Guilty as Sin (27 page)

Ellen said nothing. Of course it was denial of bail. She thought of Josh Kirkwood, who had barely spoken a word since his return. She thought of Megan, battered, broken, haunted, her career likely ended by Garrett Wright's vicious brutality. She thought of Dennis, the smell of his death sneaking down the back of her throat. She thought of Wright himself, imagined she could feel his gaze probing into her as she had that day in the interview room.

"It seems extreme to me," the judge went on. "I'm familiar with Dr. Wright's reputation and with his juvenile-offenders program, and from what I know of the man, I have difficulty seeing him as a flight risk at this point."

"But, Your Honor, that's just the point, don't you see?" she pleaded. "The college professor isn't the man we're dealing with here. We're dealing with a side of Garrett Wright that might be capable of anything. The man is evil."

Costello rolled his eyes. "Isn't that a little melodramatic, Ellen?"

"You wouldn't think so if you'd been in your predecessor's office this morning."

He had the gall to let amusement tint his surprise. "You're blaming my client for Enberg's death? That would be quite a trick, considering he was in jail at the time."

Grabko frowned at her and brushed a thumb along his jaw. "One hundred thousand dollars, cash or bond."

"Mr. Brooks, what angle are you planning to take on this story?"

Jay frowned at the reporters that had clustered around him. They had gathered in the courtroom to catch the latest twist of the case. Anthony Costello was going to ask for bail to be reduced. But the stars of the show had yet to come onstage, and the press had grown as restless as toddlers in church. One group was circled around Paul Kirkwood, who had positioned himself in the first row behind the prosecution bench. With a writer's ability to eavesdrop and carry on a conversation at the same time, Jay picked up the gist of Paul's statement—justice, victim's rights, the American way.

"I don't know that there'll be a book," Jay said, shaking his head. "I'm just here as an observer. Y'all are the ones working this case."

He might as well have told them he had come to declare himself dictator and absolute ruler of the state of Minnesota. They heard what they wanted to hear and ignored the rest.

"Will you be working with the family, or are you interested in Dr. Wright's story?"

"No comment, fellas." He flashed them a grin. "Now, listen, y'all got me talking like a lawyer. That's more work than I want to do."

Their eyes lit up like Christmas bulbs, and he knew he had made a grave mistake. A blond with a microphone leaned toward him.

"As a former defense attorney, Mr. Brooks, what is your opinion of the firing of Dennis Enberg, who allegedly committed suicide early this morning, and the arrival of his replacement, Anthony Costello?"

A man had blown his head clean off, and Blondie slid it into the scheme of things as if it were just another point of minor interest in her story. The idea disgusted him. The disgust amused him in a twisted sort of way. Ellen would have said he was no better than this woman, with her hunger for a story. He had come here for what was, on the surface, the same reason. In truth, he had deeper reasons, but they may in fact have been worse.

Self-loathing twisted his mouth into a bitter smile. "Ma'am, I haven't been an attorney in a very long time," he said. "And, hell, if I'd been any good at it, I'd probably still be doing it, wouldn't I? I can't see where my opinion on any of this is worth a hill of beans."

"And yet you don't hesitate to take sides in your books." She refused to be brushed off with "Aw, shucks" and a famous grin. "Your critics— prominent defense attorneys among them—say you have a sharp eye for the law and that your analysis of trials is akin to laser surgery."

At the front of the courtroom the door to the judge's chambers swung open, and instantly the attention of everyone in the room swung forward. Ellen emerged first, looking furious. Jay could tell she was fighting to keep her expression blank, but her whole body looked as tight as a

clenched fist, and her eyes glittered with the same kind of fire she had greeted at him a time or two.

Costello strolled out behind her, relaxed, confident. He looked directly at the members of the press. The conquering hero. The champion for the common man—provided the common man could come up with the bucks.

The judge, the Honorable Gorman Grabko, climbed to his perch and seated himself. Prim was the first adjective that came to mind. He looked like the kind of man who would use shoe trees and wax his bald spot. Hallway scuttlebutt indicated he was a stickler for form and that he tended to lean toward the defense, holding the prosecution to a higher standard. By the look of things, Ellen had fallen short.

A side door opened and Garrett Wright was led in by a pair of deputies and seated at the defense table.

It was over in a matter of minutes. The skirmish had been fought in chambers, as most of them were. This show was for the record and for the spectators who had gathered to watch the drama unfold.

Costello formally stated his request. Ellen argued against it. Grabko's mind was made up.

"Bail is set in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, cash or bond," the judge announced.

"This is an outrage!" Paul Kirkwood shouted, leaping up from his seat. His face flushed the color of dried blood, and a vein stood out prominently in the side of his neck. "That animal stole my son and you're letting him out!"

A beefy deputy rushed up the aisle and grabbed hold of him. Paul put a shoulder into him and staggered him back a step toward the defense side of the room.

"You ruined our lives!" he screamed, thrusting an angry fist in Wright's direction.

Grabko smashed his gavel down. He had risen to his feet and called for more deputies. The courtroom rang with shouts and shrieks and the scuffling sounds of physical struggle. More deputies rushed in. Three of them grabbed hold of Paul Kirkwood and herded him toward the nearest exit.

He twisted around as they dragged him. "I want justice! I want justice!"

The reporters rushed after him in a flock. The remaining deputies hustled Wright and Costello out a side door. Grabko shook his head, banged his gavel, and declared court adjourned for the morning. The room was empty in a matter of seconds, everyone running into the hall to catch the continuation of Paul's show. Everyone except Ellen.

She sat at the table with one arm banded across her middle and the rher hand raised as a prop for her chin. She stared up at the empty bench as if she were trying to will the blindfold off the figure of Lady Justice. Jay hung back, his eyes on Ellen. He should have been out in the hall. Paul Kirkwood's penchant for theatrics intrigued him. There was something slightly off about those performances, something that struck Jay as calculated, disingenuous. But he couldn't seem to make himself turn away and walk out.

Instead, he opened the gate and let himself onto the business side of the bar. Because he wanted to hear Ellen's take on things, he told himself. That was all. Not because she looked small and forlorn, sitting there all alone. Not because it touched him in any way that she was taking the loss hard.

"It's only bail," he said.

"Tell that to Paul Kirkwood," Ellen murmured. "Drive out to Lakeside and break that news to Josh's mother. Or maybe you want to call Megan O'Malley in the hospital and tell her?

"It's only bail." She faked a nonchalant shrug as she turned in her chair to face him. "Why shouldn't Garrett Wright be free to walk the streets, free to communicate with his accomplice, who may have committed murder last night? Who is, as we speak, doing God-knows-what to Dustin Holloman."

He moved closer, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his rumpled slate-colored Dockers. He had shed his coat somewhere. A bright silk tie hung like a strip of modern art down the front of his worn denim shirt. The knot was jerked loose and the top button undone as if he just couldn't bear the symbolism of a noose around his neck and yet felt compelled to make a token show of formality.

"You lost the round, not the game," he said, settling a hip on the corner of the heavy oak table. His thigh brushed against the back of her hand.

The contact had the quality of an electric shock. Ellen tried to cover the involuntary reaction by shifting positions, reaching up to brush at a stray hair that had come loose from her twist. "It's not a game."

"Of course it is. You've played it a thousand times. You know the rules. You know the strategies. You gave up some points. It's not the end of the world."

Ellen glared at him, anger burning through the haze of defeat. "A man gave up his life last night. How many points is that worth?" she asked bitterly, pushing to her feet. "What's that worth to you? Another chapter? A page? A paragraph?"

"I didn't kill him and I can't bring him back. I can only try to put it in context. Isn't that what you want to do? Make sense of it, understand it?"

"Oh, I understand it. Now let me put it in a context you can understand. It's a game, all right, Mr. Brooks. Dennis Enberg was a piece they didn't need anymore, and now he's dead and his replacement just drew the Get Out Of Jail card for his twisted bastard of a client, and I couldn't manage to stop any of that from happening!"

The rage and the pain boiled up inside her, boiled over the rim of her control. She turned her back to him and pressed her hands over her face, furious with herself. She had thought she had control of her emotions if nothing else in all this madness. She had vowed to fight this battle, but somehow she hadn't seen the possibility for this early defeat. She thought of Costello's threat to get the arrest thrown out and felt sick at the possibility. If she could lose this battle, she could lose that one. That vulnerability was terrifying and raw.

Jay watched her struggle to rein in her feelings. Her back was ramrod straight, her shoulders straining against the need to shake. Despite all the time she had spent working in the system, she had managed to hang on to a sense of right and a sense of honor. She fought hard and took her losses harder. Cynicism hadn't dulled the lance of justice for her as it had for so many. As it had for him. It seemed only to have made her more keenly aware of her place in the scheme of things.

"You didn't think it could happen here, did you?" he murmured, stepping behind her.

"It shouldn't be happening here," she whispered. "Children should be safe. Dennis Enberg should be alive. Garrett Wright and whatever other madman is playing this game with him should be stopped forever."

"Is that why you left the city?" He was close enough that the scent of her perfume caught his nose and drew his head down. The nape of her neck was no more than a breath away—tempting, too tempting.

He wanted her and knew better than to give in to that seductive need. She was part of the story. The story was what he had come here for—to bury himself in it, to lose himself in it, to run away from his own pain and dissect someone else's.

The reminder brought a bitter taste of self-loathing. The anger made him cruel.

"Is that why you left, Ellen? Because you didn't want to fight this kind of fight? Is that what you ran from?"

She wheeled on him and he caught hold of her arms before she could slap him.

"I didn't run from anything."

"You were on the short list of up-and-comers in Minneapolis," he said, deliberately goading her. "Then suddenly you're riding roughshod over drunks and losers in Mayberry."

"I walked away. I wanted a saner life. I made a choice, and I certainly don't have to justify it to you."

"There's sure as hell nothing sane about what's going on here now," he growled.

Ellen didn't know if he meant the case or the heat building between them at that moment. He was too close, his hands too tight on her upper arms, his mouth just inches from hers.

"Let go of me," she ordered, jerking out of his grasp.

The hall door swung open, and Henry Forster, a longtime reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, stepped in. Through the perpetually smudged lenses of his thick bifocals, his gaze hit Ellen with full magnified force.

"Ellen, are we going to get a comment from you?" he barked. "Or are we just supposed to draw our own conclusions?"

"I'm coming right now," she said.

Not sparing Jay so much as a glance, she picked up her briefcase and walked out.

He followed at a distance, waiting for her to capture the full attention of the reporters before he slipped into the hall. The wait also gave him a moment to clear his brain. Damn, but he had got his balls in a vise this time.