Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  “As touching as this conversation is, I’m going to need to interrupt it,” Garrett said. Jessie looked at him, surprised by the joking tone of his voice and the smirk on his previously earnest face. He reached behind his back, and his hand came back holding a stubby knife.

  “What the hell, Garrett?” one of the other deputies said.

  Garrett punched the short blade into the man’s throat. Before the other deputy could unbutton his holster, Garrett stabbed him in the eye. Both deputies staggered backward and fell, gasping and clutching at their wounds. Jessie stared in disbelief, temporarily paralyzed. Reggie, standing beside her, had gone just as still. Garrett planted a foot on the second deputy’s cheek, reached down, and ripped his knife free. Pieces of the man’s eyeball flew from his face. The man started to scream, and Garrett cut his throat. “Sorry for the mess,” he said, glancing at Jessie and Reggie, “but I can’t afford to make too much noise.”

  Jessie found her voice. “What’s going on? Were those men working with the intruders?”

  Garrett shook his head. “No, Ms. Black. I am.”

  “You know,” Reggie said, “prison doesn’t sound so bad right now.”

  The joke fell flat. They had no options here, no chance at getting out of this alive. Jessie had left Nash’s gun on the floor above them. Kurt Garrett, whoever he was, held all of the cards. And in a moment, he would hold all of the guns, too. He removed one from each deputy’s holster.

  “Just make it quick, okay?” Reggie said. “Shoot me in the head. None of that knife shit.”

  Garrett placed his knife on the conference table and ejected the clip from the first deputy’s service pistol, then the second, and put the clips in his pockets. “Never forget the one in the chamber,” he said, popping those bullets out as well before tossing the empty weapons to the floor. He picked up his knife. “Don’t worry, Reggie. I’m taking you out of here alive. Ms. Black, on the other hand....” He turned to Jessie, and his fingertip traced the edge of the blade. She willed herself to meet his stare, but her body shuddered, betraying her fear. “It’s up to you, Reggie. Come quietly, and I’ll leave her here in this room, handcuffed to the table. Resist me, and I’ll have to kill her.” He approached her with the knife. “What do you say, Reggie?”

  “How about a third option?” Reggie said. He reached into the back waistband of his suit pants. In the time it took Garrett to turn, Reggie’s hand came back gripping Tyrone Nash’s gun. He must have taken it before following Jessie out the seventh floor window. Jessie might have been angry about his deception if she wasn’t so relieved that he’d done it. A breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding burst from her lungs.

  “A concealed firearm,” Garrett muttered. His voice was thoughtful. “I didn’t expect a move like this from you, Reggie. You surprised me, and that’s not easy to do. I’m impressed.”

  “How impressed you gonna be when I shoot you in the dick? Put down that blade.”

  Garrett tossed the knife onto the floor and raised his hands toward the ceiling. “What now?” he said.

  Reggie turned to Jessie, looking uncertain. She said, “We need to call Courthouse Security. You have my phone.”

  “So they can send a few more deputies to greet me with handcuffs?”

  “Think rationally,” she said. “What other choice do we—”

  Garrett yanked a pistol from the holster at his hip. He fired once, the sound slamming Jessie’s ear drums as it reverberated around the small room. She heard Reggie cry out. Blood spurted from a hole in his thigh. He staggered but managed to hold onto his own gun. He raised the weapon and fired back at Garrett. The bullet went wide. Chunks of drywall rained to the floor. Garrett lunged forward, grabbed Jessie, and thrust the barrel of his gun against the underside of her chin. The metal burned.

  “Stop, Reggie!” Garrett said. She could barely hear him over the ringing in her ears. “We’re out of time. Put down the gun and come with me, unless you want me to blow this woman’s brains out.”

  Reggie froze, his face filled with uncertainty. Then the corners of his mouth turned in an apologetic frown. “Sorry, Jessie.” Gripping his wounded leg, he turned and lurched toward the door. Garrett cursed as Reggie limped from the room and slammed the door behind him. Jessie just stared at the door. Even knowing that Reggie was a convict and a professional liar, part of her couldn’t believe he would leave her here. That he would betray her.

  Garrett threw Jessie against the wall. Pain flared in her shoulder and vibrated down her arm. She regained her balance and turned to face him, but Garrett had his gun aimed at her.

  She rubbed her shoulder. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You should ask yourself the same question. I heard you were smart, a hotshot lawyer. Sticking your neck out for a guy like Reggie sure doesn’t seem smart to me.”

  “You want to talk about my IQ?” Jessie eyed the guns on the conference table, wondering if there was anything she could do with them. She’d watched Garrett empty them of ammunition. Her gaze shifted to the floor, where Garrett’s knife lay forgotten. If she could get to it.... “Maybe you’d like to see my LSAT scores,” she went on, trying to keep his mind off of the knife.

  “You better hope he’s loyal, because if he doesn’t come back for you, you’re dead.”

  If he expected her to cower in fear, he was going to be disappointed. She took a step, trying to move closer to the knife without drawing his attention to it. “You’re the one who’s not being smart,” she said. “My ears are still ringing from those gunshots. By now, Courthouse Security and the cops outside know something is wrong. You don’t have barricades in the stairwells to protect you on this floor.”

  “I have a hostage.”

  “Only as long as I’m alive. Doesn’t that undermine your threat to kill me?”

  Something flashed in Garrett’s eyes, and she wondered if she’d pushed him too far. The guy obviously had some kind of hangup about his intelligence, something to prove. He gnashed his teeth, and frustration seemed to rise off of his skin like waves of heat. “Maybe I can’t afford to kill you right now, but I can still hurt you.”

  She saw the look in his eyes change, and she knew before he spoke again that he had just remembered the knife. He bent and picked it up from the floor. She watched as he scooped up her last hope of turning the tables on him.

  “That’s your plan?” It was impossible to keep her voice steady now. “To torture me while the cops close in? All you’ll accomplish is to guarantee yourself the maximum sentence!”

  Garrett turned the knife in his hand. “They’ll have to catch me first.” The way he said it, there was no doubt that he believed he could outsmart the deputies, the police force, the entire law enforcement machine. She wondered what a man who believed that would be capable of. The thought was terrifying.

  Reggie staggered down the deserted sixth floor hallway. He ran hunched over, one hand pressed against his thigh, and the other holding Nash’s gun. He’d never been shot before. The pain was intense. Blood, hot and slick, pulsed from the wound and leaked out between the fingers of his hand. A trail of blood followed him, a reddish-brown line on the marble floor. His suit pants were soaked around the ragged hole the bullet had made—the bullet that was still inside his leg. The thought nauseated him.

  Not exactly the day he’d been expecting when he rolled off his prison cot this morning.

  He shoved open the door to one of the courtrooms and careened inside. He needed something to stop the bleeding. He emptied his pockets, unloading Jessie’s wallet and cell phone onto one of the counsel tables. There was something else at the bottom of the pocket. He pulled it out. His tie.

  He remembered his happiness at learning that he would be trusted with a real tie today, instead of a clip-on, and he laughed. Then he wrapped it around his thigh like a tourniquet, cinched it tight, and knotted it. The pain continued to throb, but the bleeding slowed.

  “Okay, Reggie,” he said, “that’s good. That’s a
real good start.” What next? His gaze fell on the wallet and the phone. He swept the phone off the table and flicked his finger against the screen. He was greeted by a lock screen prompting him for a password. “Fucking people! Nobody trusts anybody anymore.” Then he saw an option for making an emergency call. He hesitated, but only for a second.

  An operator answered, and in a nasally voice said, “911. What is your emergency?”

  “I need to talk to the people in charge outside the courthouse.”

  “What is the nature of your emergency, sir?”

  “The nature of my emergency is I’m hiding in a fucking courtroom with a bullet wound in my leg and crazy people trying to kidnap me!”

  “What is your name?”

  Jesus Christ—he didn’t know if he was going to bleed to death, or if Garrett or some other asshole was going to shoot him in the head, but either of those seemed likely to happen long before this idiot 911 operator transferred his call. “My name is Reggie Tuck. Why do you care? Am I asking your fucking name? I need help!”

  “And I’m trying to collect the appropriate information.”

  “Listen, you need to transfer me to—” His brain coughed up the first cop who came to mind. “You need to put me through to a cop named Leary, okay? Detective Mark Leary. You need to do that right now or I swear to God you’re going to have my death on your conscience!”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Reggie checked the screen to make sure the phone had not dropped the call. Then the voice returned. “Please remain on the line, sir.”

  27

  Leary watched Tuck fall off of the ledge, suit jacket flapping, and a pulse of panic raced through him. But when Jessie grabbed Tuck and, rather than pulling him up, began to fall with him, what Leary felt could only be described as horror. Real horror, the kind that could change your life forever. He’d seen that horror before—in the faces of ordinary men and women when he showed up at their front doors to inform them of the death of a loved one—but he’d never experienced it himself until now. The series of images that flashed through his mind were garish. A funeral. Sleepless nights. A mental hospital—the Philadelphia Center for Inclusive Treatment, where Kristen Dillard, another witness with whom Jessie had become personally attached, was still recovering from the rape and attempted murder that had shattered her life and irrevocably changed Jessie’s and Leary’s as well. Would he wind up there with her, watching game shows together in the common room?

  Then a miracle occurred, and the deputy sheriff on the sixth floor somehow managed to keep his grip on Jessie. It seemed impossible, but Leary watched it happen. Whether by strength or adrenaline, the deputy pulled both Jessie and Tuck into the building and out of sight. Leary let out a breath. Maybe those meatheads outside Vital Fitness were onto something after all.

  “Thank God,” Chancey said. The lieutenant stood rigidly still, transfixed by the sight.

  “I told you she’s a survivor.”

  Chancey turned to him, and his expression shifted from relief to anger. “You’re going to remain in custody until this situation is resolved. I don’t trust you on your own. You’re personally involved, and it’s clouded your judgment.”

  Leary couldn’t care less. “Just let me see her.”

  Chancey’s features seemed to soften, but not by much. “Stay here and you can see her for a few minutes when they bring her out. After that, I’m locking you in a van, where you can be safely contained.”

  Leary’s phone buzzed. “That’s probably her. Can you uncuff me so I can answer it?”

  “No.” Chancey took Leary’s phone from his pocket and answered it himself. “This is Lieutenant Kareem Chancey. Detective Leary is unavailable at the moment.”

  Leary lunged toward Chancey. The two uniforms held him back. He said, “Jessie, are you okay?”

  Chancey turned his back on him, then his body froze. Leary watched the lieutenant as seconds passed, each seeming longer than the one before it. With only the back of the man’s head to stare at, he couldn’t even read his face. He was shut out.

  “What’s going on?” Leary said. “What is she saying?”

  Chancey waved him to silence. Into the phone, he said, “Calm down. If you’ve been shot, you need medical attention. You need to get out of the building.”

  Shot? His stomach seemed to twist within him. Chancey lowered the phone and turned to one of the uniformed officers. “I need you to get me all of the information available on that deputy sheriff. Kurt Garrett. Now!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Lieutenant,” Leary said, “please tell me—”

  “It’s not Black on the phone,” Chancey said. “It’s Tuck.” Then, lifting the phone to his face again, he said, “Listen to me, Mr. Tuck. This is not the time to try to be a hero—” He looked at the phone’s screen. “He hung up.”

  “What’s happening?” Leary said. “Where’s Jessie?”

  Chancey stuck the phone back in Leary’s pocket. “We’ve got a problem. The threat wasn’t limited to the seventh floor like we thought. The deputy who pulled them through the window, Kurt Garrett, is in on it. He tried to take Tuck and Black hostage. Tuck got away, but not before taking a bullet to the leg. Apparently Black is still with Garrett. She’s a hostage.”

  Leary’s brain rebelled at the thought. He’d just seen her whisked to safety. He’d watched her escape with his own eyes. “No.”

  Chancey’s stare turned hard and flat. “We don’t know how many deputies are involved. Or other cops. We don’t know who we can trust.”

  “You know you can trust me.” Leary braced himself. Chancey stared at him, looking shocked, but seeming to consider Leary’s words, too. Only a few minutes had passed since the man had practically declared his intention to destroy Leary’s career. But minutes ago, the situation had been different. Now, a pattern of corruption had emerged—first Reed Estrada, and now Kurt Garrett. There was no telling how many other people supposedly on Chancey’s side might actually be working against him. “Maybe you think my personal feelings are a problem when it comes to being professional or objective, but you have to admit they’re an advantage if you’re trying to determine who’s loyal and who’s not.”

  After a long moment, Chancey nodded. “Take off his handcuffs.”

  One of the uniformed officers stepped forward to release him. “Thank you, sir.” Leary waited as the man unlocked and removed the handcuffs. He rubbed at his wrists. The skin was sore and puffy, but the pain hardly bothered him.

  “Don’t make me regret this, Detective.”

  “You won’t.” Leary continued to rub at his wrists, pacing. “If Garrett tried to take them hostage, maybe that means we’ve been wrong about their motives. Maybe they want Tuck alive.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Chancey said.

  “Only because we’ve been assuming that this is about preventing his testimony, or getting revenge. Maybe this is about something else.”

  Chancey tried to shake another cigarette out of his box, but it was empty. He crumpled the cardboard in his fist. “You have a theory?”

  “The Assistant DA who prosecuted Tuck for fraud told me that the police suspected that one of his victims was Carlo Vitale, the mobster. Tuck stole money from him. What if Vitale’s trying to find it, get it back?”

  Chancey was already shaking his head. “For Christ’s sake, Leary. The Organized Crime Unit was clear. You are not to investigate Carlo Vitale.”

  “Think about it. Hitmen? Corruption? This case has all of the earmarks of a mafia scheme.”

  “You’re an authority on the mafia now?”

  “All I’m asking for is a little flexibility to follow this lead. That’s all. Let me talk to Vitale and see if I can rattle him enough to shake something loose. Something that could help us put an end to this.”

  “And arrest him?” Chancey said, sounding dubious.

  “If he’s guilty, yes.”

  “What makes you think he’ll talk to you?�
��

  Leary looked up at the CJC. He had come so close to seeing Jessie safely out of that building, and now the situation had become even more desperate. “Let me worry about that.”

  28

  The sun struck Leary’s windshield from a different angle as he repeated his drive down South Street. He glanced at the dashboard clock. 3:11 PM. He felt a tightening in his chest, and his hands closed harder around the steering wheel. How much time did Jessie have?

  He stopped the car down the street from Vital Fitness and resisted the urge to barge inside. He’d tried that approach already with no success. Lorena Torres had told him Vitale conducted business here. His best chance was to wait for the man to show up, and make his move then. He sat low in his seat and tried not to look at the clock.

  The place didn’t seem particularly popular. Maybe two or three people entered the building during the next fifteen minutes, exchanging pleasantries with the two meatheads who’d tried to block his entrance earlier in the day. Leary told himself that he wasn’t wasting time here, as a few more people—none of them resembling Carlo Vitale—entered or exited the gym.

  Four o’clock rolled around and Leary cursed out loud. He was about to call Lorena and beg for another favor—maybe the address of Vitale’s house—when a Jaguar sedan pulled up in front of the gym. Leary leaned forward. The Jag was the nicest car he’d seen here, by a large margin. A man in a jogging suit emerged from the driver’s-side door. Leaving the engine running, he walked around the car and opened the passenger-side rear door. A middle-aged man climbed out. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit, and his salt-and-pepper hair was swept back from a widow’s peak. Leary recognized him from photos he’d seen in the press and in the police station. Carlo Vitale. His patience had paid off.

  Vitale gave his driver a friendly clap on the back and headed for the gym’s entrance. The two meatheads practically fought each other for the honor of opening the door for the man. Once Vitale was inside, the driver waved to the meatheads and returned to the Jaguar. A few seconds later, the engine roared to life.