by Joel Goldman
“No,” Rossi said. “She didn’t.”
Alex covered her mouth with her hand. “She called me. Why would she do that?”
“Think about it. What possible reason could she have had?”
Alex turned her back to him, hands on her hips, making a slow circle as she thought, stopping when she was facing Rossi again.
“She knew or thought she knew who was chasing her and wanted to tell me.”
“If it had been you and you knew who it was, who would you have called?”
She nodded her head. “I’d have called 911. It doesn’t make sense. If she knew who was after her, why call me?”
Rossi didn’t answer, wanting her to work it out on her own so she would believe it.
And then it hit her. She slumped against the side of Rossi’s car, bracing herself with her hands, staring down the embankment at the tree.
“She was trying to warn me.” She slapped the car with one hand, bolting upright, facing Rossi. “If she had just wanted someone to know who was after her, she would have called 911. She knew she wasn’t going to outrun this guy. She knew no one could get to her in time to save her. She was trying to warn me. That had to be the reason.”
Rossi kept his voice even and quiet. “Warn you about what?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, squeezing hard, looking back and forth from the road to the tree. “That this guy was after me too. Holy shit! How is that possible?”
“And that’s why I need your help. What was going on between you and Robin that would make both of you targets?”
Alex dropped her arms to her sides, shaking her head and arching her eyebrows.
“Nothing. I mean nothing except work, but she didn’t work on my cases. She was the perfect boss. All she did was assign them to me and tell me not to fuck them up.”
“Did you socialize with her outside of work?”
“No.”
“Was she having any personal problems that she talked with you about, maybe something about someone threatening her?”
Alex waved off his question. “No, nothing at all. She was my boss. We were colleagues. I didn’t know much about her personal life. And if she was having some kind of problem, she didn’t tell me about it.”
“Then it has to be something connected to work. What’s the most recent case Robin assigned to you?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
ALEX KNEW ALL ABOUT the autonomic nervous system, knew that it was the part of the peripheral nervous system that accounted for involuntary functions like heart rate, perspiration, and pupil dilation, and knew that it was better than any lie detector. She’d seen it in action whenever she caught a witness lying on cross-examination. They’d twitch or tic or their eyes would bug out or they’d look away or down or they’d burn bright red or they’d erupt in flop sweat. One way or another, their bodies would give them away and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Only the best liars and poker players could suppress the involuntary reactions and facial movements that gave away the truth. She’d learned to do that when it came to Dwayne Reed, but Rossi had caught her off guard, her evolutionary flight-or-fight impulses overwhelming her, sending her heart rate soaring, dampening her armpits, and stretching her eyes as wide as silver dollars. She couldn’t have felt more exposed if she were naked.
“Jared Bell,” she said.
“That’s my case.”
“I know that,” Alex said, willing her voice to remain in its normal octave and not stammer. “You act like you didn’t know I was handling it.”
“I didn’t.”
Alex was relieved as her heart rate began to slow and her facial muscles to relax, hoping without faith that Rossi hadn’t noticed her mini-meltdown. If he was telling the truth, something she never assumed, he couldn’t have been involved in getting Jared’s file to Robin, but she wanted to be certain.
“How could you not know?”
“I never know who’s defending one of my cases until the prosecutor needs me. And why would I care about Bell? The guy admitted to having sex with the victim and we found the crucifix she was wearing at the time she was killed in the back pocket of the shorts he had on when he says he found her body. And he confessed. The case couldn’t be any tighter. Whether you or somebody else pleads him out makes no difference to me. But I’ll tell you what I do care about.”
“What’s that?”
“Why did you practically shit your pants when I asked you what was the last case Robin Norris assigned to you? And what does Jared Bell have to do with all of this?”
Alex deflected his question, using what she’d learned from the homeless woman in Liberty Park to put Rossi on the defensive.
“Do you know the victim’s name?”
“What’s that got to do with this?”
“Just answer my question. Do you even know that her first name is Joanie?”
Rossi narrowed his eyes at her. “Who have you been talking to? Her name hasn’t been released.”
“Then you do know her name. Joanie.”
“Yeah. Joanie Sutherland. Who leaked that information to you? Was it that assistant prosecutor, Kalena . . . whatever her last name is?”
“It’s Kalena Greene, and no, she keeps everything in her vault. I got it the old-fashioned way, by investigating my client’s case. And your case isn’t as tight as you think.”
Rossi thought for a moment. “So you found a witness who knew the victim’s name?”
“Just her first name. You gave me her last name,” Alex said.
Rossi ducked his chin, pursing his lips. “Okay, score one for the defense. Now answer my question. Why did you pinch a loaf when I asked you about the last case Robin assigned to you?”
Alex had had time to regroup. She couldn’t tell him about her deal with Judge West, but she had to give him something that was plausible.
“I’m trying to save the life of a client accused of a capital offense while also trying to deal with my boss’s death when you drag me out here to tell me that not only was Robin murdered but that her death might have something to do with my client’s case. So, yeah, that knocked the pins out from under me for a minute, but my panties are clean. Score one for you if that’s what you call rounding the bases.”
Rossi stared at her, waiting for any hint of a tell that would give her away, but she was steady, her face flat and cool, her arms at her sides, her hands soft and open.
“Here’s the way it is,” he said. “Someone murdered Robin Norris, and my bet is that the last thing she ever did on this earth was try to tell you the identity of her killer because she was scared he would come after you next. Now, if you want to blow that off, pretend that I’m playing games with you, there’s nothing I can do about it. But be sure you tell your girlfriend so when she goes to the morgue to identify your body, she’ll blame you and not me.”
Alex felt the heat rise in her neck and cheeks again, not because Rossi had caught her flat-footed, but because he’d played the Bonnie card.
“Leave Bonnie out of this. You’ve been sticking your nose in our relationship too much as it is.”
Rossi shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just saying maybe Robin wasn’t trying to warn me but maybe she was trying to tell me who was chasing her so that I would make sure the bastard was caught and put away. Maybe she called me instead of 911 because she trusted me more than she trusted the cops.”
“Either way, it doesn’t matter.”
“How’s that?”
“Either the killer is coming after you anyway or once he thinks Robin told you who he is, he’ll definitely come after you and you’ll be just as dead.”
The first drops of rain splattered on the road, hissing. Alex turned her face skyward, wishing the rain would wash all of this away, knowing that it couldn’t possibly rain that hard. She let the water run off her face, running her fingers through her hair and shaking her head, then taking a deep breath.
“So what do we do?”
>
“Help each other. Do you think we can do that?”
Before Alex could respond, Rossi’s phone rang. He answered and listened.
“Okay. I’m about fifteen minutes out,” he said and clicked off. “You know someone named Mathew Woodrell?”
“Sort of. I met him yesterday at the courthouse. Why?”
“He just tried to kill Jared Bell.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
ALEX FOLLOWED ROSSI, both of them shooting past slower-moving vehicles. The sky had opened, hammering them with sheets of rain that reduced visibility until Alex could barely see Rossi’s taillights. She stayed with him, not wanting him to question Mathew Woodrell or Jared alone.
She opened her phone, put it on speaker, and called Grace Canfield.
“It’s me, Alex. What have you found on Mathew Woodrell?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Not good. No luck in the probate clerk’s office?”
“That was my first stop. No one fitting his description was there yesterday or the day before or as long as anyone could remember. I called the Kansas City Veterans Affairs office and they’d never heard of him. My husband has an uncle who was in the Eighty-Second Airborne. They’ve got their own veterans association. He checked their membership directory. There were a couple of guys named Mathew Woodrell, but they’ve been dead for years.”
“Shit!”
“What’s the problem?” Grace asked.
“He just tried to kill Jared Bell.”
“Get out! How could he do that? Jared’s in jail.”
“Tell me about it,” Alex said and clicked off the call.
Ten minutes later, Alex parked behind Rossi in metered spaces in front of the jail. Rossi ignored the meters but Alex couldn’t bring herself to do that, searching her glove box for change and jamming quarters into the coin slot, getting soaked in the process. She raced into the building, cursing that she’d let Rossi get the jump on her, only to find him standing in the first-floor lobby talking to Kalena Greene.
Kalena was wearing the kind of black sheath dress designers promised would take you through the day and the night. Her makeup was perfect and her nails were freshly done. Reliably fashion-unconscious, Alex cringed, knowing her bedraggled, wet-rat look was even worse than usual compared to Kalena. That normally wouldn’t have bothered her, but Kalena was sporting more than fashion; she was radiating authority, something Alex had to undermine or risk being shoved aside. She joined them, interrupting their conversation.
“How’s my client? Is he okay? I want to see him immediately and I want to know how there could have been such a breakdown in security.”
Kalena took the interruption in stride. “Short story, your client is fine. He was stabbed in the neck, but he’s going to be okay. They stitched him up and he’s in isolation until we figure this thing out.”
“What about Mathew Woodrell?” Alex asked. “I met him yesterday at the courthouse. How’d he end up in jail today and why did he attack my client?”
“I can answer the first part of your question,” Kalena said. “Late yesterday afternoon, he walked into a liquor store, aimed a gun at the cashier, and walked out with a fistful of money and kept walking until the police arrested him a couple of blocks from the store.”
Alex shook her head. “Unbelievable. He seemed like a harmless old guy.”
“Not so harmless,” Kalena said. “Half an hour after he got on the men’s floor, he came up behind your client and stabbed him in the neck.”
“With what?”
“His glasses, if you can believe that.”
“Like in the third Godfather movie,” Rossi said, “when Michael Corleone’s kid is getting baptized and his henchmen are busy knocking off Corleone’s enemies. I think it was the Vatican’s banker that got killed that way, only the killer used the banker’s glasses. Woodrell used his own. Must have been pretty sharp glasses.”
“Wait until you see them,” Kalena said. “He filed down the ends of the frame on each side until they were like a shiv. Then he covered the ends with rubber caps, the kind you’d use to keep your glasses from sliding off.”
“Smart,” Rossi said. “The kind of thing that no one is going to check.”
“They will from now on,” Kalena said. “Jared was lucky. When Woodrell jumped him, Jared threw an elbow that knocked Woodrell to the floor. Otherwise, it would have been worse than the proverbial flesh wound.”
“But why?” Alex said. “Why try to kill Jared?”
Kalena sighed. “That’s the next crazy part of this. The corrections officers subdued Woodrell, put him in a single cell, and called the police and my office. Standard procedure when something like this happens.”
“Dispatch called me because Jared Bell is my case,” Rossi said.
“And I got here first. He’s waived his right to counsel but he won’t answer my questions.”
“Why not?” Alex asked.
“Because he says he’ll only talk to you.”
“Why me?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Kalena led them to a room on the second floor. A corrections officer was stationed outside the room and another was inside. Woodrell was seated at a table, legs and wrists shackled, his wrists cuffed to a steel hoop bolted to the table. He’d transformed from the dapper gentleman she’d met at the courthouse to an unshaven, disheveled, jumpsuit-clad inmate, though he was just as calm.
There were two chairs on the opposite side of the table. Kalena and Alex each took a seat. Rossi stood in the corner.
Alex thought for a moment, deciding where to start. An effective interrogation depended on either fear or trust. Woodrell had no reason to fear her, and his insistence on talking to her suggested he trusted her. Though they’d spoken only briefly the day before, she must have made a favorable impression, so that was where she’d begin.
“So, Mathew. Yesterday you told me that you wouldn’t need a criminal defense lawyer, but it looks like you do.”
“No,” he said, his voice quiet and sure, “I don’t.”
“How can you say that? You committed an armed robbery yesterday and today you assaulted someone with a deadly weapon.”
“I’m guilty of both, which makes a lawyer unnecessary, don’t you think?”
Alex shook her head. “It makes it even more important that you have a lawyer. Since the person you assaulted is my client, I can’t represent you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you.”
“Yes, yes, Ms. Stone. I know all about my rights. Ms. Greene read them to me and we had a nice discussion about them, after which I signed a waiver.”
“Fair enough, then. Ms. Greene said you wouldn’t answer her questions but that you would answer mine. Why is that?”
“Because there are things you need to know.”
“Such as?”
“Your client is a murderer.”
“My client has been charged with murder. He hasn’t been convicted.”
“I’m not talking about that woman in the creek.”
Alex cocked her head at him. “Then what murder are you talking about?”
“My daughter. Jared Bell raped and murdered my daughter.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ALEX FELL BACK IN HER CHAIR, eyes wide and blinking, stunned like she’d been sucker punched. She looked at Kalena and Rossi, both of them slack-jawed, both of them taken by surprise as well.
She took a deep breath, studying Woodrell for some sign of artifice. His shoulders were soft and rounded, not bunched up around his ears, his face was slack, and his breathing was smooth. His hands were still, cupped around the hook in the table. His body was at ease except for his watery, pinched eyes. She thought about Jared and the name he shouted in his sleep, her stomach clenching at the realization that Woodrell might be telling the truth.
“Was her name Ali?”
Woodrell leaned his head to one side, nodding, the corners of his mouth quivering. “S
o he told you.”
“He didn’t tell me anything. One of the corrections officers told me that he wakes up during the night calling that name.”
Woodrell sniffed, his eyes reddening. “Ali was her nickname. Her full name was McAllister Woodrell.” He ducked his chin, chuckling. “I know. What a name, but McAllister was my wife’s maiden name. She insisted on naming our daughter McAllister because it reminded her of one of her favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor. Flannery is an old Irish clan and McAllister is Scottish, so my wife said if using the family name was good enough for Flannery, it was good enough for our daughter. Except it was a mouthful and everyone ended up calling her Ali.”
It was impossible for Alex not to smile at the story, told with a father’s sweetness. In spite of what he’d done, she sensed that Woodrell was a good man driven to extremes by a terrible loss, something she understood. He had a story to tell and he’d begun with the ending, though Alex sensed he had more to say.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
Woodrell sighed, smiling softly. “She was a good girl. Full of spunk. Like her mother. A tomboy, but a looker, hair black as a raven and a grin filled with more mischief than a sailor on leave. And she was strong and graceful, you know, like a gymnast or a dancer. And headstrong,” he said, chuckling again. “Like when she decided to join the army. Her mother raised hell about that, but you couldn’t tell Ali anything once she got something in her head.”
“Is that where Ali and Jared met, in the army?”
He nodded. “Yes. I don’t know exactly when or how. All I know is that they were on the same base in Afghanistan. She e-mailed us that a soldier was harassing her, ‘coming on to her’ was the way she put it. She wasn’t interested, but he was real pushy. She didn’t go into a lot of details, but we got the picture.”
“Did you ever find out who that was?”
Woodrell clenched his jaw. “Not till after. The army told me it was Jared Bell.”
“The army told you that it was Jared?”
“They didn’t have to. I could read between the lines.”