Move to Strike (53 page)

‘I'm so sorry, Sara,' said David, knowing she was not asleep. They had spent the previous hour arguing, their heated to-ing and fro-ing getting them nowhere, before Sara had finally caved in to exhaustion and made her way to bed.

‘I wish things were different. I wish I knew how to let things go, to turn my back and move on.' He took a breath. ‘But you knew who I was when you . . .'

And Sara knew he was about to say ‘
married me'
– but he stopped when he remembered they had never actually got around to the marriage thing – something they knew would come eventually, but had been delayed by their work, by her pregnancy, by . . .

‘I don't know what else I can promise you,' David went on, ‘aside from my assurance that I won't take any unnecessary risks. I mean, if all goes to plan, Joe and Frank will have Logan in custody before he gets anywhere near me.'

‘No,' she said after a time. ‘He's too smart, David, and you are all too busy playing caped crusader to see it. Logan will go after those guns with a clear and singular purpose – to rid him of the one person who has the power to bring him down. He'll be going after you, David, and there is nothing you can do to stop him.'

David said nothing for a long, long time.

‘Sara?' he whispered at last.

‘Yes.'

‘Will you marry me?'

Then more silence until: ‘Yes.'

And they lay there, quietly, gently, the two of them – or, more to the point, three – until finally they fell asleep, the images of what was meant to be playing hopefully in their dreams.

O
n, off. On, off.

It was early, barely past seven, and the lights in the almost empty courtroom 908 were flickering, creating a strobe-like effect on the one inhabitant who, at first glance, appeared to be dancing around the high-ceilinged expanse with a long white stick.

‘Judge,' said David, obviously scaring the dogged-faced Kessler who was now jumping up and down with her head craned towards the ceiling above her.

‘
For goodness' sake, Counsellor
,' she said, the lights finally returning to show the aforementioned stick now stuck in the soft wood ceiling above her. ‘Now look what you've done,' she said, pointing to the circular light fitting above.

And finally David realised what she was doing. Years ago many of the courtrooms in the Superior Court building had been fitted with sensor lights – designed to come on and go off when people entered and left the room. They were installed in an attempt to conserve energy – which now seemed somewhat ironic considering the red-faced judge before him.

‘The ceilings are too bloody high! These lights are made for your average-sized room – not one with eighteen-foot ceilings. So I thought if I got
that pole,' she said, pointing to the long stick suspended above her, ‘. . . the one the clerks used to open the high eastern windows, that I could wave it around underneath the lights and force them to . . .'

‘Come on,' said David, who smiled, despite himself.

‘Exactly,' said Kessler, smiling in return, a rare expression which, David had to admit, made the normally hard-faced woman look surprisingly genuine, sincere, approachable.

‘Couldn't sleep?' she asked, making a final gesture at both David and the stick as if suggesting he move into the room and help her dislodge the long white pole.

‘Something like that,' he said, tugging hard on the pole to release it.

‘And why doesn't that surprise me?' she said, taking the stick with a nod before returning it to its usual place by the window. ‘This may be my first murder trial, Mr Cavanaugh, but something tells me most of them don't go quite like this. I can't say I am a fan of the one-horse race, Counsellor, which, in all honesty, I did not expect this to be.'

‘I suppose I should take that as a compliment,' said David.

‘Or an insult,' she countered.

And David knew she was right.

‘I need a favour, Judge.'

‘I would suggest you need more than a favour, Mr Cavanaugh,' she said, leading him to a bench so that they might take a seat.

‘I know,' he admitted. ‘But for now, this one favour – well, I am hoping it might snowball onto something else.'

‘Sort of like one small step for man, one giant leap for the Logan children's defence?'

And David had to admit there was something quite admirable about this woman's refusal to beat around the bush.

‘Something like that.'

Kessler nodded. ‘Well, what is it, Counsellor? To what do I owe the unexpected delights of this early morning visit?'

‘I need a court order to exhume a body.'

Kessler jumped. ‘You
what
? Is this some sort of joke? I mean, unless I am mistaken, Counsellor, the cause of death in relation to the victim in this case is irrefutable.'

‘Not the victim,' he interrupted. ‘The victim's father.'

‘Malcolm Tyler.'

David was impressed, Kessler had obviously done her homework on the Tyler/Logan clan as a whole.

‘Didn't he die in some boating accident . . . ?'

‘He was sailing, off the Cape, about a year ago.'

‘And you want to exhume his body because . . . ?'

‘I think he was shot.'

Kessler gave that little jump once again. ‘And you suspect this hypothetical killer is the same person who . . . ?'

‘. . . shot Stephanie Tyler.'

Kessler nodded – a nod that soon transformed into a shake. ‘Do the police know about this?'

‘Lieutenant Joe Mannix is waiting outside, Judge. He is on board with this – but we need to do it quickly and quietly so that . . . well, timing and discretion are everything.'

‘I gather Miss Carmichael has not been informed about your desire to undertake this merry excavation?'

‘Ah – not yet,' said David. ‘But I promise she will be if anything relevant to the case turns up.'

‘Hmmm,' considered Kessler. ‘Well I do respect Mannix.'

‘He's the best,' said a hopeful David.

‘But such an order would be highly controversial. What about permission from the man's next of kin?'

‘J.T. and Chelsea Logan are giving “permission to exhume” statements to my co-counsel Sara Davis and another attorney by the name of Tony Bishop as we speak, and as the man's grandchildren . . .'

‘Children is correct, Mr Cavanaugh. Normally these things require the permission of an adult relative.'

‘If they are old enough to be tried as adults in an adult court, Judge, I would suggest they have earned the right to speak in the best interests of their grandfather's remains.'

Kessler nodded. ‘Touché, Mr Cavanaugh,' she said, before meeting David's eye once again. ‘Is this going to come back to bite me, Counsellor?' she asked, and David knew she was asking if the media would be involved. There had been cases in the past where desperate defence attorneys had used stunts such as an exhumation to divert attention from their lack of
evidence – but David suspected Kessler knew him better than this and was praying he was right.

‘No,' he answered.

Kessler took a breath. ‘Then I need some comprehensive documentation explaining your grounds for this highly unusual request – and you have to get me those children's statements before I commit to anything solid.'

David let out a sigh of relief. He sensed that, given her level of interest, and her obvious desire to be as thorough as possible on her first murder trial, it was unlikely she would deny any request that could come back to bite her at appeal.

‘Thanks, Judge,' he said.

Kessler nodded before rising from her seat. ‘Just promise me, if anyone asks about that hole in the ceiling,' she pointed skyward, ‘that you will deny any knowledge as to how it got there.'

‘What hole?' said David.

‘Exactly,' said Kessler. ‘What damned hole indeed.'

‘
M
ake the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it
.' And here was another one – ‘
Great liars are also great magicians
.' And another – ‘
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.'

These were all spoken by history's greatest manipulator, a man Logan admired beyond all others, the Führer with great foresight and power who understood that ‘
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force'
. In other words, as long as you told people what they wanted to hear, then they were more than happy to believe it. And what better way do so than as a man who
talks
as a profession. It really was quite beautiful – the profoundness of it all.

Jeffrey Logan looked at himself in the mirror as he adjusted his Ralph Lauren tie and ran his hands over his freshly shaven cheeks. He was a good-looking man – and that had certainly helped, but his charisma went beyond the aesthetic. He had a way with people, an inbuilt ability to charm and beguile and sway. And while he would like to think that much of his ‘talent' was due to his insatiable appetite for self-advancement, he knew that much of his skill had come down to luck – at being born the person he was, devoid of morality and that pesky emotional anchor known as a conscience.

Logan lied with ease – and people believed him. And the chosen few who had seen his true self were either too terrified or too dead to retaliate. His whole life was a lie – a brilliant, cleverly constructed work of propaganda which had made him incredibly popular and exceedingly rich. Even better was his ability not to feel fear. Some people were born blind and never knew what it was like to see, but Logan had been born valiant and never knew what it was like to fear.

He had not panicked at Tony Bishop's late night call. While it had not been expected – and, truth be told, it had made his heart race just a little – he had almost immediately turned this unanticipated development into a source of invigoration. David Cavanaugh had balls. He was in fact (and this was the ultimate compliment), probably the greatest adversary he had ever encountered. But it was about time Logan found himself someone worthy of his talents – someone whose destruction he suspected would bring unknown levels of pleasure.

He took a moment to ponder once more on the list. Carleton Blackmore, Willie Dukes – well, of course they could provide Cavanaugh with information on Jason Nagol, but Logan knew they were fishing in that empty pond weeks ago when Carleton first called him (as Nagol) and told him they were asking about his treasured ‘Ben Hur'. Logan had spent his entire life covering his tracks and there was no way Cavanaugh had any proof that Logan and Nagol were one and the same. Of this, beyond anything, he was sure.

As for the Garretsons – that pair of half-witted gun traders did not worry him an ounce. The son may have come clean about his lies regarding the gun's delivery but there was no way Cavanaugh could trace the Mark V's purchase to Logan.

And when it came to the last two people on Cavanaugh's list – well, once again, if Logan was completely honest with himself (which he was, given his lies had always been limited to everyone else in the universe apart from himself), he would have to admit that they
did
concern him just a little.

His mother was a dead woman walking, of this he was sure. But she might be stupid enough to be persuaded to tell her story in a pathetic moment of gallantry, given she had already defied death twice and may (rightly) assume that she had nothing to lose as the third and final effort
would inevitably do the trick. He had been holding a gun to his mother's head since the very moment he had been born – and while, at this time, he may not be physically forcing the barrel against her brow like he had done so many times in his youth, he knew she could still feel it there, cold and hard – and she might see ‘talking' as her last valiant act before execution.

As for the Las Vegas detective, his Asian friends had assured him that the Nevada dick had nothing. And considering his good ‘friend' and former prison mate Damien Chi had control of his Boyz, and Logan in turn had complete control of the sexually deficient Chi, he felt reasonably confident this last name on Cavanaugh's list would lead to nothing.

And so, he resolved to himself as he reached for his Armani jacket and checked his watch making sure he would be well and truly on time for his third day in court, he would make some discreet enquiries as to the whereabouts of his mother. And if by a long shot recent events were not enough to keep her quiet, if she was not content to stay holed up in whatever Nevada backwater she had buried herself in, he would simply wait until she raised as much as an eyebrow before blowing her fucking head off.

As for Cavanaugh
, he smiled to himself,
when the time is right I shall not rule out the possibility of rewarding myself with a face-off. For as my beloved Adolf Hitler also said:
‘
Strength lies not in defence but in attack and the very first essential for success, is a perpetually constant, and regular employment of violence.'

‘W
ell?' asked Joe Mannix, when he saw David round the corridor of the Superior Court's buzzing level nine.

‘Walk with me,' said David, as they entered the lift and headed back down to the ground floor.

‘Kessler's in,' he said, as soon as they hit the lobby and he was sure they would not be overheard.

Joe smiled. ‘That's great. To be honest, I didn't think she would go for it – thought she might want to play it conservatively, this being her first murder trial and all.'

‘She surprised me too – I think there's more to Kessler than meets the eye.'

Joe nodded. ‘So what do we have to do?'

‘Get the kids' letters of authority and file a motion to exhume. I'll be in court all day so I'll ask Sara to do it.'