William Bernhardt - Murder One

Ben stepped aside.

“Spread out,” Matthews instructed his team. “Everybody take a room.”

“Stick with them,” Ben said, instructing his own team, Christina and Loving, Jones and Paula. “Each of you take one of the officers. Don’t get in their way, but don’t let them out of your sight.” Something about the expression on Matthews’s face gave him the feeling he couldn’t be too careful. He didn’t know what they were looking for, but whatever it was, he wanted to make sure it didn’t come out of a police officer’s back pocket.

Ben started after them, but Matthews grabbed him and shoved him sideways. Ben tumbled into a desk.

“My apologies,” Matthews said. “Didn’t see you there.” He moved closer to Ben and lowered his voice. “No courtroom tricks are gonna get you out of this, asshole.”

If there were any doubts in Ben’s mind about what was happening before, there were none after that. Ben pulled himself together and followed one of the uniforms into the nearest office. The others did the same.

Ben watched as an officer ripped open the drawers in Jones’s desk and dumped the contents on the floor.

“Is it the McNaughton case? Is that what this is about?”

The officer grunted and continued tearing apart the office.

“Is that necessary?” Ben growled.

The officer did not look up. “Get in my way, I’ll cuff you. Which I would enjoy.”

Ben buttoned his lip and kept an eye on the man’s hands.

Outside, the other officers searched with the same ham-handed technique. Entire file cabinets were dumped out on the floor. Desk drawers were emptied; even the trash was spilled. Desktops were cleared—phones, laptops, and all. Ben hadn’t expected them to worry about keeping things tidy, but he’d been on searches before with Mike and he knew this wasn’t how it was usually done. It almost seemed as if the object was not so much to find something as to create the biggest upheaval possible.

A high-pitched shriek brought him out of his reverie. “Christina!”

Abandoning his post, Ben raced into her office, where she’d been watching one of the uniforms destroy everything in sight. When Ben arrived, the officer had Christina’s arms pinned behind her back and was snapping handcuffs on her.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Ben shouted. He was mad now, damn it. If they wanted to run some petty harassment vendetta against him, fine. But manhandling Christina was something else again.

“We warned you what would happen if you tried to interfere.” He pushed Christina into the corner.

“He was trying to go through the files in my laptop,” Christina said. “They need a special specific warrant to do that. State versus Cresswell. ”

“She’s right,” Ben said. “Screw with her computer and you may invalidate this whole dubious search.”

That seemed to slow the young officer. He backed away from the laptop, his teeth gritted.

“Now uncuff her and stop abusing your authority. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

That was more that the young man could take. “I should be ashamed of myself? Coming from you, that’s pretty ironic. At least I haven’t put any murderers back on the street.”

“Neither have I. I just point out to the judge when the police screw up their cases.”

The kid uncuffed Christina, then stormed out of the office, leaving it looking as if an earthquake had struck.

“Ben, what’s going on here?” Christina asked, rubbing her sore wrists.

“I don’t know.”

They were both riveted by the sound of bellowing from the next office over. “Found it!”

Ben and Christina both raced into Ben’s office. Matthews was there; Paula was huddled off to the side.

He was holding a knife. A butcher-sized knife. Caked with blood.

“What is that?” Christina asked. Her voice trembled.

“Unless I miss my guess,” Matthews said, “this is the knife that was used to kill Joe McNaughton.”

“Where the hell did it come from?” Ben asked.

Matthews smiled thinly. “From your office, Kincaid.”

“No way. You planted it.”

“I didn’t. I found it in the bottom drawer of your file cabinet, under some papers. Right where you left it.”

“You’re lying through your teeth!”

“I’m sorry, Ben, but—he isn’t.” It was Paula. Her eyes were lowered and her voice was slow and … confused. “I was watching him the whole time he searched. And I was especially watching his hands. He didn’t plant it. Not just now, anyway.”

“But that—”

Matthews motioned to one of the officers in the hallway. “Put this man under arrest.”

The uniform whipped out his cuffs, yanked Ben’s arms back roughly, and snapped the metal restraints around his wrists.

“Is this your idea of justice?” Ben asked. “Arresting the defense attorney?”

Matthews smirked. “Justice is never simple.”

“This is an outrage. I’ve never seen that knife before in my life!”

“Yeah. That’s what they all say.” Matthews removed a card from his shirt pocket. “You have the right to remain silent. If you waive that right, anything you say can and will be used against you …”

“Cut the crap. What’s this all about?”

Matthews stopped. His eyes locked with Ben’s. “What’s this about? It’s about seeing a murderer brought to justice. Maybe two of them.” He leaned into Ben’s face. “How much did you do, Kincaid? Did you help with the murder, or just the cover-up? Were you fucking her all along, or just after she was arrested?”

“You miserable son of a bitch. I never—”

Christina pushed between them. “He’s not answering any questions.”

“Get out of my way, lady,” Matthews barked.

Christina grabbed the man by the collar. “I’m not a lady, jerkface. I’m his attorney. And if I say he’s not answering any questions, he’s not answering any questions. Got it?”

Matthews shook her off, rubbing his neck. His teeth were clenched tight enough to pop a filling. “Frank, take this scumbag downtown.” The other plainclothes officer pulled Ben toward the door, yanking him by the cuffs.

“Find Mike,” Ben called. “As soon as possible.”

“I’ll be right there, Ben,” Christina shouted behind them. “Don’t say anything. As soon as you’ve been processed, we’ll talk.”

Matthews couldn’t bear to leave without a parting shot. He leaned into Christina’s ear and spoke in a low tone. “When we’re done with your scum-sucking boss, lady, he’ll be lucky if he remembers how to talk.”

4

THE OFFICERS SHOVED BEN down the stairs of Two Warren Place and outside, using as much force as possible. Ben was paraded through a phalanx of at least twenty SOT officers. A searchlight beamed down from the chopper overhead, practically blinding Ben and insuring that there was no one in a half-mile radius who couldn’t see him. They led him to the back of the Armored Personnel Carrier and shoved him inside.

Fifteen minutes later they arrived at the police headquarters building downtown and dragged him up to the fourth floor. He waited while the four officers accompanying him checked their weapons in a locker. As Ben well knew, no one was allowed to take weapons onto the fourth floor—not even cops. They wanted to eliminate all possibility of an arrestee grabbing a weapon and making an escape. The cops traded their guns for keys, which they placed in their holsters, a sign that they had stored their weapons. Then they dragged Ben inside the county jail.

Because the holding cell belonged to the county, Ben was patted down by sheriff’s deputies. They were none too gentle about it, and didn’t avoid any place where a weapon of any kind could conceivably be hidden.