The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

  Detective Wilkins turned to face Judy, his dark eyes glowing with anger. “Please don’t even think that I’m dirty, or that any of the men in my division are dirty, when I am driving you around like a cabbie and kissing your ass. Got it, lady? I have only so much restraint.”

  Judy nodded. Judging from his vehemence, he was telling the truth. Either that or he was in “denial.” Her neck whipped back as he stomped on the gas pedal and the Crown Vic took a right by her favorite storefront, Mr. Bar Stool, and zoomed down Second Street until he reached the cobblestone streets of Society Hill. Judy felt vaguely guilty while he fumed. Oh, what the hell. She was supposed to be a good guy. “I’m sorry if I insulted you,” she said, meaning it. Sort of.

  The Crown Vic bobbled on the bumpy gray cobblestones. The detective said nothing.

  “I do appreciate what you’re doing.” Judy managed not to say, what little you’re doing.

  The Crown Vic swerved right and headed west. Colonial townhouses whizzed by. The detective had fallen mute.

  “Look, I don’t have to kiss your ass either.”

  The Crown Vic pulled up in front of Judy’s apartment house and Detective Wilkins cut the ignition, yanked up the emergency brake, and got out of the car and slammed the car door, all without a word.

  So be it. Judy got out of her side of the car, slammed her door even harder, walked to the front door of her apartment, and dug in her backpack for her keys. It took her fully ten minutes to find them, which proved her karma had dipped to an all-time low, and during that time neither she nor the constabulary spoke. She let them in the front door, and they tramped up the stairs, with Judy in the lead.

  Her stomach tensed as she climbed to the first-floor landing, then went up to the second. What if someone were there? What if someone had come in since this morning? She would have asked Detective Wilkins to lead but she’d rather be dead than break the silence first. Lawyers call this “pigheaded.” She reached her apartment door, unlocked it, and let it swing wide open.

  The living room looked just as she’d left it, as a first impression. She entered the room, listening for commotion, but it was dead quiet. She walked around the sofa, the coffee table, and past the windows, looking for anything amiss. She went into the adjoining galley kitchen, but the dishes were still soaking in the sink and nothing was disturbed, then she hurried to her bedroom. The bedclothes were a happy tumble, the bureau drawers hung open with overflowing clothes, and the disarray on the bureau top looked normal. She walked to her jewelry box and saw that nothing had been taken.

  Judy sighed. Maybe she had left the door open. Maybe no one had been here. She went through the bathroom, but it looked fine, and then went on to the studio. She froze on the threshold.

  It was her painting on the easel, the one she’d started not too long ago. It was a self-portrait, the way she’d looked that night when the moon was full and she was changing the way she painted. No more landscapes from a nomadic childhood, long ago and far away. Judy had been starting over, with herself, so her first painting had been a self-portrait as she had been that night, in the nude.

  But the painting horrified her now. A knife gutted her portrait, running from the base of her neck, slitting her chest between her breasts, and ending between her legs. The knife jutted crudely from her pubis. Vermilion paint the color of fresh blood had been smeared all over her knifed body. The meaning was unmistakable.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said a voice behind Judy. It was Detective Wilkins, and his stricken expression as he stared at the painting matched her own. She didn’t know which was worse, that a complete stranger was seeing a painting of her nude or that he was seeing a painting like that. Blood rushed to her cheeks and she turned away from the image.

  “Please don’t look,” she said, her voice choked. She didn’t know why she felt so shaken. Somehow this was worse than a car bomb. More terrifying, more personal. It threatened the heart of her. And it showed her that whatever war was being waged between the two Coluzzi brothers, they weren’t too distracted to scare the shit out of her.

  Detective Wilkins put an arm around her and led her from the studio. “Judy, we’ll look into this. I’ll follow up, I promise you. I will personally do everything I can to nail whoever did this.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I’m not charging the Coluzzis on this evidence, not yet. You’re a lawyer, you know that. I’ll follow up, but all this is is vandalism.”

  “I know that.”

  “And you have to be realistic, even though you’re upset. You’re gonna want me to dust this whole place for prints and I’m gonna tell you we don’t have the manpower for it, and even if we did, it wouldn’t yield anything. I’ll ask the Coluzzis where they were last night, and there’ll be twenty witnesses to swear that they were having three-pound lobsters at The Palm.”

  Judy knew it was true but her heart beat harder just the same. This was sick and twisted and scary. She didn’t want to live here anymore. She never wanted to come home again. She tried to think of a way to fight back. What could she do, legally? There had to be something. “How about a TRO, a restraining order, against the Coluzzis and members of their family? None of them could come within a hundred feet of me, the apartment, or the offices. I could prepare and file it this afternoon.”

  “A restraining order? Could you get one on these facts? With no proof?” he asked, but his tone told her he knew the answer, and so did she, thinking about it.

  “Probably not. No proof that the Coluzzis are behind it. It’s the same problem, every time. And the Coluzzis wouldn’t heed a court order anyway.” She felt herself begin to shake uncontrollably, and Detective Wilkins’s arm steadied her.

  “Don’t let this get to you. Whoever did this, even if it is the Coluzzis, they’re playing mind games with you. Don’t let them win.”

  She liked the sound of it, but she still couldn’t get in control. The law was no help. Had Frank been right? She found herself missing him suddenly, when she hadn’t thought about him in so long.

  “Judy, listen,” Detective Wilkins said, his voice gentler, “I have a daughter of my own, younger than you, and that’s why I told you to get off this case. Not because I’m dirty. I’m just telling you what I’d tell her. No job is worth your life.”

  Judy almost found a smile. “What do you mean? You’re a cop. You get shot at for a living.”

  Detective Wilkins had no immediate reply.

  35

  It was all Judy could do to act natural in front of The Two Tonys, Mr. DiNunzio, and Penny, lying in a furry but sleeping pile. Judy didn’t tell the old men what she’d found at her apartment for fear of worrying them. She had to keep moving forward and concentrate on the task at hand. She skimmed the books on the expert’s shelves to get her thoughts back in order. Low-Speed Automobile Accidents, Basic Collision Investigation and Scene Documentation, The Traffic Accident Investigation Manual, Engineering Analysis of Vehicular Accidents. Judy’s mind kept wandering back to the self-portrait. She folded her arms, aware that she was practically hugging herself, and looked elsewhere. Anywhere but in her own mind.

  The room was windowless but immense, appearing bigger because of its walls of white-painted cinderblock. It was actually a converted garage in West Philly; gleaming red tool chests sat against the far wall, and the near one was lined with textbooks, accident-reconstruction newsletters, and chrome tools mounted on brown pegboards in carefully calibrated size order. The back end of the room contained a built-in work counter with three black microscopes, a fax, a printer, a Compaq computer with a twenty-one-inch monitor, and file cabinets, also in white. Fluorescent panels overhead illuminated the room so it was brighter than most operating rooms.

  Judy, Feet, Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and Mr. DiNunzio watched as Dr. William Wold circled the charred wreck of the Lucias’ red truck in silence. The Two Tonys and Mr. DiNunzio had taken it upon themselves to steal the junked truck from the scrapyard, having cut a hole the size of a whale in the Cyc
lone fence. They were quite proud of themselves, but Judy was considering sending them to bed without their cigars.

  She felt terrible that they had done it and somehow worse that she had deniability for it. But once Tony-From-Down-The-Block had told her what they’d done, she’d asked him to bring it here on the flatbed. Judy didn’t know if she could still be a good guy and benefit from a bad act. She was less and less certain she wanted to be a good guy at all. She used to think she was hard-wired to be ethical, but her wires had gotten crossed and were sparking, especially after the self-portrait with the nasty incision.

  She gazed at the Lucias’ wreck, which rested on its blackened chassis in the middle of an unwrinkled white tarp. The tarp had been placed atop a spotless white linoleum floor, in order to catch any debris the truck “shed,” as Dr. Wold had explained. Dr. Wold was turning out to be big on explanation, a prerequisite for an expert witness. He had testified on “accident reconstruction” and “automotive forensics” in 135 cases, which proved that, in America, there was an expert on everything. For a price.

  Dr. Wold made a note on his metal clipboard with a silver Cross pen and cleared his throat. “You are quite right, Ms. Carrier,” he said finally. “This is, or was, a Volkswagen Rabbit pickup. These trucks were manufactured here in Pennsylvania from 1979 through 1983, and were later produced in Yugoslavia. They came with a diesel or a gasoline engine, and about eighty of them were produced in the United States in 1979, then the figure jumped to 25,000 in 1980, and 33,000 in 1981. This model is definitely a 1981.”

  “How do you know all that?” Judy asked, her voice echoing off the hard surfaces in the large, open space.

  “I looked it up after you called.” Dr. Wold pushed his heavy, steel-framed glasses up his small nose. An apparently humorless engineer—which could well be redundant—he wore a fresh white short-sleeved shirt and pressed navy pants. “It’s not as important to keep information in your head as much as to know how to retrieve it. I know how to retrieve it.”

  “I bet,” Judy said, just to make him feel that she was participating in the conversation, which was proving completely unnecessary. Dr. Wold didn’t care if she participated or not, which The Tonys and Mr. DiNunzio must have instantly perceived, because they remained uncharacteristically quiet.

  Dr. Wold walked around the front of the truck, which was bashed in and eyeless. Its hood had buckled almost in two. “You see that the headlights are gone. This model had the square, four-by-six-inch sealed halogen beams. It also had turn signals to the immediate outer corners of the truck, resembling the 1983 to 1984 Rabbit. Of course the accident has demolished most of the truck’s front end; it clearly absorbed most of the impact.” Dr. Wold looked up. “I understand it fell off the overpass onto the highway below.”

  “I think so, but I don’t have the police file on it. There must be one.”

  “Of course there is. I’ll obtain it from the AID, the Accident Investigation Division. It’s public record. I’ve already begun to gather articles about the accident, and I will visit the scene. I should be able to reconstruct the way the accident occurred and make you a computer-animated video of it, should you need it for the jury. They are usually quite effective.” Dr. Wold made another note. “Of course, as we discussed, I’ll also examine the wreck from stem to stern. I provide that as part of my service. Many accident reconstructionists don’t.”

  Judy nodded, and Dr. Wold consulted his notes.

  “From my specs, the vehicle was 4.46 meters in length, 1.64 meters in width, and 1.43 meters in height. I can tell you, just eyeballing the wreck, that it’s no longer than 3.2 meters at this point, and much of the distortion is at the front, although there is some damage here.”

  Judy nodded again, but Dr. Wold didn’t notice.

  “You have asked me to determine if there was evidence of tampering of any sort to the truck, and that I can do. I generally run a complete battery of tests, mostly in products liability cases and wrongful death matters, but I suppose I can do it in a murder case as well.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Of course, you made mention I should determine if the engine had been tampered with, but that would be difficult.” Dr. Wold laughed shortly, a loud ha!

  Judy reddened. It had turned out the truck had been junked without its engine. She hadn’t realized it. It was a sore point. “Of course not. No engine. I guess it was sold for parts.”

  “Or scrap. Either way, cars are rarely junked with engines. They’re too valuable.”

  “I knew that,” Judy said. She could hear Feet laugh softly beside her. “You can check if there was a bomb used, can’t you?”

  Dr. Wold cocked a furry eyebrow. “Of course, but that’s not likely, given that the wreck is basically intact.”

  Judy sighed. This wasn’t her day. “Can you can test anything, and everything, just to see if there is evidence of any kind of tampering? Maybe the brakes would be messed up. They’re still there, right?”

  Dr. Wold frowned. “In part.”

  “Okay, so check that. Check everything. I need to understand everything about how the accident happened. Why do two people drive off an overpass in the middle of the night? We have only the truck to go on.”

  “As you wish.” Dr. Wold nodded. “I should tell you that I will render an expert opinion based on the facts as I see them, not as you wish them to be. I’m not one of those experts who tells you what you paid to hear, do you understand?”

  “Understood.” Judy hated experts like Dr. Wold. She liked experts who told you what you paid to hear.

  “Excellent. Then you won’t mind if I tell you that, from my preliminary examination of the wreck, and the information I have retrieved, I find the explanation for this accident fairly obvious, and simple. In fact, it is one of the most common types of traffic accidents, given the conditions.”

  Judy had to bite her tongue. She couldn’t tell him what Pigeon Tony had told her, not in front of the others. She knew the conclusion but had to get the proof. A murder case in reverse.

  “Step over to my computer, if you will,” Dr. Wold said, and led them to the workstation, with Penny waking to trot happily behind. “Since I had some time this afternoon, I took the liberty of retrieving some of the articles on the accident in question, from the online archives of the Philadelphia newspapers. One of the photos was particularly instructive.” He hit a key on his keyboard and the enormous monitor crackled instantly to life.

  Judy couldn’t help but stare. It was a huge black-and-white photo of a highway overpass, with the guardrail bent out like a bow and the Cyclone fencing ripped apart. The power of the image came from what it didn’t show, rather than from what it did; from the fact that Judy knew that the couple who had gone through the gaping hole had crashed to their death. It reminded her sadly of the photo of the Challenger astronauts, waving as they boarded the rocket that would kill them.

  “The articles report,” Dr. Wold was saying, “that the truck flipped over the guardrail, which, as I said, is one of the most common types of highway accidents, particularly in the tri-state area. It crashed onto the underpass below and burst into flame. You can see here,” he pointed with the silver pen, “that this guardrail is a vertical concrete bridge rail, an older design. It lacks a rubrail, the double section of W-beam on the top rail, and extra posts, and it has been crash-tested with catastrophic results. No doubt it contributed greatly to the ease with which the truck went over the side.”

  Judy shuddered.

  “In addition, the article reports that the accident took place on January twenty-fifth, and I took the liberty of researching the weather that day.” Dr. Wold scrolled down to find the article. The newsprint filled the screen. SOUTH PHILLY COUPLE DEAD IN TRUCK ACCIDENT. Dr. Wold went on, “It was well below freezing most of the afternoon, plummeting to ten degrees at night. It had rained only that morning, in fact, and there had to be icy patches everywhere on the roads, making them treacherous, especially at that hour. I believe it was on
e in the morning when the accident occurred, according to the article.”

  Judy nodded.

  “This, too, is significant. The Better Sleep Council estimates that about ten thousand auto deaths occur each year due to drowsy drivers. Sleepiness seriously impairs reaction time, awareness of surroundings, and ability to discern potential roadway and traffic conflicts. And the danger is greater if alcohol is involved. A drowsy driver is as potentially dangerous as the drunk driver. The combination is lethal.”

  “Yo, they weren’t drunk,” Feet said defensively. “Frank had two beers at a shot, tops. Gemma never touched the stuff. She was a lady.”

  Dr. Wold’s eyes fluttered at the interruption. “I wasn’t suggesting your friends were drunk, sir. I was suggesting that if he had even a single drink at that late hour, such as one would have at a wedding, and drove on such an unsafe highway, it is extremely likely that this fairly light truck would meet with catastrophic accident.”

  Judy wasn’t buying. Pigeon Tony had told her different, and she couldn’t doubt him now, even with the facts going against her. And the attacks against her were giving her a new insight into why Pigeon Tony had killed Angelo Coluzzi. He was a good man, driven to a bad act. Judy was starting to feel exactly the same way. She was understanding how vendettas got started, and once started, took on a life of their own.

  “Your decision, Ms. Carrier?” Dr. Wold asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do you want me to go ahead, or do you want to save your money? I’m being honest with you. I think my findings won’t be greatly different from those of the police.”

  Judy met his eye evenly. “Get it done, Doctor. Somebody’s counting on me.”

  Part of her knew she was talking about herself, and even Penny looked up, not recognizing the new tone in her mistress’s voice.

  36

  It was dark by the time Judy got back to the office, alone except for Penny. The Two Tonys and Mr. D had offered to stay with her while she worked, but she knew they had homes and lives to return to and hied them off. She’d spend the night at a hotel and tell them about the dog when she checked in, but she had a long night of work ahead. Judy had kept Penny for protection and made sure security downstairs was alerted to the fact that she was alone in the office.