Hand of Justice (Mara Brent Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Robin James

  “Then two whites, a couple reds. How do you feel about yellow?”

  Will shook his head. “I don’t want to look like a bumblebee.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. This was the hard part. During all of our FaceTime calls, Jason had been close by. I knew Will had been doing Zoom calls with his therapist, but I wanted to gauge how he really liked D.C. I didn’t want to do or say anything that made my son feel like I was spying on his dad.

  Once he had a good eight days’ worth of new clothes, we headed to the long checkout line. It seemed everyone in Waynetown waited until the last minute to school shop along with us. I bit my lip and hoped Will wouldn’t lose it. Waiting in lines was a struggle point for him.

  “What was your favorite part about your summer?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He counted people. He looked at their carts.

  “We have time,” I said. “We’ll hit a drive-thru on the way home. You pick.”

  “I don’t really like the subway,” he said. “Not after the first couple of times. So Dad had a man come and pick us up. His office is really big. Everybody’s in a hurry.”

  “I expect they are,” I said.

  “There’s a really good hamburger place two blocks from Dad’s townhouse. He said we could go there three times a week. But we only went four times total. He doesn’t like routines. The people with the cameras can keep track of you that way.”

  “What people with the cameras?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know. The ones who want to know who Dad goes out with.”

  I felt a tingle of fear crawling up my spine. I wasn’t jealous. Jason could do or date whoever he damn well pleased. He was young. Great-looking. A freshman congressman dubbed an up-and-comer within the party. Newly single. I’d read the D.C. gossip sites, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Jason’s romantic life made news. I just didn’t want Will in the center of that.

  “It’s taking them two minutes and fourteen seconds on average to get through people,” Will said. “There are seven people ahead of us.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  Will stomped his foot. “Price check.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “You’re sure Michael E. Harvey acted alone?” Will asked, startling me.

  A few of the people in line around us heard him. Most looked away politely.

  “Not here, buddy,” I whispered to my son. “Not a good idea to talk about that in public.”

  Will considered my words. I could see his wheels turning. He was having trouble letting go of the thread he’d just pulled at.

  The line moved up. Will fidgeted, pulling at his collar.

  “Yes,” I whispered to him. “He acted alone. Don’t worry.”

  “I thought that was her!” Another customer ahead of us stared at me. Middle aged, with wisps of gray hair flying around her loose bun. She wore a pink sweatshirt and ripped jeans.

  My Mama Bear instincts kicked in and I stepped in front of my son. She left her place in line with fury in her eyes.

  “That boy’s innocent,” she shouted. “You hear me? Those people think they can buy anything they want now.”

  “Ma’am,” I said. “I’m with my son today. And I can’t comment on an active case. Will you please take your place in line?”

  I looked frantically for store security as she advanced on me. She grabbed my cart and pushed it toward me. The woman seemed out of her damn mind. Behind her, a man, her companion, took his nose out of his phone and saw what she was doing.

  “Lou Anne,” he said. Lou Anne didn’t care about him.

  “Please,” I said. “This is inappropriate.”

  “Mara Brent,” she shouted. “That’s who you are. You’re dirty. Your whole office is dirty. Everybody knows it. Now you’re in the pocket of drug dealers, aren’t you?”

  “What?” I said. “I’m gonna need you to step back and get out of my face.”

  “Mom?” Will said.

  A crowd formed. I heard whispers. Name-calling. I wasn’t entirely sure if they were meant for me or Lou Anne.

  “You’ll go to hell,” she said. “Know that. You railroad that boy, that’s where you’re headed.”

  Will put his hands over his ears. White-hot rage poured through me.

  I straightened my back. “Turn around,” I said through gritted teeth. “You take another step toward me or my kid, you’ll regret it, Lou Anne. I’m gonna do my job. And you’re going to get a hold of yourself.”

  Her eyes went big. I think she saw something in mine that let her know I wasn’t kidding. She froze, but didn’t get out of my way. Her husband put a hand on her. She still didn’t move.

  “What the heck is wrong with you?” I asked.

  She blinked. Her husband prevailed and got her to turn away.

  “Mom,” Will said. “They’re taking four minutes now.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We can get this stuff online. It’ll be here in two days. You’ve got enough for the first day of school.”

  Will smiled. He let me take him by the hand. Still shaking with rage, I led my son away from the checkout line lunatic and safely back to the car.

  20

  Two weeks after my incident at the department store, someone threw a brick through Luke Sutter’s house. A few weeks after that, someone called a bomb threat into the Verde store. Sheriff Clancy assigned me a bodyguard. Now, Deputy Molly Remick followed me to and from work every day. She was a quiet presence. With just two years with the department, I hoped she didn’t feel like this was a demotion. A glorified babysitting job. I would have declined the protection, but Will caught wind of it and endorsed the idea. Clancy also assigned an extra liaison officer at Will’s school for good measure.

  “You okay?” Kenya caught me staring at the white boards in the conference room.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just want to go over everything one more time, you know?”

  Smiling, she stepped in. It was Friday. The third one in November. Three days from now, Mickey Harvey’s trial would start.

  Kenya stood beside me, staring at the board we’d put up detailing the timeline. We had one of the interns superimpose Mickey Harvey’s cell phone tracking data over it. A perfect match. A wide-open window. He had time to commit these murders three times over before he left Skylar’s property that morning.

  “Everyone buttoned up?” Kenya asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m starting with Sam.”

  “Good call,” she said. “It’s all there with him. You wanna take bets whether Weaver will put Mickey on the stand?”

  “You know,” I said. “I’ve been turning that one over in my mind. On paper, he can only hurt himself. He lied to the cops. Pure and simple. His dad’s running around town making it worse for him. Did you hear he gave a quote to the Columbus Dispatch? About the bomb threat to Verde?”

  “I did indeed,” she said. “Basically said the Sutters are the scourge of Waynetown and they got what was coming to them.”

  “I don’t get why Weaver hasn’t put a lid on him,” I said.

  “Maybe she can’t,” Kenya offered. “I’ve known Ed long enough to tell you he does what he wants when he wants. Classic narcissist. It’s sick, but he likes the attention his son’s murder trial is giving him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s angling for a book deal or something when all this is over. No matter how it turns out.”

  My jaw dropped. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “I am not,” she said. “Ed’s always looking for a way to advance his own interests.”

  “Now you almost make me feel sorry for Mickey. Like he never had a chance growing up with Ed for an old man,” I said.

  “I got a call from a true crime blogger,” she said. “Guy by the name of Stewart Cullen. Ring a bell?”

  It did, but I couldn’t recall why. Kenya saw my blank expression.

  “He hit gold with a podcast he does called Small-Town Killers. He’s working on season two
and thinks the Sutter Seven fits the bill.”

  “Great,” I said. “And he’s asking you for an interview?”

  “For a statement, yes.”

  “We’re on the eve of trial? What in the heck do these people think they’re going to get?”

  “Well, Elise Weaver,” she said.

  I shook my head as if I could clear it and Kenya’s words would make more sense.

  “Don’t tell me she’s cooperating with this guy,” I said. “Kenya, that’s not ethical. She’s in the middle of representing Mickey. He’s facing the death penalty. How on earth is that ethical?”

  “Well, this Cullen kid is an investigative journalist. I’m not worried, believe me. But he’s been stirring up people around town. I think his plan is to record his podcast in real time during the trial. I’m only telling you in case he reaches out to you. His tactic is a little in your face.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said. “I just can’t believe Professor Weaver is risking an ethical violation by cooperating with this kid right now.”

  “It’s the world we live in,” she said. “Just don’t let it throw you. And stay off the internet.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s Will. He knows too much about this case from what he’s seen online. I don’t want him stumbling onto this podcast. For a while there, he was really afraid. He keeps asking me if I’m sure Mickey acted alone.”

  “Poor kid. This one has spooked a lot of people, Mara. And everyone’s got an opinion.”

  “Half the town thinks the Sutters deserved to die,” I said. “I just hope things can get back to normal after all of this.”

  “They will,” she said. We stood shoulder to shoulder now, staring at the faces of the Sutter Seven. Kevin Sutter. Chris and Jenny Sutter. Skylar. Ben Watson. Patty Sutter. Mark O'Brien.

  Justice for them was in my hands now. I felt a hollow pit in my stomach as I feared the very fabric of the town I loved depended on how well I could do my job for them.

  21

  Six men. Six women. Four of them over seventy. Three of them under thirty. Five of them between forty-five and fifty-five. Three alternates.

  It took most of the first day of trial to weed through the pool of jurors with family connections to either the Sutter or Harvey families. I had expected Elise to move for a change of venue early on. She never did.

  So here, nearly six months to the day after five members of the Sutter family and two of their friends were gunned down in their homes, a jury of Mickey Harvey’s peers sat ready to decide his fate.

  I kept things simple during my opening statements, focusing on explaining who the victims were. What our community had lost that day. I said their names as a mantra. This was complicated. There were so many. I wanted the jury to have them memorized by the time my fifteen-minute opening was done.

  “In the first house farthest south,” I said, “Jenny Sutter, wife, mother, and grandmother. Chris Sutter, father, husband, grandfather, youngest son of Chet. Their daughter, Skylar Sutter, studying to become a respiratory therapist. Ben Watson, her best friend. A medical student. In the second house to the east. Kevin Sutter, Lou and Georgette Sutter’s only grandson. He carried on the tradition of running the family bait shop as long as he could. Then, in the third house higher up the hill to the west, Patty Sutter, C.J. Sutter’s widow. A loving mother to her only daughter, Dev. Finally, Mark O’Brien, the man she’d started to rebuild her life with, gunned down as the two of them slept.”

  Then, I focused on the web of lies Mickey Harvey spun from the moment they discovered the bodies.

  Elise Weaver was a master of body language. She pulled faces, leaned over for hushed whispers to her client. Waited patiently as I gave the jurors a preview of what they would hear over the next two weeks.

  “Is he drugged?” Hojo wrote to me as I took my seat and waited for Elise to deliver her opening statement.

  It was a good question. Elise had transformed Mickey Harvey. Gone was the greasy-headed, smarmy-looking kid who’d waltzed into Sam Cruz’s interview room all those months ago. In his place sat a well-groomed young man in a freshly pressed gray suit and red tie. He’d shorn his slicked-back hair for a close-cropped style that made him look ready to report to a military recruiter, not a courtroom. He sat straight, quiet, stoic as Elise introduced herself to the jury.

  “You may want to convict Mickey Harvey,” she said. “Of something, anyway. He’s made grave mistakes in his life. He’s lied. Cheated. If Skylar Sutter was your daughter, maybe you wouldn’t have wanted Mickey to be her boyfriend either. But as you’ll hear, none of those things make him a murderer. The prosecution’s case is nothing more than a good story. It won’t hold up to the rigors of their burden of proof. Reasonable doubt. That’s the phrase to remember. Not beyond any doubt. Not the absence of doubt. You can have that. Reasonable doubt will present itself to you in abundance. That’s a promise.”

  She was neat. Efficient. Comfortable in her role. The cadence of Elise Weaver’s voice brought me back to a dozen years ago when I heard it every day in a lecture hall. Only today, she wasn’t lecturing. She was starting a conversation. She did it smoothly.

  “They like her,” Hojo wrote. It was true. Every juror kept their eyes on Elise as she leaned on the lectern, only stepping out from behind it once.

  “They’ve only scratched the surface,” she said. “They’ll only bring you superficial evidence of Mickey’s alleged role in this tragedy. It will crumble before your eyes. That, too, is a promise,” she said. She turned at the last sentence and I knew her words were meant as much for me.

  Weaver the Cleaver had thrown her gauntlet. Now, she expected me to run.

  Judge Terrence Denholm sat unimpressed behind the bench. The joke was he and Morgan Freeman were separated at birth. He had the same peppery hair and deep lines around his mouth as his doppelganger. You expected his voice to have the same rich timbre. Instead, Judge Denholm’s voice had a nasally twang that could grate after a while.

  I liked him. A judge’s judge, he didn’t grandstand. He didn’t show contempt for the lawyers practicing in front of him as some did.

  When Elise walked back to the defense table, Denholm looked at the clock on the wall, then at me. Three fifteen.

  “I want to go until four thirty today,” the judge said. “You ready to call your first witness, Ms. Brent?”

  “I am,” I said. “Your Honor, the state calls Detective Sam Cruz to the stand.”

  Sam had waited in the back of the courtroom. He wore a suit I’d not seen him in before. Black with a faint gray pinstripe. A blue tie he straightened as he walked past the bailiff and raised his hand to be sworn in.

  “Detective,” I said. “Will you please tell the jury your role in the Sutter murders?”

  “I am the lead detective,” he said. “It’s my case.”

  I took Sam through the discovery of the bodies. One by one, we entered the crime scene photos into evidence.

  Ben Watson was first. Shot in the back, half in and half out of the sliding glass door leading into Chris and Jenny Sutter’s living room.

  “Mr. Watson was shot at point blank range, no more than fifteen feet from his assailant,” Sam said. “One shot. Right below his left shoulder blade. You’ll see a twelve-foot blood trail leading from the yard into the house.”

  “Why is that significant?” I asked.

  “Well, we think Mr. Watson may have been running away from the killer, Mr. Harvey.”

  I clicked my laptop and pulled up the next crime scene photo. It showed the trail of blood Sam spoke of in greater detail. The blood became thicker as Ben reached the house.

  “Were you able to determine which of the victims was killed first?” I asked.

  “Not definitively, no,” Sam said. “But these victims were killed quickly. Likely within seconds of each other in some cases. No more than minutes in others.”

  “Who was the next victim found?” I asked.

  “Moving in
to the Christopher Sutter house, we found Jenny Sutter. She took a shot in the face. She was found lying against the refrigerator. Unlike Mr. Watson, Mrs. Sutter appears to have died where she was struck. There’s no trail of blood that would indicate she moved under her own power after she was shot.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” I said. We let the photograph of Jenny speak for itself. Her cheekbone was gone. It was easy to imagine the shooter walking right up to her and pulling the trigger. Later, in closing, I would have them envision the last thing Jenny Sutter would have seen. “Who else was found in the Christopher Sutter home?”

  “Christopher Sutter himself, along with their daughter, Skylar.”

  I had a second screen up with the layout of the home displayed. Sam took his pointer and shone it on the small hallway off the kitchen leading to the mudroom and garage.

  “Christopher was found just inside this small hallway. There’s a small blood trail behind him, so we believe he took at least a few steps toward the kitchen before falling. Behind him, Skylar was found half in and half out of the doorway leading to the garage.”

  “Her father was in front of her?” I asked.

  “He was. Since Mr. Watson was shot in the back and all the Sutters in this home were shot from the front, we believe Watson was killed first, then the defendant entered the home and picked off the rest of the Sutters as they came toward him to see what happened.”

  Sam then moved to describe the crime scenes at Patty Sutter’s home. Members of the jury recoiled as I displayed the crime scene photo. You didn’t have to be an expert to see exactly what had happened.

  “Mr. O’Brien was found on his side. His cell phone was knocked off the nightstand beside him. It was found on the ground near his right hand. Mrs. Patricia Sutter was found face down in her own bed. Gunshot wound through the back of her head. We don’t believe she ever woke up.”

  “She never knew what hit her,” I said. Surprisingly, Weaver let me.

  “She was likely asleep when the bullet entered her brain, that’s correct,” Sam said. “But this was a quick, violent death for both of them. No other signs of a struggle anywhere in the home.”