Sawyer hadn’t seemed happy with the division of labor, but making him happy wasn’t her prime objective at the moment. Finding out what the hell was going on had taken center stage.
“Yes, I did,” she replied, studying the young woman before her. Mariel still looked harmless. Was there some mistake? “You dropped it in the parking lot.”
Mariel spread her hand over her chest, sighing dramatically. “You saved my life,” she declared, reaching for the cell.
Janelle moved the object just out of reach. “Maybe not. What are you doing with Charlie Wentworth’s phone number on your cell?”
She could have sworn Mariel paled just a little. “Who?”
“Oh please, don’t insult my intelligence. You’re not dumb, Mariel. You know who Charlie Wentworth is. Especially since Woods handed you my chair.” She’d felt a pang when she’d heard that the A.D.A. had given her position at the prosecution table to Mariel.
Mariel immediately defended herself. “You withdrew from the case.”
“And so should you.”
“Why?” she asked nervously.
It was an act, Janelle thought. All of it. The shy looks, the submissive attitude, all an act. Her eyes narrowed. “Because you’ve been keeping Wentworth apprised of everything that’s been going on here regarding Anthony Wayne’s case.”
The deer-in-the-headlights expression receded. Mariel began straightening the papers on her desk. Her laugh was forced. “Why would I do something like that?”
Leaning over her desk, Janelle put her hand down on the folders Mariel was tidying, forcing the woman to look at her. “You tell me.”
Mariel’s voice stopped quivering. “The only thing I’m doing is telling Stephen that you’ve lost your mind.” She began to leave, but Janelle put her hand on her shoulder, stopping her. She shrugged it off. “You need some time off to get back to your A game, Janelle.”
“While you tamper with evidence and get Anthony Wayne convicted for something he didn’t do for some reason I can’t fathom yet? I don’t think so.”
A flash of anger flared in Mariel’s deep brown eyes. “You’re making a mistake, Janelle.”
“You’re the one who made a mistake,” Janelle corrected. “But I’m going to Woods with this.” Janelle held up the cell phone. “Next time you try to put one over on someone, remember to get a disposable cell phone.”
With that, Janelle spun on her heel and was about to walk out. But she never made it out the door because Mariel blocked her way. The weapon in the other woman’s hand was pointed straight at Janelle’s stomach.
“Where did you get that?” Janelle asked.
“I have my ways,” Mariel replied smugly. “And I don’t know about the phone being disposable, but now you’re going to have to be.” Mariel shook her head, her dark hair shimmying around her face. “I wish you’d kept out of it, Janelle.” There was a note of genuine regret in her voice. “I liked you.”
Janelle needed to keep the woman talking until someone came in. Or until Mariel came to her senses. “No need to use past tense, Mariel. I’m still here.”
“Not for long.” Her eyes trained on Janelle, Mariel felt around along the back of her chair until she found her purse. “We’re going to go to lunch together. And then only one of us is coming back.”
Her hands raised slightly and, eyeing the weapon warily, Janelle still made no move to leave the office. “I already went out to lunch.”
“You’ll go out again,” Mariel instructed, each word tersely uttered. “Now move.”
The next second, there was a low pop and the gun flew out of Mariel’s hand. With a stunned cry, Mariel pulled her hand away and sank to the floor. On her knees, she was rocking.
All of this took less than a second. Before Janelle could swing around to see what was going on behind her, Sawyer was in the room. Drawn service revolver in one hand, he grabbed her shoulder with the other.
“You okay?”
Was that tenderness? Concern? No, she was probably hallucinating. Numbly, Janelle nodded. “Yeah.”
People began moving toward them down the hall. Mariel was still on her knees, still sobbing.
Releasing her shoulder, Sawyer backpedaled as he shook his head. “The minute I take my eyes off you…” He didn’t bother finishing. Bending over, he picked up the weapon that Mariel had dropped. He was still talking to Janelle. “Don’t you know that cowards are dangerous if you corner them?”
“I must have skipped that chapter,” Janelle bit off. And then she sobered. That had been a miscalculation on her part. Her father would have her head—if he found out. “I thought I could handle her.”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped. “Our forefathers said it best— Guns are great equalizers.”
“I didn’t know she’d have one.” Janelle pressed her lips together. She couldn’t argue with him if he was right. And he had probably just saved her life. “Thanks.”
Sawyer shrugged carelessly. As if his heart wasn’t still doing double-time. As if everything hadn’t suddenly frozen when he’d seen the short brunette pointing her gun at Janelle. He’d gotten up here as fast as he could, but when he’d seen the gun, he’d been afraid that it was already too late.
“Don’t mention it.”
“He made me do it,” Mariel cried, clawing at the side of the desk for support as she tried to gain her feet. Standing, she swayed. “Wentworth. He said he’d kill my whole family if I didn’t do what he wanted.”
Sawyer regarded her coldly. One quick background check based on a hunch had laid it all out for him. “Did he also ‘make’ you take the money that put you through law school?”
Mariel’s mouth dropped open as she stared at him, dumbfounded. He knew he’d hit a bull’s-eye. The woman had probably thought no one would ever find out or make the connection. The arrogance of the criminal mind never ceased to amaze him.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Janelle cried, grabbing his shoulder as people began to push their way into the room, firing questions that she tuned out. “How did you know that?”
Sawyer didn’t get a chance to answer. Woods was pushing his way through the crowd and into the office. He looked at the bleeding assistant, then at the gun in Sawyer’s hand.
“What the hell is going on here?” Woods demanded, looking from Sawyer to Mariel to Janelle.
“We found your mole,” she replied simply.
Mariel began to protest. Sawyer looked at her darkly. “You’ll have your turn.” The woman whimpered, but stopped talking.
Woods was completely stupefied. The information refused to process. “Mariel?”
Janelle nodded and produced Mariel’s cell phone for Woods. “She’s been making calls to Charlie Wentworth.”
“Wentworth?” Woods echoed, confused. “But it’s Wayne’s son who’s on trial—”
“We got caught in the middle of a power play, sir,” Janelle explained. “Since Wayne looked like a shoo-in to succeed Salvatore Perelli when the old man retired or died, Wentworth threatened Wayne, telling him to back off and to toe the line. When Wayne told him where to go, Wentworth played hardball, striking Wayne in his only vulnerable place—his son. The drugs were planted to frame Tony.”
The news caught the other members of the D.A.’s office by surprise. Voices rose as speculations were traded. Woods looked at Janelle skeptically. “And you know this how?”
Sawyer interrupted, taking the ball. “There were no fingerprints on the nickel bags we found in Junior’s apartment. Except for one partial thumbprint.” He turned to look at Mariel. “All government workers are fingerprinted. The print was yours.”
It still didn’t make any sense to her. “But why?” Janelle asked. “Why would you do something like that? What did he offer you?”
Sawyer didn’t bother letting the woman make up excuses. He answered Janelle himself. “Wentworth’s known Mariel since she was a baby,” he told her. “She’s his cousin’s kid, from his old neighborhood. He took a special interest in
her, sent her to law school and made her his eyes and ears in the D.A.’s office. Damn clever if you ask me.” He could admire a man’s technique and still loathe the man. “Lucky for us he got so impatient.”
“You have no proof!” Mariel spat haughtily. Before their eyes, she transformed from a meek, agreeable assistant to a brazen young woman accustomed to getting her way. Accustomed to being privy to the machinations at the top. In his own fashion, Wentworth had doted on her. “This is all just desperate conjecture.”
“If you want desperate,” Janelle countered, “look into a mirror. And we have plenty of proof.” She smiled and pointed to the cell phone. “In case you’ve forgotten how it works, we can subpoena phone records. Go back for years,” she added, twisting the knife.
Mariel viciously cursed Janelle’s parentage, then spit on her.
“Get her out of my sight,” Woods ordered. “Someone call the jail and get a judge. I want the Wayne kid out before nightfall.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, then ran it through his chestnut hair. “This is going to be embarrassing enough to deal with as it is.” Woods shook his head, anticipating the future. “They’ll probably slap the city with a lawsuit for wrongful arrest,” he moaned.
Sawyer looked at Janelle. She thought she saw something akin to confidence in his eyes as he regarded her. “I think Cavanaugh can handle it so that doesn’t happen.”
Woods brightened ever so slightly. A light had appeared in the dark. “That’s right, you have Wayne’s ear, don’t you?”
“More like he has—had—mine, sir,” she corrected, thinking of the initial phone call. Woods’s brow furrowed deeply. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
Woods nodded. “You do that, Janelle,” the A.D.A. instructed, his voice both firm and weary at the same time. “You do that.”
Two policemen approached, responding to a call placed by Woods’s secretary. Mariel shrank back, but any escape was severely blocked. She looked at Woods, a frantic light in her eyes.
“You can’t take me to jail,” she cried, all her arrogance and bravado drained out of her.
Janelle smiled. “Wanna watch us?”
As the policeman snapped handcuffs on her, one of them beginning to recite the familiar words every suspect heard when taken into custody, Mariel jerked back. She almost flung herself in front of Sawyer. “I want immunity,” she begged. “I want my family to be placed in protective custody.”
“In exchange for?” Janelle asked before Woods could find his tongue.
Mariel took a deep breath. This time, Janelle believed that the nervous look on the woman’s face was genuine. She was about to take a fateful step. Once she did, there would be no turning back. No return to the way things were before.
“A lot of inside information.”
Sawyer regarded the woman for a long moment before his eyes shifted over toward Woods. “I think you might have found yourself a legitimate informant this time,” he told the A.D.A.
Janelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Woods look so pleased.
Chapter 16
What remained of the afternoon moved at the clip of a commercial freight train making up for lost time. There was a tonnage of papers to file, a judge to coerce and a mountain to move. The wheels of justice turned slowly, but not this time.
Getting someone at the D.A.’s to cover for her in court, Janelle had spent the better part of the afternoon taking Mariel’s statement. They wanted it fresh, before anyone could get to Mariel or she changed her mind. Janelle was far from finished when Woods had her pulled and replaced by one of the other assistants. She was stunned until she heard the reason why.
The moment the A.D.A received the green light on the paperwork, Woods chose Janelle to inform Anthony Wayne that he was free to go.
She knew Woods saw it as a reward for her part in finding the leak and preventing the D.A.’s office from suffering any further embarrassment. Operating under the assumption that everyone had his sense of values, Woods felt that she would be thrilled at being the bearer of good news as well as possibly snagging the spotlight.
But the spotlight had never meant very much to her. In addition, as she got into her car and drove the short distance to the local holding cell where Tony Wayne had been for the last two months, Janelle wasn’t sure she could face the crime lieutenant’s son now that she was aware of her connection to him.
Still, she couldn’t exactly refuse without having a damn good reason.
Her conception had been an accident, she reminded herself. One that Marco Wayne would have easily brushed aside if that had been her mother’s choice. He was only her father in the most technical sense. She might share DNA with him and his offspring, but that didn’t make Tony her brother. Time, love and life did that.
She had three brothers. She wasn’t looking for more. Now if only her stomach could understand that.
Arriving at the police department, a building she had walked into so many times she couldn’t possibly begin to count, she felt nervous for the first time in her life. She doubted that Marco had told Tony about his affair with her mother. That put her one up on the younger Wayne.
As it should be.
Taking in several deep breaths, she put her hand out in front of her. It was steady.
Okay, here we go.
She hurried into the building and hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew.
But she did.
Sawyer, who had left her shortly after coming to her rescue, seemed to materialize out of nowhere and fell into step with her as she went to the room reserved for defense attorneys and their clients.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Damn, just what she needed, to have her pulse rate go up another few notches. She’d be lucky if she made it through today intact.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, holding the door open for her, “this is the police department building.”
She made a right turn down the corridor that led to the very back of the building and the holding cells. “I know what it is,” she retorted, “but what are you doing here?” She waved her hand around at the specific area.
The soft hint of a smile shot right through her. “Didn’t think I’d let you go in here alone, did you?”
Did he know? she wondered. Did he suspect how nervous she was about this meeting? How had he gotten into her head so easily?
“He’s not dangerous,” she pointed out.
“Didn’t say he was,” Sawyer said, taking hold of her arm.
Reflexes and the independent streak that she had nurtured ever since she was old enough to dress herself would have had her pulling her arm away. But reflexes were trumped by inherent instincts. Janelle left her arm where it was, allowing Sawyer to guide her into the small conference room.
Along with his lawyer, Anthony Wayne was brought in less than two minutes later. Janelle sat up even straighter in her chair. The younger man looked nothing like his father. Thin-boned and slight, she could only assume that the man she had seen only once before, at his arraignment, took after his mother.
As she took after hers, she thought.
Edward Parnell, who took the chair beside Tony, was as sharp as they came. He was also, like the custom-made suits he wore, the best that money could buy.
“You have news for us?” Parnell directed his inquiry to Janelle, his body language indicating that he was oblivious to the police detective with her.
Rather than address the attorney, Janelle looked at her half brother, wondering if anyone was ever going to tell him of their connection. She sincerely hoped not. Life was complicated enough as it was without her having to deal with that.
She folded her hands before her. He’s a kid and he’s scared. Suddenly, she was glad she was the one bringing him this news. “New evidence has recently come to the attention of the district attorney’s office. You were framed, Mr. Wayne, and now you’re free to go.”
He stared at her, as if afraid to believe what he was hearing. His voice wa
s almost reedy and nearly broke as he asked, “Just like that?”
She nodded. “Assistant D.A. Woods rushed through the paperwork personally. Judge Winterset signed off on it.” She smiled at Tony, feeling compassionate stirrings despite everything she’d told herself just prior to walking into the room. “Everything’s in order. As of three o’clock this afternoon, all charges against you were dropped.” She added the necessary coda. “You have the sincerest apologies of the city of Aurora.”
“Not good enough,” Parnell said.
She’d expected nothing less from the attorney. Neither did Woods. She knew the man was preparing for battle.
“You’ll have to take that up with the D.A.’s office,” she told him as she rose from the table. She was aware of Sawyer rising as well. The police detective had surprised her with his silence. Janelle hooked her purse straps on her shoulder and pushed her chair in. “I’m just the messenger.”
Very obviously shaky, Tony Wayne rose to his feet as well. “Miss—”
“Cavanaugh,” she told him, the coolness leaving her voice. “Janelle Cavanaugh.”
“Miss Cavanaugh,” Tony repeated, then hesitated before he asked, “do I know you?”
She wondered about that old saying, Blood will out, and if it actually meant anything. “We met at your arraignment.”
But Tony shook his head. “Besides that.”
Yes, I’m your sister. Your half sister, but there’s no way for you to know that. So she smiled and shook her head as well. “No.”
He looked reluctant to accept that as his final answer. “Funny, I had this feeling…”
Her smile was compassionate as it widened. Janelle crossed back for a moment and made physical contact, squeezing his hand. “That’s probably just the heady smell of freedom getting to you. Don’t do anything to lose it,” she counseled. With that, she turned away and headed toward the outer door.
Cavanaugh Watch Page 17