by Misty Evans
Hope, a flush on her cheeks, was looking back and forth between them. She wanted to know what Gerard had to say, but she also knew Brice wasn’t about to leave her alone with him. “Play nice, boys. We all want the same thing. Either Justice Turner was killed by a random person on that bridge, or there’s more to it.” She spoke to Gerard. “Hawkeye and I are a package deal. If you have something to say to me, you can say it in front of him.”
Gerard crossed his arms over his chest and returned Brice’s glare. “Heard you were kicked out of the ATF.”
“You heard right. Read my blog on the subject and you’ll know why.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, the creases around his mouth softening. A hint of respect laced his voice. “I read every post back to the first one. You did what needed to be done to protect agents, but I can’t say I approve of your methods.”
“Fair enough.”
With somewhat of a truce between them, Hope chose that moment to go into journalist mode. “Can you walk us through what happened yesterday, Officer Gerard?”
“Off the record?”
“No,” Brice said at the same time Hope said, “Of course.”
Gerard starting walking. Hope looked at Brice and he nodded for her to follow. Brice stayed behind a few feet, hoping Gerard would feel more comfortable and that way Brice could watch Hope’s back just in case the guy—or woman, who the hell knew?—in the car last night made another appearance.
And what could he say? Her backside was worth watching.
As Gerard walked in the direction of the Washington Monument, he removed his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. Then, miracle of miracles, he took a deep breath and started speaking. “I drive—drove—the justice to work each morning. Yesterday morning, we were on our way in and got stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge. We’re trapped in traffic and a couple of cars ahead of us, two guys start having an argument. They get out of their vehicles. One starts yelling. Here I am, a friggin’ police officer, and I’m stuck. I can’t leave Turner. He’s my responsibility. Whatever is going on around me, I can’t leave my man. It’s been drilled into me. But the judge wants to know what’s going on. Then the angry one starts pushing the other guy around. Other people get out of their cars. Judge Turner tells me to diffuse the situation before anything gets crazy. My first responsibility is to the judge, but he insisted. I could see his point. We were landlocked on that bridge and shit could get out of hand real quick.”
“So you got out? That’s why you were outside your car.”
“Yeah. I told him to stay put, and against my better judgment, I got out. Of course, the judge, who is notorious for being a good Samaritan, follows. I have no idea why he thought he could help, but he was the Chief Justice. He was used to people listening to him.”
Gerard stopped, faced Hope. The slightest smile passed over his face, then faded just as quickly. “I was in the middle of ordering—and I mean ordering—the judge back in the car and—boom—shots fired.”
His gaze dropped to his feet. “The judge went down. The guy who fired the shot ran to the opposite end of the bridge, pushing through people, waving the gun, the whole nine yards. Most of the crowd dropped when the shooting started. Luckily, no one was hit except Turner.”
“Not the other guy involved in the argument?” Brice asked.
Gerard shook his head.
“You don’t find that odd?”
Gerard gave him a heavy look. “Not until now.”
“What happened then?” Hope asked.
“My boss was bleeding out at my feet and the bad guy was running away. I grabbed a packet of clotting agent from my break-out bag for the judge’s wound. Didn’t matter. He was dead a few minutes later.”
“You did everything you could,” Hope said.
Brice felt for the guy, he did. In the field, he too had seen death up close. “Do you remember a DDOT employee taking down the barricade while you were still on the bridge with Turner?”
“I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the Chief Justice. The shooter got too good of a jump on me and he was hauling ass, waving that damned weapon. I couldn’t get a clear shot even if I wanted to. And I damn sure wasn’t about to risk blowing away a civilian.”
“Do you know anything about the Kenton Labs case he was about to rule on?” Hope asked.
Gerard waited for an elderly couple to walk past them before he answered. “He never shared information about cases. It would have been a breach of ethics. He was under a lot of pressure from various lobbyists about most all of the cases that passed his desk.”
“I can tell you a few things about Kenton Labs,” Brice interjected. Hope and Gerard faced him. “I was researching them just before Hope showed up. They filed a suit to extend their patent on Donazem, the top heart drug in the world. It’s fifty percent of Kenton’s profits and they don’t want other companies releasing generics, since it has global implications. There are three other companies developing generic forms of the drug, the biggest being PriceCo Pharmaceutical. As soon as Kenton’s patent expires, PriceCo will flood the market with their generics. It could be millions of dollars, maybe more, a year that Kenton will lose if they don’t get to keep that patent. Turner was vocal in the past about pharmaceutical companies tying up patents in favor of profits over availability to consumers. What are the odds he was going to deny Kenton their hearing?”
Gerard watched a couple of tourists stroll by. “I don’t know. Could go either way, even with his past comments. But I heard him on the phone with one of his clerks a few nights ago. They were reviewing cases. The clerk must have given him something new to think about, but if I had to guess, I’d say he was leaning toward denying the hearing.”
“That was three nights ago?” Hawk asked.
“Yeah.”
“Interesting timing.”
“You’re insinuating the company killed him over it?” Gerard sounded incredulous. “What if the next Chief Justice feels the same way? Are they going to off him too?”
“The next candidate in line is Justice Harper,” Hope said. “He’s on the president’s short list. I updated his bio for my boss to take to her boss this morning. He’s voted in favor of pharmaceutical patents three out of four times in the past.”
“The scientist who developed the drug, Martin Block, spent nearly fifteen years on R&D and claims his patented formula works on a molecular level,” Brice added. “I don’t know anything about drugs, but Block claims in all of his papers and symposiums that the generics won’t work the same way. He’s lauded as a genius and had quite a track record in biogenetics research before being wooed by Kenton and going into drug development. There are a million more articles on him, on the Internet, than Kenton Labs itself. The guy has traveled the world and written about sixty papers alone on the amazing properties of his drug.”
“So this drug was practically his life’s work,” Hope said. Her forehead was creased in thought. “The hearing no doubt as important to him as it was to Kenton.”
Brice scanned the area, checking out a group of tourists heading in their direction. He turned to Gerard. “Did the justice have any enemies?”
The cop had his eyes on the tourists too, automatically checking them out. “He was Chief Justice. He had plenty of people who didn’t agree with his decisions, and sometimes he didn’t care for a clerk or had a run-in with another judge. But true enemies? None that I know of.”
The group of tourists passed by them. Hope shielded her eyes from the sun. “He always seemed to get along with everyone.”
Gerard nodded. “From what I know, he and his son weren’t getting along, but most people at the court liked him. He did have this clerk who was pissed because Turner wouldn’t give him any big cases. Turner thought the clerk was greedy and cared more about his career as a future justice than about the law. The little prick does seem to think highly of himself, and I could tell Turner didn’t trust him. You probably know him, Ms. Denby. Joel Bigley?”
Brice saw Hope’s face go
slack. She darted a look at him. A look that said, oh, shit. “I do know him, although I’ve only spoken to him once or twice. The word around my office is he has loose lips.”
“That was one of Turner’s complaints as well. He couldn’t prove anything, but he had a feeling that kid was breaking the unwritten rule of not sharing court info with anyone.”
Gerard checked his watch. “I’ve got to get back to work. Do you two have any actual evidence that yesterday’s shooting was premeditated? That Chief Justice Turner was set up?”
Brice blew out a heavy sigh. “No, but we have a lot of circumstantial evidence to look at.”
A woman with a bunch of kids wearing lanyards stepped around them and Gerard eased to the side, letting the group pass. After the last kid marched by, Gerard glanced around again, checking their surroundings.
Satisfied by what he saw, he came back to them. “Witnesses on the other side of the bridge saw a man hop into a car that was parked in the emergency area.” He pointed at Hope. “Right where I found your car.”
Well, shee-it. Didn’t that make Brice’s conspiracy-hungry self howl. It would also explain why Gerard got a bug up his ass about Hope’s car being parked in that emergency turn-off.
“Ah,” she said. “That explains your reaction.”
“Yeah. He got in and drove off. When I saw your car there this morning, I needed answers.”
“Getaway car,” Brice surmised. “The shooter got out of a cab right before the argument started. And then there’s a car waiting for him on the other side of the bridge.”
Hope shrugged. “What if the car were disabled or he caught a ride with someone because he was sick—or loaded—and he took a cab in the morning to retrieve his car?”
Brice scoffed. “Listen, Mary Sunshine, play devil’s advocate all you want, but that car is way too convenient.” He turned back to Gerard. “What do we know about the cab driver?”
“He was questioned and released. Claims he picked the guy up on the street, doesn’t know him, never saw him before, blah, blah.”
“You don’t believe him?” This from Little Mary Sunshine.
Gerard gave her a bored look. “I’m suspicious. Particularly when someone I care about is dead. But the FBI took over the investigation and I’m boxed out. My office, aside from any assistance the FBI might request, is out of it. Total bullshit.”
“I’m sorry,” Hope said.
He shrugged. “They can do what they want, but I’m gonna look into this cabbie. See what I can find. If he’s lying, I’ll nail his ass.”
The FBI. With all the crap Grey and Mitch shoveled on Brice, he’d tap into them, see if they had any useful intel. “I have a couple of contacts at the FBI. Not your typical agents. Black ops type shit, but a possible assassination of a Supreme Court justice is in their wheelhouse. I’ll see if they have anything on this taxi driver.”
For the first time since this conversation started, Gerard focused on Brice and held his gaze in a steady non-threatening manner. No posturing. No venom. No condescension. “I’d appreciate that,” he said. “Thanks.”
Progress with the pissy cop. Excellent. “I know what it’s like to lose a friend. Let me see what I can find.”
“Hope has my cell number. Call me if you find anything. I’ll see what I can find on my end.” With that, Gerard walked off toward the east.
Once he was out of earshot, Brice said to Hope, “Who’s this Joel Bigley?”
“He’s the clerk who put me on to Kenton Labs. Why?”
He took her hand and laced his fingers through it, trying to keep up the ruse of lovers. “He’s our next target.”
Hope stared up at Hawk wondering if he’d been hitting the crack pipe. “You think Turner’s clerk had him killed? Because he wouldn’t feed him cases?”
“Say it a little louder, Hope.”
She rolled her lips together. “Sorry. That just floored me. I don’t know. It seems like a stretch for a guy Gerard just told us wants to be a justice one day. Why risk it?”
Hawk shrugged. “Money. Imagine what some big corporation, one like Kenton would pay to make sure they got a favorable ruling on something that could make them billions. Billions, Hope.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, fought the pounding in her head. She’d skipped lunch and her sugar was far beyond crashed. What a day.
“You okay?”
She opened her eyes again. “Headache. And I’m starving. I need food. Once I have that, I’ll be able to focus. Can we grab something and then revisit this?”
“Sure. I’ll even buy.”
“Wowie. Do I get to choose the place?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“The place.”
Ha. A comedian. Mr. Paranoid who never opened his drapes needed to get out a little. “Since you think someone tried to run me down last night I think we should find someplace busy. A place where we could get lost in plain sight.”
“Have I mentioned how much I hate busy places?” he said with a grimace.
“In fact, you did not. I’m not shocked by this admission. You live like a hermit.”
“Don’t start.”
She grinned up at him and bumped his arm. “My goal is to get you out amongst the living. Be a man of the people.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?” He waved his free arm. “I see a lot of people out here.”
“Yeah, but the only reason you’re out here is because you can’t resist the lure of a scoop. That, I understand all too well. But since you’re already out, you should humor me and let me lead you astray.”
Oh, how she wanted to lead him astray. Whoop-de-do, it had been quite the male-drought because she hadn’t been quite so...um...lusting in months. With all the men she worked with or interacted with, none of them gave Hormona this kind of excitement.
“Careful, Miss Rah-Rah. If that kiss a few minutes ago was any indication, I’d have no problem with you leading me astray.”
Immediately, her cheeks grew warm. Whew. The hotness. Easy, Hormona. “We might have to discuss that further. In private. For now, I want you to trust me and let me take you to Barney’s.”
Hawk burst out laughing. “Barney’s? The adult version of Chuck-E-Cheese?”
“Yep. The food is good.”
He groaned. “Please, Hope.”
“It is! Plus, I’m addicted to video games. They give me a rush. And believe me, right now I could use it. A little fun wouldn’t kill us.” she tugged on his arm. “Come on. We won’t stay long. We’ll only play while we’re waiting for our food. Then we’ll eat and map out a plan for your infiltration of Joel Bigley’s life.”
“Listen, as much as a place like that makes me itch, I’d do it for you. You’ve had a crappy couple of days and the break would probably do you some good.”
“But?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
Hope’s shoulders dropped. So close. “Have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it’s dangerous?”
“The place itself isn’t dangerous. You being there is dangerous. Christ sakes, someone tried to run you down last night. No.”
As much as Hawk thought he’d take charge of this, as much as he wanted to play the stubborn alpha, it wouldn’t work. And her slumped, mopey shoulders had to go. Where was the fierce Hope Denby? Huh? Come on, girlfriend, buck up. She shoved those shoulders back and got right in Hawk’s space.
Right.
In.
His.
Space.
“Listen up, Hawk. Focus on the fact that we’ll be lost in plain sight. It’s not even 4:30. Way too early for dinner crowds. How would you feel if we went to some quiet restaurant with no people in it and something happened to me? You’d have to explain it to my parents. All because you wouldn’t go to Barney’s. Barney’s is always busy. It’s the logical choice.”
He looked down at her, a sarcastic half grin on his face. If he was buyin
g any of this, it would be a miracle. But she was starving, stressed, and needed a good twenty minutes of distraction to recharge her battery.
“Or,” he said, “we’ll go back to my house, order food and get cracking A.S.A.P. on Operation Joel Bigley. But if you want to screw around playing video games while your three day deadline is winding down, by all means, let’s do that.”
Ooh, the rotten scoundrel throwing the deadline in her face. “You’re holding me to that deadline?”
“Bet your sweet ass I am. We made a deal. I’m living up to my end, but if three days passes, I will release the story if it means beating the networks to it.”
“The networks are too busy repeating the company line.”
He reached up, tugged on the end of her hair. “Trust me on dinner. Please. Let’s keep you safe and get to work on Bigley. I think there’s something there. Call it my blogger Spidey sense. I also want to look further into the CEO and board of Kenton. See if any of them have skeletons in their closets.”
Doggone it. He had a point. The journalist in her would do the same thing in trusting her instincts. Get the story first. At the expense of everything else, including fun, she’d chase the story too.
“Fine. But when this is over, you owe me a trip to Barney’s.”
He smiled in that smug way men do when they get their way. So annoying that.
“Deal,” he said.
“What are we doing about Joel Bigley? We need to find some dirt on him.”
Hawk ran his hand over his mouth. Once, twice, and a third time. “If he’s talkative, we gotta get into his emails. I’ll get Teeg on that.”
Hope gagged. “Without a warrant? That’s illegal.”
Still walking, Hawk grabbed her elbow, pulling her to his other side as two men approached. “What’s your point?”
The two men strode by without incident. Hawk might make her insane with his hyper-vigilance. “Even if we find something, it’ll be inadmissible.”
“Yes, but it’ll give us a start. And if we find something, it might lead us to something else that’ll get us a warrant. And then we’ll have the emails. Done deal.”
“And it doesn’t disturb you that you’re okay with your friend hacking into a United States’ citizen’s emails?”