The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3) (2 page)

T
wo weeks later
, the Chicago Police Department's shooting team and the District Attorney were wasting no time, trading witness statements and reports and investigatory leads. Teams returned to the scene and more measurements were taken. Cameras clicked and whirred. Bullet trajectories were laid out in white strings and more pictures taken.

Meetings were held in which witnesses, deputy DA’s, and police searched for insights and answers.

The entire community was watching. Without an indictment of the white cop there would be blood in the streets. It was promised.

In the end it all came down to the officer’s dash cam. The video was clear and the view unobstructed. It was all presented to the DA’s second-in-command, Darrell Harrow. Harrow took the case before the grand jury and laid it out. The grand jury came back with a true bill—Officer Tory Stormont was indicted on a charge of first degree murder.

Harrow explained to the press that Stormont’s final two shots were fired off as the young man was falling to the ground. It was an execution, he made the mistake of telling the
Tribune
. The Police Union responded with a threat of a recall election of the District Attorney. Cops called in sick by the hundreds. Black Lives Count filled the streets with peaceful marchers while opportunists from all sides set stores ablaze and looted a Target and a Costco. The nation was polarized.

CNN, Fox, and MSNBC had never left. They pointed their cameras at the new players in the case—the lawyers.

Assistant DA Darrell Harrow was a no-nonsense veteran of the homicide wars in Chicago. He went before the cameras, where he predicted a verdict that would satisfy the victim’s family and neighbors and community.

Officer Tory Stormont took the news of the indictment hard. He hid inside his apartment while the cameras roamed the courtyard outside. According to the police union rep, Stormont was extremely emotional, spewing hatred at the authorities for abandoning him.

But Stormont had the support of his fellow officers and the police union. They swore that he wasn't going to go down just because he had followed departmental lethal force policy. Which was true, they said, and now look.

Indicted and enraged, he nonetheless pulled himself together and assessed his predicament. He morphed from outraged to calculating. Then he found himself calling in favors as he put together a dossier on the DA who had indicted him. On the day of his arraignment in court, Stormont followed Harrow out of the courthouse and tailed him home.

It was the beginning of his fixation on the man who represented everything Stormont saw wrong with the criminal justice system, the man who had indicted him, the man who had to be stopped.

The media went away. Stormont returned to the streets. He watched Harrow’s house day and night. He had nothing else going on, being on paid leave. At night he pawed through Harrow’s garbage and became satisfied that Harrow had a serious drinking problem covered up by hiding Jim Beam bottles at the bottom of his garbage bin.

Then, on July Fourth, Harrow attended a fundraiser put on by the Cook County Democratic Party. Stormont stood not five feet from Harrow as the lawyer argued with a woman who later made a speech. Clearly Harrow was intoxicated and the woman rebuffed him repeatedly. Harrow persisted. He warned the woman he was coming to her home that night to settle things. She tossed her head and laughed him off. He was demeaned and Stormont saw the man’s rage take hold. His next move was easily predicted by Stormont so he tore away from the scene. He had been to the woman’s home before and he was headed there now. It was important that he arrive first.

Stormont raced to the woman's home, a condo in downtown Chicago. He went inside the lobby and got clearance at the security desk. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a hat pulled low on his forehead. But he was clean-cut and well-mannered. They wouldn’t remember a nondescript nobody in jeans and a T-shirt. They didn't even ask to check his shoulder bag.

He avoided making eye contact with the CCTV cameras as he headed to the elevators.

He was cleared to visit unit number 2566. The woman lived in 2564. He didn’t plan on leaving a record connecting him to her number.

Stormont stepped off the elevator and disappeared from camera range as he headed down the hall. There was no closed circuit TV allowed in the hallways; the owners had voted it down, preferring their privacy.

He stopped outside of 2564 and sprung the door with his picks. He stepped inside.

Into her bedroom he crept and removed his street clothes. Then, from the shoulder bag, he withdrew the Chicago Police Department uniform and put it on. It was the uniform with the stripe-less sleeve of a patrolman, a job he had once held in high regard. Now he just saw it as his downfall.

He slipped the police utility belt around his waist and adjusted the pepper spray, handcuffs, magazines, and semi auto. He settled the hat low across his eyes. His uniform made him feel powerful. When all hell broke loose and the duty cops arrived and he mixed in with them, the security staff and the district attorneys and the defense attorneys would have no record of him arriving there before the others.

He folded and carefully placed his jeans and T-shirt and porkpie hat inside his bag.

Thirty minutes later, he heard her key in the door.

S
tormont stationed
himself behind the front door. Once she was inside and the door was closing behind her, he clutched her in a choke hold. It was simple to do as he simply overpowered her. Her legs fell out from beneath her as if she had been head shot.

He caught her as she lost consciousness and crumpled. He carried her gently to the sofa. He stretched her out on her back and straightened her dress. Neat and unmarked--exactly like he wanted her.

He returned to the door and retrieved her gold lamé purse from the carpet. As he knew it would be, her pistol was inside. He knew that his hands, inside latex gloves, would leave no prints on the gun so he withdrew it from the purse and placed the purse on the coffee table beside the unconscious woman.

It was but minutes until lobby security called on the intercom. He keyed the unit and replied in his best impression of a female voice that yes, security should send Darrell Harrow right up to her condo, she was expecting him. Lights were clicked off. He took a seat in the chair beside the unconscious woman.

In less than five minutes there was a rapping on the door. It sounded almost like scratching and maybe it was, he couldn't be sure.

Whatever, he called to the visitor to come on in, the door was unlocked.

The visitor stepped inside a room that was as dark as night. Suddenly a light flared on and he froze; the police officer had turned the switch on the table between his chair and the sofa. In one continuous move Stormont fixed Harrow in his gunsights and pulled the trigger. Those hundreds of hours at the police shooting range hadn't been wasted. The single round struck the startled man squarely between the eyes. They remained open while the rear of his head spattered against the wall in the pattern of a large red flower. He fell to the floor, twisting, coming to rest partially on his back, one leg crumpled beneath him, both arms at his sides. He stared at the ceiling with the unblinking concentration of the dead.

Plucking a small nugget of burnt wood from the fireplace, the police officer drew on the wall above the victim's head. He rubbed the charcoal on the unconscious woman's hands. Pulling a wooden cross from his pack, he placed it on the carpet just above the victim's head. He cast a look around the living room. It was coming together just as he’d planned.

He then placed the gun inside the prosecutor’s purse and placed that in her bedroom. Tucking his shoulder bag up under his arm, he pulled his cop hat low across his eyes and exited the condo.

The elevator lowered him to the basement of the condominium tower, down to the visitors' level, where the man stepped back into the shadows.

An hour later, he saw the black Mercedes arrive and take the only remaining visitor's slot. He watched as the lawyer exited the Mercedes and hurried for the elevators. Making him was easy: his license plate said
SET U FREE.

Twenty minutes later, Stormont heard the sound of far-off sirens coming closer. When he heard the sirens shut down just outside the building’s entrance, he rode the elevator back up to the woman’s condo. His plan was to mix in with the arriving cops and enter the condo as one of them.

The uniform stationed at the entrance to the condo didn’t give him a second look when Stormont walked inside like he owned the place. The on-call detective told him, “I need you to search the premises. We’re looking for a gun.” He was made a part of the crime scene team.

Officer Stormont started at the far end of the condo, the woman’s bedroom. The rest was simple. He searched the woman’s purse and there was the gun. A moment of inspiration caught him up and he jammed the revolver into his rear pocket. It was a tight fit but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Just then, the lawyer came into the room and snapped his picture with his smartphone. Stormont turned and abruptly left. He then made his way downstairs to the parking garage. He exited the parking garage elevator and pressed his back to the wall and began making his way north.

He sidled along in the shadows until he was positioned directly beneath the CCTV camera. He reached above his head and turned the camera.

Alone at the rear of the black Mercedes, he jimmied the trunk with his picks and up it popped. He withdrew the gun from his back pocket. Behind the spare tire he placed the weapon. He was still wearing the same blue gloves he had worn while searching the woman’s condo. Now he slammed the trunk, took a step back, and snapped the gloves from his hands. They went into the pocket of his navy pants.

Stormont rode the elevator up to the lobby, walked through and came out onto Jefferson Street. He hurried off into the Chicago night.

"
Y
ou have
no idea how this happened?"

We are sitting in the living room of Cook County prosecutor Miranda—Mira—Morales. She was voted Top Female Lawyer in Chicago just last year and she is nobody's fool. But tonight a dead body is obtrusively stretched out on the shag with a bullet hole between the eyes, and she has no explanation for me, Michael Gresham, the lawyer she has called. Skull and soft tissue are spattered against the wall beside the front door. The eyes of the dead man are crossed, staring inward, as if gazing at the incoming round a split-second before the lights went out.

Assistant District Attorney Mira Morales is a woman of thirty-three years. She has invested the past ten years of her life achieving a trial record of 70-1. It's a world-class record and she is counting on it to win her the job of District Attorney in the November election. Her boss has announced his retirement and his return to private practice from whence he came some twenty-five years ago. The vacancy has attracted a crowded field of District Attorney wannabes in the Democrat primary election. Her competition is unaccomplished and mostly unelectable, as Mira Morales is the only career prosecutor among them. On the Republican side there is but one candidate, Lamont R. Johnstone. Until three months ago, Johnstone was the District Attorney's First Assistant. He jumped ship in order to run against his boss. But then his boss announced he was retiring.

She raises a hand to say something to me when an involuntary shudder wracks her body. It is only then that I realize I've been staring at her. Her skin tones are dark browns and deep ferrous hues. Her long, thin nose and violet eyes are stunning and I cannot stop staring. Everywhere in Cook County you will spot pictures of this beauty staring out from her campaign posters while shaking the hand of the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. But even those posed shots understate her elegance. She is beautiful beyond any woman I've seen in years. But right now she is jangled and her hands shake and her voice falters as I try to question her.

"Mira, what happened here?"

She only looks at me. Her mouth opens and shuts but there are no words.

I am very tempted to call the police and give notice of the murder this minute, but Marcel, my investigator, is smartly holding me back. He's doing this to give us time to properly prepare the scene and the District Attorney candidate. Once the police are notified and the press intercepts the call, Mira's life will come crashing down around her. The election will likely be lost when the newspapers hit the streets. But right now it appears she'll be the last to know, as she sits on the couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, her face a blank, shut off from the world.

Her eyes close and remain that way. Marcel looks at me and shrugs. We both look at our newest client. She is still wearing the little black dress and string of pearls that carried her night at the annual Cook County Democratic Party Dinner kicking off the campaign season. It is July and elections are just four months off.

Her eyes open and swim back to reality. She focuses on me, the attorney she called when she realized there was a dead body in her living room. I say "realized," because Mira is claiming she was in a blackout when the shooting occurred. Of this she is certain: the dead body wasn't on her floor when she returned home from the dinner. She knows this to be a fact because she remembers coming inside her condo and locking the door behind her. The next thing she knew she was coming awake on her sofa. She sat up, dizzy and faint, and that's when she saw the body. She instantly recognized the man.

She lives alone, a single woman without children, a woman known in Chicago legal circles as a willing sleepover partner and Chicago's very own Escoffier of intimate, morning-after brunch.

"Are you sure you hadn't invited him home with you?"

"I did not invite him. We argued at the fundraiser and I came home alone."

"Did anybody see you arguing?"

"Only everyone, I imagine. He was loud and under the influence."

Under the influence
, I am thinking. Only a prosecutor would say
under the influence
. The rest of the unwashed--which includes me--would say he was drunk. Or maybe knee-walking. Or toasted.
Under the influence
? Only if we'd watched too much TV. No, Mira was a hands-on prosecutor, the kind who had learned the ropes by trial and error, and her words, while sparse, were always informed, always precise. That was the Mira Morales I knew from having defended three jury trials against her. We had each won one then split the third on a hung jury that went away on a plea after the smoke cleared. The score was tied, so she felt she was neither stooping nor reaching when she called me. I am known for being nuts-and-bolts in my trial practice. I am also known for smoke-and-mirrors. Mira evidently felt like she needed a helping of each. But for right now, the nuts-and-bolts lawyer will help her prepare for the arrival of the police once I put in the call to advise of a dead body in my client's living room. My goal is to shield her from all questions and to guide the inquiry away from her.

If I can do that, it's a first-round win.