Eddie Flynn 02-The Plea

by Steve Cavanagh

  ‘Your analyst, Sophie. Kennedy told me about her. Said that you two were a thing. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  I meant it. Didn’t stop Dell from searching my face for any hint of insincerity. Satisfied, he said, ‘Thank you. She was too young. It should’ve been me in that convoy. I know I push hard, but I’m not a bad guy. I just want the firm.’

  ‘So what exactly do you need from David Child?’

  ‘He wrote the algo. He must have a way of tracing how it moves the money and where it will end up. He must have a way of monitoring the money while the algo moves it. I want the route the money takes from the first dollar deposited with the firm until the payoff to the partners. He tells us where the money will land and how the cash filters to Harland and Sinton. That gives us the evidence to indict Gerry Sinton and Ben Harland and it ensures we can secure all of the firm’s cash.’

  I let this sink in, searching through Dell’s account, looking for any inconsistencies. I found only one.

  ‘Say I believe you. It sounds more like the truth. But if you found out that Child can manipulate the algo and you’ll cut him a deal in exchange, then what the hell do you need me for? Why not go see him for yourself and make the deal? Why involve me?’

  ‘Soon as we got the drop on David’s IT system, we planned to do exactly that. Until our friends at the Bureau gave us David’s psyche evaluation. The kid has a history of deep-seated authority issues – he was a hacker for many years, and he hates and distrusts the government. He’s borderline paranoid, and he suffers from some kind of adjustment disorder. If we approached him directly, he wouldn’t trust us. But that doesn’t matter; we couldn’t legitimately get to him without his lawyer finding out. Plus there’s the little matter of his dead girlfriend. We can’t cut him a deal without him having a lawyer. We needed Child to have an ally, somebody to trust, and we had to separate him from the firm. Made sense to bring in a new lawyer for him, one who would be sympathetic and motivated to convince Child to plead guilty and make a deal. You’ve been on our radar since your wife took the job at the firm. We know everything about those lawyers, every possible angle of exploitation. And when the opportunity arose, we thought we’d use it. You were perfect for the job.’

  This was standard CIA fare, using people, manipulating lives to further their own needs. I’d played this game myself.

  ‘I’m not that perfect. I won’t beat Child into a false confession.’

  ‘I know you can get a good read on someone, but you can never be sure, Eddie. David Child is highly intelligent – and all the evidence says that he’s a killer. You willing to let a murderer walk? I saw the photographs. I know what he did to that girl. As much as I want the firm, I can’t let a guy like that just walk away.’

  A cold, dull pain lit up my right hand. An old injury. Bad memories came flooding back.

  ‘Dell, if I thought he was guilty, I’d help you nail him. I have to trust my instincts on this. I’ll get you your evidence another way. When I get it, you let Christine slide on an immunity agreement,’ I said.

  He rubbed his chin and said, ‘How will you get it?’

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  We pulled over, a half mile from the courthouse.

  ‘You can walk from here. Take care. I told you these men are dangerous. Now you know just how dangerous. Do yourself a favor and take the easy route – get me my plea and I’ll make sure Christine is safe. But don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t have Christine indicted if you cross me. Sometime tomorrow night the firm’s money lands in a secured account – all of it. I need the information before that so we can be waiting. If we don’t have the trace on the algo by then, it’s too late. Sinton can lift the cash and disappear if he feels the need,’ said Dell.

  I tucked my case files under my arm, opened the door, and climbed out of the SUV onto the pavement. Dell flicked open his cell phone and turned his attention to the screen. I closed the door and the SUV sped off.

  My wife or my client? Twenty-nine hours until the money lands. Twenty-nine hours to get Christine clear – if I gave up Child.

  It had seemed an easy decision the night before. But I couldn’t shake that feeling that I was on the wrong side of this, that David needed someone to defend him, not help him into prison.

  Not that long ago I’d represented a man whom I knew to be guilty. I played it out and got him off. And regretted it every day since. I’d lost too much down that road.

  I could no more send an innocent man to prison than I could let a guilty one go free. The system that allowed a defendant to buy a hotshot lawyer to get him off was the same system that pitted seasoned prosecutors with unlimited resources against public defenders who couldn’t buy their clients a bus ticket to get them to court.

  The system was wrong. It allowed the players to rule. I was a player, and whatever else I did, whatever I scammed on the side to keep my practice going, I wouldn’t let the system fail for the wrong reasons.

  Somehow I had to get both Christine and David clear, and right then, no matter what way I played it out in my mind, I knew if I tried to save them both I would probably end up losing at least one of them. I had to get David to trust me. I had to make a deal.

  A half smile turned up the corner of my mouth as I wondered if the copy of the New York Times that I’d substituted for the contents of the manila folder would fool Dell if he glanced at the cover. I needed only a few minutes with the stolen documents.

  A half a block away, I saw a FedEx office.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  33 hours until the shot

  The FedEx office boasted six of the latest high-tech photocopiers. I threaded the pages from the file into three of them, distributing the pages evenly, no more than fifty to a machine. I hit start on each machine and waited while the copiers purred and whirred their way to making me copies of Dell’s file.

  I collated the copies from each machine, paid at the desk, and left.

  I called Dell direct, my emergency number.

  The SUV appeared within a minute.

  This time I opened the passenger door and held out the papers. ‘Sorry, this must have gotten mixed up with my files.’

  The twitch.

  Without a word, Dell grabbed the original documents, closed the door, and sped away into New York traffic, heading toward the Chrysler Building.

  I had my copies slipped between the discovery pages of the old Popo files I’d carried with me that day. At that moment I couldn’t read the file. I was due back at court to assist with Child’s bail processing and release as soon as things calmed down in holding. I would have to read the file later. When I had time to sit and figure things out.

  In taking those papers, I’d crossed a line. Even if Dell couldn’t be sure I’d taken the file deliberately, he would assume it was a move on my part. I had to tread more carefully with Dell. He held Christine’s fate in his hands. And I hated that.

  Somehow, I had to figure out a way to shift that balance of power in my favor, and I knew the key to that was a twenty-two-year-old boy, pissing himself with panic in a cell, unable to breathe or think, never mind help anyone else.

  I waved down a cab, told the driver to bring me back to court, flicked open the prosecution file Lopez had given me in Knox’s chambers, and began to read. I already knew the basic facts – the victim, David’s girlfriend, had been found shot in his apartment. What I didn’t know before I opened that file was how the prosecution were going to run with the case, what specific pieces of evidence they had against Child, what motive they would put up in front of the judge.

  It wasn’t a thick file – preliminary forensic reports, witness statements, crime scene photographs, and computer logs. After I’d finished reading, I began to doubt my assessment of David Child; the evidence looked clean, and it proved, way beyond any doubt, that David shot and killed his girlfriend, Clara Reece. I thought about the kid’s eyes. His panic. It was like watching him falling down a deep hole.

  I found it
hard to guess what way the prosecution would spin the motive for the killing. The evidence made it clear that not only did David kill his girlfriend, but it would’ve been impossible for anyone else to have done it.

  I asked the cab driver to pull over a block away from the courthouse. I needed a walk to clear my head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A light rain began, and I pulled my collar up and tucked the files into the folds of my overcoat to keep them dry. The sidewalk hummed with commuters, shoppers, joggers, vendors, street performers, and people talking loudly on their cell phones. I didn’t hear any of it, or really see it. Nor did I see the stone columns lining the front of the court building, nor the yellow cabs lined up outside, their drivers hanging out of their windows arguing over who was first in line for pickup. None of it came directly within my view, yet I was aware of all of it, but only on the most basic level. My head was still in the prosecution file.

  There was reference in the file to the existence of two DVDs that hadn’t yet been served on the defense, but there were statements from detectives who had watched them and wanted to get their commentary noted for evidentiary purposes. The first DVD, according to the cop’s statement, was from a traffic camera on Central Park West that captured the RTC. A drunk driver ran a red light and plowed into David’s Bugatti, head-on. When police attended the scene, they saw the firearm in the passenger footwell of the supercar. Child said the gun wasn’t his. The cop, Phil Jones, said that he smelled the gun and detected an odor from it, as if it had been recently fired. There was no license for the gun, and they arrested Child, put him in lockup. Then later they matched his address to the reports of the body found in an apartment – his apartment. I could tell that the cops, in their statements, were hinting that if Child’s car hadn’t been hit by that drunk driver, he might have gotten away clean and had a chance to dispose of the murder weapon.

  As it was, fate made sure that he got caught.

  Being a relatively new billionaire, Child owned an apartment in Central Park Eleven, the most expensive apartment building in the United States. The building actually sat on Central Park West, but they’d decided to christen the place Central Park Eleven. His apartment spread over more square footage than a basketball court and enjoyed a wide, wraparound balcony with the best views of the park in Manhattan. The statement from his neighbor, a Hollywood movie director named Gershbaum, began by explaining that he owned the adjoining apartment on the twenty-fifth floor and at that height, in the tower above the main block, there were only two apartments per floor. He said he was in his apartment, watching footage from a movie he was shooting that day, when he thought he heard gunfire. At first he wasn’t sure. He thought it might have been a car backfiring on the street, so he opened his balcony door and leaned over the railing to check. That’s when he saw the window exploding in the apartment next to him. It scared him so bad he damn near fell over his own railing. He called building security from his panic room and waited. Security were outside his door in four minutes. Gershbaum told the guard what he’d seen and showed him the glass on the next balcony. The first security guard to enter the apartment found Clara’s body in the kitchen.

  I didn’t need to recall the guard’s description of what he saw. A photograph of the body at the scene had already burned itself into my mind. She’d had blond hair, cut into a short bob. Her hair was no longer blond; now it was a mass of bloody tissue. Simply clothed in a white tee over dark blue jeans, feet bare. Her body lay facedown in the kitchen, head turned slightly to the right. Both arms by her sides. People are rarely shot as they lie facedown on the floor. And most people who get shot don’t die instantly, and their arms reach out, reflexively, to break their fall as they go down from the kinetic force of the bullet. Clara’s arms had not moved to break her fall. The rational explanation for that could be that she was dead before her body hit the polished, white tiles.

  The medical examiner stated that Clara had been shot multiple times – most of the shots were to the head. There were two bullet entry wounds in the center of her back, thirteen millimeters apart. The remainder of the shots were to the back of her head. From the way her body was positioned, providing it had not been moved postmortem, my take on it was she’d first been shot in the head, then dropped. Two in the spine to make sure she was down, and then the killer unloaded into the back of her head. The ME couldn’t confirm the number of shots to the head, as there was little of her skull left intact. A CSI’s statement confirmed that beneath Clara’s face, the tiles were broken and the cement held what had become a ball of mangled rounds.

  On his reading of the scene, the killer had fired twice into her back then spent the rest of the clip with shots to the back of her head.

  Then reloaded.

  The second clip had then been emptied into what remained of her skull.

  A rage shooting. That pointed to a suspect who knew the victim well, and I guessed this is what the DA’s office would run with for motive. Along with the rest of the crime scene photographs was a picture of Clara, taken from her Reeler account. She was with another woman, about her age, but not as pretty. They were sitting on barstools, showing off their new, matching tattoos. A purple daisy on their respective right wrists. Drinks sat behind them, and they were facing away from the bar. Clara looked as if she was giggling. She had been naturally beautiful, her skin clear and bright, and her eyes had an effervescent aspect.

  For a moment I thought of the young girl that I’d failed so miserably years ago when I’d set her attacker free.

  I felt a growing heat in my stomach. My hands felt heavy and ready to fly. That feeling came to me sometimes, when I wanted to hurt someone. For Clara, all I could do was make sure that her killer could never do that to someone else. Seeing that same tattoo in the crime scene photos, on her upturned, lifeless wrist, I couldn’t help but think that some part of her soul stayed behind, to watch, to wail at the life taken, and to judge. Again, I thought about David Child; could he lie that well? Well enough to fool me – a guy who could spot a tell on a mannequin? I didn’t believe that he could, but the evidence against Child just got worse and worse the more I read.

  If you were a tenant in Central Park Eleven, you got a key to your apartment and an electronic fob. The fob operated the elevators in the building and turned off your security alarm, which came as standard for your accommodation. Building security had Child’s comings and goings logged, to the minute, from his fob. At 19:46 he entered his apartment with Clara, seventeen minutes later Child’s fob was registered using the elevator to exit the building, alone. He was the last person to leave the apartment. Four minutes after that, the security guards are at Gershbaum’s apartment, and then they discover Clara’s body in David Child’s empty apartment. The apartment that he’d left just minutes before.

  A cop viewed the building’s security camera recordings and saw Child entering and leaving the apartment. He wore an oversized green hooded top, baggy gray sweatpants, and a pair of red Nikes. I checked the description of Child from the first DVD, which held security footage from the car accident. He wore the same clothes.

  Preliminary forensics revealed Child’s hands and clothes were covered in gunshot residue. This wasn’t a case of secondary transfer, like brushing up against someone who’d just fired a pistol, or walking around in a firing range. It looked like he’d taken a bath in GSR; the concentrations found on his hands, clothes, and face were consistent with him having fired a gun multiple times.

  During police questioning, Child said he’d never seen the gun before the cop showed it to him, allegedly having found it on the floor of David’s Bugatti. He’d told them he didn’t own a gun and he’d never fired a gun in his life.

  Shell casings found in the apartment were to be tested by ballistics and reports should be ready soon. However, given the similar caliber, and preliminary findings, it looked as though the gun in Child’s car was the murder weapon.

  The gun was a Ruger LCP.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-O
NE

  The back stairs of the courthouse, accessed via the fire door with the faulty alarm, led me to the secure detention floor. Department of Corrections reserved this block for the most dangerous detainees and for the most vulnerable. Behind the barred entrance, two guards manned a bank of security monitors. I knew one of them by sight, told him I was there to see Child. This section of detention was not in lockdown, and he let me through after patting me down and having a thorough thumb through my files, just to make sure that I wasn’t trying to slip anything to the prisoner.

  The corridor dog-legged once and at the end, beyond the stretch of cells on the right-hand wall, I saw a single guard sitting outside the secure room. For a detention officer he was small, no more than five foot two. The riot stick slung from his belt looked bigger than he was.

  ‘Anyone ask to see my client?’

  ‘The doc came to check on him, but he left ten minutes ago. You want to see him?’ said the guard.

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘You his lawyer?’

  ‘Well, I’m not his mother. Of course I’m his lawyer. Can you open the cell? Aren’t you supposed to be watching him?’

  ‘He’s an AR – at risk – so I check on him every nine minutes. Wanna read my chart?’ he asked.

  He’d probably ticked his inspection boxes already and there would be no point in checking. The cell door opened with a metallic groan, and inside I saw Child lying on the two inches of rubber mattress that passed for a bed. Even lying down he cradled his head, perhaps afraid that unless he kept a hand on his brow the whirlwind he found himself in would spin even faster that it was already.

  ‘I got you bail, but with some conditions. You’ll have to—’ I began.

  ‘Is he alive?’ said Child.

  My impression of this man went up even more. When you’re sitting in an orange jumpsuit with a murder charge hanging over your head, it’s real easy to forget about other people’s problems.