Dead Ball

by Judith Arnold

  If only there was a way to do that without explaining how she’d managed to get her hands on the incriminating photos—without admitting that for all her innocence, she was a thief.

  Chapter Nineteen

  LAINIE MIGHT BE apparel-challenged, but she knew enough not to wear jeans or sweats for the conference Peter Cataldo had set up with the assistant district attorney. She chose the royal blue suit she’d worn to Arthur’s funeral, not to be ironic, but because it was the only suit she owned.

  Her arrival at the Superior Courthouse in Cambridge this time was a bit more auspicious than last time. Besides being better dressed, she had showered and eaten breakfast before leaving her house, although she’d had to force down the whole-wheat toast; her appetite was nonexistent. She’d driven into Cambridge in her own car and she’d brought her wallet, which contained enough money to pay for parking at the garage down the street from the courthouse building. She also wore her nice watch, so she had some concept of time.

  Peter had told her to meet him at the courthouse a half hour before their appointment so he could review with her what to expect, but he didn’t show up until ten minutes before their meeting. “I’m sorry—I got held up,” he told her as he swept down the street and gave her cheek a kiss. “You look great.”

  “Better than the last time you saw me,” she agreed. “I even wore lipstick.”

  “Your lips are magnificent. Come on—we’ll strategize in the elevator.”

  They entered the courthouse, let the guards search his briefcase and her purse, walked through the metal detector gates, and stood with their arms outstretched while the guards wanded them. Then they headed for the elevator bank.

  “This is going to be a piece of cake,” Peter assured her as he pressed the button and adjusted his tie, which was just narrow enough to make some sort of fashion statement. “The guy we’re meeting with is named Michael Hucker. He’s the ADA who was at your arraignment.”

  “With red hair,” Lainie recalled.

  “Right. He’s young. Competent, but not exactly Mensa material. He’s going to offer to drop the charges against you in exchange for your testimony against William Stavik.”

  Lainie tried not to scowl. The elevator door slid open, and she and Peter entered the car. So did a burly police officer armed with a service revolver and a club. Handcuffs dangled from his belt. The sight of all that cop hardware made Lainie cringe.

  “So you’ll testify and we’ll get the charges dropped, and you’ll go home and live your life,” Peter said.

  He might be able to ignore the police officer, but Lainie couldn’t. What if the cop was a plant from the district attorney’s office, sent to eavesdrop on them while they strategized?

  “Hello?” Peter prodded her. “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  She blinked twice. “I can’t testify against Stavik,” she said in a low voice, eyeing the cop surreptitiously. He stared straight ahead, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Lainie. Don’t be an idiot.”

  “I’m not being an idiot. The truth is, I have nothing to say about what Stavik did or didn’t do.”

  “You can say he put the BlackBerry into your purse.”

  “But I don’t know that he did. If I’m being honest, the best I can say is that he might have.”

  Peter sighed heavily. “Then you’ll say he might have. The DA wants to convict Stavik. Let them convict him. If he did the deed, he deserves to go to prison.”

  “If he did it.”

  “You think he didn’t do it?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” Lainie muttered. “But I can’t lie to this Hucker person just to save my skin. Of course I want to go home and live my life, but . . . I can’t lie.”

  “So you won’t lie. No one wants you to lie.” The elevator door slid open and Peter, Lainie, and the cop stepped out. The cop strode down the hall in the opposite direction from them—to report what he’d heard, Lainie was sure. Being in this courthouse, surrounded by the trappings of the Massachusetts legal system, brought out the paranoid neurotic in her.

  Peter was asking her to lie. Not directly, but he wanted her to say the words that would get her out of this mess. She wanted to say those words, too.

  The problem was, she didn’t know if Stavik had put the damned BlackBerry in her purse. The last time she’d seen him, at Emerson Village Estates, he’d seemed so baffled by her accusations. He’d insisted he’d never touched the BlackBerry. He’d claimed to have no idea what its significance was. She hadn’t believed him—she really hadn’t.

  Except that maybe she had, just a little.

  Peter ushered her through a door and gave his name to the receptionist. She nodded and led him and Lainie to a small conference room. Lainie tried to calculate how many rooms like this she’d been inside in the past few weeks. This one was the nicest yet, even if that wasn’t saying much. It had a window and no mirror, and the table was genuine wood—old but solid.

  Peter pulled out one of the chairs for her, then dropped onto the chair next to her. “You know the drill,” he reminded her. “Don’t say anything unless I give you permission.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t get snarky.”

  “I won’t.”

  He gave her a dimpled grin, then snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a folder. After a minute, the red-haired prosecutor Lainie had seen at her arraignment entered the room. He had a shaving scab on his chin, in a different spot from the scab she’d noticed the last time. She knew assistant district attorneys earned less than private sector attorneys, but surely he could splurge on a new package of blades for his razor.

  “Ms. Lovett,” he greeted her, right hand extended. Lainie didn’t think she needed Peter’s permission to shake it. “I’m Michael Hucker. Peter,” he continued, giving Peter’s hand a firm pump. He carried a folder which he set on the table in front of his chair, across the table from Lainie and Peter. She wished she had a folder, too, just so she’d fit in.

  “We all know why we’re here today, right?” Hucker eyed Lainie.

  She looked at Peter. “We’re here to get this laughable charge tossed,” he said. “You have nothing on my client.”

  “We have the BlackBerry.”

  “Which she turned in to the police as soon as she found it. Throughout this entire ordeal, she’s been nothing but forthcoming with the police, and her reward is to be charged as an accessory to murder. This is a complete perversion of justice, Michael, and I’m hoping we can rectify the situation right now.”

  “Spare me the speech,” Hucker countered. “I’m not sure it’s a perversion of justice, but if we can rectify anything, we will.” He shuffled through the papers in his folder, doing his best to look important.

  “As of today,” Peter continued, “we haven’t even been officially notified whether the BlackBerry belonged to the murder victim.”

  “It did,” Hucker said.

  “And you know this how? What tests were performed on the BlackBerry? Given that the BlackBerry is the only alleged evidence you have against my client, I can’t believe we haven’t been kept informed.”

  “The BlackBerry had the victim’s phone directory on it. Its memory contained some emails addressed to him. We were able to trace a few phone messages, although Mr. Cavanagh deleted most of them.” He culled a sheet of paper from his folder and handed it to Peter, who perused it as Hucker continued. “The BlackBerry also had your client’s fingerprints all over it.”

  “Of course it did. She found it. She touched it. We’ve never disputed that.” Finished with the paper, Peter leveled his gaze at Hucker. “Who else’s fingerprints were on it?”

  “The victim’s, of course. Also one other set of prints.”

  “Mr. Stavik’s?” The way Peter asked and the way he stared at Hucker imp
lied that he already knew the answer.

  “No, we haven’t found Mr. Stavik’s fingerprints on the BlackBerry. Since he had it in his possession for some time before he passed it to Ms. Lovett, he had the opportunity to wipe his fingerprints off it.”

  “He wiped his own fingerprints off it, but not Mr. Cavanagh’s. That’s a neat trick. And this other set of prints?” Peter scanned the paper again. “No idea whose they are?”

  “The lab is working on it. The other explanation,” Hucker rushed ahead, “is that Mr. Stavik wore gloves or wrapped the BlackBerry in a cloth when he removed it from Mr. Cavanagh’s possession.”

  “Mr. Stavik’s fingerprints were on the nail gun,” Peter said. “Yet he was careful not to leave his fingerprints on the BlackBerry?”

  “He could have been wearing gloves when he used the nail gun on Mr. Cavanagh,” Hucker explained. “His fingerprints would have been on it from previous use. He was building a house, after all.”

  “Yes, he was.” Peter slid the paper into his folder.

  Lainie wondered what exactly she was doing there. Not talking, not fussing with papers in a folder. Just sitting like a lump in her conservative blue suit while the hotshot lawyers lunged and parried.

  “Any speculation why Mr. Stavik would have stolen the BlackBerry?”

  “Some of the phone messages we traced were incriminating,” Hucker said.

  “In what way?”

  “There was a phone message we were able to retrieve in which Mr. Stavik issued a death threat.”

  “And what was the nature of this death threat?” Peter asked.

  Hucker hesitated. He glanced at Lainie, then replied, “Essentially, he told Mr. Cavanagh to drop dead.”

  Peter laughed. “You don’t have squat,” he said. “You have nothing on Mr. Stavik, and you have less than nothing on my client.”

  “We have a great deal of circumstantial evidence, plus motive, implicating Mr. Stavik. We have the death threat. We have Mr. Stavik’s prints all over the murder scene and Mr. Stavik’s DNA on the victim’s body. We have evidence that Mr. Stavik gave financial support to People for the Preservation of the Planet, an eco-terrorist group that had targeted Mr. Cavanagh. And as for your client, once again I remind you, we have the BlackBerry. Now tell me, Ms. Lovett, how did you come into possession of the BlackBerry?”

  She took a minute to digest the news that Stavik had had close ties to those environmentalist loonies, then turned to Peter, who nodded. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not going to work.” Hucker sounded stern and a bit disappointed. “‘I don’t know’ will not make this charge go away.”

  Peter nodded again, freeing her to respond. “It’s the truth,” she said. “One day I reached into my purse and found the BlackBerry inside it. I didn’t put it there. I don’t know how it got there.” She recalled what Peter had told Detective Knapp when they’d turned over the BlackBerry and added, “When you find something that doesn’t belong to you, you turn it in to the police. That’s what I did.”

  “That’s not all you did,” Hucker goaded her. “You also had a relationship with Mr. Stavik. You were seen with him publicly on several occasions. You met him at Walden Pond.”

  Oh, God. She had been followed that afternoon. The toast she’d forced down her throat earlier that morning threatened to rise back into her mouth.

  “You and Mr. Stavik both showed up at the murder site. You left together. Your connection with Mr. Stavik can be established, Ms. Lovett. Now, do yourself a favor and tell us what you know about him.”

  Peter nodded. “Not much,” she admitted. “We hardly had a relationship.” One night of sex shouldn’t count, she thought anxiously.

  “The only other person who had access to your purse was”—he flipped through the pages in his folder until he found what he was looking for—“your daughter. No one else could have put the BlackBerry there.”

  Another nod from Peter. “No one else I can think of. But who knows? I brought my purse to work. I brought it shopping.”

  “Did Mr. Stavik ever discuss his hatred of Mr. Cavanagh with you?”

  Lainie sighed. She’d promised to be honest, and she would. “I don’t think it was hatred. There was no love lost between the two, but Stavik worked for him. He told me he quit once and Arthur begged him to come back, because Arthur respected his work. And he did go back, so how much could he have hated Arthur? They argued, but lots of people argue. That’s not the same as hatred.”

  Hucker rolled his eyes and turned to Peter. “We’re not getting anywhere here.”

  “Lainie.” Peter pivoted to face her. “Is there anything you can tell us that would help to solidify the state’s case against Mr. Stavik?”

  “I could make things up, but I don’t think Mr. Hucker wants me to do that. Do you?” She turned to him.

  “Ms. Lovett, we’ve got a pretty good case against Mr. Stavik. Anything you can do to fortify that case will be extremely helpful to you.”

  And even more helpful to you, she thought bitterly. “All I can do is tell the truth,” she said. God, she sounded as if she were auditioning for The Crucible. Integrity oozed from every pore. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir ought to be standing in a semicircle around her, humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” “I’ve been telling the truth from the first day I talked to Detective Knapp. I told him I’d seen Mr. Cavanagh with another woman the night before he died, and Detective Knapp refused to believe me. I told him my friends had seen her, too, and Knapp spoke to at least one of them. And if he’d questioned anyone in the lounge at Olde Towne Olé that night, they could have corroborated it.”

  “He did question people. He did speak to your friends, who of course backed your story. He questioned the bartender, who claimed he hadn’t seen anyone who looked like Arthur Cavanagh that night.”

  “Then the bartender is lying,” Lainie said. “Maybe Arthur paid him off so he wouldn’t spill the beans about Arthur’s extramarital fling.”

  “Lainie,” Peter murmured. “I think we’re getting off track here.”

  “No, we’re not. The cops did a half-assed job investigating this case. They arrested me. Arthur Cavanagh was having an affair, and no one wants to believe it.”

  Peter decided to ignore her. “Michael, can we make this go away? You want her testimony? You can hear for yourself what her testimony will be. Threatening to convict her on some bogus charge isn’t going to change anything. Meanwhile, she’ll have grounds to sue the state for false arrest, harassment, and a whole bunch of other charges I’m sure I can come up with. So put through the paperwork and let’s get this done with.”

  “I have to talk to my superiors,” Hucker said.

  “Fine. Talk to them and call me. Come on, Lainie.” He pushed back his chair, stuffed his folder into his briefcase, and gestured for her to rise.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Hucker said, standing as well.

  More hand shaking, and then Lainie and Peter left the office. Peter gripped her arm and steered her down the hall, around the bend, and into an alcove with a water fountain. “What the hell was that about?” he growled.

  He had never spoken to her that way before. Then again, she had never seen him angry before. He was angry now. On the blowing-one’s-top scale, he was somewhere between Mount St. Helens and Vesuvius. “I told you I was going to tell the truth, and I did,” she explained, refusing to let him cow her. She was tired of being weepy and afraid. She much preferred her “Battle Hymn” warrior mode.

  “Cavanagh’s extramarital fling? Why did you bring that up?”

  “Because I went to the police with information about what I saw that night, and they decided I was making it up.”

  “Were you?”

  “No. I have proof.”

  “What proof?”

  “Photos.”<
br />
  Peter’s hand relented on her arm. His anger faded, replaced by curiosity and a touch of wariness. “Where did you get these photos?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Lainie—”

  “It’s all right. I have the photos and that’s all I have to say about it.” She leaned back against the wall, felt the edge of the water fountain digging into her waist, and straightened up again. “I can’t just sit around waiting for this Hucker guy to decide to drop the charges against me. I can’t expect the police to do anything right. And I’m tired of crying. I need to take control of my own fate.”

  “You’ve got me to take control of your fate, honey. Did you steal the photos?”

  “I borrowed them,” she said. “I’ll return them.” She glanced toward the hall. “Will he drop the charges?”

  “I don’t know. You didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.”

  “That’s a mistake I keep making,” she muttered. “I keep telling these folks the truth instead of what they want to hear.”

  Peter sighed. “I liked you better when you were weepy. All right, toots, I’ll see what I can do. Can I count on you to behave yourself from here on in?”

  She gave him her most wide-eyed, innocent look.