Ashes to Ashes (24 page)

“Have you heard anything back from your friends in Wisconsin yet?” she asked.

“Nothing yet.”

“It’d be nice to know who the hell this kid is. I feel like I’m working with a blindfold on.”

“I’ve got the videotape of Angie’s interviews,” he said, setting his hands at his middle. “I thought it might be helpful to sit down together and go over it. Maybe we could bring Quinn into that too. I’d like to hear his opinion.”

“Yeah, why not?” Kate said, resigning herself. “Let me know when you set it up. I have to get to court.”

Some days it just seemed the better option to stay home and hit her thumb with a hammer. At least that was a pain from which she could easily recover. John Quinn was another matter altogether.

“I WAS AFRAID you weren’t coming,” David Willis said with no small amount of accusation. He rushed up to Kate as she made her way around the knots of lawyers in the hall outside the criminal courtrooms.

“I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Willis. I was in a meeting with the county attorney.”

“About
my
case?”

“No. Everything is ready to go for your case.”

“I’m not going to have to testify, right?”

“Not today, Mr. Willis.” Kate steered her client toward the courtroom. “This is just a hearing. The prosecutor, Mr. Merced, will be presenting just enough evidence to have the court bind Mr. Zubek over for trial.”

“But he won’t call me as a surprise witness or anything?” He looked half terrified, half hopeful at the prospect.

Somehow, Kate knew this was just how David Willis had looked in his high school yearbook back in the seventies: out-of-date crew cut and nerd glasses, pants that were an odd shade of green and an inch too high-waisted. People had probably assaulted him regularly all his life.

For the occasion of the hearing, he had worn the black horn-rimmed glasses that had been broken in the course of his assault. They were held together in two places by adhesive tape. His left wrist was encased in a molded plastic cast, and he wore a cervical collar like a thick turtleneck.

“Surprise witnesses happen only on
Matlock
,” Kate said.

“Because I’m just not ready for that. I’m going to have to work myself up to that, you know.”

“Yes, I think we’re all aware of that, Mr. Willis.” Because he had called every day for the last week to remind them: Kate, Ken Merced, Ken’s secretary, the legal services receptionist.

“I won’t be in any physical danger, will I? He’ll be in handcuffs and leg irons, right?”

“You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Because, you know, situational stress can push people over the edge. I’ve been reading up on it. I’ve been religiously attending the victims’ group you set me up with, Ms. Conlan, and I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about the criminal mind, and the psychology of victims, and post-traumatic stress disorder—just the way you told me to do.”

Kate often recommended her clients educate themselves as to what to expect of their own reactions and emotions following a crime. It gave them a sense of understanding and a small feeling of control. She didn’t recommend it as an all-consuming hobby.

Knowing Willis would want to be close to the action, she chose the first row in the gallery behind the prosecution’s table, where Ken Merced was going over some notes. Willis bumped into her as she stopped to indicate the row, then tripped over his own feet trying to move aside and gallantly motion Kate in ahead of him.

Kate shook her head as she stepped into the row and took a seat. Willis fumbled with the cheap briefcase he’d brought with him. Filled with news clippings about his case, Polaroids taken of him in the ER after the attack, brochures on victims’ groups and therapists, and a hardcover copy of
Coping After the Crime
. He pulled out a yellow legal pad and prepared to take notes of the proceedings—as he had at every meeting Kate had had with him.

Merced turned to them with a pleasant poker face. “We’re all set, Mr. Willis. This won’t take long.”

“You’re certain you won’t need me to testify?”

“Not today.”

He gave a shuddering sigh. “Because I’m not ready for that.”

“No.” Merced turned back toward the table. “None of us are.”

Kate sat back and tried to will the tension out of her jaw as Willis became engrossed in making his preliminary notes.

“You always were a secret soft touch.”

The low whisper rumbled over her right shoulder, the breath caressing the delicate skin of her neck. Kate jerked around, scowling. Quinn leaned ahead on his chair, elbows braced on his knees, dark eyes gleaming, that little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile firmly and calculatingly in place.

“I need to talk to you,” he murmured.

“You have my office number.”

“I do,” he admitted. “However, you seem not to want to answer my messages.”

“I’m a very busy person.”

“I can see that.”

“Don’t mock me,” she snapped.

David Willis grabbed hold of her forearm and she turned back around. The side door had opened, and O. T. Zubek entered the courtroom with his lawyer, a deputy trailing after them. Zubek was a human fireplug, squat with thick limbs and a protruding belly. He wore a cheap navy-blue suit that showed a dusting of dandruff on the shoulders, and a baby-blue knit shirt underneath, untucked and too snug around the middle. He looked right at Willis and scowled, his face the doughy caricature of a cartoon tough guy with a blue-shadowed jaw.

Willis stared at him, bug-eyed for a second, then twisted toward Kate. “Did you see that? He threatened me! That was threatening eye contact. I perceived that as a threat. Why isn’t he in handcuffs?”

“Try to stay calm, Mr. Willis, or the judge will have you removed from the courtroom.”

“
I’m
not the criminal here!”

“Everyone knows that.”

The judge entered from chambers and everyone rose, then sat again. The docket number and charges were read, the prosecution and defense attorneys stated their names for the record, and the probable-cause hearing was under way.

Merced called his first witness, a pear-shaped man who serviced Slurpee machines at 7-Eleven stores in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area. He testified he had heard Willis arguing with Zubek about the condition of a delivery of Hostess Twinkies and assorted snack cakes in the store Willis managed, and that he had seen the two come tumbling down the chips aisle, Zubek striking Willis repeatedly.

“And did you hear who started this
alleged
argument?” the defense attorney questioned on cross-examination.

“No.”

“So for all you know, Mr. Willis may have provoked the argument?”

“Objection. Calls for speculation.”

“Withdrawn. And did you see who threw the first punch in this
so-called
attack?”

“No.”

“Might it have been Mr. Willis?”

Willis trembled and twitched beside Kate. “I didn’t!”

“Shhh!”

Merced sighed. “Your honor …”

The judge frowned at the defense attorney, who had come costumed as a bad used-car salesman. He looked seedy enough that he might have been Zubek’s cousin. “Mr. Krupke, this is a hearing, not a trial. The court is more concerned with what the witnesses saw than with what they did not see.”

“Not exactly the Richmond Ripper case, is it?” Quinn murmured in Kate’s ear. She gave him the evil eye over her shoulder. The stiffness in her jaw began radiating down into her neck.

Merced’s second witness corroborated the testimony of the Slurpee mechanic. Krupke went through the same cross, with Merced voicing the same objections, and the judge getting crankier and crankier. Willis fidgeted and recorded copious notes in tiny bold print that said frightening things about the inner workings of his mind. Merced entered into evidence the security surveillance tape showing much of the fight, then rested his case.

Krupke had no witnesses and put on no defense.

“We don’t dispute that an altercation took place, your honor.”

“Then why are you wasting my time with this hearing, Mr. Krupke?”

“We wanted to establish that events may not have taken place
exactly
as Mr. Willis claims.”

“That’s a lie!” Willis shouted.

The judge cracked his gavel. The bailiff frowned at Willis but didn’t move from his post. Kate put a vise grip on her client’s arm and whispered furiously, “Mr. Willis, be quiet!”

“I suggest you listen to your advocate, Mr. Willis,” the judge said. “You’ll have your turn to speak.”

“Today?”

“No!” the judge snorted, turning his glare on Merced, who spread his hands and shrugged. He turned back to the defense. “Mr. Krupke, write me a check for two hundred dollars for wasting my time. If you had no intention of disputing the charges, you should have waived rights and asked for a trial date at the arraignment.”

The date for the trial was set and the proceedings were over. Kate breathed a sigh of relief. Merced got up from the table and collected his papers. Kate leaned across the bar and whispered, “Can’t you get this guy to cop, Ken? I’d rather gouge my eyes out than sit through a trial with this man.”

“Christ, I’d pay Zubek to take a plea if it wouldn’t get me disbarred.”

Krupke asked someone to lend him a pen so he could write out the check for contempt of court. Willis looked around like he had just awakened from a nap and had no idea where he was.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, Mr. Willis,” Kate said, standing. “I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

“But—but—” He swung his blue-casted arm in the direction of Zubek. “They called me a liar! Don’t I get to defend myself?”

Zubek leaned over the rail, sneering. “Everyone can see what a shitty job you do of that, Willis.”

“We should leave now,” Kate suggested, handing Willis his briefcase. The thing weighed a ton.

He fumbled with the case and his notepad and pen as she herded him toward the aisle. Kate was more concerned with what she was going to do about Quinn. He had already moved into the aisle and was backing toward the door, his gaze on her, trying to get her to look at him. Sabin must have called him the second she was out of the office.

“But I don’t understand,” Willis whined. “There should have been more. He hurt me! He hurt me and he called me a liar!”

Zubek twitched his shoulders like a boxer and made a Bluto face. “Weenie wuss.”

Kate saw Quinn’s reaction the second the war cry curdled up out of David Willis. She spun around as Willis launched himself at Zubek, swinging. The briefcase hit Zubek in the side of the head like a frying pan and knocked him backward across the defense table. The locks sprung and the contents exploded out of the briefcase.

Kate hurled herself at Willis as he drew his arm back to swing again. She grabbed both his shoulders, and the two of them tumbled headfirst over the bar and into a sea of table legs and chairs and scrambling people. Zubek was squealing like a stuck pig. The judge was shouting at the bailiff, the bailiff was shouting at Krupke, who was screaming at Willis and trying to kick him. His wingtip connected with Kate’s thigh, and she swore and kicked back, nailing Willis.

It seemed to take forever for order to be restored and for Willis to be hauled off her. Kate sat up slowly, muttering a string of obscenities under her breath.

Quinn squatted down in front of her, reached out, and brushed a rope of red-gold hair back behind her ear. “You really ought to come back to the FBI, Kate. This job’s going to be the death of you.”

“DON’T YOU DARE be amused at me,” Kate snapped, surveying the damage to herself and her clothes. Quinn leaned back against her desk, watching as she plucked at a hole in her stockings that was big enough to put her fist through. “This is my second pair of good tights this week. That’s it: I’m giving up skirts.”

“The men in the building will have to wear black armbands,” Quinn said. He held his hands up in surrender as she shot him another deadly glare. “Hey, you always had a nice set of pegs on you, Kate. You can’t argue.”

“The subject is inappropriate and irrelevant.”

He gave her innocence. “Political correctness prohibits one old friend from complimenting another?”

She straightened slowly in her chair, forgetting about the ruined tights. “Is that what we are?” she asked quietly. “Old friends?”

He sobered at that. He couldn’t look her in the eye and be glib about the past that lay behind them and between them. The awkwardness was a palpable entity.

“That’s not exactly the way we parted company,” she said.

“No.” He moved away from the desk, sticking his hands in his pants pockets, pretending an interest in the notices and cartoons she had tacked up on her bulletin board. “That was a long time ago.”

Which meant what, she wondered. That it was all water under the bridge? While a part of her wanted to say yes, there was another part of her that held those bitter memories in a fist. For her, nothing was forgotten. The idea that it might be for him upset her in a way she wished weren’t so. It made her feel weak, a word she never wanted associated with her.

Quinn looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Five years is a long time to stay mad.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

He laughed. “The hell you’re not. You won’t return my phone calls. You don’t want to have a conversation with me. Your back goes up every time you see me.”

“I’ve seen you what—twice since you got here? The first time you used me to get your way, and the second time you made fun of my job—”

“I did not make fun of your job,” he protested. “I made fun of your client.”

“Oh, that makes all the difference,” she said with sarcasm, conveniently forgetting that everyone made fun of David Willis, including her. She stood, not wanting him looking down on her any more than their height difference allowed. “What I do here is important, John. Maybe not in the same way as what you do, but it
is
important.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Kate.”

“No? As I recall, when I decided to leave the Bureau, you told me I was throwing my life away.”