False Justice

by Larry A Winters

  Dax eyed him with open skepticism, but said nothing.

  “You said, ‘for now,’” Warren said. “Is there more?”

  “No. But if Black’s interference continues, then I will have no choice but to escalate this to my friends in the mayor’s office. Make no mistake, Warren. I can cause serious problems for you and your office. And I will.”

  “I thought we already covered the part of the conversation where you throw around empty threats.”

  Dax raised her chin. “I trust you’ll do the right thing.”

  Warren watched her rise from the chair. She stood over him for a moment, again looking with distaste at the documents spread everywhere on his desk. Then she turned away and made her way out of the room. Warren waited until she was gone before letting out a pent-up breath. Then he thought about his next move.

  26

  Vicki Briscoe escorted Jessie back to the room where Leary and Graham were being held. She found them still sitting in their chairs, with Ray Briscoe’s goons hovering at their shoulders.

  Jessie turned to Briscoe. “Can you give us a minute alone, please?”

  Briscoe turned to leave, motioning for the bikers to follow her. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  When the door closed, Leary and Graham shot up from their seats. “Are you okay?” Leary said.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “She agreed to help?” Graham said, her voice laced with disbelief.

  “We worked out an arrangement.”

  “What does that mean?” Leary said.

  “You two need to leave,” Jessie said.

  Leary stared at her. “What about you?”

  “I’m going with Vicki.”

  “Like hell you are. Do you not see how much danger you’ve already put yourself in today? You’re a lawyer, not a cop. You’re not equipped to deal with a person like Vicki Briscoe alone. Emily, back me up here.”

  Graham crossed her arms over her chest. “I trust Jessie to make her own decisions.”

  “Are you serious?” Leary’s voice rose. “Is this because you’re still pissed off at her for trying to help Kelly Lee?”

  Graham seemed to bristle at the accusation. “No, actually, it’s because I have faith in her.”

  “You’re saying I don’t?”

  “I’m saying you have a hero complex. An I’m-a-big-strong-man-protecting-my-woman thing. It’s a little over-the-top, Mark.”

  Leary’s face twisted. “It’s not a complex. It’s common sense!”

  “We’re not going to debate this,” Jessie said, cutting off their argument. “I know what I’m doing. Mark, we’ve been through a lot together. You know I’m not a damsel in distress.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “I’m going back to Philly with Vicki. She’s going to take me on a tour of Kelly’s final days. Hopefully, I’ll find something useful. If I don’t, we have bigger problems.”

  “Why can’t we come with you?” Leary said.

  “Because Vicki doesn’t want you to.”

  “That’s not a red flag for you?”

  “It is, and I’ll be careful.”

  Graham took Leary by the arm. “Mark, let’s go.”

  Leary didn’t look happy about it, but he went. Jessie followed him and Graham outside.

  It was still daytime, but night was coming and the unkempt farmland looked gloomy. Spiderweb returned their weapons, and Leary and Graham climbed into Leary’s car. Jessie felt Leary’s anxious gaze on her. She hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake by not listening to him.

  She watched the car drive toward the main road and listened to the sound of tires crunching gravel. When the car was out of sight, she turned to Briscoe with what she hoped was a confident expression. “You ready to go?”

  Briscoe pointed to a nearby structure. “My car is in the garage over there.” It turned out to be a sleek, black Mercedes. Jessie walked to the passenger side and opened the door as Briscoe took the wheel. The vehicle was as spotlessly clean on the inside as it was on the outside. Briscoe drummed her fingers against the steering wheel.

  “Nice car,” Jessie said.

  “I was a surgeon at a major Philadelphia hospital when I started the lease.” Briscoe’s tone sounded defensive.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Didn’t mean nice car for an unemployed, unlicensed doctor living with her dad?”

  Briscoe’s fingers stopped drumming. She stared at Jessie with an intensity that made Jessie wish Leary and Graham were still with her.

  “No. I didn’t mean that.”

  Briscoe continued to stare. Then her fingers resumed their drumming. She turned away from Jessie and looked out the windshield. “Let’s get going. It’s a long ride back to Philly.”

  Traffic was light, and the ride didn’t actually take that long. When the Philadelphia skyline came into view, Jessie felt some of the tension in her body ease. A sense of safety—probably a false sense, she knew—made her feel less at the mercy of this woman. They entered the city and she saw other cars, pedestrians, signs of normal life.

  Jessie asked Briscoe to retrace the locations she’d seen while stalking Kelly. Their first stop was a small office complex down the street from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City. Briscoe paused in front of the entrance where a plain, white sign was affixed to the brick wall. Reading it, Jessie felt a jolt of adrenaline. “It’s a doctor’s office.”

  Briscoe looked at her with a curious expression. “That’s exciting to you?”

  “Before she died, Kelly told me she consulted a doctor about the Rowland case. At that point in time, she thought it was a medical malpractice claim, and she wanted this doctor’s opinion about whether the Rowlands’ pediatrician had misdiagnosed their son.”

  Briscoe’s lip curled. “So he’s one of those doctors who gets paid to testify against other doctors.”

  “They’re called expert witnesses. I guess there was probably one at your trial.”

  Briscoe shrugged. “The hospital’s insurance company settled, so I never had to listen to the expert in my trial testify in court. I read her report, though.” Briscoe quickly looked away, but not before Jessie glimpsed the pain in her eyes.

  “Kelly never told me her expert witness’s name. She just referred to him as a doctor. I’m pretty sure she said, ‘he.’”

  “The court won’t tell you the guy’s name?”

  She thought of Judge Dax. “The judge hasn’t been very helpful. But even if she wanted to tell me, she probably doesn’t know. The discovery phase of the trial hasn’t started yet, so Kelly wasn’t required to disclose that information to the court.” Kelly Lee’s crash had occurred before the identification of expert witnesses, which would be part of the discovery schedule once Judge Dax set a trial date. Jessie had asked Kelly’s assistant, Cheyenne, but the woman had not known. Without access to Kelly’s own files, and with no expert witness identifications in the pleadings, Jessie and Snyder had no way to know the name of the expert witness who’d found the excessive levels of formaldehyde in the toy. “If Kelly was visiting this doctor days before her death, maybe he was her expert witness. That would be a big help.”

  “Stephen Adkins, M.D.,” Briscoe said, reading the sign.

  A sports car honked and swerved around them. Jessie realized they’d been idling at the curb for a minute, maybe longer. “I’m getting out. Do you want to circle the block? I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”

  “I can find a spot and we can both go in,” Briscoe said.

  “I think it’s better if I do this part alone.”

  Briscoe’s eyes narrowed. “Sitting in the car waiting for you doesn’t sound like a fun time to me.”

  Fun? Jessie felt a stirring of uneasiness. “I never said this would be fun. I said if you help me, I’ll help you.”

  “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  Jessie got out of the Mercedes and hurried inside the building.

  27

  Emily
Graham watched Leary drive. Since starting the engine, he’d been silent, staring straight ahead. She could practically feel the emotional turmoil radiating off of him.

  They drove through a rustic town with Amish shops—furniture, food, a bed-and-breakfast. “Do you think we should stop for shoofly pie?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she added, “You’re the Amish expert, remember?”

  The muscles of his face seemed to bunch up.

  “You’re giving me the silent treatment?” she said. “Mark, I know you’re worried about her. I’m worried about her, too.”

  He continued to stare straight ahead. “If anything happens to her.” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Jessie is a grown woman, a professional. She deals with criminals every day.”

  “Not like this.”

  Silence filled the car. Amish countryside eventually gave way to more twenty-first-century civilization.

  “What are you going to do?” Graham said.

  “Head back to the DA’s Office, try to distract myself with work so I don’t think about the love of my life driving around with a psychopath. Where should I drop you?”

  Graham didn’t want to admit it, but she had the same idea—bury herself in work and try not to think about Jessie being in danger. “The Roundhouse.”

  “You sure? It’s getting late.”

  She tilted her head so she could glance through the windshield at the darkening sky. It didn’t change her mind. “Yes.”

  “You got it.” He drove to police headquarters and stopped the car at the curb. Graham reached for the door handle, then paused and looked back at Leary. “Jessie will be okay.”

  Leary nodded.

  Graham climbed out of his car and headed for the entrance to the Roundhouse. The sky was getting darker by the minute, and she knew the homicide squad room would be quiet. She had some reports to work on—a task she despised, but one she hoped would divert her attention away from Jessie and ease the fluttering in her stomach.

  As she approached the building, a man stepped out of the shadows. Graham stopped short. It was Ross Reid, the AID detective.

  “Buy you a drink?” he said.

  She tried not to look startled. “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “I didn’t. I was at the Roundhouse and saw you as I was walking out.”

  “But now you want to buy me a drink.”

  He let out an impatient sound. “If you have somewhere you need to be—”

  “Actually, I could use a drink,” she said.

  Five minutes later they were sitting side-by-side at a bar. He ordered a tequila and soda and asked what she wanted.

  “Yuengling,” she said, indicating the tap. She wanted to stay sober tonight, in case Jessie needed her, but she didn’t think one beer would hurt. In her current frame of mind, it could only help.

  The bartender, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard, gave them their drinks. “You want to settle up now or run a tab?”

  “Tab,” Reid said.

  “You got it.”

  Reid seemed to wait until the bartender moved on, then brought his glass to his mouth. Ice cubes rattled as he took a long drink.

  “What’s going on?” Graham said. She took a sip from her pint glass. “You look like there’s something you want to say.”

  He laughed. “You could tell? I see why you’re good at your job.”

  “Well?”

  “There is something I’d like to get off my chest.”

  “You're going to tell me again what an arrogant homicide detective I am?”

  “No.” Reid smiled at her, but his expression seemed morose. “And I’m sorry about saying that. You seem like a decent person. A decent cop.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I’m serious. I’m trying to apologize here.”

  Graham offered a smile of her own. “Okay. I know. It’s been a tough day. Apology accepted.”

  He took another long drink of his tequila and soda, and she sensed he was building up the courage to continue. She drank her beer, giving him time.

  “There’s something I didn’t tell you before, when we spoke at the gym,” he said.

  “About Lee’s crash?”

  Reid nodded. “I’ve been … well … not exactly hiding something. Nothing like that. But….”

  Graham put down her glass. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  “You said there was nothing suspicious about Lee’s accident. Was that the truth?”

  “Yes.” He said it without hesitation, but then he added, “Mostly.”

  “Mostly?”

  “It was an unusually bad accident, but not a suspicious one. When a car hits a brick wall at high speed, well….” He waved his glass, which was now empty except for ice cubes. “The results aren’t going to be pretty, you know?”

  “Lee’s car exploded. That’s normal?”

  “Her car didn’t explode. It burned. There’s a difference. You can have a very intense fire in a car wreck. The engine is hot, you’ve got fuel, other fluids. Lots of flammable plastic and foam. All it takes is a sheared fuel line, a puncture in the gas tank, and a spark….” His voice trailed off.

  “You said you didn’t find any evidence of explosives or explosive devices.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And no evidence of tampering with the car.”

  “Correct.”

  She rocked on her stool. “I’m a little confused here, Ross. What didn’t you tell me?”

  He put down his drink. Took a deep breath. “I found a brick in the well under the driver’s seat. It’s probably nothing. Lee’s car collided with a brick wall and did a lot of damage. Her front windshield was destroyed and a brick could have easily tumbled into the car after the impact. But….”

  “But?” She prompted.

  “I looked at the wall during the incident, and at photos of it afterward. There’s no missing brick. Also, the color of the wall and the color of the brick I found in the car don’t match.”

  “Could someone have used the brick to weight down the gas pedal and cause the accident? Force Lee’s car to race headfirst into the building?”

  “Obviously, I’ve been thinking about that. Especially after you visited me at the gym. But it doesn’t fit, right? I mean, it’s not like Kelly Lee’s arms and legs were tied up. If someone put a brick on the pedal, she could have just kicked it off.”

  “What if she was unconscious? Drugged?”

  “It’s possible.” Reid shrugged. “The medical examiner wasn’t able to determine much. Because of the impact and the fire, there wasn’t much left of the body to examine.”

  “You logged the brick?”

  “Of course. But in the end, it didn’t change my conclusion.”

  Graham finished her beer slowly, thinking. “Thank you for telling me this, Ross.”

  “Does it help? You know, with whatever you’re doing?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but it might.” She slid off the stool. “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Wait. You don’t want to stay for another round?”

  “I can’t tonight.” She looked at him, seeing him differently now. “But maybe another time?”

  He smiled. “I’d like that.”

  28

  Mark Leary sat at his desk in the DA’s Office. He lowered his head and rubbed his temples. The hour was still early, but he was dead tired. Emotionally spent. He took a breath and forced his attention to the Philadelphia Inquirer article on his screen.

  It was one of dozens of web pages to which a Google search for Ray Briscoe had led him. His original searches, for Vicki Briscoe and Victoria Briscoe, had not returned any relevant hits, and so far, the daughter’s name had not appeared in any of the articles about her father. Leary supposed this should comfort him, but it did not.

  He had not really spoken to the woman, or even seen her for more than a few minutes. Still, he sensed there was something …
off-balance about her. And even if his instincts were wrong—and they rarely were—Briscoe lived with her crime figure father on property run by a criminal syndicate. She’d admitted to Jessie that she had been stalking Kelly Lee with a desire to hurt her. These were not exactly facts describing a normal human being.

  She was dangerous, and Jessie was alone with her.

  So what was he going to do about it?

  He rubbed his forehead again. What could he do? Possibly he could trace her location by using her mobile phone signal, but she was already chafing at his protectiveness. If he tried to track her location and she found out, that might be the end of their relationship.

  So what? Isn’t her life more important than the relationship?

  Maybe. But if there was another way to help her, to keep her safe, and not lose her at the same time, that would obviously be preferable. He loved her.

  The sound of his cell phone vibrating roused him from his thoughts. He turned and saw Warren Williams’s name appear on the screen. Great. Just what he needed.

  “Listen, Warren. Fire me if you need to. I understand how these things work. But don’t sacrifice Jessie. She’s too valuable for this office—you know I’m right—and she also deserves better from you. She—”

  Warren cleared his throat loudly. “Thanks for your unbiased opinion, but if you don’t mind, I actually have some work for you to do. You know, as an employee of the DA’s Office?”

  Leary glanced at his watch. “Now?”

  “You really want to help Jessie?”

  Leary straightened in his chair. “You know I do.”

  “Then help me. I need your detective skills.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a judge of the court of common pleas, by the name of Cynthia Dax. She’s the judge assigned to the Rowland case that Kelly Lee was working on before her accident.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jessie visited her. Apparently, she didn’t make a good impression. Dax came here and threatened me. She wants action taken against Jessie.”

  “Seriously? Can anything else go wrong?”