Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“What’s that?”

“Why did you practically shit your pants when I asked you what was the last case Robin Norris assigned to you? And what does Jared Bell have to do with all of this?”

Alex deflected his question, using what she’d learned from the homeless woman in Liberty Park to put Rossi on the defensive.

“Do you know the victim’s name?”

“What’s that got to do with this?”

“Just answer my question. Do you even know that her first name is Joanie?”

Rossi narrowed his eyes at her. “Who have you been talking to? Her name hasn’t been released.”

“Then you do know her name. Joanie.”

“Yeah. Joanie Sutherland. Who leaked that information to you? Was it that assistant prosecutor, Kalena. . whatever her last name is?”

“It’s Kalena Greene, and no, she keeps everything in her vault. I got it the old-fashioned way, by investigating my client’s case. And your case isn’t as tight as you think.”

Rossi thought for a moment. “So you found a witness who knew the victim’s name?”

“Just her first name. You gave me her last name,” Alex said.

Rossi ducked his chin, pursing his lips. “Okay, score one for the defense. Now answer my question. Why did you pinch a loaf when I asked you about the last case Robin assigned to you?”

Alex had had time to regroup. She couldn’t tell him about her deal with Judge West, but she had to give him something that was plausible.

“I’m trying to save the life of a client accused of a capital offense while also trying to deal with my boss’s death when you drag me out here to tell me that not only was Robin murdered but that her death might have something to do with my client’s case. So, yeah, that knocked the pins out from under me for a minute, but my panties are clean. Score one for you if that’s what you call rounding the bases.”

Rossi stared at her, waiting for any hint of a tell that would give her away, but she was steady, her face flat and cool, her arms at her sides, her hands soft and open.

“Here’s the way it is,” he said. “Someone murdered Robin Norris, and my bet is that the last thing she ever did on this earth was try to tell you the identity of her killer because she was scared he would come after you next. Now, if you want to blow that off, pretend that I’m playing games with you, there’s nothing I can do about it. But be sure you tell your girlfriend so when she goes to the morgue to identify your body, she’ll blame you and not me.”

Alex felt the heat rise in her neck and cheeks again, not because Rossi had caught her flat-footed, but because he’d played the Bonnie card.

“Leave Bonnie out of this. You’ve been sticking your nose in our relationship too much as it is.”

Rossi shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

“And I’m just saying maybe Robin wasn’t trying to warn me but maybe she was trying to tell me who was chasing her so that I would make sure the bastard was caught and put away. Maybe she called me instead of 911 because she trusted me more than she trusted the cops.”

“Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

“How’s that?”

“Either the killer is coming after you anyway or once he thinks Robin told you who he is, he’ll definitely come after you and you’ll be just as dead.”

The first drops of rain splattered on the road, hissing. Alex turned her face skyward, wishing the rain would wash all of this away, knowing that it couldn’t possibly rain that hard. She let the water run off her face, running her fingers through her hair and shaking her head, then taking a deep breath.

“So what do we do?”

“Help each other. Do you think we can do that?”

Before Alex could respond, Rossi’s phone rang. He answered and listened.

“Okay. I’m about fifteen minutes out,” he said and clicked off. “You know someone named Mathew Woodrell?”

“Sort of. I met him yesterday at the courthouse. Why?”

“He just tried to kill Jared Bell.”

Alex followed Rossi, both of them shooting past slower-moving vehicles. The sky had opened, hammering them with sheets of rain that reduced visibility until Alex could barely see Rossi’s taillights. She stayed with him, not wanting him to question Mathew Woodrell or Jared alone.

She opened her phone, put it on speaker, and called Grace Canfield.

“It’s me, Alex. What have you found on Mathew Woodrell?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Not good. No luck in the probate clerk’s office?”

“That was my first stop. No one fitting his description was there yesterday or the day before or as long as anyone could remember. I called the Kansas City Veterans Affairs office and they’d never heard of him. My husband has an uncle who was in the Eighty-Second Airborne. They’ve got their own veterans association. He checked their membership directory. There were a couple of guys named Mathew Woodrell, but they’ve been dead for years.”

“Shit!”

“What’s the problem?” Grace asked.

“He just tried to kill Jared Bell.”

“Get out! How could he do that? Jared’s in jail.”

“Tell me about it,” Alex said and clicked off the call.

Ten minutes later, Alex parked behind Rossi in metered spaces in front of the jail. Rossi ignored the meters but Alex couldn’t bring herself to do that, searching her glove box for change and jamming quarters into the coin slot, getting soaked in the process. She raced into the building, cursing that she’d let Rossi get the jump on her, only to find him standing in the first-floor lobby talking to Kalena Greene.

Kalena was wearing the kind of black sheath dress designers promised would take you through the day and the night. Her makeup was perfect and her nails were freshly done. Reliably fashion-unconscious, Alex cringed, knowing her bedraggled, wet-rat look was even worse than usual compared to Kalena. That normally wouldn’t have bothered her, but Kalena was sporting more than fashion; she was radiating authority, something Alex had to undermine or risk being shoved aside. She joined them, interrupting their conversation.

“How’s my client? Is he okay? I want to see him immediately and I want to know how there could have been such a breakdown in security.”

Kalena took the interruption in stride. “Short story, your client is fine. He was stabbed in the neck, but he’s going to be okay. They stitched him up and he’s in isolation until we figure this thing out.”

“What about Mathew Woodrell?” Alex asked. “I met him yesterday at the courthouse. How’d he end up in jail today and why did he attack my client?”

“I can answer the first part of your question,” Kalena said. “Late yesterday afternoon, he walked into a liquor store, aimed a gun at the cashier, and walked out with a fistful of money and kept walking until the police arrested him a couple of blocks from the store.”

Alex shook her head. “Unbelievable. He seemed like a harmless old guy.”

“Not so harmless,” Kalena said. “Half an hour after he got on the men’s floor, he came up behind your client and stabbed him in the neck.”

“With what?”

“His glasses, if you can believe that.”

“Like in the third Godfather movie,” Rossi said, “when Michael Corleone’s kid is getting baptized and his henchmen are busy knocking off Corleone’s enemies. I think it was the Vatican’s banker that got killed that way, only the killer used the banker’s glasses. Woodrell used his own. Must have been pretty sharp glasses.”

“Wait until you see them,” Kalena said. “He filed down the ends of the frame on each side until they were like a shiv. Then he covered the ends with rubber caps, the kind you’d use to keep your glasses from sliding off.”