Contempt: A Legal Thriller

by Michael Cordell

  “Stone knew I was innocent, but he convicted me anyway. I will not let him do that to another innocent man. I won’t.”

  “This isn’t about him,” she said plaintively. “Baby, this is about you and me. Right now, there’s just you and me. It wasn’t easy for me either, you know. I waited years for you—”

  “I never asked you to.”

  She slammed her hand on the desk, jolting it from the force of the blow. “Goddamn you—that wasn’t your decision to make. It almost killed me when you cut me off. But now you’re home and I will not lose you a second time because of another one of your stubborn choices.”

  Now the tears started to flow.

  “Thane,” she almost screamed, “why are you doing this to us?”

  Her sobbing filled the room. Thane started to move toward her when the office door flung open. In the doorway stood a man Thane had never seen before.

  “Get the fuck away from her, you son of a bitch.”

  Thane’s body tensed. The familiar alarm of violence again flooded his body. He wanted to look over at Hannah, but he wasn’t about to take his eyes off this man. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Paul, don’t,” Hannah said. “What are you doing here?”

  Paul stared at Thane for a moment longer. “Caitlin called me when you got back. Said you had returned from the courthouse all upset, she thought you might need someone to talk to. I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

  “She doesn’t need help,” Thane said. “I don’t know who you are, but this is between my wife and me. You need to leave. Now.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you want.” Paul locked his hand into a fist, then started to move around Thane to get to Hannah, but Thane stepped in his way.

  “This is between Hannah and me. She’s fine. Just go.”

  Paul tried to brush by him, but the moment the other man touched him, Thane felt an electric jolt surge through him. When Paul grabbed hold of Thane’s wrist, he maneuvered his hand up and over his attacker’s wrist, instinctively twisting the arm and forcing the other man to the floor—the same maneuver that had saved his life so many times at Forsman. He kept the pressure on Paul’s wrist, pushing it backward, subduing him with minimal effort.

  “Thane,” Hannah said. “Please don’t . . .”

  “I don’t want to fight you,” Thane said to Paul, trying desperately to keep the jagged edge out of his voice. “I’m just trying to talk to my wife. I don’t know who the hell you are, but I understand you’re trying to help her. But she doesn’t need it. You don’t want to push this any further.”

  “Or what? Are you going to kill me too?”

  “No, but you’ll get hurt,” Thane said.

  “Paul, it’s okay. Really.”

  Paul struggled a moment longer, then finally stopped. Thane waited a moment before letting go, but he knew what would happen. There was a pause, then as Paul rose from the floor, he sprang at Thane, his right arm swinging through the air like a club; but Thane leaned back, just as the fist slashed by his head. He brought his left fist up into Paul’s stomach, forcing whatever air was left in the lungs to burst out. Hannah started to scream, but Thane could barely hear her. Two more rapid blows to the stomach, solid hits like he was working a punching bag, then a cracking left uppercut under the chin. This last strike sent Paul wheeling into the edge of a file cabinet. He crumbled to the floor, sitting dazed against the bottom drawer.

  “Stop it!” Hannah screamed as she scrambled around her desk, shoving her way past Thane and dropping to the floor beside Paul.

  Thane’s teeth ground against each other, red tinting his vision at the corners. His focus disappeared, however, when he saw his wife kneeling down and putting her hand on the man’s head, stroking it. She looked up at Thane, and this time, there was no fear in her face—only rage.

  “Get out,” she said.

  Thane just stood there looking at the two of them, stunned.

  “I said get out!” Hannah shouted again.

  Thane turned and staggered out of the room, his breath gone, feeling as though he had taken every punch he’d just thrown.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Thane stood in the aisle of a dingy drugstore, staring blankly at a row of toothbrushes. The store was only a few blocks from his office, but he’d never come inside before today: the shelves were bent and all half-empty, the chipped linoleum floor was littered with gum wrappers and magazine inserts, and even the safety-sealed packaging was yellowing. A strong aroma filled the store, almost a medicinal smell, or like the scent of men’s deodorant.

  He still couldn’t get his bearings. He’d returned to the apartment from the bookstore to collect some things, but as he threw handfuls of clothes into a gym bag, his head was spinning, as if he’d just stepped off the Tilt-a-Whirl at the fair. He hadn’t thought to get anything from the bathroom, which is why he now found himself here, staring at toothbrushes for the last five minutes.

  He shook himself and grabbed a toothbrush at random, then dragged himself over to the aspirin. The expiration date on the box had passed two months ago, which almost made him laugh—who’d ever seen expired aspirin before? Glancing at some of the other boxes on the shelf, he saw that more than a quarter of them were expired. Five years ago, he would have been outraged: tonight he simply tossed the aspirin into his basket.

  As he searched for shaving cream, he felt eyes on him. It wasn’t the store cashier, who was focused on a bum pretending to check prices on mouthwash. Thane didn’t turn around right away. Instead, he tossed a pack of razor blades into his basket, then discreetly scanned the store as he turned around. He saw no one. It was probably nothing, but five years in Forsman had taught him to trust his instincts.

  He walked toward the cashier as the front door was closing. He sat his basket on the counter, and as his items were being rung up, he walked over and peered out the door, but didn’t see anything. He was used to being watched everywhere he went, but this felt different. The cashier took his money and made change without taking his eye off the guy studying the mouthwash.

  Thane walked out of the store carrying the thin paper bag with his items. He surveyed the street stealthily, but the few people he saw walking at that late hour looked like they belonged to the neighborhood. Making his way down the sidewalk, he stopped to look in a liquor store window, using the reflection to try and spot anybody following.

  There—he picked up the shadow of a person across the street, moving close to the side of a decrepit brick building.

  He turned, ready for the confrontation, but the shadowy figure slipped down the alley that ran parallel to his office building. The streetlight on the corner had burned out, so the street was dark. Thane reached into his bag and tore open the pack of razor blades, then stomped on the plastic casing and picked up one of the blades, placing it between his first and second knuckle as he formed a fist. He crossed the street.

  He kept close to the building until he reached the alleyway, paused, then stepped forward quickly, his fist holding the razor at chest-level. But there was no one there. He couldn’t see very far into the alley and didn’t hear any movement. The fire escape on the building opposite his was pulled down, but the one attached to his building was a good eight feet off the ground, impossible to reach from the outside.

  He took a couple of steps into the alley, then stopped and listened again. The alley was nothing but shadows and smells, barely distinguishable from the brick buildings. A memory struck him like a blast of wind, of an alley very much like this one:

  The alley where he’d found Lauren’s body all those years ago.

  He retrieved his bag, entered his building, and walked up the three flights of stairs and down the hall toward his office. It was probably just a bum—and anyway, there was no force on earth that would make him walk down an alley like that ever again. Especially no
t tonight. Inside, the office building was dark; most everyone renting there had no interest hanging around after the sun went down. That was one advantage of having been in prison: every other place seemed as safe as Disneyland in comparison.

  Once more, the image of Hannah kneeling next to the unknown man as she screamed at Thane wrenched its way back into his mind. He knew on an intellectual level that Hannah must have dated other men while he was inside. Emotionally, however, he could only imagine Hannah with him.

  At least until a couple of hours ago.

  He unlocked his office door and slipped inside, locking it behind him. He placed his ear against the door, but didn’t hear any noises in the hall. He turned on the light in the front room, then walked into his office. He reached down to turn on his desk lamp when he suddenly stopped. He then walked over and stood to the side of his office window, peering through the Venetian blinds at the building across the alley, the roof of which was directly across from his office window. He didn’t detect any movement, but that didn’t mean anything. The darkness could hide anything.

  He leaned back against the wall, trying to steady his nerves. He wasn’t the type to jump at shadows, but he also knew from experience how dangerous shadows could be. He leaned down and unplugged his desk lamp from the outlet on the wall, then walked over and flipped the switch to the lamp. Going back to the outlet, he crouched low against the wall and plugged the lamp cord back into the electrical socket, bathing the room in light once more.

  Three blasts from a shotgun rang out.

  The window exploded inward, showering Thane with shards of glass that fell like sleet. The room plunged into shadow—one of the blasts tore apart the lamp. Thane raised his hands to cover his face, and they came back bloody. He swept his gaze around the room: the wall to either side of the window had busted clean through, and the shelves behind the desk had absorbed a lot of buckshot, as did the back of his desk chair.

  He pressed up against the wall. After a couple of minutes, he heard an engine turning over down the block, and he peered hesitantly out the corner of the window, feeling secure now that the office was dark once more. He studied the rooftop across the alley, but whoever had been there was long gone. He then looked down toward the street, where the only movement was an old pick-up truck driving away from his building.

  Thane slid back down to the floor, leaning against the wall and ignoring his bleeding hand. The assassin was gone for the night, but they’d be back once Thane reappeared in court, alive. He knew he wouldn’t be reporting this to the police, not only to avoid even more publicity, but because he was going to handle it his way—and his way didn’t include the police. He figured the odds were against anyone else in this neighborhood reporting the incident as well; it wasn’t the sort of area that sought police involvement.

  The wheezing AC unit had never done much to help cool his office, so there was no way it would be able to cough up any sort of air flow to offset the heat now flooding in through the shattered window. He also knew that sleeping on his office sofa was going to be like sleeping on a pile of gravel, but all things considered, his comfort was the least of his concerns right now. Just the same, he hoped the expired bottle of aspirin still had at least a little of its medicinal power left.

  Thane managed to claim a couple hours of sleep despite the lumps in the sofa. The sound of the entryway door opening woke him, but he didn’t move until he heard careful footsteps outside his door, at which point he grabbed the baseball bat next to him. He rose and silently maneuvered over to the side of the door, bat raised and ready.

  His office door opened far more deliberately than normal, as if someone were trying to sneak up on him, but he lowered his weapon when he saw the bright pink nail polish on the hands that carried two cups of coffee.

  Kristin froze when she spotted the bat.

  “Whoa, Trigger. Maybe I should have brought you decaf.” She extended one of the cups to him. “No need to be so jumpy.” Then she noticed the remains of the window and the debris strewn across the office floor. “On the other hand, maybe there is. What the hell happened here?”

  Thane stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon. “Somebody took a shot at me.”

  “Oh my God! Are you kidding me? Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I seem to have an enemy.”

  Kristin conducted another quick visual survey of the damage. “Ya think?” She turned back toward Thane. “Are you hurt? Oh my God—you have blood on your neck.”

  “I’m fine. Just some pieces of glass. It’s from my hands.”

  “Let me look.” She stood in front of him, lifting his chin with one hand then licking her napkin and running it lightly across the small streak of dried blood to wipe it off.

  “I always hated when my mom did that,” he said.

  “You used to get shot at as a child, too?” Once the blood was off, she ran her index finger along the side of his neck, feeling for shards of glass. “This was not how I was expecting to start my morning.”

  “Look, I’m fine.” Thane replaced the back-sofa cushions where they belonged, then sat down. He took a long drink of coffee, the aroma counterbalancing the gas fumes and garbage smells wafting in from the alley below.

  Kristin approached his desk, eyeing his gym bag. “You spend the night here?”

  “That’s a whole ‘nother story.”

  She ran her hand along the back of his desk chair, moving her fingers across the pellet holes as if she were reading Braille. His desk and the books on the shelf looked as though they had been attacked by burrowing insects.

  “Your life certainly has no shortage of drama,” she said. He ignored the comment, continuing to focus on the coffee, so she walked around to the front of the desk, brushed away the remains of the demolished lamp with a book that was also filled with buckshot, and hopped up on the edge of it.

  “You want to hear something interesting?” she asked. “I mean, good interesting, not someone-shot-my-office-all-to-hell interesting?” Thane looked up at her and simply stared, tired, so she continued. “You know I’ve been trying to get a copy of Gruber’s computer disks, right? I was getting to the point where I was thinking I was going to have to sue their asses for withholding evidence, but then I started dealing with this young officer who I think kind of has the hots for me, so I implied––only implied––that if he gave me the information, I might––only might––consider going out with him. Once he heard that, suddenly he was—”

  “Kristin, I didn’t have the best of nights. Any chance we can just jump to the point where it gets interesting?”

  She tilted her head down and lifted her eyes as if she were looking over a pair of invisible reading glasses. “I think I like you better when you haven’t been shot at. But OK, I got a copy of the disks, and most of them contain notes about cases he’s worked on.”

  “Like police reports?”

  “Sort of. More like a journal—more informal than a police report, although nothing especially revealing. Just general notes from over the years. Reads sort of like something you could get out of a newspaper, for the most part. It was like he was making notes on crimes he’s worked, maybe in case he got called to testify on any of them, or maybe for his memoirs.”

  “I’m not sure that rises to the level of interesting.”

  “Then how about the fact that the missing disk covered the time period August through September, 2014?” Thane looked up at her as if she’d just slapped him. “Ah,” Kristin said, “I seem to have your attention.”

  Thane rose slowly. “Lauren McCoy was killed in August of 2014.” Kristin did, indeed, have his attention. All roads that he now traveled emanated from that night in the alley. “I want you to go through Gruber’s phone records again for calls he made. Start four weeks before he was killed, although we might have to go back further than that. I want a list of names and businesses he called during that time.
That something you can do?”

  “Sure, no problem. You looking for anything in particular?”

  Thane shook his head. “I’m hoping we’ll know it when we see it.”

  The phone rang, despite sporting several holes in one side of it. Thane walked over to answer it just as Gideon entered, stopping in the doorway as he took in all the destruction.

  “You two been scuffling?”

  “Somebody took a shot at him,” Kristin said.

  “Took more than one, from the look of things.”

  Gideon looked out the glassless window at the building across the alley. As Gideon surveyed the office, Thane grabbed a pen and started writing on the back of a manila folder.“When?” Thane said into the phone. He jotted down a time. “What’d they find?” He started writing then stopped, dropping his head toward his chest for a moment, then regaining his composure. “Please email the report over to me.”

  He hung up the phone and looked over at his colleagues, both of whom were expecting the next piece of bad news: he didn’t disappoint them.

  “That was Detective Struthers. They recovered the stolen goods from Skunk’s apartment building. Hidden in the drop ceiling in the hallway right outside his front door.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Gideon shook his head and spit out of the broken window. “Skunk always was a dumb shit.”

  Kristin kicked the leg of the desk and flopped down onto the sofa. “Son of a bitch. I never even got interviewed on TV.”

  Gideon smirked from behind her. “Yeah, now you’ll just be another law grad newbie.”

  Kristin whirled. “Hey, I’m not just another anything.”

  “I know it doesn’t look good,” Thane said.

  “Doesn’t look good?” Kristin parroted. “What planet are you from?”

  “This just confirms my suspicions: somebody’s framing Skunk. This is all too convenient.”