Joel Goldman - Stone Cold

“I don’t know what you mean, Counselor.”

“I mean that when you saw Alex’s car in the driveway and heard those shots fired, you were more concerned about her safety than Mr. Reed’s. Isn’t that so?”

Rossi licked his lips and nodded. “Yes.”

“And that’s because you didn’t think Alex Stone could defend herself against Dwayne Reed. Isn’t that so?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t think she could.”

“Well, you were wrong about that, weren’t you, Detective Rossi?”

“Objection!” Ortiz said. “Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Withdrawn,” Claire said. “No further questions.”

Ortiz stood at his counsel table. “Just a couple of follow-up questions, Detective. Was the defendant treated for her gunshot wound at the scene?”

“Yes. A paramedic patched her up.”

“Did you overhear any conversation between the paramedic and the defendant?”

“Yeah. The paramedic said-”

“Objection,” Claire said. “Hearsay.”

“Sustained.”

“Detective,” Ortiz said, “what was the subject matter of their conversation?”

“How the amount of blood made the defendant’s wound look a lot worse than it was.”

“And what did the defendant say on that subject?”

“She pointed to Reed’s body and said, ‘Try telling that to him,’ like it was all a big joke.”

“That’s all I have,” Ortiz said.

Rossi left the courtroom, joining a crowd waiting for an elevator, which, given the temperamental nature of the equipment, could take long enough for a person to grow old. There were six elevators, three each on opposite sides of the hall, though at any one time, two were usually out of order, two were stuck, and the other two were jammed full of impatient people.

When at last an elevator stopped and the door opened, a crowd piled out like clowns from a circus car. Rossi peered over the heads of the people waiting in front of him and saw a familiar face at the back of the car. It was the woman he’d seen Blues with coming out of the Chouteau Courts apartments. And then he remembered who she was and how he knew her.

She was Grace Canfield, the investigator in the public defender’s office who had worked with Alex Stone on the Wilfred Donaire trial. She was holding a file, studying it, and didn’t notice him. The car filled and the doors closed before he had a chance to get onboard.

He sorted this information for possible explanations as he bolted down five flights of stairs, hoping that she was headed to the ground floor and that he could catch up to her and ask her a few questions. Grace could have been at Choteau Courts on another case and just happened to run into Blues. Or she could have been working with the defense team, helping Blues find Gloria Temple.

That made more sense to Rossi, knowing how difficult it was to get people living on the east side to talk to anybody about anything. But he knew they’d talk to Grace because she was one of them, having lived her whole life on the east side. And she worked for the public defender’s office, the only lawyers dedicated to helping them when the cops jammed them up. And Rossi hated coincidences, though he loved the definition he’d run across by an author named Emma Bull whose sci-fi books had a permanent spot on his nightstand. A coincidence is the word we use when we can’t see the levers and pulleys.

If he was right, her involvement meant more trouble for the defense team, because the public defender’s office had put as much distance between itself and Alex Stone as possible, suspending her and issuing a statement that it would not be involved in her defense. Given that, Rossi assumed Grace Canfield’s participation was off the books, something he could use to persuade her to tell him what she knew about Gloria Temple.

Rossi made it to the ground floor in time to see Grace spinning through the revolving door that led to the street. He followed her, slowing once he got outside and saw her standing on the sidewalk talking to Blues. She took a small notepad from her pocket, wrote something, tore the page from the pad, and handed it to Blues, who handed her an overnight bag before each went in a different direction.

Rossi was willing to bet that Grace Canfield had just given Blues the address where he could find Gloria Temple and that Blues had given her something in return. Maybe it was money, though Rossi knew enough about Grace’s reputation to dismiss that possibility. More likely, it was something for Gloria, meaning that Blues expected Grace to see her before he did.

He followed Grace back to the building at Eleventh and Oak where the public defender’s office was located, stopping across the street, waiting until she was inside and out of sight before he called Gardiner Harris.

“I think I’ve got a line on Gloria Temple,” he said, explaining what had happened.

“How do you want to play it?”

“Get eyes on Blues and stay with him. I’ll stick with Grace. One of them is bound to lead us to Gloria.”

“Works for me. Where’s Blues?”

“Best guess is that he’s headed back to his bar. You’ll need someone to watch the front and the back. Get Trumbo to help you.”

“You don’t think he’s already gone after the girl?”

“No. The bag he gave Grace was probably for Gloria. If he was going to see her now, he wouldn’t have given it to Grace. He’ll probably wait until after court tonight and take Mason and Mason’s aunt with him.”

“Got it. I’ll let you know when he’s on the move.”

Patrick Ortiz filled most of the afternoon session with a series of witnesses that filled in necessary parts of the prosecution’s case, albeit without the edge of the morning session.

The coroner testified that Dwayne Reed sustained two gunshot wounds, one to the abdomen and one to the heart, the latter proving fatal. A ballistics expert from the crime lab confirmed that Alex Stone’s Ruger had fired the fatal bullets. She corroborated Rossi’s testimony that Dwayne had either been falling to the floor or was already on the floor when his gun was fired, adding that it was also possible that someone else had fired Dwayne’s gun even though there was no proof that had happened. The manager of the Bullet Hole shooting range testified that he had trained Alex in the safe use of the Ruger and that she had been a regular at the range, practicing two to three times a week, usually at night.

The jurors were attentive without being enthralled. That was the nature of a trial. As in life, the mundane was more common than the dramatic. Unlike life, where drama was unpredictable and unexpected, Patrick Ortiz knew when and how to orchestrate a big finish for the day, sending the jury home with something to think about overnight.

“The state calls Bonnie Long,” he said.

Bonnie, wearing a knee-length pale blue dress, walked to the witness stand, her eyes darting everywhere but at Alex, until she was sworn and took her seat. They looked at each other, their eyes watering, each giving the other a reassuring nod. It was a moment Kate didn’t rehearse with them, because the practice would have robbed it of its emotional spontaneity. It was one thing to tell the jury that they loved each other. It was another thing to let the jury see that, a necessary part of humanizing Alex in the jury’s eyes.

“State your name,” Ortiz began.

“Bonnie Long.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m an emergency room physician at Truman Medical Center.”

“Dr. Long, please tell the jury about your relationship with the defendant.”

Bonnie furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand the question. What do you mean?”