The Vendetta Defense raa-8

by Lisa Scottoline

  Judy knew it was true but her heart beat harder just the same. This was sick and twisted and scary. She didn’t want to live here anymore. She never wanted to come home again. She tried to think of a way to fight back. What could she do, legally? There had to be something. “How about a TRO, a restraining order, against the Coluzzis and members of their family? None of them could come within a hundred feet of me, the apartment, or the offices. I could prepare and file it this afternoon.”

  “A restraining order? Could you get one on these facts? With no proof?” he asked, but his tone told her he knew the answer, and so did she, thinking about it.

  “Probably not. No proof that the Coluzzis are behind it. It’s the same problem, every time. And the Coluzzis wouldn’t heed a court order anyway.” She felt herself begin to shake uncontrollably, and Detective Wilkins’s arm steadied her.

  “Don’t let this get to you. Whoever did this, even if it is the Coluzzis, they’re playing mind games with you. Don’t let them win.”

  She liked the sound of it, but she still couldn’t get in control. The law was no help. Had Frank been right? She found herself missing him suddenly, when she hadn’t thought about him in so long.

  “Judy, listen,” Detective Wilkins said, his voice gentler, “I have a daughter of my own, younger than you, and that’s why I told you to get off this case. Not because I’m dirty. I’m just telling you what I’d tell her. No job is worth your life.”

  Judy almost found a smile. “What do you mean? You’re a cop. You get shot at for a living.”

  Detective Wilkins had no immediate reply.

  Chapter 35

  It was all Judy could do to act natural in front of The Two Tonys, Mr. DiNunzio, and Penny, lying in a furry but sleeping pile. Judy didn’t tell the old men what she’d found at her apartment for fear of worrying them. She had to keep moving forward and concentrate on the task at hand. She skimmed the books on the expert’s shelves to get her thoughts back in order. Low-Speed Automobile Accidents, Basic Collision Investigation and Scene Documentation, The Traffic Accident Investigation Manual, Engineering Analysis of Vehicular Accidents. Judy’s mind kept wandering back to the self-portrait. She folded her arms, aware that she was practically hugging herself, and looked elsewhere. Anywhere but in her own mind.

  The room was windowless but immense, appearing bigger because of its walls of white-painted cinderblock. It was actually a converted garage in West Philly; gleaming red tool chests sat against the far wall, and the near one was lined with textbooks, accident-reconstruction newsletters, and chrome tools mounted on brown pegboards in carefully calibrated size order. The back end of the room contained a built-in work counter with three black microscopes, a fax, a printer, a Compaq computer with a twenty-one-inch monitor, and file cabinets, also in white. Fluorescent panels overhead illuminated the room so it was brighter than most operating rooms.

  Judy, Feet, Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and Mr. DiNunzio watched as Dr. William Wold circled the charred wreck of the Lucias’ red truck in silence. The Two Tonys and Mr. DiNunzio had taken it upon themselves to steal the junked truck from the scrapyard, having cut a hole the size of a whale in the Cyclone fence. They were quite proud of themselves, but Judy was considering sending them to bed without their cigars.

  She felt terrible that they had done it and somehow worse that she had deniability for it. But once Tony-From-Down-The-Block had told her what they’d done, she’d asked him to bring it here on the flatbed. Judy didn’t know if she could still be a good guy and benefit from a bad act. She was less and less certain she wanted to be a good guy at all. She used to think she was hard-wired to be ethical, but her wires had gotten crossed and were sparking, especially after the self-portrait with the nasty incision.

  She gazed at the Lucias’ wreck, which rested on its blackened chassis in the middle of an unwrinkled white tarp. The tarp had been placed atop a spotless white linoleum floor, in order to catch any debris the truck “shed,” as Dr. Wold had explained. Dr. Wold was turning out to be big on explanation, a prerequisite for an expert witness. He had testified on “accident reconstruction” and “automotive forensics” in 135 cases, which proved that, in America, there was an expert on everything. For a price.

  Dr. Wold made a note on his metal clipboard with a silver Cross pen and cleared his throat. “You are quite right, Ms. Carrier,” he said finally. “This is, or was, a Volkswagen Rabbit pickup. These trucks were manufactured here in Pennsylvania from 1979 through 1983, and were later produced in Yugoslavia. They came with a diesel or a gasoline engine, and about eighty of them were produced in the United States in 1979, then the figure jumped to 25,000 in 1980, and 33,000 in 1981. This model is definitely a 1981.”

  “How do you know all that?” Judy asked, her voice echoing off the hard surfaces in the large, open space.

  “I looked it up after you called.” Dr. Wold pushed his heavy, steel-framed glasses up his small nose. An apparently humorless engineer—which could well be redundant—he wore a fresh white short-sleeved shirt and pressed navy pants. “It’s not as important to keep information in your head as much as to know how to retrieve it. I know how to retrieve it.”

  “I bet,” Judy said, just to make him feel that she was participating in the conversation, which was proving completely unnecessary. Dr. Wold didn’t care if she participated or not, which The Tonys and Mr. DiNunzio must have instantly perceived, because they remained uncharacteristically quiet.

  Dr. Wold walked around the front of the truck, which was bashed in and eyeless. Its hood had buckled almost in two. “You see that the headlights are gone. This model had the square, four-by-six-inch sealed halogen beams. It also had turn signals to the immediate outer corners of the truck, resembling the 1983 to 1984 Rabbit. Of course the accident has demolished most of the truck’s front end; it clearly absorbed most of the impact.” Dr. Wold looked up. “I understand it fell off the overpass onto the highway below.”

  “I think so, but I don’t have the police file on it. There must be one.”

  “Of course there is. I’ll obtain it from the AID, the Accident Investigation Division. It’s public record. I’ve already begun to gather articles about the accident, and I will visit the scene. I should be able to reconstruct the way the accident occurred and make you a computer-animated video of it, should you need it for the jury. They are usually quite effective.” Dr. Wold made another note. “Of course, as we discussed, I’ll also examine the wreck from stem to stern. I provide that as part of my service. Many accident reconstructionists don’t.”

  Judy nodded, and Dr. Wold consulted his notes.

  “From my specs, the vehicle was 4.46 meters in length, 1.64 meters in width, and 1.43 meters in height. I can tell you, just eyeballing the wreck, that it’s no longer than 3.2 meters at this point, and much of the distortion is at the front, although there is some damage here.”

  Judy nodded again, but Dr. Wold didn’t notice.

  “You have asked me to determine if there was evidence of tampering of any sort to the truck, and that I can do. I generally run a complete battery of tests, mostly in products liability cases and wrongful death matters, but I suppose I can do it in a murder case as well.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Of course, you made mention I should determine if the engine had been tampered with, but that would be difficult.” Dr. Wold laughed shortly, a loud ha!

  Judy reddened. It had turned out the truck had been junked without its engine. She hadn’t realized it. It was a sore point. “Of course not. No engine. I guess it was sold for parts.”

  “Or scrap. Either way, cars are rarely junked with engines. They’re too valuable.”

  “I knew that,” Judy said. She could hear Feet laugh softly beside her. “You can check if there was a bomb used, can’t you?”

  Dr. Wold cocked a furry eyebrow. “Of course, but that’s not likely, given that the wreck is basically intact.”

  Judy sighed. This wasn’t her day. “Can you can
test anything, and everything, just to see if there is evidence of any kind of tampering? Maybe the brakes would be messed up. They’re still there, right?”

  Dr. Wold frowned. “In part.”

  “Okay, so check that. Check everything. I need to understand everything about how the accident happened. Why do two people drive off an overpass in the middle of the night? We have only the truck to go on.”

  “As you wish.” Dr. Wold nodded. “I should tell you that I will render an expert opinion based on the facts as I see them, not as you wish them to be. I’m not one of those experts who tells you what you paid to hear, do you understand?”

  “Understood.” Judy hated experts like Dr. Wold. She liked experts who told you what you paid to hear.

  “Excellent. Then you won’t mind if I tell you that, from my preliminary examination of the wreck, and the information I have retrieved, I find the explanation for this accident fairly obvious, and simple. In fact, it is one of the most common types of traffic accidents, given the conditions.”

  Judy had to bite her tongue. She couldn’t tell him what Pigeon Tony had told her, not in front of the others. She knew the conclusion but had to get the proof. A murder case in reverse.

  “Step over to my computer, if you will,” Dr. Wold said, and led them to the workstation, with Penny waking to trot happily behind. “Since I had some time this afternoon, I took the liberty of retrieving some of the articles on the accident in question, from the online archives of the Philadelphia newspapers. One of the photos was particularly instructive.” He hit a key on his keyboard and the enormous monitor crackled instantly to life.

  Judy couldn’t help but stare. It was a huge black-and-white photo of a highway overpass, with the guardrail bent out like a bow and the Cyclone fencing ripped apart. The power of the image came from what it didn’t show, rather than from what it did; from the fact that Judy knew that the couple who had gone through the gaping hole had crashed to their death. It reminded her sadly of the photo of the Challenger astronauts, waving as they boarded the rocket that would kill them.

  “The articles report,” Dr. Wold was saying, “that the truck flipped over the guardrail, which, as I said, is one of the most common types of highway accidents, particularly in the tri-state area. It crashed onto the underpass below and burst into flame. You can see here,” he pointed with the silver pen, “that this guardrail is a vertical concrete bridge rail, an older design. It lacks a rubrail, the double section of W-beam on the top rail, and extra posts, and it has been crash-tested with catastrophic results. No doubt it contributed greatly to the ease with which the truck went over the side.”

  Judy shuddered.

  “In addition, the article reports that the accident took place on January twenty-fifth, and I took the liberty of researching the weather that day.” Dr. Wold scrolled down to find the article. The newsprint filled the screen. SOUTH PHILLY COUPLE DEAD IN TRUCK ACCIDENT. Dr. Wold went on, “It was well below freezing most of the afternoon, plummeting to ten degrees at night. It had rained only that morning, in fact, and there had to be icy patches everywhere on the roads, making them treacherous, especially at that hour. I believe it was one in the morning when the accident occurred, according to the article.”

  Judy nodded.

  “This, too, is significant. The Better Sleep Council estimates that about ten thousand auto deaths occur each year due to drowsy drivers. Sleepiness seriously impairs reaction time, awareness of surroundings, and ability to discern potential roadway and traffic conflicts. And the danger is greater if alcohol is involved. A drowsy driver is as potentially dangerous as the drunk driver. The combination is lethal.”

  “Yo, they weren’t drunk,” Feet said defensively. “Frank had two beers at a shot, tops. Gemma never touched the stuff. She was a lady.”

  Dr. Wold’s eyes fluttered at the interruption. “I wasn’t suggesting your friends were drunk, sir. I was suggesting that if he had even a single drink at that late hour, such as one would have at a wedding, and drove on such an unsafe highway, it is extremely likely that this fairly light truck would meet with catastrophic accident.”

  Judy wasn’t buying. Pigeon Tony had told her different, and she couldn’t doubt him now, even with the facts going against her. And the attacks against her were giving her a new insight into why Pigeon Tony had killed Angelo Coluzzi. He was a good man, driven to a bad act. Judy was starting to feel exactly the same way. She was understanding how vendettas got started, and once started, took on a life of their own.

  “Your decision, Ms. Carrier?” Dr. Wold asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do you want me to go ahead, or do you want to save your money? I’m being honest with you. I think my findings won’t be greatly different from those of the police.”

  Judy met his eye evenly. “Get it done, Doctor. Somebody’s counting on me.”

  Part of her knew she was talking about herself, and even Penny looked up, not recognizing the new tone in her mistress’s voice.

  Chapter 36

  It was dark by the time Judy got back to the office, alone except for Penny. The Two Tonys and Mr. D had offered to stay with her while she worked, but she knew they had homes and lives to return to and hied them off. She’d spend the night at a hotel and tell them about the dog when she checked in, but she had a long night of work ahead. Judy had kept Penny for protection and made sure security downstairs was alerted to the fact that she was alone in the office.

  She sat at her desk finishing a motion in the Lucia case. The office was empty. The window behind her was a square of black. The only sound was the clicking of her keyboard. She’d had the idea for the motion on the way back; she had decided to ask the court for an expedited trial in the Lucia case, in view of the string of lethal events directed at her and her client. It seemed the only thing Judy could do legally that had any chance of success, and she had been enthused about it when she’d started.

  But as she reread the finished product, her mind grew restless and her bare foot tapped constantly. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten last. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. She was too antsy even for coffee, and Penny, sensing her mood, watched her alertly, her head between her paws, at the threshold to Judy’s office. Judy thought of returning Frank’s many calls to her cell phone, but she didn’t want to talk to him yet, not in her present mood, and she didn’t want him to know what had happened at her apartment. Bennie was unreachable and had left a message she would be at her client’s until midnight, in settlement negotiations. Judy considered calling Mary but didn’t want to worry her either. Even Murphy wasn’t around. It left Judy feeling isolated, cut off, and more homeless than usual.

  She tried to focus on the brief and read: As the attached affidavit will show, it is undisputed that since leaving his preliminary arraignment, Mr. Anthony Lucia and his family have been the target of a riot at the Criminal Justice Center and an attempted murder in the form of a shooting and high-speed pursuit through the streets of South Philadelphia. Mr. Lucia’s home and property have been completely . . .

  Judy shifted in the chair. The more she read, the angrier she got. It had barely been a week since she took his case and already there had been a litany of violence against Pigeon Tony, Frank, and her. The cops couldn’t do anything until they were all dead. The situation was insane. Out of control. Which was close to the way Judy felt. Beneath the veneer of professionalism, she was off the reservation. Slightly deranged. She realized now that it had been brewing all day, since she’d seen her self-portrait smeared with blood. A hunting knife between her legs.

  Judy stopped reading, shot up from her seat, and began to pace. Penny watched from between her paws, her large brown eyes rolling back and forth. The office was small and there wasn’t far to pace; even that frustrated her. Her own defense could barely get off the ground, the accident reconstructionist was telling her she couldn’t prove murder against Angelo Coluzzi, and the tapes had been incinerated. Jimmy Bello would be testifying that he had heard P
igeon Tony say, “I’m going to kill you.” All of it was going down the toilet in a hurry. And the violence against her could end only one way, inevitably, on a case she refused to quit.

  Judy paced this way, then that, in endless motion, like the proverbial loose cannon, rolling back and forth on a ship’s deck. She paced forward. Wishing she could see her car again. Back. Wishing she could go home again. Forward. Wishing she could do something—anything—more effective against the Coluzzis than filing lawsuits and briefs. It may have gotten them angry, it may have distracted them, it may have pitched one against the other, but it wasn’t making them stop.

  Then Judy came to an abrupt stop. She wiped her brow, suddenly damp. Penny lifted her head, sensing something new.

  It struck Judy that there was something she could do. Something she hadn’t tried yet. It was undoubtedly a little crazy, it was equally dangerous, but it sure beat writing briefs. She ran to her computer and sent an explanatory e-mail to Bennie, then resolved to do it. She had a rented Saturn. She had a golden retriever. She felt her sense of humor returning. What else did a girl need?

  Judy grabbed her backpack and the dog, caught the elevator downstairs, took the back entrance to her waiting Saturn, and drove off, her eyes on the rearview mirror. Penny sat in the passenger seat, very upright and looking straight through the windshield, the way she always did. Judy always thought of it as the date position, but tonight it felt different. Tonight Penny was riding shotgun.

  Judy pointed the Saturn in the usual direction and in no time was threading her way through the streets of South Philly like a professional Italian, instead of an amateur. Like a native she didn’t notice the illegal double-parking, the little shops, or the cool brick colors. Girl and puppy were on a mission.

  She took a right on McKean Street, traveled down the number street, then took a turn on Ritner. The traffic was slight. The beach chairs were empty. The Phillies were playing a doubleheader, but South Philly watched it on TV. The seats were better and the beer was cheaper. It actually made sense to Judy, now that she had changed citizenship. After all, these were the people who gave the world Michelangelo and Mike Piazza. Maybe they knew what they were doing.