Lawyers In Love: In His Own Defense (3 page)

He couldn’t figure the answer to that, or say what exactly it was about her that had his cock at constant attention and his brain obsessed. When he strode into the courtroom, he reminded himself for what seemed like the thousandth time of all the reasons Ms. Granger most likely was not his kind of woman.

* * * * *

Kristine glanced toward the defense table. Even before she met his gaze, she felt Manny Garcia’s malevolent glare. A small man with a well-groomed mustache, he wore a pinstriped suit even more conservative than the ones his high-priced lawyers had on. Garcia would have appeared benign but for flat black eyes devoid of any emotion. He appeared totally comfortable in his surroundings—as well he might be. She calculated how much time Garcia had spent in places like this, how many times he’d been charged only to be freed.

She doubted there were any mysteries left for him in this courtroom, ripe with the smell of sweaty bodies, industrial-strength disinfectant, and the lemon oil polish that permeated wooden benches worn by nearly a century’s use. From all the times he had been here before, Garcia should recognize the smell of justice.

The man made Kristine’s skin crawl, made her think of dead kids and ruined lives. He made her think about Helen. She had to see him put away so he couldn’t go on contaminating people with coke and heroin.

Kristine didn’t delude herself. The supply of dope wouldn’t dry up with Manny Garcia gone. Tampa had plenty of thugs who liked quick, easy drug money and weren’t afraid of doing time if they got caught.

But locking Manny Garcia away would strike a serious blow at Tampa’s drug business. Garcia was worse than most. He had dealers everywhere. They peddled their wares on street corners in the projects, in the pristine mansions of South Tampa and Avila, and everywhere in between. To children. To officials. To anyone with the price of a fix.

Allegedly
. Kristine recalled Andi’s admonition. Her case had holes. Big ones. For a moment she regretted the state attorney’s decision to reject the plea bargain Garcia’s lawyers had offered.

No. Garcia deserved to go to jail, not just pay a hefty fine and visit a probation officer once a week. She would put him away on sheer guts if she had to.

Kristine straightened the skirt of her new, hot-pink suit and arranged her notes in front of her, snapping her briefcase shut in time to watch the members of the jury file into the box. Except for the scruffy-looking Hispanic male she hadn’t been able to get dismissed for cause after using all her peremptory challenges, she felt good about them.

Garcia’s lawyers had seemed pleased, too. Another pang of insecurity hit her. Perhaps she
should
worry about the jurors. Certainly Garcia’s expensive defense team had more knowledge and experience than she in guessing how people would react to the evidence.

“All rise.”

Kristine glanced again toward the defense table when the bailiff announced the arrival of Judge Harrison. A spark of interest ignited when she met the gaze of the lead defense attorney, Tony Landry. Landry, if gossip could be believed, had been tapped to head up Winston Roe’s local criminal defense department precisely because he had proven his skill at getting scumbags like Manny Garcia acquitted of their crimes.

God, but the man had charisma. Big time. And dark good looks to boot. Too bad he’d positioned himself on the wrong side of the legal profession.

His gaze burned at her back while she made her opening statement to the jury, making her wonder how he’d counter what she said. As far as Kristine was concerned, his client was guilty, not only of the possession with intent to deliver cocaine charge for which he was on trial, but of many other crimes, the extent of which she could only surmise. The thoughtful looks on the jurors’ faces when she concluded her remarks gave her a fresh burst of confidence.

Then she sat down and listened to him. Damn. Landry talked to the jurors as if they were his friends. His voice was deep, mellow, like orange blossom honey spilling slowly from its jar. She detected just a trace of back-country southern accent that could peg him as having grown up anywhere from rural Hillsborough County to the northernmost reaches of Georgia or Alabama.

While his tone made Kristine think of darkened rooms and intimacies inappropriate to contemplate in a court of law, his words cut straight to the jugular. He zeroed in on the lack of hard evidence against Garcia that had cost her hours of sleep while she prepared the People’s case. Conceding that his client fit no one’s definition of a model citizen, Landry insisted all the while that this time the police had arrested Garcia for a crime he had not committed.

Good strategy. Kristine couldn’t help admiring Landry’s skill, though she censured him for using it to benefit a despicable bastard like Garcia.

“Be my guest,” he told the jury, his gaze steady as he motioned toward his client and curled his lips as if the sight filled him with disgust. “Hate Manny Garcia. I don’t like him a whole lot myself. Just remember while you’re hating him that he’s not on trial for the crimes he’s been accused of in the papers and on TV. He’s not on trial for anything except hiding a bag of cocaine in a crate of lettuce at his warehouse.

“Unless Ms. Granger can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Manny Garcia was personally responsible for that coke being where it was when the police found it, you will have no choice but to vote for his acquittal.”

Holding out both hands in a manner that made Kristine almost believe he hated having to adhere to the letter of the law and set a bad man free, Landry concluded his statement with a shrug and a smile that oozed sincerity.

Kristine suppressed a groan. Each juror’s nod, every thoughtful look on a solemn face, sent her confidence plummeting.

She should have told Andi she wasn’t ready to handle a case on her own. She should have ignored the state attorney’s wishes and let Garcia cop a plea. How could she survive this and come out looking like anything but the prize fool she felt like now?

“Ms. Granger, you may call your first witness.”

Shelving her momentary terror in the back of her mind, Kristine did what she had to do. She called Sergeant Gray, the vice detective who had found the drugs. Very carefully, she established what had happened May third, when the police had acted on an anonymous tip and found nearly two pounds of pure cocaine bagged up and stashed in a specially marked carton of lettuce said to have been grown in Texas.

Landry shot her down on cross-examination, when he forced Gray to admit Manny Garcia hadn’t been on the premises when the coke was found.

That didn’t daunt Kristine. She called her next witness, one of Garcia’s employees who had gotten immunity from prosecution for his testimony. “How did the cocaine get into that crate of lettuce?” she asked after asking a few questions to establish his identity.

The witness shot Garcia a troubled look. “I don’t know how it got there, but I saw Mr. Garcia and the man who brought the crate to the warehouse check out what was inside and close it up again before they put it on the shelf with the other crates.”

She gave the witness an encouraging smile. “Did you see what was inside?”

“No, ma’am. I just saw them—Mr. Garcia and that other guy—open the crate and look inside. Like I said.”

Kristine smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Smith. That will be all for now.”

Slowly, as if he hadn’t a care, Landry unfolded his long, lean body from his chair behind the defense table and sauntered toward the witness box. “Mr. Smith,” he said, “you say you did
not
see the contents of this crate Mr. Garcia and a man you cannot identify opened and looked into on the day before Sergeant Gray raided the warehouse?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Thank you. I have no more questions.” The attorney headed back to the defense table.

The testimony went on. Kristine called witnesses, introduced evidence, and Landry kept hammering politely on the fact no one had actually seen his client look at or touch the drug.

It didn’t help that Landry had a dimple that deepened on his left cheek when he smiled, or that he had a casual way of running his fingers through stylishly cut dark brown hair she imagined would feel smooth as silk. Kristine could almost feel the women on the jury latching onto every word he said.

Damn it anyway,
she
was latching on the bastard’s every word while she imagined him stroking her hair, whispering sexy suggestions in her ear…dragging him beneath her so she could feel him skin to skin, up close and very personal.

She was losing. Desperate, Kristine abandoned her quest to present the evidence logically and tried to sway the jury with emotion. When she finished presenting her case and the court recessed for the day, she hurried to her office, intent on finding some detail she might have missed before, a detail that might yet put Manny Garcia behind bars.

“Kristine?”

When she looked up from the papers strewn across her desk, Andi was there. Suddenly Kristine felt every drop of sweat she’d accumulated on the short but miserable walk from the courthouse. “Landry’s going to get Garcia off,” she muttered, her blood suddenly pounding at her temples.

Chapter Three

Andi sat down on the rickety chair beside Kristine’s desk and met her gaze. “You’re helping him do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I finished up in court early and came to see how your case was going. I heard it all. The emotional outbursts. The references to unrelated crimes linked to Garcia in the past, some so blatant Judge Harrison didn’t wait for Landry to object before warning you. What are you trying to do, Kristine? Have Judge Harrison declare a mistrial? Land in jail for contempt or get yourself disbarred?”

“No! I’m trying to put Manny Garcia in prison where he belongs.”

“It’s not going to happen. Harper should have let you let him plead to a lesser charge, but this is an election year. Anything about Garcia makes news, and he probably thought he’d come off as being soft on crime if we didn’t take the case to trial.”

“But I want to get him convicted.”

Andi shook her head. “You’re a good lawyer. Smart. Intuitive. If you’d been thinking rationally, you never would have counted on convicting Garcia in this case. The evidence just isn’t strong enough, and you would have seen that. Don’t let this obsession of yours destroy your career.” Her expression softened, then she smiled. “By the way, I like your suit.”

Kristine suddenly wanted to tear off her hot-pink skirt and jacket and toss them in the trash. Fat lot of good the new outfit had done her in court today. She started to protest. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you’re obsessed. Kristine, get over it. If you can’t, I can’t let you try cases like this.” As if to emphasize her words, Andi stood.

“But Andi—”

“Your job’s not in jeopardy, yet. I’d hate to lose you. It’s not often we get a young attorney with credentials as good as yours. But I will make certain you don’t get drug-related cases if you can’t be objective about them.” Andi rested one hip against the corner of Kristine’s desk and shot her what appeared to be a sympathetic smile.

“I want to make a difference.” Kristine knew she’d screwed up, big time, blown her chance.

“You will. Now do you think you can go back to court and handle the rest of this trial like the professional you are?”

“I’ll handle it,” Kristine said, and for a moment she let herself believe she still might get Garcia convicted.

* * * * *

That night she sat at her home computer, searching in vain for precedents that would help her convict Garcia, while she munched on a pizza that had about as much flavor as the box in which it had been delivered. The image of the drug lord’s tall, drop-dead gorgeous lawyer with an incongruous little-boy dimple on his cheek kept distracting her.

She sensed he’d be as skilled a lover as a defender, that he would know how to play a woman the way he played a jury. Her skin burned, though the regular hum of the air conditioner reminded her the temperature couldn’t be much over seventy degrees. Nothing, not even telling herself that Landry was almost as bad as the clients he defended, dispelled the fascination she felt for him.

This was crazy. She didn’t fantasize about men, ever, and here she was, imagining doing all kinds of unimaginable things with the man who was figuratively ripping her to shreds in court. Kristine tried to put Landry out of her mind.

She didn’t want to give up looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack that might help her win her case, but the logical part of her brain assured her she wouldn’t find anything. Angry at herself, she shut down the computer. At least, Kristine figured as she crawled into bed, she could start the morning rested. As she tried to sleep, though, visions of Tony Landry tormented her.

Not since high school had Kristine felt so drawn to another human being. Never to a man like Landry, who should repel her as thoroughly as it seemed he was attracting her. She imagined how he’d feel, all tough sinew and sex appeal, when he stripped out of his elegant courtroom attire. He’d have a hard, fit body, satiny, tanned skin, soft except for cheeks and jaws roughened by the hint of a beard. Never mind that she’d never seen him late in the day. She could almost feel the rasp of his five o’clock shadow against her fingers.

She imagined those dark eyes raking her with interest, interest much more personal than the visual caresses he gave the jurors. Not just interest, but desire. His big hands would touch her everywhere, make her hot and wet and ready for sexual adventure. Real sexual play, as different from the adolescent groping she remembered as the Gulf of Mexico during a hurricane from calm, protected Tampa Bay.