by Chris Leibig
“All right.” O’Grady held her palm aloft to Amelia. “I have considered the evidence and the arguments of the counsel.” She shuffled some papers on the bench and appeared befuddled for a moment, looking around as if she were a mere spectator at the hearing and not the focus of more than a hundred onlookers.
“Ms. Paradisi, I am going to order you furloughed this evening at seven for the purpose of delivering your child at the direction of the medical personnel described in the defendant’s delivery plan. I order your immediate return to the detention center upon your clearance by Dr. Torres.”
Judge O’Grady, herself again, now looked sternly at Sam, as if he had been the lawyer conducting the argument. Sam left her mind, wanting her to be herself. He wanted to hear some harsh, even biting words towards Camille. A typical anti-defendant rant by O’Grady would help show a lack of bias to the appeals court if Sparf tried an emergency appeal of O’Grady’s decision to furlough Camille.
“Mr. Young, a minimum of twelve deputies will accompany Ms. Paradisi and remain in the closest reasonable proximity possible during the procedure.” She began to stand, as if to adjourn, but then plopped back into her chair and looked around the courtroom, seeming to take in the size of the silent crowd behind the lawyers for the first time. Then she lightened the mood by speaking to O’Malley.
“Chief, I heard about what happened the other day with the assault. Glad to see you out and about.”
O’Malley stood from his seat in the gallery, sporting his wide, political grin. The one he used for press conferences.
“Oh, I’ve been punched before, Judge. Part of the job. Apparently the fella thought I wasn’t working hard enough to find his daughter’s killer.”
“Well, apparently, he was wrong,” O’Grady said. She then eased off the bench.
Typical O’Grady. The nonsensical comment, which suggested that O’Malley had solved the Ripper case, was belied by the evidence she had just heard.
Sam turned around. The reporters, scattered randomly throughout the courtroom, scooted past the legs of their fellow spectators to get to the door as fast as possible. As he gathered his materials, he sensed O’Malley lurking behind him. He turned to face the chief. Sure, O’Malley was selfish. Sure, he was driven. But, like Sparf, he wasn’t one to convict an innocent person. And Sam saw something else. Unlike Sparf, O’Malley wouldn’t work too hard to convict Camille if he thought she were only guilty of killing Zebulon. Not if she killed Zebulon because he had been the Rosslyn Ripper.
“What gives, Young? You couldn’t have alerted me about Zebulon’s DNA before?”
Sam shrugged. “I have my reasons. You don’t know what it’s like in my world.”
Sam and Amelia stood together, watching Sparf as the courtroom emptied. He still faced the well of the courtroom, perfectly still. He held a sheet of paper in each hand, looking from one to the other. His posture was not that of the young, goofy Sparf or the adult, meticulous Sparf. He stood in the solid, unselfconscious pose of a leader weighing a serious matter.
CHAPTER 24
AMELIA, SAM, AND NGUYEN SAT at the bar at Harpoon Hannah’s, watching the clock as well as the Fox news coverage of the demonic nun case. They touched on all the main points, the strange genes, even the odd religious overtones. The cameras still focused on the front of the Bennet Detention Center, from where the pregnant nun with a mother but no father would emerge in less than an hour.
“So what’s your assessment of the case against Camille on Zebulon?” Nguyen asked.
“That’s easy. They have one. The crime scene techs say the hat must have been replaced on his head after he was killed. Her DNA is on the hat, which they can say shows she probably placed the hat on his head after he was killed, thereby suggesting she killed him. She fled the scene. They know Andrada can establish that she had been onto Zeb as the Ripper. She could try self-defense, and sure, could be acquitted. But they have a case if they want to have one. Whether they technically have a case isn’t the question.”
“What is?”
“Justice, Nguyen. Some prosecutors care about it. Some don’t.”
Sam’s phone buzzed. He peered at it. “It’s Sparf.”
“I bet he’s appealing the furlough order, ten bucks,” Amelia said. “He’ll get O’Grady reversed on the papers.”
“No bet,” Sam said. “I’d be stealing your money.” He picked up the phone. “This is Young.”
“You know I could win this ruling on appeal,” Sparf said with his usual quick, clipped analysis. “O’Grady would have to halt the release if I filed for it, and the appeals court would have to rule for me. Frankly, I don’t know what O’Grady was thinking today.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m not appealing. The feds called today after the hearing. They asked again if they could take Paradisi into federal custody. I told them to shove it.”
“Thanks, Chad. How long will that hold them off?”
“I got a murder charge on her so they’d have to go to Main Justice and get politics involved to get hold of her. But hey, I also took another look at this case based on today’s hearing. I’m thinking a different way about it now. O’Malley’s following up on some of your information, but if it checks out, I’m thinking, you know, Paradisi isn’t much of a suspect for the first three murders.”
“True.”
“There’s no federal jurisdiction over just the murder of Zebulon. He wasn’t killed on memorial grounds. The feds will have to back off unless they can build a case on the first three. But I gotta say, they seem to want her, badly. A deputy attorney general yelled at me on the phone.”
“They could still at least charge her with the other three, though.”
“Sure, but after today, that would look pretty stupid if you ask me. I think your girl’s in the clear there. But don’t think for a second I buy that DNA transfer on Zebulon’s hat BS. I think Paradisi was at the crime scene. The thing is, unless I find more, I’m not convinced her involvement with his death means she committed murder. I mean, if he really was the Rosslyn Ripper, who’s gonna believe she didn’t kill him in self-defense? Paradisi’s in the Ripper victim demographic, plus she turned herself in. I’m not convinced there’s a case there.”
Whoa! Sam’s mind drifted back over the years to the young Sparf. The kid with the funny haircut, stoically dressing in the junior high locker room after somebody had dumped a cup of piss on his head. Sam had sat on the bench in front of his own locker, watching Sparf’s hollow eyes as he delved deeper and deeper into himself to escape. Sparf tied his shoes while the urine still glistened on the side of his face. But through it all Sparf was a smart guy, and maybe the adult Sparf shared something with Sam they had come to in different ways.
Fuck the feds. Fuck the bosses. Fuck ’em. Good for Chad.
“Chad, for what it’s worth, you are one hell of a good prosecutor.”
“I need a few days. But if all this stuff checks out, I’ll likely drop the case next week. And by the way …”
“Yes?”
“Fuck you, Young.”
•••
Wooden sawhorses, manned every twenty feet or so by a cop with a baton, penned the crowd, press included, away from the entrance to the detention center. The officers faced the horde of people and cameras, backs to the detention center exit. O’Malley stood yards from the jail exit talking to Deputy Plosky, who wore street clothes—his signature tight shirt and Western-style jeans. Plosky also wore a badge around his neck and a pistol at his side.
Plosky waved Sam past the barricades, and he approached the two of them.
“A nutty-ass detail, thanks to you, Young,” Plosky said as Sam reached him. Sam did not respond. O’Malley lectured Plosky on detail protocol, how to position the eleven deputies he would be commanding and the like.
“Chief, I’ve been doing this for thirty-two years,” Plosky said. “Relax.”
O’Malley shook his head and walked away.
“Hey, Sa
m, Irwin Junior got accepted to Virginia Tech. He’s doing great. Told me to tell you hi.”
“Of course he’s doing great. He’s got you for an old man.”
Plosky looked down. “Your girl will be just fine. As long as there are no surprises, this will be easy, easy. Now, let’s get her to the hospital.” Plosky signaled to another deputy, who spoke into a walkie-talkie. Minutes later, the double doors swung wide and Camille, flanked by deputies, emerged in handcuffs. The crowd roared, a combination of cheers and curses.
“Follow me.” Plosky led them towards the waiting ambulance, which was surrounded by police cruisers on all four sides.
Camille’s gaze was on the ground when she emerged, walking slowly, her cuffed hands in front of her. A deputy held each arm, and three more walked behind her.
Sam waited with Plosky by the back of the ambulance as Camille and her guards slowly crossed the pavement between them and the jail entrance. When she got within reach, he and Plosky each lightly grabbed an arm to facilitate an easier climb into the ambulance. Sam gazed along the sawhorses behind her and marveled at the random assortment of yelling and gesturing citizens and reporters. Cameras rolled from every allowable angle. When Sam touched Camille, her emotions pumped into him. They were warm and soft. Happy even.
Just as Camille placed a foot on the first metal step leading into the ambulance, Sam felt a burst of warm, pungent liquid, which he at first bizarrely took to be gravy, splatter the side of his face. Then he felt Camille go limp.
Sam looked at Camille just in time to see her body collapse into Plosky’s arms. A man stood in front of the sawhorse barricade, hunched over and screaming in their direction. It only took the second between when Sam focused on the man and when the man was torn apart by bullets for Sam to see that he knew the guy. In the same second Sam also realized how utterly badly he had screwed up by not calling O’Malley. Of course, Jerome Johnson had screamed what anyone would expect him to scream. Murderer.
In Sam’s memory, Johnson’s body would always appear, like in the movies, to have stayed standing for just a moment while bullets riddled it, as if, though he was dead, the world wanted to feel his effect for an extra second or two. Whether that actually happened or not, Johnson crumpled to the ground, dead. His gun bounced and skittered away across the pavement. Sam knelt and placed his hands on the sides of Camille’s head. Plosky, still screaming, arms under her armpits, held her just off the ground. Sam had never been in combat, never been to medical school, never been trained in first aid. But no training was needed to know what could be done to save Camille. Nothing. The small hole in Camille’s temple looked, and indeed felt, almost surgical. But the gaping exit wound behind her ear gushed blood and brains. Camille’s eyes were empty saucers. She was dead.
Deputy Plosky, in the immediate wake of the security debacle that would likely cost him his job, kept his head. Obviously recognizing the futility in providing any life-saving aid to Camille, he focused on the matter at issue.
“Her baby! Her baby! We need to get to the hospital!”
In the midst of the shouting observers and influx of what seemed like hundreds of police officers on the scene, Sam and Plosky lifted Camille’s body into the ambulance, which sped off pursuant to Plosky’s desperate orders.
They were led and followed by dozens of police cars, sirens wailing. Sam kept his hands pressed on Camille’s head wounds as they drove, but nothing much more tried to escape through his fingers. Within five minutes the doors sprung open and two medics placed Camille on a gurney and rushed her through the automatic doors and into the emergency room. Plosky and Sam stood together on the street. Sam felt the side of his own face and realized it was thickly matted with blood.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam said. He watched the man cry for a while before he responded.
“I know,” Plosky said. “It was yours.”
Sam and Plosky sat next to each other on the curb, covered in blood, not speaking for what felt like half an hour. Occasionally Sam looked at his phone. Texts flew in from friends and colleagues, but he ignored them. Finally, his phone buzzed and when he saw who it was, he decided to answer it
“This is Young.”
“Dude,” Barnabus said. “We gotta hurry.”
Sam shut his eyes. “You must not be watching TV. Camille’s been shot. She’s dead.”
“Oh, I was watching. I’m inside the hospital now. That’s how I know we gotta hurry. They saved Camille’s baby. It’s being rushed up to intensive care.”
“Then what the hell are you talking about? Hurry for what?”
“You fully well know, dude. Look, I can get to Camille’s body in the morgue, but that does us no good without a legal-like way to actually get her out of here. Only you can figure that out. But we gotta get her body outa there.”
“What are you up to, Barnabus?”
“Call that undertaker friend of yours and get him to meet me in the delivery area, Lot 3A, as soon as he can be there.”
“Barnabus—”
“Samson, I don’t like telling you what to do, but who’s payin’ the fee here? Please, just do it.” Barnabus hung up.
Without thinking, Sam hit a number on his phone.
“Yeah?” a thick, scratchy voice said.
“Get sobered up, my friend. I need your help.”
Silence, then attention. “Anything for you, man.”
“Thanks, Acorn.”
CHAPTERCHAPTER 25
SUSPECT NUN IN ROSSLYN RIPPER CASE MURDERED
By Lexi Shapiro
Sam put down the paper. He and Raj sat in the lobby of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, which also housed the Office of the Medical Examiner. Sam studied the old man’s face. Raj held his eyes half shut, as if praying.
“Raj, about Camille and my mother.”
“What about ’em?”
“What do you mean, what about ’em? How’d you meet them? And why’d you never tell me you knew my mother?”
“They were nice young women I met long ago, Samson. That’s all you need to know for now. We’ll talk more later.”
“Good morning, Sam,” O’Malley said, startling Sam out of his intense focus on Raj.
“Chief?” Sam was surprised to see O’Malley in the morgue lobby in street clothes—sweat pants, T-shirt, and sneakers. He held his police creds and his wallet in his hand. He did a double take on Raj.
“What are you doing here, Buterab?”
“Good morning to you, too, sir.”
O’Malley did not respond. He turned to Sam.
“Where’s the next of kin?”
“I guess this is all she’s got,” Sam said.
O’Malley sighed. “Good grief. I don’t care at this point. You gentlemen ready?”
They followed a young clerk down a hallway. Sam’s phone buzzed with an incoming text.
“Her body is in a refrigerated drawer,” the clerk said. “I’ll pull out the drawer, and all I need you to do is take a quick look at her and tell me whether it’s the body of Camille Paradisi.”
The clerk swiped his way through a door and into a small room with about ten large metallic drawers against the far wall. She placed her hand on the drawer and pulled.
The four of them stared into an empty drawer.
“Wait here.” The clerk quickly left the room and moments later returned with an elderly Indian man wearing a nametag identifying him as Dr. Lail. He opened every drawer on the wall, checking paperwork on the plastic clipboards hanging from a peg on each one.
“There has to be some mistake. The body was in this drawer last night. I closed it myself.” He examined the clipboard, and Sam could see he was looking at his own set of initials from the night before. “This building, and this room in particular, is absolutely secure. No one can get in without swiping one of these badges, and only five people have the badges. Not to worry, Chief, she’s here somewhere.”
Lail awkwardly ushered the clerk out of the room. “We’ll be right bac
k.”
“I’m detaining your ass, Young,” O’Malley whispered.
“For what?”
“Not sure yet, but until we find that body, I’m assuming this is some of your bullshit.”
“I’m sure they’ll find the body,” Sam said. “We both know she’s dead. Besides, this is on you—not me.”
“Me?”
“You’re the chief. It’s your department. You definitely don’t want the press finding out you misplaced the body, even for a few minutes. I mean, after you released Johnson, failed to protect Paradisi, and missed the obvious facts in the Ripper case? Besides, why would I take her body? And how?”
The chief laughed softly.
They could hear Lail’s yells coming from down the hall.
“Get the hell out of here, Young,” O’Malley said.
•••
Sam sat behind the wheel of the Escalade in the parking lot of the Department of Forensic Science. He watched Raj walk slowly across the parking lot towards his shiny Bentley. Sam looked at his phone. Sparf three times. Amelia. Juliana. Nguyen. Lexi Shapiro. He put the phone in his pocket and felt the side of his face, remembering how Camille’s warm blood had splashed against it.
“Samson.”
Sam broke out of his trance and saw that Raj had pulled his car up next to his, driver’s window to driver’s window, apparently wishing a last word.
“Yes?”
“We won’t be seeing each other for a while.”
“Okay.”
“Wanted to say goodbye, for now. You’re a heck of a lawyer, Samson. I’ve always cared about you. I’m proud of you. You know, once things settle down, let’s get together. Talk some things through. Once you kinda sort things out. Learn a few things.”
“When?”
Raj smiled. “At the opportune time. For now, see you around, Samson.”
Raj eased away in the Bentley.
