“I feel terrible even suggesting this,” her attorney friend had told her, “but you may want to consider…”
“I’ll pull down my shingle when it’s time,” Maryanne shot back. “I can still whoop most of our county’s ADA’s asses in court, which I plan on doing till…well, I’ll know when it’s time to call it a day. I won’t put any of my clients in a compromised situation. If they trust me enough to pay me fees, they deserve my best. And when I can’t deliver my best, I’ll retire. Probably roll myself off a cliff somewhere if I can find one high enough in this damn flat-assed state of ours.”
Her decision to take on Jessica Gracers’ case was not easily reached. Jessica had called her the day her husband was murdered and she had been officially charged with the crime. But Maryanne wasn’t sure she’d take the case until yesterday morning, one day after receiving Jessica’s frantic call. She woke up feeling like her arms and legs were vibrating but was shocked — and more than a little pleased — when she felt strength in her limbs, as if they hadn’t lost an ounce of strength to the advancing disease which was wasting her body away in silence.
After meeting with Jessica yesterday morning, and attending her early morning court appearance, she felt her returned strength being sucked out of her body. Slowly, marking its departure not with pain, but with promises of things yet to come. Maryanne Jenkins, for the first time in her nearly thirty years of being a lawyer, questioned her ability to provide her client proper representation. When Jessica insisted on her desire to call in an outside private investigator, Maryanne put up a weak resistance. She usually preferred to handpick a private investigator from a group she occasionally worked with when cases demanded outside assistance, but, despite her vocalized objections to her client, she didn’t have the energy to choose, and then direct, a private investigator for this case. She acquiesced to Jessica’s request; something she would have never done if old Iron Lou hadn’t come calling.
She sat at the diner’s table for several long minutes after District Attorney Steinberg dropped the Grant on the table and walked away, flashing a smug grin Maryanne wanted to wipe off her face with an iron skillet filled with boiling hot bacon grease. She sat, worrying if her legs would obey her command to stand, to walk and to keep walking until she didn’t need them to walk anymore.
“You just stay your hand, Iron Lou. Let me see this Gracers’ case through, then you and I will discuss terms for payment due.”
Chapter 4
Derek and Maggie left the county jail around three in the afternoon, drove their rental car over to their hotel, where, after checking in, they decided to start their preliminary investigation by splitting up.
“You head down to the DA’s office,” Derek said to Nikkie, “and I’ll make some calls to the sheriff’s department. Don’t know much about the DA or the detectives, so not sure how willing they will be to meet with us.”
“Only one way to find out,” Nikkie said. She paused, leaned back and braced her body with her arms. She crossed her legs as they dangled off the end of the king-sized bed in Derek’s hotel room. “Initial thoughts?”
Derek held a long gaze at Nikkie. Let his eyes wander about her body. As beautiful as she was, it was her eyes which held the greatest magnet for him. Every inch of her body charged him with an energy he hadn’t felt since his wife was murdered in a Columbus-based bank’s lobby. The feeling, at first, was unsettling. He felt committed to his wife, despite her being dead six years. Though the wedding ring Lucy put on his finger as the couple stood in front of the priest who married them was tucked into a plain, white envelope, stacked neatly inside Derek’s home safe, and even though the telltale markers of its position had long since been erased by the sun, the invisible ring which bound him to his wife remained. And like Lucy’s, Nikkie’s eyes held power over him.
He traced the fading scar—now a thin, whitish line crossing three inches of his left cheek—with his index finger, then took a small step away from Nikkie’s warm and inviting body.
“It’s all about her alibi, isn’t it? I mean, if she doesn’t share it with us, our time here is wasted.”
Nikkie bounced her crossed leg slightly. “What about her lawyer? Maryanne Jenkins? Notice anything about her?”
“I noticed she hated me. Probably hates you, too. Also noticed she flinched a bit there at the end, when we were talking about what will happen if her client doesn’t give up her alibi.”
“What did that tell you?”
“Two things, actually. One, she knows we were right about what will happen without an alibi and, two, that twitch told me we had gotten through to her client, more so than she was able to. Probably relief more than anything else. No lawyer wants a client who holds back a crucial piece of their defense. I think Maryanne’s flinch, as slight as it was, said she was happy as shit we were called in.”
“Anything else?” Nikkie pressed.
“Probably a smart woman. Capable. Hell, more than capable. Has seen her fair share of the inside of a courtroom. Won more cases than she’s lost. Pride filled.” Derek searched his memory, looking for any other clues to Maryanne Jenkins’s personality he might have overlooked. Nikkie was better at picking up subtle things in the way other people carried themselves than he was. He looked past what words people used and into what was driving those words. Nikkie had an entirely different insight into people. She noticed things, far beyond words, body language and facial expressions. These other “things” gave her almost a psychic ability. She’d never call it that, but, to Derek, that’s how it felt.
“Don’t know what else I should have noticed, but I have a feeling you did.”
“She never stood, never moved her legs at all, for that matter. And her arms seemed too thin for the rest of her body. Did you notice that?”
“I’m not the type of guy who looks too closely at a woman’s arms.” He flashed a small grin as he raised his eyebrows and dropped his sights a foot or two below Nikkie’s eyes. “As for her not standing, I took it as her attempt at insult. You know, you stand up to meet people you have some respect for. Keep your ass planted when you couldn’t give two shits about the person or people who just walked up to you. Plus, I thought a man stands to shake hands and a woman, if she’s already seated, stays seated. Miss Manners, right?”
“Old school,” Nikkie said. “Everyone who can stand does so when meeting someone. But Maryanne didn’t move an inch when we walked in, and she didn’t stand when we left, either.”
“So?”
“Notice the little wobble in her voice?”
“I took that for a Caribbean accent,” Derek said. “Sounded Caribbean to me. Not you?”
“I have no idea how you got Caribbean out of her voice. Honestly, Derek, sometimes I think you get stuck on a train of thought and look for any proof, no matter how insignificant, to prove your thought was correct.”
“Okay, so, thin arms, didn’t stand and has either a Caribbean accent or a wobble in her voice. What’s that all point to?
“Don’t know.” Nikkie looked off into the distance, as if the answer to Derek’s question was hiding in a faraway land. Maybe a land from her past. “Maybe nothing, but I think I’d like to stop by the law offices of ‘Jenkins and Whoever Else’ for a little ‘girl to girl’ chat after I meet with the DA.”
Coffee has a certain draw to it. Offer a cup to someone early in their day, and their reaction is usually immediate. Call someone up in the middle of the afternoon, tell them you’re paying for a quick coffee, and, more than likely, you won’t be drinking alone.
For cops, coffee takes on a different meaning entirely. It’s not only an excellent way to deliver stimulating caffeine into your blood system, but it’s also a moment or two of pause. A break from either the hours stacked upon hours of a boring shift or a reminder that there is respite from a world gone crazy when the hours of boredom are interrupted by the madness of human beings and what they are capable of doing to each other.
Derek waited till close to three in the afte
rnoon before calling the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department and asking to speak with either Detective Gary Mathers or Rachel Gonzales. Gonzales was in the detective’s bullpen, took the call and agreed to meet Derek for a quick cup of coffee.
“You know I can’t talk about the Gracers’ case, right?” she admonished before agreeing to meet.
“Believe me, I know. Just one cop drinking a couple of cups of coffee with one ex-cop. Trying to get a lay of the land.”
They met at a Denny’s on the outskirts of Belleair; a twenty minute drive for Derek from the hotel and a short walk for Gonzales from the sheriff’s office. They sat in a booth in the far corner of the restaurant. Blue vinyl seats, paper placemats with a map of the area printed in blue ink, displaying the local businesses who decided advertising on Denny’s paper placemats was a good way to drive revenue.
“Hell of a case I picked up,” Derek said, after he and Rachel Gonzales introduced themselves and after Derek gave a quick rundown of his military and Columbus PD resume. “Without an alibi, not sure why the hell I’m down here.”
“She’ll talk,” Rachel said as she held her mug of coffee in both hands. “They always do. Either it takes them time to come up with a whopper of a story, or they need to check with someone to make sure their stories line up.” Rachel Gonzales was no older than thirty. Deep, brown eyes and even darker hair, pulled back into a tight bun.
“Typical hairstyle for female detectives,” Derek thought. The ones he knew always seemed to believe they needed to hide their femininity from the male officers and detectives. No matter what police department you walked into in the world, they were still dominated by men. A woman rising the ranks to an officer’s position or a detective’s wasn’t all that uncommon, but the women were still outnumbered five or ten to one when compared to men holding the same positions.
Gonzales was attractive. No doubt about that. Derek could tell that behind the white shirt, which was at least a size and a half too big for her thin, well conditioned frame, and dark blue pants that were about as flattering to her figure as olive drab paint was to an ocean side villa, Gonzales was all woman. Her choice in clothing and in the fit of those clothes was too intentional. She wanted to hide her body from people who may be too distracted by her looks to give her a chance to impress them with her skills. The glide in her step and the confidence behind her brilliant white smile also told him she was damn good at her job.
“Jessica said she needs to speak with someone first before she’s willing to give her alibi. Said telling us who she was with could cause a world of problems for this mystery person.”
“Probably wants to meet to get stories straight, is all. Or, she could be having an affair with some married dude or some high-ranking political asshole. She may not want to ruin his career. May also be testing to see what he’s willing to do for her if she keeps her mouth shut.”
“Would have to be someone with a lot of pull. If she doesn’t talk, she’s facing, what? Twenty-five to life?”
“Pretty, rich woman like that? And white, to boot? Hell, she’d get ten and probation at most.”
“Still,” Derek said, trying to find some angle to turn the conversation into one of actual value. He wanted Gonzales to share the one thing the DA and the sheriff’s were concerned about. One missing element in the case. There was always one “something” no matter how simple the case appeared. “Any time behind bars for a woman like Jessica Gracers would be hard time. Damn hard time.”
“Like I already said, she’ll talk,” Rachel said as her brown eyes drifted away from Derek and outside the window. “They always do.”
The way she said it was all Derek needed. Maybe she was alone in her thinking, but he could tell Rachel didn’t think Jessica Gracers killed her husband. Sure, the evidence was all pointing directly at Jessica, but there was something, some question driving the falling off of her voice and the obvious drifting of Rachel’s gaze, that suggested she wasn’t as sure as the others in the department may be.
“Gotta say,” Derek said after giving Rachel a few moments to let her mind wander to wherever she needed it to, “I am pretty curious about what she’s going to tell us. And by us, I mean me, my associate, her lawyer and you all. I get what you said about her maybe waiting to get her story straight, but…I don’t know. I’ve seen my fair share of guilty people and she doesn’t fit the mold. You know what I mean?”
Rachel returned her sight to Derek. She smiled and let out a brief puff of air disguised as a laugh. “Murderers come in all shapes and sizes,” she said, and then took a long pull from her coffee. “They come rich, they come poor, they come pretty and out right ugly as sin, some do. They all say they’re innocent at first, just like Gracers did. She may not fit the mold but, in my book, there’s no such thing as a mold for killers.” She paused, danced her eyes between her mug and the view out the window a few times. “Still, I’m pretty curious about what story she comes out with, too. Not quite sure I see the balance between the whole ‘risk versus reward’ thing with this case.”
“Running out of the crime scene, holding the gun and screaming for help doesn’t make a ton of sense, does it?”
“Said she was holding the gun because a little voice inside her head was telling her someone may be in the house still. As soon as someone stopped to help her, she dropped the gun and ran into the street. Some neighbor was driving past the house; saw her running out, screaming her head off. He said she was shaking like a leaf and was babbling on about her husband lying dead on their kitchen floor. Uncontrollable, the neighbor described her as being. Uncontrollable and inconsolable.”
“Doesn’t fit the mold of how someone who just killed their husband would behave, does it?”
Rachel fixed her gaze deeply into Derek’s sky blue eyes. Her face went emotionless. Flat. Unreadable.
“It fits a mold. The mold of a victim.”
“Glad to hear you say that,” Derek said, leaning back, causing the vinyl bench seat to call out with its scratchy voice. At six foot one and tipping the scales at a few ounces over two hundred, Derek’s size had made plenty of diner seats moan. “Wonder if Detective Mathers felt the same?”
If a laugh could sound sarcastic, Rachel’s quick one was as sarcastic as they come.
“Mathers is a good guy, no doubt. A little too set in his ways and being less than a year from retirement isn’t motivating him to change things up at all. He’ll see what he wants and think along the easier tack. Truth is, the DA in the county, Julia Steinberg, barks out orders like a short-order cook barks out readied meals. Rumor is she’s interested in running for a congressional seat that’s about to be vacated.”
“Then putting a rich, white woman in jail probably won’t help her much,” Derek said. “Not sure of the area’s demographics but I see a whole lot of rich, white people around here.”
“Congressional district is Tampa. Good mixture of the population. Her being Jewish means she probably needs to do a little more than whomever she runs against to prove she’s fair and balanced.” Rachel paused, looked around the restaurant in staggered glances, then turned back to Derek. She leaned in close, pressing her chest against the table. “I wasn’t invited in on the meeting, since I’m not Mather’s normal partner, but I heard Steinberg met with the sheriff, Mathers and his normal partner, Detective Jose Posada, after hours last night. Posada is a good guy. Probably consider him my closest friend in the department. He didn’t tell me much about what was said in the meeting, except that Steinberg wants the department’s part of the investigation tidied up and tied up as quick as possible.”
“You see a problem with that?” Derek asked. He, too, had leaned in closer to match Rachel’s move. He was close enough to get a close-up look at her eyes. Could smell the perfume she was wearing. He liked being close to Rachel. Felt a little charge of energy pulsing through his body, like being close to her was infusing him with a magnetic pull towards her. He pushed himself back a few inches. Though he and Nikkie had shared thei
r feelings for each other, they hadn’t moved their relationship into any physical territory.
Yet.
Still, Derek had always been completely faithful to his wife and, though their relationship was utterly lacking in any hint of commitment, he felt he owed a degree of fidelity to Nikkie.
She smiled, almost sensing Derek’s reason for moving back away from her. She held the smile and the lock her eyes held for a few beats, then said, “Election is coming up in November. Just a couple months from today. From what I’m hearing, Congressman Walter Wiggins hasn’t announced his retirement yet, but plans on doing so first week of September.”
“Doesn’t give much time for Steinberg or anyone else to start a campaign,” Derek said.
“Exactly the point, I think.”
“You think this Congressman Wiggins has arranged some agreement with Steinberg?”
She inched a bit closer. Lowered her voice to just above a whisper. Derek moved back in.
“Think about it. Wiggins holds off announcing his retirement just long enough for the board of elections to throw together a primary in September. She knows what’s happening, probably has her campaign team all set, ready to go. All of a sudden, a fairly high profile murder happens under her watch, one she now wants to make go away as soon as possible.”
“Having a murder case hanging out there, with the potential of making her look bad might jeopardize her public opinion.”
“Exactly. So, whatever agreement she has with Wiggins probably doesn’t matter, but what does matter is getting the Gracers’ case taken care of as quickly as possible.”
“Meaning she probably told Mathers and his partner to make damn sure every last drop of evidence points in only one direction,” Derek said.
“Directly at your new client.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right.”
Chapter 5
Nikkie waited in the front hallway outside of DA Julia Steinberg’s office for well over thirty minutes. Closer to forty-five if anyone was counting. No one was but Nikkie.
Deathly Reminders: a Derek Cole Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 6) Page 3