Esprit de Corpse (7 page)

Chapter 9

It Ain’t Docket Science

THE NEXT DAY
began with Conrad and his cellmate being brought breakfast trays. Maddy promptly redistributed Conrad’s breakfast to her own advantage.

Then Maddy harassed Conrad while he dressed, calling him names and at one point, spitting on Shannon’s silk shirt.

To his credit, Conrad kept his head down and fought his way into the unfamiliar panty hose. Maddy tossed one of Shannon’s shoes toward the toilet, but Dante was able to deflect it, making it look like a failed basketball shot.

I so needed to learn to do that.

Then we all shuffled off to the prisoner loading dock. Once again Theresa Mudders accompanied them, perky and compassionate as ever. She even asked their permission to study during the long drive to the courthouse. She informed them she was taking night classes, but she dropped the subject and opened the book when it became obvious neither prisoner was interested in anything outside of themselves and their immediate circumstances.

To be fair, if I were facing the loss of my freedom and my future hung in the balance, I might not have cared either.

My mind drifted and I wished for a distraction when Conrad suddenly asked, “What are you studying?”

Theresa wasn’t as shocked as I was. Instead of gaping as I was doing at his apparent interest in someone other than himself, she smiled at him, marked her place and closed her book. “Social work,” she answered, seemingly not at all bothered that she’d told him that not ten minutes before.

She held the book up so he could see the title. It was the same massive text Shannon had lugged around during her final year of undergrad. Putting the “work” in “social work,” I’d teased her. I glanced over at Shannon now, but she stared unseeingly at her feet.

That, if anything, told me how worried and depressed she’d become. Only a year ago, the mere mention of social work would have grabbed her attention, eyes gleaming and brain humming. She’d been so passionate about her chosen field of study that she could almost make it sound interesting.

As Theresa seemed to be doing now.

“Ah,” Conrad nodded, returning her smile. “My daughter was studying—I mean, I was studying social work at one point before I, well, before my wonderful father convinced me that my place was alongside him, working in his successful public relations business.”

“That must have been hard for you. Social work is a calling and to give that up to work in the family business . . . I admire your sense of responsibility.”

Conrad nodded, a thoughtful expression on Shannon’s face. Perhaps he’d never looked at it that way before.

“But Detective Leo said you weren’t interested in working in that business. Was that true?”

“That was misinformation. I love public relations. Besides, my father needed me.” He shrugged. “It was no hardship.”

I glanced over at Shannon again. This time she was listening. “Yes, it was, you bastard,” she snarled, her features dark and angry. “I wanted to go back and finish my master’s, but you always had one more project that needed my
special
touch, one more client who would only work with me.”

I hated to see Shannon this upset, but I was glad to see her finally understand what a selfish and manipulative creep her father had been. Was. Is.

She stood a little taller now. Well, sat a little taller, actually, as we bounced along in the prisoner transport van.

I knew Conrad had never been supportive of Shannon’s desire to help people. She’d had to fight him to enroll in social work at university instead of business.

Even though I had agreed with Conrad and really wanted my best friend to work with me all the time instead of just during her summer breaks, I had kept that to myself and encouraged her to pursue her dreams.
That’s
what you do for the people you love, not trick them into doing what you want them to do.

“Besides,” Conrad added, “children should sacrifice for their parents.”

“Oh,” Theresa replied. “I’d always heard it was the other way ’round.”

Behind me I heard gagging sounds and looked over to see Shannon fake-sticking her finger down her throat and rolling her eyes. I couldn’t have agreed more without actually puking.

Theresa placed the heavy textbook on the bench beside her while she and Conrad chatted. She probably thought he needed to take his mind off things. I figured he was just winning friends and influencing people in case he might need her on his side later.

We arrived at the courthouse to find the steps thronged with media, even more than had lain in wait for us at the precinct last night. Someone was leaking info to the press and I guessed it was Conrad’s lawyer, Gill Hammerhead. It was exactly the sort of career-building tactic he’d use to get noticed. The fact that he strolled among the reporters, shaking hands, slapping backs and getting on camera only supported my supposition.

Even over the noise of the crowd, I heard him chant,
“If the stapler don’t fingerprint, the judge must acquit.”
Jeez. That was so bad it made Dante’s poems sound like, well, poetry.

Conrad grabbed a passing microphone and repeated yesterday’s performance. He had his “I’m so innocent it hurts” speech down pat now. The crowd ate it up. And wrote it down.

Theresa and the other guard began pushing their charges through the press of press toward the courthouse. Theresa managed to be firm but polite to those reporters who got all up in her face. I didn’t envy her the task of coming between Conrad and his audience.

Finally we all made it to the hallway outside the courtroom. Once again, cold, hard benches played a key role in my life.

Before very long, Conrad’s name was called by the bailiff or court clerk or some official I couldn’t identify. We all shuffled into the courtroom. A few bored-looking men and women who were probably reporters occupied the seats nearest the door.

Conrad was asked to stand while Judge Wilson, complete with dark robe, little white collar and bright red sash, oversaw proceedings. The court clerk read the charges. I worked hard to parse the legal language and twisty wording. It hurt my head, but I gathered Shannon was being charged with only a single crime—that of my murder.

Some legal stuff went back and forth between the Crown prosecutor and Gill Hammerhead. At the judge’s request, Conrad launched into a shorter version of his speech of innocence. By this point, it rolled off his tongue like so much saliva. It brought tears to my eyes and bile to my throat. After having heard it four or five times now, I almost believed it.

The judge presiding didn’t look like she believed much of anything. If you’d told her water was wet, you’d better have some pretty significant—and damp—evidence to support that fact.

She reminded me of Judge Julius back in Hell. If Julius had been black, svelte and attractive. Oh, and also? Human. With less horns, toupees and caterpillars. No, after careful consideration, I decided the Right Honorable Judge Wilson was nothing like Hell’s judge.

In fact, the only way that she reminded me of the judge who’d denied my appeal was that she was all business. Conrad’s plea fell on ears that had heard it all before.

She whipped off her designer glasses and peered over at Conrad. Shannon’s business suit looked a lot worse for wear and I won’t even mention the state of her hair. Shannon had had a lifetime to learn how to manage her shoulder-length brown hair. Conrad? Only twelve hours. What had been an artfully messy bun yesterday was just plain messy today.

“Shannon Rebecca Iver. First off, the Court offers its condolences on the recent loss of your father.”

“My father? He died years a—Oh, I mean, thank you, Your Honor.”

The judge cut him a suspicious look. She knew something was up, but not what. But we needed her to trust Conrad. He’d better work hard to win the judge’s favor so she would set Shannon free and we could get on with trying to bust Conrad down to Hell.

“As pointed out by the Crown, you have no other family.” The judge rustled through her notes. “And, according to the testimony of your colleagues gathered by Detective Leo, you have no friends. In separate testimony from one . . .” She peered over her glasses, running a finger across the page. “Ah, here it is. According to your employee Francesca Tick, you aren’t interested in running the business you inherited. In summary, you have the means, motive and opportunity to get out of town. To wit, I consider you a flight risk. Bail is hereby denied.”

A collective gasp ran through the courtroom.

“But Judge,” Gill Hammerhead jumped in. “My client has no history—”

“I’m not finished, Counsel. If I was, I would have called the next case, now wouldn’t I?” Hammerhead withered under her glare. “However, I do have a special, one-time-only offer for you.”

The entire courtroom sat forward in anticipation. This was like
Judge Judy
and
Let’s Make a Deal
all rolled into one.

“I’ve had a cancellation on my docket for day after tomorrow. The parties involved decided to settle out of court. Now, can you, Mr. Hammerhead, be ready for your preliminary hearing by then? If you choose not to accept my generous offer, then your client will be incarcerated until the next opening in the court’s docket, which won’t be more than . . .” She nodded at the court clerk, who appeared to have been expecting this.

“Not more than six months, Your Honor.”

“Six months,” Judge Wilson repeated. “I’ll give you one minute to confer with your client.”

Hammerhead and Conrad whispered together only seconds before responding. “We’ll take the offer, Your Honor, because we are so sure that you will rule in favor of my client’s innocence that—”

“Save it, Counsel, or you won’t have anything left to say at the hearing.”

With that, she did call the next case.

Getting rid of the media circus that accompanied our visits probably had something to do with Conrad scoring a speedy hearing date. It wasn’t like Judge Wilson appeared to have warmed up to him.

We had to wait for Maddy’s arraignment before we could head back to Vanier prison. Conrad and Theresa, followed by Shannon and Dante, filed back out into the hall to wait. I had spent more than enough awkward silence with them, so I hung around to see what was up with our resident murderer.

Maddy didn’t have a lawyer so the Court had appointed her a young, caring, legal aid worker. The universal translator in my scythe wasn’t much good when it came to understanding the legalese, though. Near as I could figure, Maddy had strangled someone during a bar brawl. Nice. Classy.

She had chosen to plead self-defense, which the courts called “guilty with an explanation.” Or maybe “guilty with an excuse.” I wasn’t paying that much attention. It’s not like I wanted her set free. Unlike Conrad, Maddy was granted bail—a huge sum she had no hope of raising.

Perhaps this wasn’t Maddy’s first time through the court system, because she seemed blasé about the entire proceeding, even when the legal aid worker argued that Conrad had been treated with favoritism. The judge begrudgingly agreed to piggyback Maddy’s preliminary hearing onto Conrad’s. That is, if Conrad’s finished up with time to spare, they’d allow Maddy the leftover time.

Then it was time for the next contestant, I mean, accused. Judge Wilson ran her courtroom with cool efficiency. I just hoped that worked in Shannon’s favor.

I rejoined my posse as we left the building. The reporters swarmed us again on the way out. This time Theresa and the other guard refused to stop, leaving Gill Hammerhead the job of declaring Shannon’s innocence to the world.

Speaking of poor Shannon, she had barely said a word all day. She looked faint. I don’t mean she looked like she might faint, but rather she looked like she was fading away. I decided to ask Dante about it but before I could approach him, he approached me.

Pulling me into one corner of the van, he spoke in low tones. He might as well not have bothered since Shannon was the only one who could hear us and had she wanted to, she could probably hear us even when we whispered. It wasn’t a large van.

He leaned in close, meeting my gaze. His big, soulful eyes melted my crankiness into a little green puddle that stank of jealousy and insecurity.

“Kirsty, I am sorry that I have hurt your feelings. I do not like it when we fight. I want very much to make up with you.”

My insides tingled as I thought about how we usually made up. It might be fun to see what we could do with these semicorporeal bodies here on the Mortal Coil. I glanced around, but the van was really not conducive to makeup sex. “It’s okay, Dante. I just need you to be more supportive. I’m paying the price of having used your scythe to reap Conrad back in my hospital room. I’m going to make it right. But you have to believe that Conrad attacked me. It wasn’t self-defense like he said in his version of events.”

Dante placed a hand on my cheek, his sad, brown eyes meeting mine. “I do believe you, Kirsty. I believe that you remember the events leading up to your final demise to have occurred as you’d described them.”

“
What? You
believe that
I
believe? If that is supposed to make me feel better, it fails epically. I need you to believe me. Not that evil jerk who bashed my brains in.” Or his whiny daughter, I added mentally.

I’d wanted so much to see my best friend again, but now that I had, I had to admit Shannon was getting on my nerves. Not only was she playing up to my boyfriend, but she wouldn’t stop tearing up. At one point she cried so hard she tripped over her own feet.

Honey, you should look before you weep.

I knew I wasn’t being fair to Shannon. And maybe not to Dante, either. I hadn’t told Shannon Dante was off the market, but
he
should have. Or maybe he was just following my lead. I had introduced him as my colleague.

I tried to look at it from his point of view but I didn’t like what I saw so I tried another tack.

“Look, Dante. I understand that Conrad’s sequence of events is logical, but it’s just not true. You need to take my word for it. That’s what boyfriends do.”