Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  What were you thinking?

  Jessie pursued her outside. A light drizzle fell from the clouds, spattering the sidewalk with icy rain. Jessie caught up with her under the dripping awning of a deli, took her by the arms, forced her to meet her gaze.

  “We’re a team, Kristen. I would never betray you.”

  People seated at a table inside had turned to stare at them through the deli’s fogged window.

  Real professional. If only Warren could see her now.

  Kristen looked at her shoes. Drops of rain had collected in her hair. She hugged herself. After a moment, she looked up, meeting Jessie’s gaze with red-rimmed eyes. “I don’t want to testify. I’m scared.”

  “They want you to be scared. Don’t be. You beat Ramsey last time. You’ll beat him this time, too.” But the girl had good reason to be scared, Jessie knew. If Kristen had found Jack’s cross-examination trying, the one-two punch of Goldhammer’s cross and Kate Moscow’s testimony would drop her to her knees. Jessie would do everything she could to protect the girl, short of keeping her off the stand. Without her testimony, Ramsey would walk.

  “How can I trust you anymore?” Kristen said.

  According to her doctors, the ordeal Ramsey had put her through had rendered trust an almost alien emotion for Kristen. That she had ever trusted Jessie at all had been a minor miracle. To think Jessie may have lost something so precious now made her want to cry herself.

  She didn’t. She maintained eye contact with the girl, held her trembling look with the stern stare of an adult. “You know you can trust me, Kristen. I’m the same person I’ve always been.”

  She did not release her pent-up breath until Kristen, staring at a soaked cement square of the sidewalk beyond the cover of the awning, nodded her head.

  When Kristen raised her eyes, she focused on something beyond Jessie and gasped. Jessie spun. She half-expected to find Ramsey standing behind her with a knife, but it was only Elliot, holding an umbrella.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  32

  Woody braced himself before opening the door to Goldhammer’s war room. He hated the massive temporary office space, and not just because the hotel provided it at an exorbitant cost. The space was like a cubicle-partitioned maze, loaded with desks and chairs, high-end PCs, and other equipment. Keyboards clicked, voices spoke into phones, copiers and printers whined as they spat out page after page. Freeing killers was big business, and it sickened Woody to be a part of it.

  He found Goldhammer at a long table in the back of the suite. The cubicle walls provided some privacy, but did nothing to block the din. Sitting in a chair beside his, poring over a document with him, was the Ice Princess.

  That was Woody’s name for her anyway, since he picked her up from the train station and she treated him like a chauffeur. Katherine Moscow, the quack psychologist from New York.

  She was leaning forward over the document. Her blonde hair—silky and natural, unlike Amber’s crinkly dye job—had been pulled back and secured in a neat spiral at the back of her head. She wore a dark blue suit over a white blouse. A few rings and a watch that looked more like a bracelet than a timepiece complemented her soft hands and slender white fingers. Goldhammer, hunched beside her, looked troll-like in her presence.

  Woody cleared his throat, and the lawyer’s head popped up. “I don’t know how you can hear yourself think in this hellhole,” Woody said.

  “The bustle helps focus my concentration.” Goldhammer’s mouth crinkled in distaste. “If you don’t mind, we’re kind of busy.”

  Woody stepped closer and looked at the document. “What’s that?”

  “The transcript from Ramsey’s first trial. We’re taking a closer look at Kristen Dillard’s testimony. Kate is helping me prepare to cross-examine her.”

  For the first time since he’d entered their little work area, Moscow looked up from the document. Her eyes—a light, icy shade of blue—seemed to pierce through his skull and catalog the folds of his brain. He wondered if her background in psychology gave her the power to perceive his secrets, or just the ability to cast an illusion of having that power. Whatever, he didn’t like the bitch.

  He focused his attention on Goldhammer. “What about Leary, the detective?”

  “He won’t be a problem.” Beyond the cubicle walls, keyboards continued to click. “Did you come for a reason, or were you just in the neighborhood?”

  “I don’t need a reason.”

  “Great. Well, I guess I’ll see you later.” Goldhammer picked up the trial transcript, pointed at a line near the top of the page. The Ice Princess leaned closer to scrutinize it.

  Dismissed, Woody shook his head and turned to leave. Then he stopped himself. “Dr. Moscow?”

  The Ice Princess looked up and he met her cold stare one more time. She didn’t blink, but the corner of her lips tugged up in a half-smile. “Yes?”

  “Jessica Black drove to Manhattan, talked to some of your colleagues and students about you. I thought you might want to know.”

  Her ambivalent expression did not change. “She’s not the first prosecutor to check up on me.”

  “If there’s anything you don’t want her to find, you better let me know now.”

  “I have no dark secrets, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  Goldhammer waved a hand without looking up. “Kate’s a pro. You don’t need to worry about her.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Moscow said. “I’ve done some investigating of my own. Believe me, I’m not intimidated by Jessica Black.”

  Woody was surprised to find himself insulted by her tone. There was no reason that her dismissal of his enemy should offend him, but it did. “She’s won a lot of murder trials. And not all of them had eyewitnesses.”

  Unimpressed, Moscow continued to stare at him, her half-smile maddening in its superiority. “To your untrained eye, Miss Black may seem like a threat. But I see her for what she is—conflicted and emotionally compromised, a troubled woman in need of therapy.”

  Goldhammer looked from Moscow to Woody, giddy with her analysis. “You see? Everything’s going great.”

  “All I see is a couple of arrogant assholes.”

  The lawyer recoiled from his words, but the psychologist only stared at him. “Maybe Jessica Black’s not the only one who needs therapy,” she said.

  “Where I come from, you don’t brag until after you’ve won,” Woody said.

  “And where is that?”

  Goldhammer ruffled the pages in front of him and cleared his throat. “Woody is kind of enigmatic about his origins. He’s a true man of mystery.” He looked at Woody, and this time his gaze took on a hard edge. “We really have a lot of work to do. I would be happy to discuss the case with you later, at your convenience.”

  “You’re so accommodating.” Woody smiled at Goldhammer, then tipped his head to the Ice Princess. “See you around, Doc.”

  33

  Prepping Kristen for trial would have been difficult enough if the girl hadn’t caught her with Jack. Now it was almost impossible. Sitting together in the dark conference room, it was a challenge to get Kristen to look at her, much less take her advice.

  Jessie usually liked to video record her witnesses during prep, to give them the chance to see how their testimony looked from the outside. The process helped to eliminate mumbling, fidgeting, and other nervous tics that might negatively impact the jury’s impressions. She followed the same procedure today, but with more reluctance. On the screen, Kristen recited the details of her attack with a blank expression. The decades-old TV-VCR combo in the Homicide Unit’s conference room was never kind. Faces on the screen always seemed enlarged, distorted, and overly pixilated. At least the TV’s speakers were decent—cadence and tone were critical—but now all they did was emphasize the monotone voice with which Kristen had uttered every sentence. She looked as if she wasn’t even listening to her own words.

  “You sound too unemotional,” Jessie said. />
  Kristen did not turn to look at her. She continued to watch herself. The light from the TV screen glowed on her pale face. “Maybe I should kiss the defense attorney. Would that be emotional?”

  Jessie gritted her teeth. “This is serious. You can’t hold back when you testify for the jury. You need to put yourself back in the moment—as hard as that will be—and drag the jury there with you.”

  “Like you care.”

  “It’s not enough for them to hear about it,” Jessie continued. “They need to experience it through you.”

  “I get it,” the girl snapped.

  “Good.”

  Still refusing to turn, Kristen spoke toward her own image on the screen. “I’ll tell them what happened. That’s all I can do.”

  Jessie stopped the video. She decided to do something she had never done before. She ejected the tape and inserted a different, older one. She pressed play.

  “What’s this?”

  “This is a tape we made when we were preparing for your testimony in Ramsey’s first trial.”

  For a few seconds, snow buzzed on the screen. Then the noise ceased and a conference room appeared. A blurry head in the foreground focused to reveal a younger-looking Kristen. Her hair was in disarray, tangled and knotted. She wore no makeup. Tears slicked her face below bloodshot eyes. Her mouth hung slightly open, saliva pooled at the corners. The scar on her neck looked more red and puffy than it did today.

  “I don’t want to watch this.”

  Jessie did not stop the tape. On the screen, the younger Kristen shifted in her seat. A voice—Jessie recognized it as her own—spoke comforting words in a soothing tone, but the girl did not relax. Staring past the lens at the woman talking to her, she opened her mouth but could not speak.

  “Please.” Illuminated by the TV, Kristen’s stony expression shifted in concert with the one on the screen. Her mouth trembled, and tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t want to watch this, Jessie.”

  Jessie’s protective instinct overwhelmed her, and she paused the tape. The image froze. Kristen’s face flickered on the TV screen.

  “If you bury your emotions, we’ll lose.”

  Finally, Kristen turned to face her. “I’m not burying anything. You want me to pretend to cry?”

  “If you relive the experience in your mind, you won’t have to pretend.”

  Kristen flinched as if Jessie had slapped her.

  “Kristen, the jury is going to scrutinize you.” She stopped short of warning Kristen about Kate Moscow’s testimony. That testimony would come after Kristen’s, and if Kristen did not know about it, it would not hurt her. It might hurt the case, but it would not hurt her. “Even though it might not be fair, the jury is going to equate misery with sincerity. When it comes to victims, they always do.”

  Kristen glanced at the screen. “Believe me, I’m just as miserable now as I ever was. It doesn’t fade.”

  Jessie shut off the TV and turned up the lights. She loaded the tape back into the video camera, framed Kristen in the viewfinder. “Are you ready to try this again?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Before Jessie could begin recording, someone knocked on the conference room door. The door opened and Warren stepped inside. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to borrow Ms. Black.” He offered Kristen an apologetic smile, and gestured for Jessie to join him in the hallway.

  Jessie stepped out of the room and closed the conference room door, but did not let go of the doorknob. “What’s up? I’m in the middle of preparing a witness.”

  Warren’s face pinched with barely-controlled anger. “Let’s go to my office.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Now? About what?”

  She followed him down the hallway to his tiny office. This time, he closed the door but did not sit down. Standing with him in the small space made her feel claustrophobic. “Are you having some kind of relationship with Jack Ackerman?”

  “What?” In surprise, she stepped away from him. Her back struck the door, rattling it in its frame. The knob dug into her hip.

  “Elliot overheard an argument you had with Kristen Dillard.”

  “He eavesdropped on me?”

  “Are you romantically involved with Jack Ackerman? Yes or no?”

  “That was a personal conversation. He had no business—”

  “Jessie.” Warren’s face darkened. “You are. Jesus. I can’t believe this. What a fucking mess.”

  “I’m sorry. It just kind of happened. I tried to keep it secret.”

  He looked angry enough to take a swing at her, but instead he pounded his desk. Papers scattered. “Are you nuts now, too? Is Ackerman’s craziness contagious? Do you know how improper this is? Dating a lawyer for the other side?”

  “He’s no longer involved in the case.”

  “It’s a massive conflict of interest. Lawyers have been disbarred over less.”

  “You’re blowing it out of proportion. I’ve been seeing Jack socially. That’s all. He hasn’t been helping me with the case. We’ve barely talked about the case at all. He hasn’t violated any obligations to Ramsey.”

  “No? Is that what you’ll tell me next year, when Ramsey gets a third trial?”

  The idea struck her speechless.

  “Thank God Elliot’s second-chair,” Warren said.

  “What?”

  “He’s up-to-speed on most of the research, knows the facts, and he’s been present during the trial. The jury’s familiar with his face.” Jessie knew better than to interrupt. She had seen Warren rant like this before. “He can take over. True, he doesn’t have enough experience to handle a murder trial on his own, but we can guide him from the sidelines.”

  “The sidelines? What are you saying? Warren, this is my case.”

  Warren shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  34

  Surrounded by reporters and other spectators, Jessie waited for Goldhammer to realize she was no longer seated at the prosecution table. Sure enough, when no one joined Elliot after ten minutes, the defense attorney twisted around in his chair and scanned the courtroom. He located her in the third row of pew-like benches in the gallery. His face bunched with confusion. Then the bastard smiled.

  Sheriff’s deputies brought Ramsey into the courtroom and escorted him to his chair next to Goldhammer. A moment later, Judge Spatt entered from his chambers and took his place at the bench. The jury filed in last.

  “Someone want to tell me something?” the judge said.

  Elliot rose. “Your Honor, I will be handling the remainder of the trial for the prosecution.”

  “News to me.”

  “Well, uh, we tried to contact you, but your clerk said you were unavailable—”

  “I was.”

  Elliot shifted his weight from one leg to the other, waiting for the judge to continue. Spatt made no further comment—he became engrossed in some documents, flipped pages, marked them with a pen—and after a moment Elliot sat down.

  “Okay,” Spatt said. “Call your next witness, Mr. Williams.”

  Elliot called Kristen Dillard to the stand.

  Kristen’s eyes found Jessie’s as the girl was guided to the witness stand and sworn in. The previous day, when Jessie had told her that Elliot would be taking over the case, any anger Kristen had harbored toward Jessie had disappeared. She had demanded that Jessie be the person who interview her on the stand. It had taken over an hour for Jessie and Warren to calm the girl down and assure her that she would be in good hands with Elliot.

  Please, God, let that be true.

  As Kristen began her testimony, Jessie was relieved to see that her preparation with Kristen—despite being cut short—had paid off. When she told her story to the jury, the girl’s voice was confident but not robotic. She described the pleasant evening of TV watching that had preceded the nightmare, recalled the doorbell chime that had drawn her father to the front door. Instead of looking through the p
eephole, she said, her absent-minded scientist father must have simply opened the door.

  “I guess his attention was still focused on the TV show. He was probably listening to it from the entryway so he wouldn’t miss any of the story.”

  Kristen and her mother, seated on the couch, had heard a loud bang and thump—the door being thrust open and slamming against her father’s chest—and had run to the entryway. There, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black ski mask stood in their house.

  Jessie watched the jurors react to that image. One woman’s mouth dropped open. The face of the man next to her paled. Even the three jurors Jessie had identified as potential holdouts—Trent Slaney, the skeptical construction worker, Malcolm Clonts, the anti-middle class janitor, and Jenna Gottlieb, the love-struck nursing student—leaned forward in their chairs, their faces transformed by empathy for the victims.

  Good job, Kristen. Keep going.

  Kristen’s voice thickened as she described the serrated knife in the intruder’s hand. He had already stabbed her father once, and her brain seemed to go numb as she watched her father’s blood well from a wound in his chest that he tried to cover with his hand. The man in the mask twisted the deadbolt behind him and ordered the family upstairs.

  “I know this is hard for you, Kristen, but can you tell us what happened upstairs?” Elliot’s voice was gentle. His sympathetic tone seemed genuine.

  Kristen described her fear as Ramsey herded her and her parents into the master bedroom. Her voice broke. Tears ran down her cheeks. She recounted the murder of her father, then the rape and murder of her mother.

  “What happened next?”

  “He threw me on the bed. He yanked my pants down and turned me on my stomach. He—” She brought her hands to her face and cried.

  Judge Spatt’s jaw clenched as he watched her from the bench. “Maybe we should take a break.”

  “No, I’m okay.” She sniffed, wiped her eyes. “He raped me. Then he ... he—” Sobs hitched from her body in painful jerks. “He stabbed me. Over and over.”