The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3) (9 page)

T
he District Attorney's
black Suburban with smoked windows picked up Lamont Johnstone from his campaign headquarters at seven-thirty p.m. It was earlier that day that Michael Gresham had come into Johnstone's office and confronted him about DA Ronald Shaughnessy. Gresham had told him he believed the DA was protecting the Chicago PD, especially police officer Tory Stormont.

"Thanks for coming by," Johnstone said to the large black man occupying half the back seat of the SUV.

Ronald Shaughnessy, huge like an NFL tackle with a scowling face hidden behind sunglasses nodded but didn't reply. Then he said, in his trademark growl, "Gresham's a smart guy. Been around a long time, knows too much about too many people."

"You have any ideas how he's to be handled?"

"It's a done deal."

"As in how?"

Shaughnessy turned to his protégé. "You just gonna have to trust me, Lamont."

Shaughnessy nodded to the driver and turned to look out his own window. The Suburban began pulling away from the curb, flashing its red and blue police vehicle lights to gain a foothold in the evening traffic jam. Then he leaned back against the seat, working the pleat in his trouser legs between thumb and finger. He was like that, Johnstone had noticed long ago: alway fiddling with his attire, trying to look every inch the important public official he actually was. Johnstone had been there through four of the DA's campaign slogs. He had officially gone on the record as the office's ranking Republican staffer as someone who, regardless of party politics, would be voting for Shaughnessy the Democrat and supporting him. In a city manned at all four corners by diehard Democrats, Johnstone's support of the Democrat was unequalled in the recent memory of most Chicago pols. He was effectively abandoning his own party in his cross-overs every four years, which made it all the more remarkable that now he had received his own party's endorsement for DA. He had abandoned them--but only in the DA race--but they had come around and gotten on board with him. They had had to; he was the only truly electable Republican on the primary ballot.

"What about Tory Stormont? What's going to happen with him now that his case is dismissed?”

"Have you seen the news? South Chicago's been on a rampage every night since--burning buildings, lootings, patrol cars being shot at, undercover narcs being outed. The religious leaders are calling for a boycott of all white-owned businesses. The blacks are calling for a lynch mob to come after me. My guess is there won't be many Democrat Party voting levers being pulled in South Chicago come November."

"So my chances against Mira are looking really good?”

"Not so fast. The black community knows all about you, Lamont. They know you and I are joined at the hip. You might not be a Democrat on the voter registration rolls but you sure as hell have hitched your star to one. Namely, me. They won't forget. Without Mira's mess dragging her down she would be looking very good to those voters about now. But Harrow's untimely demise has effectively shut her down."

"But if she's found not guilty? From what Gresham tells me her case is very defensible. The Attorney General is going to have a hard time convicting her."

Shaughnessy smiled for the first time that night. He turned to Johnstone and laid a huge paw on his friend's shoulder.

"Didn't I tell you we’ve got that covered?"

Johnstone pressed it.

"Mind telling me how?"

"Just read the papers tomorrow evening. Turn on the news. It'll become very apparent in its own time."

By now the DA's official SUV had reached the East-West Kennedy Expressway.

"Let's go to Schaumburg," the DA said to his driver. "I'm meeting the wife and kids at Jungle World for dinner. I'll drop you at the Niles train and you can head back to your house."

Johnstone nodded. He was still anxious to know what his ex-boss had up his sleeve for Michael Gresham. He decided to pry.

"Gresham told me Mira isn't the shooter. She didn’t kill Harrow.”

"Mira? Naw, she wouldn't shoot anyone. Screw them maybe, but never shoot them."

Both men chuckled. They both knew whereof the DA spoke. Her rep just wouldn't stop following her around. But it was her own damn fault, thought Johnstone. She had never made any attempt to hide her private business; her sexual couplings were as open and notorious as a hooker's.

"He also told me that Mira's box of bullets matched the one that killed Harrow."

"So I'm told. So I'm told," said Shaughnessy, suddenly tiring of the game. He knew that Johnstone was going to try to guess his way into whatever Shaughnessy had planned for Michael Gresham. But he wasn't about to let that happen. He had held public office long enough to learn the number one rule of getting re-elected: trust no one. It was a rule he followed assiduously, so he wasn't about to spill the beans to Lamont Johnstone. Besides, it would all go public tomorrow anyway. Johnstone--and the rest of the city--would find out soon enough.

"Gresham also told me the murder weapon hasn't been found. The gun is missing."

"That so?" smiled the DA, his eyes opening wide. "That so? Maybe it's time that gun turned up."

Johnstone sat back against the deep leather seat.

So that was it, he thought.

Tomorrow was going to be a red-letter day for him and his campaign.

He could expect to rise at least ten percentage points in the polls.

Ten? Hell, might as well make it twenty if what he thought he had just caught a sniff of was in fact cooking on the stove.

Gresham was about to be served up to the public.

And it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy, thought Johnstone.

He had it coming.

T
rue to his word
, Detective Jamison does, in fact, come after me.

I'm sitting at my desk in my office, reviewing the order of dismissal in the Tory Stormont case. Marcel has copied the order from the court file, as I am trying to understand what rationale was used by Brianna Finlayton to dismiss. There must have been some comment or reasoning she would have thought would be acceptable to the public, some predicate that the court found compelling enough to allow her to dismiss and that the public would accept.

Which was, of course, impossible. The black community is outraged. The skinheads are delighted. The Nazis are—you get the idea. America is as splintered anymore as there are ethnic groups times one hundred. Some applauded the dismissal of the charges against the white cop; some were outraged. Sometimes there just isn't a good answer. There is only palliative care.

Which is when my closed office door suddenly comes flying open, rattling on its hinges as it is thrown back against the wall. Close behind is Detective Jamison, his sunglasses perched on top of his head, a wicked grin lighting the way. In his hands are papers that can only be the search warrant he has talked some judge into issuing for the search of my office. I am half out of my chair when he rushes across the room and gleefully scatters the papers across my desk.

"We'll need you to leave the office, counselor," he says in his command voice. "We're here to execute a search warrant. You need to get up and go into the outer office and wait there until we're finished in here. Don't bother going to your car. It is being searched as we speak. Same with your home. Have we covered everything?"

The man is wicked, but I don't engage.

"Let me see the warrant first," I say.

He pushes the papers across my desk. "Read away. It's all copacetic."

I leaf through the paperwork. It's signed. The affidavit, while about half-bogus, is also about half-correct. He's done a good job at reconstructing the steps I took to protect Mira the night of Harrow's death.

So I come upright and silently go into my waiting room and plop down in the chair closest to my office door. Mrs. Lingscheit is pushed back from her desk while a technician copies her hard drive onto a drive he's brought along. I know that he'll be in my office next copying my own hard drive; my heart leaps into my throat. What's there? I'm wondering. Are they going to find a smoking gun they can use to put me away for ten years?

I’m very paranoid for several moments while I calm my racing heart and logically go through what they might uncover. Probably "uncover" is not the best word. It indicates I might be hiding something, which I am definitely not. I am congratulating myself for my honesty in how I defend my criminal clients when a shaft of pure conviction suddenly lights up my mind: the cigarette butt. The one I took away from Mira's condo after she stubbed it out in her ashtray. The butt was blackened from the charcoal on her fingers, the charcoal she or someone had used to draw the Satanic pentagram on the wall above Harrow's body. I had, in fact, taken the butt with me in order to hide the fact that when I first spoke with her I'd had to ask her to wash her hands. To wash her hands because I was concerned they would be examined by the detectives or the CSI's. But the cigarette butt: I had all but forgotten I had just dropped it into her file after I returned to my office later that morning. I'm hoping they don't realize what it is. But that's the slimmest of hopes. These guys are pros; they're going to catch on in a hot second: the butt will be examined and it will have her DNA on it. There's the first presumption it came from the crime scene. Otherwise, why would I have it?

How incredibly stupid of me, I'm thinking, and I'm chastising myself. What the hell was I even thinking, memorializing the fact that I had removed evidence from a murder scene? A chill passes up my spine and I am stupefied I could have done something so randomly ignorant. It just isn't like me to remove evidence from a crime scene. On the other hand, I had done it without a plan. I hadn’t thought through to what I planned on doing with it. Forgetting it was in my file, ready to be seized by the police, was definitely not what I had in mind. But, here I am and here they are.

Any minute now Detective Jamison will come out and pounce on me, announcing his find and waving a plastic evidence baggie in my face, one containing a Salem butt. I want to jump up and run downstairs to my car and drive away, but I fight to restrain that impulse, fight to stay in my chair, in Mrs. L’s office, and face the music. Besides, my car has also been removed from my control. I am trapped.

Marcel's office is next, evidently, because he joins me in the reception area, taking a chair across from me.

"What the hell?" he mutters to me. "How did they ever get a judge to authorize this?"

"I saw Jamison's affidavit on the search warrant. The key is that a confidential informant has told him that I am secreting evidence of Darrell Harrow's murder in my office, in particular inside Mira Morales' file."

"What the hell does that mean? Confidential informant? In our office?"

"Yes. Someone turned me in."

"But there's nothing to be found. You're not hiding anything."

"I'm not?" I lean forward and whisper, "Did you not see me pocket her cigarette butt?"

He looks at me. It is a look of dismay.

"You're joking, right, Michael? You didn't get rid of it?"

I spread my hands. "I didn't get rid of it. We hadn't done our case review and I hadn't been back inside her evidence file since that night."

"So you saved it?"

I nod. "Sure as hell did. Sure as we're sitting here."

"Oh, Jesus, man. This isn't good. This is very bad, Michael. You know this cop already wants your head!"

"I know, I know."

Sure enough. Ten minutes later, Detective Weldon comes bursting into our reception area and approaches me and Marcel. He is almost galloping. He waves the plastic bag under our noses.

"Bingo!" Is all he says. Then he points at me and shakes his head.

"What?" I ask.

"What the hell were you thinking, counselor? Removing evidence from my crime scene? You know that's a crime, of course, because you're a criminal lawyer. So this particular criminal lawyer--mainly you--knew he was committing a crime when he made off with this cigarette butt. But I'm asking myself, why this cigarette butt? Why would the defense attorney remove this from the crime scene? And then I'm seeing the black smudges on the cigarette paper. And I'm putting two and two together and I'm thinking the crime lab's ultraviolet spectrographs will connect up the dots."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, though I already know the answer--I'm afraid.

"It means we will very likely find out that the black smudges on the cigarette butt are the same stuff as what we scraped off the wall in Ms. Morales' condo. The black pentagram someone drew there. Let me say, counselor, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you. And blah blah blah. I won't go into the whole
Miranda
thing right now because I'm not running your ass in right now. I'm going to wait until the crime lab confirms what it is you've removed from the scene of a homicide. Then I'm going to run your ass in."

"I--I--" I want to argue, but Marcel interrupts--thank God.

"Don't," says Marcel. "Let it go. He has zero idea what he's talking about."

"Oh don't I?" Weldon says with a smirk. "I think we're very close to solving this homicide and even closer to solving who tampered with evidence at the scene of the homicide. Gentlemen, it's going to be a fun couple of days while we wait to hear back from the crime lab. Wouldn't you agree?"

He looks at us: me, then Marcel and back to me. We don't reply, better judgment having overtaken us--me, actually. I keep my mouth shut.

There's nothing to win here and everything to lose.

T
hree hours later
, I finally leave the office. It is one o'clock and the search is still underway but I just can't stand to be there any longer. Marcel and I head down to underground parking. My Mercedes is sitting there with all four doors open, its trunk and hood open, and technicians crawling it like ants over a turd. The car is being vacuumed, dusted for prints, and taken apart at every point where separation of interior lining from frame is possible. My car has been stripped. “Who puts this back together!” I cry at the team of four investigators and two cops. One cop punches the other and there’s a barely suppressed smile shared between them.

“That’s your problem, sir,” says a youngish CSI tech. “We don’t have authority from the court to put it back together.”

Marcel and I stand there, dumbfounded, unsure what comes next. Then Marcel takes me by the arm and steers me down the row of vehicles to where his truck is parked.

Marcel takes the wheel of his truck and we head north on Lake Front Drive. Danny has stayed home today with Dania, who spent the morning watching cartoons before she went in for her checkup with her pediatrician. I’ve called Danny and told her what is going on and it is actually her idea that I just leave. The police have already been to our house and are gone. I tell her I think that was just intimidation; that they came to the house just to let us know they could. Because they can always come back if they decide they've missed something.

"Hey," Marcel says sideways, "what say you put in a call to Harley Sturgis?"

Harley Sturgis is Chicago’s very own up-and-coming female trial lawyer who eats prosecutors for breakfast. She’s a no-holds-barred two-fisted brawler who loves to duke it out with the cops. Word on the street is that she’ll fight about anything, that there are seldom stipulations on any issue at trial, much to the displeasure of Chicago judges who prefer agreement wherever possible.

“You want me to call her? What for?"

"Look, Boss. We're going to need someone to help us very soon."

"You mean you're pretty sure I'm going to be facing charges and will need another lawyer on staff?"

"Yeah, something like that. And Harley would be a great choice. I've done some work for her on the side and she's amazing. Cops run and hide when they hear she's on a case. Prosecutors buckle and settle. She's pretty damn amazing, Boss."

Tonya Sturgis is known around town as Harley, nicknamed for her last name Sturgis: the name of the town in South Dakota that is the site of the annual get-together of thousands of Harley riders. And she deserves the name, too--from what I hear. Still, whatever else might be said about Harley, she's almost impossible to cut a deal with, according to the DA’s who've reported back from skirmishes on the front lines with Harley. Exactly what I would want.

"Hold that thought," I tell him about calling Harley. "Let me think a minute."

So we travel north while I morosely look out the window at Lake Michigan and the five-million dollar Tudors that line its banks. Most of them have three or four cars in the driveways--Land Rovers, Porsches, Mercedes, and the occasional Rolls. As I watch the evidence of others' success pass by outside my window, I am kicking myself for being so damn stupid as to remove evidence from a crime scene. It was a pure mental lapse; in the last thirty years I've never even come close to something that stupid and obvious, but here we are. It's happened and there's one hellbent cop on the other side of the equation chomping at the bit to see me in jail. And, truth be told, there's a good likelihood he'll have his way. I have no defense. The butt is evidence, it was at the crime scene and I knew it was evidence, and I removed it. If Mira was the artist who drew the pentagram, then it only stands to reason she's the same person that shot Darrell Harrow. And the cigarette butt ties her to the pentagram charcoal drawing and that, in and of itself, is huge. It is compelling evidence that she was the shooter.

Marcel's voice breaks through my reverie.

"You're beating yourself up back there, aren't you?"

I have to admit he's right. I am beating myself up. With good reason.

"I am. It's just not like me, Marcel."

My phone vibrates and I have a look. It is my office, Mrs. Lingscheit.

"Michael!" she cries into the phone. "Are you at home?"

"No, why?"

"Don't go home! The police are looking for you right now."

"What?" I am stunned.

And frightened.

"They found a gun in your car. In the trunk. Weldon is beside himself. He's crowing. He's saying it's the same caliber as the one that killed Darrell Harrow."

"My God, in my trunk?"

"In your Mercedes."

I have her on speaker. Marcel has heard all of this.

"Where to?" he asks, pulling to the side of the road. We are parked beneath McDonald's Golden Arches. I can smell the poison on the air.

"Where to? I don't know."

"You know what?" he asks.

"What?"

"Let's just take you on home. They're coming for you, Boss, and you're not running. We know that."

I am unable to put together even a thought. I can only nod.

Marcel says, “Wait one. I've got Harley's number on my cell. Do I call her?"

I can only nod.

Then the words come to me.

"Yes. Hurry."