Will cut a glance at Fiona, who stood just a few feet away, stiff and somber in her black pantsuit. She looked stressed. Tired. Probably a lot like Will looked after spending a sleepless night on his sofa with his phone in his lap.
Will straightened his spine and ignored the frustration burning in his belly. Once upon a time he’d stood for hours, not moving, in the biting winds of the Korengal Valley, his gaze fixed on a distant stretch of highway, usually some supply route that needed protection from terrorist insurgents.
He could take a few minutes in front of a crew of reporters.
The key was to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand, in this case an unidentified boy and the people who’d killed him.
But every time he thought of that, his mind went to Courtney. And Walter Greene. And the inch-thick file he’d had copied and overnighted from Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t Greene’s case file—which took up two entire boxes, according to the LAPD clerk he’d managed to get on the phone. No, this file was all about Courtney and her probable—but not provable—involvement in Greene’s murder.
The sea of reporters rose up and surged toward the exits. It was over. Will spotted Fiona trying to make a break for it, and caught up to her in a few strides.
“Wait.” He clamped a hand on her shoulder and watched her eyes flare with annoyance. She didn’t want to talk to him. Well, too bad. He steered her through the door and down the corridor until they were alone in the relative privacy of the vending machine alcove.
She turned to face him. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“No.”
Will watched her, gauging her honesty. “Have you had an e-mail? Anything?”
“No.” Fiona’s eyes brightened with tears, and he knew she was telling the truth. She hadn’t heard from her sister. She was just as scared as he was.
“Do you have anything I can go on? Maybe some friends or relatives I can look up?”
Fiona looked down, and he could sense the conflict inside her. She looked up again. “Tell me why I should help you arrest her.”
“That wasn’t my idea.”
She scoffed. “Whose was it?”
“It came from higher up,” Will said, wishing he could be more candid.
“Cernak has his head up his butt.” She clenched her hands into fists. “Did he even talk to that jogger from the park? Who does he think those two men were? And does he know about what happened to my sister’s house?”
“I don’t know—”
“Does he think she did that herself? It’s like he’s got blinders on!”
“I know, I know.” Will stepped closer and lowered his voice. “And I agree with you. I’m working an entirely different theory of this case. But I need to find Courtney. Skipping out on an arrest warrant isn’t doing her story any good.”
“Her story? You act like she made it up! You act like she’s guilty!”
“She looks guilty if she runs, and you know it. I need to find her. You need to help me.”
Fiona looked down and chewed her lip.
“Is there a friend somewhere? An ex-boyfriend, maybe? She doesn’t have much money, so she couldn’t have gone far without help.”
Fiona shook her head.
“You didn’t lend her money, did you?”
“No.” She looked at him again, and she seemed to have decided something. “I didn’t give her a dime. But my passport’s missing.”
“Your passport.” His stomach sank.
“I’m not sure she has it, but—” She shook her head. “I don’t know. She sort of looks like me. I think maybe she plans to leave the country.”
Will stared at the television, too tired to move and too tired to sleep. The Yankees were up against the Red Sox, but if someone held a gun to Will’s head, he couldn’t have told them the score.
He reached over and pecked at the laptop sitting beside him on the couch. No new mail. He checked the battery on his phone.
He swigged his beer.
He’d come home from work and decided to get tanked. He was doing a damn fine job of it, judging by the six empty bottles lined up on his coffee table.
Walter Fucking Greene.
Ordained minister. Youth director. Spiritual leader with a fondness for single moms and troubled kids. Will had spent the past three hours imagining how he’d kill the guy if he weren’t already dead.
According to the file from California, Greene had spent four years married to a Denise McCowen Glass, a part-time waitress and mother of two. Police had been called out to the couple’s house several times, including once for an altercation involving a broken whiskey bottle. Denise had claimed her husband tried to hit her with it, but the husband said it had shattered against the wall when his wife tried to wrestle it from his hand. Then she’d gone after him with a pistol, getting a shot off and prompting a 911 call.
The police report favored the minister’s side of things. Greene said his wife was a recovering alcoholic, and he intended to get her back into a treatment program as soon as possible. According to the report, he’d asked the cops not to arrest his wife but to pray for her instead.
The 911 call had been placed by Fiona Glass, age fourteen. Courtney Glass, eleven, had been present at the scene.
Also in the file was the write-up from a later incident in which a twenty-two-year-old Courtney “accidentally” rear-ended Greene’s car. Three times. In a movie theater parking lot. A witness said the driver seemed “crazy” and “drunk,” but a Breathalyzer came up clean. Greene declined to press charges, saying it was a family matter, although he and Courtney’s mom would have been divorced for years by then.
Two weeks later, Greene burned to a crisp in his house with a couple of .22-caliber slugs embedded in his skull, and police hauled Courtney in for questioning.
Will glanced at his watch. It was after eleven. Tomorrow was a new day, and provided he didn’t get his ass called out to some crime scene at three in the morning, Will planned to spend it at the posh offices of Wilkers & Riley. He’d interview everyone. Again. Especially the lawyers he’d missed, the ones Webb had talked to when they’d first made the rounds. And then Will would go talk to the plaintiff, a millionaire widower. He’d take another crack at everyone until he found someone who looked good for rigging a jury and then hiring a pair of hitmen to tie up loose ends.
Another day of interviews. Another day of lies and half-truths and separating the important ones out from the crap. People lied about everything, and only some of it mattered.
The phone rang, and Will sloshed beer on his shirt as he lunged to answer it.
“Hello?”
Silence.
“Hello?” He flipped the TV off and listened. He could have sworn he heard breathing.
“Courtney…talk to me.”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER 18
Name no one man. Will gazed at his computer, unable to get that damn phrase out of his head.
Will was fried. He’d spent all day at his desk, including more than an hour on the phone with an attorney. The guy was a childhood buddy, and he’d given Will a crash course in litigation as Will had taken pages of notes. He thumbed through the notes now, unable to shake the feeling that somewhere in all this legal mumbo jumbo was the key to Alvin’s murder.
The LivTech case had been a product-liability suit, which was tried in federal court. The players included the family of a dead stockbroker, one judge, fourteen jurors—twelve regulars plus two alternates—and an army of attorneys on both sides, although the actual courtroom participation had been limited to a select few.
The victim’s family took home more than thirty million dollars when the case settled prior to appeal. Wilkers & Riley’s cut of the settlement had been twenty mil, with five going to each of the two litigators. Will stared at his notepad and the numbers started swirling together. His paltry salary paled in comparison, and he knew Courtney had been right when she’d said
she probably made more money than he did.
Courtney invaded his brain again, and Will glanced at his phone. She’d been gone a week now, and each one of the days had been a month.
“You still here?”
Will glanced up to see Devereaux standing beside his cubicle. “Still here.”
“How was Dallas?”
“Dead end.”
After receiving a call to come get his Suburban from an impound lot near the bus station in Austin, Will had tracked down a Greyhound worker who remembered selling Courtney a ticket to Dallas last week. So Will had driven his ass to the Dallas bus station, but the trip had been a waste of time.
“You check the security tapes up there?” Devereaux asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hmm. I bet she’s got some tricks up her sleeve. Woman’s a beautician. She can probably change her looks at the drop of a hat.”
“No kidding.”
“I talked to Fiona again,” Devereaux said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Still nothing.”
Will squeezed his pencil. Fiona was the most promising link, and it amazed him that Courtney hadn’t reached out to her. In fact, he wasn’t sure he believed it. But Fiona kept telling Devereaux she hadn’t heard a thing, and Devereaux seemed to be buying it.
“You know, you look like shit,” his partner said. “How ’bout we get some dinner over at the Smokin’ Pig?”
Will’s gaze dropped to his notes. “I keep coming back to the trial. Two litigators, a man and a woman. Lindsey Kahn. You remember her from the funeral?”
Devereaux sighed, obviously realizing Will wasn’t going to be lured away from his desk even though it was nearly ten. He dragged a chair over from a neighboring cube and plopped into it.
“Yeah, I remember her. Blonde. Hot. So what?”
“So she’s the youngest partner at the firm. The least experienced litigator they have, yet they hand her their most important case. Her and Alvin.”
Devereaux crossed his arms. “So juries like attractive lawyers. What’s the mystery there? Lots of businesses put their best faces out front.”
Will tapped his pencil. “But what if it was carefully calculated? A man and a woman. The jury foreman isn’t chosen until the end of the trial, during deliberations. So what if Wilkers and Riley hedged its bets?”
“You mean put something out there for everyone?”
“Right.” Will leaned forward. “The jurors heard hours and hours of boring testimony from doctors and scientists and drug experts. It would have been miserable. They would have welcomed a distraction. Shit, Pembry was so bored, he was doodling pictures and dreaming up word puzzles.”
“Okay, they were bored. So what?”
“So then the deliberations lasted eight days,” Will continued, “interrupted by a weekend. What if the lawyers found out who the foreman, or woman, was going to be, and then moved in as soon as it was decided and tried to influence the outcome of the case?”
Devereaux frowned. “But why just the forewoman? They needed ten people on their side to win.”
“Yeah, but the foreman is key. It’s usually someone persuasive. Someone influential with the other jurors. Eve Caldwell was in sales, so she fits. Now, this group was made up of mostly men, so you’d think they’d end up with a male foreman. So they dangle Kahn out there. But then Caldwell gets picked, and Alvin moves in on her.”
“That’s a serious offense,” Devereaux pointed out. “It’s not just disbarment. Both those lawyers could go to jail for jury tampering in a federal case.”
Will shrugged. “Sixty mil is serious money.”
“Also, it’s a risky plan. What if the jury foreman or forewoman or whatever wasn’t the type to fall for it? What if it was some dried-up old librarian still in love with her husband?”
“I thought about that,” Will said. “But maybe they weren’t just manipulating Eve Caldwell. Maybe Kahn was busy, too, meeting up with some of the male jurors after hours. It was a nine-week trial. Maybe they didn’t wait until the deliberations to begin targeting people, seeing what kind of favor they could rustle up.”
“And what do the crooked jurors get out of it?”
“Sex. Flattery. A break from the monotony.”
Devereaux leaned back in his chair and seemed to think about it. “You’ve been to that law firm a dozen times. We’ve been all over their finances, their backgrounds. Nothing looks amiss.”
“Maybe we’re the only ones really looking,” Will said bitterly. It still burned him up that Cernak had gotten an arrest warrant for Courtney. He and Webb had already made up their minds; they weren’t interested in any other theories. “Why go after the lawyers when they’ve got the jealous mistress angle tied up with a bow?”
“What about the plaintiff? Out of everyone, that broker’s husband benefited the most from this thing.”
“Guy looks clean as a whistle. Fact, he gave half the money to some charity foundation already.” Will sighed and rubbed his eyes. “But, shit, I don’t know. Maybe that’s just another smoke screen.”
“You sound pretty cynical.”
“I am. You know, you expect the plaintiffs’ attorneys to be all about standing up for the little guy. But they’re just as greedy as the corporations. It’s bullshit. It’s all about money. All these deaths over some pile of money.”
Devereaux stood up, grabbed Will’s cell phone off the desk, and held it out him. “Come on. You’ve been here long enough. Let’s get some dinner.”
Will checked the message icon on his computer before packing it up for the night.
Devereaux led the way through the dimly lit maze of cubes. “We’ll find her,” he insisted.
Will felt the weight of his phone in his pocket and said nothing.
He bolted upright and checked the clock. Four fifty-eight. He grabbed the phone off his nightstand.
“Hodges.”
“I just got a call from a homicide cop I know down in Corpus.”
Will’s brain snapped to attention. They’d found her.
“They found him,” Devereaux said.
“Who?”
“Martin Pembry.”
Two minutes later, Will stood in front of his bathroom mirror and gulped down a handful of aspirin. Going to the Smokin’ Pig with Devereaux had been a mistake. Will felt hung over and he looked like it, too—a long way from the prime condition he’d been in when he reported for duty in Austin less than two months ago. He threw on some shorts and sneakers.
The pounding in his head echoed his soles on the pavement as he wended his way toward the Y. It was five miles north, which would take forty minutes, given his sluggish pace. Their gym opened at 6:00, and Will would punish himself with an hour of weights before heading into work.
The case had taken a turn.
Corpus Christi investigators said it was a homicide. Scavengers had made a mess of the corpse, but a credit card found on the body belonged to Martin D. Pembry. Before being dumped in Laguna Madre, the man had been garroted with a length of barbed wire.
Will’s headache raged as he made his way up Congress Avenue toward the spotlighted capitol dome. The humidity was like a blanket already, and he knew it was going to be a bitch of a day.
Pembry was dead. Executed, mostly likely by the same goons out looking for Courtney. The only bright component of this bleak news was that his murder went a long way toward clearing Courtney’s name. The jeal ous mistress theory was strained way past the point of credulity now, and the case would have to be reexamined as part of a bigger crime spree, a crime spree being orchestrated by someone with money and power and determination.
Will pounded out the miles, grimly satisfied to be making headway on at least part of his mission—exonerating Courtney. The other part—actually finding her before someone else did—was no further along.
His heart pumped in his chest, and he thought of her body underneath him in bed. He wanted her back. He wanted her safe. He wanted her every way imaginable, and with a ferocity that scared
him. He’d never felt this way about anyone, and he couldn’t believe he was feeling this way now about a woman with purple hair and a rap sheet. About a woman he was investigating.
He still couldn’t believe she’d run away. And he’d been so blinded by lust, he hadn’t seen it coming.
She’d covered her trail well, too, and every tracking technique Will could think of had failed to produce a solid lead. It was beyond frustrating, except for the fact that if Will was having this much trouble finding her, somebody else must be, too. He was beginning to think Fiona’s passport theory had merit.
Sweat streamed down his face and arms. Mile three, and he still felt like shit. This was pathetic. He was a soldier, for Christ’s sake. He was better than this.
He was a soldier.
And even though he really wasn’t anymore, the mind-set had been hammered into him through years of training. He wouldn’t turn loose of it. He couldn’t. He never wanted to be one of those burned-out old cops who let his body go to hell and his life slide into a bottle.
He had a mission: find and retrieve. And he would approach it the way he approached every mission—with the knowledge that failure was not an option.
CHAPTER 19
Lindsey Kahn exited her office building and walked north on Rio Grande. Nathan predicted she was destined for the sandwich shop two blocks away and smiled slightly to himself when she veered into the café and lined up with dozens of other yuppies seeking midday eats.
He hung back and perused a menu as she ordered. She paid with plastic, collected a number from the cashier, and filled a cup with Diet Coke, no ice. She tucked herself into a booth, pulled a phone from her purse, and started checking messages.
Nathan made his move.
“Hey, there.”
She looked up, startled, as he slid into the seat across from her. Her gaze darted around anxiously.
“Nathan Devereaux.” He pushed a business card across the table to her, but she didn’t look at it.
Whisper of Warning Page 22