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

N
ot ten minutes
after my arrival we are joined by my investigator, Marcel Rainford. Marcel has been with me seven years, a one-time employee of Interpol and Scotland Yard. We crossed paths during that time. He was transplanted to America after a contract was issued on his life by a group of Sicilian Mafiosi upset with the inroads he had made on their European heroin kingdom. The U.S. State Department was instrumental in changing Marcel's surname and hiding his real identity in its cloistered terabytes of bureaucracy. He signed on with Chicago Police Department when he arrived stateside; two years later, he received medical retirement after being shot in the face on a routine robbery call. The wound left him disfigured even after six surgeries. But it didn't affect his investigator's bent for justice and truth--two character defects in my world of criminal defense. But he works hard to overcome his better self. The fact of the matter is Marcel has crossed the line separating fact from fiction, as did I long ago when I became counsel for my first criminal client. We both are able to lie with ease. Criminal defense practice demands no less. Just now he is taking pictures of the scene with his Nikon.

He finishes up and turns to Mira and asks her to hold out her hands, palms up. She obliges, and he racks off maybe ten snaps on the camera. Then she's instructed to turn them over and he makes a recording of the top side. While the hand baseline is being set in this manner, I make a mental note. Her hands are blackened, sooty. I look back at the entrance wall. There is a large Satanic pentagram drawn there. It is done in what appears to be charcoal. Such as we have just recorded on her hands.

"Marce," I tell him softly. "Flip back through. Get rid of all the pictures of her hands."

He looks at me with a silent question. I roll my eyes to the wall drawing. He follows. The light goes on in his eyes. He immediately begins flipping back through his snaps. His fingers punch and the camera clicks and snapshots disappear. We know we must be very selective in what is preserved and what is disappeared.

Mira pulls an ashtray across the coffee table and manages, with shaking hands, to insert a Salem between her full, red lips and bring a flame to the business end of the tobacco. She inhales and the cigarette glows.

I ask again, "You have no idea how this happened?"

"Michael," she manages at last, "one moment I was out and the next moment I was conscious and aware. How he got there, I have no idea, I swear to you."

"It's Darrell Harrow?" I ask.

She nods and says heavily, "It is Darrell Harrow."

“Who hated him?” I ask.

She shrugs. “He's well-known around town and very well-liked.”

My mind switches gears.

"So we need to figure out why Darrell, a married man, was in your condo tonight. Can you help me with that?” I cannot fend off my own sarcasm: of course she can help me—she had been bedding the guy.

Marcel looks up. "Let's try this. What
do
you remember?"

"I remember unlocking my door.”

"What happened next?”

"That's the sixty-four-dollar question. I don't know."

"You regularly carry a gun?" Marcel asks.

"Yes. Our homicide prosecutors are armed. It goes with the job."

"Sure. So do you remember going for your gun tonight?"

"No. It's still in my purse."

"Where's your purse?"

She looks around the immediate area then shakes her head.

"I don't know. But I'm sure I had it when I came inside."

"Marcel?" I say.

"I'll have a look. Be right back."

Marcel begins an ever-widening search of the condo. After several minutes he returns. “It’s in the bedroom. Gun’s in the purse.“

“What’s it doing in there?” I ask her.

"I might have shot him and I might not have shot him. I honestly don't know," Mira suddenly offers. She semi-reclines, legs crossed, inhaling cigarette smoke and discharging it through her nostrils. In her black dress and silver-white pearls, slouching on the sofa, a swirl of smoke across her face, I am reminded of a noir scene from some long-ago movie. I can't name it, but the moral ambiguity of that ancient scene shades our work tonight: we are about to start hiding things from the cops who will arrive once I call them.

"Nobody came to see?" Marcel says to me. "Nobody heard the shot?"

I shake my head.

"Our units are guaranteed one-hundred percent soundproof," she dreamily allows. "I can turn my stereo full on and nobody says a word."

Marcel and I trade a look. Then it's my turn to ask a few questions.

"Did Darrell come home with you?"

"Honestly, I don't know. He must have."

"Why do you say that?"

"How else would he get here?"

"Maybe he was already here when you came in," I say.

Marcel says, "Maybe you walked in, found him here, and shot him. Maybe he was stalking you. Maybe he was here to rape you--or kill you. There's a million and one possible theories. We just need to settle on the one that works best for you."

"Meaning, we've got to get my story pulled together?"

"Meaning exactly that," Marcel replies.

I don't disagree with him.

Marcel toes the dead man's shoulders with his ostrich-skin boot. Same with his arms and hands—toe of the boot, lift, drop. He’s looking for a weapon of some kind.

"A weapon would be nice," he says absently. He fixes Mira with his hard gray eyes, waiting for the get-out-of-jail response, such as, “He had a gun," or “He came at me with a knife."

But there is nothing. The cigarette ember flares and her eyes drift off again.

Marcel turns to me and gives a slight shrug as if to say, "Your turn."

I try again.

"We need you to think with us, Mira. We're going to have to call the cops in the next few minutes and report this."

Marcel circuits the room, looking above and below. Then he disappears down the hallway, into the prosecutor's bedroom. I have been there and I know its layout. He is examining the mahogany escritoire right about now and looking beneath the ruffled skirt on Miranda's queen-sized bed, searching for anything the police might use against her.

Some minutes later he returns.

"Nothing out of place. Bed still made. Top covers undisturbed, smooth, no one's rolled around on them. I'm going downstairs to talk to the security desk. Be right back." He disappears out the front door.

Mira looks away again, obviously preparing to return to her mental la-la-land. But I head her off. I stare right at her, holding her attention. This is a question any woman can answer whether recently passed out or not.

"Have you had sex tonight? Any indication?"

"No indication."

"So you came to--for want of a better term--and then, what? Called me?"

"I called you, Michael. I took one look and luckily I've seen enough dead guy pictures that I didn't run screaming out the front door."

"You had presence of mind enough to dial your phone," I say.

"Exactly. You arrived thirty minutes after I called you. I timed it because I knew the police would ask."

"What did you do in the interim?"

"I've been to dozens of homicide scenes. So I kept my cool. I went in and used the toilet connected to my bedroom. Then I came right back here, sat down and lit a cigarette."

“Did you wash your hands after the toilet?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.”

"The police will want to know why we took so long to call them. The building's closed circuit TV will tell them what time Harrow arrived and what time I arrived. Coupled with your phone log, we paint a perfect picture of elapsed time between your call to me, my time of arrival, and the time we called the police. To delay much longer will only underscore that I was helping you prepare for them."

She stands and shakes her arms to loosen them. She lights yet another cigarette and lays it within the notch on the ashtray. A twist of smoke blows sideways.

"I'm making coffee. You want some?"

"No. Hurry it up. We call them when Marcel returns."

She hurries over to the long kitchen galley where the coffee maker sits silently. She lifts the handle, inserts a k-cup, and pulls down. She pushes a button and coffee begins hissing into a white cup. The sink faucet runs, a quick on-and-off. Minutes pass. The coffee maker goes silent. She adds half-and-half to the white cup then returns to her sofa.

She looks up at me, more awake than she has been since I arrived.

"Okay. So what am I to tell them? I came home and he was already here?"

I frown and shake my head. "Listen to you. You're not hearing what you're saying and that isn't good."

"What?"

I say, "The police will know what time you entered the elevator from the security cameras."

Marcel returns and raps twice on the door. She goes over and lets him back in.

"Interesting," he says. "Security guys didn't hear a gunshot."

"Do they have video of Harrow arriving?"

"Yep. Shows him arriving alone. He doesn't appear drunk or lurching around--nothing like that. Just calmly and coolly shows ID at the front desk and they say they buzzed Mira's condo. She said to let him come up. After that, they didn't see him again."

"But they didn't hear a gunshot?"

"They said they did not."

Mira taps the half-consumed cigarette against the green glass ashtray. Its ember disarticulates. She stabs the butt against the glass and pulls her hand away. She sniffs her nicotine-stained fingers and frowns. "What do I tell them?"

"You tell them nothing. You're advised to remain silent."

"All right. How does our story go, just between us?"

"Well, no one's going to believe you came inside and woke up a few minutes later and a dead guy was found on the floor who hadn't been there when you came inside."

"Highly unlikely," she agrees.

I continue. "So we have a couple of choices. One, you were in a blackout from too much alcohol and passed out. Two, you have some kind of medical condition that rendered you unconscious. Any luck there?"

"I take Ambien for sleep."

"Ambien?" says Marcel, suddenly sitting up on his haunches as he takes close-ups of the victim's entrance wound with his Nikon. "That stuff's all kinds of bad if you've been drinking. How much did you have to drink tonight?"

"One drink at the fairgrounds. I had two, maybe three sips." She looks up, then, and I see she is crying. She wipes her eyes with her forearm.

"You haven't taken an Ambien?"

"No, but I could right now."

"Please do."

She leaves and returns several minutes later.

"Done," she says.

"Good. They'll do a tox screen."

"Of course."

"Where were you when you came to?" Marcel asks.

"Here. On the sofa."

"Were you fully dressed when you came to?"

"Yes."

"Was the TV on?"

"No."

"Was any music playing?"

"No."

"Where was your cell phone?"

The cell phone is lying on the coffee table beside the green glass ashtray. It is a plus-size with the tablet screen.

"Phone was right about where it is. I only moved it to call you then I put it right back."

"How did you feel when you woke up?" I ask.

"Dizzy. Dry mouthed and dizzy."

"How long were you out?"

"That I don't know. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe longer."

"Did you make any other calls?"

"Not that I know of."

"Check your phone log, please."

She picks up her phone and presses several keys.

"No other calls."

I turn my attention to Marcel, who is lifting and opening the victim's suit coat with a ballpoint pen. He peers inside the coat.

"His wallet's inside. There's a business envelope in there, too. But I don't want to touch it."

“Won’t your gloves protect you?”

He looks at me. "That could be construed as tampering with evidence. Among other things."

He's right, of course. I return my attention to Mira. Tampering-schmampering. This is a client's freedom we're talking about here. The inner lawyer steps up.

"Wash your hands, please," I tell her. "And change your clothes. Maybe put on a sweatshirt and shorts."

She holds out her hands, palms up. The black is gone. "I washed when I made coffee. What should I do with my dress?"

She knows that if she fired the pistol then her dress will register the shot because the gun will have discharged particles of burnt powder. The blowback from a revolver such as hers could easily convict her. A simple soaking and mild scrubbing of the dress will remove all gunshot residue. Washing of the hands--same thing.

"Pour wine on the chest. There's the rationale for washing the dress. Then toss it in the sink. Scrub lightly. Use some detergent and leave it soaking."

She stands and disappears back into her bedroom. While she is out, I pluck the cigarette butt from the ashtray. It is black from her fingers from earlier, before she washed. I drop the remnant into my pocket. She emerges just minutes later, dressed in jeans and a Bears T-shirt.

"The dress is in my bathroom sink, soaking in soapy water."

She displays her hands to me. "Washed up to my biceps this time."

"Your story is you spilled wine and were soaking the dress. But that's for trial if there is a trial. For tonight--"

"Don't say anything. Refuse to talk."

"You're reading my mind."

She forces a smile.

I sit back in my chair and survey the scene. We haven't talked about the upside-down cross above the victim's head. And we haven't talked about the pentagram scrawled on the wall behind the cross. The drawing is evidently rendered in charcoal remnants from an earlier blaze in the fireplace.

"Why were your fingers black?"

"I don't know. They were that way when I woke up."

This is troubling and I'm slowly starting to doubt her story altogether. Which is not a show-stopper; I have been known to defend the guilty before. But here's a twist: the scene says Satanism with the pentagram and the upside-down cross, and yet the body isn't mutilated as Satanists are known to do. The eyeballs aren't punctured with pins; the throat isn't cut; the genitals haven't been cut away and jammed in his mouth; organs haven't been harvested for potions; the fingers haven't been clipped away--none of the usual Satanic ritualism one would expect.