Catherine Coulter - Backfire

“Black is good.”

When they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table, Harry waved his hand toward the window. “What have you got planted in that first pot?”

“Thyme.”

“Yeah? You put that in birthday cakes?” Again, he saw her in a pretty swingy summer dress, long legs in open-toed sandals, serving cake up to a noisy herd of kids at a party.

“Not unless my specialty was pasta primavera cake.”

He laughed. “I called the hospital on the way over. Judge Hunt is sleeping. No setbacks so far. I hope he makes it out of the hospital in time to see Emma play at Davies Hall.”

“If he can make it without causing a stir and disturbing the audience, he’ll be there,” Eve said. “With the paramedics, if he needs them.”

“He’s a local hero. The paramedics would be thrilled. Emma blew my mind tonight.”

“I guess I’ve heard her play so many times I’m used to it. It was Sherlock who blew me away. Made me feel inferior. Judge Sherlock told me she chose being an agent over trying to make it as a concert pianist. When I asked him why, he only smiled and shook his head. I wonder what happened.”

“Who knows? Maybe in the pursuit of her blood?”

Eve said, “It’s hard to imagine Savich and Sherlock are actually married.”

“Cheney told me he’s heard stories about Sherlock going toe-to-toe with Savich when she disagrees with him, that she can be as stubborn as he imagined his mother-in-law would be if he had one. But despite that, he says what impresses him the most about Sherlock is her loyalty.” He studied his coffee, swirled it in his cup. “Imagine that, loyalty in a woman.”

Whoa. Best move right along.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Eve said. “Virginia Trolley has asked to be part of our protection team. She’ll have officers stick close to Ramsey’s house, keep people from sneaking in when no one’s home. Did you know Virginia Trolley is a longtime friend of Ramsey’s? She’s a good cop, too.”

Harry said, “I met Lieutenant Trolley. She acted suspicious, didn’t much like me.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing at all. I was my charming self.”

“Yeah, I can only imagine.”

“She’s like you, wears a uniform.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look at you, all in black with that kick-butt red leather jacket. I’ll bet your socks and your underwear are black, too.”

He’d nailed that one.

“You didn’t tell me what you did to make Virginia dislike you.”

“Strange, really. I only happened to mention that the San Francisco cops are really good at writing parking tickets.”

Eve rolled her eyes, then grinned. “Yeah, no secret there. Got to raise money to support the city budget.”

“Good coffee, even though it’s decaf. Cheney told me he put Burt Seng with Sherlock on finding that Zodiac. Fact is, Burt could find a contact lens in a swimming pool. He’ll be updating us at the meeting tomorrow.”

“I hadn’t heard about a meeting. Do you think I can be in on that? When? Tomorrow morning?”

He couldn’t help himself. “That’d be okay, if you don’t forget your place.”

She leaped for the bait, coffee sputtered out. She wiped a napkin over her mouth and gave him a look to fry his liver.

He quickly raised his hand, smiling. “You gotta learn control, Barbieri. You can’t lose it every time someone makes an innocent comment rubs you the wrong way.”

The jerk, but he’d done it on purpose, and she’d been ready to go for his throat. She dredged up a smile and a sneer. “And when do you interview the Cahills? Can I go with you for that?”

“Savich and I planned to do that in the morning. That actually is why I followed you home tonight, so I could ask you about the trial. I’d wanted to be there from the beginning, since it was my case, but something else came up. Since Judge Hunt isn’t in any shape to tell me about it himself yet, could you tell me exactly what was happening to make him so suspicious about Mickey O’Rourke?”

Eve said, “Ramsey never talked to me about it directly-of course he wouldn’t-but I can tell you what I saw.

“The trial was still in the final pretrial motion stage. They hadn’t impaneled a jury yet. Milo Siles, the Cahills’ defense attorney, had been making all sorts of motions for discovery. He’d demanded proof of everything the government accessed from the murder victim’s computer, especially anything that was considered top secret. He kept going on about the Brady rules giving the defense the right to any documents it needs to defend their clients, even in the case of espionage. It was pretty obvious, really, Siles was trying to force the government to disclose exactly what Mark Lindy-the murder victim-did for them.”

“Yeah, I know all about Mark Lindy, since it was my case, like I told you. So it sounds like Siles was trying to get the government to drop the case rather than have what Mark Lindy was working on compromised? That sounds nuts.”

“Just you wait. There was a lot of talk then about the Classified Information Procedures Act that provides protection for the government and for defendants in these kinds of cases. There were a bunch of conferences, some of them in camera-that means in Ramsey’s chambers-and after that, Ramsey started getting more and more hard-nosed with O’Rourke. You see, Ramsey had ruled some of that information admissible, but O’Rourke had repeatedly failed to provide it to the court. At first his excuses seemed reasonable, but then he had no more excuses, even bad ones.

“I’ll tell you, it was quite a sight seeing Ramsey lambaste a federal prosecutor like that. He said the court would have to impose sanctions, possibly dismiss the federal indictment, and you could tell that really burned Ramsey, and that’s when he suspended the trial, the same day he was shot.”

Harry nodded. “Since Judge Hunt’s known O’Rourke pretty well after working with him for years, he realized he wouldn’t behave like that-ignoring the judge’s directives time after time-if something weren’t seriously wrong. No way would a federal prosecutor want a case dismissed, except if there was bad stuff going on, and he was directly involved. Yes, that fits nicely.

“Thanks, Eve. I’ve got a better handle on it now. About the Cahills: Savich wants to meet with them as soon as possible, before they have a chance to talk all this through with their lawyer. We’re going to offer them a chance to spend some time together if they’re willing to talk to us immediately, without waiting for Siles. They’re going to want to see each other real bad, one reason is so they can both be sure they can still trust each other. A lot has happened in two days. Who knows what they know? What they’ve heard? What they’re thinking? Maybe they’re ready to deal.”

“Maybe,” Eve said.

Harry rose. “Gotta go. Thanks for the coffee.”

She followed him to the front door. “Do you think I could go interview the Cahills with you?”

“That’ll be up to Savich.”

Eve didn’t think her chances were that good. Besides, there was so much to do, best not to overload anywhere. She dropped it. “Hey, what tree are you heading for?”

An eyebrow went up, and then he grinned. “Yeah, yeah, my street name. I live on Maple-my house is in the center of the block. I’m really close to pizza and Szechuan, and the dry cleaner’s. All the comforts, lots of people driving around, parking to shop or eat. The cops love to ticket in that neighborhood.”

“Imagine Virginia not liking you when, I’m sure, you just happened to mention that to her.”

She heard him whistling as he walked away down the corridor. She was in bed ten minutes later.