Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  “You really like doing this, don’t you?” Axel asked me. He had his own handful of bread crumbs, which he was scattering along the ground next to me.

  “I do. Sometimes I watch the ducks, just swimming around, without a care in the world. I start to think that in my next life, maybe I would like to come back as a duck. I mean, all they have to worry about is, well, nothing. They have all the food they need here at the lake, they have all their buddies around, and they just look so relaxed.”

  Axel smiled. “They don’t have anything to worry about until they blown out of the sky,” he said. “Or eaten by a hawk.”

  I shrugged. “These ducks don’t have to worry about being shot. They’re smart if they just continue to hang around here. Or at the zoo.” I laughed. “You ever see those random ducks swimming at the zoo? For some odd reason, I find that hilarious.”

  Axel nodded his head. “I have, and I find them funny too.”

  I ran out of bread crumbs, so the two of us walked back over to some of the fountains. I got on the ledge of the fountain, and Axel took my hand. “Jump,” he said. “I’ll catch you.”

  I jumped down, and Axel put his strong hands on my sides. I looked down at the ground, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “We better go. I know that it’s Saturday, but I have a hellacious day ahead of me. I’m pretty much going to be working 24/7 until the Heather trial goes through.”

  Axel smiled. “You’ll fit me in. I’ll make sure of it.” He kissed my forehead and I sighed.

  I knew that he was right. I was going to fit him in.

  No matter what.

  I DECIDED that I was just going to have to find out everything I could about Connie Morrison. I didn’t have the knife, and I didn’t have a good witness, although I was going to go ahead and try to find other church members who might talk to me off the record about the Reverend and the craziness he was imparting on them. Not that any of them would – they were probably either completely brainwashed or were being threatened. Nonetheless, there might be somebody who would talk.

  I was also going to go ahead and put the Reverend on my witness list. It certainly couldn’t hurt, even though I knew that he was going to lie on the stand as well. Plus, I doubted that he would be approved as a witness, unless he was willing to get on the stand and admit that he brainwashed Connie and Connie tried to kill her daughter because of it. I was sure that I had a better chance of being struck by lightning or win the lottery than to see that happen.

  I called in my computer whiz, whose name was Anna Smythe. She was able to get any record I wanted, because she could hack into any records database that I needed her to. “Anna,” I said. “Could you come in and help me today? I’m working from home.” I knew that Anna was available pretty much seven days a week, because she clearly loved what she did, and she didn’t have a life outside of her computer hacking.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’m just sitting home playing video games right now. When do you need me?”

  “Whenever you can get here. I need to get records on this my client’s mother. There might be some kind of criminal history or mental health records that we can shake out.” The problem was, always, getting these records in front of the jury, especially the mental health ones. But if Connie had a criminal record, that would be a cinch to get in front of the jury. I crossed my fingers and prayed that I could find something. Maybe she assaulted somebody, or a lot of people, and I could show that these assaults showed her character as a violent person.

  Maybe, but I doubted it. Still, it was worth throwing it against the wall to see if it stuck.

  ANNA ARRIVED ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. “I’m here,” she said. Anna was young, only 23, and gorgeous in a tough-girl badass way. She had short black hair and brown eyes, and her entire right shoulder and back was covered in tattoos. She was small, compact and muscular and typically dressed in a A-shirts, torn jeans and high-topped tennis shoes.

  “Cool,” I said, feeling that I was anything but cool, especially next to her. “Here’s my girl,” I said, giving her Connie’s information – her date of birth and her social security number. Heather was able to supply both of those things for me, which was extremely helpful.

  She nodded and sat down, cracking her knuckles. “I’ll have a preliminary report for you in an hour,” she said, plopping her laptop down on one of the desks in my office. “If you want to go and do whatever you’re doing today. Go, play with those two little girls I saw when I came in.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I do need to spend some time with them.”

  I went out to talk to Rina and Abby, who were playing music in the living room and dancing around wildly. “Hey girls,” I said. “Let’s watch a movie, and then you need to do at least an hour of homework.”

  Rina rolled her eyes. “Yuck,” she said. “I hate doing homework on a Saturday.”

  “Well, we’ll watch a movie, and then you guys can do one hour of homework, and then I’ll take us all to the drive-in.”

  The two girls cheered wildly. Like me, they loved going to the drive-in. “Can we invite some girls?” they asked.

  “Sure, sure. The SUV is big enough for about two more. We’ll pick up some chicken, pop some popcorn and have a good time.”

  “Okay,” they said in unison.

  “I don’t mind studying on a Saturday,” Abby said. “But Rina does.”

  We all sat down and watched a movie, one that the girls picked out, while Anna worked in the other room.

  After the movie, I got up. “I need to go and check on Anna,” I said. “To find out what she found out about Connie. Can I get you girls anything while I’m up?”

  “Another pop,” Rina said.

  “I’ll get you a water,” I said. “Or juice. You know you can’t have more than one pop in a day.”

  “Whatever,” Rina said, rolling her eyes. “Okay, a glass of grape juice.”

  “Abby?”

  “I’m good.”

  I went into the kitchen and got a glass of grape juice and went back into the living and handed it to Rina.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Come on, Abby, let’s go and study.”

  At that, the two girls went to their rooms, and I went in to check in on Anna.

  Anna was sitting in front of her computer, a rope of red licorice hanging out of her mouth. She seemed lost in thought, so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice me when I walked in the door.

  “Oh, hey,” she said finally, looking up at me. “What’s up?”

  “I could ask the same. What did you find out?”

  She shrugged. “No mental health records, clean arrest record. I’m sorry, I wish I could find some kind of dirt on this chick, but she seemed to be pretty clean.”

  I sighed and nodded my head. “I was afraid of that. Another blind alley.”

  “I guess. Did you know that Heather was adopted, though?”

  I cocked my head. “Adopted? No, I didn’t know that.” I tapped my pencil on the desk. “I don’t even know if Heather knows that she’s adopted, either. Can you find out who her mother is?”

  She grimaced. “No, that’s apparently not a matter of record, at least not on the Internet. The records might only be available at the courthouse, if at all. It was a closed adoption, that much I can tell you.”

  I sighed. Was this another dead end, or was it significant? And if it was significant, why would it be? Heather was adopted. So what?

  Still, I had a feeling that I was going to need to find out who the birth mother was. “What was the jurisdiction,” I asked. “Where the adoption went through?”

  “Savannah, Georgia,” she said. “Chatham County.”

  I nodded my head. “Thanks, Anna,” I said. “What do I owe you?”

  “Two hundred dollars,” she said. And then she smiled. “And maybe a drive-in movie? I heard you talking to your girls.”

  I laughed. “You got it. Meet me here at 7, and we’ll go.”

  OVER THE NEXT month or so, I did all the digging I coul
d. I talked to Heather’s friends, Connie’s friends and I even was able to talk to a couple of church-goers who were willing to be honest with me.

  “Reverend Scott is crazy,” one lady, whose name was Haley Matthews told me. I met with her in her house, which was a beautiful Victorian mansion in the Gladstone District, which was known for turn-of-the-century Queen Ann homes, which were generally made of stone, three stories tall, with circular cupolas and pointed roofs. “Would you like some tea?”

  I nodded my head as I sat down in her sun room with her. “Thank you.”

  She sat down with me, each of us sipping our tea. “Now, what would you like me to tell you specifically?”

  “You say that he’s crazy, can you elaborate?”

  She sighed. “I’ve never been in the proximity of such hate. Such virulent, nausea-inducing hate.”

  “How long were you a part of that church?”

  “For a year. I know, I know, why did I keep going? Well, my husband was a part of the church, and he demanded that I go with him. So, I did. And it eventually destroyed us, because I finally decided that I had had enough. I heard rumors…”

  I nodded my head. “Rumors…”

  “Yes, rumors. Rumors that the Reverend told parents to kill their children if the children were LGBT. And I could believe it, because the Reverend told the congregants, week after week, about how the LGBT community is destroying this country.”

  “Can I get you to testify in court?”

  She shook her head. “I would rather not. I’m scared of that man. I think that he’s capable of anything.”

  Nevertheless, I thought I should probably subpoena her. I put her on my possible witness list right then, even though I knew that her testimony probably couldn’t come into court, anyhow.

  One other woman, a Sally Toby, said virtually the same thing, and, like Haley, said that she wouldn’t testify. She, too, was scared, but I still made a note to subpoena her as well. You never know…

  As for Heather and Connie’s friends – they were no help. In fact, all of them told me that Connie and Heather fought constantly, and that Heather said lots of incendiary things about her hatred for her mother. Still, it gave me a heads-up on what I could expect from the witnesses in trial. I was just going to have to cross-examine them and hope that I could get some kind of positive testimony out of them.

  After doing my research, and talking to the witnesses, the case didn’t seem any more promising than before.

  In fact, it seemed even worse.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  One Month Later

  The day of Heather’s trial was finally here, and I had a pit in my stomach like I had never had before. Nothing had worked out for me in my discovery process, unfortunately. I never was able to track down Louisa, even though I sent my investigator out after her and Anna wasn’t able to find out any information about her, either. She tried, but, for some odd reason, Louisa was like a ghost. Of course, it would have helped if I had something to go on with Louisa – her date of birth, for instance, or her prior address. I didn’t have access to any of those records, and the church where she worked apparently expunged her contact information when she left that place.

  There wasn’t anything on-line that would help me find Louisa, and that was frustrating.

  I was also trying to find out who Heather’s birth mother was, and was getting close to finding that out. I didn’t know why that was important, except that I wanted Heather to possibly have a family who might want to know who she was. She didn’t have anybody – her mother and father were both gone, and they both were only children, so she didn’t have any extended family around, either. I wanted to find out her birth mother, because I wanted her to have family.

  Not that Heather cared about that. Every time I went to see her, after her plea deal blew up, it was the same – she had apparently given up. She didn’t even bother to dress for me when I saw her, because she was usually in her pajamas, and she had even cut off her hair. It was short, because Heather told me that she didn’t want to bother with making it look pretty anymore.

  “Why should I care about doing my hair?” she asked. “I’m going to have to get used to not having access to my blow-dryer and flat iron, and my hair is so kinky and curly, I just don’t want to mess with it anymore.” It was a little surprising that Heather’s hair was curly, because, before, when she was caring about her appearance, it was always straight. “I used a straight iron every day,” she explained. “I’m just gonna go au naturel, because it’s going to look like this when I’m in that fucking cage, where I’m going to be for the rest of my fucking life.”

  She never bothered putting on makeup, either, so she looked very different than the first time I met her. She didn’t exactly look like a man, but she was no longer trying to look like a woman, either, so I could almost tell what she looked like before she decided to transition.

  I WENT to pick her up for our trial at 7 in the morning. I was happy to see that she had bothered to dress appropriately for the occasion. She was wearing a dark blue dress, with a lighter blue sweater over it, tan pumps and hose. Her curly hair was tied back with a colorful scarf, and she carried a tan bag. She was wearing makeup, but it was subtle, so subtle that I probably wouldn’t have known that she was wearing makeup if I wasn’t up close.

  “What?” she asked when I picked her up. She brought out a mirror and looked into it, rubbing her teeth to get the lipstick off. “You looked at me funny. I know that you probably wanted me to look like Heath Morrison for this occasion, but fuck ‘em. The jury might as well know the truth about me, don’t you think? So, I’m sorry that I’m not in a suit and all, but I want to feel that I look good.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” I said. “Honestly. I was thinking that you looked beautiful.”

  “Huh.” Heather raised her eyebrow. “Whatever.” She looked ahead, her small hands clutching her purse at her feet. “Is the media gonna be there?”

  “I would imagine,” I said. “This is my first murder trial since John Robinson, so they’ve been interested in this case. They were interested, anyhow, at the beginning.” I sighed. “I wanted to tell you what’s going to happen today. We won’t actually be picking a jury until the afternoon. This morning is just me and the prosecutor arguing pre-trial motions. I presented him with a list of witnesses from that church, and the prosecutor is objecting to them on the grounds of relevance. I basically have to tell the judge what these witnesses are going to testify to, and the judge will decide if they are relevant or not. If he says that they aren’t relevant, then-“

  “We’re fucked. What else is new?” Heather studied me, her fingers, with pale pink polish replacing the black, tapping her forehead.

  “I don’t want you to think that we have a good chance with this case,” I said. I hadn't been able to locate that butcher knife, and that was still the real problem. That was still going to mean that the prosecutor was pretty much going to slam-dunk this case. But at least we were going down swinging. “But you never know. If the judge allows the testimony of the church people, then we just might be able to make a good case.”

  “What are the chances of that happening? That the judge lets you talk to these people on the stand?”

  “10%,” I said. “To be perfectly honest. It’s just going to be difficult to show relevance unless the Reverend is willing to testify that he brainwashed Connie, in particular, which he won’t do. But you never know. The problem is, even if, by some miracle, the judge allows these people to testify, the prosecutor might have grounds to appeal that decision, because it would be so out of the realm of what he’s supposed to do. But, best-case scenario, he allows the testimony and the prosecutor doesn’t bother to appeal if he loses.”

  Heather rolled her eyes. “None of this is sounding appealing to me. What else we got?”

  “Your testimony,” I said. “We got nothing else, so you gotta be convincing.”

  “Of course I’m gonna to be convincing,” sh
e said. “I’m telling the truth, so I’m going to be convincing.”

  Heather and I had gone over her testimony, in depth, the night before. I not only peppered her with my own questions, but I also played the part of the prosecutor, and I came at her with all my firepower. I wasn’t able to shake her, so I was encouraged by that.

  In the end, that was all we had – Heather and the truth. The truth and Heather. The prosecutor was going to try to nail her on the butcher knife, and she was going to have to admit that she had no idea what had happened to it. That was where our case was going to fall apart, no doubt. But I had long ago decided that this case was going to be a long shot. I could only hope that, if we lost, I could win over the judge on sentencing. Maybe the prosecutor might be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Heather killed her mother and that she did not have justification for doing so, but the judge had wide discretion on sentencing and maybe, just maybe, I could put enough doubt in the judge’s mind about what really happened, and that would mean that he would go easy on Heather in sentencing her.

  That was another reason why I wanted the judge to at least be made aware of my theory on what happened. Even if the jury couldn’t hear the testimony of the church-goers that I managed to find who were willing to talk on the record, or of the Reverend, perhaps I could put the seed in the mind of the judge that this was happening.

  Heather looked down at her hands. “I got my nails done,” she said. “Professionally.”

  “They look nice. Very nice.”

  “I guess.” She looked out the window of the car. “It’s going to be fall soon,” she said. “My favorite time of year.” Her voice cracked, and I knew what she was thinking.

  “You’re going to get to enjoy autumn,” I said. “We’re going to win this.” I didn’t know why I was being so positive with Heather, because, usually, I was realistic. And realism would dictate that I would tell her that she had less than a 10% chance of actually enjoying autumn.

  “You think?” Her face looked hopeful, perhaps for the first time in months, and it broke my heart.