False Witness (25 page)

She turned on the television. She locked the dead bolt. She called her brother to check on her dog.

She slept that night with the bathroom light on and the bathroom door cracked open, the light spilling softly into her bedroom. She kept the loaded gun on the nightstand. Three times she woke up and reached over to touch it. Each time, after feeling the cold steel, she slipped back into a fitful sleep.

41

Monday, March 31

“Can we talk?” The pretty brunette with earnest brown eyes touched Isaiah's arm.

A law student? He didn't think so. She looked to be midthirties. He couldn't recall seeing her around the law school before. If he had, he would have noticed.

“Sure.”

She had short-cropped hair, stylishly spiked. A killer body.

“Can we go someplace private?”

“Thought you'd never ask.”

She didn't smile. “I'm serious.”

Isaiah shrugged. Law students passed on both sides of the corridor. “Private like the library or private as in my place at ten?”

“The library will do fine.”

“I was afraid of that.”

She followed him down the hallway, mysteriously quiet. He held out his hand to shake. “Isaiah Haywood,” he said.

“I know,” she said, shaking his hand.

Interesting.
They kept walking, Isaiah nodding at a few friends passing in the other direction. “A lot of people might take that as a cue to share their name.”

She let silence be her answer. He noticed her movements out of the corner of his eye—lithe, fluid. Definitely an athlete.

“Beach volleyball?” he asked.

“What?”

“You're an athlete. I can tell. I'm guessing beach volleyball.”

“No.”

He opened the door for her as they entered the library. She had a sleeveless blouse on—strong shoulders, but not bulky. A body-fat ratio that would barely move the needle. “Gymnast?”

“Nope.”

“There're usually some empty tables back and to the right.” He paused a beat to formulate his next guess. “Cheerleading?”

She gave him a half smile. “Hardly.”

“What do you mean by that? Cheerleaders are incredible athletes these days.”

“Yeah. So are poker players.”

“What's that I detect?” Isaiah gave her a teasing smile. “A sense of humor?”

She shook her head and frowned, the makings of a grin forming on her lips. “Actually, I'm a diver.”

He stopped and looked her over. “My favorite sport,” he said.

She brushed some hair in place with her left hand. A wedding ring.
Could she be more obvious?

Isaiah found a private spot at a table isolated among the stacks in a far corner. She sat opposite him and leaned forward.

“My name is Stacie Hoffman,” she said, her voice soft and secretive. “I need to hire you as my lawyer. Actually, you'd be representing my husband and me. I need to know this will all be confidential and absolutely secret.”

Her eyes pinned him back. A hint of eye shadow, nice lashes, beguiling . . . if it weren't for the ring. “The only problem with representing you is that I'm still a law student,” Isaiah offered. “There's the small matter of graduating from law school, followed by a trivial little thing called a bar exam, and then a nasty little law that makes it illegal to practice without a license.”

“Don't you work in the legal aid clinic?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you represent clients there?”

“Yeah, but that's done under a third-year practice rule. Technically, we're being supervised by one of our professors, even though he's never actually there.”

“All right, I'm hiring you as my legal aid lawyer.”

Isaiah shifted in his seat, torn between liking the spunk of this woman and feeling like she might be playing him. Real clients paid real cash. One of the things that got old fast in law school was having friends and family members, and friends of family members, all hit you up for free legal advice. At first it was flattering. But by his third year, Isaiah had had more than his fill. Plus, this woman was married.

“There are forms to fill out. We can't just represent clients who walk up to us in the hallway. Besides . . .”

Stacie put a hand on his arm. “Just hear me out.” Her gaze sizzled with intensity. “Please.”

“No promises.”

“I know.”

He shrugged and slouched a little lower in his seat.
What could it hurt?

“You don't want to take notes?”

Isaiah tapped his skull. “Steel trap, baby.”

Her look said she was not impressed. “My husband is being represented by your colleague, a law student named Jamie Brock. We can't go directly to Jamie because we think they might be watching her. My husband saw you argue a case in court the other day and thought maybe you would help us.”

“Who is ‘they'?”

Stacie lowered her voice. “The triads. Chinese mafia.”

Isaiah gave her a skeptical nod.
I see.
The crazy thing was that she actually looked sane.

“My husband attended court with Jamie Friday on a Class 5 felony—impersonating a police officer. But before his case was called, David—that's my husband—saw a member of the mafia he recognized from several years ago. They're trying to kill us, Isaiah. David set up a diversion and bolted from the courtroom. He ditched the guy and then circled back and picked up his car. We've been in hiding all weekend.”

As she talked, Isaiah tried to assess her credibility. She was educated and compelling, not the kind who might typically imagine false mafia figures. Though she occasionally glanced around the library, she didn't appear to be overly paranoid. It was hard not to take her seriously.

“So what do you want me to do? Why not just go to the cops?”

Stacie leaned forward a little more, and the movement had a kind of magnetism to it. Isaiah found himself sitting up a little straighter, drawn by the captivating pull of a nice-looking woman who needed him. Even if she was married.

“David and I are part of the federal witness protection program. We testified against some leaders of the Chinese mafia four years ago in Nevada. But now they've done something the federal agents said would never happen—they've found us here in Atlanta. We need you to approach an FBI agent we think we can trust and let him know our identities have been compromised. We need to start over with new identities.”

Snead had briefly touched on the witness protection program about a month ago in crim pro class. Isaiah didn't remember much from that discussion, but he thought he recalled some basics. “Isn't the U.S. Marshals Service supposed to supervise the witness protection program?”

“Yes. But somebody in that office compromised our location, Isaiah. Or somehow it leaked out. Until we find out how—we want to deal only with this one FBI agent. No marshals.”

“Why don't you just go to him yourself?”

“We don't even want the FBI to know where we are unless we know for sure that this guy's willing to help us. We're a little spooked right now, Isaiah. And we're not willing to trust these federal bureaucrats until we can get a new protection deal in place—one that severely restricts the number of people who know about our new identities. We need an intermediary to negotiate that deal so that David and I can stay in hiding until it's in place.”

The whole thing sounded intriguing to Isaiah, but it had a serious downside. “So you want me to talk to this FBI agent so the mob can put
me
on their hit list.”

“They won't even know you're representing us. That's why we didn't approach Jamie. Like I said, she's probably being followed.”

Suddenly Isaiah found himself whispering. “Why not go to a real lawyer? Why me?”

“We need someone who hasn't been compromised by the system. Someone young and idealistic. We've been burned by lawyers in the past.” Stacie reached into her purse and pulled out a white legal envelope. She handed it across the table. “My husband is a little unorthodox, but he's a pretty good judge of character. And we're not asking you to do this for free.”

Isaiah's instincts told him not to grab it. Stacie laid it on the table, and Isaiah stared at it for a second before sliding it back toward her.

“It's a retainer,” she protested.

“Legal aid clients don't pay.”

Stacie frowned, and the brown eyes turned soft . . . pleading. “Look, I don't want you to get in trouble for us. And if you can't take the money, I understand. But we both know this is not a legal aid case, Isaiah. We're not really asking you to practice law; we just need you to serve as a go-between with this FBI agent. David and I really struggled with whether we should even ask you to get involved in something like this. If you choose to help us, paying for your services is the least we can do.”

She nudged the envelope back toward the middle of the table, and this time Isaiah picked it up. He slit open the end and peered inside. Cash. A stack of hundreds.

“How much?”

“Two thousand for starters. If we get the new identities and a new start, we'll pay another twenty.”

Isaiah wondered where they got that kind of money, especially in cash, but he was going to be a lawyer soon. That was one question real lawyers never asked.

He still thought he should reject the money. On the other hand, this case—and Stacie in particular—had already drawn him in. How often did a young lawyer have a chance to do something this meaningful? David Hoffman was right about one thing: this case fit Isaiah's personality, his passion. The Hoffmans needed somebody to take on the system. Somebody who wasn't afraid to color at the edges of the box, maybe even a little outside it.

Plus, though this was definitely a secondary point, he had more than fifty thousand in student loans. He gently riffled the bills with his thumb. They seemed real.

“One more thing,” she said. “You can't tell your instructor. Nobody but you and Jamie can know about this. David doesn't trust your professor.”

“How does your husband know Professor Snead?”

“He knows a lot of things.”

“That's a reply straight out of a James Bond movie.” Isaiah lowered his voice and did an imitation. “‘He knows a lot of things.'” Then he gave her his best serious-lawyer look. “Problem is—that doesn't tell me anything. If you want me to be your lawyer, I've got to know what you know.”

Stacie didn't shrink back. If anything, she got more intense, her eyes becoming lasers. “That's where you're wrong, Isaiah. This is not a game. We're dealing with the mob here—the Manchurian Triad. The
less
you know, the better. This is dangerous. And if you're not up to it, we'll get somebody who is.”

“Now you've done it.”

“What?”

“Threatened my manhood.” He leaned forward and raised his hushed voice an octave. “If you're not man enough, we'll get somebody who is.” He waited for a smile, a flicker in her eyes, a slight loosening of her tense neck muscles.

She sat stone-faced. Not even a courtesy grin. This woman had a serious humor deficiency. But then, she had the mob after her. A damsel in distress. A good-looking damsel. Plus, she had money.

“What's the agent's name?” he asked.

“Sam Parcelli.”

42

The shooting range was not at all what Jamie expected. It felt sterile, hollow, and loud. She wore bulky safety glasses and large earmuffs, her hair pulled up inside a baseball cap. There were six shooting lanes about fifty yards long with paper targets at the end. All but two of the lanes were occupied. Bullet casings lay scattered on the floor.

She didn't feel the intoxicating allure of firearms that she had seen in the eyes of some men she had known. Nor did her new friend, Detective Jacobsen, wrap his arms around her and gingerly show her how to hold her new weapon of destruction. Which was fine with Jamie. She wasn't the type to be treated like she might break at any minute.

To his credit, Jacobsen kept the contact to a minimum. When he first inspected the gun, he shook his head a little as if maybe Jamie had more guts than brains. “Nice piece,” he said, turning the gun over in his hand. “It'll have a little kick.”

“So I've heard.”

He walked her through a whirlwind gun-safety course. The Kimber had a narrower grip than Jamie expected, and it fit comfortably in her hand. Plus, she had to admit, she felt powerful holding the thing. And a little more secure.

Jacobsen was right. The gun recoiled against her when she fired it, causing her to jerk the shot upward. He showed her how to sight the gun in, the proper grip, and the best stance for accuracy—a shooter's crouch, arms straight out in front, both hands on the grip. They started at ten yards, then twenty, and eventually thirty-five. Though Jamie was a natural athlete, her would-be assailant really didn't have much to worry about if he stayed at least thirty-five yards away.

Two hours passed quickly. When she left, Jamie was no expert, but neither did the gun feel like a complete stranger in her hands. She thanked Drew Jacobsen profusely.

“I hope you never have to use it outside a shooting range,” he said.

The thought of it made her shudder.

When Jamie climbed into her 4Runner and picked up her phone, she noticed three calls from Isaiah Haywood. She called him back without checking his messages.

“We've got to talk,” he said.

His serious tone made Jamie realize how much her world had changed in three short days. Isaiah undoubtedly wanted to talk about a new strategy for crim pro class. Just last week, the biggest issue in her life had been whether to pass if called on by Professor Snead. Now she was being stalked by professional criminals and learning how to kill a person, if necessary.

“What about?” she asked.

“I can't say over the phone.”