by Diane Capri
“How about surveillance video? You have cameras in the waiting room and posted around the parking lot, I noticed. Can I get someone to look at that video for me and help me find this woman?”
“You need to talk to security about that.” He frowned and reached to pick up the phone. “Shall I call them over for you?”
What the hell. Why not? “Yes. That would be great. Thanks.”
He punched about seven buttons into the phone and waited while it rang on the other end. When someone picked up, he said, “Yeah, this is the ER. Can you send a supervisor over here, please? I’ve got a woman looking for—well, I’m not sure what she’s looking for. But she wants to talk to you…Okay…I see. I’ll tell her. Maybe she can come back tomorrow. Right.”
“Sorry.” He hung up the phone. “They said they’re short-staffed tonight because of the Celine Dion concert. They can’t spare anyone to answer questions.”
As he talked, he wrote a name and phone number on a Post-it and handed it to me. “You can call the supervisor in the morning. His name is Kevin Blake. If we have what you’re looking for, this guy will be able to help you.”
I took the Post-it and thanked him for the help through clenched teeth. Too busy to talk to me, indeed. I stomped out and started the long trip back to the hotel, empty-handed. No wonder it took Chief Hathaway so long to get anything accomplished if every call he made ended up this way.
Cindy Allen might as well have been living on the moon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Wednesday, November 16
9:30 a.m.
Chief Hathaway claimed his department was working on it, but he shared nothing new in the investigation into Hayden’s death on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I’d fallen into a sort of routine—up before six to work out in the hotel gym, a light breakfast in my room, and then walk to the courthouse where I’d sort through boxes of paperwork that hadn’t seen the light of day in years.
In a way, the Stingy Dudes trial being off my to-do list was helpful, even though I’d never admit that to CJ. He called at least four times a day, and I ignored the towering stack of pink slips with his name on them. The Special Judicial Review Committee had also called asking to interview me. But I still had no answers in the Hayden case, and until I knew what had happened to Evan Hayden, I wasn’t speaking to them, on the record or off.
My luck at evasion would only last so long, though. If the Hayden investigation didn’t break soon, I would have to seriously consider the possibility of giving up my job. CJ complained that I enjoyed making a spectacle of the courts, and he was wrong. It wasn’t negative attention I sought. Not even remotely. What I wanted was justice. Every time.
If seeking justice sometimes came with a heaping side of unflattering attention…well, there was nothing I could do about that. I’d always been a crusader for justice in my own way, and I wasn’t about to stop now. Even if it meant leaving the bench and returning to the practice of law when all this was said and done. I’d loved being a lawyer. Part of me wouldn’t mind getting off the hot seat and back to the relative anonymity of working hard out of the spotlight.
Being a public servant wasn’t all glitz and glamour. My life would be a lot simpler without CJ and all those disapproving power brokers constantly trying to keep me in the place they believed I belonged. Not to mention the pay cut when I took the bench. The money was certainly a lot better in private practice, as my colleagues often reminded me.
First, though, I had to get clear of the suspicion that I’d killed a man with my car. And avoid being charged with any kind of vehicular crime on that score.
Many people were shocked to learn that a convicted felon could hold a license to practice law. But only three states prohibited felons from practicing, and Florida was not one of them. Still, I meant to return to practicing, if it came to that end, with a clean record. Augustus and I worked through the morning, cleaning out storage boxes of records we’d moved over from the old chambers and either committing them to storage or filing them in the shiny new cabinets along the walls of our new chambers.
I’d wanted a paperless office for years. So far, it hadn’t happened. But we were moving closer to the goal. Like everything else in government, the project marched ahead at the pace of a disabled snail.
After a nice lunch in my office—smoked turkey sandwiches on fresh-baked, cracked wheat bread from the deli across the street and iced tea to drink—we were ready to dig into another section of boxes when my desk phone rang. Augustus reached for it, but I stopped him when I saw the coroner’s number pop up on my caller ID.
“Judge Carson,” I said, answering on speakerphone.
“Willa,” Dr. Martin Eberhard said, sounding slightly flustered as always. “The police chief requested a rush, so I’ve got the full autopsy results back on Charles Evan Hayden. I just spoke with Ben Hathaway, and he gave me the okay to call you.”
I stood, knocked the dust off my jeans, and glanced over at Augustus who was unpacking yet more files from one of the storage boxes, somehow managing to keep his pristine suit flawlessly clean. How did he manage to stay so immaculate all the time? Once this horror show was over, I planned to find out all his secrets. Including that one.
I plopped into my chair and took a gulp of water. “Anything interesting turn up?”
“If you call a previously unseen mix of drugs interesting, then yes.” Eberhard sounded downright gleeful. Scientists had a distinctly odd sense of excitement. “According to the toxicology reports, the particular blend of toxic heroin found in Hayden’s system doesn’t match anything we’ve previously seen in Tampa.”
“I’m failing to see how that’s a good thing, Martin. What about the rest of the state?” I frowned while I considered the possibilities.
Ben Hathaway had pulled Hayden’s travel records. He’d flown a lot, often with his clients, but sometimes alone. If he’d died from a self-administered drug overdose, he might have bought the toxic heroin out of state.
Beyond that, Hayden’s clientele consisted of sports stars and rich celebrities, all of whom traveled extensively, too.
We could reasonably assume the drugs were transported here by Hayden or one of his contacts, although that was a risky thing to do, what with drug-sniffing dogs at the airports these days. It made more sense that the drugs arrived in Tampa via ground transportation of some sort. Drug runners were more likely sellers.
But then, the toxic heroin would have shown up in Tampa before now.
“Nothing matches this drug in the FDLE databases, either,” Eberhard said, drawing me back to the present. “Meaning nothing like this type of heroin has been seen in Florida at all.”
“Were there matches elsewhere in the country?” I pulled out a pen and paper to jot down his answer. When I was actively working, I liked to document everything as it happened and then review it at the end of the day. But my whole routine had been thrown off by these events, and I’d resorted to scattered bits of paper and scratched notes on napkins until I could settle down at last and organize everything, preferably with a glass of gin and nice cigar by my side.
“This particular mix of fentanyl and heroin has entered law-enforcement databases in Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Jersey,” Eberhard said. “The worst hit area, though, was Pennsylvania. They’ve had over a hundred deaths in the past three years from it.”
As I scribbled, I noted this was yet another connection to Evan Hayden’s past and another possible connection between him and his killer.
“Did the autopsy turn up anything else of interest?” I asked, keeping an eye on Augustus, who was still going through files across the room but was keeping an ear on my phone call, I was sure. Augustus, in addition to his excellent executive-assistant and paralegal skills, made for a terrific sounding board when I needed to bounce ideas off of someone. And yes, there was always a possibility that some of my information might make it into the hands of his powerful uncle, but that was a chance I was willing to take. Augustus
was that good.
“The parents’ DNA results came back a conclusive match to their son,” Martin said. “We’ll be releasing his body to them this afternoon. They plan to fly back to Pittsburgh tonight.”
They’d been through so much. They’d be relieved to finally have their son returned to them. But with the body gone, I worried that the case would remain unsolved.
I thanked Eberhard and ended the call. For a while afterward, I simply stared into space as I worked things through.
It was quite a stretch to believe, but if this special, unique toxic heroin had been acquired for the purpose of killing Hayden or anyone else, that was some pretty cold premeditation. We’d been thinking lately that Hayden’s drink might have been poisoned the night he died. But Hayden probably had a close connection to his killer, too.
Of the leads Ben had turned up, the two that stood out to me were Cindy Allen and Johnny Rae.
Domestic crimes were common. Perhaps Hayden and Cindy Allen had some sort of argument, and a nasty breakup. She might have harbored anger and resentment toward him. Maybe even enough to begin using drugs again. Under the influence and hurting, she could have slipped him the poison.
But could she have shoved him into the street, making sure he was killed? He was heavier than her. Unless they were standing at the accident site already, how would she have gotten him there? She couldn’t possibly have done all that alone.
I thought back to the picture I’d seen of Cindy on Ben’s phone and when I’d seen her in the ER. She’d looked too innocent to be a killer. But I wouldn’t know a killer if I was sitting right next to one. I’d had it happen a few times. Trust me. Killers don’t all look like Charles Manson and wear a neon sign over their heads flashing “Look Out! I’m here to kill you!”
Get a grip, Willa. I shook my head and took a deep breath.
Moving on to Johnny Rae.
Yesterday, I’d spent a couple of hours digging into Rae’s falling-out with Hayden. Things had turned ugly fast after Rae accused Hayden of embezzlement and tax fraud. Hayden fought back. He was the suspected source of doping and steroid use rumors about Rae.
Rae was a favorite to be on the roster of US Olympic Basketball team at the time. The gossip ruined his chance to put his skills on display for a gold-medal team. He claimed millions of dollars in endorsement deals went down the tubes, too.
The whole dispute was at the top of every sports report everywhere for a couple of weeks. Since I never watched sports news, I’d missed the whole thing.
The dust-up ended as abruptly as it began.
There was no proof that Hayden was the one who had spread the malicious lies about Rae—and Rae’s bloodwork had come back negative for any illegal substances—but the rumors of doping mysteriously stopped once the claims against Hayden and his firm were dropped. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together. Rae got paid. Problem solved.
Could bad blood between the men and a desire for revenge have driven Johnny Rae to murder Evan Hayden with, ironically, an illegal substance? Of course it could have.
But in the six months since the nasty falling-out and its aftermath, Rae seemed to be getting his life back on track. He was engaged to the mother of his newborn son and had just bought a luxurious mansion on the exclusive Pointe of Harbour Island. Situated on Seddon Channel, his home had direct access to Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Not exactly the type of property a man would buy and then commit a murder that would land him in prison.
Then again, killers rarely expected to get caught. Most imagined themselves smarter than your average law-enforcement officer or judge.
Most were wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Wednesday, November 16
4:30 p.m.
A couple of hours later, the phone buzzed again, but this time I let Augustus answer it. Good thing, too. The caller was the secretary for the special investigative committee trying to corral me into an interview again.
I couldn’t hold them off forever, but I could postpone a bit longer. Something would break in the Hayden case. Until it did, I just had to stay out of CJ’s reach and find Hayden’s killer.
“How do you feel about the Haydens taking their son back home to Pittsburgh?” he asked after he’d taken a message.
“I don’t know.”
“Sounds like a good thing to me.” Augustus added the pink message slip to the stack. “Let things die down a bit. Let those gawkers turn their spotlights elsewhere. Surely, there’s something more exciting happening in the world for Rinaldo Gaines to focus on, right?”
He wiped his hands on a napkin and tossed it in the trash. All signs that he’d been digging through dusty files for hours disappeared.
I looked down and saw nothing but streaks of dust and smudges of dirt on my clothes. I looked a mess. I ran my fingers through my pixie-cut red hair and fluffed it out as best I could. “Maybe you’re right.”
“There’s another good thing I don’t think you’ve considered.” He smiled, all white teeth and lilting Jamaican charm. “If the attention goes away, your life can get back to normal. No more living in a hotel. You can move back home, too. With George.”
He might be the male version of Pollyanna, but he was also right. The hotel was luxuriously nice, no question, but I missed my husband and our dogs something fierce.
My smile widened into a full-blown grin. The knot of tension between my shoulder blades unfurled, and I straightened in my seat.
Things with my job might still be tenuous, but I’d faced worse. I’d get to the bottom of Evan Hayden’s death from the comfort of my own home. “Augustus, can you call George and tell him that I’ll be home for Thanksgiving, please?”
“I will.” He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. “But how are you going to get rid of those people who have been following you around?”
“My plan is to put them to sleep from boredom. And then hope something much juicier comes along to snag them,” I said, grinning.
The legitimate news organizations had dropped off almost immediately when no further developments had turned up. Charles Evan Hayden wasn’t a celebrity. He wasn’t a local. He wasn’t a power broker or a politician or even a particularly newsworthy businessman. There was nothing in particular to keep him in the news, so his story simply slipped away, replaced by new stories.
The number of gawkers, protesters, and vultures had slowly subsided over the days following Hayden’s death. The paid protesters must have run through their budgets. For the gawkers, there was simply nothing much to look at. Watching me walk from the hotel to the courthouse every day was boring.
And the citizen journalists were still doing their best to keep the “Federal Judge Kills Pedestrian. Removed from Court” story alive, but with nothing new happening, they were running out of ways to say the same old, same old.
Except, of course, Rinaldo Gaines. I’d made a mistake by responding to him that first night. I’d watched his video channel, and he’d found about three dozen ways to slice that footage with images of me coming and going at home and at work. In short, he’d milked this thing for all he could get. Hits to his fake news channel had soared. His revenue was up, too.
He wouldn’t give up his cash-cow story easily. He’d approached people who knew me and confronted them with offensive questions, which they didn’t answer, of course. But he put the video online with his outrageous voice-overs. My colleagues were “covering” for me, he said. My friends were “hiding.” I was “on the run” from him.
Not only was he one of the most offensive people I’d ever met, but he was also as tenacious as any junkyard dog on the planet.
“What we need to do is find something that’s more interesting than I am so Gaines will move on,” I murmured.
“Such as?” Augustus asked.
“We’re almost at the end of hurricane season, so we can’t count on one of those to rescue me.” Flashing a big grin, I said, “Crazy things are always happening in Florida. D
on’t you read the papers? Entire neighborhoods falling into a sinkhole. Stupid kids doing illegal things and videotaping themselves while they do it. Something’s bound to turn up.”
“So your plan is to sit around and wait? Doesn’t sound like you,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t. Which is why it’s time for me to get out of town for a few days.” I tapped my lips with a knuckle, thinking about where I might go to get out of sight and hopefully out of Rinaldo Gaines’s mind.
I sat back in my chair and folded my hands to think. “While I’m gone, maybe the last stragglers will tire of waiting around if something doesn’t draw their attention before I get back.”
Augustus nodded. “When are you leaving and how can I help?”
“I’ve done everything I can to find Cindy Allen without success. I’m thinking she or some of her friends might attend Hayden’s funeral in Pittsburgh.” I held up my hand, palm out, when he gasped. “Hear me out. I won’t be the cause of any more pain to his parents. Nothing of the kind. And I’m not going to cause a disturbance at his funeral.”
“What are you planning to do, then?” Augustus asked, frowning.
“I’m not entirely sure yet. But if I buy a ticket to Pittsburgh and get on the plane, Rinaldo Gaines might come after me.”
August frowned. “Won’t that draw Gaines to the funeral? You know he’ll cause even more heartache to Hayden’s parents if he had the chance. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, I don’t. So I’ll have to figure out a way around him. He might have friends in Pittsburgh who could help him out, but I doubt it.” I was thinking aloud, making a plan as the conversation progressed.
“There are other problems with your plan, too.”
“Such as?”
“You want the vultures that are camped out in front of the judge’s private entrance to the courthouse to see you go, don’t you? And you want them to know where you’re going. How are we going to make that happen?” Augustus asked, getting into the spirit of the plan.