Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  Jacoby stared at him until his laughter subsided. “You done?”

  “Yeah,” Leary said. The truth was, Jacoby might not practice what he preached, but he knew what he was talking about. He’d been a distinguished homicide lieutenant before leaving the PPD for a prestigious detective position at the DA’s office.

  “Look, you told me you needed some advice,” Jacoby said. “That’s why I’m here, right? If you want to be promoted, you need to focus on things like this.”

  “Like how I eat?”

  “Your attitude. Your bearing. Look at you.” Leary thought he looked good. He’d put on his best suit this morning, and was pretty sure that when he took the stand to testify against Tyrone Nash, no one would be criticizing his bearing. He started to wave his coffee mug dismissively, but the serious look in Jacoby’s eyes stopped him. “Solid police work and good test scores got you this far, Leary, but if you want to move any higher up the ranks, it’s gonna take more.”

  “I’m a good detective and everyone knows it. I deserve—”

  “You don’t deserve anything. You need to earn it. You’ve heard the phrase, ‘give it your all?’”

  Leary nodded.

  “Guys like us, we hear that phrase and our brains translate it to, ‘work hard.’ We forget the word ‘all’ means more than that. I know you work hard—and sure, maybe you’re even great at your job—but that’s not enough. You’re expected to work hard. That’s the minimum. You need to take it a step further if you want to move up the ranks. You need to give everything. Your mind, your soul, and your heart.”

  “What does that even mean?” Leary felt rising frustration. Jacoby had been a mentor to him for years, in particular when Leary had started as a detective in the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Division, but the advice Jacoby had given him then had been street-level, practical. Give it your all? That sounded good, but how was he supposed to actually implement it? The things he wanted—more responsibility, better compensation, some acknowledgment of his abilities—seemed as far from his grasp as ever.

  “It means putting the PPD first, ahead of everything else.”

  “I do that already.”

  Jacoby slurped the rest of his coffee and put his mug down, slamming it a little too hard against the table. Leary’s gaze moved from the man’s meaty hand to his eyes, which had narrowed. “I caught up on your file, and it isn’t pretty. You’re not paying enough attention to the politics of the department. You’re not making friends with the right people—or any people, far as I can tell. And this thing with the Assistant DA, Jessica Black, don’t even get me started.”

  Leary felt his face flush. “Leave Jessie out of this.”

  Jacoby barked a laugh. “You should take your own advice. It’s bad enough your little hookup in the car made it onto the Internet, but you mooning after her ever since is just fucking embarrassing.”

  “I’m not mooning after her. We’re friends.”

  “Uh-huh. Listen to me, Leary.” He spread his massive hands. “Jessica Black is an Ivy League lawyer, a top homicide prosecutor. She’s out of your league. The woman had one moment of weakness. Who knows why? Maybe she thought that tattoo you hide under your shirtsleeve was a turn-on. But she moved on. You need to do the same. What about that detective in Organized Crime, Lorena Torres? She had the hots for you, remember? You know what I’d do to get a piece of that?” He shook his head. “No, strike that. You need to keep business and pleasure separate. What’s the phrase? Don’t shit where you eat.”

  “Lovely.”

  “You asked for my help.”

  “I asked for career advice, not a postmortem on my love life.”

  “This is career advice. That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You want to move up the ladder, become a sergeant, a lieutenant, maybe even a captain or an inspector one day? Then you need to put the job first. You need to make friends with the right people, do things to make them happy. You need to sacrifice.” He shrugged. “Or you could just do what I did—get lucky and land a cushy nine-to-five job.”

  The waitress dropped off their check, and Jacoby scooped it up. “I got this one. You need to get your ass to court.” Leary forced a smile and started to rise. Jacoby looked up at him. “Promise me you’ll think about what I said, so I’m not just wasting my breath here. You’ve got a lot of potential. All seriousness, the PPD needs cops like you. Smart cops who can actually solve crimes. But you can’t wait for the department to figure that out. You need to show them.”

  Leary nodded. “Maybe I will.”

  4

  Jessie instinctively stepped back from the man and the gun, but her shoulders and spine struck the cold, unyielding wall behind her. The tiny conference room offered no retreat. The man hardly seemed to notice. He advanced into the room and closed the door behind him, his eyes never leaving Reggie. With his free hand, he withdrew a cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket. He tapped the screen several times, his gaze darting from Reggie to the screen and back again. Leaning forward, Jessie could see what looked like a candid photo of Reggie on the screen.

  Reggie was a target. The man was here to shoot him.

  “No, don’t!” Jessie threw her weight against the man, leading with her shoulder. She knew she had no chance in a fight against him. Her only hope was to knock him off balance so that she and Reggie could run. But his body was almost as unyielding as the wall. He swayed slightly, rocking with the impact and maintaining his balance. With the hand holding the phone, he struck her chest. The edge of the device jutted into her. She staggered sideways, banged one of the chairs, and fell to the floor, falling hard on her hands and knees. Pain jolted through her wrists and legs. She rolled, clutching herself. She could see Reggie standing above her, gawking.

  The man returned his phone to his pocket and placed both hands on the gun, switching to a two-handed grip and calmly leveling the barrel at Reggie. The image blurred and Jessie had to blink away tears.

  “Hold on a second,” Reggie said. His hands were up, palms forward as if they could shield him from a bullet. “Just talk to me. Tell me what you want. There’s no need for violence. I’m sure we can work something out. I got resources, man. I’m resourceful.”

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. How had this man gained access to the holding area, much less the attorney-client conference rooms, or the keys that opened them? It didn’t seem possible. The CJC might not be known for impenetrable security, but surely it employed good enough measures to prevent an attack like this. The Sheriff’s Office even had a budget for upgrades like the JusticeGuard lecterns.

  And the panic button key fob in my attache case.

  She mentally cursed herself for not listening to Kenny Rodriguez when he’d told her to keep it on her person. Her bag, sitting on the tabletop, seemed a million miles away. By barely moving his arms, the man could turn his gun on her and make sure she never got up again.

  Where was Rodriguez now? Had the man killed him? Was that how he’d gotten in here? The thought chilled her.

  Then Reggie did something stupid that saved both of their lives. He grabbed her attache case off of the table and threw it at the man. The man deflected the bag, knocking it aside with his arm and barely adjusting his aim. It landed a foot from Jessie’s hand. She grabbed it. The man, seeming to sense something wrong, turned to look at her, but he was too late. Her hand was inside the bag and her fingers found the key fob. As Rodriguez had promised, it only had one button. She jabbed it with her thumb and an alarm blared in the corridor outside the conference room.

  The man turned the gun on her, and she saw what looked like regret in his eyes. “I wish you hadn’t done that.” She could barely hear him over the scream of the siren. Her focus shifted from his face to the gun as she watched his finger curl around the trigger. Reggie jumped onto the man’s back, clinging to him. The man grunted, struggling to maintain his aim with Reggie hanging off of his neck. A chunk of floor burst apart five inches from Jessie’s
face. With the suppressor, she hadn’t even heard the shot over the wail of the siren. She screamed and did not hear that either.

  Men burst into the room. All Jessie could see was a chaos of legs and shoes, but when she heard Kenny Rodriguez’s voice barking commands, she felt an immense relief. Rodriguez was alive, and the man was apprehended. Someone helped her up off the floor. “Jesus, are you okay, Jessie?” It was Amy Erlinger, another deputy sheriff she’d become friendly with over the years.

  She struggled to catch her breath. “I think so.” She brushed pieces of the floor off her suit and rubbed at her aching wrist. Erlinger watched her for a moment, her eyes full of concern behind her thick glasses. She took the panic button from Jessie. A moment later, the siren cut off.

  “I’m okay, too,” Reggie said. “Thanks for asking.” A third deputy, Mohammed Rais, secured his wrists with handcuffs. “Is this a joke? I’m the hero here. Tell them, Jessie. I brought that guy down!”

  “Yeah, right,” Rais said. He was one of the younger deputies. To Jessie, the squat, olive-toned kid looked barely older than a high school student. He glanced nervously at Rodriguez and Erlinger for approval. “You’re the hero.”

  “He was the target,” Jessie said. Her voice was hoarse from screaming. She cleared her throat and added, “The intended victim.”

  Rodriguez thrust the would-be killer against the wall and secured his wrists behind his back. Looking at Jessie, he said, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess not everyone finds Reggie as lovable as he thinks they do.”

  “Not funny,” Reggie said. “Not fucking funny.”

  “He’s the second witness in this trial who’s been threatened,” Jessie said. But even as she said the words, she doubted there was any connection. Tyrone Nash was a thug, and fully capable of asking a crony to intimidate Dunmore by holding up a phone in the courtroom gallery. But hiring a professional hitman hardly seemed his style. Nash didn’t have the money for that, or the connections, as far as she knew. Still, what other explanation could there be? Reggie was here to testify against Nash in a murder trial. The only reason to kill him was to shut him up.

  Rodriguez spoke quietly into his shoulder mic. Jessie caught only some of his words, distorted by the ringing in her ears and the strange inflection caused by his partial deafness, but she surmised that he was checking in with courthouse security. “It’s under control. We have the guy.” To Erlinger, he said, “Search him, will you?”

  Erlinger pushed her thick glasses up her nose and quickly frisked the man. “No other weapons. No wallet or ID, either. Look at this.” She held up a security keycard. “Explains how he got in here, I guess.”

  “Whose is it?” Rodriguez said.

  Erlinger read the card. “Reed Estrada.”

  Rodriguez spoke into his mic again. “The guy has Reed Estrada’s keycard.”

  “Did you do something to Reed?” Rais left Reggie’s side and crossed the tiny room to get in the man’s face. Anger and horror momentarily stripped the youthfulness from his features. “Did you kill him?”

  “Rais, quiet!” Rodriguez snapped. Jessie held her breath. She didn’t know Reed Estrada well, but she’d exchanged pleasantries with him plenty of times. He often manned the metal detectors in the courthouse lobby. “He’ll answer all of our questions soon enough,” Rodriguez said.

  Rais frowned, but after a second passed, he nodded. “Yes, sir.” Jessie felt the tension in the room begin to diffuse now that the threat had passed.

  She moved closer to Reggie. “I’ll request that your testimony be postponed. You don’t need to take the stand today.”

  Reggie gave her an incredulous look. “Are you kidding? It takes more than a piss-poor shot like this asshole to scare me.” The words might be brave, but the tremor in his voice was unmistakable. Jessie shook her head and patted his arm.

  She turned to Rodriguez. “Kenny, it looks like you guys have this under control. Can you spare a deputy to take Reggie downstairs? I’m not going to need him today.”

  Rodriguez looked at her but held up a finger for quiet. He had his cell phone out now and was listening intently. Jessie waited. Finally, he put his phone away and said, “I don’t think any of us are going anywhere right now, Jessie.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Sheriff’s Captain just ordered the gates in the lobby closed. The building is in lockdown.”

  “Lockdown?” Jessie stared at him. His words didn’t make sense. There were thousands of people in the courthouse. Hundreds of trials and hearings and conferences. “You’ve got the guy in handcuffs.”

  Rodriguez shook his head. “Security just reviewed the camera feed from the lobby. Estrada was working the metal detector. He let five men through without scanning them, and he gave his card to this one.” He gestured at the handcuffed gunman. “Then Reed walked out of the building and didn’t come back. The police are putting out an APB on him now.”

  Jessie’s breath caught in her throat. Estrada had been bought off, or blackmailed, or threatened. Now there were four other men inside the courthouse who were probably armed, and no one knew who they were, where they were, or why they were here.

  Almost no one. She looked at the man who’d tried to kill her. He had been watching their whole conversation with a knowing smile. “I’m an Assistant District Attorney. Tell us what’s going on, help us stop your friends before someone gets hurt, and I’ll try to help you get a deal. But you need to talk to me now.”

  The man smirked at her. “Aren’t you forgetting something, ma’am?”

  Jessie liked to think she wasn’t easily rattled, but watching the man, she felt a flicker of doubt. She didn’t like being called ma’am, and she definitely didn’t like the confident, fearless look in the man’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m in custody, right? That means you can’t question me without reading me my Miranda rights.” His gaze shifted to Rodriguez. “Don’t bother. I do not waive my right to counsel. I want a lawyer.”

  Rodriguez licked his lips. There was a look of panic in his eyes. “We can’t get you one. Not right now.”

  “Then put me in a cell, because you can’t talk to me. It’s the law, right Ms. Assistant District Attorney?”

  “Actually, it’s not,” Jessie said. She felt her uneasiness give way as the man’s cool veneer cracked.

  “Don’t try to bluff me.”

  “I’m not. There’s an exception to the Miranda rule. Where the public safety is at stake, Miranda does not apply. You have no right to counsel.”

  “Good to know,” Rodriguez said. “Let’s move our mystery man to another conference room where he can meditate on the complexity of the law until Security sends someone to question him. Erlinger, you can take Mr. Tuck back to the holding area for now. Jessie, you should probably head down to the Security Center. Rais can escort you.”

  Rais smiled at her. His deep brown eyes actually seemed to twinkle. “Come on, Ms. Black.”

  Jessie didn’t move. “You can’t keep Reggie in the holding area. That’s where anyone looking for him will expect him to be.” She gestured at the would-be assassin. “The only thing we know about this man is that he came here to kill Reggie. We have to assume his four accomplices have the same agenda. Reggie’s the one who needs to be put somewhere safe, not me.”

  “The holding cells are safe.”

  “Not for him.”

  Rodriguez stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “That’s my decision and right now I’m the ranking officer on this floor. Erlinger, please place Mr. Tuck in his own cell. We only have a handful of inmates in the holding area. There should be enough room. Rais, please take Ms. Black down to the Security Center.”

  Erlinger grabbed Reggie by the shoulder and shoved him out the door into the corridor. “Hey, get off me, lady!” Reggie held Jessie’s gaze for as long as he could before he disappeared into the hallway. Th
en he and Erlinger were gone. Jessie heard their footsteps trail away.

  “Just think about what I’m saying,” she said, but Rodriguez’s attention was on Tuck’s would-be killer now.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Rodriguez said. “Wait here.” He hurried from the room, leaving her and Rais with the handcuffed man. The man glowered at them, all traces of his arrogant smirk gone now, replaced by smoldering anger.

  Rodriguez returned carrying an ink pad and a piece of paper. He opened the ink pad and placed it on the table. “Turn around, big guy.”

  The intruder turned his back to Rodriguez, exposing his handcuffed hands. Rodriguez grabbed his right hand and jerked it to the ink pad, where he began to roll the man’s fingertips, one at a time, first against the ink pad and then against the sheet of paper. He repeated the process with the left hand, creating a clean set of fingerprints.

  Rodriguez held up the paper, as if to admire it, and blew gently against the drying ink. “You may have left your wallet behind,” Rodriguez said, “but you still brought one form of identification, didn’t you?” He handed the sheet of paper to Rais. “Take this with you to Security.”

  “Will do.” Rais took Jessie’s forearm in a gentle grip and guided her toward the door. “Don’t worry,” he said in a quiet voice. “Everything will be fine, Ms. Black.”

  “I hope you’re right. And for God’s sake, please just call me Jessie.”

  The look he gave her was painfully earnest. “Yes, ma’am.”

  5

  In the hallway outside the conference rooms, Rais started walking in the wrong direction—away from the sheriffs’ elevators. He must have seen her confusion, because he stopped and said, “We need to take the stairs. The elevators won’t be working. It’s part of the lockdown protocol.”