James Grippando - Last to die

A journalist with a wiretap on her telephone. Are they out of their minds?

She reached Johnny’s townhouse in record time. The fear, the gin, the adrenaline all had her driving faster than usual. The parking spaces in front of Johnny’s unit were full, and Carmen’s comment came back to her. The creep could have at least given up his prime spot and parked his own car in guest parking so that she didn’t have to walk five hundred yards in the darkness. She was inclined to bag it and go home, but she did feel safer sleeping with him. She zipped her car over to guest parking, found a spot, and jumped out.

Gables Point was a quiet condominium development, lots of trees, not very well lit. She followed the sidewalk past the pool area, which wasn’t the most direct path to Johnny’s unit, but the lighting was better, except for the last hundred yards, where the sidewalk snaked through a forest of droopy bottlebrush trees. The ring of light that shined from the pool area seemed to follow her for a while, but she stopped when she reached the faint edge of its farthermost reach. She’d walked this way at least a dozen times over the past month, never once giving it a second thought. Tonight, her instincts told her to turn and run the other way. It was late. It was dark. There were lots of big trees for someone to hide behind.

You’re making yourself crazy.

She put one foot in front of the other, and she was on her way, gathering speed, her pulse quickening. She’d entered far more dangerous places in her career, night after night, as the Tribune’s crime beat reporter. Interviews with killers, dead bodies galore-it was all in a day’s work. This was nothing to be afraid of.

Halfway there. The sidewalk curved, but she went straight. No time for the scenic route, and there was no scenery in the black night anyway. She was cutting her own path through the grass when she heard it. She stopped and looked back, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. But she was certain that she’d heard something just a moment earlier. Footsteps. Behind her.

Or was she imagining it?

She turned and ran at full throttle, holding back nothing, brushing aside the tree branches that were lashing at her face. Her ankle turned, which made her yelp, but she ran through the pain. Twenty yards to Johnny’s townhouse. She was back on the sidewalk, sprinting down the homestretch. She gobbled up the three front steps in a single leap, then searched frantically for her key in the darkness.

Jerk doesn’t even leave the porch light on for me.

She got her key, used two hands to steady her aim, and shoved it home. The tumblers clicked, the deadbolt turned. She turned the knob and leaned into the door. It opened six inches, then caught on the chain.

Shit!

She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, and again she saw nothing. Or no, maybe a shadow. “Johnny, open the damn door!”

She pushed and pulled the door back and forth, shaking it violently against the chain to wake him.

“Johnny!”

She heard footsteps again, and her heart skipped a beat-then relief. The footsteps were coming from inside the townhouse.

“Johnny, it’s me!”

The door closed, and the chain rattled on the inside. The knob turned, and Deirdre pushed her way inside. She rushed in, eager to see him, eager to see anyone. He grabbed her, she poured herself into his arms, the door slammed, and she was firmly in his grasp before she could realize what had happened.

It wasn’t Johnny.

A cold knife was at her throat. “Fucking bitch,” he said in an angry whisper. “You were told to write the story, not print it.”

She screamed, but it was heard only in her own mind, as the sharp blade slid deeply across her throat, sinking all the way to the neck bone, silencing her forever.

At 4 P.M. Friday afternoon, Jack and Tatum were back in probate court.

It had been less than two days since Deirdre’s murder, and everything had changed. Or at least everything had intensified, and Jack couldn’t get away from it-media coverage, phone calls from lawyers for the surviving heirs, questions from investigators. It was a neighbor who’d spotted the blood seeping out from under the front door on Thanksgiving morning. The cops found her body in the foyer, and her boyfriend was tied up in his bedroom closet, unharmed but blindfolded. He hadn’t seen a thing, a useless witness. Naturally, Detective Larsen turned to Jack and his client for answers, as the judge’s restraining order had already labeled Tatum as the thug in the group. Mason Rudsky’s hit-and-run death was still a mystery, and it didn’t help matters that Deirdre Meadows had turned up dead the same day the Tribune ran her story that Tatum was hired to kill Sally Fenning.

“All rise!”

Judge Parsons entered the courtroom from his side chambers. The crowd rose on command, and the foot shuffling was noticeably louder than at most hearings. All fifteen rows of public seating were packed with spectators, mostly members of the media. This was the first court hearing since a state prosecutor and an ambitious reporter had met untimely deaths in a race for forty-six million dollars, and the local news geniuses had finally taken serious notice, even without a sex scandal.

“Please be seated,” the judge said.

Jack and Tatum returned to their seats, the two of them once again splintered off from the others. Miguel Rios, Gerry Colletti, and their lawyers sat at the table nearest the empty jury box. Vivien Grasso, as personal representative of the estate, took a seat alongside the edge of their table, not quite on their side, but definitely not aligning herself with Jack and Tatum.

Alan Sirap was still a no-show.

The bailiff called the case, “In re the Estate of Sally W. Fenning,” and the judge took over. He seemed overwhelmed at first, or perhaps he was waiting to make sure the television cameras were ready and rolling to catch his speech.

“Good afternoon,” he said in a voice suitable for a funeral. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t express my grave concerns over the tragedy that has befallen this matter. Especially on this day after Thanksgiving, I wish to convey my heartfelt sympathies to the friends and families of Mason Rudsky and Deirdre Meadows.

“That said, I want to assure everyone that I come to this courtroom with no preconceived notions as to who is responsible for these terrible events. I say this because we have before us today a very serious motion by Mr. Colletti, one of the potential heirs. I want Mr. Colletti and everyone else here to understand that this court will not rely on emotion or outrage to adopt any extraordinary measures. I will insist upon proof, and if the proof exists, I will grant the requested relief. But not before then. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” came the lawyers’ reply.

Tatum leaned toward Jack and whispered, “I like the sound of that.”

Jack gave a little nod, hiding his concern. It was eerily reminiscent of the speeches he’d heard from the bench when he was a federal prosecutor, where the judge would rail against the government for some “outrageous tactic” that “shocked the conscience of the court” and then proceed to dispatch the defendant on a millennium-long tour of the land of the walking dead.

“Mr. Colletti, proceed, please,” the judge said.

His lawyer started up from his chair, but Gerry waved him off and stepped forward first, as if to say, I’ll handle this. It was an obvious last-minute change in plans, and Jack knew exactly what was going on. The spotlight was shining far too brightly for Gerry Colletti to defer to another lawyer.

Gerry approached the lectern in the center of the courtroom, stealing one last look at the television camera before showing his back to the crowd and addressing the court. “Your Honor is exactly right. This is a very serious motion that I’ve filed. And I have filed it with good reason.”