Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  Didn’t it?

  She wasn’t so sure. The last person she’d known who put his job ahead of politics had been Leary, right before he’d been pushed out of the Philadelphia Police Department.

  Too late now for second thoughts.

  She stepped forward. Cameras flashed. A reporter called out, “Do you have a response, Ms. Black?”

  She made eye-contact with the reporter. “This is not the appropriate forum to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation into a possible co-conspirator in the Stevens Academy killings. I’m here to collect the data per the court’s order.”

  There. Best she could do. Hopefully she’d still have a job tomorrow.

  She reached for the thumb drive, but of course Truman held it just out of her reach. He wasn’t done. He was just getting started.

  He wore a dour expression, but she sensed he was all smiles on the inside.

  “I am in your city today to face the latest attempt by our government to silence the men’s rights movement. You see, as part of the movement, I operate a website message board called Manpower, where people can come together to discuss their views on the issues facing men in our modern world. Manpower users have the option to post their opinions anonymously or under nicknames, so that they can speak freely without fear of being punished or persecuted for their beliefs. Because of this, our forum has grown into a large community with lively, healthy debate and discussion.”

  One of the cops in the crowd gave Jessie a questioning look. Should we break this up? She responded with a barely perceptible shake of her head. She wasn’t sure yet what the right move was, but she knew it wasn’t that.

  Graham looked up. The building was shorter than City Hall—maybe four flights—and on the other side of the street from the government building. The ground floor was an Indian restaurant Graham had never noticed before, called House of Spice.

  “Call for backup,” she said as she and Novak ran toward the door.

  “On it.”

  She rushed inside, Novak right behind her. The hostess, a tall, matronly Indian woman, looked up from her counter. Going by the woman’s wide-eyed expression, Graham figured she understood immediately that they weren’t here for lunch. Patrons glanced up from their tables, curious.

  Graham said, “How do I get to the roof?”

  The hostess shook her head. “The roof’s off-limits.”

  She held up her badge. “Not today it isn’t.”

  The woman looked uncertain. “The landlord, he gets angry….”

  “This is an emergency. How do we access the roof?”

  The woman seemed to come to a decision. She sighed and said, “Follow me.”

  A door in the back of the restaurant, near the restrooms, led to a small office. The office connected to an internal hallway. “Elevator and stairs are that way,” the woman said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “No time,” Graham said. Already striding away from the woman.

  “Is there danger?” the woman called after her.

  Graham hesitated. She believed there was danger—a man on a rooftop with a rifle was pretty much the definition of danger—but she didn’t want to cause a panic. “Stay inside and you should be okay,” she said.

  That’s when they heard the first gunshot.

  “The District Attorney,” Truman lectured, “seizing on the recent tragedy at Stevens Academy, has convinced the court to issue a warrant forcing us to divulge the identity and private messages of one of our users. We fought the warrant in court, and we lost, and now we must provide the state with this confidential information—a terrible outcome for us, for you, and for democracy.”

  Jessie tried to gauge the reaction of the crowd. Some seemed to be buying into Truman’s rhetoric, turning accusatory stares in her direction. But others looked skeptical, and some were even laughing.

  “We could have just sent the data to the DA’s office, or even emailed it,” Truman went on. “But that would be a cowardly manner of accepting defeat. Instead, I am here personally, as the owner of Manpower, to make sure that everyone knows what’s happening today. I hope that all of you who share my disappointment with the erosion of our constitutional rights and our expectations of privacy will loudly condemn this unlawful search and seizure, which, as the founders of this country anticipated when they drafted the Bill of Rights, can only lead to the chilling of free political speech in this country.

  “Make no mistake. Manpower will appeal this miscarriage of justice all the way to the Supreme Court, if that’s what it takes to protect the right of all of us to free political discourse.”

  And with that, he handed the thumb drive to Jessie. Aware of the multitude of eyes and cameras eager to read her expression, she tried to keep her face neutral. She took the thumb drive, offered Truman a curt nod, and turned to make her escape.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. Sensing that this was the right moment, the reporters in the crowd surged forward, thrusting microphones toward her and Truman. The noise level rose to an ear-battering din as they shouted questions.

  Then there was a loud, sharp crack and the crowd went silent. In the stretch of seconds that followed, Jessie’s eyes met Truman’s. She wasn’t sure if he recognized the sound, but she did. A gunshot.

  It was followed by another one. Crack! She felt something zip past her face. The bullet struck the building right behind her and sent chunks of the wall flying like shrapnel. Something caught Jessie’s neck. Sharp pain. Blood.

  The crowd burst apart and people fled in all directions. Someone dropped a camera and it was trampled instantly, broken into a thousand pieces and scattered under hundreds of shoes. Jessie stared, holding her neck, thinking, I’m shot.

  No, just a cut. You’ll be fine. Just get the hell out of here.

  She grabbed Truman’s arm. “Come on! We need to move!”

  He gawked at her. His eyes were wild with panic. All his cockiness seemed to have abandoned him. She tugged his arm again, but he didn’t move. Petrified, frozen in place by fear. Where the hell were his bodyguards? She spotted them, running away.

  “Mr. Truman! Vaughn! Snap out of it. Vaughn!”

  Hearing his name seemed to bring him around. His gaze focused on her. He opened his mouth, about to say something, when a perfect circle appeared to the left of his nose. A hole. It filled with blood even before she heard the CRACK! He fell.

  Then there was a different sound—also recognizable as gunfire, but from a different weapon. Four shots, in rapid succession.

  And then the wail of sirens.

  Graham and Novak raced down the hallway. The sound of the gunshot still echoed in Graham’s ears. “Take the elevator!” she said. “I’ll take the stairs.”

  She didn’t wait for his confirmation. There was a door with a picture of a stick figure mounting a staircase. She threw her body against the crash bar and burst into the dimly lit stairwell. Up she went, pounding the stairs, wishing she were wearing her sneakers instead of her work shoes. But her morning running ritual paid off. She practically flew up the stairs, rushing past the second-floor door, the third-floor door.

  Finally she hit the end of the stairwell and a door marked Roof Access. It was more solid-looking than the inner doors, and had an ancient but complicated-looking combination lock built into it.

  Please don’t be locked. There was no time to drill.

  Novak entered the stairwell below her, coming from the third floor elevator. “Jesus,” he said. “You’re not even out of breath?”

  She gestured at the door to the roof. “Ready?”

  He drew his Glock and nodded.

  Graham pulled her own gun and gripped the cold, steel doorknob with her other hand. She turned the knob. The door didn’t budge at first, and she thought it really was locked. But it was only stiff. She added pressure and the rusty hinges squealed and the door opened. Sunlight flooded the stairwell.

  Novak bounded past her through the doorway, gun raised. She followed him outside, coming i
n lower and sweeping left to right with her own gun. Adrenaline flooded her system. Her heart jumped into her throat, pumping like crazy.

  Noises from the streets below reached her ears. Screams, cries, shouts, running feet—the unmistakable sounds of panic.

  She spotted Wesley Lanford just as the second gunshot went off. A blunt, brutal sound that seemed to bounce off the sky above them.

  Lanford’s back was to them. He knelt at the edge of the roof, his bald head glistening with sweat, the rifle braced against his shoulder. He didn’t look panicked. He looked calm. Totally at ease. Like a zen Buddhist in meditation. Except for the Browning X-Bolt SSA Predator bolt action rifle. Nothing zen about that. He slotted in another round.

  “Stop!” Graham yelled. “Drop your weapon!”

  She aimed her gun at his back. Her heartbeat seemed to slow down—just a notch—as she lined up her shot. She realized this was the second time she’d confronted a shooter in a matter of days. And that the shooters were father and son. She’d managed to take the son alive. The father? She hoped so. God, she hoped so. As much as she disliked the man, she didn’t want to shoot him.

  “I said drop it, Lanford! Now!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Novak said. “Drop the rifle.”

  Lanford pivoted and turned a cold stare toward them. Instead of dropping the rifle, he aimed it at her. Graham didn’t hesitate. Her finger squeezed the trigger. Four times. The shots rang out. Lanford’s body jerked as all four bullets hit him center mass. He slumped to the roof. The rifle fell out of his hands.

  She darted to his side, kicked the rifle away. It skidded across the surface of the roof until Novak brought his foot down on it, stopping it.

  Lanford was bleeding, which meant he was alive. Graham half-knelt, half-collapsed beside him. She felt his pulse. Already slowing. “He’s bleeding out.” Backup would be arriving soon, and with it, an ambulance, but by that time, it would be too late. “Damn it.” She rocked back on her heels. A ragged breath tore out of her. She was suddenly exhausted. Spent. She didn’t even have the energy to look past the edge of the roof to watch the chaos below.

  It was a good shooting. A justified shooting. She knew that. But it didn’t change the fact. She’d put a man down. Killed him.

  First time.

  “You alright, Emily?” Novak said. He squatted beside her and placed a tentative hand on her arm.

  “Not really.”

  “It’s okay. You will be.” She didn’t realize she was still gripping her pistol, finger inside the trigger guard, until Novak gently took the gun from her. “All part of the job,” he said.

  “I was right about Lanford,” she said.

  “You sure were.”

  “I sensed something.”

  “Remember this,” Novak said. He looked in her eyes. “If you ever start to doubt your instincts, remember this.”

  She nodded, already starting to feel better, to feel stronger. She’d stopped a bad guy.

  But she had to wonder, as the sounds of frightened civilians continued to fill the streets below, if she’d stopped the danger.

  21

  An emergency room doctor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital treated the wound in Jessie’s neck and sealed it with surgical glue. “Shouldn’t leave much of a scar,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready, you can go home.”

  “Thanks.”

  Leary paced beside her. The whole event had obviously disturbed him. He’d rushed straight here from his office, and was still dressed in the business casual attire that she knew he was still getting used to after years of wearing a suit as a homicide detective. The doc watched his restless prowling and glanced at Jessie with a concerned look. “I think he’s taking this harder than you.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  The doctor smiled and left them alone.

  “Leary, relax. I’m fine.”

  “You’re lucky,” he said. His face looked strained. “Lucky that Wesley Lanford was a relatively good marksman. If he’d had slightly worse aim, it might be you in the morgue right now instead of Truman.”

  She winced. Somehow, Vaughn Truman’s death hadn’t fully sunk in yet. Counting Wesley Lanford, whom Graham had taken out one second too late to save Truman, the death count was now up to nineteen. And True_Man, whoever he was, was still at large.

  But not for long, hopefully. The police had the thumb drive and were perusing its contents right now. With luck, they’d have True_Man identified and under arrest by the end of the day, and then Jessie could bring the full weight of the DA’s office down on his head.

  “How are you feeling?” said a familiar voice. Jessie looked up to see Emily Graham walking toward her.

  “I’m fine. What about you? I know it’s never easy, having to shoot someone.”

  The detective shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”

  “You might not really believe that right now,” Leary said, “but it’s true. You’ll be alright.”

  Graham gave him a half-smile. “Thanks. That’s what Novak keeps telling me. How’re you doing, Leary? Private sector getting any more tolerable?”

  Now it was Leary’s turn to shrug. “I don’t get shot at anymore, so I guess that’s a plus.”

  “What’s the latest on True_Man?” Jessie said.

  Graham’s face seemed to darken. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I wanted to deliver the news in person. We looked at the flash drive Manpower provided. It contains logs of the private messages—and they’re illuminating, believe me—but we don’t have True_Man’s identity.”

  Anger coursed through Jessie. “But Judge Katz ordered them to give us that information!”

  “They gave us what they had. But True_Man never gave any identifying information to Manpower. Even his IP address was hidden. He visited the website using a VPN, a proxy service. He could be anywhere and anyone.”

  Jessie shook her head, momentarily forgetting her injury. The motion brought a stabbing pain to her neck, which only made her angrier.

  “I want to see everything Manpower gave us,” she said.

  “I assumed you would,” Graham said. She handed Jessie a folder and a thumb drive. “I printed everything out for you. Here’s a hard copy, and a copy of the digital files.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. You’ve got some unpleasant reading ahead of you.”

  Later, Jessie was officially discharged and she and Leary left the hospital. Outside, the sun was beginning to set behind the Philly skyline, a red glow between the buildings.

  “Wait here,” Leary said. “I’ll bring my car around.”

  “My neck is hurt, not my legs. I can walk with you to the car.”

  He gave her a look. “Just humor me, will you? Let me take care of you a little.”

  She sighed. Even though her only wound was to her neck, the truth was the experience had fatigued her. “Okay. Thanks.”

  She watched him walk away. Her phone vibrated and Warren Williams’s name appeared on the screen. Not a surprise. She’d been expecting his call. Still, with her neck hurting and her frame of mind shaken, he wasn’t a person she wanted to deal with right now. She considered sending the call to voice mail, then reconsidered. He was her boss, after all.

  “Hello?”

  “What the hell is going on?” he said.

  “I’m okay. Thanks for your concern. It’s touching.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and his voice actually sounded abashed. “Of course I want you to be okay,” Warren said. “But I just spent ten minutes getting chewed out by Rivera and his political advisers, so my social skills are a little off. I’m sorry.”

  “Who are you kidding, Warren? Your social skills are never on.”

  She watched traffic pass the hospital. No sign of Leary’s car. She was starting to wish she’d walked with him.

  “Two deaths today,” Warren said, “and we pretty much martyred this guy Truman. Doesn’t put the district attorney’s office in a great light. In fact, quite th
e opposite. We look like fascists trying to suppress political speech. I hope you found something that justifies this warrant, Jessie.”

  She gripped the folder Graham had given her. “The warrant’s already been justified. By a court of law.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the court of public opinion. Just as important, as you know. More important, as far as Rivera is concerned.”

  She made an effort not to sigh into the phone. The higher she rose in the prosecutor’s office, the more politics seemed to enter into her job. She didn’t like politics. “Tell him not to worry. I’m on top of it.”

  “That’s what you keep saying, but it’s not what I’m seeing. First your warrant is challenged as unconstitutional. Then a press conference puts you in front of the cameras looking like a deer in the headlights. The shooter’s father goes on a vigilante attack and murders an innocent man right in front of City Hall, while you’re standing next to the victim on live TV. And then that same father, who was probably out of his mind, crazy with grief about his son, and needing help, gets gunned down by the police. So you tell me, Ms. I’m-On-Top-Of-It, do you think the media is praising the city’s response to the Stevens Academy shootings right now?”

  “I’m guessing that’s a rhetorical question. I know you’re fond of those.”

  “The mayor is blaming Rivera. Rivera is blaming me. And now I’m telling you—fix this.”

  Jessie touched the bandage on her neck. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to fix. Truman’s and Lanford’s deaths had been unfortunate, but they hadn’t been her fault or the fault of the DA’s office. There was nothing fascist or unconstitutional about the warrant. She was doing her job, and doing it well.

  “The police are already reviewing the new evidence Manpower produced,” she said. “And I’ll personally read every page tonight. It’s going to lead to the arrest of a very bad guy. By the time this is over, Rivera, the mayor, and everyone else will be fighting to take credit.”