Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) (10 page)

Tony couldn’t knock her for that. He might
have done the same had the opportunity arisen to use his good looks instead of
his skill at throwing a baseball, before he’d earned a full ride at Gainesville
and applied himself to his studies as well as his sport.

“Since you told me you spoke on the phone
with Lanie yesterday afternoon, I’m guessing she wasn’t being questioned at
that time.” Tony shut off the TV and concentrated on JD. “I’m also assuming
that she’ll use her free call from the jail to contact me as soon as the
switchboard opens. We’re not what you’d call close friends but we’ve got a
history and she knows the firm’s reputation in criminal defense. I can’t
imagine that she’d call anybody but me.”

“Good. Will you defend her yourself?”

Tony nodded. “I’d never turn over a
high-profile murder case to any of the associates or even to Gray, although
he’s a damn fine trial lawyer and his grandfather’s name is still on the firm’s
letterhead. If this goes to trial—and I can’t imagine the state attorney’s
office dropping it or allowing a plea down from the original charge if she’s
indicted—I’ll be lead counsel for the defense. Gray will be my second chair.”

Relief was apparent in JD’s expression. “Do
you think they’ll be pushing her for a confession?” He looked as though he’d
willingly take Lanie’s place if he could.

“They’ll try. But remember, Lanie’s a
lawyer too. Even though she’s a general practitioner, she undoubtedly knows
more about criminal defense procedures than you do. I’m certain she must have
defended clients in at least a few criminal cases. She’ll have enough sense not
to say anything without having her attorney present.”

JD let out a nervous laugh. “You’re
probably right that she knows more about criminal defense than I do. Unless her
situation has her so scared that she can’t think straight, she’ll know to keep
her mouth shut until her attorney arrives. I’m sure that if I were in her
position, though, I’d be so terrified that I couldn’t think straight. I doubt I
could even remember my own name. Can you get hold of her?”

“Not until she contacts me, unless I want
the Bar bringing me up on an ethics violation, but I’m pretty sure she will.
The switchboard here will be open in less than five minutes now. Try to relax.”

“But what if—”

“Easy, my friend. The jail isn’t the most
pleasant place to be, but it’s no medieval torture chamber either. As soon as
Lanie retains the firm, I’ll make some calls and find out what’s going on. If
they’ve charged her, I’ll try to get a bond hearing set right away—today if
possible. Hopefully she won’t spend any significant time behind bars.”

Tony heard the phone ring at the
receptionist’s desk and glanced outside to see that Liz, his secretary, had
arrived and was there to pick up the call. “That may be Lanie calling now.”

A minute later, Liz knocked on the open
door, looking relieved when she saw him.

“There you are, Tony. I’m sorry to disturb
you, but you have a call on line six. It’s Elaine Winstead, calling you from
the jail.”

“Thanks, Liz.” Tony pressed the flashing
button on his phone and switched it to the speaker. “Hey, Lanie. I have JD
Ackerman here in the office and you’re on speaker. We’ve been talking about
you.”

“Will you help me? I’ve never been so
scared.” She let out a pathetic-sounding noise, somewhere between a laugh and a
sob. “I never thought I’d need a criminal defense lawyer but it looks like I
need one now. I need you bad. They say they’re gonna charge me with killing
Wayne.”

Lanie had to be petrified, because Tony had
never before heard her revert verbally from the smooth, refined Southern lady
she’d become to the frightened little girl he remembered as being afraid of her
own shadow back when they’d ridden the same school bus years ago. He held out
his hand and took the dollar bill JD was holding out.

“You’ve got me. JD just handed me a dollar
to retain me. You can pay him back later. There’s no need to go through all the
formalities right now.”

“C-can I afford you?” Lanie made Tony want
to reach through the phone and give her a big, brotherly hug. It was certain
that she had no family to support her, and he doubted that any of Winstead’s
family members would be inclined to offer their help.

JD moved closer to the desk and spoke into
the speaker. “Lanie, I’ll handle Tony’s fee if you can’t. I don’t want you to
worry about it.”

Tony shook his head. “Let’s do first things
first. JD’s right. I don’t want you to worry about legal fees right now. I’ll
try to get a bond hearing set right away so we can get you out of jail. Today,
if we’re lucky.” He mentally calculated that, depending on which judge was
assigned to the case, bail would be set somewhere in the neighborhood of a
million dollars if the state attorney decided to charge Lanie with first-degree
murder. Lanie’s first financial concern would be to come up with the bondsman’s
fee.

“All right.”

“I want you to say nothing when the police
or state attorney’s people come to question you—but of course you know that.
I’ll be out to see you this afternoon, so just think positive.”

“I’d like it if JD could come see me too.”
Lanie sounded as if she was holding on to her composure by a slim thread. “Can
he?”

Glancing over and seeing JD nod, Tony
thought for a minute and then replied. “Technically, I can bring any
Winston-Roe attorney or paralegal with me to consult with you at the jail, but
bringing someone whose connection with you is purely personal wouldn’t be a
good idea.” He didn’t want to say too much because the last thing he needed was
for the state attorney to get wind of Lanie having had an affair during her
marriage, and he’d learned the hard way that a fellow inmate might overhear a
client’s end of the conversation and snitch. “As I said before, I’ll be out to
see you today. Try not to worry. I’ve got your back.”

A couple of hours later, Lanie stared out
from behind the bars of a locked cell, feeling shell-shocked and more exposed
than she’d been when two female deputies had stripped her down and performed a
body cavity search half an hour before. She’d cried when the woman had made
crude comments about the nipple rings JD had placed as signs of his possession
but at least they hadn’t taken them from her.

The sound of metal clanking against metal
as the cell door slammed shut still reverberated in her ears. She jumped
reflexively every time somebody opened and shut similar doors in the block of
cells, helpless to close her ears to the sounds of misery.

I
know now how it feels to lose your
freedom.
Though she’d never defended a client whose very life was on the line
the way hers could be now, she had a new understanding of the urgency even
those accused of less heinous crimes expressed to get out of jail—to the point
of not caring if it strapped their families to come up with bondsmen’s fees.

She knew just enough about the criminal
justice system to give her justification for the terror that had welled up in
her gut. Nausea practically overcame her, so pervasive that she was barely able
to keep her emotions under wraps. What she didn’t know was enough to have a decent
idea of whether Tony would be able to get a judge to grant bail or how long it
might take for a murder case to come to trial.

She knew Tony Landry’s reputation as a
litigator. Everybody in Florida’s legal community and half the criminals in the
country did. Still, she wasn’t sure that the acclaimed defense lawyer would
succeed in getting her acquitted if the case actually came to trial.

If? What a joke, Lanie. You know damn
well that you’ll be tried.
She was fairly sure that
Harper Wells, the county’s pompous state attorney, would ask for the death
penalty. He always did at the least provocation, if for no other reason than
that capital cases drew maximum attention to him and his office. The fact that
Wayne was—had been—a state senator would give the man all the more reason to
sensationalize a trial.

Lanie also knew that innocence of a crime
was no guarantee that the defense, however strong the exculpatory evidence or
however skilled the lawyers were at presenting it, would be able to get a
not-guilty verdict.

Tired of pacing back and forth on the
eight-foot-long concrete floor between door and toilet, she took a reluctant
seat on the lumpy cot. The narrow, hard surface brought back unhappy memories
of the sagging single bed she’d slept on as a child. As she’d done back then
when the voices of her father and his drunken buddies had grown louder as they
passed around cheap whiskey, she lay back against the dingy wall, curling into
the fetal position that used to give her a temporary sense of security. As she
remembered from her childhood, pressing her hands over her ears did a pathetic
job of blocking sound. Today those sounds consisted of cries and curses from
her fellow inmates. Collectively they filled the cell block with an atmosphere
of tears and hopelessness.

The only peace Lanie could find was when
she reminded herself that she hadn’t killed Wayne.
Damn it, I’ve never
killed anything more than a mosquito or a cockroach—except for a rattlesnake I
almost stepped on down by the creek behind my daddy’s shack.
Surely that
didn’t count as murder—she’d only been thirteen years old at the time and the
snake had been coiled and ready to bite her when she’d whacked its head off
with a rusty hoe. She’d never done anything to harm another human being, no
matter what evidence the sheriff’s detectives thought they had found.

The man she loved believed in her and was
already trying to get help for her even before she’d contacted Tony. Knowing JD
was in her corner made her feel a little less hopeless.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her mind
to the sounds of desperation around her and let her mind wander to a happier
time, when she’d been with JD on Cedar Key.

* * * * *

He kept whispering how hot, how sexy she
was as he slid his fingers through her hair and drew her down on him in that
swing out on his porch. “There’s no one to see us,” he said when she hesitated.
When she surrendered, unzipped his fly and took his thick, hot cock in his
mouth, he groaned with ecstasy, his grip on her tightening as she swallowed the
slick, salty spurts of his climax.

Later he carried her inside and returned
the favor, consuming her wet, swollen cunt with smooth strokes of his tongue on
her pussy, gentle nips of his teeth on her clit. She wanted to hold him there
forever, keep coming and coming and coming, until finally he pinned her to the
mattress with his muscular torso and fucked her cunt so deep and hard that she
hoped he never would stop.

He whispered hot promises of how he’d take
her to his club, introduce her to the BDSM lifestyle he’d enjoyed before his
late wife had gotten too ill to go with him. When he gave her a preview of
domination and submission, what she’d thought at first would be scary came into
delightful, kinky focus when he threatened to share her with another Dom and
show her how taking two men, even three, could give her pleasure.

“I’ll take every hole you’ve got,
sweetheart,” he told her as he stretched her rear passage with a gel plug.
Someday you’ll be able to take me here.”

It felt strange, a little painful but a lot
arousing. And when he left the plug inside her and took her cunt with long,
heavy strokes, she screamed with the exquisite pleasure-pain of a massive
orgasm.

“You opened my eyes to what good sex could
be like,” she whispered afterward as he held her. With gentle hands he explored
her torso, lulling her into semiconsciousness.

God how she loved him, she thought as she
curled her arms around a lumpy pillow.

* * * * *

“C’mon, sleeping beauty, get a move on.”

“What…where?” A harsh male voice, nothing
like JD’s, snatched Lanie rudely out of her fantasy.

“That must have been one hell of a dream
you were having, lady. Come on with us now. Your lawyer’s here.” A fat,
grinning jail deputy opened the cell door and motioned for Lanie to fall in
line behind his companion before stepping into place at the rear of the
procession to make the trip to the attorneys’ visiting area downstairs.

Lanie tried not to look at the dingy walls
or the color-coded lines and arrows that marked the way to different cell
blocks. The series of hallways and stairs reminded her of a rat maze, but at
least she looked forward to seeing an understanding face in one of the stark,
gray rooms where she had occasionally visited clients who were locked up.

When the first deputy opened a door, he
rattled the handcuffs clipped to his belt. “Here she is, counselor. Want her
cuffed?”

“That won’t be necessary, Joe. I doubt that
Mrs. Winstead is capable of overwhelming me even if she should be inclined to
try.” Tony’s voice and matter-of-fact response to the deputy served to reassure
Lanie—at least a little bit.

“You sit here.” Joe slid back a straight
chair and stood back so she could take her place in front of the battered
wooden table. “Looks like you’re gettin’ the royal treatment. Landry here
usually sends his flunkies on jail visits.”

“You deputies can leave now. I’ll call you
when we’re finished.” Tony dismissed the two jail guards.

When they were alone, Tony reached across
the desk to squeeze Lanie’s hand. “My secretary called me while I was on the
way out here to let me know Judge Castellano has granted bail. My team is
working now to get it posted, so we’ll be getting you out of here. Just hang in
for a couple more hours.”

A couple of hours would normally sound like
nothing. It sounded like forever when she knew the nominally short time would
have to be spent behind bars. “Why a couple more hours?” she asked. “Will there
be a problem with making the bond?”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t foresee that
being an issue. It’s just that the jail staff processes releases after each
shift ends, and that will be in another hour and a half.”

Relief that she wouldn’t have to spend
weeks, months or even years in this place pending trial made Lanie feel practically
giddy. “I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about a few hours delay in getting
me out of here. Thanks for all you’ve done already.”

“No problem. Meanwhile, though, you need to
fill me in a little. My team is on your case, sifting through media reports and
what little information we’ve been able to get so far from the state attorney’s
office. I need you to tell me in your own words how you ended up here.”

Lanie sighed. “I guess you’ve heard that I
filed for dissolution of marriage from Wayne. The petition hasn’t been heard
yet, and as far as I know Wayne never answered it.”

“I heard. We’ll need to go over the whys
and wherefores but we can do that later. What I need to know now is when and
why you went to the house yesterday.”

“Bert—he’s Wayne’s campaign
manager—arranged for me to meet Wayne at six o’clock, to talk to him about the
details of our separation. When I got there, I saw Wayne’s car in the garage so
I assumed he must be inside. When I didn’t see him in the kitchen or family
room, I knocked on the door to his office. He didn’t answer, so I pushed the
door open and went inside.”

Tony looked up from the notes he’d been
taking. “Did you do that often?”

“No. He didn’t want me barging in
unannounced, but Bert said he knew I’d be coming to talk to him. I knew that
sometimes he liked to go out through the French doors and get some fresh air
and I wanted to get this talk over with so I could get on with my life.”

“Was anybody else in the house?”

“I don’t think so. I saw a stain of some
sort on the carpet by the French doors so I opened them and looked outside.
When I noticed more of that stain and guessed it might be blood, I thought
Wayne might be hurt so I started following what I could make out of the stains
in the grass—it’s winter and it’s pretty brown. I was almost to the boathouse
when some deputies surrounded me.”

“Tell me what happened when you were
arrested,” Tony said.

“The lieutenant in charge told me Wayne was
dead and I was under arrest for killing him.”

Tony frowned. “Did he tell you what
specifically had brought them out to your place?”

“No, but they’d parked out on the road
instead of in the driveway. That seemed weird. I don’t know if they were
already there when I drove up—I didn’t notice them if they were. When I finally
asked what had brought them there, Lieutenant Grimes said somebody had reported
suspicious activity down by the boathouse.”

“It seems strange that they wouldn’t have
come to the house first, announced their presence so they’d be safe from
trespassing charges. You’re sure they didn’t and maybe you didn’t hear the bell
ring?” Tony’s expression didn’t change but she could practically see him
reconstructing the scene in his agile mind.

“No. I would have heard them. That doorbell
is really loud.”

Tony scribbled a few notes on the pad in
front of him, then met Lanie’s gaze. “Refresh my memory here. If somebody comes
onto your property from the road, don’t they have to drive more or less right
up to your front door before they get anywhere near that lake out back?”

“Yes, they do. You have to go around the
house and across the yard to get to the water. What are you getting at?” Lanie
thought she knew—now that she thought about it, the fact that the deputies had
bypassed the house and gone straight to Wayne’s body didn’t make sense. Unless…

“Didn’t it strike you as odd that they went
to the boathouse before checking at the house first?”

“Not at the time, but it does now that you
mention it.” It struck her that the only neighbors who had a good view of the
boathouse were close to a mile away, too far to see any activity going on there
short of an explosion or a fire.

Tony’s mouth curved in a grin. “Exactly.
We’ll be looking into that, but for now I’ve got a few more questions. I assume
that somebody read you your rights.”

“Yes. I remember that. It seemed at the
time like a badly done TV cops-and-robbers show.”

“Did they tell you exactly where and in
what condition they found the senator?”

“Yes, they did, in graphic detail. They
even marched me down there and showed me.” Lanie felt like throwing up, so she
looked over at Tony, hoping he’d take pity and… “Didn’t the media fill you in
on how they found Wayne’s body?”

“Yeah, and the reporters ate it up as you’d
probably expect. They gave graphic descriptions of a gator eating a severed leg
on the waterfront next to the dock. And of the deputies finding the rest of
Wayne inside the boathouse with a bullet through his brain. Is that more or
less correct, allowing for the usual journalistic license?”

She couldn’t do more than nod. Nausea was
bubbling up in her throat, threatening to choke her.

“Okay. We don’t need to go into that any
further now. Did the deputies have a search warrant?”

Lanie shook her head. “No. Rather, they may
have had one but they didn’t serve it.”

Tony jotted that down on his pad, then met
Lanie’s gaze. “I suppose it could be argued that the presence of a severed body
part gave them probable cause to go inside the boathouse and the house.”

He reached across the table and took her
hand. “We can go over this more thoroughly later when we’re in a friendlier
environment. I’ve got one more question, though, and it’s important that you
tell me the absolute truth. To your knowledge did anyone ever see you with JD
in a compromising position? By that, I mean did anybody see you alone together
in a place where you couldn’t explain your presence in some innocent way?”

She looked Tony straight in the eye, hoping
that the truth wouldn’t drag JD into her mess, though that hope was futile
since JD had been the one to approach Tony about defending her even before
she’d placed her call.