Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“You sure you’re not reading too much into that given your history with her? She’s got a solid explanation for why she didn’t get the phone call, since the two of you were kicking back a few brews. And by the way, what were you doing going drinking with her?”

Rossi crunched his brow, staring at Wheeler. “I didn’t go drinking with her. I was at the Zoo drinking by myself. She came in. I sat down next to her. End of story.”

“No, it’s the same old story. You didn’t have to sit down next to her. You’re never going to leave it alone, are you? What did you think was going to happen? You’d get her drunk and she’d confess? And even if she did, so what? She was acquitted. And that is the end of the story.”

“Not for me. And don’t forget, you invited me to this party after her name popped up, so quit telling me to let it go.”

“Look, I get it. We’ve all got at least one case that will eat our ass until the day we die.”

“Even in traffic?”

Wheeler stepped back. “Fuck you, Rossi!”

Rossi put up his hands. “Sorry, Mayor. That was out of line.”

“Damn straight it was. I know why you can’t let this one go.”

“And now you’re gonna tell me even though I’m not going to ask.”

“You know I am. You don’t give a rat’s ass about Dwayne Reed. Nobody misses that prick. But you can’t get over the fact that Alex Stone beat you.”

“It’s more than that.”

“What?”

“She used me.”

“How?”

“To put a bullet in Gloria Temple. That’s how she beat me. I killed the one witness who would have put Stone away.”

“You’ve told me that story a dozen times. No way Alex could have set that up. Shit, you saved her life.”

“Like you said, she beat me.”

Wheeler studied him. “Man, you are fucked-up.” He pulled the evidence bag containing Alex’s phone from his jacket pocket. “I may regret this, but are you in?”

“Yeah. I’m all in.”

“Okay. My boss will square it with yours. Just be sure you’re all in on Robin Norris, not Alex Stone.”

Rossi put his hand on Wheeler’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I know how to multitask.”

“Oh, yeah?” Wheeler grinned. “What’s next on your to-do list?”

Rossi pointed across the street to Ilus Davis Park. “I’m going to have a seat on a bench, let the sun shine down on me, and watch all the girls go by.”

“And hope that Alex Stone is one of them?”

“You’re a wise man for a mayor.”

Ilus Davis Park was an outdoor mall flanked on the north by the federal courthouse and on the south by city hall and named after another former Kansas City mayor. The five-acre park had a statue of Davis, a reflecting pool, a memorial to the more than two hundred city employees who’d lost their lives in the line of duty, and a monument to the Bill of Rights.

It also had enough trees and shrubs to make it a perfect place for Rossi to sit and watch the entrance to Alex’s building without her knowing it. He was betting that she was so shaken by the message on her phone that she’d have to get out if only to clear her head and, if Rossi was lucky, talk to someone, probably Bonnie. If she did that, he’d take another pass at Bonnie. He settled onto a bench with a good line of sight and waited.

Twenty minutes passed before Alex emerged, heading south on Oak. Rossi gave her a head start before following, puzzled when she didn’t turn into the garage where he knew she parked her car. He was even more curious when she crossed Twelfth Street, angling toward the Jackson County Courthouse. She wasn’t carrying a file or a briefcase, so he doubted she had a hearing. He couldn’t imagine a less likely place for Alex to go to lay down her burden.

He stopped on Oak, just north of Twelfth, standing in the shadow of a bail bonds office, and watched her enter the courthouse because he couldn’t follow her immediately without her seeing him.

Once she was inside, he trotted across the street, past the bronze statue of a mounted President Andrew Jackson, the county’s namesake, and up the stairs to the courthouse doors. Peering through the glass, he saw her standing in front of the lobby elevators.

When she disappeared into one of the elevators, he went inside, the deputies waving him through security, and watched as her elevator door slid shut. The number of each floor was displayed above the elevator, lighting up as the elevator reached that floor. The car in which Alex was riding made its first stop on the fifth floor. Rossi watched the numbers. When the car began its descent, he took the stairs to the fifth floor, coming out in the center of a wide, oval-shaped rotunda ringed by four courtrooms. Doors at each end opened into interior corridors leading to offices for each judge’s staff and chambers.

It was near the end of the lunch hour, and the expansive hallway was filled with lawyers, litigants, jurors, and courthouse personnel getting ready for their afternoon sessions. Alex wasn’t among them and she wasn’t in any of the courtrooms.

She could have gone into one of the interior corridors to see a secretary, law clerk, or judge, but that didn’t make sense if he was right about her reason for being there. And he couldn’t go prowling through those offices without having to answer more questions than he could ask.

There was another possibility. She could have realized he was following her, led him to the fifth floor, and jumped on another elevator, giving him the slip. Either he was wrong about her knowing something about Robin Norris’s death or she’d beaten him again.

Alex stood outside judge West’s courtroom, looking through the glass set in the upper half of the swinging double doors at the lawyers huddled in front of the bench. The court reporter had moved alongside them with her steno machine to capture what they were saying in hushed voices the jury couldn’t hear, while the jurors studied ceiling tiles and the handful of spectators checked their e-mail. It was twelve forty, well past the usual time for a lunch break, but Judge West was notorious for long sessions and short recesses.

Knowing that he had to break sooner rather than later, Alex decided to wait for him in his chambers, hoping his secretary and law clerk had gone to lunch so she wouldn’t have to make up an excuse for a private, unscheduled meeting with the judge. She let out a quick sigh of relief when she found their offices empty, sucking in a sharp breath as she stood in front of the closed door to Judge West’s chambers. She hesitated for a moment, debating whether to let herself in, deciding that Wheeler and Rossi hadn’t left her a choice.

She’d always felt uneasy in his chambers even before they became coconspirators. It wasn’t just his prickly gruffness or the perpetual dusk he maintained with drawn shades and muted lighting. And it wasn’t the dark woodwork and black leather chairs or the absence of any trace of kith or kin. It was how well the shadows suited him.

In her nightmares, he strode toward her on legs welded from steel prison bars, swinging arms made of long-handled gavels in punishing arcs at her head, his corpulent body bursting at the seams as a putrid discharge boiled over his collar. He kept coming at her, his eyes shrunk to red slits, his mouth torn in an executioner’s snarl, until she turned and ran, only to be caught by Dwayne Reed, who pinned her against the wall, one hand clamped around her throat, the other ripping at her clothes until she broke free, pulling a gun, both of them laughing at her until she pulled the trigger again and again and woke up screaming.

Alex never told her therapist that Judge West haunted her dreams along with Dwayne Reed. Physician-patient privilege was not a safe enough sanctuary for that confession. Nor did she tell Bonnie, too afraid that once Bonnie tugged on that thread, she wouldn’t stop until she’d unraveled her.