Guilty as Sin (18 page)

"You can bet he knows something we don't," Cameron said darkly. "Rumor has it he had a long talk with his client after the bond hearing yesterday and that he left the jail looking sick."

"He'd just lost a client and a chance for a lot of publicity," Rudy pointed out.

Cameron reserved comment, his gaze steady on Ellen.

"I'll find out what I can," she said. "But how much can he tell me without committing a breach of ethics?"

"How much can he keep to himself without committing a breach of decency?"

"Let me know what you find out," Rudy instructed. "Where do we stand as far as ammunition for this hearing?"

"We've got the statements from Mitch and from Megan O'Malley regarding her abduction and that whole drama," Cameron said. "We won't have the DNA results back on the bloody sheet Wright wrapped around her that night, but we've already got the blood types—one of which is the same as O'Malley's and one of which is the same as Josh's."

"Regarding O'Malley's situation," Ellen said, "as you know, Wright was apprehended fleeing the scene. To paraphrase Megan, we've got him dead to rights."

"But what about the boy's case? So far, we've got a victim who's not talking."

"We've got Ruth Cooper, the witness who identified Wright in the lineup as being the man she saw on Ryan's Bay the day Josh Kirkwood's jacket was found," Cameron said.

Rudy made a rumbling sound in his throat that might have been discontent or phlegm. "I was there. The lineup was wearing parkas and sunglasses. A good defense attorney is going to take it apart like Tinkertoys."

"The visual may be iffy," Ellen conceded, "but you'll remember, Mrs. Cooper also made a voice ID. The two together will be hard to discount."

"We've also got Agent O'Malley's testimony as to what Wright confessed to her regarding Josh," Cameron pointed out.

"He said, she said," Rudy grumbled.

"She's a police officer."

"She's a victim. Hardly an impartial hearsay witness."

Ellen tipped her head. "Maybe, maybe not. I think her credentials will carry her through."

"Wright knows the Kirkwood family," Cameron went on. "And he has a flimsy alibi for the time Josh disappeared. He claims he was at his office working that night, but so far that's just his say-so."

"So what's his motive?" Rudy asked.

"We don't have one, other than that he's playing some kind of sick game," Ellen said. "All we have to do for the moment is get him bound over. We don't need a motive until trial. We have to bear in mind that Wright wasn't even a suspect until Saturday night. The investigation is really just beginning."

Rudy ambled to the window and looked down on the early shift of protestors gathering on the sidewalk.

"It sounds like you've got everything under control, Ellen," he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

Rumors had been churning for months that the yuppies of Park County were looking to root him out of office and replace him with Ellen Morth. When he moved into Franken's seat, the path would be clear for ler. She and her backers likely saw this case as her chance to step into the limelight, but limelight wouldn't be the only thing she would step in. He pulled in a deep, cleansing breath and envisioned his judgeship, so close, he could feel his new black robes draping over him.

"You know, I'm just an old country lawyer at heart," he said. "When I came on this job, there was no such thing as a high-profile case. Folks around here didn't lock their doors. They let their kids run all over town without worrying about them. Deer Lake was the kind of town America is supposed to be all about."

Ellen recognized the speech immediately. He had used it as his closing statement in a drug dealer's trial eighteen months ago. He heaved an exaggerated sigh and twisted his features into the expression of a sad clown.

"Do your best, Ellen," he instructed. "Always let your constituents know you did your best."

"Rudy, I've told you a hundred times, I have no intention of running for your office."

And for the hundred and first time he didn't listen. The irony was too much. Her ambition topped out right where she was. She had no political aspirations, had thought leaving Hennepin County had been a clear statement to that effect. Yet, in the place she had come to settle herself into a comfortable niche, she was constantly viewed with suspicious eyes as being an ambitious woman with her sights on bigger things.

"Yes, well . . . ," he said, sauntering away.

As he opened the door, Phoebe popped in, coffeepot in hand.

"Garrett Wright has a new attorney." Her face glowed with the excitement of it all. She set the coffeepot on the table, unable to give the announcement adequate fanfare without using her hands. "A big big shot," she said, bracelets rattling. "Anthony Costello."

Cameron gave a low whistle. "Wow. Where'd Wright get that kind of money? Costello's retainer is more than a professor at Harris makes in a year."

"That was my question, too," Phoebe said, sliding into the chair next to him, settling in for a round of juicy speculation.

"It doesn't matter who his lawyer is." Rudy spouted false confidence like a fountain, the promise of his judgeship making him magnanimous. "We've got the team to beat him. Isn't that right, Ellen? Ellen?"

Ellen jerked her head in Rudy's direction, feeling faint. "Yes, of course."

Her voice sounded far away to her, as if it had come from someone out in the hall. Her hands were curled over the back of a chair, fingertips digging into the upholstery.

"Wright can bring in his big-shot lawyer from the Cities. We've got Ellen," Rudy declared as he marched off down the hall, thanking God he had dropped this hot potato in Ellen North's lap.

"Did you ever come up against Costello when you were with Hennepin County?" Cameron asked.

"A few times."

She imagined if she was to look in a mirror, her reflection would be pale and wide-eyed, but neither Phoebe nor Cameron seemed to notice anything odd about her appearance or her manner. She pulled out the chair and slid into it. Her body seemed to be working independently of her mind, and thank God for that. In her mind she was floundering, scrambling, knocked off balance by a blind-side shot.

Tony Costello's was not a name she had ever expected to hear in these offices. He was big money, style and flash, one of the top defense attorneys in the Twin Cities and rapidly making a name for himself on a larger scale. Which was, of course, what he would be doing with Garrett Wright—soaking up publicity like a sponge, posing for the cameras and reaching his propaganda of justice for the common man.

That was why he had taken Garrett Wright's case, Ellen told herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was the prosecutor, and it certainly had nothing to do with the fact that they had once been lovers.

Garrett Wright couldn't have known anything about her past with Tony Costello. It was just a coincidence that he had chosen the one defense attorney in the state who knew her better than any other, the one who had slipped under her guard and stabbed her in the back.

Even as she tried to placate herself, the tide of the uneasiness that had been with her since Monday night rose a little higher inside her.

"We've calculated all the moves, all the options, all the possibilities," Barrett Wright had whispered to Megan. "We can't lose."

"We can't lose," Anthony Costello said, his voice clear and strong, his eyes on the network cameras. "Dr. Wright is an innocent man, wrongfully accused and wrongfully imprisoned."

Shutters clicked. Motor drives whirred. Cameras loved his face— square, rugged, utterly masculine, perpetually tanned. His eyes were the color of espresso, set deep beneath the ledge of his brow. He had long ago >erfected a piercing stare that could make witnesses crumble and jurors sway.

He stood on the front steps of the Campion Sons of Norway hall, the wind ruffling his jet-black hair. The cameras had to shoot up to get him, in angle that made him look taller than five feet ten and emphasized the solid squareness of his build and the excellent hand-tailored cut of his black wool topcoat. He would have preferred to make his first statements to the press regarding his new client in front of the Park County court-house because he liked the symbolism of storming the halls of justice, but the press was in Campion covering the second child abduction, so he had gone with Plan B. It was the mark of a good defense attorney to be flexible, to be adaptable. He had to be able to shift on the run, think on his feet.

He had begun to formulate a strategy for the defense the moment he had accepted Garrett Wright as a client. He wanted to strike hard and fast at the media, grab their attention and keep it on him. The kidnapping of Dustin Holloman was a terrible tragedy, but Costello had also seen it immediately as the opportunity it was. Naturally, he felt sympathy for the family—in the way one might feel sympathy for fictional characters in a movie. He couldn't allow the feeling to become more personal than that. It was essential for him to put their tragedy in a perspective that would potentially be of some benefit to his client.

"My client sits in jail, his reputation suffering more with every passing hour, while a madman stalks the children of Park County," he said. "The investigation of the kidnapping in Deer Lake was mishandled from the start. As a result, there have been needless deaths, an innocent man has been incarcerated, and now another family has been torn apart."

The reporters clamored for his attention, barking out questions, thrusting microphones up at him. He gave the answer he wanted to give, not caring whether the question had been asked.

"I'm here in Park County to see that justice will be done." Sound bite extraordinaire. "I'm here in Campion as an emissary for my client, to offer his deepest concern to the family of little Dustin Holloman. I know Dr. Wright would want me to extend a personal plea to the kidnappers to return Dustin unharmed."

He knew no such thing, of course. He had yet to speak directly to Garrett Wright. It was unlikely Wright had even heard about the kidnapping. For all Costello knew, Wright was a coldhearted son of a bitch who wouldn't have felt a second's pity if all the children in Campion were torn from their families and carted off to concentration camps. It didn't matter. As of this moment the press would look upon his client as a compassionate man with a deep, abiding respect for families, for the law, for America.

"Who do you blame for botching the Kirkwood investigation?"

He frowned in the general direction of the reporter who had shouted the question. "I think there's blame enough to go around, don't you?"

Not having paid close attention to the case from the outset, he had spent six hours last night going over news clippings from both major dailies in Minneapolis and St. Paul. He had watched videos of newscasts and interviews, absorbing as much as he could about the principal players, though he wasn't ready yet to single any one out for public castigation.

The female BCA agent was sleeping with the chief of police. A convicted pedophile had been working at the ice arena, then killed himself while in custody. A mummified cadaver had been found in the garage of a church deacon who had eluded capture for two days, then fell to his death before he could be apprehended. There were enough plot twists for a soap opera—which was exactly what had caught the attention of the networks and the tabloids. Immune to everyday crime, they sought the sensational, the kind of stuff writers were paid for in Hollywood. It was so much cheaper to get it from real life.

"But though there has been a gross miscarriage of justice," Costello went on, "I want it made clear that Dr. Wright himself bears no grudges. He still has trust in our justice system and faith that the truth will out and he will be exonerated—just as we all must have faith that the kidnapper of Dustin Holloman and Josh Kirkwood will be found and punished; that justice will be swift and sure."

On that glorious note, Costello stepped down from his impromptu podium and moved quickly through the crowd toward his waiting black Lincoln Town Car, his staff clearing the path for him. He had brought with him an associate, a legal assistant, and a personal assistant who was also his driver. Another of his associates had been sent ahead to Deer Lake for the purpose of leasing an office suite. It would be far inferior to his offices in the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis, but it would serve the purpose. He believed it was important to establish a presence, like a show of muscle before a fight. It would also be easier to have a base of operations in the town rather than try to do everything long-distance. By the end of the day, the Deer Lake office would have a full complement of business machines and one of his secretaries would be hard at work.