by Tami Hoag
“Or one of Wright's supporters,” Rudy offered. He had claimed the head of the table for his own. After spending two days in the wake of Bill Glendenning's powerful aura, he felt a rise in his own sense of power. He was in Glendenning's good graces, relatively safe on the sidelines of this case, and Victor Franken had finally croaked, obligingly vacating his seat on the bench. All may not have been right with the world, but Rudy Stovich didn't personally have a lot to complain about.
“It could have been one of Wright's students,” Mitch said, his lack of inflection subtly giving away his doubts. He had declined the offer of a chair, opting instead to slowly pace the length of the table. Operating on too little sleep and too much stress, he was fueling his system with high-test caffeine and sugar doughnuts. “Ellen, you said you had a run-in yesterday with the Sci-Fi Cowboys. What's your feeling?”
“I don't know,” she said, picking at a blueberry muffin. She was exhausted. Two nights with a total of eight hours' sleep left her feeling heavy and slow, as if the air around her was as dense as water. “Yesterday's mail was on top of it in the box, so I'd say the note had to be there before two o'clock yesterday afternoon.” She was repeating the theory she had told last night to one cop and then another and another. “If it was one of the Cowboys, they had to have run straight to my house after I saw them.”
“My guys will be canvassing your neighbors this morning asking if they saw anyone around your house yesterday.”
And they would probably learn nothing. Her neighbors were professional people, with daytime jobs downtown or at Harris or in Minneapolis. There was always the chance someone had been home with the flu that was going around and had glanced out the window at the right moment, but she felt no hope for that. What she felt was a sense of disquiet that had been lingering since Monday.
Monday night kept coming back to her—waking suddenly, Harry growling, the silent phone call, then the call that Josh was home.
She recited it all for Mitch, step by step, half-embarrassed to be saying it at all. From an objective, rational perspective, nothing had happened. There had been no intruder in her home. The call had probably been a wrong number. But the timing of all that “nothing” made her uneasy.
Mitch stopped his pacing and faced her, pressing his palms flat on the table. “Is your home number listed?”
“Under my initials—E. E. North.”
“I got a call myself last night,” he confessed. “On my cellular phone—a number only a few people have access to. The caller whispered, ‘Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.' Right after he hung up, I got the word about the abduction in Campion.”
Rudy looked alarmed. “Are you saying this lunatic is someone you know?”
“No.” Mitch shook his head, his mouth twisting. “Our boy had the balls to call my mother-in-law and weasel the number out of her. I was just thinking, if he had to finagle Ellen's number out of someone, we'd have two people who might possibly be able to identify his voice.”
Cameron looked at Ellen with concern. “Why didn't you say anything about this call yesterday?”
“I dismissed it as nerves. Josh came home. I've been busy with the case; I didn't think about it again—until I found the note. Even now I'm not sure it was anything. I mean, you're probably right—Yogi Berra is hardly Wright's style.”
“But it might be his partner's style,” Mitch argued. “Or it might be his idea of a joke. I'm no expert, but that note sure looked like the others.”
“But the press made public the fact that the kidnapper's notes were on common twenty-pound bond and came out of a laser printer,” Cameron said, automatically playing devil's advocate. “Any nut with access to a laser printer could have done it.”
“True, but the press didn't actually see the notes, the type font, the preference for lower-case letters.” He straightened away from the table, pulling his parka off the back of the chair where he had abandoned it earlier. “We'll see what the lab boys have to say. In the meantime, we'll check with your neighbors,” he said to Ellen. “One of them might have seen a kidnapper.”
He didn't look as if he believed that any more than she did, Ellen thought. Hope had become a scarce commodity. “What's the latest word from Campion?”
“‘Help,' ” he answered, shrugging into his coat. “They don't have a damn thing to go on. We've set up a multijurisdictional team of my people, guys from Steiger's office, and the BCA to work on connections. So far, there aren't any. The Hollomans don't know the Kirkwoods, Hannah isn't their doctor, Paul isn't their accountant, the boys have never met. Dustin and Josh share some physical traits—light hair, blue eyes, same age. That would be more significant if this were a sexual-predator thing, but it doesn't appear to be. It's some kind of goddamn chess game.”
Rudy pushed his chair back and rose, hiking up his baggy suit pants by the belt. “Be sure to keep us abreast of the developments, Mitch,” he said importantly.
“Yeah, I'll do that. If there are any. Ellen, I want you to call the department if you have any more odd happenings. It may be our boy or not. Wright has a lot of supporters. They may not all confine their anger to the picket line in front of the courthouse. You're a likely target.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Ellen said sardonically, then remembered Megan. Megan, who was lying in a hospital bed because of this case. She could have as easily been dead. If the note had come from Wright's accomplice, then that could mean she had been singled out for inclusion in the game, as Megan had been singled out.
“Did anyone tell you Karen Wright went home yesterday?” Mitch asked, backing toward the door.
“Home—as in down the block from the Kirkwoods'?” Cameron said, appalled.
“It's the only home she's got,” Mitch said. “The BCA was through with the place, and the city council was making noise about the cost of putting her up at the Fontaine, so we took her home.”
“What about the accomplice?” Cameron asked. “If Karen knows something, she could be in danger.”
“The BCA has a man on her. We should be so lucky that this creep is stupid enough to come calling.”
“I'm concerned with her mental health,” Ellen said. “Is she staying alone?”
“She has friends looking in on her, and Teresa McGuire, the victim-witness coordinator, is checking on her and reporting back to my office. Still hoping she'll turn on Wright?”
“She might have an attack of conscience.”
“I wouldn't count on it, counselor. Denial is pretty tough armor.”
Cameron turned to Rudy as Mitch made his exit and Ellen stuck her head out the door to call for more coffee. “Any word on who'll get the case with Franken gone?”
“None yet. They may delay the whole thing until a replacement is named,” Rudy said, then frowned, worrying suddenly that his connection to this case, as much as he had tried to minimize it, would somehow jeopardize his chances for appointment to Franken's seat.
“If that happens, we can count on Wright's lawyer raising a stink,” Ellen said.
She walked back along the length of the table slowly, her eyes scanning the mountains of paperwork the case had already generated—piles of statements, search warrants, arrest warrants, police reports. She and Cameron had commandeered this conference room for their own war room, where they could lay everything out and study it. A replica of the time line in the law-enforcement center was taped to one peeling dark-salmon wall.
Lying across a stack of news clippings was the morning Star Tribune opened to a photo of Jay Butler Brooks scowling at the camera. The headline read “‘Crime Boss' Fights to Save Judge.” Ellen tossed it onto the credenza. Behind it dusty, hot air from the vents blew straight up along the old window, where eighty percent of the heat escaped through the glass.
“By law Wright is entitled to that hearing without delay,” she said. “I bet they'll divvy up Judge Franken's caseload between Witt and Grabko and float another judge in here to catch the overflow until the governor names a replace
ment.”
Rudy breathed a sigh of relief. “Who is Wright's attorney now?”
Cameron shrugged.
Ellen shook her head. “I'm going to see Dennis later. Maybe he'll know something we don't.”
“You can bet he knows something we don't,” Cameron said darkly. “Rumor has it he had a long talk with his client after the bond hearing yesterday and that he left the jail looking sick.”
“He'd just lost a client and a chance for a lot of publicity,” Rudy pointed out.
Cameron reserved comment, his gaze steady on Ellen.
“I'll find out what I can,” she said. “But how much can he tell me without committing a breach of ethics?”
“How much can he keep to himself without committing a breach of decency?”
“Let me know what you find out,” Rudy instructed. “Where do we stand as far as ammunition for this hearing?”
“We've got the statements from Mitch and from Megan O'Malley regarding her abduction and that whole drama,” Cameron said. “We won't have the DNA results back on the bloody sheet Wright wrapped around her that night, but we've already got the blood types—one of which is the same as O'Malley's and one of which is the same as Josh's.”
“Regarding O'Malley's situation,” Ellen said, “as you know, Wright was apprehended fleeing the scene. To paraphrase Megan, we've got him dead to rights.”
“But what about the boy's case? So far, we've got a victim who's not talking.”
“We've got Ruth Cooper, the witness who identified Wright in the lineup as being the man she saw on Ryan's Bay the day Josh Kirkwood's jacket was found,” Cameron said.
Rudy made a rumbling sound in his throat that might have been discontent or phlegm. “I was there. The lineup was wearing parkas and sunglasses. A good defense attorney is going to take it apart like Tinkertoys.”
“The visual may be iffy,” Ellen conceded, “but you'll remember, Mrs. Cooper also made a voice ID. The two together will be hard to discount.”
“We've also got Agent O'Malley's testimony as to what Wright confessed to her regarding Josh,” Cameron pointed out.
“He said, she said,” Rudy grumbled.
“She's a police officer.”
“She's a victim. Hardly an impartial hearsay witness.”
Ellen tipped her head. “Maybe, maybe not. I think her credentials will carry her through.”
“Wright knows the Kirkwood family,” Cameron went on. “And he has a flimsy alibi for the time Josh disappeared. He claims he was at his office working that night, but so far that's just his say-so.”
“So what's his motive?” Rudy asked.
“We don't have one, other than that he's playing some kind of sick game,” Ellen said. “All we have to do for the moment is get him bound over. We don't need a motive until trial. We have to bear in mind that Wright wasn't even a suspect until Saturday night. The investigation is really just beginning.”
Rudy ambled to the window and looked down on the early shift of protestors gathering on the sidewalk.
“It sounds like you've got everything under control, Ellen,” he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.
Rumors had been churning for months that the yuppies of Park County were looking to root him out of office and replace him with Ellen North. When he moved into Franken's seat, the path would be clear for her. She and her backers likely saw this case as her chance to step into the limelight, but limelight wouldn't be the only thing she would step in. He pulled in a deep, cleansing breath and envisioned his judgeship, so close, he could feel his new black robes draping over him.
“You know, I'm just an old country lawyer at heart,” he said. “When I came on this job, there was no such thing as a high-profile case. Folks around here didn't lock their doors. They let their kids run all over town without worrying about them. Deer Lake was the kind of town America is supposed to be all about.”
Ellen recognized the speech immediately. He had used it as his closing statement in a drug dealer's trial eighteen months ago. He heaved an exaggerated sigh and twisted his features into the expression of a sad clown.
“Do your best, Ellen,” he instructed. “Always let your constituents know you did your best.”
“Rudy, I've told you a hundred times, I have no intention of running for your office.”
And for the hundred and first time he didn't listen. The irony was too much. Her ambition topped out right where she was. She had no political aspirations, had thought leaving Hennepin County had been a clear statement to that effect. Yet, in the place she had come to settle herself into a comfortable niche, she was constantly viewed with suspicious eyes as being an ambitious woman with her sights on bigger things.
“Yes, well . . . ,” he said, sauntering away.
As he opened the door, Phoebe popped in, coffeepot in hand.
“Garrett Wright has a new attorney.” Her face glowed with the excitement of it all. She set the coffeepot on the table, unable to give the announcement adequate fanfare without using her hands. “A big big shot,” she said, bracelets rattling. “Anthony Costello.”
Cameron gave a low whistle. “Wow. Where'd Wright get that kind of money? Costello's retainer is more than a professor at Harris makes in a year.”
“That was my question, too,” Phoebe said, sliding into the chair next to him, settling in for a round of juicy speculation.
“It doesn't matter who his lawyer is.” Rudy spouted false confidence like a fountain, the promise of his judgeship making him magnanimous. “We've got the team to beat him. Isn't that right, Ellen? Ellen?”
Ellen jerked her head in Rudy's direction, feeling faint. “Yes, of course.”
Her voice sounded far away to her, as if it had come from someone out in the hall. Her hands were curled over the back of a chair, fingertips digging into the upholstery.
“Wright can bring in his big-shot lawyer from the Cities. We've got Ellen,” Rudy declared as he marched off down the hall, thanking God he had dropped this hot potato in Ellen North's lap.
“Did you ever come up against Costello when you were with Hennepin County?” Cameron asked.
“A few times.”
She imagined if she was to look in a mirror, her reflection would be pale and wide-eyed, but neither Phoebe nor Cameron seemed to notice anything odd about her appearance or her manner. She pulled out the chair and slid into it. Her body seemed to be working independently of her mind, and thank God for that. In her mind she was floundering, scrambling, knocked off balance by a blind-side shot.
Tony Costello's was not a name she had ever expected to hear in these offices. He was big money, style and flash, one of the top defense attorneys in the Twin Cities and rapidly making a name for himself on a larger scale. Which was, of course, what he would be doing with Garrett Wright—soaking up publicity like a sponge, posing for the cameras and preaching his propaganda of justice for the common man.
That was why he had taken Garrett Wright's case, Ellen told herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was the prosecutor, and it certainly had nothing to do with the fact that they had once been lovers.
Garrett Wright couldn't have known anything about her past with Tony Costello. It was just a coincidence that he had chosen the one defense attorney in the state who knew her better than any other, the one who had slipped under her guard and stabbed her in the back.
Even as she tried to placate herself, the tide of the uneasiness that had been with her since Monday night rose a little higher inside her.
“We've calculated all the moves, all the options, all the possibilities,” Garrett Wright had whispered to Megan. “We can't lose.”
“We can't lose,” Anthony Costello said, his voice clear and strong, his eyes on the network cameras. “Dr. Wright is an innocent man, wrongfully accused and wrongfully imprisoned.”
Shutters clicked. Motor drives whirred. Cameras loved his face—square, rugged, utterly masculine, perpetually tanned. His eyes were the color of e
spresso, set deep beneath the ledge of his brow. He had long ago perfected a piercing stare that could make witnesses crumble and jurors sway.
He stood on the front steps of the Campion Sons of Norway hall, the wind ruffling his jet-black hair. The cameras had to shoot up to get him, an angle that made him look taller than five feet ten and emphasized the solid squareness of his build and the excellent hand-tailored cut of his black wool topcoat. He would have preferred to make his first statements to the press regarding his new client in front of the Park County courthouse because he liked the symbolism of storming the halls of justice, but the press was in Campion covering the second child abduction, so he had gone with Plan B. It was the mark of a good defense attorney to be flexible, to be adaptable. He had to be able to shift on the run, think on his feet.
He had begun to formulate a strategy for the defense the moment he had accepted Garrett Wright as a client. He wanted to strike hard and fast at the media, grab their attention and keep it on him. The kidnapping of Dustin Holloman was a terrible tragedy, but Costello had also seen it immediately as the opportunity it was. Naturally, he felt sympathy for the family—in the way one might feel sympathy for fictional characters in a movie. He couldn't allow the feeling to become more personal than that. It was essential for him to put their tragedy in a perspective that would potentially be of some benefit to his client.
“My client sits in jail, his reputation suffering more with every passing hour, while a madman stalks the children of Park County,” he said. “The investigation of the kidnapping in Deer Lake was mishandled from the start. As a result, there have been needless deaths, an innocent man has been incarcerated, and now another family has been torn apart.”
The reporters clamored for his attention, barking out questions, thrusting microphones up at him. He gave the answer he wanted to give, not caring whether the question had been asked.
“I'm here in Park County to see that justice will be done.” Sound bite extraordinaire. “I'm here in Campion as an emissary for my client, to offer his deepest concern to the family of little Dustin Holloman. I know Dr. Wright would want me to extend a personal plea to the kidnappers to return Dustin unharmed.”