Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  Woody began to slide off the sagging mattress edge. He pushed his shoes against the carpet, thrust himself further back onto the puffy bedspread.

  “I wouldn’t touch that.” Goldhammer pointed at the bedspread as if lice might swarm out of it onto Woody’s hands. Never mind that Goldhammer was practically naked on a hotel room chair.

  People who were put off by hotel linen had always amused Woody. They should work for a few years at a state prison. The experience would quickly put their idea of basic hygiene in the proper perspective.

  “You’re telling me you want to be able to read Jessica Black’s mind?”

  Goldhammer laughed, put up his hands defensively. “All I said was a dishonest lawyer might benefit from ... well, insider knowledge.”

  “You mean like a mole.”

  Goldhammer returned his attention to the computer screen. “Mr. Butler, the hotel is charging you a hefty fee for my use of this internet connection.” He pressed a pudgy finger to the laptop’s touchpad, moved it, clicked a button, typed. “You should let me finish this e-mail.”

  “Do you treat all your clients this rudely?”

  As quickly as he’d lost Goldhammer’s attention, he got it back. The lawyer dropped his hands from the computer and turned to look at him.

  “I already told you, Frank Ramsey is my client. That’s something you need to understand if this relationship is going to be effective.”

  “I retained you.”

  “You pay my fees, but Ramsey is my client. Mull it over. If you can’t accept the situation, we need to terminate our relationship.”

  “Give me a break.” Woody got up from his perch, walked to the door. He could hear Goldhammer’s fingers back on the keyboard, clicking away. “You want to know what our relationship is, Gil?”

  Goldhammer squinted at him.

  “You do what I say, or I shoot you in the fucking head. Mull that over.”

  Before the lawyer could form a response, Woody grabbed the doorknob and left.

  16

  It was raining and cold on Thanksgiving. Jessie drove to the Philadelphia Center for Inclusive Treatment to take Kristen Dillard out for the day. She parked her Accord in the lot, cut the engine, and remained in the car for a moment, staring past the rain-smeared windshield at the foreboding tower. It was hard not to draw comparisons with the picturesque grounds of Wooded Hill Hospital. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. The unfairness of it riled her. Unlike Jack Ackerman’s nebulous “nervous breakdown,” Kristen’s symptoms were all too clear—acute depression, night terrors, suicidal tendencies. Yet Jack had recovered in an idyllic hideaway, with the constant attention of the best therapists money could buy, while Kristen stared at gray walls and ate meals that a high school cafeteria would refuse to serve. High school cafeterias had to answer to parents. Kristen no longer had parents, or any family.

  That’s why you’re here, she reminded herself.

  After a deep breath, she exited the car, opened her umbrella, and headed for the entrance.

  She was surprised to find Kristen in the waiting room. The girl rushed forward and embraced Jessie in a hug strong enough to stifle her breath. The nurse waiting with her smiled and touched Jessie’s arm. “I think it’s so great what you’re doing. Kristen’s been talking about it all week.”

  “How are you?” Jessie said.

  Kristen’s smile did not falter, but in her eyes Jessie saw the sadness that never seemed to leave her, even for a moment. “It’s kind of sad with the holidays coming.”

  “I know.”

  “I used to give my mom a hard time, tell her I thought her turkey was too dry.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she shook her head. “I’d sure like to eat some of her turkey now.”

  “I know.”

  Jessie signed the necessary forms, thanked the nurse, and took Kristen’s hand. Outside, they didn’t bother with the umbrella, instead running for the car like a couple of kids.

  Jessie’s father lived in a small house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He hugged Jessie and then Kristen, treating the girl like family even though he’d never met her. He even managed not to stare at the scar on her neck, reddish, jagged evidence of the knife Ramsey had plunged there.

  They ate a simple dinner together. Not like the elaborate Thanksgiving feasts of her childhood when her mother had still lived here, and probably not like the holidays Kristen remembered. But they did have turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. And it was good.

  After Jessie helped her father clear the dishes, she excused herself and took Kristen into the family room to make sure she was holding up.

  “Everything okay?” Jessie asked.

  “Yeah. I’m having fun. Your dad’s nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you. For having me.”

  “Every year,” Jessie said. “For as long as you want to come. You’re welcome.”

  Jessie moved toward the doorway, but Kristen touched her arm, stopping her. “The doctors tried to hide it from me, but I heard Ramsey’s name on the news. He had some kind of appeal?”

  Jessie chewed her lip. Telling Kristen about Ramsey’s victory at the PCRA hearing, and what it meant, was inevitable. She had hoped to postpone the conversation until after Thanksgiving. But now that Kristen had brought up the subject, there was no avoiding it. As much as her instincts urged her to protect the girl, Jessie refused to be dishonest with her.

  “Not an appeal. A petition under the Post-Conviction Relief Act. We don’t need to talk about it tonight, Kristen—”

  “I want to. Please.”

  “Okay. Close the door.”

  Kristen shut the door, damping the sounds of her father washing dishes and leaving them alone with the patter of the rain against the windowpanes. They sat on the scratchy cushions of an old floral-print sofa.

  “Frank Ramsey has been granted a new trial.”

  Kristen shook her head. “What does that mean? The jury found him guilty. I was there. They gave him a death sentence.”

  “I know.” Since the moment Judge Spatt had granted Ramsey’s petition, Jessie had been dreading this moment. She had spent hours playing this scene in her mind, over and over, trying to imagine how she could possibly tell Kristen what had happened. And now that the moment was here, she still had no idea what to say. She decided to speak plainly. She owed Kristen that much. “He filed a petition and it was granted. He’s going to have a new trial. The old verdict doesn’t matter any more. He’s presumed innocent until I prove him guilty again.”

  “But—” Kristen’s eyes blinked rapidly as she grappled with the concept. “You mean I have to do it all over again? I have to testify again about what he did to me?”

  Jessie nodded. A lump had formed in her throat and she was afraid that if she spoke, her voice would betray her. She knew that Kristen needed to believe that Jessie was in control, that she could fix this. Otherwise, Kristen might not be able to summon the courage to take the stand again, face the judge and jury again, face Ramsey again. And without Kristen’s testimony, Jessie could not win.

  Jessie hugged her, pressed her face to the girl’s shoulder. She could feel Kristen’s tears soak into her sweater. When the lump in her throat dissipated, she said, “The system isn’t perfect. But Ramsey won’t escape justice. I promise you that. Do you understand?”

  Without moving her face from Jessie’s shoulder, Kristen nodded her head.

  “You ready to go back to the dining room? I’m pretty sure my dad mentioned a pie.”

  “My mom used to make amazing pumpkin pie.”

  Jessie rocked her gently. “So did mine.”

  17

  Weeks passed, and before Jessie knew it, Christmas was only days away. She sat in her shoebox-sized workspace in the DA’s office, eyes on her window and the clear blue sky outside, and tried to summon some holiday spirit.

  Even with her door closed, she could hear Christmas music jingling from someone’s radio down the hall. She had stepped
out of the elevator this morning to find a potted evergreen, placed there by Ron McGowan as a joke. He’d decorated it with the mug shots of murderers convicted over the past twelve months, added some tinsel, and completed the effect with a banner reading Naughty Tree. Another colleague, Evan Geroff, had shown up in a Santa suit.

  Of her fellow prosecutors, only Warren seemed to share her lack of interest in the imminent holiday. He had left her a message scrawled on a yellow Post-It note that he’d stuck to a document in her inbox. It said, I told you Goldhammer would have a surprise in store for us. This is it. His handwriting was decidedly non-jolly.

  She peeled off the sticky and tossed it. The document was an expert witness report. Jessie started reading. By the time she finished, she was livid. She gripped the report tightly and headed for Warren’s office.

  “She’s infamous,” Warren said when she stepped into his office an hour later, expert report in hand. His own copy sat on one of the piles of paper on his desk. “Do a search on Westlaw for cases where the prosecution’s argument depends on eyewitness evidence. Katherine Moscow’s name pops up nine times out of ten.”

  “I’ve heard of her,” Jessie said. And after a Google search, she knew even more about the woman. A research psychologist and memory expert, Kate Moscow had made news by testifying at criminal trials all over the country, and it was rumored that she had taken a more behind-the-scenes role in dozens more. Her testimony, backed by impressive experimental data, had persuaded juries to acquit murderers and rapists despite confident eyewitness identifications. The Review of General Psychology had listed her as one of the twenty-first century’s Top 100 psychologists. She held a professorship at New York University’s prestigious psychology department. She had been described as a defender of the wrongfully accused, and as a champion of evil, depending on your point of view.

  “I can’t let this woman near Kristen Dillard,” Jessie said. “The damage she could do.... I don’t want to think about it.”

  “The damage she could do to Kristen Dillard, or to our case?”

  “Both.”

  In the hallway behind her, a woman broke into song. Jessie had not thought it possible to slur Fa-la-la-la-la, but if anyone could do it, it was an overworked employee of the Philadelphia DA’s Office.

  Warren closed his eyes. “Would you mind shutting the door?”

  Jessie kicked it shut with her heel, but the thin door did little to mute the sounds of merriment.

  “At least the law is on our side,” Warren said. “Pennsylvania courts have consistently refused to allow this kind of expert testimony. Maybe you can get her excluded.”

  “If there’s one lawyer that might convince a judge to let Dr. Moscow testify, it’s Goldhammer.”

  Warren nodded. “That’s what worries me. This type of evidence is gaining acceptance in other jurisdictions. If Goldhammer convinces the judge to allow Kate Moscow’s testimony in Ramsey’s case, the floodgates will open and we’ll find ourselves facing a memory expert in every trial involving eyewitness testimony. Can you imagine?”

  “Judge Spatt’s not easily impressed.”

  “By lawyers, no.” Warren turned to some other documents on his desk. “But he loves scientists. His son is a biochemist who’s served as an expert witness in six pharmaceutical patent cases. Last year, Spatt admitted expert testimony on an issue relating to DNA analysis.”

  “This isn’t hard science, though. It’s psychology. And it’s testimony about the credibility of a witness, which is the province of the jury. I can make Spatt see that.”

  Warren shrugged. “Good.”

  “I’ll file a motion in limine.”

  “Good,” he said again. But the way he pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger and looked down at his papers did not convey a lot of confidence. “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “You remember a few weeks ago, after you lost the PCRA hearing, when you suggested that getting Mark Leary involved might be helpful?”

  She stiffened, but nodded. “You were pretty clear about your feelings on that plan.”

  He waved her words away and thrust a finger toward the expert witness report in her hand. “That was before Moscow. It’s a different ballgame now. Get him involved.”

  18

  This doesn’t need to be awkward, she told herself. But of course it would be. Every encounter she’d had with Detective Mark Leary since that encounter had been awkward as hell.

  Arriving at Philadelphia Police Headquarters, Jessie was further dismayed to discover that Christmas cheer had also infected this building. Didn’t anybody work anymore? She ducked tinsel and fake snow, slipped past a cardboard Santa wearing a badge that identified him as Sergeant Kringle, and headed for Homicide. Police Headquarters—dubbed the Roundhouse because of its distinctive, curving architecture—had become familiar territory to her years ago. It took her mere minutes to navigate to the office of the homicide division.

  There she found the cramped collection of desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and computer equipment surprisingly unused. Most of the detectives had abandoned their desks in order to hunch over a table on which an assortment of plastic pieces had been carefully arranged.

  “New case?” She approached the table, figuring she might as well lend her help to the investigation.

  One of the detectives, Nick Jameson, turned and put an arm over her shoulder. He drew her close to the table. “Thank God you’re here, Black. This one’s got us all stumped.”

  She peered at the plastic pieces. Their shapes seemed random, illogical. “What are these? Where are they from?”

  Another detective, Robin Scerbak, passed her a large sheet of paper with some sort of schematic printed on it. “Death Station Command Center.”

  “What?”

  “From Wal-Mart,” Nick Jameson said. “Toy aisle.”

  Chuckles and snickers rose from the circle of cops.

  “It’s for my son,” Robin Scerbak said. “Need to be a fucking brain surgeon to put the thing together.”

  Jameson said, “Can you help us, Black? You’re our only hope.”

  Jessie knocked his arm off of her shoulder. “Don’t you guys have work to do?”

  “Relax, Black, it’s Christmas,” Jameson said.

  “I’d love to help,” she said, “but I’m a little pressed for time.”

  As if on cue, Mark Leary appeared at her side. “Hi, Jessie. Captain Henderson said you’d be stopping by.”

  “Sorry to ruin your holidays,” she said. Aware that she was avoiding eye contact, she silently cursed herself and forced her gaze upward—only to find him carefully studying his shoes.

  And this is why you don’t have casual, drunken sex with your coworkers.

  “Let’s go outside,” he suggested.

  She told herself again, this doesn’t need to be awkward. She pulled her coat tighter around her. The sky was clear blue and she could feel the warmth of sunlight on her face, but she still felt a deep chill. She could taste winter in the air.

  Leary had not bothered to grab a coat or scarf on their way out of the Roundhouse. The temperature did not seem to bother him. She shifted her weight, watched cars pass on the street. Now that the distraction of the Jameson and Scerbak comedy routine was behind them, silence descended.

  She cleared her throat. “I guess by now you’ve heard that Frank Ramsey was granted a new trial.”

  Leary nodded. “Captain Henderson said the DA’s office asked for help bolstering the evidence.”

  “Makes sense,” she said, as if it hadn’t been her idea. “You were the lead detective.”

  “It’s a case I’m not likely to forget.” He finally looked at her. There was a rueful note in his voice, but not a sarcastic one. Had they reached the stage where they could shake their heads and laugh at what they’d done? Peering closely at him, she didn’t see any resentment in his expression, but she knew he could be difficult to read. Did he still bear a grudge for her refusal to take thi
ngs any further? He had wanted to. He had called her three times after their encounter, and had hung up on her in anger after the third rejection.

  The wind gusted, and she tucked her chin into her coat. “Ramsey’s lawyer is going to try to discredit Kristen Dillard’s testimony,” she said. “He’s planning to have an expert named Katherine Moscow testify about the fallibility of eyewitness identifications. She’ll talk about the photo array you showed Kristen, argue that the photos influenced her later identification at the lineup—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Leary said.

  “Dr. Moscow gave similar testimony in seven other recent cases. In each of them, the jury acquitted.”

  “So you want me to investigate Dr. Moscow?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I can do that. I want you to find more evidence against Ramsey. Something physical. Something that will corroborate Kristen’s testimony.”

  “Like what? Ramsey was too careful. He left no prints, no blood, no semen.”

  “Find something.”

  “You know the only reason we got him was because Kristen survived.”

  She knew that all too well. Ramsey was a serial killer, but she couldn’t prosecute him for the other families he’d raped and killed because he’d left no evidence behind. Absolutely nothing linking the killings to him. His one mistake—the only one he’d ever made, as far as she knew—was stabbing Kristen, but not making sure she was dead.

  “The killings stopped after his arrest,” Leary said. “Can you use that?”

  “I want something concrete.”

  “I’ll try. Maybe we should get together later, go over all the old evidence again.”

  Was there a note of hopefulness in his voice? She couldn’t tell. He was doing his job, probably, and nothing more. She silently prayed that was the case. Surely he understood by now that what had happened had been a mistake.