Joel Goldman - No way out

“You’re kidding yourself if you think anyone starts in neutral, not even a good cop like you. It’s not a level playing field for people like Roni. Somebody has to push back.”

“There’s a difference between pushing and getting in the way.”

“Meaning I’m still a pain in the ass?”

He smiled as the doors opened. “Big time.”

“Good to know.”

Roni was sequestered in a first-floor conference room in the administration wing of the hospital, a cop on the door, this one not going anywhere. She was sitting at a long oval table, rotating her swivel chair side to side while plugged into her phone and texting, a mirror image of Brett Staley, the two of them leaving an electronic trail for Carter to follow.

Cops believe in causation, not coincidence. If Roni Chase had intentionally caused a disturbance so someone could kill Frank Crenshaw, Brett Staley climbed to the top of the shooter short list when he showed up at the hospital, his timing too good and any alibi he may have too pat. The shooter would have to have been someone Roni trusted, and who would she trust more than the man who was saving up to buy her funeral dress? It made sense if she was guilty.

Carter and I were coming at the case from opposite directions. He suspected she was guilty, and I hoped she was innocent, the truth hidden somewhere between certainty and doubt.

She looked up when we entered the room, taking off her earbuds and sliding her phone into her jean pocket, gathering her jacket around her like a protective shield, her face brightening for an instant when she looked at me, then darkening when she focused on Carter.

“So,” she said, “can I go home now?”

“Soon, I hope,” I said. “Detective Carter says you and I can talk, but only if he gets to watch and listen.”

“Can he do that?”

“Depends on how hard he wants to play this. He can hold you for questioning here or take you downtown. He knows that if he doesn’t let you go home in the next five minutes that you’re going to call a lawyer and if you don’t know who to call that you’re going to ask me to call someone, and he knows that whoever I call is going to turn his long day into a shitty night. Either way, he knows he’s not going to get diddly-squat out of you tonight. Except for what you’ve already told him, which is that you had nothing to do with Frank Crenshaw being murdered in his unguarded hospital bed.”

Her grin split her face. “So,” she said to Carter, “am I under arrest?”

Carter, hands planted on his hips, blasted me. “That’s what you call getting her to cooperate?”

“Here’s how it is. You want anything else out of her tonight you’re going to have to give us the room. I’m not promising anything after that, but I’m sure as hell not going to serve her up to you for a midnight snack.”

Carter glared. I stared, and Roni waited, wisely swallowing her grin.

“Motherfucking pain in the ass,” Carter said, wagging his finger at me. “That’s what you are-a royal, motherfucking pain in my ass.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, pointing to the slack-jawed uniform cop standing in the door. “I’ll have him call you when we’re ready.”

Officer Fremont knocked on the conference room door. “Detective Carter, the ATF agent is waiting for you upstairs. I told him you were interrogating a witness and I didn’t know how long that would take. He said to tell you he wasn’t much interested in waiting around. Guy’s a fed through and through, thinks his shit don’t stink.”

“So that was the good news Fremont gave you,” I said. “Don’t worry about us. We can come back tomorrow if that’s more convenient for you.”

Carter aimed his finger at me again, his caramel complexion purpling. “You keep pushing and you’re gonna push too far.”

Roni clapped her hands. “Dude, that was sweet!”

I sat in a chair across the table from hers. “You have no idea how much trouble you could be in, do you?”

Her mouth and eyes stretched wide. “Me? I told you, I didn’t do anything!”

“Listen to me. I’m not your lawyer. I know a fair amount about criminal law because I put a lot of crooks away, but I’m not an expert on criminal procedure or the rules of evidence and I’m lousy at reading juries. So I can’t help you shape your testimony so that you slide by on some narrow ledge between innocent and guilty. Nothing you tell me is privileged. I get called before a grand jury or summoned to testify in court, I’ll have to tell them everything you tell me.”

Her cheeks lost their pink. “What are you doing? Are you trying to scare me?”

“Just shut up and listen. Don’t talk until I’m finished. Here are the known facts. Yesterday you shot Frank Crenshaw, and then you came to the hospital to see him and were told you couldn’t. You came back tonight, after visiting hours, and raised a ruckus when you were told the same thing you were told the day before. Then you made enough noise that the cop guarding Crenshaw came running, giving the killer a clean shot at him. Quincy Carter is no dummy. It isn’t hard for him to connect the dots and tie you and the shooter together like a tag team setting up the hit on Crenshaw. Then your boyfriend shows up, saying he thought it’d be fun to hang out at the hospital.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Maybe not on your dance card, but that’s how Carter sees him.”

“I can’t help that. Sometimes, he drives me crazy.”

“And now Carter is going to turn him inside out to see if he might have finished what you started at LC’s. Case like this, the first one to make a deal serves the shortest sentence. Carter won’t care which one of you flips, so long as one of you does. So you telling Carter and me that you had nothing to do with anything won’t cut it.”

She went from pale to red hot in a flash, coming out of her chair, planting her fists on the conference table.

“I shot Frank Crenshaw to save my life and yours, and I haven’t kept a meal down or slept since. I don’t know who killed him, but it wasn’t Brett. He was hanging out with my mom and grandma tonight until he came over here. So, fuck you if you don’t believe me!”

“He’s not your boyfriend, but he hangs out with your mother and grandmother?”

“Sometimes he is my boyfriend. Just not when we fight.”

“Then what was he doing hanging out with you and your family?”

“My grandmother likes to have people for Sunday-night dinner. She invited him.”

I liked that she was mad. I liked that she didn’t curl up into a ball and cry, and I liked that she didn’t tell me to call a lawyer. I didn’t like that her family was Brett Staley’s alibi because families are the first to lie to protect loved ones, and, if Staley was spending his evening with her mother and grandmother, odds were he’d get the family treatment.

“What time did he leave your house?”

She straightened, throwing one hand at the walls before wrapping her arms around her chest.

“I don’t know. We had dinner and sat around talking and watching TV. I said I was going to see Frank, and he tried to talk me out of it because they wouldn’t let me see him yesterday. We got into it, nothing serious, just yelling like we do all the time, and he says if I go, he isn’t going with me, like I even invited him. So I left him there.”

“You want me to call a lawyer?”

She dropped her arms to her side, her initial outburst spent. “How can I need a lawyer when I’m innocent?”

“The system doesn’t always get it right.”

“But if I get a lawyer, it will look like I’ve got something to hide, and I don’t. Besides, I can’t afford a lawyer. It costs a lot of money to take care of my mom. She didn’t have health insurance when she had her stroke. She’s in a wheelchair, and her speech is pretty garbled.”