Chasing The Dead

Chapter Eleven

Alex Stared At Jared Bell’s file, her neck and back stiffening, afraid that if she picked it up, she would be shaking hands with the devil. She could have her secretary return it to Meg Adler with a note that she was too busy to handle the case. She could try swapping it with a colleague for another case. Or she could do what she knew she had to do not only because of Judge West but because it was her job-suck it up and pick it up.

At this early stage, there would be only two documents in the file, the probable cause statement, written by the investigating police detective, and the complaint, filed by an assistant prosecuting attorney. The two documents went together, the probable cause statement forming the basis for the complaint.

She’d never gotten these documents before her client’s initial appearance in court, which was also where she usually met her client for the first time. In a high-profile case, she might meet her client at the jail before the initial appearance, but even then, she wouldn’t have the probable cause statement and the complaint. So how did she end up with the file now?

Meg Adler had told her that she found the file on Robin Norris’s desk bearing a Post-it note with Alex’s name on it. It was possible that Robin had learned about the case yesterday, requested the file in advance of Jared’s initial appearance, decided to assign the case to Alex, and told Judge West of her decision, but three things bothered her about that sequence of events. She’d never known Robin to do something like that before. The Post-it note wasn’t on the file when Meg gave it to her. And Robin was dead.

Alex shook her head, warding off paranoid conspiracy theories. Meg had no reason to make up the story about the Post-it note. And Robin worked hard to maintain good relations with the prosecutor’s office, the police, and the court. Someone in the prosecutor’s office could have given her a courtesy call, telling her about Jared’s case, trading an early copy of the file for a favor in another case. Robin could have reviewed the file and decided that Alex should handle it and told Judge West in order to expedite matters at the initial appearance.

Alex couldn’t say for certain that something like that had never happened before because Robin didn’t tell her how she handled each and every case. Nor would Alex have expected her to do so, but there was one way to find out if that was what had happened this time.

She called Robin’s secretary, Patty, who maintained a master calendar for all the cases in the office. Patty protected her turf so well that people in the office compared her to the Hand of the King in Game of Thrones.

“Patty, it’s Alex.”

“Oh, my God, Alex. This can’t be real, it just can’t.”

Alex waited for Patty to compose herself. “I know. It’s awful, but I need you to do something for me.”

Patty sniffled and cleared her throat. “Sure. What is it?”

“I’ve got a new file for a client named Jared Bell. I need to know when his first appearance is scheduled.”

“Hang on. Let me check. . Well, that’s weird. It’s not on the calendar. You know that I enter all relevant dates before I give a new file to Robin.”

“Did you give this file to her?”

“You said the defendant’s name is Jared Bell, right?”

“Right.”

“I don’t remember seeing that file at all. What are you doing with it?”

“Meg Adler gave it to me. She said she found it on Robin’s desk this morning with a Post-it that had my name on it and assumed that Robin had assigned the case to me.”

“Well, I don’t have any record of it, but I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, so maybe it came in after I left. This is how stuff falls through the cracks. Whoever took that file off my desk should have known better, Robin included. Meg should have given the file to me first.”

“I guess you’ll have to train her.”

“Don’t think I won’t. Let me check on the initial appearance and get back to you,” Patty said and hung up.

Alex didn’t think her problems with Jared’s case could get any worse, but they did when she opened the file and began reading the probable cause statement. The first line read, I, Detective Hank Rossi, #4278, knowing that false statements on this form are punishable by law, state that the facts contained herein are true.

“Shit!” Alex said, slamming the file onto her desk.

Another dance with Rossi was the last thing she needed, especially after what happened at the Zoo and what happened with Bonnie when she got home. Bonnie took one sniff and ordered both of them into the shower. Afterward, wrapped in their robes, they sat on the bedroom floor drinking wine and ruffling their dog Quincy’s fur. Bonnie waited until Alex had finished her glass of wine.

“Okay, give. What terrible thing happened today?”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Yes, but you smelled worse. Where did that come from?”

Alex knew that she had to give Bonnie enough of the truth to make sense of her appearance, and that meant telling her she’d been to the judge’s ranch. She’d never told Bonnie about her visits to the ranch, claiming she was meeting a witness in one of her cases.

“I was in Judge West’s court today. He was going on and on about his damn horses and how wonderful they are and I was trying to be polite so I said that I’d love to see them sometime. And he said what about tonight, and what was I going to do? Of course, if I’d known he was going to ask me to help him muck out the stables, I would have come up with an excuse. But I wasn’t quick enough.”

“You’re kidding! He made you shovel horseshit?”

“Well, he didn’t make me. I just couldn’t figure out how to say no. Except for the smell, it wasn’t that bad. I needed the exercise, and who wouldn’t want to help a horse?”

“That explains the smell, but it doesn’t explain why you looked so beat-up when you walked through the door.”

Alex dropped her chin to her chest and sighed. “No, it doesn’t.”

Bonnie draped her arm over Alex’s shoulder and pulled her close. “Come on. Out with it.”

Alex left out that Judge West was blackmailing her, limiting her confession to her encounter with Rossi at the bar. They argued over what to do about it, Bonnie wanting her to file a complaint against Rossi with the police department, Alex refusing, saying she could handle him. Their fight killed the cuddling vibe, the argument ending with them sleeping back to back, the middle expanse of their king-sized bed separating them. Bonnie was gone when Alex woke up in the morning. But Rossi was there, stuck in her head like a bad song playing over and over.

Alex’s computer pinged, announcing that she’d received an e-mail. It was from Patty. Jared Bell’s initial appearance was Friday morning, September 17, at nine o’clock.

“Shit!” she said again, plucking the probable cause statement from the file.

Rossi stated that he’d gotten a call about a dead body in Liberty Park at 1:15 a.m. on Tuesday, September 14. He identified Jared as a twenty-eight-year-old white male, approximately 150 pounds, with black hair, summarizing how Jared had led them to the victim. He described the ligature marks and the bruised impression on her chest in the shape of a cross. He included Jared’s statements denying he had touched the body while acknowledging that he was familiar with the victim but didn’t know her name. Rossi described going with Jared to his tent and finding a cross that appeared to match the wound on the victim’s neck.

The probable cause statement recited that Rossi then took Jared into custody and advised him of his Miranda rights and that Jared consented to continuing to answer questions. Jared stated that he had consensual sex with the victim in his tent several hours before he reported finding her body. Not owning a watch, he was uncertain about the time.

Rossi continued questioning Jared at police headquarters. At nine twenty a.m. on Tuesday, September 14, Jared stated that after having sex, they quarreled and he strangled her, dumped her body in the creek, and stole her cross.

The report identified six people who were camped out in the same area, noting that none of them acknowledged hearing or seeing anything suspicious or related to the crime. None of them had permanent addresses.

The last paragraph of the probable cause statement recited that the coroner, Dr. Bruce Solomon, had examined the body at the county morgue and informed Rossi that he had observed evidence of genital trauma at the external vaginal opening consistent with forcible rape. Rossi ended the statement by saying that the victim was unidentified.

The complaint charged Jared with forcible rape and first-degree murder of one Jane Doe. Kalena Greene had signed the complaint.

Alex leaned back in her chair, the file in her lap, reconsidering her speculation that Judge West wanted Jared convicted not because he was guilty but because he was innocent. Taken at face value, the probable cause statement was compelling. So why force her to handle the case and make sure Jared took a deal for a life sentence? Why not let Kalena go for the death penalty, which would satisfy the judge’s appetite for maximum justice?

The answer came to her. No defendant would ever agree to a plea bargain that included the death penalty. And a death-penalty case would be more closely scrutinized. Once Jared was convicted, the Midwest Innocence Project might jump all over Jared’s case and Judge West would have no way to control that. If the judge was using Jared to protect the real killer, a plea bargain was his only option.

Which brought her to the bottom-line question. Who was Judge West protecting? The easy answer was that he was the killer, but that was too big a leap for her. He’d never given her any indication he was capable of such a crime. Still, she knew firsthand the human capacity to kill when pushed too far. And she also understood a killer’s unabashed determination to get away with murder.