Staring at the faded beige finish of the heap, he felt familiar pangs of resentment. He thought about how well so many of his classmates from Georgetown U Law Center were doing these days. Most had taken “Curriculum A” and gone into commercial and corporate law. Where the big bucks were. They’d all sold out. They lined their pockets helping the rich get richer by exploiting the underprivileged.
Not him, though. He was an idealist. He’d gone the “B” route, busted his ass learning from some of the foremost scholars in Critical Legal Studies. And he wound up here, running Class Justice Legal Services.
The breeze was chilly. He put down the briefcase to slip into the jacket.
Yeah, they had lots of money and material things and trophy wives, sure. But legal services had other compensations. Emotional rewards. Moral rewards they would never know. You get to help so many of this rotten society’s victims. People who never have a chance in life. Poor, disadvantaged people and minorities who get screwed by the system—by the same corporations his old fraternity pals now protect.
He thought of all the prisoners that Class Justice Legal Services represented pro bono. Victims of racism and injustice at the hands of the power structure. Treated like society’s refuse and warehoused out of sight. And what were their real crimes, anyway? Being poor or the wrong color or nationality in white, patriarchal, capitalist Amerika.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t rich. But being the champion of social victims earned you prestige. Street cred out in the community and in the media, but lots of respect on the Hill, too, where the progressives got it. Like the call he’d gotten returned yesterday from Congressman Horowitz’s office. The chief of staff said Horowitz would be delighted to lend his name as a reference for his grant proposal to the MacLean Family Foundation.
And ultimately, connections like that brought in whatever money CJLS really needed. Sometimes federal money, but mostly foundation cash. Now, planning next year’s budget, they really needed the MacLean money. The administrator there promised to fast-track his grant proposal if he submitted it by Friday. That was tomorrow. Where the hell did the week go?
He picked up his briefcase and headed for the entrance. Saw his approaching reflection as he reached the glass entrance. To himself, he looked skinny and kinky-haired and nerdy. Sheila told him he looked like a young Alan Dershowitz. Yeah, wish I had his bank balance.
He pulled out his key and was surprised to find the door already unlocked. He knew nobody else would have arrived this early. Goddamned cleaning crew. They always forgot something. Anybody could walk right in.
When he opened the door, he caught a faint, unpleasant smell. Great. Not only do they leave the place wide open, they don’t even clean it right. First thing, he’d call their super and chew him out. What are we paying them for?
He thought of stopping first at the kitchen and putting on some coffee, but he needed to get to that proposal. He crossed the small, shabby reception area to the hallway and headed back toward his office. The smell got worse with every step. Jesus, did the toilet overflow or something?
He pushed open his office door and stopped, startled.
He immediately recognized the client’s face. Tomas Cardenas. Sitting in his chair, behind his desk, nice as you please. Staring back at him arrogantly, holding an open newspaper spread across his chest.
“What the hell?”
But Cardenas was staring slightly to his left. And not reacting.
Then his skin crawled as he realized from the frozen, sleepy expression that the guy was dead.
And he knew what the smell was.
The briefcase fell from his nerveless fingers. His knees went wobbly and his face got warm and he turned and stumbled out into the hallway, hand against his mouth, staggering toward the bathroom and knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time…
TWENTY-TWO
SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND
Saturday, November 15, 1:17 p.m.
The rest of the investigators from the task force had been at the crime scene a while when Cronin and Erskine got there. They badged the uniforms standing outside, ducked under the yellow strand of tape, and went inside the high-rise office building. Another cop in the lobby directed them to the elevator bay and the twentieth floor. More crime-scene tape was strung across one of the elevators, so they took the freight car to the top. Its door opened onto a wide reception area of soft lighting and expensive wood-and-leather furniture.
Cronin stepped outside and looked around. The walls were paneled in polished mahogany and large Impressionist paintings adorned them. The place was crawling with about a dozen CSI. Off to the left, behind a wall of glass, a large conference room was adorned festively with colorful crepe ribbons and balloons. About two dozen well-dressed people, men and women, huddled there in small groups, looking stricken. A couple of the women were crying and being consoled by others.
Marty Abrams, the task force’s lead investigator, was talking to another detective near the reception desk and spotted them. He made a show of looking at his watch.
“Nice of you to join us, ladies,” he called out.
They went over. “Come on, Marty. It’s a long ride from Alexandria,” Cronin said. He glanced back at the other elevator, where three CSI and a photographer worked the scene. “What do we have this time?”
Abrams said, “Even cuter than College Park last month. Or the one in Fairfax last week. We don’t have a positive on the stiff yet, but it looks like a Darone Antoine Wallace, gang-banger from the District, northeast. At least that’s what the newspaper clip on the body says. Looks like our vigilantes whacked him last night, brought him up here this morning.”
Erskine raised his eyebrows. “This morning? You mean in broad daylight?”
“Yeah. Take a look. You’re gonna love this.”
They walked to the elevator and asked the crime-scene investigators to take five. Everyone backed out, and they stepped up to the open door.
Inside, secured with ropes onto a high-backed swivel chair, sat a dead African-American guy who appeared to be in his late twenties. He’d been shot between the eyes at close range. Tracks of dried blood ran from his ears and nose, and what they could see of the back of his head looked like a mass of dark jelly. The guy wore no shoes or socks, just jeans and a white t-shirt—or it had been white: Now it was covered with patches of blood, gone rusty brown. His right hand was clamped around a newspaper clipping and rested on his lap.
“He’s sure not dressed for the weather,” Cronin added.
“Nope,” Abrams said. “And notice his mouth.”
They leaned forward. “Is that food?” Erskine asked.
“Uh huh. That, plus how he’s dressed, makes me think they caught him right in the middle of supper last night. Probably at his place. I’m betting that when we find out where he lives, we’ll find the rest of his brains on the floor around his front door. You know: ‘Ding-dong, Avon calling.’ He opens up. Boom.”
“So what’s the rest of this staging all about?”
“See, this is a private elevator, key-card-operated.” Abrams pointed to the elevator buttons. A panel around the card reader had been unscrewed and removed, exposing a tangle of wires. “It only goes up to the law firm here—Ellis, Lehman, and Rogers.”
“Those bastards,” Cronin said, looking over at the distraught faces in the conference room.
“Yeah. Those bastards. So today they’re throwing this small luncheon for the partners, their biggest clients, and their wives. They tell us that this elevator has an ‘out of order’ sign on it when they get here this morning, around eleven. So everybody takes the freight elevator up here. The party starts about noon. Then, about twelve-twenty, they hear the elevator alarm go off. All of a sudden, this door opens up. The alarm is real loud, now, so some of them go to check it out, and this is what they find.”
Erskine smiled. “This could cost them a few of those big clients.”
“I think that was the idea, Paul,” Cronin said. “So how did t
his go down?”
The older veteran ran his palm over his bare scalp, like he was smoothing hair that wasn’t there anymore.
“This building has private underground parking. No guard in the booth late nights and weekends, just an electronic card reader to raise the gate. This being Saturday, almost nobody is going in and out, except for the people coming to the party.
“So I’m figuring they drive in there with the stiff sometime before the party. Then they stick ‘out of service’ signs on the elevator doors, down there in the garage and in the first-floor lobby. Then they go back to their vehicle and wait. After noon, when everybody’s here and the coast is clear, they rig up our gang-banger in his chair. Then they fiddle with the electronics in the elevator, as you can see, to bypass the card reader. They press the alarm and push the number-twenty button. The door opens up here. ‘Surprise, everybody!’”
“Yeah,” Erskine said. “Having a naked broad jump out of a cake is so yesterday.”
Abrams ignored it. “They needed a key card to get into the garage, but I can’t imagine they had somebody on the inside working with them.”
“They wouldn’t need that,” Erskine said. “They could’ve used one of those electronic ‘skimmer’ things. It’s a hacker device. They sneak in here late one night, after the guard leaves, and attach it inside the card reader on the gate, then leave it in place. It records the codes whenever anybody swipes his card. Sometime later, they come back, stick a different gizmo into the card slot, and the skimmer transmits the stored card data right into that. Then they remove the skimmer from the gate, leaving no trace. Now they have the data to program their own key card.”
“Great. Maybe the security-camera video will show something.”
“Security cams haven’t helped us so far,” Cronin said. He pointed at the body. “So what’s with the news clipping? Another article by Hunter?”
Abrams shook his head. “It’s several years old, and it’s from the Post. Just like the one on the stiff in Fairfax last week. Forensics don’t want us to touch it yet, but from what I could read of it, this guy Wallace jacked a car four years back, killed the owner.” He indicated a tall, thin man in the conference room, wearing an expensive suit and a look of shock. “Dwight Rogers over there, one of the partners, represented him. He got most of the evidence tossed on a Miranda. So Wallace walked.”
“Prick lawyer.”
“That’s redundant, Paul,” Cronin said. “Well, then, the pattern hasn’t changed. These guys, whoever the hell they are, have hard-ons for defense attorneys, liberal judges, lefty legal-aid groups. And prosecutors who do plea deals.”
“Don’t forget politicians,” Abrams reminded him.
“Oh, right. That child molester last week, Smith, they dumped him on that state rep’s lawn in Fairfax—what was that guy’s name?”
“Dinsmore,” Erskine answered. “The jerk-off who blocked the bill about enhanced sentences for baby-rapers.”
“Which let Smith get out after just six months of some bullshit therapy,” Abrams said. “I gotta say, I liked how they crammed Smith’s pockets full of the kiddie porn they took from his apartment. Wind blew it all over Dinsmore’s yard and into the neighbor’s. And the feds checked Smith’s email. You know that dirt bag was grooming two other young boys from his town?”
“Say what you will about these shooters,” Erskine said, “but they’re sure as hell taking out the garbage.”
Abrams nodded. “Feeb profilers figure them as super-conservative, super-pissed-off at ‘leniency in the legal system.’ Their words. They think one or more of them lost a person they loved because some punk went through the revolving door. So this is payback time.”
Cronin shook his head. “Maybe that’s part of it. But I have a feeling this is more than personal revenge.”
“Why?”
“If it was only revenge, then they would’ve hit only the perps responsible for their own losses, and maybe those judges or defense attorneys, but that would be all. I think they would’ve stopped by now. But they haven’t. Besides, we’ve been looking hard at all the victim families in every case, and drawing blanks. None of them are good for this stuff.”
“So if it’s not personal revenge, where does that leave us?”
“Well, look at what they’re doing, even here. These guys are getting back not just at specific perps, but at the people who turned them loose. And they seem to be operating by some sort of code. They whack only the killers and sex predators. But they don’t kill anybody in the legal system or in any of those criminal-sympathizer groups.”
“At least they haven’t so far,” Erskine said. “They just embarrass the hell out of them.”
“Exactly. They’re doing what the system should’ve done to the perps. But then they bring the criminals right back to the doorsteps of the people who freed them. Literally. Plus the records of their crimes. These newspaper clippings, starting with the Hunter columns: It’s like they’re prosecutors building an indictment—only they’re indicting the whole system. They’re holding everybody accountable.”
“Justice for all,” Erskine said.
“There you go. So I don’t see this as being about private revenge. It’s bigger than that. It’s about retribution. These guys don’t think the legal system is a justice system anymore.”
“Well, they got that right,” Abrams said. He paused, lowering his voice. “So, you still suspect this could be a team of cops or ex-cops, Ed?”
“It fits. The shooter at Prince George’s Mall badged the two guards and drove a Crown Vic—”
“But he was a fake cop. There’s no ‘Detective Lex Talionis.’ The name’s a joke—Latin for ‘eye for an eye.’ The badge number didn’t check out legit, the car’s plate was phony, and the security camera down the road showed the Crown Vic was civilian, not a P71. Come on, Ed, all that proves is that these people are good at masquerading and flashing fake IDs. We already knew that, from the Alexandria courthouse.”
“That’s not my point, Marty. I’m only saying the guy knew enough police procedure to convince the guards he was the real deal. Besides that, they know how to pick locks, bypass alarms and security gates, rig electronics, keep a crime scene clean. And they get in and out of places without arousing suspicion. Especially that. If they’re police, that would explain it. Who stops a cop from going anywhere?”
Erskine was studying the exposed wiring around the elevator buttons. “I’m with Ed on this. We’ve already established they have a pile of money, multiple vehicles, a bunch of guns, plus people experienced in planning, logistics, surveillance, and conducting hits. Who else except cops would know all that stuff?”
Abrams shrugged. “People in government. Military, ex-military. Former SWAT or Navy SEALs or something.”
“So what’s their motive?” Cronin asked.
They looked at each other blankly.
Abrams turned to stare at the corpse. He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. We still got jack shit.”
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
Sunday, November 16, 9:35 a.m.
She drifted awake, wondering if she had been dreaming or if something had touched her bare shoulder. She kept her eyes closed and pulled the comforter higher around her.
Seconds later, a light tap on her cheek.
She opened an eye. Luna was a foot away from her face, paw extended.
“No,” she groaned.
She felt Dylan stir somewhere behind her.
“We don’t use that word here. Remember?”
“Not you. Your cat.”
“Luna, let the lady sleep.”
“Mrrrroww.”
“Get your paw away from my face!”
“She’s probably out of food. I’ll take care of it.”
She felt the bed quiver as he got up. Heard the thump of the departing cat hitting the floor. Felt herself drift off again....
*
She awoke some vague time later to the smell of coffee. After stopping in the
bathroom, she padded out in her bathrobe and bare feet.
Dylan was also in his bathrobe, reading the Sunday paper at the dining table. He looked up at her and smiled.
“Hi, you.”
“Hi, you,” she answered. “Thanks for letting me sleep. At least this morning.”
He chuckled, raised his mug. “Made another pot. You have first dibs.”
“Great.” She went into the kitchen, poured a cup, fetched a container of yogurt from the fridge, then joined him at the table.
“So where’s Luna?”
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