Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

If she was right that Judge West was behind the photograph and that he had been waiting for the right moment to use it, she had to prove that it was a fake. That was the only way she’d be able to make a clean break from him.

The judge wasn’t the kind of person who would spend time hunched over a laptop manipulating images in Photoshop. Which meant he had to have had help, and the help was always the weakest link in any conspiracy. So all she had to do was figure out a way to prove the picture was phony, find whoever had created it, and then tell Judge West what he could do with it. Not easy, but it was enough to stop the bleeding.

Her new client, Jared Bell, was next up on her critical list. If the case against him was as strong as Judge West had said, Bell would be convicted or plead guilty regardless of which public defender represented him. So why would Judge West use his influence to get the case assigned to her and why would he go to such lengths to make certain she persuaded Jared to plead guilty? The inescapable answer rocked her. Jared Bell was innocent and Judge West wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

A criminal defense lawyer’s two worst nightmares were helping the guilty go free and failing to save the innocent. Alex had lived the first with Dwayne Reed, and now she was faced with the second.

Alex wasn’t ready to go home. She needed more time to wind down and think and enough beer to help with the former without making the latter impossible. And that meant taking a trip to the Zoo.

The Zoo was a downtown dive bar at Twelfth and McGee, a narrow, shotgun joint with room for a couple of dozen people. There were stools along the bar, a few chairs against the back wall, and standing room only for everyone else. The bartenders did business in front of a floor-to-ceiling display of whiskey, and the surest way to get thrown out was to ask them for a drink made in a blender. The walls, ceiling, and anything that was nailed down were covered with graffiti, some patrons just signing their names, others bragging or begging, and a few making promises they couldn’t keep.

Alex was a regular. She liked it when it was jumping with shoulder-to-shoulder people and she could get lost in the noise. But she was glad it was Tuesday night, because that wasn’t a big night for the bar business and she needed a quiet place to drink in peace while she tried to find a way out of the wilderness.

Half a dozen people were scattered around the room when she took a seat at the bar, the stools on either side of her empty, and asked for a bottle of Bully! porter. It was ten o’clock. She turned her phone off, not wanting to be bothered. Taking an easy pull, she rubbed the back of her neck, feeling her knotted muscles give a little bit. Cranking her head from side to side, she saw Hank Rossi approaching her from the back of the bar.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” Rossi said, taking the stool next to hers.

Alex shook her head. “Of all the gin joints. .”

“In all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine. Casablanca . Great flick, even if the cop was on the take.”

She wasn’t in the mood for company, especially his and especially if he liked Casablanca as much as she did. Rossi had arrested her for Dwayne Reed’s murder. He’d also saved her life when he killed Gloria Temple. None of which made them pals, Rossi making it clear that he was just doing his job, neither of them trusting the other. It didn’t matter that she’d been acquitted of murdering Dwayne and he’d been cleared in Gloria’s shooting.

Rossi was long and muscled, with dark-eyed, craggy good looks that drew women close until the blood on his hands drove them away, blood that belonged to the bad guys who’d put up a fight, taken a shot at him, or just pissed him off too many times.

Alex was surprised that he would join her, certain he’d rather drink by himself in a toilet stall than have a beer with her.

“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid,” Rossi said. He tilted his beer toward hers and they clinked bottles. “Didn’t figure you for a Bogart fan.”

“I was always more into Ingrid Bergman.”

“Even if she was into Bogart?”

“Girl has to dream.”

“I’ll give you that, but I don’t thing she would have gone for you tonight.”

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause you smell like horseshit. And I don’t mean that metaphorically.”

“Metaphorically? Don’t tell me you’re reading Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary .”

“I am. Last night I got all the way up to motherfucker .”

“Ah, but can you use it in a sentence?”

“Stone, you motherfucker, you smell like horseshit.”

Alex cocked her head, fighting against a laugh and losing, not wanting to tell him where she’d been. “You’re definitely getting your money’s worth from that book.”

“No doubt about that, even if I didn’t think of you as the horseshit type.”

“And I never think of you at all.”

Rossi grinned. “We both know that’s bullshit. Deep down I think you like me.”

“There you go again, Rossi, doing all that thinking. Didn’t your father warn you about working without tools? Besides, why do you care? It’s not like I’m at the top of your Christmas list.”

“I don’t have a Christmas list. Hell, I don’t even have a fucking stocking.”

“Poor pitiful Rossi. Need a suggestion on where to put your lump of coal?”

“No, thanks. I’d rather keep it in the sunlight where I can admire its natural beauty. And, not that you’re asking, but I’d say you could use a little sunlight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you don’t just smell like shit. The way you’re hunched over and your face is all pinched, you look like you’re trying to decide between going postal or fetal.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself.”

Rossi swiveled on his barstool, facing her. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

Alex straightened, flattening her palms on the bar and forcing a smile. “Is that better?”

“Now you just look like you’ve got gas.”

“Fuck you, Rossi.”

“No, thanks, but I get it.”

“Get what?”

“All most people know about killing is what they see on television. Good guy kills the bad guy and goes home for dinner with the wife and kids like it was just another day at the office. But it’s not, is it?”

Alex rubbed her hands around her bottle, setting it on the bar.

“No, it isn’t.”

“No, it isn’t, is right. It changes you forever. I still get the nightmares, wake up sweating like it’s all going down again, my heart trying to bust out of my chest.”

Alex nodded and sighed. There’d been moments when Rossi had reached out to her like he cared. She hadn’t known what to make of him in those moments, whether that was the real Rossi and the rest was just for show. But in this moment, she hoped it was the real Rossi, because he was the only person who truly knew what she’d been through. Bonnie’s therapist had tried to understand but could never bridge the gulf between his compassion and her experience.

“I know the feeling, and I get so worked up, so angry, I can’t get back to sleep. I just stay mad. Is it like that with you?”

He shrugged. “Nope. I thank God they’re dead and I’m not and I go back to sleep, and you know why I can do that? It’s because I don’t feel guilty. I was doing my job each and every time, by the book on permissible use of deadly force. And when I had to go on the record, I told the truth. I’ve got a clear conscience, and that makes a world of difference.”