Alez Kava - One False Move

Instead of lifting the gun and firing it, Jared turned. He just walked away. Melanie stared at him as he sat down in one of the easy chairs. From the side of the table he grabbed what looked like a leather briefcase and suddenly became interested in its contents. He rifled through the case's pockets, undoing zippers, taking out notepaper, examining it all and shoving it back into the case. He pulled out a couple of books, checked the covers and started to shove them into the briefcase, as well, when he stopped. Jared examined one of the back covers of the books, glanced at the man on the floor then at the cover.

"You're this guy," he said, flipping the book over to look at the front again. "You wrote this book, huh? Andrew Kane."

Melanie watched the man-Kane. He looked up at Jared when he said his name, so maybe he was okay. Maybe the bullet hadn't done any damage.

"So you write books," Jared continued.

She couldn't decide if Jared was impressed or if he was making fun. She didn't seem to be very good at reading her brother lately.

"How many books have you written, Andrew Kane?" Jared was flipping through the book, stopping several times, and it looked to Melanie as though he was actually reading parts.

She finally sat down across from Jared on the worn sofa. She couldn't believe how wonderful it felt to sit, and only now did she realize her legs were numb. Her arms felt raw, and even in the dim yellow light she could see all the scratches and cuts. She pulled her legs up under her and wrapped her battered arms around herself in an effort to stop shivering. Her wet, aching, cold muscles seemed secondary to trying to figure out what the hell Jared was up to.

Melanie tried to remember when the last time was that she had seen Jared with a book. Even as a kid he rarely read or did homework, usually getting someone else to do it for him. But here he was, sitting back, apparently fascinated, not just with this book but that he had an author right in front of him. Wounded and bleeding, but right in front of him. Right where Jared liked to have people he wanted to control.

All Melanie could think was, Poor Andrew Kane. If only he had simply left his fucking keys inside his car. That was all Jared had wanted. Melanie had offered to slip in, find the keys and slip back out. No one else needed to get hurt, Melanie had said, remembering the blood splatters all over Charlie's coveralls. But no. Jared decided he needed something to eat. Evading the law evidently gave him an appetite.

"Seriously, how many books have you written?" Jared asked again.

Melanie watched as Andrew Kane untangled his legs from underneath himself and leaned against the wall. It seemed to be an effort for him to move. She wondered how he had ever intended to defend himself with only a pole, his right arm practically attached to the side of his body.

"That's my fifth one," he told Jared in a voice that sounded stronger then he looked. Then he sat there watching Jared, waiting for the next question, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for them to be sitting down having a conversation about writing books right after Jared had tried to blow his head off.

"I write a little poetry," Jared said, and Melanie stared at her brother, trying to keep her jaw from dropping. She glanced at Charlie to see if he was buying any of this bullshit. Charlie, however, had found a bag of cookies and was working his way to the bottom.

"Do you know 'Richard Cory'?" Jared asked the writer.

Now Melanie wanted to laugh. How ridiculous that Jared would think he and Andrew Kane would know any of the same people. Yet to her surprise Kane answered, '"And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.'"

"Yeah, I love that poem." Jared smiled. "Here's this guy, this Richard Cory, and everybody fucking admires him because he's rich and handsome and has it all. Or so it appears, right? And yet, this guy goes home and blows his fucking head off. Goes to show not everything is what it appears to be, right?"

It was a poem, a fucking poem. Melanie couldn't believe she was sitting here wet, cold and filthy while Jared exchanged rhymes with a man he had tried to kill. This had to be the perfect ending to a nightmare she hoped was, indeed, ending soon.

8:05 a.m. Hall of Justice

When Grace arrived at work, she found Max Kramer in her office, sitting in her visitor's chair, using her phone while he waited. He glanced at her, holding up one finger to indicate that he was almost finished with his call. No apology for using her phone. Finally he said into the receiver, "No, it's white. That's all I can tell you. I gotta go." And he hung up, sitting back in the chair, taking his Starbucks coffee cup from the corner of her desk and sipping it, as if this was his office.

The coffee's aroma filled the small space, reminding Grace that their office brew couldn't possibly be related to this wonderful scent. She tried to focus on that rather than be pissed off by Kramer's presumptuous attitude.

"Forgot my cell phone," he said almost as an afterthought and still no apology.

"You must have heard how bad our coffee is," she said instead of addressing his rudeness. She slipped past him to get behind her desk, putting down the mug of coffee she'd brought in with her.

"I'm addicted to this stuff. In fact, I've started chewing gum in the afternoon to curb my withdrawals."

She pulled out a couple of files from the two stacks on her desk and glanced across at him. That wasn't his only addiction. She could tell that he bit his nails, too. Expensive suit, salon-cut hair, silk tie and yet he paid no attention to his hands. Odd for an attorney, she thought, since her own hands were an integral part of her court presentations. She probably couldn't make a closing argument without using her hands. Of course, Vince would most likely say she couldn't talk without using her hands.

"Your client has several priors," she said, getting down to business. A brief chit-chat about coffee was all the niceties she was willing to grant the man who'd fought for Jared Barnett's release. "What makes you think she has any room to bargain?"

"She may be able to identify who's responsible for the string of convenience-store robberies." He said it like it was an official announcement, then sat back and sipped his coffee, looking pleased with himself, as if he had handed her the thief's name, address and DNA sample.

"What makes…" Grace stopped to check the name, "Carrie Ann Comstock think she might be able to do that?"

"She was in the vicinity of the store on Fiftieth and Ames when it was robbed. She saw the man leave."

"The store was robbed at one-fifteen in the morning. What exactly was she doing in the vicinity at the time of the robbery?"

She watched his hands. His fingers tapped the oversize cup that he held between both hands. His right hand index fingernail had been bitten down to the quick. She decided she didn't trust an attorney who bit his nails and spent more money on his hair than she did.

"It really isn't important what she was doing."

That was exactly what she'd expected him to say. She sat back in her chair with her hands wrapped around her mug, as if ready for a showdown.

"So she thinks she got a good enough look that she might be able to identify him?"

"She got a good enough look that she was able to recognize him," Max Kramer said with a smile.

"Why didn't she come forward sooner?"

He shrugged, a practiced gesture that raised his shoulders almost to his earlobes. "Who knows? So do we have a deal?"

"Hey, Grace." Pakula suddenly filled her open doorway. "Oh, sorry. I didn't know you had-" He stopped when he recognized Max Kramer. "I didn't realize you had a pile of trash in here."