Dead Reckoning

by Linda Castillo

  Kate jolted when the tape played out. Looking quickly around, she pulled her thoughts back from a place she rarely let them venture. Rising, she turned off the VCR, then turned to her team. “My apologies. I didn’t know the tape was quite so graphic.”

  “It’s definitely going to help convict him,” David Perrine said.

  “There’s no jury in the world that won’t respond to that,” Marissa Riley added.

  Kate continued. “The arraignment is this afternoon. Bruton Ellis will be formally charged with two counts of first degree murder, one count of sexual assault, and one count of aggravated robbery. It is our job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this man did, indeed, commit these atrocious crimes.”

  Picking up her legal pad, she began to pace, her mind already leaping ahead to all of the things that needed to be done. “Marissa, I want documents filed this morning. Get us on the docket so we can move forward as quickly as possible after the arraignment. Call the Dallas PD Evidence room and the lead detective and let him know I’ll be there this afternoon to review evidence. I’ll also want a copy of the interview tape between the detectives and the subject. I want copies of reports from officers on the scene. All by this afternoon.”

  “You got it,” the junior ADA said.

  Kate glanced at her investigator. “David, I want a comprehensive background check on Bruton Ellis. I want arrest records. Convictions. Time served. I want to know if he was ever treated for substance abuse or mental illness. I want to know about his friends and family. I want to know what brand of toothpaste he uses. We don’t want any surprises. And I want all this information yesterday.”

  “Hopping into my time machine as we speak.” Gathering his coffee cup and notes, he rose.

  “Liz, get me everything you can on the convenience store. I want to know if it is corporately owned or a franchise. I want to know if it has been hit before. I want a profile of both the corporation and, if it’s a franchise, the franchisee of record—”

  Kate bit off the words when the conference room door swung open. The room went silent when a tall man in a nicely cut charcoal suit entered. She knew it was crazy, but for a bizarre instant she felt as if she were in danger. Like maybe this man had snapped and at any moment was going to pull out a gun and start shooting people. He had an edgy, unpredictable look about him. A look that told anyone with a brain to tread carefully.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  A quiver of something she couldn’t quite identify went through her when his gaze fastened on hers. His eyes were an unusual shade that wasn’t quite brown and not quite green. It was an earthy shade that reminded her of the deep woods of East Texas. Green that faded to black as night descended and the forest became one with the shadows.

  Kate had dealt with people of all walks of life in the two years she’d worked in the DA’s office. Experience had taught her to recognize certain types of people by the way they looked, their mannerisms, the emotions and thoughts she read on their faces and in their eyes. But nothing had prepared her for what she saw when she peered into the disturbing depths of this man’s eyes. He had the look of a person who had seen a lot of things, and she knew instinctively that some of those things had been ugly, that they’d disturbed him in some deep and profound way.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Looking appropriately repentant, he closed the door silently behind him, limped to the conference table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

  Several seconds ticked by before it dawned on her who he was. Her missing investigator, Frank Matrone. Kate couldn’t believe he had the audacity to walk in now, some twenty minutes after the meeting had begun. She’d purposefully moved the sign on the conference room door to the “In Use” position so he wouldn’t walk in late. There was an unwritten rule in the DA’s office that once that sign was in place, you didn’t cross the threshold. Evidently this man didn’t do well with rules. That was fine with Kate. She’d never done well with subtle. She sure as hell wasn’t shy about getting in someone’s face when she needed to.

  “Mr. Matrone, I’m afraid this meeting is already in progress. I’m assuming you didn’t see the sign on the conference room door.”

  Several snickers sounded around the table, but Kate ignored them.

  “I saw the sign.” He met her gaze levelly, and once again she was reminded of the dark Texas woods. After dark. When the wild animals came out. “Mike Shelley told me I needed to be here.”

  Kate could tell by the hard sheen in his eyes that the good-old-boy Texas drawl wasn’t nearly as friendly as it sounded. She didn’t miss the resentment buried in the depths of that hard gaze. She’d done her homework. She knew this man had once been a detective with the Dallas PD. She also knew he’d been a military reservist and that he’d been sent to the Middle East. He’d been badly injured, and when he came back he hadn’t been able to resume his career with the Dallas PD. Kate had been around enough to know how to read between the lines. She figured some high-ranking individual within the Dallas PD had pulled some strings and gotten him a job with the DA’s office. And she knew this man was not happy about the perceived demotion. She saw bad attitude written all over him in big, bold letters. From the way he sprawled in that chair. To the tardiness of his arrival. The lack of paper and pen. His total disregard of the rules.

  Kate admired the men and women who’d put their lives on hold to serve their country. But her admiration didn’t extend to vets who took advantage of their status—or had a chip on their shoulders. This was the biggest case of her career, and she wasn’t going to tolerate anything less than one hundred and ten percent. If Frank Matrone didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want him.

  “That’s all I’ve got this morning.” Kate looked at the rest of her team and motioned toward the door. “My home and cell numbers are in the file along with my e-mail addresses. If you need to talk about the case, please don’t hesitate to call me any time. Until this case goes to trial, I am available day or night.”

  At that, the participants began to gather their materials. Frank Matrone sat sprawled in the chair, staring at her, looking like a bored teenager who’d been asked to stay for detention.

  “Mr. Matrone, you can go.” She motioned toward David Perrine’s retreating form. “I’ve already been assigned an investigator, but thank you for coming.”

  Giving him a cool smile, she began stacking her notes into her briefcase. Vaguely she was aware of her team filing from the room. Of Frank Matrone scooting his chair back, rising slowly, and starting toward her. She didn’t look at him when he reached her and hoped he would realize he’d been dismissed. But Frank Matrone evidently wasn’t ready to be dismissed.

  Kate could feel the power of his stare on her back as she turned and popped the tape from the VCR. When her meeting notes and files were neatly stowed, she looked up and met his gaze. “Is there something on your mind?”

  “Mike Shelley assigned me to this case,” he said. “This is where I need to be. Maybe you could fill me in on what was covered in the meeting.”

  Feeling the initial fingers of anger pressing into her, she snapped her briefcase closed and rose. “Since you don’t do well with subtle, Mr. Matrone, I’ll just come right out and say it. You were late. You didn’t call. You didn’t offer a reasonable excuse. You came to the meeting totally unprepared. I already have an investigator. Therefore, I do not need you. Is that clear enough for you?”

  “Look, if this is about my being late—”

  She added dense to the list of things she didn’t like about him. Where the hell did Mike Shelley find this guy? “This is about your attitude.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my attitude.”

  Kate laughed, but she could feel her temper winding up. Taking a deep breath, she pulled herself back, but only a little. There were times when honest emotion spoke better than calm. Particularly when dealing with thick-skulled ex-cops. “You skulk in here like some kind of angry tenth grader and expect me to fall all over myself accomm
odating you because you decided to grace us with your presence. Well, I’m sorry if this comes as a surprise to you, but I don’t operate that way. This is my case, and I plan to win it. Nothing personal, but I don’t think you have anything to offer this team. You can tell Mike Shelley that or I will. Do you have any questions?”

  FOUR

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 9:25 A.M.

  Frank might’ve only been with the DA’s office for two days, but he’d heard all about the infamous Kate Megason. She was a favorite topic among the male attorneys during happy hour when the booze was flowing and tongues were dangerously loose. He knew she was a pushy, uptight, type-A personality with a capital letter and double underscore on every single one of those adjectives. He’d even heard her name mentioned a few times back when he’d been a cop. Only cops weren’t quite so politically correct and called her things like hard-driving, big-mouthed, ball-breaking bitch.

  Frank had figured he could deal with that, since many of those same adjectives could be used to describe him. Well, except for the bitch part, anyway. Frank’s personality flaws went far beyond bitch. Just ask his former boss, Dallas PD Chief of Detectives Manolo Blanco.

  But while his attitude sucked and his life was totally fucked at the moment, Frank still considered himself a professional, even if he was hanging on to that belief by the skin of his teeth. When Mike Shelley had told him he would be working for Kate Megason, Frank hadn’t even blinked. He might have a short fuse these days, but he wasn’t so wigged out that he was going to blow the best opportunity he’d had since returning from the Middle East. Having spent the last year in his own private hell, dealing with some mean-spirited, self-absorbed, ambitious, she-bitch lawyer would be a walk in the park.

  Or so he’d thought. Having just received a thorough verbal trouncing that would put any drill sergeant to shame, he wasn’t so sure.

  She was staring at him, her gaze direct, her nostrils flaring slightly. He stared back, his own temper stirring up all sorts of nasty comments. “Look,” he began, “I got caught in traffic.” It was a lie, but Frank was getting good at lying, especially to himself. “There’s construction on—”

  “Everyone gets caught in traffic in Dallas, Mr. Matrone, including me. That excuse doesn’t wash.”

  “I was fifteen minutes late, for chrissake.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Whatever the case, a few minutes is no cause to have someone removed from an assignment.”

  “I guess that depends on expectations and whether or not the person doing the removing is willing to settle for less. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t ever settle for less than what I expect.” She shot him a pointed look over the tops of her glasses. “This meeting is concluded.”

  He stared at her in disbelief, aware that his heart rate was up. That his temper was revving. That he disliked her. Intensely. It was one hell of a time for him to notice her eyes. They were the color of a deep mountain lake reflecting a cloudless sky and so blue he thought they had to be contact lenses.

  All that blue was fringed with lashes that were long and thick and very black. Her brows were thin and dark and delicately arched. A stark contrast to skin that was the pale ivory of fresh buttermilk. Her lips were as pink as a Texas grapefruit. No power lipstick for Kate Megason. But then she didn’t need facades. The hard edges of her personality more than made up for the softness of her face.

  She wore an uptight suit with uptight shoes, and Frank figured if she got any more uptight, the woman would be in a knot. Her espresso brown hair was cut short, barely longer than his own, but it had the shiny gloss of a raven’s breast. He hated boy-cut hair on a woman. He hated bitchy women with holier-than-thou attitudes. But even through the layers of dislike, he couldn’t help but notice that beneath that uptight suit and I’ll-kick-your-ass expression she had one hell of a body. The kind of body a man would risk bodily harm for just one touch.

  Frank figured it was a good thing he wasn’t in the market for a woman, to-die-for body or not.

  “I don’t report to you,” he said. “I report to Mike Shelley.”

  “I think this situation will be best resolved if you walk away and let it go.”

  “Not a chance, sweetheart.” He smiled when she stiffened, and Frank knew he’d scored a direct hit. Bingo. She didn’t like being called sweetheart. He wondered how she would react if he told her what he really thought of her. “If you have a problem with my working on this case, I suggest you take it to him.”

  “I plan to.” Snapping her briefcase closed, she turned and walked away without looking back.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 5:24 P.M.

  “I don’t want him.”

  “Kate, come on.”

  “He’s got a bad attitude. He disrupted my team meeting this morning. He’s inexperienced. I could go on.”

  “Don’t, because it’s out of my hands.” Mike Shelley leaned back in his leather executive chair and tried to look diplomatic.

  Kate knew him well enough to know he was about as diplomatic as Hitler had been. “Why is it out of your hands? You’re the DA, for chrissake.”

  “I agreed to do this.”

  “Do what exactly? Sabotage my case?”

  Looking pained, he leaned forward and frowned. “Look, it’s political, okay? I owed the assistant chief a favor.”

  “Assistant chief of police?”

  “He and I go back a ways.”

  “So you dump Matrone on me? If you owed someone a favor, why the hell didn’t you give him symphony tickets or something?”

  “He was a good detective, Kate.”

  “If he was such a good detective, why isn’t he still a detective?”

  “He was in the military. Reserve, I think. Got called to duty and sent to the Middle East. He got hurt when he was over there and has had a rough time of it, so give him a break, will you?”

  Kate knew she wasn’t being nice about this, but she couldn’t help it. An investigator’s role was crucial. This case was important. And she didn’t like Frank Matrone one iota. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked without sympathy.

  Mike Shelley laughed. “You’re a hard case, Kate.”

  “I have a hard job to do.”

  “I’m really glad you’re on my team.”

  “You’re trying to flatter me because you don’t want to deal with this.”

  “Look, I’m not going to change my mind, so you’re just going to have to work it out.”

  “Why do you have to repay this favor on my watch? At my expense?”

  “From what I hear, Matrone was a good cop, Kate. Give him a chance to do his job. He might surprise you.”

  If Kate had learned anything in the course of her career, it was that she didn’t like surprises. Particularly when it came to her job.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 11:13 P.M.

  “Ellis is going to talk.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know enough about that sleazy little son of a bitch to know he’ll do anything to save his neck, including sell us out.”

  The man in the Italian-made suit leaned back in his leather chair and contemplated the woman sitting across from him. She’d poured herself a cognac before sitting down, but he could tell by the way she was gripping the crystal tumbler that the alcohol wasn’t helping. She was usually unshakable. It worried him that she was letting this get to her.

  “Even if he talks, how much damage can he do?” he asked calmly. “He’s a piece of scum. No one will listen to him.”

  “Don’t be naive,” she said. “He knows too much. If the wrong person listens, he’ll blow this entire operation right out of the water.”

  She had a point, but he would be a fool to admit it. They had good reason to be uneasy about Bruton Ellis sitting in a jail cell surrounded by two hundred and fifty cops. If he started talking and someone started putting two and two together, the situation could get ugly.

  “Bruton Ellis has a record as long as my arm,” he said. “
He’s a junkie and a thug. The police have the robbery and murder on tape. There’s not a cop on this sweet earth who will believe him if he tells some story about his being a hired gun.”

  The woman nearly came out of her chair. “Are you willing to stake this entire operation on that assumption? Are you willing to risk your life? My life? Do you have any idea what will happen if someone figures this out?”

  “It’s not going to do us any good if we panic.”

  “I’m not suggesting we panic,” she snapped. “I’m concerned. We need to do something.”

  “Like what?”

  It was so quiet for a moment he could hear the overhead fluorescent lights buzzing. The hiss of traffic on the street sixteen stories down. Then the woman in the Ellen Tracy suit leaned forward and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m scared. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “For God’s sake, pull yourself together.” Realizing his annoyance with her was showing, he reached out and touched her arm. “We’re going to be all right.”

  “Ellis took out the wrong camera. He murdered two people in cold blood. He left DNA behind when he raped that woman. None of that was supposed to happen.”

  The man sighed, wondering how well she would hold up if the situation took a turn for the worse. If he had learned anything in his lifetime, it was that fear and panic invariably caused rash behavior. Rash behavior never did anything but get people caught. He’d decided long before he’d committed himself to this that he would not get caught.

  “What we need to get through this are level heads and some clear thinking.” He gave her arm a final squeeze, then folded his hands and set them on the desktop in front of him. “I don’t want you falling apart on me.”

  She raised her head, her eyes seeking his. “Have you talked to Ellis?”

  “No.”

  “He’s been in jail for three weeks. This is Texas, for chrissake. He knows he’s facing the death penalty. He has nothing to lose. He’ll do anything to save his neck, including implicate us.”