Stone Cold (28 page)

“Is she under arrest?” the judge asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then when you’re finished with her, give Ms. Mason a call and let her have a turn. Satisfied, Ms. Mason?”

“Almost. In order for me to prepare to talk with her, I’m entitled to know the substance of what she’s going to say on the stand.”

Judge West nodded. “Fair enough. Mr. Ortiz?”

“Gloria Temple was a friend of the deceased, Mr. Reed. She went to his house to visit him the day he was killed. She entered the house through the back door, which leads into the kitchen. She was in the kitchen when the defendant shot Mr. Reed.”

“Judge,” Claire said. “What’s the point of letting her testify? She’s just another witness who didn’t see what happened.”

“Except for one thing,” Ortiz said. “She saw the defendant pull Mr. Reed’s gun from his waistband after she shot him, put the gun in Mr. Reed’s hand, and fire a round into the ceiling.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

CLAIRE WHISPERED ORTIZ’S DISCLOSURE TO LOU while they were packing their briefcases before leaving court, and he briefed Kate and Blues on the way to his office. Claire waited until they’d all gathered there to drop the bombshell on Alex.

Lou was sitting behind his desk. Blues was standing at the window overlooking Broadway. Kate and Claire were standing on either side of Lou’s dry-erase board. Alex was sitting on the sofa. Anyone who walked into the office at that moment would have said they were looking at one another. But they weren’t. They were looking at Alex.

“Alex, we’ve got a problem,” Claire began. “Gloria Temple is going to testify that she saw you shoot Dwayne and that after you shot him, you put his gun in his hand and fired a round into the ceiling.”

Alex jumped off the sofa, arms in the air. “That’s bullshit!” She slapped her thighs and spun halfway around. “That’s fucking unbelievable! You blew Odyessy Shelburne out of the water, so Ortiz had to come up with something, but this is too much, way too fucking much!”

She planted her hands on her hips, first staring and then glaring at them as they watched her in silence until she realized what was going on.

“Oh, c’mon, you guys!” she said. “You can’t seriously think she’s telling the truth. She’s got to be another junkie peddling a story to get a break because they’re about to charge her with something. So she’s going to testify against me in return for immunity. C’mon! I can’t be the only one in the room who can see that!”

“It’s possible,” Lou said. “Rossi and one of the CSI techs testified that that’s the way it could have gone down, but they both said there was no proof. Rossi could have put the idea in her head, let her know what they needed, and she agreed to go along to get along.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Blues added.

“You see,” Alex said, her hands chopping the air. “That’s the only way it makes sense. What do we even know about Gloria Temple? I’ve thought all along that she was the girl who gave Dwayne a gold necklace that belonged to Wilfried Donaire, but that’s just speculation.”

“She used to stay with a woman named Virginia Sprague, who was Kyrie Chapman’s grandmother. Grace Canfield talked to Virginia, and that’s how we found Gloria.”

“I tried talking to her last night,” Lou said, “but I didn’t get anything out of her.”

“Well,” Claire said, “she’ll have to talk to me. Ortiz will see to that. He doesn’t want me to start my cross-examination by having her tell the jury she refused. We’ll know more in a little while.”

Alex calmed down enough to reclaim her seat on the sofa. “Okay, then. What’s the plan besides you talking to Gloria?”

“It begins with you,” Claire said. “We need to know everything that happened in that living room before you shot Dwayne. Everything.”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded, pressing her back into the sofa, feeling staked out.

“Okay,” she said. “For starters, if Gloria was there, I never saw her.”

“Start at the beginning, from when you walked into Odyessy’s house.”

“We’ve been over this a hundred times.”

“And we’re going to go over it as many more times as it takes. I’ve got nothing on Gloria. If I can’t shake her on cross, you’ll have to testify. So tell us everything that happened.”

“Fine. I went there to tell Dwayne that I was withdrawing from his case because he’d threatened Bonnie. I took my gun because I was scared of him. When he let me in, I could tell he had a gun in his waistband. My gun was in my right jacket pocket. I put my hand in my pocket and held on to my gun just in case.”

“That’s good,” Claire said. “Then what happened?”

Alex took a breath. “We were in the living room, just the two of us. Dwayne was doing his big, bad, sexy beast bullshit shtick, showing me his gun and making everything a sexual innuendo. I asked him how stupid he thought he was possessing a gun in violation of his bond.”

“How did he take that?”

“Not well. He accused me of coming to his house and disrespecting him. He told me that Wilfred Donaire had disrespected him too, so I better watch what I said.”

“How did you react to that?”

“I was scared but I tried not to show it. That’s when I told him I had to withdraw because he’d threatened Bonnie. And I told him that the police were protecting Bonnie and that if he came near her, they’d stop him.”

“What did Dwayne say in response to that?”

“He started pressing me about why did I care so much about what happened to Bonnie, and I guess he figured out from my reaction that we were together.”

“What happened next?” Claire asked.

Alex shook her head, her jaw tight. “He said, ‘How long you been diving into that muff?’ and I told him that I wasn’t going to talk about my relationship with Bonnie. That’s when he pulled out his gun and said that if he couldn’t get to Bonnie, he’d have to settle for me. So I shot him, twice. He fired his gun as he was falling to the floor.” She paused, taking a deep breath, her eyes wet. “I must have been in a state of shock, because the next thing I remember is Rossi yelling at me to put my gun down. I dropped my gun and that’s when Odyessy shot me. I slumped down against the wall and that’s when I realized Odyessy was holding Dwayne’s head in her lap and that he was dead.”

Claire waited a moment. “Is that everything?”

“Yes. Just like I told you every time before.”

Claire glanced at Kate, who had stared at Alex throughout her recitation.

“Oh,” Alex said as she stood, “now you’re asking Kate if I’m telling the truth? Is this trial prep or an inquisition?”

“Alex!” Claire snapped. “You know—”

“That’s okay,” Kate said. “It’s trial prep and, trust me, Ortiz’s cross-examination will be your own personal inquisition. For what it’s worth, I think you’re telling the truth. You’re filled with shame and guilt, but I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

Alex shrugged her shoulders, then let them sag, as if she’d put down a heavy burden, and took a deep breath, letting it out. She stood without saying anything for a moment.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Kate asked.

“For believing me.”

“I told you I was on your side.”

“And now I believe you.”

“At least,” Lou said, “now we know why Ortiz pulled the plea bargain off the table.”

“Except for one thing,” Claire said. “In the bench conference we had Monday morning, he told the judge that he didn’t know where Gloria was or what she was going to say.”

“But he had a good guess, and that means he had to have at least known that she was in the house when Alex shot Dwayne.”

“Or,” Blues said, “that she could have been.”

“What are you getting at?” Claire asked.

“It’s simple. If Ortiz knew she’d been in the house some other time, there was a chance she was there that day. And the closer to the day of the shooting she was there, the more likely she was also there that day.”

“I’m with you,” Lou said. “So who was she hanging out with? Odyessy or Dwayne?”

“My money’s on Dwayne,” Blues said. “Odyessy isn’t much of an attraction.”

“So,” Claire said, “if she was with Dwayne, she probably knows whether he killed Kyrie Chapman and the Hendersons.”

“If you’re right, you better hope Gloria pulled the trigger, because otherwise the jury might just believe her,” Kate said.

“Are you guys trying to freak me out?” Alex asked.

Claire put her arm around Alex. “You know we’re not. We’re just thinking out loud. Same as you would do. Now, go home, have a glass of wine with Bonnie, and get some rest. We’ll see you in the morning.”

Chapter Fifty

ALEX DIDN’T GO HOME. She wasn’t ready to face Bonnie and tell her about Gloria Temple. She needed time to think, to clear her head and decide what to do. She got in her car and drove. She wasn’t going anywhere in particular. She just had to keep moving.

If her defense team didn’t come up with something to discredit Gloria, Alex would have no choice but to take the stand. After hearing Gloria’s testimony, the jury would expect to hear her version, but telling her story wouldn’t be enough even if Kate Scranton believed it. Not if Gloria Temple was a credible witness. Patrick Ortiz would work her over until there was nothing left of her story, her reputation, or her future.

She assumed that Claire would find out whether Ortiz had made a deal with Gloria in exchange for testifying, but that didn’t mean Ortiz would tell her everything about the case against Gloria. Defense lawyers called that prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors called it a reasonable interpretation of the rules.

Blues and Lou had spent months chasing after Gloria without learning anything useful. Now that Gloria had been found, if they had more time, they might discover something to make a liar out of her. But they didn’t have time. Gloria was going to be the first witness in the morning.

Alex knew from years of defending criminals that her clients made a lot of bad decisions when they gave up trying to think of good ones. For the hundredth time since she pulled the trigger and killed Dwayne Reed, she felt a kinship with them. She opened her wallet and took out the scrap of paper with Judge West’s cell phone number on it.

Calling him was a bad decision, but she wouldn’t make it worse by using her own phone. She stopped at a convenience store and bought a cheap prepaid cell phone she could get rid of, making it impossible to trace the call back to her. Judge West answered on the second ring.

“Who the hell is this? How’d you get this number?”

“It’s Alex Stone.”

When he didn’t respond right away, her stomach convulsed and she thought she would throw up.

“This is a bad idea,” he said at last.

“I know and I’m sorry, but I need your help. I’ve got to talk to you about Gloria Temple. She’s the money.”

After another long pause, he said, “I’ve got a horse farm. I look in on the horses around eight o’clock.” He gave her the address and hung up.

Alex decided to pass the time drinking coffee in a downtown diner. Taking a back booth, she opened her phone and found the e-mail Kate had sent with the files from Gloria’s cell phone attached. She downloaded the files and starting working her way through them. The files were lengthy and the screen on her phone was small, making for tedious work.

She couldn’t imagine that Lou and Blues hadn’t already been through the files, but they hadn’t said anything about them. Either they hadn’t found anything or they didn’t want to talk about what they had found. If it was the former, she hoped she’d recognize something that they hadn’t. If it was the latter, she was in for a shock.

By seven thirty, she was jittery from caffeine and cross-eyed from staring at her phone. Gloria’s e-mails covered men, other women, family, being broke, getting high, being homesick, and a litany of other mundane topics, but there was nothing about Dwayne Reed, Wilfred Donaire, Kyrie Chapman, or Jameer Henderson. That was as far as she got before leaving for her meeting with Judge West.

His horse farm wasn’t out in the country. It was tucked away in an undeveloped area east of downtown and surrounded by residential developments. A long and winding narrow driveway kept it hidden from the street. The driveway ended at a white clapboard farmhouse. A dirt track led from the farmhouse to the horse barn. Alex’s headlights picked out the judge’s SUV next to the barn. She followed the track, parking next to his car. Judge West was waiting, holding the reins to a horse in one hand and a lit cigar in the other.

“Are you out of your mind calling me?” he said to her.

She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. “Entirely possible, but you’re the one who told me to break the rules.”

He took a sharp draw on his cigar, yelling at her through the smoke. “I didn’t tell you to kill your goddamn client and then call me asking for help in the middle of your goddamn trial, over which I happen to be presiding!”

She held her palms up. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I thought—”

“You thought what? That we’re partners? Buddies? Pals? Is that what you thought?”

She let out a deep breath. “I thought we wanted the same thing. I thought I could trust you. I thought you were the only person I could talk to who could help me.”

“You’ve got pretty goddamn good lawyers. Don’t you trust them?”

“Not with this,” she said, pointing her finger back and forth from him to her. “Not with what we talked about doing.”

Judge West flicked the ash from his cigar, grinding it in the dust. He stroked his horse’s face, pulled a carrot from his pocket, and fed it to the horse.

“Your lawyers must have told you what Gloria Temple is going to say on the stand.”

“I know the gist of it. Claire is supposed to talk to her tonight and get the details.”

“So how can I help you with that? I doubt that your lawyer, good as she is, can come up with a reason for me to exclude Gloria’s testimony without looking like a damn fool.”

“Gloria isn’t going to testify willingly. Claire will find out if Ortiz made a deal with her to give her immunity for whatever trouble she’s in. But if I know Ortiz, he won’t tell Claire everything and neither will Gloria, because that might knock the pins out from under her testimony. That’s the stuff I need to know.”