The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by John Ellsworth

  "My God," she says in a small voice, "I'm shot and I'm dying."

  "Quick," shouts Marcel, "give me your handkerchief to plug the hole."

  He knows I always carry one. I rip it from my back pocket and watch aghast as he slowly threads it into the hole, then he stands straddling Harley and takes her by her wrists. He steps backwards, drawing her prone body up against the wall just down from Stormont's window. A bullet hole the diameter of a cigar can be seen in the window glass, I realize, and I run to the end of the walk nearest where we entered the courtyard.

  "Come back!" hisses Marcel. "Help me get her out of here."

  With a sudden boldness I push myself from out of the shadows back into the dim light of the sidewalk and approach Marcel and Harley.

  "Take her legs up under your arms and start walking backward. She's light."

  I do as ordered and soon find myself doing what I never in a million years thought I would ever be doing: carrying one of my employees out of a firefight. It honestly hadn't crossed my mind that there might actually be someone in the cop's apartment after we knocked and there was no answer. It just hadn't registered with me that we three presented an easy target.

  As we steal along the shadowy wall I realize Marcel is talking into his phone, which he is carrying in his breast pocket. Evidently he has called 911 and he's giving directions to us. At that exact second, the cop's apartment door suddenly flies open and I see a shadowy figure emerge and begin running directly away from us. Of course there will be a parking lot out beyond the quadrangle wall he's headed for. There always is. But we cannot abandon Harley and run after him.

  Reaching the front of the building, we ease Harley down onto the sidewalk, on her back, and Marcel kneels and listens to her chest. Then he puts his ear to her mouth. Now he pulls her lower jaw open and pushes his index finger around the inside of her mouth. Then he is breathing into her mouth and intermittently pumping her chest with the heels of his hands. Coming out of my stupor I realize he's breathing for her and that he could use my help. So I take over with the hands on the chest while he continues breathing air into her lungs. It's a very primitive CPR when it's done without instruments or cannulas or bags of any kind, but it is reputed to save lives so we continue.

  "Harley!" I hear him saying. "Open your eyes!"

  The eyes remain closed. I look down at her in shock and disbelief. This beautiful, gifted woman is, I'm realizing, probably already dead and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.

  We keep applying CPR anyway. Then the EMT's are there and taking over and Marcel and I are ordered to stand back. We surrender our positions and watch as the pros take over. There are stethoscopes and moments of listening for pulses and breath sounds, but the EMT's faces remain grim, stony, as if a battle has already been lost. A portable EKG is in place and its leads are attached. The monitor lights up and all eyes fall to its small window and its LEDs. They remain glued there for a good fifteen seconds then, one by one, they look up and resume their CPR and ministrations but this time without much enthusiasm. I only sense this, as the efforts are mechanically the same. But there's a dead woman on the sidewalk before us and their faces show it.

  At last the nurse among them calls it.

  "She's gone," she says. "No pulse, no breath sounds, flatline EKG. I'm calling it. Time of death is seven forty-eight p.m. Somebody make a note and let's stand aside and let the M.E. in here."

  The nurse turns to Marcel.

  "The bullet pierced her heart. She was gone before you called us."

  Marcel shakes his head and it’s clear he’s losing control. "I should've known! I should've known he was inside."

  "Wait here. Lots of police officers are waiting to talk to you."

  A sudden rush of tears fills my eyes as the reality comes screaming into my brain. Harley is dead. The words bounce around inside my head and I hear them with diminishing disbelief each time they come around. She really is gone. Her body is small and looks almost childlike there on the cement at our feet. Then I feel a strong hand encircle my upper arm and I realize I'm being steered away from her body. I am moved across the grass strip up over the curb and placed into the backseat of a police cruiser.

  I have been detained.

  40

  Ten minutes tick by. I am still detained.

  Finally, I look up and try to figure out where they've taken Marcel. And why isn't he right here with me?

  Then I think I see him in the next car over, an unmarked black Ford with fat tires. He sits there in the backseat, his chin on his chest, his upper body moving slowly back and forth. I want to rap on my window and call out to him but I don't. Something tells me not to draw attention to myself at this moment.

  So I sit and stare straight ahead. It occurs to me--the lawyer kicking in--that they have no right to have me detained. I reach up and try the door handle. It is locked. I really am being detained. So what's that make me, a suspect of some sort?

  Looking straight ahead I see the tight knot of cops and medical personnel surrounding Harley's body. A wheeled cart has been pushed into their midst and, even as I watch, her limp body is lifted up to the cart and she is gently placed upon it. Many hands have helped move her from the dirty sidewalk up onto the sterile-looking cart. But it's too late for sterility, I realize as I watch the little drama unfold. It's too late because there will be no more medical effort on her behalf. There is, simply put, no reason to keep her body sterile any longer. At this point it's done out of respect for the dead.

  Harley is dead.

  My mind cannot even conceive of the ramifications of this news. A small cry works its way up through my chest and escapes my mouth. I realize I am angry and that I am calling out for attention.

  "Someone come talk to me!" I cry against the thick glass of the backseat prisoner enclosure.

  But no one gives a damn. I'm unsure anyone can even hear me anyway.

  So I call out again. This time I see a slightly familiar face turn from the tight clutch of cops overseeing things, and it begins moving toward me. Then I realize. Detective Jamison Weldon.

  What the hell?

  He's supposed to be home, escaped from the courtroom where we've all been pent up all week. So what in the world is he doing out here at this homicide scene?

  Which is the moment I realize. Detective Weldon and Officer Stormont are connected. I don't know how--I haven't made it that far yet--I only know that it's true. There is a link between them of some kind. And I suddenly know that if I can understand that link then I will be very close to solving the mystery of the murder that occurred in my client's living room. No, Weldon isn't here in an official capacity as the detective on call. Hell, this is Arlington. He's not a member of their police force; he's Chicago PD. But who called him?

  Then it comes into focus for me. Stormont called him. Probably before the shooting incident. He was probably on his way over to lend a hand to Stormont, to run us off from his front porch. But where were the other cops, the ones we were told were watching out for Stormont 24/7? That in itself is a mystery. But Weldon is here. That picture is becoming clearer by the minute.

  My mind keeps going over it: Stormont and Detective Weldon. The murder happened on Weldon's watch because that's when it was supposed to happen so that Weldon would be the one to answer the call. That's why Weldon's partner was off sick that day. He was supposed to be off sick. There it was, neat and tidy. They were in it together. That's how Stormont got away with the murder weapon in his back pocket. Otherwise he would have been questioned about Mira's purse and gun after he searched her bedroom. Weldon knew Stormont would find the gun. And he knew Stormont would remove the gun in order to place it inside the trunk of my car.

  But why me? They sure as hell didn't know I would be on the scene to help Mira.

  Of course it didn't matter who came to help her. Whoever it was, they would be framed with the planted gun. Only I had gone a step further and even given them a second shot at me with the cigarette butt. They mu
st absolutely love me, I'm thinking, as Weldon approaches the car where I'm being held.

  Then a funny thing happens. He comes up to where he's standing just outside my window when he looks down on me and I can see his face up close and in focus. He gives me a fierce smile from ear to ear. Then he shakes his head and walks on by. No one saw him do it and there are no witnesses standing around watching.

  But the message is clear.

  They knew we were coming and they had been ready. Now one of our trial team is dead and the other is being held on a Friday night in the back of a cop car in connection with--God knows what. A murder? In the next second I realize the holster beneath my armpit is empty. They have seized my gun. And why wouldn't they? It is evidence. Evidence of my plot to come here and shoot Tory Stormont. Terrified for his life, he had shot one us first. Then he had fled, running for his life. I can hear the story already. We are about to be prosecuted under the felony-murder rule which says that one who is participating in a felony crime at the moment someone dies is guilty of the murder as if he pulled the trigger himself. It doesn't matter that I was only standing outside the door, waiting for someone to answer. There was a shooting and I was there, engaged in the crime of--what? They will figure out what. Obstruction of Justice, maybe, a Class Four felony in Illinois. There is a whole book full of felonies to lay on me and Marcel. They only have to choose. Then we can be charged with murder and Mira's trial will go to a mistrial.

  And there's more coming into focus. She will lose the election and Lamont Johnstone will step in. Lamont, friend of the police union, friend of Tory Stormont, the poor cop who was threatened and had to shoot his way out of his home to avoid being attacked.

  Suddenly my head drops to my knees and I throw up.

  Then I repeat.

  I lay my face on my knees and the pain starts surging up through my chest, into my eyes, sweeping across my face as I am wracked with the horror of what I have stumbled into. Not only is the trial lost, not only am I lost, but Harley is dead.

  And, according to the law they're going to pull out and use against Marcel and me, we killed her.

  We are guilty of murdering one of our own.

  It's a short jump from there to visions of a long prison term.

  At that very moment, I feel like I deserve no less. My own stupidity, my own need to win Mira's trial at any cost, brought me to this place. Brought me here with a gun hidden on my person.

  And in the next breath it all comes rushing out in a long, pained cry.

  The gun, my gun, hidden on my body.

  I have no license to carry a concealed weapon. The application to do so is still in my office, beneath a stack of papers that had priority, waiting to be filed.

  Weldon's face appears again outside the window. Only this time it is all in my mind.

  I am losing control and then, in a rush, I am gone, unable to think another thought that would require that I consider the reality that has grown up all around me.

  I am finished.

  41

  It is six-forty-five on Saturday morning and we've just marched into Pod 3 eating hall. I was brought here to the Cook County Jail last night by the Arlington PD, and I've had the hell scared out of me all night. Imagine me with thirty-six men, each having committed a really evil deed, spending the night together on concrete slabs, the great majority drunk or stoned, and waking up feeling refreshed. Honestly, I have never felt worse. Marcel has disappeared out of my life. I have no idea where he's been taken. He would handle this much better. I'm a nervous, twitchy, train wreck who stayed awake all night in enormous fear for his life.

  A jailer guides us into the tables and I find myself sitting between two gigantic black men with the shaved heads and the black panthers whose legs curl around the upper arms. They both only stare straight ahead when I twist my legs and body into the small space separating them. Each tightens the body side that touches me so that I don't feel flesh touching my shoulders but instead feel case-hardened steel. Nothing is said as we eat, of course, and after five minutes the guards have us on our feet and filing out the other end of the place so our replacements can get to the tables and cheese slice with apple.

  They march us directly back down the hall to an area new to me: the dayroom. It is octagonal, as wide as a normal pool, with back-facing TV's in the center, each tuned to a different channel and adding a different soundtrack to our day. I make my way around the exterior walls until I am met by a wood chair. Making myself as small as possible, I let myself down on it. No one pays any attention to me and for that I'm hugely relieved. These are not the kind of people I'm around even as an extremely experienced criminal lawyer because in here no one is putting on his court manners in an attempt to endear. What you see is what it is, I would tell one of them if asked how I see the place. What you see is what it is.

  I do not relax.

  Nearly two hours later, I hear my name being called. I find that I have fallen asleep upright on the wood chair because it's daylight and there are lots of eyes about, making it safe to snooze off. My head jerks up from my chest and I wipe a thread of drool off my chain and look around. It is a blue-uniformed jailer and he's calling me over. So, I go.

  "You're Michael Gresham?"

  "Yes. How did you know?"

  "It's a Caucasian name and not a Washington or Jefferson."

  "Oh." Racist, but I think no one gives a damn in here.

  "Your lawyer wants to see you. She has a right to come in twenty-four-seven. And you also have the right to refuse to see her. Do you want to accept her visit or reject it?”

  “Accept.”

  “Come through the two doors and I’ll be waiting to take you to her."

  "I'm coming."

  The doors buzz sequentially, fifteen seconds apart, and we meet. He tells me to walk ahead of him down the hall and through two doors to where the attorney conference room is located and where my lawyer is waiting. So I lead the way and am buzzed through two more doors.

  He steps up behind me and says, "Turn left, second door."

  I obey. At a small table someone is waiting for me.

  Then here she is. Danny Gresham, the most beautiful wife in the world.

  The jailer leaves the small room, closing the door behind him.

  Danny and I run at each other and collapse in a bear hug. I am kissing her hair, the top of her head, her face, snuggling against her shoulders with my own, and we are just crying how glad we are to see each other. Tears roll down her face but mine remain in my eyes, making the scene a blurry one for me.

  "Thank God," I say.

  We sit down beside each other, hands clutched and squeezing.

  "What am I charged with?"

  "So far? Illegal concealed carry. Who knows what's close behind, but you can bet something is. I'm thinking felony-murder from what I'm seeing in the papers and hearing on TV. Seriously, Michael? You? In a shootout? With a gun? What in God's name were you thinking!"

  "You're not sounding like my lawyer. You're sounding like my wife. Maybe even my mother; forgive me, but it's true. Let's try talking about how the hell we're going to get me out of this before all the rest of the stuff that's going to make some counselor a million bucks. I did everything you mentioned and no one regrets it more than me. But I could regret it even more if I weren't locked up in here."

  "Bail hasn't been set. You can't get out."

  "Oh, my God!" I moan. This can't really be happening. It's Saturday morning and I won't see a judge until Monday. "Can't you call a judge this morning? How about Judge Itaglia. She's going to want me in her court Monday morning. Not in some criminal court down the hall."

  She's way ahead of me. "Listen to me. I've got an idea. We go to Judge Itaglia and notify her you're being held in jail because Tory Stormont shot one of Mira's defense team. We tell her that Stormont is your witness and we make the case to her that you have been arrested in order to deprive Mira Morales of due process in not getting to call Stormont to testify and in arresting
you and depriving her of her counsel of choice. What do you think?"

  "I think it's pure genius. Let's make it in the form of a petition for habeas corpus where I'm delivered into her court today and where she issues an order releasing me on my own recognizance. If you can get that order, I'm out of here today."

  "I'm on my way, Michael."

  "I love you just for trying. Thank you. Oh, and one other thing."

  "Yes?"

  "Do this for Marcel too."

  "Done."

  Back in the dayroom, I go so far as to sit down with a dozen other inmates and watch cartoons featuring the talking crows. I try to remember whether I ever watched these things; I do this to make myself recall my reality as I feel it slipping away in Pod 3.

  Five hours later, the same jailer as before comes for me. I'm starting to recognize a jailer face or two. This one has the job of moving solo inmates around the halls. Which explains why he's enormous and heavily muscled. No one's trying to get the jump on this guy. He guides me back toward the attorney conference room except this time we pass it by, turn right, and buzz through a final door. Now I'm in the front office of the jail and Danny is waiting there, the bail order spread before the assignments officer.

  "Welcome out," Danny says, and I am handed a bag containing my clothes and told to step into a side room and shed the jail garb. I comply and five minutes later I emerge ready to walk outside, get in a car, and get the hell away.

  Then we are under the overcast skies of November Fifth.

  The election is three days away.

  42

  When I walk into Judge Itaglia's chambers at eight o'clock Monday morning, as I've been told to do, I am immediately greeted with the news, from the judge's secretary, that officer Tory Stormont has been subpoenaed by Judge Itaglia to appear in her court at eight o'clock. The clerk then looks up from his screen and tells me he's been told the officer is in the building, that he's waiting in the courtroom. Evidently he was picked up at his house by CPD and brought straight to court up here on California Avenue.