Missing Justice (25 page)

“That would be fine. Please proceed.” That simple plan would have taken Prescott fifteen minutes to conjure on her own.

“The defense calls Nelly Giacoma.”

Unlike Ray, Nelly hadn’t toned down the fashion statements for the courtroom. I watched Judge Prescott eye her from head to toe, pausing extra long for the ankle tattoo. I couldn’t wait until Prescott learned that this funky chick with a nose ring and hot-pink pixie cut was a law school graduate. And I couldn’t wait to hear what Nelly could possibly offer to the case.

Slip’s initial questions established Nelly’s working relationship with Clarissa and her job responsibilities. Bo-ring.

Then he pulled out a document, a move that never fails to get my attention.

“Do you recognize this document, Ms. Giacoma?”

“Yes. It’s a letter to Judge Easterbrook that I received at the office on Wednesday.”

Slip gave me a copy and had the original marked as evidence. I recognized the scrawl from the other letters he’d written. This one was comparatively brief:

Dear Judge,

What does it take to get your at tension I am making good money and have proof to show you. I will do ALL I can do to save my family. PLEASE understand that.

“The letter is signed Melvin Jackson, is that correct?” Slip asked.

“Yes.”

“And it relates to a pending case about his eviction from public housing.”

“It’s a threat relating to his pending case, yes.”

Nelly was growing on me. I have an affinity for women who talk back. The letter was indeed a threat, very much like the ones Jackson had been sending for weeks.

“And is this the envelope that the letter arrived in?” Slip asked.

I restrained myself from objecting to the dangling preposition and waited while Slip marked the envelope as evidence.

“Yes.”

“Could you please identify the date on the envelope’s postmark?”

Nelly did. The date was the previous Monday, the morning after Clarissa died.

The panic was momentary. After a few seconds, Slip’s cheap trick was apparent. I used my cross to make sure the judge saw it too.

“Hi, Nelly. Samantha Kincaid. We met earlier this week.”

“I remember.”

“You’ve used the mail before, right?”

“Of course.”

“And in your experience, are post offices open on Saturday nights and Sundays?”

“No, they’re not.”

“So a letter mailed on Saturday evening would be postmarked “

“On Monday.”

A lunch hour from a court hearing isn’t much of a break. In an office where we’re each entirely on our own, each precious minute of recess must be spent on the research and follow-up that supporting attorneys would do in a large law firm. Every time I go to trial, I lose a few pounds from the combination of adrenaline and starvation.

I stopped at the mini-mart on my way into the courthouse and grabbed a Diet Coke, yogurt, and banana. I wolfed down the food in the elevator and sneaked the Diet Coke into the law library. I spent half an hour in the stacks, confirming the research I had done on Caffrey’s motion to quash. This would be a fight between Caffrey and Slip. If Prescott asked for my opinion, I’d cite the cases I found, making it clear that it was entirely in her discretion.

Before I left again for the Justice Center, I ran up to my office to check messages.

The first was from Susan Kerr. “Hi, Samantha. Susan Kern I’m sorry to bother you again. I know you’re busy, but I didn’t know who else to talk to. Can you call me if you have a chance? Thanks.” I hit the nine button to save the message, then went to the next one. It was from Jenna Markson, the child-support paralegal I had called last night.

“Hi, Samantha. It’s Jenna. I had a chance to run that property you asked about when I was doing some other record searches. The owner’s a corporation called Gunderson Development, Incorporated. I checked with the corporate registry division of the Secretary of State, and the registered officer is a guy named Larry Gunderson.”

I scribbled his name and the name of his company on a Post-it note while I listened to the rest of Jenna’s message.

“I went ahead and ran his financials. It looks like he was a bit of a wheeler-dealer until he went Chapter Eleven about ten years ago. My guess is that Gunderson Development is little more than Mr. Gunderson himself. Let me know if you need anything else. Oh, and Samantha, don’t tell anyone else I ran the financials. We only have access to that database for child-support investigations.”

Now I understood why the attorneys all rave about Jenna. She’d probably been running defendants for everyone in the office, telling each of them it was an exception.

I looked at my watch. I only had three minutes to get my butt out of the courthouse, across the street, and into the Justice Center, but Grace’s comments about the Glenville property last night were still bothering me.

I hit six to respond to Jenna’s message. At the beep, I said, “Hey, Jenna. Samantha Kincaid in Major Crimes. Thanks for the information on Gunderson. Could you do me one more favor? Can you see who owns the adjacent parcels? Sorry for the extra work, but I forgot to bring it up earlier.”

I hit the pound key twice to send the message, hung up, and grabbed what I needed for court, making a vow to myself as I ran out the door. If Gunderson didn’t own the rural property beyond the urban growth boundary, I’d let it drop.

Ten.

Word must have spread about T. J. Caffrey, because the TV crews were back. Asked to comment on the anticipated motion to quash, I said I was not going to address matters that had not yet been brought to court. It sounded more civilized than, “You mean that coward s motion to squirm out of testifying? No comment.”

Back in the courtroom, I noticed that Roger had returned without his client. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame Townsend for wanting to avoid sitting in the same room with Caffrey.

When the motion was argued, I stayed out of it as planned, but I found myself rooting for Slip. As much as I hated the idea of letting the defense use Caffrey as a distraction, I deplored even more the idea of Caffrey invoking the legal process to protect his ass politically. Fish’s polka-dotted bow tie wasn’t helping matters.

I watched Caffrey occasionally catch himself chewing his lower lip while his attorney argued the motion. When Fish had finished his presentation, he summarized his principal point. “Your honor, Mr. Szlipkowski’s subpoena would add nothing to this case other than an opportunity to question a high-profile public figure under oath about private matters, a spectacle that should be permitted only if there is a clear showing of the need for the information. Mr. Szlipkowski has made no showing at all, let alone a clear one. Put simply, even if he were to establish what he alleges a contention that we are not conceding it would have no bearing whatsoever on the question of Mr. Jackson’s guilt.”

Put simply, Fish was insinuating that the subpoena was setting up a political perjury trap. He couldn’t have spun it any better, especially for a big party Democrat like Prescott. There wasn’t a soul among the party faithful who wasn’t wary about demanding answers about sex under oath.

Slip did his best, but in the end, it was all a big so-what? So what if Clarissa and Caffrey talked? So what if they were even boffing each other? There was no other reason to believe that Caffrey knew anything about Clarissa’s murder.

Except, of course, that nagging coincidence that she was found and Jackson worked at a property whose value would be determined by T. J. Caffrey’s vote.

Prescott being Prescott, she had to take a break in chambers before issuing her ruling. When she finally retook the bench, it was clear that Fish’s spin had taken. She quashed the subpoena, thanked Caffrey for being present in the event she had decided otherwise, and told him he was free to leave.

Hopefully, the news crews would be waiting for him outside, yelling the questions on the street that he’d bullied his way out of in the courtroom.

Slip had played his last card. He did his best to gnaw away at the medical examiner’s report, arguing that the state should be barred from proceeding until they reconciled their theory of the case with the fact that Clarissa had been dressed after she was killed. But, in the end, we all knew that wasn’t the law. He’d have to do that kind of gnawing in front of the jury.

“Does the defense have any more witnesses?” Prescott asked.

“Not for this afternoon, your honor,” Slip replied, “but we had assumed that the hearing would continue until Monday. I would like to have the weekend to reconsider. As your honor knows, the parties were given only a day to prepare by Judge Levinson.”

Any other judge in the courthouse would have ripped Slip a new one for assuming anything about the length of the hearing. To judges who have forgotten what it’s like to practice, the lack of time to prepare is never an excuse for a lack of preparation.

Prescott, however, had no problem with it. “I was planning on taking the weekend to consider my decision, so here’s what we’ll do: Reconvene here Monday morning at nine. If either party wishes to submit additional evidence, the record remains open. Otherwise, I will announce my decision then. And, in the event that it makes a difference to the lawyers, I have formed a tentative opinion based on what I’ve heard today.”

She was sending a message to Slip. He was going down in flames, but she was going to give him a reprieve before pulling the trigger.

Slip caught up with me on the staircase. “What’d you think about Caffrey?”

“He’s a skunk, Slip, but he’s not your murderer. For your sake, you might want to reconsider your Plan B before trial.”

“Maybe Plan B is for the two of us to sit down and talk. Got time for a drink after work?”

“Sure. Right at five?” I’d been up late enough the night before working on the prelim. I wasn’t about to spend my entire Friday night talking about the case.

“Meet you at Higgin’s. You still drinking martinis straight up?”

“Damn straight.”

“You’re my kind of woman, Kincaid.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got to say after we have our little chat.”

Whatever Slip’s plan had been for the prelim, it had clearly failed. Prescott may have thrown him a line, but we both knew he was in no position to grab it. I was sure the meeting at Hig-gin’s would be a fish for a plea.

I had three new voice mails back at the office. The first was from Jenna Markson. “It’s Jenna again about your question on the property adjacent to your crime scene. You were right. Gunderson Development owns another hundred and twenty acres west of the property he’s building on. Gunderson purchased all the land at once as four separate parcels. You probably already know this, but the other parcels are mandatory rural. That’s probably why he’s not building on them.”

At least, not until they were re designated as ripe for development.

“I’m sending my printouts about this to you interoffice mail,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

The next message was from Nelly. “This is Nelly Giacoma. Judge Easterbrook’s clerk? I testified today in the hearing you had on Jackson?”

I’ve noticed that the people I remember assume I don’t know them, while the people I’ve forgotten think we’re best pals.

“I overheard something after the hearing and think I should talk to you about it. I’m at City Hall right now, but I’m leaving in a few minutes.” She had left her home telephone number and asked me to call over the weekend. I noted the time of her message, only fifteen minutes ago. Maybe I could still catch her.

The third call was from Russell Frist. “I just got done with my grand jury. Looks like you’re still out, so I’m assuming you’re still in your prelim. Jesus, with Prescott running the show, she might hold you over until Monday. Anyway, I was calling to see if you were up to having a drink after work. Let me know how it went.”

As much as I was warming to my new boss, fifty-plus hours a week at the courthouse is enough time for me to talk with my coworkers. I’d update him on the case, but we’d do it on the clock.

First, I was calling Nelly. The voice that answered sounded flustered. “Oh, I’m glad you caught me. I was just about to leave, and I was worried you’d call while I was out running around.”

“Well, it sounded important.”

“I don’t know whether it is or not, but I really can’t talk about it here. Can you meet me somewhere?”

I looked at my watch. If I was going to make my meeting with Slip, it was going to have to be quick. “Can you leave right now? The SBC behind the courthouse?”

Seattle’s Best Coffee isn’t my usual choice, but it was only steps away.

“Meet on the other side of the elevators in the building lobby,” she said. “It’s less likely someone will see us there.”

I dialed the general number for MCT. Nelly might want to sneak around like the Spy Kids, but I’d need a witness for whatever was about to go down. It was probably nothing, but attorneys can’t testify in their own cases. With my luck, Nelly would show up and confess.

“Forbes.”

“Chuck, it’s Samantha. Is Ray around?”

“That’s all I get? I never heard from you last night.”

“Sorry. When I got back from dinner, I still had a bunch of work to do. And right now I really need to talk to Ray. Is he around?”

“Nope. Might’ve left already.” Their usual shift, which they rarely could stick to, ended at four.

“Is anyone else there?”

“You mean someone other than me? Sure, there’s bodies here.”

“Anyone on the Jackson case? Walker or Calabrese?”

“Sorry, babe, just me. I’m getting the feeling that’s not the answer you’re looking for.”

Damn. I had tried to minimize Chuck’s involvement on the case, but now I didn’t have much of a choice. I told him I didn’t have time to explain anything but needed him to meet me and Nelly.

“Far as the department’s concerned, the case is cleared, Sam. The lieutenant will look at any OT we put in on it, and that might ripple back to your office. You sure?”

See, this is why it’s not wise for us to work together. His heart was in the right place, but Chuck was questioning my judgment when any other cop would be happy at the chance for easy time-and-a-half. “You don’t need to tell me how it works. Just meet me over there.”