Beyond Justice (40 page)

"Legal watchdog, protector of human rights—"

"I was thinking more of the four letter variety."

"Officer O'Brien, may we go now?"  Jodi said.

He released Anita's arm.  "Detective?"

She glowered at Stringer and his lawyer.  They both wore stupid smiles.  Now more than ever, she wanted to have it out with the creep.  Let him know what she thought of him.  Hell, she'd even pistol whip him, bitch-slap him, and dig her stilettos into his privates!

But this would never happen with Jodi Bauer present.

"Fine.  Take him."

Chapter Eighty-Two

"Can we take a break, counsel?" Rachel said as Kenny Dodd popped the first DVD out of his laptop.

"We're just about to get to the part that we need Sam to verify," Dodd replied.

I looked to Rachel and nodded.  I was okay to continue.

"I need a few minutes to confer with my client," Rachel said.

"That's fine," Dodd got up.  "Back in ten."  When he left, Rachel came over.  She slid a chair and sat beside me.  "How are you Sam?"

"Fine, you?"

She didn't answer right away.  Instead she set a stack of legal papers on the table in front of me.  "These are for your hearing tomorrow.  It's going to be one of the quickest exonerations ever because Walden knows that—"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."   She adjusted her glasses, her eyes never leaving the ever spreading pile of documents.  "What are you talking about?"

"Why are you being so, I don't know, professional?"

"Because that's exactly what you need me to be right now." Making little x's on the pages where my signature was required, she continued flipping the pages.

"We're still friends, aren't we?"

"Sign these, please."  She pushed over the first stack, pointed to the signature line and handed me a pen.  I did as she asked, but kept waiting to see if she'd make eye contact.  She didn't.

After ten pages and zero words exchanged, I finally said, "What's going on?  Why are you being this way?"

"What way?"

"So distant, impersonal."

She turned and faced me.  Finally.  Behind her glasses, her eyes were red and shimmering.  "Do we have to talk about it now?"

"I just want to understand.  Did something happen?"

"No.  It's just that..." she bit her lip and frowned.  Then turned her back to me and wiped her face.  "It's no good."

The serial killer who called himself
Kitsume
had been caught, I was about to get exonerated, what wasn't good?  I reached out but I hesitated for a moment.  She took a deep breath but didn't turn around.  Then I touched her shoulder.  She seemed to deflate before my eyes.  With conflicted urgency, she put a warm hand on mine and held onto it.

"Help me out here," I said, rubbing her soft knuckles with my thumb.

"Sam, don't." She sniffed, exhaling a trembling breath.

"A clue, anything."

"Here's the thing," still holding my hand, she turned around to face me.  For the first time that day, she looked me in the eye.  Then held both of my hands.  "You've been in prison almost three years."

"This much I know."

"You know how hard I've been fighting for you."

"Yes."

"Part of me never thought you'd get out.  That was my safety net."

"Safety net?  For what?"

"Just let me finish, okay?" She removed her glasses, wiped the corner of her eyes.   "I figured it would be okay.  I mean, nothing could possibly happen, right?  Stupid, I know, but I just allowed myself.   And over time, before I realized it—"

The door clicked open.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Dodd.  My ears were burning, my face flushed.  But I didn't let go of Rachel's hands.

"Give us another five," Rachel said.

"You got it."  He stepped out and shut the door.

Rachel gripped my hands, got even closer.  "All right, I'm just going to say it."

"Good...I think."

"I don't know how it happened exactly.  But Sam, I've developed feelings for you."  I sat there looking into her eyes not knowing what to say.  Strange, but I wasn't surprised.  It wasn't arrogance.  It was mutuality.

"Rachel."

"Wait.  Before you say anything.  It won't work.  Truth is, as much as I worked for it, as much as I hoped for it, I've never prepared myself emotionally for the day that you'd become a free man.  But last night, while in bed, I was thinking about it.  And I just... I just couldn't."  Rachel's words accelerated.  "I'm your attorney, for heaven's sake!  And there's Aaron, I know it's been a few years, but you lost your wife, I mean, what was I thinking falling in love—?"

I put a finger to her lips.  Before I could think, much less utter a word, I ran my hands through her silken hair and drew her towards me.  I pressed my lips to hers and we began kissing, desperately yielding to the inevitability of it all.  Between breathes, she kept trying to say my name.

Finally, she stepped back and said, "This isn't what I planned."

I pulled her back and kissed her again.  This time we held each other until it ebbed on its own.  Her eyes were still shut, lips still parted.  I brushed the hair from her face.  "It's never about our plans."

Chapter Eighty-Three

You idiot
, Anita couldn't help but thinking.   Despite her training, she very well could have ended up like one of Brent Stringer's victims.  All because he had made her feel... what—desirable?  Feminine?   That freak was going to get a piece of her mind, lawyer or not.  Jodi the Piranha had returned to her office, anyway.

Anita trailed O'Brien's squad car as he drove Brent Stringer back to San Diego Central.  The hot midday sun should have caused the grey leather upholstery of her Six, a BMW 650i, to waft that new leather smell she'd always loved so much.  It now seemed stupidly bland.  She'd traded in her previous Beamer for a newer black one.   On a Detective's salary, she couldn't quite afford it.  But this was San Diego and she had decided long ago that she was, in fact, too sexy for her car—a vintage VW Bug.

O'Brien pulled into a parking space on Front Street.   Heat waves visibly rose from mirages, pooled in the asphalt.  The tower of the damned arched up, glaring at all who approached.

Jim and his partner led Stringer out and to the receiving entrance.  Even from a distance, the sound of the chains scraping against the pavement irritated Anita like sandpaper on a chalkboard.

The alarm on her Six chirped twice, its headlights winked.  Anita strode briskly to the officers.  "A word," she said.

"Listen Pearson," Jim said, reseating his black sunglasses and holding one of Stringer's arms.  "You heard what his attorney said."

"Just a couple of minutes."

Stringer winked at O'Brien whose shoulders heaved.  "You pull anything and I'm going to get named because it happened on my watch."

"Trust me," Anita said.  I'm not looking for any legal trouble.  This is personal."

"That's the part I'm not comfortable with."

"Come on, Jim."

"No way."

"Five feet."

Jim removed his shades. "What?"

"I just have a few things to say to this guy.  You and your partner can stand five feet away, right here in plain view."

He turned his head to the side and stared at the entrance. "I'm sorry, Anita.  No."

"All right, look." She reached behind her back and pulled out her gun, held it by the muzzle, walked towards the squad car.  The officers yanked Stringer back.  She set her weapon down on the roof of the vehicle and then returned.  "You can keep your guns aimed," she said.

Jim pulled his lips into a taut line.  "The department's already under scrutiny, all the wrongful conviction suits since we pulled this slimeball out from under his rock."  He shook Stringer.  Rattled his chains.  "Pearson, you gotta promise—"

"I swear.  Just talk, is all."

"Two minutes."  Jim nodded to Anita's gun and Davis went to retrieve it.  With his own weapon, he pushed Stringer into the shadow of the building.

"One wrong move...," Jim said.

"Better keep an eye on her," said Stringer, turning to show his hands cuffed behind his back.  Anita took him by the arm and gripped it such that her nails dug into his flesh.  He didn't say a word, didn't so much as flinch. 

Finally, she stopped and confronted him.  His demeanor seemed so genuine, so sincere, Anita had to keep reminding herself what he really was.  But she missed him.  The way he'd made her feel, how he could draw her tears with the beauty of his letters, his thoughtfulness, and at the next moment make her sides ache from laughing.  And laughing was not something that came easily.

"A question," she said.

"Anita," he said.  "I know how all this looks, but you have to—"

"I haven't asked it yet."

His eyes still trained on her, pleading, he said, "Are we off the record?"

"Yes."

"Okay, go ahead and ask," he said.

She took a deep breath.  "How could you?"

"I'm innocent."

"You've been boasting about the murders!"  A couple of uniformed SDPD officers passed by and entered the building.  Anita looked away until they were out of sight.

"That was just legal strategy," Stringer said.

"Strategy my sweet—!"

"No, really.  I'm going to instruct my attorney to switch to an insanity plea later.  I had to act that way during the confession.  Don't you see?  I'm not some psycho serial killer, not
Kitsune
.  I'm one of his victims.  I've been—"

"Stop it!  Just stop!"

He took a cautious step forward, reached out to her with his eyes.  "Anita, please.  If you believe nothing else, believe this:  I love you."  His words ripped through her like a jagged knife.  A single tear fell from her eye.  God, she wanted to believe him.   There was no other man for her, even if that man had only been an illusion.

"Why?" she needed to know.

"After all we've been through. Won't you help me, Annie? "

Don't call me Annie.  Never call me Annie again!
  "Please, just tell me."

"I just need you to testify that—"

"WHY!"

"Why what, you irksome little girl!" Stinger shouted, his chains jangling.  O'Brien and his partner lifted their weapons and took a couple of steps forward. 

Anita waved them off.  Sniffed.  "Why me?"

In that instant, Stringer's expression morphed, like one of those billboards with rotating louvers.  Then, the earnest lover, wrongfully accused, pleading with the one person who might still believe in him, now a hideous creature, with his smile a canine snarl.  And though she was already at a safe distance, Anita took a step back.

"I chose you, Anita Pearson," he said, pausing as if withholding just a tiny bit longer would cause her even more pain, "because you were
easy
."

The ice walls refrosted, refortified, her jaw trembling from the fierce clamping, Anita flew at him.  Threw her entire body weight into a right hook to his nose.  Stringer fell back, landed on his back.  As his back hit the pavement, he laughed.

"Get this scumbag out of my sight!" Anita shouted to O'Brien.

"I chose everyone else because they were remarkable, noteworthy," Brent said, his countenance a maniacally glazed sheet of ice.  "But you.  You were simply for my amusement.  Poor misunderstood Annie.  Poor little orphan Annie.  Did you like my poetry?

One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impair'd the nameless grace...
  Illiterate slut!  That was Lord-frickin'-Byron!"

"Shut up!  Shut the hell up!" she was covering her ears now, internally cussing her inability to cope.  Jim and his partner heaved Stringer to his feet.

"One more word and I'll tazer your sorry ass," Jim warned. 

Anita turned her back.

Stringer's chains scraped the concrete.  Stopped abruptly.

Just long enough for him to offer one final parting shot.

"You're pathetic!"

Anita spent the rest of the day at the Pistol Range.  She named every target she shredded, Brent.

Chapter Eighty-Four

Kenny Dodd's grin betrayed that he was on to us.  Thankfully, he made neither mention nor allusion.  Just pretended he hadn't seen me lip-locked with my attorney.  Everything was back to normal in the room except for the fact that Rachel now sat next to me.

On the next video, Brent Stringer proceeded to explain how he pulled everything off.  I verified each familiar step and grew more and more queasy.  Somehow Jenn had ended up on Stringer's database because of an email she sent him through his official fan website.  That was the initial point of contact.  He'd sent bogus and anonymous e-card email links that appeared to be dead.  When Jenn clicked them, they silently downloaded hidden surveillance software.