Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

He was black, which would have given him a leg up with the brothers on the east side if they trusted the cops and if they couldn’t sense his upper-class, Ivy League background a mile away. Despite the badge, he was an engineer at heart, more pen-and-paper problem solver than throw-down motherfucker.

One day they chased a suspect into an abandoned house, Wheeler taking the front, Rossi going in the back. The suspect put a bullet in Wheeler’s left leg before Rossi took him out. His wife, Lorraine, reminding him that their two kids needed their father, convinced him that it was time he stopped chasing bad guys and used his engineering degree. Wheeler didn’t want to quit the force, so they compromised and he transferred to the traffic investigation unit and started reconstructing accidents.

Rossi occasionally used him as a sounding board, appreciating how Wheeler could deconstruct a case, finding the flaws and pointing him in the right direction. Rossi bought him a beer after Alex Stone was acquitted, running the case past him. Wheeler told Rossi he agreed with him but since Alex had been acquitted, he had no choice but to let it go. Rossi said he couldn’t, and Wheeler said that was the difference between an engineer and a homicide cop.

Rossi shook his hand. “Free and easy, Mr. Mayor. How’s the leg?”

Wheeler patted his thigh. “Still got a limp, but Lorraine says it’s not enough to get me out of mowing the lawn.”

Rossi laughed. “I hear that. What brings you over here?”

Wheeler pointed at a file on Fowler’s desk. “Like I told the commander, I’ve got a case I’d like you to take a look at. My boss said your boss would have to okay you doing that.”

Rossi turned to Fowler, whose perpetual scowl notched another downturn. “He said take a look, not take it over. Are we clear?”

“Clear as ever, boss,” Rossi said. “Follow me,” he said to Wheeler.

Rossi pulled a chair next to his desk, motioning to Wheeler to take a seat, Wheeler sighing as he did, rubbing and stretching out his left leg.

“Just a limp? Looks like it feels worse than that,” Rossi said.

“Depends on the day. Sometimes I get pins and needles that won’t quit. Sometimes it gives out on me and sometimes I can mow the lawn.” He patted his stomach. “But it’s a good excuse for packing on the weight.”

Rossi grinned. “And what’s your excuse for the bald head and glasses? You didn’t have those the last time I saw you.”

Wheeler smiled and nodded. “That, my friend, is just me getting where we’re both going, only I’m getting there first. But it makes me glad you killed the prick that shot me so he could get there ahead of both of us.”

“Makes me glad too. What’s with your case?”

Wheeler spread his file on Rossi’s desk, separating the photographs from the accident report and a diagram of the scene. “One-car accident last night north of the river, way west on Barry Road. Westbound car goes around a curve where the road turns to the south, driver loses control, goes down an embankment, and smacks into a tree. The driver is dead at the scene due to massive head trauma.”

“So? Happens all the time. What do you need me for? Maybe she fell asleep at the wheel or maybe it was suicide.”

“Maybe, but she didn’t leave a note and the family says no way. She was happy, wasn’t in debt, wasn’t on drugs, and as far as anyone knows, wasn’t in any kind of trouble. And, there’s one more detail.”

“What’s that?”

“The accident location. According to her oldest son, who’s a senior in college at UMKC, his mother never went north of the river unless she was going to the airport, and this location is a long way from KCI. He had no explanation for why she was where she was.”

Rossi took sip of cold coffee. “Which leaves you where?”

“Suspicious. I won’t know more until we get an autopsy report to rule out drugs and alcohol and until I get a chance to flyspeck the vehicle and do a complete reconstruction of the accident.”

Rossi nodded. “Okay, you’ve got a case with a lot of questions. I still don’t get why you want me to look at it.”

“The victim was Robin Norris. Ring a bell?”

Rossi’s eyes popped. “The Robin Norris who runs the public defender’s office?”

“Yeah. That Robin Norris. We found her cell phone on the floor in the front of her car. We pulled her phone records. She made a call just before the accident.”

“Who’d she call?”

“Alex Stone.”

Rossi sat up. “How ’bout that.”

“Yeah, how about that. I was going to pay her a visit and ask what they were talking about, but I thought you might like to come along.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Grace Canfield knocked on the open door to Alex’s office. “You wanted to see me?”

“We’ve got a new case for a guy named Jared Bell. He’s charged with forcible rape and first-degree murder and his initial appearance is Friday morning at nine,” she said, holding up Jared’s file.

“And you’ve already got the file? How many times has that happened?”

“Zero, but we can’t say that anymore. Make a copy for yourself and bring it back to me. Then start digging. I want to know everything there is to know about him-family, friends, priors-whatever you can find. He was in the service, so we’ll need those records too. And I’d like to have as much as you can pull together before court.”

“Why the rush? Nothing ever happens at the initial hearing except for the judge setting bail our clients can never post.”

“You’re right, but there’s something about this guy that’s off and I need to figure out what it is.”

“All of our clients are off one way or the other or they wouldn’t be our clients,” Grace said.

Alex raised a hand, telling Grace to stop. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that. But when I was talking to Jared. .”

“Wait a minute. You’ve already talked to him? At the jail?”

“Yes. Already. At the jail.”

“He’s that high profile?”

“No. Near as I can tell, he doesn’t even have a profile. He’s a homeless vet who confessed to murder but not rape who says he’s never getting out because he’s been heading to jail for a long time. Calvin, my buddy at the jail, says he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming to someone named Ali that he’s sorry. We don’t have an ID on the victim yet, so look for anyone by that name because we’re gonna need that if we’re gonna have a shot at putting this on someone else.”

Grace cocked her head, a glint of worry in her narrowed eyes. “Girl, you got that look I haven’t seen in a while.”

“What look is that?”

“It’s your I-Am-Sasha-Fierce-and-I’m-gonna-save-the-world-one-poor-soul-at-a-time look.”

Alex smiled. “Something wrong with that?”

“Just one thing. That look works for Beyoncé when she’s onstage shaking her booty, but, girl, you lost that look for a reason,” Grace said, leaving with the file.

Grace was right. She’d lost that look because she’d lost hope that she could make a difference. Even on the rare occasions when she won, all she did was send her clients back to the same lousy world that had raised them to be criminals and where that was the only job skill they had. She’d learned to live with that, convincing herself that she was defending the Constitution as much as any client, making certain that their rights were protected regardless of their guilt or innocence.

But her ideals had been no match for Dwayne Reed. They hadn’t been strong enough to protect the people he killed or to stop her from killing him. If Grace had seen that look in her today, maybe she could feel that hope again and turn Jared Bell from someone’s fall guy into her salvation, if she could find a way around Judge West.