Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  Then Harrison shrugged and the tension in the room evaporated. Graham breathed.

  “May I at least put on some clothes?” he said.

  “Be quick,” Graham said.

  Harrison stepped past her and Novak. They heard boards creak as he ascended a staircase, then more creaking as he walked around upstairs.

  His wife stared at them with a look that was equal parts fear and anger. At last, she said, “You’re not really here for his help, are you? What did he do?” She looked pained, and more tired than ever.

  More sounds reached them from upstairs. Suddenly, something seemed to occur to Novak. He said, “Shit!” and pounded after Harrison. Graham, confused but trusting his instincts, followed her partner up a narrow staircase to the second floor.

  “Stop!” Novak yelled. He burst into a room off the upstairs hallway, and Graham, still following him, saw it was a bathroom.

  Harrison was in there, still wearing his robe and white socks, standing over the toilet with a laptop in his hands. The toilet seat was up. He looked at Novak, bared his teeth in a snarl that reminded Graham of a raccoon her father had cornered in their driveway when she’d been a kid. He dropped the computer.

  Novak lunged forward and swung an arm. The flat of his hand connected with the laptop just before it could hit the water, and sent the computer flying. The laptop hit the tile wall above the bathtub and shattered in an explosion of bathroom tile, plastic, and circuitry. Then he grabbed Harrison, wrenched the man’s arms behind his back, and handcuffed him.

  Graham squeezed past the two men. The laptop was in pieces in the bathtub. She pulled on latex gloves from one pocket, grabbed an evidence bag from another, and began gathering the smaller pieces.

  “Good reflexes, Toby,” she said. A second later, and the laptop would have been submerged in toilet water, its innards probably fried beyond recovery.

  Novak was frowning. “I meant to grab the thing. Not bash it against the wall.”

  “At least it’s dry. Hopefully Eldon will be able to recover something.”

  Novak looked doubtfully at the mess in the tub. “Yeah. Hopefully.”

  “We don’t need the laptop, anyway,” she said as she straightened up. She made eye-contact with Harrison. “We have more than enough evidence against this creep.”

  Judging by the victorious grin on his face, Harrison thought he knew better.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Novak said, beginning the Miranda warnings.

  “So now I’m under arrest?”

  “Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law.”

  “I want my lawyer,” Harrison said. He craned his neck toward the open bathroom door. “Barbara, call Hyram Brand!”

  “Let’s go,” Novak said, and hauled him out of the bathroom.

  “You’re going to regret this,” Harrison said. They pushed him toward the stairs. “I know people. I have a lot of friends.”

  “In my experience, friends tend to disappear when you’re arrested for murder,” she said.

  Harrison turned on her with a grin that chilled her blood. “Not friends like mine.”

  31

  Jessie crossed her arms and stared at the closed door of the police conference room in which Clark Harrison was conferring with his lawyer, Hyram Brand. As an attorney-client communication, the meeting entitled Harrison and Brand to privacy. Jessie and the police couldn’t listen in. All she could do was chew her lip.

  Someone walked up to her. She turned and saw Emily Graham. “Eldon took the hard drive and RAM chips to the computer lab,” Graham said. “What was left of them anyway.”

  “And?”

  “He’ll do his best. He didn’t sound particularly optimistic, though.”

  “Damn it.” Without the laptop, they had no physical evidence tying Clark Harrison to the True_Man identity. And if they couldn’t prove that Harrison was True_Man, then they had no case. “How did this happen?”

  “We shouldn’t have let him go upstairs alone to get dressed,” Graham said. “It was a lapse in judgment.”

  Jessie didn’t contradict her. It had been a lapse in judgment, and it might just result in Harrison walking out of here. But there was no sense dwelling on it.

  “Do you think if we work together we can get him to confess?” Graham said. She stared at the conference room door as if trying to see through it.

  “With Hyram Brand at his side? Doubtful.”

  “He’s good?”

  “You could say that.” Good didn’t begin to describe Hyram Brand. He was one of the most respected criminal defense attorneys in the city. Harrison must have anticipated that he might need a lawyer one day, and had done his research ahead of time to find the best. Now his preparation was paying off. Jessie wondered what other preparations he might have made.

  “Still worth a try,” Graham said. “Maybe we can rattle Harrison, get him to say something incriminating before his lawyer can shut him up. I’ve seen that happen plenty of times. Even the best lawyer can have trouble protecting a client from himself. Especially a client with a guilty conscience.”

  “I’m not sure Harrison has a conscience,” Jessie said. “But I agree,” she added, seeing the look of anxiety on Graham’s face. “It’s worth a try.”

  A familiar voice grumbled from behind them. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”

  Jessie swung around and saw Warren Williams striding toward them. He was breathing hard and his face was red, as if he’d run here from the DA’s office. Maybe he had.

  “Who’s this man you arrested in the Stevens Academy case? Clark Harrison. Why wasn’t I given a heads-up?”

  How the hell had he found out about the arrest so quickly? Jessie didn’t bother thinking too hard about it. The man really did have eyes and ears everywhere. Very little happened in the DA’s office or the police department without Warren receiving an alert. Whoever his sources were, they were reliable.

  “He’s the principal at Stevens Academy,” Graham said. Even though she stood a head taller than Warren, her voice faltered and she looked intimidated.

  Warren glared at her, then turned his attention to Jessie. “And?”

  “He’s True_Man,” she said.

  “Ah, the internet mystery man who supposedly orchestrated the massacre. You do know who’s in there with him, right? That’s Hyram Brand, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You know I was skeptical about this whole conspiracy angle from the beginning,” Warren said, “but now it looks like you’ve compounded the problem by making an arrest prematurely. Do you have any tangible evidence that Harrison is True_Man? I mean, other than your stellar instincts?”

  Jessie forced herself to breathe. “We’re working on it. It’s a long story. Harrison’s computer—”

  “I already know the long story.”

  Of course he did.

  “Your case is shit,” Warren said.

  “We’re going to try to rattle him,” Graham said. “See if we can trip him up.”

  Warren stared at the detective, incredulous, then turned back to Jessie. “Is she serious? I’m starting to miss Leary.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Jessie said, “but worth a try.”

  Warren barked out a laugh. “That’s not Noah Snyder sitting in there. That’s Hyram Brand. You’re not going to get anywhere with Harrison. Release him now, with an apology, before this gets any more embarrassing.”

  “What?” Graham looked outraged. “What’s there to be embarrassed about? He caused the deaths of seventeen people—nineteen, if you count Wesley Lanford and Vaughn Truman—and we arrested him for it.”

  Jessie raised a hand to quiet her. “Warren, just give us fifteen minutes to talk to him, okay? If we don’t get anywhere in fifteen minutes, we’ll let him go and cut our losses.”

  She could sense Graham fuming beside her, but didn’t dare turn to look. She needed to maintain eye-contact with Warren.
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br />   Seconds passed before her boss let out a little snort of disdain. “Fine. Fifteen minutes. But that’s it. If you don’t get results, we pull the plug. And not just on this arrest, Jessie. On this whole investigation. It’ll be over. Agreed?”

  He’d raised the stakes on her, the way only he could. And there was nothing she could do about it. She clenched her teeth and nodded. “Agreed.”

  Warren glared at Graham. “Move them to an interrogation room. One of the comfortable ones—we don’t want to give his lawyer any ideas about a civil claim. Let’s get this over with.”

  32

  This time, Jessie joined Graham in the interview room. Per Warren’s request, this space was one of the bigger, less dungeon-like rooms, with a nice wooden table large enough to accommodate four. On the other side of the table from Jessie and Graham, Harrison sat with Brand. The principal still wore his terrycloth bathrobe. Brand wore a five-thousand-dollar suit.

  Novak and Warren were out of sight in the observation room behind the one-way glass. That glass looked like a mirror on Jessie’s side of the wall, but even though she couldn’t see them, she could feel Warren’s stare boring into her.

  “Hello, Hyram,” she said.

  “First of all,” Brand said, indicating Harrison’s robe, “this is outrageous.” So much for starting things out on a pleasant note.

  Jessie wasn’t surprised by the bluster. It was Brand’s style. The man was barely five feet tall, and had the kind of Napoleon complex common to short men. He always seemed to be on the attack. In the courtroom, he’d been known to browbeat witnesses and lawyers—and even judges, on occasion—into submission. She was determined not to let this tactic work on her.

  “Your client resisted arrest,” she said as she calmly took a seat.

  “Not true. Your police overreacted when Mr. Harrison accidentally dropped his laptop computer.”

  “Over a toilet bowl,” Jessie said.

  Brand shrugged. “I fail to see how that warrants the demeaning treatment of being taken to the police station without his clothing. The behavior of the police tonight was beyond inappropriate.” He leveled an icy stare at Graham, who stared right back at him.

  “After his attempt to destroy the laptop,” Jessie said, “Detectives Graham and Novak did not want to give your client any additional opportunities to tamper with evidence. That’s why they took him into custody in his robe.”

  “Well, Mrs. Harrison is on her way here now with a change of clothes. If she hurries, she should reach the building in”—he looked at his Rolex—“just enough time to let Mr. Harrison put on some trousers before he walks right out of here.”

  Brand’s face was dead serious. Harrison’s bore a smirk. Jessie glanced at her own watch and saw her fifteen minutes slipping away. She could feel the weight of Warren’s unseen stare.

  “No one’s walking anywhere,” Graham said. “We arrested your client for murder.” She focused her gaze on Harrison, and Jessie was pleased to see the principal’s smirk falter, if only slightly. “You’re looking at the death penalty, Mr. Harrison. The best thing you can do now is tell us everything. If you save the state the cost of a trial, Ms. Black has the authority to take death off the table. You’ll serve a life sentence, seventeen of them, but—”

  At this speech, Hyram actually let out a snort. “Is this Philadelphia Police Headquarters, or are we on the set of a bad TV cop show?” He looked past them at the mirrored wall. “Warren, are you there? Are you watching this farce?”

  But Graham kept her eyes locked on Harrison, and he was starting to squirm in his seat. Jessie decided to help Graham keep the pressure on. “Mr. Harrison, it’s easy for your lawyer to joke around. But this is no joke for you. Do you really think a jury exists that wouldn’t look at your list of victims and give you the death penalty?”

  Harrison’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. Brand put a steadying hand on the man’s arm. “Those were Russell Lanford’s victims. My client is a principal, a teacher, a model citizen. And because you’re out for blood, you want to make him a scapegoat. That’s what the jury will see.”

  “He was having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl,” Graham said.

  “You have no evidence of that.”

  “Only because he killed her,” Jessie said.

  Brand looked from Graham to Jessie. “You guys tag-teaming us now? As I said, the only person who killed any students was Russell Lanford.”

  “Your client conspired with Russell Lanford,” Jessie said.

  Brand laughed. “That’s a novel and interesting legal argument. Unfortunately, we won’t have the opportunity to test it, because you have no evidence.”

  There was a knock at the door. Jessie glanced at her watch. Only ten minutes had passed since they’d entered the interview room, but apparently Warren had seen enough.

  “Excuse us for a minute,” Jessie said. She and Graham rose from their chairs.

  Brand smiled knowingly. “It’s Warren, isn’t it?” His eyes seemed to twinkle with glee. “I knew he was there.”

  Jessie didn’t respond. She and Graham stepped out of the interview room. Warren was waiting for them. He did not look happy.

  “It’s over.”

  “You agreed to give us fifteen minutes,” Jessie said.

  Warren gave her a beleaguered look. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were five minutes away from a full confession. Come on, Jessie. Brand is right. We don’t have the evidence to support the charges.”

  “Actually,” a deep voice said, “we do.”

  They all turned to see Eldon’s seven-foot-frame leaning against one of the homicide desks, a thumb drive gripped in one hand and a sheaf of printed pages in the other.

  “You were able to recover data from Harrison’s laptop?” Graham said.

  “It was busted up pretty bad—a real challenge, unlike rifling through Jordan Dunn’s laptop. Novak must have a hell of a throwing arm. But I salvaged most of its memory. Including more than enough data to prove that the user of this laptop was the internet user calling himself True_Man.”

  Jessie felt an urge to hug the bearded giant. Instead, she turned a triumphant smile on Warren. “Well?” she said. “What do you think now”

  To her surprise, Warren smiled back. “I think we’re going to have a chance to test that novel and interesting legal argument after all.”

  33

  Two months later, the trial of Commonwealth v. Clark Harrison began.

  In Courtoom 303 of the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice, Judge Letty Sokol waited for the crowd to quiet before she invited Jessie to present the prosecution’s opening statement.

  “Are you ready, Ms. Black?”

  Sokol was one of the newer judges, having practiced law as a civil litigator until ascending to the bench two years ago. She lacked the crusty wrinkles and jaded cynicism of some of the old-timers, and was also less of a known quantity. Both the DA’s office and the defense bar were still trying to figure her out. In the three cases Jessie had tried in her courtroom, she’d found the judge to be knowledgeable and fair, but not particularly open to new legal ideas. That could pose a problem in her current trial. One of many.

  “Ms. Black?” the judge prompted again.

  Was she ready? The question sent a flutter of nervousness through her belly. But she expected the sensation and was able to mentally shake it off. She never felt ready to begin a trial, no matter how much she prepared.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  She rose from her chair at the prosecution table. She didn’t take any notes with her, and she didn’t bother with the podium. She walked to the railing of the jury box. Years of experience had taught her that delivering her opening statement from memory, and looking straight into the eyes of the jurors—talking directly to them as if they were her colleagues—was the most effective way to open a trial.

  She had two goals with her opening statement. The first was to come across as a genuine and likable person, and
the second was to give the jury a short, easy-to-understand version of her case. She was confident in her ability to achieve the first goal—already, some of the jurors were returning her smile. It was the second goal that worried her this time. Her case against Harrison wasn’t simple and easy to summarize like most murder cases. She couldn’t just tell her audience of twelve jurors and two alternates that defendant X used weapon Y to kill victim Z, and that the state was going to prove it. Harrison’s crime was more complicated. More subtle. His weapons had been words and the power of the internet.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Thank you for being here today to help us with this very important matter. My name is Jessica Black. I’m an assistant district attorney.”

  They waited for her to continue. Their faces looked patient, receptive.

  She remembered the advice of a favorite law professor, guiding her during mock trials back at Penn Law: Just start at the beginning, and lay it out in chronological order until you reach the end. Jurors want to hear a story they can understand. Get that right, and you’ll be more effective than half the trial lawyers out there.

  “This case,” she said, “is about the murder of seventeen people—sixteen of whom were kids, teenage girls. Each of those people had family, friends, hopes and dreams, a favorite ice cream flavor. They had lives. One of them had a story of particular importance to us today. Her name was Jordan Dunn. She was sixteen when she died from a bullet wound that punctured her left lung. Jordan’s story is that she was having sex with one of the teachers at her school. That teacher, now the principal, is the defendant sitting here today, Clark Harrison.”

  She turned sideways to give the jurors an unobstructed view of Harrison. She would have liked to look at him, too, to see how he held up under their scrutiny, but it was more critical that she study the jurors’ faces. She watched them, tried to determine which ones were already leaning towards a guilty verdict and which ones would need more convincing.