Without a Hitch

by Andrew Price

  “I know.”

  “Has he given you any idea what he’s really thinking?”

  “There’s no mystery to it. Beckett’s got it in his head that somehow this is wrong, no matter what Beaumont’s done.”

  “Do you think you can get him off?”

  “I don’t know, maybe,” Corbin said indifferently.

  “It sounds like you could be in Philly for a long time. What did you tell your boss?”

  “I told him I had a sick aunt.”

  “Did he buy that?”

  “Sure, he’s happy to have me not working. The less work I do, the bigger the backlog, the greater the justification for his budget.”

  “He denied having the wallet?” Alvarez meant Beckett. He was jumping all over in his questions, but Corbin had little trouble keeping up.

  “He denied even knowing about the wallet.”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “It means he has it.”

  “Where?”

  “Could be anywhere, but I suspect he has it nearby. I’m going to search the office tomorrow at lunch or in the evening. If I don’t find it there, I’ll search his hotel room.”

  “How are you going to get into his hotel?” Alvarez asked.

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Don’t get caught. What do we do if you can’t find the wallet?”

  “Just keep going.”

  “What if he tries to turn you in?”

  Corbin tapped his finger against the back of the phone. “I’m not going to talk about that on the phone.”

  “He gave away the money?” Alvarez asked this several times already; he was having a hard time believing it.

  “So he says.”

  “Then how’s he supporting himself?”

  Corbin shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s probably on a leave of absence, like I am. Kak still pays me every two weeks.”

  “But I thought he was going broke? How can he add the cost of a hotel and living separately from his family? He’s got to be using the money we gave him.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe his financial situation wasn’t as dire as he claimed. Remember, he used to commute by train every day. That’s not cheap. Maybe he’s using that money to pay for his hotel? Maybe he’s putting it all on credit? Maybe he lied about getting rid of the money? I don’t know.”

  “When are you coming back to town?”

  “This weekend.”

  “All right, call me if something comes up.”

  Corbin hung up and checked his messages. He had several including a message from Blue to call him back and a lengthy message from Penny. He listened to a few seconds of her message before calling her.

  “Hello,” came Penny’s familiar voice.

  “Hey there.”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.” Corbin heard a loud clank through the phone. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m cleaning my oven,” she said. “Oh shoot.”

  “What?”

  “This bottle says ‘avoid direct eye contact,’ and I’m staring right at it.”

  Corbin snickered.

  “How’s your aunt?” Penny asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Fine enough that you’re coming back soon?” Penny asked hopefully.

  “I’ll be down this weekend, but I have to turn around and come right back Sunday night.”

  “At least I can have you on Saturday. . . unless you have another date?”

  Corbin laughed. “No, no other date. I guess I’m available.”

  “You ‘guess’?” Penny mimicked. “Oh good for me,” she laughed. “I’ll have to check my calendar and see if I’m free as well.” Penny closed the oven and turned on the clean function. “Did you talk to Blue?”

  “No, I’ll call him next.”

  “He’s got good news for you. I’ll let him tell you though. . . I miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” he replied. “But listen, it’s been a really long day, and there are things I still need to do, so let me call you tomorrow?”

  “Fine, blow me off,” Penny said in mock frustration.

  Corbin laughed.

  After they said goodbye, Corbin pulled up Blue’s number, but he didn’t dial it. Instead, he turned off the cell phone. He was tired. He rubbed his temples and stared out the window. Beneath the yellow street lights, he could see sheets of rain falling against the deserted street.

  Chapter 27

  By the time Corbin reached the office the following morning, his overcoat and hair were wet from walking through the drizzle, though his suit remained dry. Beckett sat behind his desk reviewing a forensics report. He looked damp from head to toe as his winter coat was more of a jacket. It hung on the doorknob to dry. As usual, his paisley tie was frayed.

  “I’ve got a lead on a witness,” Beckett said.

  “Who’s the witness?”

  “A drug dealer. He calls himself ‘Saitoo.’ He says Beaumont was with him all day on the 14th.”

  “Did you find him or did he find you?” Corbin asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It would be nice to know how happy he’ll be to see us.”

  “He called me.”

  “All right, when do we leave?”

  “Now,” Beckett said, rising from his chair. “Oh, and I’ve set up an interview with one of the cops this afternoon.”

  “The old guy or the rookie?”

  “The rookie. Russell ‘hasn’t decided if he wants to talk to us yet’.”

  Corbin decided against sitting in the broken chair. Beckett chose to stand as well. The room around them looked like it had been attacked. There were holes in the walls, holes in the floor, and empty fast food wrappers liberally strewn about. The paint was peeling from everything and wires hung where fixtures once had been. Lounging in a beanbag in the middle of the floor was a small black man in a light-blue track suit and dark glasses. He was covered in faux-gold jewelry and was smoking a joint.

  “He was wit’ me the whole day,” said Chester Williams, aka Saitoo. “That’s all anybody gots to know.”

  “Listen, Site-oo,” Corbin said mockingly.

  “That’s ‘Si-too’.”

  “Sure it is, Chester—”

  “Don’t disrespect me, I teach you a lesson.”

  “Try it,” Corbin offered. He sized Saitoo up for a poser the moment he met him.

  As Corbin expected, Saitoo backed down. “Look, man, I was wit my friend all day. What more you want me to say?”

  “Try answering the question. Where did you two spend the day?”

  “We just hung out: his place, my place, then we drove ’round ’til we came back here and ’et dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Corbin looked around the shattered empty apartment with no table and no kitchen. “By dinner, you mean you got high?”

  “Man, I ain’t never touched no drugs in my life,” Saitoo protested, with the joint still resting between his fingers.

  “It would be helpful if you could remember what you ate,” Corbin suggested.

  “Why does that help?”

  “Everything helps,” Corbin replied.

  “We had tacos.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Do you have a receipt?”

  “Tossed it last week.” Saitoo mimicked crumpling up paper and dropping it to the floor.

  “Where did you get the tacos? Maybe they have a videotape of you two entering the store.”

  “Don’t nobody keep videotapes this long,” Saitoo said incredulously.

  “You’d be surprised. Give me the name of the place, and I guarantee I can get the video.”

  “Uh, we didn’t go in and get ’em. We sent this girl we was hanging out wit’.”

  “Oh goodie, a third witness,” Corbin laughed. “What’s her name.”

  “Rochelle DeMint.”

  Beckett stepped forward. He’d been taking notes. “Ho
w can we contact Rochelle? Do you know her phone number?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Saitoo flipped through his cell phone directory. “867-5309.”

  Corbin burst out laughing and walked across the room.

  Beckett followed him. “What’s up?”

  “867-5309!?” Corbin repeated.

  “What?” Beckett asked.

  “Are you serious? That’s a fake number, Evan.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me on this one.” Corbin looked over his shoulder at Saitoo puffing away on the joint. “This guy is telling us whatever we want him to tell us. He’s just making it up on the fly, and he’s not very good at it.”

  “We should still run down this Rochelle.”

  “There is no Rochelle. He made her up.”

  “We don’t know that,” Beckett said earnestly.

  “You know, for an experienced attorney, you can be remarkably gullible.”

  “I’ve learned over time to run everything down, because you never know where it might lead,” Beckett offered in his defense.

  “All right, when we get back to the office, you look up that phone number. You’ll find it belongs to someone named ‘Jenny.’ And if you want to meet ‘Rochelle,’ let’s cut to the chase.” Corbin walked back toward Saitoo. “Listen up, idiot,” Corbin said, tapping the bottom of Saitoo’s foot with his own foot, causing Saitoo to jump backwards in the beanbag and curl up his leg. “We need to talk to this Rochelle. Go find whoever it is you’ve got in mind and then call us when she’s ready to meet us.” Corbin tossed a card at Saitoo with their office number written on it. “Oh, and tell Beaumont he needs to get better witnesses.”

  Without another word, Corbin and Beckett left. Once they were back in the car, Corbin turned to Beckett. “Did you notice he never once fought me on any of the challenges I made to his story? Beaumont paid this guy to play along with everything we said. He wasn’t with Beaumont on the 14th and there’s no Rochelle or Jenny or whatever her name is supposed to be. Let’s go see the cop.”

  Paul Webb walked into the coffee shop. He arranged this meeting after the prosecutor told him Beckett wanted to meet with him. Webb had no obligation to meet with Beckett, but he somehow felt he should. He didn’t tell the prosecutor. Webb spotted Corbin and Beckett right away. They sat in the corner, away from the window and the other patrons. Webb clicked off his two way radio, a violation of regulations, and walked over to their table.

  “I’m Paul Webb,” he said, without extending his hand to either Corbin or Beckett.

  “Thanks for coming, Officer. Can I get you a drink or something?” Beckett motioned Webb to sit down.

  “No, no thanks.” He sat down.

  “This is my co-counsel Alex Corbin,” Beckett said, pointing toward Corbin. “We wanted to ask you some questions about the arrest.”

  “What do you want to know,” Webb asked cautiously.

  “I’ve got some questions about the police report.” Beckett pulled a copy of the report from beneath a manila folder. He offered the report to Webb, who declined to take it. Beckett planned to start with a series of simple questions, each designed to get Webb agreeing with him before hitting him with some of the controversial questions. This was an old attorney trick. Once you get a witness into the habit of agreeing with you, it becomes easier for them to keep agreeing with you as the questions get harder and it becomes harder for them to fight you. “You were the arresting officer, right.”

  “Yeah, me and Sgt. Russell,” Webb replied.

  “Right, Sgt. Russell. He signed this report as well. You’ve been an officer for less than a year now?” Beckett asked in a friendly, yet businesslike manner.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Yeah, it’s ok.”

  “You’ve had other arrests before Beaumont, right?”

  “Yeah, ten or twelve.”

  “That’s impressive. Sounds like you could make sergeant in record time,” Beckett suggested, but Webb didn’t respond. He returned to the report. “Here you are listed as the arresting officer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sgt. Russell lists himself as backup?”

  Webb hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “Did Russell know Beaumont before the arrest?” This was Beckett’s first test question. Beckett knew from the file Russell had arrested Beaumont twice before. He’d also learned Webb and Russell were no longer partners, something which was itself suspicious, and he wanted to test the bond between them.

  “You’d have to ask him,” Webb replied.

  “He never mentioned it at the time of the arrest?”

  “You should probably ask him,” Webb repeated.

  “Is there a reason you can’t answer that?”

  “I don’t want to speak for the guy, that’s all.”

  “I’m not asking you to speak for him, I’m asking you what he told you, that’s it.”

  Webb shifted uncomfortably.

  “Is there a reason you won’t answer the question?” Beckett leaned forward. “Officer, you took an oath did you not, when you graduated from the academy?”

  “What does that have to do—”

  “What happened at the arrest, Officer?” Beckett asked, interrupting Webb.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. This report has serious problems.” Beckett tossed the report in front of Webb, who backed away from it, refusing to touch it. “You do realize what it means that you signed this, right?”

  “I’ve got to go,” Webb said, rising from the table.

  “Officer,” Beckett said, trying to stop him. “Webb!”

  Webb stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “Don’t let them do this to you. We can help you,” Beckett said earnestly, but Webb left.

  Corbin sipped his coffee before setting it down. He ran his tongue over his teeth. “So. . . what happened to calmly pulling him in, gaining his trust, and seeing if he knows anything?”

  “He gave me an opening, and I took it.”

  “Opening? Looked more like he slammed the door in your face.”

  “Didn’t you see the conflict? He didn’t want to sign the report. He’s afraid of it. He’s so afraid of it he doesn’t even want to be a cop. Did you see how he reacted when I suggested he might make sergeant? No rookie hates their job that much in less than a year. Rookies are like puppies, they’re gung ho about everything. Something happened. He knows something.”

  “Maybe he’s just not happy being a cop?”

  “No, he’s got an impressive record until this arrest,” Beckett replied.

  “How do you know he’s not the one who faked the evidence? We’re assuming it was Russell, but we don’t know if that’s true.”

  “It had to be Russell. Somebody planted those documents on Beaumont. We know that for a fact, because we know who really opened the accounts. We also know those documents came from the police department because the only people in the room when they appeared were the cops. So where would the cops get them? According to Russell’s statement, he worked on this case with the fraud boys before Webb was assigned to him. That gave him access to the documents. We also know Russell and Beaumont go way back, and Russell got the supposed anonymous tip that sent them to Beaumont. Plus, there’s no way Webb could have planted those documents without Russell noticing it. No sergeant is going to let a rookie put him into that kind of a bind, especially a guy like Russell. It all adds up to Russell.”

  “Makes sense, but you’re still only guessing.” Corbin sipped his coffee.

  “Now we need to push Webb. We need to remind him of his training, remind him he didn’t become a cop to play God. Remind him of his oath. That’s the only way to get him to make the hardest choice of all, to do the right thing no matter who it hurts.”

  “Those are pretty long odds to rest Beaumont’s defense on.”

  “I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket, but we need something from him. If both Rus
sell and Webb stick with their stories, then we have a problem.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “The prisoner’s dilemma. Two guys are accused of the same crime. If they keep their stories straight, they both get off. But if you can separate them and offer them each a deal, they’ll rat each other out because they’re afraid of being ratted out themselves. We just need to find out what kind of deal makes Webb tick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve met a lot of cops. The young guys are motivated by doing the right thing, a sense of honor. The older guys are motivated by keeping their jobs. The political guys just want to get promoted. Webb’s young and he showed no interest in getting promoted. That tells me he’s all about honor. So we offer him a chance to come clean and protect his honor.”

  “Unless I miss my guess, you just did that and he declined.”

  “So far he’s declined,” Beckett corrected him. “Give him time.”

  “Should we try again to set up an interview with Russell?”

  “No, let Webb wonder why we haven’t spoken to Russell. Hopefully, he’ll think Russell is selling him out to save himself.”

  Webb sat in his cruiser a block from the coffee shop. He stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. After some seconds, he turned his radio on again and started the cruiser. He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and pulled up the prosecutor’s number. He looked in the mirror again before returning the phone to his jacket. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said to himself.

  Chapter 28

  There was nothing Corbin or Beckett could do on the case until they met with the judge, which wouldn’t happen for another week. In the meantime, Corbin returned to the Washington office. He wanted to see if anyone there had heard anything about the case. It only took Corbin a few minutes to discover that nothing had changed in his absence and no one knew anything. So he sat at his desk watching the clock. After lunch, he got bored, so he paid Molly a visit. Her desk was covered in catalogs. She held a dozen more in her lap.

  “Hey, you’re a guy, right?” Molly asked.

  “Last time I checked.”

  “Then I need your help. In most things, reading you people is like reading a picture book. But when it comes to gifts, you’re all absolutely incomprehensible.”