James Patterson - Cross Justice

Eyes still, Bell smiled with precision. He altered the position of his cup on the saucer by a quarter turn.

“That statement is not true,” he said. “I have never sold drugs or been involved with them. Your mother and father, I actually tried to get them clean, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

“Never been involved with drugs?” I said.

“I am involved in business,” Bell said, sipping the coffee. “I have several enterprises, all successful. Why would I need to pursue something risky like drugs?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But every time your name comes up, people tell me that I should be looking at you.”

Bell seemed amused. “Looking at me in what way?”

“As some kind of criminal mastermind,” I said.

Bell laughed, reached for another sugar, said, “That’s a small town with a lot of poor folks for you.”

“What does poor have to do with it?”

“Everything,” Bell said. “Most poor people think that anyone who becomes successful couldn’t have done it legitimately, with initiative, with hard work. It’s just not part of the myth most poor people want to believe. So they sit around and invent bullshit stories to explain things when someone makes it in the world.”

“So there’s nothing to the charge?”

“Zero to the charge,” Bell said, holding my gaze. “How’d you come to be back in town, Detective Cross?”

I had the feeling he knew this, but I played along, said Stefan Tate was my cousin.

“Butcher,” Bell said, hardening. “Sorry that he’s your cousin, but based on what I’ve read, I hope that boy fries.”

“It’s a popular sentiment.”

“There you go.”

“You heard the defense’s position?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Bell said, reaching up to pick a coffee ground off the tip of his tongue.

“Stefan came to believe that there is a large and complex criminal organization operating in Starksville,” I said.

“If there is, I haven’t heard a thing about it,” Bell said.

“They run drugs,” I said. “Maybe more.”

“Maybe more?” Bell said. “Sounds like maybe more bullshit to me. Sounds like a fantasy designed to muddle the facts, which, as I understand them, are conclusive beyond a reasonable doubt. Your cousin murdered that poor boy, and he’s gonna pay for it. I had my way? Someone would rope him up and drag his ass through the streets on the way to the death chamber.”

“If you were running a criminal enterprise, I imagine you would,” I said.

Bell flicked the coffee ground away, leveled his green eyes at me, and said, “If I were you, Detective Cross, I would not be casting aspersions that are unfounded. It looks bad. It looks like you are desperate. If I were you, I’d face the facts about your cousin, pack your bags, and leave the sonofabitch to his fate.”

“That’s not happening,” I said, standing. “Sorry to have taken your time.”

“Anything for the son of an old friend,” Bell said. “But you tell your niece there that if she tries to bring my name up in this trial in any way, I will surely sue her ass from here to Raleigh and back.”

I remembered Bell’s words as Judge Varney gaveled the court session to a close at five thirty that Monday after four hours of testimony that made my cousin sound like a monster.

Detective Guy Pedelini had gone on the stand first. He’d testified about discovering the body and identified evidence that the district attorney wanted admitted. Chief among them was the semen sample collected off Rashawn Turnbull’s body. It matched Stefan’s DNA. The prosecution also introduced blood matching Rashawn’s that was found on the pruning saw discovered in my cousin’s basement.

Naomi did her best to get the sheriff’s detective to say these things could have been planted, but he was skeptical in the extreme, and the jury took note.

Even more damaging to Stefan’s case was the testimony given by Sharon Lawrence, a teenager I recognized as one of the Starksville girls Jannie had trained with the prior Saturday. On the stand, she was pretty, articulate, and devastating.

Strong began her examination of Sharon Lawrence by getting her to admit that she was ashamed to be there but determined to tell the truth “for Rashawn’s sake.”

The jury reacted sympathetically. I reacted sympathetically.

Sharon Lawrence had been in one of Stefan’s twelfth-grade gym classes. She said there was something between herself and my cousin right from the start.

“Coach Tate was always looking at me,” she said.

“Did you like that?” Strong asked.

Lawrence looked in her lap and nodded.

“Coach Tate make advances toward you?”

The girl nodded again, flushing and kneading her hands. “I knew it was wrong, but he was... I don’t know.”

“Smart? Good-looking?”

“Yes,” she said. “And he seemed to care about everyone.”

Stefan glared at a legal pad during this entire exchange, scribbling with a pen and shaking his head.

“He seemed to care about everyone,” Strong repeated.

“Yes.”

“But especially you?”

Lawrence said, “I guess so. Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing for a while. It was just like flirting with each other.”

“And then?”

“It went further,” she said quietly.

“When was this?”

“Like, a few months after Billy Jameson and Tyler Marin overdosed and died, and a week before Stefan killed Rashawn.”

“Objection!” Naomi cried.

“Sustained,” Judge Varney said. “The jury will ignore that.”

“So tell us what happened,” Strong said.

You could see Sharon Lawrence wanted to be anywhere but in the courtroom as she mustered up her energy and said that after the two overdoses, my cousin became obsessed with finding out who the drug dealers were.

“He talked about it in class,” she said. “Asking anybody who knew anything to come forward.”

“Did they?”

“I don’t know. And it didn’t matter anyway, it was all a bunch of lies.”

“Objection,” Naomi said.

“Overruled,” Judge Varney said.

Strong said, “Can you tell us why you think they were lies?”

“Because Coach Tate was the one dealing the drugs,” Lawrence said.

“Objection!”

“Your Honor, with the court’s indulgence, Miss Lawrence will explain the basis of her contention.”

“Proceed, but you’re on a short leash, Counselor.”

“What makes you think Coach Tate was dealing drugs?”

“He told me,” Lawrence said. “He showed me.”

“Where were you when this happened?”

“At his place.”

“How did you come to be at his house?”

“At school that morning, he’d asked me to stop by,” Lawrence said. “He said Ms. Converse would be down in Raleigh at a doctor’s appointment.”

I glanced over at Patty Converse, who looked stricken.

Strong said, “And Coach Tate showed you drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do drugs with Coach Tate?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of drugs?” Strong asked.

Lawrence bit her lower lip, which was trembling. “I don’t know all of it. Cocaine for sure. And, like, maybe some meth. He called it a speedball. But I think he put something in my soda too.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I woke up a couple of hours later in his bed,” she said, looking at her lap again. “I don’t remember how I got there. But I was naked and... sore.”

“Sore where?”

“You know,” she said, and she started crying.

Strong approached the box, gave her a tissue, said, “You’re doing fine.”

Lawrence nodded, but she wouldn’t look up.