Exposed

by Laura Griffin

  He rubbed his chin, where a way-past-five-o’clock shadow darkened his jaw. “Damn, I never thought about it. I’ll have to watch my hands around you. No cleaning my ears or subtly adjusting things in my pocket.”

  “Yeah, that’s not too subtle. And men do it all the time, thinking they’re being discreet.” She caught a glimpse of his watch and gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s after one!” She jumped up from her chair. “We have to work tomorrow. And you still have to drive back.”

  “It’s no big deal.” He left some bills on the table and followed her from the restaurant. “I’m used to long hours.”

  They stepped into the brisk night air, and Maddie’s breath formed a cloud in front of her face. She shivered and fisted her hands in the pockets of her coat. He’d left his suit jacket in the back of his car, but he seemed unbothered by the weather as he walked alongside her. For some reason, she felt comfortable around him, but she resisted the urge to huddle close to him for warmth.

  “How long’s your drive?” she asked.

  “Half an hour. I live on the north side of the city.” They reached the car, and he opened her door. “Easy access to San Marcos, Austin, most of the municipalities covered by our field office.”

  His tone was businesslike, but the look in his eyes was not as he watched her slide in. She leaned her head against the seat as he walked around and got behind the wheel.

  The drive back was quiet, and Maddie’s thoughts drifted as he glided through deserted intersections to the neighborhood where she lived. It was less than a mile away from the gas station where she’d seen Volansky, in the flesh, only a few hours ago.

  “You should think about getting that alarm activated.”

  She gave him a sideways look. Had his thoughts been on the same path as hers?

  “It probably wouldn’t cost much, and your homeowner’s insurance might knock a few bucks off your rate.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said. It was something she’d been meaning to do for years, but she’d never gotten around to it. Now she felt foolish for putting it off.

  She glanced at him behind the wheel of the car, completely relaxed. She remembered the tension in his face as he’d sped through yellow lights and careened around corners in pursuit of a fleeing criminal.

  She remembered the sound of those gunshots, and suddenly her stomach tensed. One instant. That’s all it took. She, more than anyone, knew how something young and vibrant and beautiful could be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

  Maddie looked away. She watched the trees pass by. She watched the tidy little lawns and the manicured flowerbeds and the houses that were locked up securely for the night. A wave of loneliness washed over her.

  She could ask him in. He would stay. He would peel her clothes off and warm her bed and make the world feel good again for a few hours.

  And no matter how good it was, she’d wake up utterly alone—maybe not in body but in spirit—and she’d have a fresh new batch of regrets. Or worse, she’d have no regrets at all. She’d feel nothing. Just the dull blankness that had been a fixture of her life since Emma died.

  She glanced at Brian’s strong profile in the seat beside her. She didn’t want to do that. She liked him too much to let him see that side of her. It wasn’t something she felt proud of.

  He swung into her driveway. Before she could think of a tactful protest, he was out of the car and coming around to her door.

  “Thanks for dinner,” she said brightly as he walked her up the sidewalk.

  “You bought it.”

  She stopped at the base of the steps and turned to look at him. “Well, thanks for the beer, then. And the invitation. I—”

  He kissed her. Maddie’s breath caught as his mouth pressed against hers and his hand cupped the side of her face. In her shock, she simply stood there and registered every detail of the moment—the chill of the air, the warmth of his fingers against her cheek, the firmness of his lips. Her hand slid around his waist, and she registered the solid heat of him through the fabric of his shirt.

  He eased back, and she blinked up at him as he gently stroked his thumb over her jaw.

  “I’ll call you about that brass.” His voice was low and warm.

  “What . . .”

  “The shell casing.” He dropped his hand, and she felt a rush of cool air against her skin.

  “Oh.” That brass. “All right.”

  “Good night, Maddie.” He turned toward his car, and she caught the smile on his face as he walked away.

  CHAPTER 7

  Scott Black hated testifying. He didn’t like ties, or suits, or endless hours wasted on benches outside courtrooms. He didn’t like attorneys, period, and he especially hated criminal defense lawyers.

  With one exception.

  “Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

  “You may.”

  Rae Loveland rounded the defense table and strode toward him with a gleam in her eye. Her high heels clacked against the floor, and she halted in front of him.

  “Mr. Black, do you recognize this document?”

  “I do.”

  “Could you describe it for the jury, please?” She handed him a thin stack of papers and returned to the lectern.

  “It’s a report from our ballistics lab. An analysis of a firearm.”

  “Thank you.” She tucked a strand of that long dark hair behind her ear. “And can you read the part at the top where it describes the firearm being analyzed in this case?”

  “A Beretta nine-millimeter.”

  “A nine-mil, like the one allegedly collected from my client at the time of his arrest.”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” The county prosecutor got to his feet. “These facts are already in evidence. We showed the videotape of the arrest, and the defendant clearly had the gun stuffed in his pants.”

  “Sustained.”

  Rae didn’t miss a beat. She’d known her opponent would object, but she was planting seeds of doubt wherever possible.

  “Mr. Black, can you tell us what you did with this firearm after it arrived at your ballistics lab for analysis?”

  Your ballistics lab. Scott sensed the wording was deliberate, but he couldn’t see her game plan yet.

  “I fired it into the tank to create a reference bullet.”

  She looked at the jury. “You just ‘fired it into the tank’? Did the gun arrive at the Delphi Center already loaded?”

  “It arrived empty. We don’t accept loaded firearms.”

  “So, could you walk us through exactly what you did, step by step, please?”

  Scott nodded, Mr. Cooperative. “I put on gloves. I removed the empty firearm from the foam-lined case that was used to transport it. I loaded a magazine into the weapon. I put on safety glasses, and I fired two rounds into the tank.”

  “To create a reference bullet.” She looked at him. “What is that, exactly?”

  “It’s a sample bullet for comparison with another bullet possibly fired by the same gun.” Scott made eye contact with the jury as he got to the technical part. “The inside of a handgun’s barrel is rifled, which imparts spin to stabilize the bullet’s flight when it leaves the gun. No two firearms make the same marks on fired bullets. The marks are unique to each weapon.”

  “And what did you do with your reference bullet?”

  “I viewed the striation pattern—the unique marks—under the microscope and created a picture that I added to a database of known firearms to see if it matched anything already on record.”

  “And did it?”

  “We didn’t get any hits.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “None at all?”

  “No.”

  She turned to face the display screen beside the jury box. “I’d like to direct your attention to the photograph shown here. It’s a picture made in the laboratory showing the bullet that was removed from the crime scene. Do you recognize it?”

  “Yes.” Scott glanced at the photo of the mangled scrap of metal caked with
dried blood.

  “Did you compare this bullet with the reference bullet you created to see if it contained the same striation marks?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your conclusion? Did the marks match?”

  “I wasn’t able to see the striation pattern.”

  “You’re saying it didn’t match?”

  “I’m saying the bullet was too damaged and misshapen to get usable marks.”

  “I see. So you failed to discover these unique identifiers on the crime-scene bullet.” She turned to face him with a curious look in her pretty blue eyes. “Is that unusual?”

  “Fairly unusual, yeah. But when a bullet travels through a cop’s shoulder and a wooden door and gets embedded in a cinder-block wall, that lowers our chances of getting anything.”

  Her eyes sparked. She definitely wasn’t happy to have the jury reminded that her scumbag client was accused of shooting an off-duty police officer who’d tried to stop a convenience-store robbery.

  Scott had worked a lot of holdups, but this one was especially callous. The assailant—who’d been wearing a rubber Halloween mask—had shot the cop at point-blank range and calmly picked up his brass before collecting ninety-six dollars in cash and walking out the door as the man lay bleeding on the linoleum.

  “Your Honor, permission to approach the witness again?”

  The judge gave permission, and she strode up to the stand, looking primed for battle.

  “Mr. Black, I’d like to direct your attention to your report again.” She picked up the paperwork and flipped the pages. “Could you read your notes at the bottom of page three there?”

  He cleared his throat. “Possible blood spatter, trace amount, grip.” He looked at the jury. “I noticed a smear of blood on the pistol grip.”

  She returned to the lectern as Scott’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it, and the call went to voice mail.

  “You said ‘trace amount.’ I take it that means small?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were the first person to notice this? Even after the gun had been examined by a police detective? He didn’t see this smear?”

  “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Scott said, earning a stern look from the judge.

  “Sustained.”

  “And what did you do after you noticed this trace of blood on the pistol grip?”

  “I’d already finished my tests, so I sent it to DNA so they could analyze the blood, see if it came from the victim.” Scott was pushing it with that last part, but the judge let it go, and he suspected they’d already firmly established that the blood on the pistol grip belonged to the cop, who’d been on medical leave for eight months.

  Rae turned to the jury box. “So you sent the gun from your ballistics lab to the DNA lab so they could analyze this tiny trace of blood, the sole direct evidence connecting my client to the victim, is that correct?”

  The prosecutor jumped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “Sustained.” The judge gave her a warning look. “Watch it, Ms. Loveland.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” She turned back to Scott. “Is there any chance the tiny amount of blood you discovered could have been picked up at the ballistics lab? While the gun was in your possession, not my client’s?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not possible? The reports show that the gun and the bullet were in your lab on the same day.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He looked at the jury again. “Because we’re very careful with our procedures to prevent the possibility of contamination. We don’t mix up the evidence like that. We wash our hands between each step in the analysis. We wear gloves when we handle everything.”

  “You wash your hands between every step?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “You always wear gloves?”

  “When we’re handling evidence, yes.”

  She looked down at her notes, and he could tell she was winding up for a curveball.

  “Mr. Black, do you recall what you were doing on the morning of April twelfth of last year?”

  Here it came. “No, I don’t recall.”

  “Do you recall conducting a tour of the ballistics lab with staffers from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, as well as an assistant from the DA’s office?”

  Scott’s gaze narrowed. “I remember that, yes.”

  “Do you recall meeting my assistant here, Mr. Koenig? Mr. Koenig, could you stand up, please?”

  “Your Honor, I object. What is the relevance of this to the matter at hand?”

  “Your Honor, if you will indulge me a moment, I’m confident the relevance will become clear.”

  “You may proceed.”

  The guy stood up, and Scott recognized him as the rookie attorney who had come through the lab that day with a law-enforcement tour. Evidently, he’d already gone over to the dark side.

  “I recognize him, yes.”

  “And do you recall giving a demonstration that morning, Mr. Black, in which you fired three separate weapons into the tank you mentioned previously?”

  “I do.”

  She consulted her notes. “You handled a Glock nineteen, a Beretta nine-millimeter, and a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight that morning, is that correct?”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.” Scott braced himself as the curveball flew right at his head.

  “And do you recall whether or not you were wearing gloves?”

  “No.”

  “No, you weren’t wearing any gloves, or no, you don’t recall?”

  “No, I wasn’t wearing any.”

  “No gloves?” She turned to the jury. “But didn’t you just tell us that you always wear gloves in the lab? That it’s an important procedure you follow to prevent contamination?”

  Scott glanced at the jury. He looked at Rae. She was still making eye contact with the jurors, driving the point home.

  She turned to look at him, and he caught the glint of triumph in her eyes. “Mr. Black? Would you care to change your testimony?”

  “No.”

  She addressed the judge. “In that case, Your Honor, I have no further questions for this witness.”

  The judge looked at the prosecutor, who was staring glumly in Scott’s direction. “Would you care to redirect?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  The prosecutor knew when to cut his losses. Scott gritted his teeth as Rae collected her papers, and the judge dismissed everyone for the midday break.

  Scott left the courtroom and entered the throng of courthouse staffers rushing out to lunch.

  “Hey, wait up.”

  He headed for the drinking fountain.

  “Scott.”

  He turned around. Rae fought the flow of people like a salmon swimming upstream. She stopped in front of him and straightened the hem of her jacket.

  “You need something?”

  “I just wanted to say thank you. For your time today.” She squared her shoulders. “And I hope you understand that wasn’t personal in there.”

  “Hey, no worries, Rae. Whatever you need to do to get your man off.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and he could tell she didn’t appreciate the innuendo, especially coming from him.

  “My client is entitled to—”

  “Your client’s a dirtbag, and this is the second time I’ve been called to testify against him in three years.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “You know, Scott, you really . . .” She shook her head.

  “I really what?”

  She huffed out a breath as his phone vibrated again. “Forget it.”

  “I will.” He took the phone from his pocket as she turned on her heel and walked away.

  “Scott, it’s Maddie.”

  He watched Rae disappear into the courtroom and felt a twinge of disappointment because she never finished
her sentence.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?” He headed for the exit, sidestepping the line of people stacked up at the metal detector.

  “I was hoping you could do me a favor,” Maddie said.

  Scott stepped into the sunlight and scanned the meters for his pickup.

  “Do you think you have time?”

  “Not really. What’s the favor?” he asked, even though it didn’t matter. He’d do it anyway, because he liked her. Of all the CSIs he knew, Maddie was the least prone to dumb-ass mistakes, such as using a pen to pick up a firearm by the barrel, thereby preserving fingerprints on the weapon but potentially fucking up other evidence.

  “I’ve got a shell casing from a crime scene,” she said, “and I told a friend of mine I’d see if I could get it analyzed. It’s kind of a rush job.”

  “Who’s the friend?” Scott spotted his truck and saw the ticket tucked under the wiper blade.

  “An FBI agent I know. His name’s Brian Beckman.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I bet he never heard of you, either.”

  Scott dug the keys from his pocket. Maddie had an attitude, and he’d always liked that about her. “This the guy from the lab last night?”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Saw you talking to someone on the steps.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. He’s part of a task force investigating a young woman’s kidnapping.”

  Scott should have figured it was something like that. Maddie had a soft spot for anything that involved women or kids.

  “So, will you do it?”

  “Drop it by the lab, and I’ll take a look.”

  “I already did. Thank you so much. I owe you one. So does my friend.”

  He stuffed the ticket into his pocket. “Yeah, well, you are welcome. Tell the fed next time, he can use his own lab.”

  Maddie finished her response to the last urgent e-mail in her in-box and pressed send. She glanced at her watch. Five o’clock, and these photos had been promised yesterday. The investigator who’d been pinging her all afternoon obviously wasn’t happy she was running behind, but that was too bad. He could take a number.

  “Who’s the hot cop?”