Law of Attraction (11 page)

In an office full of the toughest trial lawyers in the country, Jack Bailey was known as the best. His improbable ascension from a kid in one of D.C.’s worst neighborhoods to the city’s top homicide prosecutor made him a bit of a local legend. He was a tall African-American man with a cleanly shaved head and startling light green eyes. Jack looked younger than Anna had pictured; aside from the U.S. Attorney,
the Homicide chief was the biggest cheese of all. Every new attorney tried to work her way up the office hierarchy, graduating from smaller cases to more serious ones, so she could eventually earn a position in Jack Bailey’s Homicide Section. The last thing any rookie prosecutor wanted was to have one of her minor cases become part of Jack’s Homicide docket. It meant something had gone terribly wrong.

Anna dreaded why she’d been called into this meeting. Were they going to reprimand her for losing Laprea’s case? Was she going to be fired? She would understand if she was.

McFadden spoke, and the rest of the room fell quiet. “The
Post
called this morning about the Johnson murder. Turns out the victim was featured in the Metro section a couple years back; she graduated from some job-training program and got herself off public assistance. Now they want to know why this woman who climbed out of the proverbial garbage heap ended up in a real one.”

Anna looked down at her hands. She didn’t see the sympathetic looks aimed at her. She knew victims recanted in DV trials all the time, and this could have been anyone’s case. But this was every DV prosecutor’s nightmare.

“They want a comment from me,” McFadden continued. “I’d like to tell them we have a suspect.” He turned to Carla. “Do we have a suspect?”

“We do.” Carla tapped the file from D’marco’s last trial—the trial that Anna had lost.

McFadden turned to Jack. “Good. And we expect to charge him soon?”

Jack nodded. “Today.”

“Excellent. This’ll be a cautionary tale about domestic violence. But it has to have the right lesson: that it won’t be tolerated.”

“Absolutely.” Carla folded her hands on the table and leaned forward to address the U.S. Attorney. “And the best place for that to happen is in the DV Section.”

“I disagree.” Jack’s voice was deep and smooth, conveying a confident authority although its volume was low. “No one can prosecute a homicide like a homicide prosecutor.”

“You’ve got all the rest of the homicides, Jack.” Carla glanced at him with annoyance. “I’ve got a cadre of senior attorneys who want to work a homicide. Can’t you spare one case?”

“There’s a reason why my shop has all the homicides, Carla.”

Anna knew what a tight ship Carla ran, and she bristled at Jack’s words.

“Not only do we have the expertise in dealing with this
type
of family dynamic, but one of our prosecutors has already worked with this
particular
family,” Carla said, putting her hand on Anna’s arm. Anna’s body tensed. She couldn’t believe where this conversation was going. She wasn’t here to be reprimanded—she was being used as leverage in a turf war. “Anna Curtis met the victim; she knows the mother. She already has a rapport with family members who will be government witnesses. She can work with a senior AUSA in my section. DV is the right place for this case.”

Oh God, Anna thought. What about Nick? I can’t be on this case!

Jack shook his head. “I respect the work done by the DV Section. But DV’s expertise in family dynamics didn’t secure a conviction back when this was a simple assault case.”

Anna sank shamefully in her seat.

“Nothing against DV or Miss Curtis,” Jack continued, glancing at Anna. “But you need a veteran homicide prosecutor on this case. It’s the sort of case I’d handle myself.”

“Okay, you’ve got it then,” McFadden announced. “This case will go to the Homicide Section. That’s the office policy, and we’re going to stick by it. Jack, since you’ve offered, I’ll ask you to take the case personally.” Jack closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink. Jack had apparently planned to help initiate the case and then give it to one of his senior prosecutors. “But Carla makes some good points. I’m also going to assign Anna to work the case with the homicide team. Jack, Anna will be your second chair. Carla, you’ll cut some of her responsibilities so she can devote the necessary time to this matter. Any press release will credit both the Homicide
and
the DV sections.”

“Okay.” Carla was not entirely satisfied, but she was still pretty pleased.

Anna gaped at her boss and McFadden. “But—I’ve never tried a homicide.”

“You’ve got to learn sometime,” Carla said, “and Jack is an excellent teacher.”

Carla could be gracious now that she’d won.

Anna looked around the room. Should she tell these people about her relationship with the defense attorney? These were the highest-ranking
prosecutors in her office, mostly stern silver-haired men. She couldn’t imagine telling them the intimate details of her love life. But she wasn’t sure she could accept the case and still stay with Nick.

She opened her mouth, but Jack protested before she could say a word.

“Listen, Joe,” Jack said. “This isn’t going to fly. Working a homicide case is a tremendous responsibility. It has to be earned. There are dozens of experienced attorneys who would love to handle this case. Besides, Detective McGee and I have already started it. SWAT’s gearing up, and we’re about to go execute warrants on the suspect’s home.”

“Good,” the U.S. Attorney replied, standing up. The meeting was over. “I hope you brought a bulletproof vest in a size small. Take your second chair with you.”

11

A
nna trotted wretchedly after Jack as he walked out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and into the humid summer morning. He hadn’t said a word to her. He strode across the brick plaza and up to a navy blue Crown Victoria parked at the curb. A man built like Santa Claus, but with skin the color of espresso beans, was leaning against the trunk of the car. The big man stood up as he saw Jack approaching.

“Hey, Chief,” he called in a deep, gravelly voice. “What took so long?”

“We have an addition today.” Jack turned and addressed Anna for the first time. “Anna Curtis, this is Detective Tavon McGee. McGee, this is Anna Curtis . . . my second chair.”

“Second chair, huh?” McGee smirked at Jack. “They think you’re losing your edge?”

“Something like that,” Jack muttered.

“Nice to meet you, Counselor.” McGee gave Anna a meaty handshake and a warm smile. She was surprised to see that his two front teeth were missing. The gummy grin gave him an endearing, babyish look, although he was probably in his fifties. He wore a black six-button suit with lime green pinstripes, a lime green shirt, and a shiny tie with a swirling lime-on-lime pattern. A black fedora perched on his head. In that outfit, he could only be a homicide detective.

McGee opened the car’s front passenger door and ceremoniously gestured for Anna to take a seat. She shook her head quickly.

“No! Thanks, though.”

On top of everything she’d done to piss off the Homicide chief, she wasn’t about to claim shotgun. She climbed into the backseat. McGee made an even more elaborate Vanna White gesture for Jack to get into the front passenger seat. Jack sighed and climbed in.

As the unmarked police car careened onto the I-395 ramp, Anna tried to keep herself from sliding back and forth across the shiny faux
leather seats. McGee started updating Jack on the Laprea Johnson investigation. From the backseat, the conversation was barely audible over the blaring sirens. Anna felt like a kid trying to listen in on her parents.

“Body turned up yesterday afternoon,” McGee shouted over the sirens. “Coupla kids going through a trash heap behind Davis’s building got the shock of their lives. Perp wrapped her body in black plastic garbage bags and dumped her in the heap.”

“Cause of death?” Jack asked.

“Looks like blunt force trauma to the head, but we’re still waiting on the ME’s report. No obvious gunshot or stab wounds. She was beat up bad. Bruises all over her chest and arms, face looks like a war zone.”

Anna felt sick.

“She didn’t have any ID on her, so it took a minute to connect the body to a missing person’s report from her mother.”

“Did you find the witness who called 911?” Jack said.

“Yeah, guy named Ernie Jones. Good citizen—steady job, no record. Cooperative.”

“Wonders never cease. How come there wasn’t a police report?”

“Busy night.” McGee swerved around a cluster of slower cars. “Uniform got there half an hour after the call. By that time, no one was around—turns out Jones went to work. There was nothing to report.”

“Jury’s gonna love that.”

“They want better service, they should hire more cops.”

“Positive ID on the body?”

“The mother, this morning.”

Anna cringed at the image of Rose at the morgue, seeing her battered daughter laid out on one of the cold steel tables.

She vividly remembered the first time she’d met Laprea and her mother, in the basement of the courthouse. Rose had said that it would be Anna’s fault if Laprea were killed. Anna agreed with that. The mantra that had been running through her head repeated itself:
This is my fault.

She looked out the window as McGee drove. The drive from the sparkling downtown to the poorest section of the city always felt surprisingly short. As a matter of geography, the two neighborhoods were a few miles apart. As a matter of class, race, and economics, they were different worlds.

When the highway split, McGee veered onto I-295, leaving behind
the wealthy Northwest quadrant of the city: the world of postcard-perfect white monuments, the centers of government power, the arrogant glass office buildings housing the country’s most influential law firms, media outlets, and think tanks. The Anacostia Freeway took them over the muddy brown Anacostia River and into the part of the city that tourists on bus tours didn’t see, the part that helped D.C. become “the murder capital of America” in the 1990s. Fancy condos became low brick apartment buildings, sagging public housing complexes, and modest row houses, some with plywood-covered windows, although they were occupied. Office buildings were replaced with pawnshops, check-cashing outlets, and liquor stores, or just boarded-up storefronts. The few working businesses covered their windows in metal bars and their counters in bulletproof glass. Children played in vacant dirt yards, alleyways, and between parked cars. These places were just as safe as the playgrounds, which were often controlled by drug dealers. Parts of Anacostia were like a slice of the Third World, steps away from the most powerful people and institutions in America.

As they pulled into a narrower street, McGee cut the sirens and turned off the police lights. The car sped silently through residential streets lined with squat brick apartment buildings. As the car rounded a corner onto Alabama Avenue, Anna’s cell phone rang. It was Nick. She saw Jack looking at her in the rearview mirror.

“You need to turn that off,” he said.

She quickly powered off the phone, glad the Homicide chief couldn’t see who’d been calling.

In that instant, she knew she’d made a decision. She was going to prosecute the case, regardless of Nick. There was no other way she could respond to the image of Laprea’s shattered body—of Rose identifying the remains of her only daughter—of the two motherless children. Anna couldn’t undo her mistakes, but she could make sure the killer was punished. She hoped Nick wouldn’t defend D’marco; she hoped he would have the decency to decline the homicide case. If he did take it, though, she’d face that dilemma then. She wasn’t going to tell anyone about their relationship—she wasn’t going to say
anything
that would jeopardize her position on the case. She owed it to Laprea’s family.

McGee pulled up behind two white vans. D’marco’s apartment building was ahead on their right. The structure was replicated throughout this neighborhood: a low brick box surrounded by a chain-link
fence. It was a quiet summer morning and few people were out. Most of the windows had their blinds pulled. It seemed inappropriate that birds were chirping, under the circumstances.

“SWAT’s waiting on us.” McGee nodded toward the vans.

Jack rolled up his shirtsleeves. He still wore his tie, but had left his suit jacket back at the office. He turned back to address Anna. “We’ll be in the van during the police’s initial entry into Davis’s apartment. When SWAT gives us the all clear, we’ll go in. When we do that, don’t touch anything. Stay out of the officers’ way. And stay with me at all times. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Bailey.” She understood that he didn’t want her here.

Anna followed the men out of the car, half running to keep up with them. A van door slid open and they climbed in. The van smelled of sweat and metal. Anna found herself in a tiny space crowded with men dressed in black paramilitary uniforms, complete with high-top boots, bulletproof vests, and helmets with the visors pushed back on their heads. The weapons holstered at the officers’ sides and clamped onto the walls included the usual service revolvers, but also assault rifles and one shotgun. This was the Special Weapons and Tactics team—SWAT.

Someone handed Anna a black bulletproof vest with
POLICE
emblazoned in tall white letters across the chest and back. Anna watched how McGee and Jack fastened theirs and she did the same, pulling it over her black suit jacket. She tightened the Velcro straps as far as they would go, but it was still too loose on her.

Only then did it register what the officers were about to do—storm into D’marco’s house to arrest him. The vest was because they thought he might shoot at them. Anna’s head and neck suddenly felt very bare and exposed.

Jack showed his arrest and search warrants to the head of the SWAT team, a seasoned sergeant named John Ashton. Sergeant Ashton showed Jack the floor plans of the apartment. SWAT had done its homework. They knew which apartments were occupied and which residents had criminal records. They knew exactly where D’marco’s unit was and how it was laid out. The two men grumbled about the fact that it was already so late in the morning. They preferred to serve warrants before dawn, surprising their sleeping target. Still, they agreed, it was better to do the search now than to wait another twenty hours.