False Witness (John Steel series Book 3)

by syron-jones, p s

  Mathews felt another drop of sweat hit her hand. She was in a suit beneath her robes which all in all had the effect of virtually being in a sauna.

  The judge picked up the glass and took a massive mouthful of the water as the lawyer drawled on. As he approached the jury his words became heightened, his tone raised, as if to bring a little drama to the whole performance.

  The jury watched him intently as he went through how his client was being set up, how he wasn’t even there when the victim was killed. Their eyes fixed on him as though he was reading an exciting novel to a bunch of kids. All eyes were on him except for one person.

  There was a scream from the gallery and everyone turned to see a woman standing up, her arm outstretched as she pointed towards the judge.

  Mathews sat there, her eyes bulging. Blood began gushing from her mouth, and suddenly she vomited a stream of red plasma that reached the desk of the accused. The poor guy behind the desk shot backwards, falling off hischair in the process.

  The flesh around the judge’s mouth began to bubble and pieces of blooded flesh fell away as though she was made from melting wax.

  Mathews froze, her hands gripping the sides of the bench, her eyes still open wide. Then she slumped forwards, her head smashing onto the bench, making a hard sickening crack as bone met wood. The impact knocked the glass jug over, spilling the rest of the liquid all over the place.

  Everyone ran out screaming, all of them apart from Megan, who just sat there, frozen in place, her eyes fixed onto the judge as she lay slumped on her bench.

  *

  The sun was high and the breeze had died away leaving some warmth in the air. Steel had finished his hot dog and was now watching McCall devour hers in the most unladylike manner.

  Steel shook his head and laughed as she shoved the rest of the dog inside her mouth and tossed the screwed up paper into the trash like a champion basketball player.

  “What?” she asked with a confused look on her face.

  Steel said nothing, he just stood leaning on a wall of the station.

  “Nothing, come on, we have work to do.” Steel said shaking his head with a smile.

  McCall licked the remaining ketchup off her fingers and headed for the entrance. As they entered and heard the noise of the station house lobby, the desk sergeant stopped them and waved the two detectives over to him.

  “Hey, McCall, your captain says that you and James Bond over there have got to go to the courthouse. Someone has whacked a judge during a murder case.”

  McCall’s face flushed hotly as she marched over to see if there was any more information. “What the heck? Are we the only detectives here or what?”

  The sergeant just shrugged and smiled unsympathetically. The two detectives walked back out into the welcoming sunshine. Sure, it was a great day to take a walk but the courthouse was on Chambers Street in the Civic Centre, which was miles away.

  McCall headed for the subway whilst mentally figuring out which route to take. She stopped and turned to see Steel reading a text message on his cell phone.

  “You coming or what?” McCall shouted, almost losing the directions she’d calculated in her head. He just smiled and headed for the parking lot down the road.

  “You remember I don’t have a car anymore, right?” she shouted after him as he walked off at a fast pace, like a child in a toy store. McCall let out a growl of disapproval and chased after him. Suddenly it dawned on her, that he may have actually brought his car for a change.

  As she caught up with him she found John Steel looking at an old Ford f-150. Her enthusiasm suddenly died at the sight of the dusty pick-up.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she said in disgust. “This is your car?”

  Steel turned to her with a puzzled look on his chiselled face. “What? This? Oh no, Detective. That is.” He pointed to a far corner of the lot to a black 2015 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500 coupe.

  Her jaw dropped and she could feel herself begin to drool at the sight of the beast. “Wow! Steel, I am, actually not surprised really.” Her words had turned what was meant as a compliment almost into an insult—mostly out of jealousy.

  “Well, you said you had a car and,” she trailed off, “well, I guess I’m impressed.”

  Steel smiled smugly as he watched her walk around the shiny new car. She paused for a moment.

  A brand new car!

  “Steel, did you just buy this to piss me off?” She knew he could be insensitive sometimes but this had taken the biscuit. She shot him a look that could have melted the sun.

  “What, don’t you like it?”

  McCall was lost for words. Was he actually asking if she liked his new car while hers was in an ashtray somewhere?

  “Seriously?” she said in astonishment. “You’re asking me if I like your new car while I trashed mine saving your ass?”

  Steel threw her the keys whilst wearing a large grin. “Who said she was mine?”

  *

  The streets were filled with the throaty roar of a V8 as McCall took her new baby for a spin. She had to admit she was taken aback with the whole thing. He had come through for her. He had bought her a new car, and what a car it was!

  But she was confused about it. This new car was fitted out with hidden police warning lights in the grill and a couple of other extras, making her wonder just how long had he had this planned.

  However, the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it didn’t really matter. She was happy, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

  Steel smiled as he watched McCall out of the corner of his eye. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the steering wheel every time the car’s V8 engine gave a mighty roar.

  As McCall parked she could see that the media circus had started to arrive and were setting up in what they thought was the best vantage points for good camera shots.

  And as the two detectives approached the outer police barrier at the foot of the courthouse’s steps she smiled. They had already cordoned off the building with a ‘nobody in or out’ policy, so as to prevent the killer from leaving.

  At the door, two uniformed officers stood watch. One was a tall female officer with dark hair, blue eyes and a secret smile for Steel, and the other was a tall man with a quarterback’s body and watchful eyes.

  “Morning, Detectives,” the tall officer greeted them as they walked up to show their IDs.

  “Morning officer, er, Hodges,” McCall shot the greeting back after quickly getting the man’s name from his name tag.

  “Morning, Detective,” the female officer greeted Steel—the smile still confined to the corner of her mouth.

  “Morning, Elizabeth, sorry, I mean Officer Lane.” He walked in, leaving her with a smile and a memory. McCall rolled her eyes and followed him into the building.

  Inside the old stone walls, groups of people sat or stood in the wide corridors, while uniformed officers took statements. There was the sound of crying and loud mumbling. Something terrible had happened. Certainly they had been told that a judge had been murdered, but it seemed that something more had happened.

  McCall figured that the large group of people had come from the crime scene, which now had two officers on either side of the courtroom’s door to prevent entry to anyone with a sick urge to grab a photograph. Steel looked round at the groups, most of whom were made up of teenagers—possibly students. Then he froze for a moment as he saw a familiar face in one of the crowd waiting to be interviewed.

  Steel walked over to the young female uniformed officer waiting to carry out the next interview and moved in close to whisper in her ear. She nodded agreement before John gratefully tapped her on the shoulder. He walked quickly towards the guarded doorway to catch up with McCall, who was waiting patiently.

  “Sorry,” she muttered sarcastically, thinking he had just picked up another date. “Is this murder interfering with your social life, Detective?”

  Steel smiled at the thought that she was mad at the idea of other women
giving him the eye, but he held his pleasure inside, enjoying watching her squirm.

  “Who the hell attacks a judge in a courtroom?” McCall asked as she pulled on the surgical gloves. Steel held the door open with his already gloved hand, letting Samantha go in first.

  “Okay then!” she said. They both stopped at the sight of the judge slumped onto the wood of the bench, with the ME, Tina, standing some feet away. Blood ran down the sides of the front of the furniture, and there were splatter marks leading to the desk.

  “What the hell happened here?” Steel asked, almost as surprised as McCall at the sight, half expecting it to have been a shooting or something equally spontaneous.

  “Well, time of death is obvious and we have plenty of witnesses,” Tina told them. “What we don’t have is a suspect.”

  McCall looked at Tina, confused at what she had just said.

  Steel got closer, then quickly moved back from the potent smell emanating from the corpse. “That’s acid,” he said decisively.

  Tina nodded at Steel’s assessment. “That it is—acid, I mean. As for the type of acid, well, I will have to get her back to the lab first to find that out, well get back what’s left of her anyway.” Tina pointed to the bench, then carefully walked round to get a better look, wondering if there was a possibility of finding a clue as to how the acid had been administered. McCall pointed to the overturned water jug, thinking that it could be a good place to start looking.

  “Whatever it was, it chewed her up pretty good,” Tina stated. “Luckily we knew who she was: Judge Carmen Mathews.”

  Sam McCall nodded, her face a mask of disgust. “Okay, Tina, you get her back and we will check out her chambers. She may have left something that might explain all this.”

  Tina waved over a couple of men in safety suits who had buckets to gather up the remains, even the fluid ones.

  *

  McCall and Steel made their way to the bailiff, who was still guarding the door to Judge Mathew’s chambers. She could see the shocked expression on his face. Even though he was looking away from the scene.

  “I am Detective McCall and this is Detective Steel,” she introduced herself and Steel to the bailiff, who looked at them and then at their shields that they held up for him to see. Steel opened the door to the chambers and stepped aside.

  “I think it’s best if we talk in here,” Steel told the man. “I think you could do with a change of scenery.”

  The officer nodded shakily and proceeded inside. Steel beckoned for him to sit in one of the padded chairs that was in front of a large wooden desk. The man sat in one, while McCall took the other.

  “So can you tell me what happened?” McCall asked him.

  Steel had left the room briefly, but soon returned with a bottle of water from a vending machine. He handed the bottle over and listened whilst he made a cursory search of the office.

  The bailiff cracked open the bottle and drank in sips. McCall smiled at him to try to reassure him that it was okay for him to take a moment to gather his thoughts.

  Eventually he began: “I have no idea what happened. We started proceedings as normal.” He stopped as he remembered the juror getting sick.

  “Well, I remember that everything was okay, apart from the fact that it was damn hot for some reason. The judge asked me to get someone to see the caretaker about it. Later, after I got back, one of the jurors, well I guess he must have had a hard time with the heat because he dropped to the floor with breathing problems.”

  Sam McCall had already turned on her digital recorder and was taking in everything.

  “Did he leave?” Steel asked, looked over at the man, curious at the timing.

  The bailiff shook his head and took another hit from the bottle. “No. The judge gave him some water and we carried on once he had retaken his seat. He insisted he was fine.”

  McCall looked at Steel, who wore the same troubled expression.

  “Which juror was that exactly?” Steel shot the question as he sat in the judge’s chair and opened the drawers of her desk, to see if there was anything untoward.

  “Number six,” replied the bailiff. “Juror number six. Hell, you can’t miss the guy, he must weigh two hundred pounds.”

  McCall made a mental note to look for the man after they had finished examining this room. “So, what happened next?”

  The man’s face was suddenly filled with terror as the image came back to him. “Oh God, it was horrible! I brought her a fresh glass from her chambers and she refilled it. Like I said, it was like a friggin’ oven in there. Anyways she took a drink—”

  Steel watched as the man quickly put his bottle of water down.

  “And she began to spit blood, I mean it was comin’ out like it was from a fireman’s hose! Then she just collapsed. I told everyone to get the hell out of there and radioed it in so nobody could leave.” The bailiff looked at one of the pictures on her wall—an old photograph of her from when she had graduated from law school, alongside another woman who was around the same age.

  “She didn’t deserve that,” the poor man concluded. “She was a good judge and a good person.”

  The Englishman noticed a family photograph on the desk. It was of the judge, her husband and their kids. The oak-framed photo sat neatly on a corner under a brass desk lamp.

  “We will come back later,” Steel told him. “In the meantime can you secure this room? CSU will probably want to come in just in case.”

  The bailiff was still shaking with shock, and McCall made a mental note to ask the paramedics to come and take a look at him.

  Steel had come up empty but if there was something to be found, he figured it would not be in plain sight. They could hear the commotion from the frightened people in the other part of the building. Steel got up out of the chair and helped the bailiff out of the room, through the doorway to the hallway instead of making him look at that courtroom once more.

  But something played on Steel’s mind. How, she wondered, did the judge fit into this whole mess?

  And what the hell was the girl whose life he’d saved, doing there?

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tooms and Agent Lloyd sat in the briefing room looking through the files on the prisoners. They also had paperwork on the guards and the bus driver, just in case they red-flagged.

  Tony had sent a request to the financial department for anything on the guards. They had already found the one guard had taken money that could not be explained, and maybe there were more unexplained payments. However, that would take time—or so they said.

  Tooms looked over at Agent Lloyd as she sat in the chair opposite. She wore a grey suit with a black blouse that had the first two buttons unfastened: probably not for his benefit, after all she knew he was married, but the bared flesh made sure that she got a lot of attention from the other detectives, who seemed to time their coffee breaks to coincide with hers.

  Her hair glistened from the artificial overhead lighting. Though Tooms had to admit she was a stunningly beautiful woman, he was aware that she was damaged goods.

  She caught him staring and smiled, almost as if she had misjudged his attention.

  “Anything wrong, Detective?” Her voice was soft and rang with a hint of a sensuality.

  Tooms leaned back in his chair and looked at her through half-closed eyes. “I guess I’m just trying to work out why you’re here.”

  Lloyd looked puzzled for a moment, not really knowing where this conversation was going. “I thought it was easier than rushing back and forth between here and the office.”

  Tooms shook his head at the evasive answer. “No, I mean this case. Why are you here, Agent Lloyd? If it’s a federal case we wouldn’t be anywhere near it apart from acting as your lapdogs, but we seem to be doing all the lifting on this gig. Plus where’s the rest of your team? Don’t you guys normally travel in packs?”

  Cassandra Lloyd nodded, a smile of approval on her face. “We all have our orders, Detective, whether we like them or not.”
>
  Tooms sensed a tone of disappointment in her voice, as if she’d been assigned to this case like a kid sent to the corner of the classroom for misbehaving in class. He knew there was no use pressing the matter, and that she wouldn’t unburden herself, at any rate not to Detective Tooms. However she might open up to Joshua Tooms.

  Detective Tooms smiled and shrugged as if defeated, then he picked up the file on the driver, hoping to defuse the situation. Lloyd watched Tooms look quickly through the file as if he was using it as an excuse to end their discussion. She smiled at his attempt to hide his curiosity about her, but then he stopped reading and she saw his expression change.

  She could see that he had found something. He stood up and quickly looked through the files he had just skimmed through quickly.

  “What did you find, Detective?”

  Tooms raised a hand so as to silence her, before he lost concentration. Lloyd leaned forwards with interest as she watched him scan the words in front of him.

  For a moment she thought Tooms looked excited by something. He grabbed two of the files and looked through them with interest, his fingers flying up and down the paragraphs as he started to compare them with something in the driver’s file.

  The paperwork had revealed something to Tooms that everyone else had missed.

  Tooms looked up at Lloyd with a surprised expression on his face. “It says here that the guard who we found in the Hudson and the guard who was sat with the driver, they had both been transferred to the prison two days before. Someone wanted them on that bus. The question is who and why?” He looked at Cassandra as she raised an eyebrow. “I think we need to speak to the survivors in the hospital. They are the only ones who can tell us what happened on that bus.”

  Lloyd threw down her file and sat back, tilting her chair onto its rear pair of legs. “Good luck with that, Detective. But we’re waiting for the hospital to phone back to tell us when they are conscious.”