The Accused

by Jana DeLeon

  Connie’s eyes widened. “Oh! You mean something to do with when you were an attorney?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “You’re not going back there, are you?”

  “I don’t have a choice. If I quit now, I’ll have to start this all over again later on and if the problem is something I brought with me, it will just follow me somewhere else. I may as well deal with it now.”

  Connie nodded and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Well, let me cook you two some breakfast. I don’t know when Jack will show up and the regulars won’t be in for another twenty minutes or so.”

  “If it’s no trouble,” Alaina said, “that would be great.”

  She glanced over at Carter, who still stared straight ahead at the wall behind the grill. His silence bothered her. Either he was angry over her unintentional brush-off this morning or he was more worried about the situation than he was letting on. Neither were good options.

  They sat in silence as Connie cooked up two specials and placed them in front of them. The waitress glanced over at Carter, then back at Alaina and raised her eyebrows. Alaina shrugged. She had no idea what had gotten into the brooding sheriff and didn’t want to guess.

  “I need to get some stock from the back,” Connie said. “Are you two all right for a couple of minutes?”

  “We’re fine,” Alaina said. “Thanks.”

  Connie hurried off to the storeroom at the back of the restaurant, and Alaina began to eat her breakfast in silence. She’d finished a little over half of it when the ringer sounded on her phone.

  A phone call! Service must be available again.

  She pulled the phone out of her purse and checked the display. Five missed calls, one phone message and a text sent only minutes ago. Her pulse quickened as she clicked on the text message. A text this early in the morning could only mean something bad.

  Call me as soon as you can. Everett.

  “Is everything all right?” Carter’s voice broke into her thoughts.

  “It’s a text from Everett. He wants me to call him.”

  Carter frowned. “A text this early?”

  “Yeah. There are some missed calls from yesterday. I bet everything’s coming through at one time.”

  She located Everett’s number in the contact list and pressed Call. Maybe it was good news. Maybe they’d caught the vandal and he was calling to let her know the worry was over. But as soon as she heard his voice, she knew something was wrong.

  “Alaina, thank God! I was about to call that sheriff you told me about.”

  She clenched the cell phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “Emily Jensen was attacked in the parking lot of her apartment building last night.”

  “No!” The kind intern wouldn’t even kill bugs when they got in the office. The last thing she should be on the receiving end of was violence. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s in a coma.”

  Alaina’s heart dropped and she choked back a sob.

  “It’s touch and go,” Everett said, “but for now, she’s stable.”

  “Did they catch her attacker?”

  “No, and there were no cameras at her apartment building.”

  “Have the police made any progress at all?”

  Everett sighed. “I’m afraid not. The two main suspects are Steven Adams and Larry Colbert, who are both apparently lost in the wind. I sent my wife and daughter to her mother’s in Phoenix and stepped up security around the building. If I’d thought for a minute that they’d go after Emily...”

  “You couldn’t have known. It makes no sense to take it out on her.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Well, I’ve got to get ready for a trial this morning, and I haven’t slept at all. Emily is at Park Memorial Hospital if you want to send a card. I’ll call you as soon as I have an update on anything.”

  “Thanks. And, Everett, watch your back.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carter had been staring at her during the entire conversation, knowing the news wasn’t good. “What happened?” he asked.

  Alaina told him about Emily, choking back a sob when she got to the part about the girl being in a coma.

  “Did Emily work on the Warren case?”

  “No. I mean, indirectly, Emily works on every case. She’s an intern, so she does all the document cataloging, but she’s rarely in court except when she requests to watch the proceedings, and she certainly wasn’t in court for that case.”

  “Really? I would think an aspiring attorney would want to be on the ground floor of a criminal case.”

  “Emily has no interest in pursuing criminal law. She intends to enter the nonprofit sector. She just hasn’t exactly told Everett that. They would never waste their time and education on helping others, but for Emily, the internship at such a prestigious firm will open practically any door she wants.”

  “Sounds like you were close. I’m really sorry.”

  Alaina swallowed, the lump in her throat making it ache. “I was closer to her than the others, but that’s not saying a lot. She’s a very private person and I’m a very guarded person, but I like and respect her. She’s so nice.”

  Her voice broke and she choked back a sob. “She doesn’t deserve this!”

  Carter placed his hand on hers. “Of course she doesn’t.”

  “I have to go see her.”

  Carter shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. He may have attacked Emily hoping to draw you out.”

  “If he doesn’t know where I am, then who’s harassing me here?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t like all these moving pieces. But if I were stalking you, the one place I’d be watching is that hospital.”

  She blew out a breath, trying to control her frustration. He was right, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

  “Were the missed calls from Everett? You told him to call the sheriff’s department if he couldn’t reach you, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why he didn’t call for me there.”

  She scrolled through the missed calls, and her pulse quickened when she saw the first one was from Emily. “Emily called me yesterday evening from the law office.”

  “Did she leave a message?”

  “No.”

  “Turn off your phone and turn it back on. Just to make sure there’s nothing hanging out there in cell limbo.”

  She powered down the phone, waited ten seconds, then powered it back up, eyes glued to the message window at the bottom. When the message indicator popped up, she jumped on her seat. “There’s a message!”

  “Stay calm,” Carter directed. “It may be from Everett.”

  Some of the wind left her sails. “You’re right,” she said as she punched the button to check the message. Emily’s voice sounded through the phone a second later.

  Alaina, I’m really sorry to call you like this, but I need to talk to you. I found something I don’t understand...it doesn’t look good, but maybe I’m misunderstanding what I’m seeing. I know you will be able to make sense of it. You’re the smartest person I know. And this involves you. Please call me as soon as you get this message.

  Alaina’s heart dropped as Emily’s message played. What in the world had the intern stumbled into? She hit Replay and handed the phone to Carter. He listened to the message, his expression becoming graver as the seconds passed.

  “I don’t like it,” he said as he handed the cell phone back to her. “Do you know what cases Emily was working on when you left?”

  “It could have been anything. A first-year intern is nothing more than a glorified administrative assistant really. Emily did a lot of filing and labeling and assembling documents for court, but she wasn’t involved in the analysis of any of them.”

  “But she may have reviewed them if she had the time.”

  “Certainly. The way most interns learn is by seeing how the lead attorney has developed the case.” She took a breath and tensed her back, ready to argue. “You realize this means I have to go se
e her now.”

  “She’s in a coma.”

  “At this moment, but she may wake up.”

  Carter frowned, but she could see the wheels turning. “If she wanted to talk to you about a case, she probably had the case documents with her. I could talk to the officer assigned to the case and see if I can get a copy of the documents recovered at the scene.”

  “That would be great!”

  “Don’t get excited just yet. They don’t have to give me anything, but I’m hoping if I explain the situation here and ask nicely that they will.”

  “We have to try.”

  Carter nodded and pulled some money from his wallet. “Let’s head to the house. I’ll do a cursory check while you change clothes, but anything more intense will have to wait until we get back. I don’t have anyone who has the training or authority to do it for me.”

  “I wouldn’t want anyone else in there anyway. It may be dangerous for them.”

  “I agree. We’ll inform Amos of the situation on the way out—tell him to take a day off.”

  Connie came out of the storeroom as Alaina was pulling her purse over her shoulder. “Was my cooking that bad? Neither of you finished your breakfast.”

  “I have an emergency back in Baton Rouge, but the breakfast was great.”

  Carter nodded. “You keep cooking and Jack might be out of a job.”

  “Thanks,” Connie told Carter, “but I’m not interested in doing more work, so my cooking will be our secret. I hope things turn out all right in Baton Rouge.”

  “Me, too,” Alaina said.

  But she was already worried. What had Emily seen that caused her so much distress? And did it have anything to do with the attack on her?

  She hoped answers lay in Baton Rouge because all she’d found in Calais were questions.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Carter hurried down the hospital stairs to a coffee shop on the first floor, leaving Alaina in Emily’s room, waiting on the doctor to make his rounds. The lead detective on the case had agreed to meet him there, wanting to speak to Alaina as well in case she could provide any information about the attack on Emily. Carter had explained that they were there to get information and likely had nothing to give, but the detective wanted to talk to them anyway.

  Carter understood the direction he was taking. Often, people had no idea how much information they possessed because they only had one or two pieces of a large puzzle. But the detective was collecting all the pieces he could and hopefully would form a picture that led to an arrest. Detective work was rarely as portrayed in the movies or books. Mostly, it was tedious and arrests were made over the details and not great leaps of intuition.

  The detective wore street clothes, as was often the case when they were canvassing for information, but Carter picked him out of the coffee shop crowd in a matter of seconds. Something about the way cops studied everything while appearing not to and the way they positioned themselves for optimum defense regardless of the situation—it was almost like breathing. He wasn’t sure they could hide it if they wanted to.

  As he crossed the shop, the detective spotted him as well and nodded, then pointed to a table in the corner. Carter stopped at the counter to grab a coffee and headed over to join the detective, who was already working on a big cup himself.

  “Carter Trahan,” Carter said as he took his seat and extended his hand across the table.

  “John Breaux,” the detective said as he gave Carter’s hand a shake. “I appreciate your meeting me.”

  “I don’t know if I can help, but you are welcome to anything I have.”

  “How is Ms. Jensen?”

  “She’s still unconscious but her vitals are stable. The doctors think she will awaken. They just have no idea when.”

  “That’s good news compared to last night.”

  “I noticed you had a guard at her room. Are you planning to keep one there?”

  “Until someone is arrested, absolutely. Given Ms. Jensen’s connections with the law firm and the threat on Mr. Winstrom, we can’t assume this was a random attack. Unconscious in that bed, she’s a sitting duck.”

  “I’m glad she’ll have protection. Alaina wanted me to make sure that was the case. If you get short-staffed or get the order from above to pull the security detail, let me know. Alaina said she’d pay for private security herself.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I appreciate Ms. LeBeau’s offer and will definitely let you know if the situation changes. You said Ms. LeBeau has had some problems since her arrival in Calais?”

  Carter nodded and gave John a rundown of the things that had transpired since Alaina’s residency at the estate.

  “Is it possible someone local is responsible?” John asked when Carter finished.

  “Sure, and I have someone in mind whom I’m keeping an eye on. He was expecting to inherit but Alaina’s stepfather didn’t have the right to distribute the estate. It was all set in stone by her mother, who was the heir.”

  “Will he inherit if the sisters don’t meet their obligations?”

  “Not that I’m aware of and he wouldn’t be either, as the terms of the will have been kept confidential. But the person I’m talking about isn’t all that stable. He’s childish, at best, and at worst, a professional alcoholic.”

  “So he might do it just for sport—if he can’t have it, then they won’t either.”

  Carter nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Makes sense, but I still want to cover all bases.”

  “I would, too. What can you tell me about the attack?”

  “Ms. Jensen left work at 6:00 p.m. and went to her gym. She worked out for approximately an hour, then had smoothies with some acquaintances for another hour. It was just getting dark when she parked at her apartment.”

  “No security cameras, right?”

  “No. It’s a decent building but old. It doesn’t have the amenities of newer developments, but it’s near the college and the rent’s cheap, so it tends to be filled up mostly by college students.”

  “No one saw anything?”

  “I’m headed back over there after this to finish canvassing. Between classes and their social lives, it’s hard to pin down an entire building of students. But so far, no one who was in the building at the time of the attack saw or heard a thing except the girl who called the police.”

  “And what did she see?”

  “She has an apartment on the side facing the parking lot where the attack occurred. She was on her balcony watering a plant. The lighting in the lot is not substantial, so she didn’t see the strike, but when she heard Ms. Jensen scream, she scanned the lot and saw someone clad in jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt running across the lot and away from the building. Then she saw Ms. Jensen collapsed next to her car and she called 9-1-1.”

  Carter shook his head. “A building of college students doesn’t seem like a good mark for a thief. Did you find any prints?”

  “No. It may be that he didn’t touch anything we could print, or it may be that he was wearing gloves. The witness couldn’t be sure on that point.”

  “Her purse was taken?”

  “The receptionist at the law office said Ms. Jensen carried a purse and sometimes a briefcase. There was no sign of either at the law office, the gym or her apartment, so I’m assuming both were taken.”

  John frowned.

  “What?” Carter asked. “You have that look like something doesn’t sit right with you.”

  “Yeah. It could be nothing, but Ms. Jensen was wearing a diamond necklace. It was her mother’s and the stone was a pretty good size. I figure if it was a random theft, he would have pulled it off her neck. The chain was thin.”

  “Maybe she screamed and he bolted before he could steal the necklace.”

  “Maybe, but the situation doesn’t fit tweaker or professional.”

  Carter nodded. “Which leads to the attack being personal and not made by a professional.”

  “Yeah,
but then why steal her bags? If the same person who threatened Mr. Winstrom is responsible for attacking Ms. Jensen, why make it look like a robbery in one case when he bragged about his work in another?”

  “I have no idea, but I don’t like it.”

  John blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t either. I’m glad to hear another law enforcement professional say that, because the chief thinks I’m out on a limb here. But I can feel it—something isn’t right about this case.”

  “I’m at the same place with the situation in Calais. On the surface, it looks like a fairly simple case of jealousy, but I feel like I’m missing something.”

  John nodded. “Like something’s moving just below the surface.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you think our cases are related?” John asked.

  “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

  * * *

  ALAINA DOWNED the last of her iced cappuccino and set the glass back on the coffee shop table with a sigh. Detective Breaux had left just a minute before, no closer to knowing what was going on than he had been before speaking with her.

  “I wish I could do something,” she said. “I kept saying ‘I don’t know’ over and over to all Detective Breaux’s questions. I feel so useless.”

  “Every little bit helps,” Carter said.

  “Helps what? Add more useless information for him to sift through?”

  “You sift through tons of data all the time putting a case together. You know firsthand that what seems irrelevant to the layperson could be the item that brings you a conviction.”

  “Perhaps, but when I’m sifting, the crime has already been committed. I’m not up against a time clock trying to prevent it from happening again.”

  “We all have our roles to play. It doesn’t do you any good to put yourself down. You’re doing what you can.”

  “Am I? Because I can’t stop thinking if I’d only gone into town to check my messages yesterday, or if I’d gotten to know Emily better so I could guess at what she wanted, or if I’d never made the impulsive decision to quit my job and move to the swamp in the first place—”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t have been attacked?” Carter finished.