Joel Goldman: Chasing The Dead

“It came in the mail last Friday, addressed to me, no note, no explanation, just the photograph.”

Alex forced herself to look at him. “I. . I. . I can explain.”

“You don’t have to. It’s a fake.”

Alex blinked, slumping against the back of her chair. “How do you know that?”

“I gotta admit, when I first saw it, I thought I was gonna bust the buttons on my jeans. But you know what they say about things that are too good to be true. I had one of our forensic photographers check it out, and he said it had been Photoshopped. He pulled the photographs from Dwayne Reed’s file and showed me how it was done.”

“Wow.”

“Wow is right. So naturally I was curious about who sent the photograph to me and why, so I had it and the envelope it came in checked for prints.”

Alex swallowed. “And I take it you found some.”

“Big fat ones, one on the envelope and one on the picture. They were so clear and distinct, it was like somebody went out of their way to make sure we’d find them.”

“Could you identify them?”

Rossi nodded. “Yep. Ran them through the system and got a match.”

Alex was afraid to ask but knew Rossi wanted her to. “Whose are they?”

Rossi leaned back in his chair. “Millie West. Turns out she was arrested for disorderly conduct a few years ago and that’s how her prints got in the system.”

Alex’s chin dropped, her mouth hanging open. “What?”

“Nuts, right? So Friday night, I go see her. She and the judge are out at their horse farm, and man, that horseshit is nasty stuff. But I guess you know that from helping that friend of yours clean out their stables.”

Alex straightened, her relief ebbing away. “Go on.”

“So, like I was saying, I go out there to talk to Millie, and right away the judge is on my case, what’s this all about, and I tell him I need to talk to his wife and he says what for and I say that’s between her and me and he says if I think he’s going to let her talk to me alone, I’m out of my mind, so the three of us sit down at the dining room table and I put the photograph on the table. Don’t say a word. Just put it out there.”

Rossi’s eyes were dancing, a grin creeping out of the corners of his mouth. Alex didn’t know how to read him.

“What happened?”

“He about shit a brick and she started laughing, I mean cackling like a witch with a new broomstick on Halloween, and wouldn’t stop. He finally had to take her into another a room and give her a pill to calm her down. Then he comes back and tells me that she made the picture and sent it to me. I asked him why she’d do something like that and he said she’s bipolar and doesn’t always take her meds and when she doesn’t she goes kind of crazy.”

“Maybe that explains the disorderly conduct thing.”

“It does. But it doesn’t explain why she’d jack around with this photograph or how she even got ahold of the file photographs in the first place.”

“How did Judge West explain that?”

“He said there were copies of the pictures in the court file. He had the file at the ranch during the trial and that’s when she must have done it. I told him that explains the how but not the why, and you won’t believe what he said.”

“Try me.”

“He said that being bipolar and not taking her meds makes his wife paranoid and she became convinced that you and the judge were having an affair and that this was her way of getting even with both of you. She made sure her prints would be found so that he’d know what she’d done.”

Alex shook her head. “I’m stunned.”

“I know. It’s crazy. But here’s the really crazy part. How’d Millie know to put you in that picture in just the right way to prove that you murdered Dwayne Reed? I mean, if she wanted to embarrass you and the judge, why not doctor up some naked pictures of the two of you?”

Alex took a deep breath, letting it out. “I don’t know. I guess you’d have to ask her.”

“Kind of hard now that she blew her brains out. Besides, I don’t think she could tell me how your fingerprints also ended up on the photograph.”

There it was. Rossi wasn’t going to leave her alone. No matter that she’d helped him solve three murders. No matter that she and Bonnie had nearly been killed. No matter anything. Weariness swept over her. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t keep running from Dwayne Reed while she slept and from Rossi while she was awake.

“Go ahead. Ask me.”

“Did you shoot Dwayne Reed in self-defense?”

Alex flattened her hands on her desk and looked him in the eye. “No. I shot him and put his gun in his hand and pulled the trigger to make it look like he fired first.”

“What was going on between you and Judge West?”

Alex took another deep breath. “West had been shading cases in favor of the prosecution for years but doing it in ways that would stand up on appeal. He saw how upset I was after I got Dwayne acquitted and he murdered that family and he recruited me to throw my really awful clients under the bus without doing a bad enough job to give them grounds to appeal based on ineffective assistance of counsel. That night I ran into you at the Zoo, I’d been at his horse farm. I told him I was out, that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. He handed me that photograph in an envelope just like you did. That’s how my prints got on it. He told me he’d ruin me if I backed out. Then he told me Jared Bell would be my next case and that he’d use the photograph if I didn’t make sure Jared was convicted. I still don’t know how he knew about Jared.”

“Interesting thing about that. Kalena told me about Robin getting Jared’s file ahead of schedule. She said no one in her office was responsible. West could have done it but we couldn’t figure out why he would, so I asked him. He admitted giving the file to Robin but said she asked him for it.”

“And you believed that?”

“Until Judge Steele told me different. When he heard on the news that a prostitute’s body had been found in Liberty Park, he was afraid it was Joanie even though her identity hadn’t been released. The only good news was that we’d arrested Jared. Steele was scared that Sonia might have killed Joanie and he called Judge West and asked him about the case.”

“He must have known what West was doing.”

“He did. They were hunting buddies, and West got drunk one night on a hunting trip and told Steele enough that he figured it out.”

“Did Steele tell him about Sonia?”

“Not directly. He just made it clear that this was one case that needed to go away in a hurry, and West said he’d take care of it. I don’t know if or how he made sure you were assigned to the case. West might have been telling the truth about that or he might have had something on Robin. We may never know for certain. What we do know is that you didn’t go along with West.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Alex pursed her lips. “I hated what I’d become and I didn’t want to be that person anymore, and I was willing to let whatever was going to happen, happen.”

Rossi nodded and then stared out the window, lost in thought for a minute. “I guess you know what Bonnie pulled on me, that thing with the lawsuit?”

“Don’t blame her. She was just trying to help me. You don’t have anything to worry about. It was total bullshit. There isn’t going to be a lawsuit.”

“I know that. I checked up on the family members of those men. I don’t know who she had at your house, but they definitely weren’t who she said they were.”

“Now what?”

He picked up the photograph. “Nothing. This thing between you and me, it’s over.”

Alex was wide-eyed. “Why?”