Stone Cold

Chapter Forty-Nine

Claire whispered Ortiz’s disclosure to Lou while they were packing their briefcases before leaving court, and he briefed Kate and Blues on the way to his office. Claire waited until they’d all gathered there to drop the bombshell on Alex.

Lou was sitting behind his desk. Blues was standing at the window overlooking Broadway. Kate and Claire were standing on either side of Lou’s dry-erase board. Alex was sitting on the sofa. Anyone who walked into the office at that moment would have said they were looking at one another. But they weren’t. They were looking at Alex.

“Alex, we’ve got a problem,” Claire began. “Gloria Temple is going to testify that she saw you shoot Dwayne and that after you shot him, you put his gun in his hand and fired a round into the ceiling.”

Alex jumped off the sofa, arms in the air. “That’s bullshit!” She slapped her thighs and spun halfway around. “That’s fucking unbelievable! You blew Odyessy Shelburne out of the water, so Ortiz had to come up with something, but this is too much, way too fucking much!”

She planted her hands on her hips, first staring and then glaring at them as they watched her in silence until she realized what was going on.

“Oh, c’mon, you guys!” she said. “You can’t seriously think she’s telling the truth. She’s got to be another junkie peddling a story to get a break because they’re about to charge her with something. So she’s going to testify against me in return for immunity. C’mon! I can’t be the only one in the room who can see that!”

“It’s possible,” Lou said. “Rossi and one of the CSI techs testified that that’s the way it could have gone down, but they both said there was no proof. Rossi could have put the idea in her head, let her know what they needed, and she agreed to go along to get along.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Blues added.

“You see,” Alex said, her hands chopping the air. “That’s the only way it makes sense. What do we even know about Gloria Temple? I’ve thought all along that she was the girl who gave Dwayne a gold necklace that belonged to Wilfried Donaire, but that’s just speculation.”

“She used to stay with a woman named Virginia Sprague, who was Kyrie Chapman’s grandmother. Grace Canfield talked to Virginia, and that’s how we found Gloria.”

“I tried talking to her last night,” Lou said, “but I didn’t get anything out of her.”

“Well,” Claire said, “she’ll have to talk to me. Ortiz will see to that. He doesn’t want me to start my cross-examination by having her tell the jury she refused. We’ll know more in a little while.”

Alex calmed down enough to reclaim her seat on the sofa. “Okay, then. What’s the plan besides you talking to Gloria?”

“It begins with you,” Claire said. “We need to know everything that happened in that living room before you shot Dwayne. Everything.”

Alex took a deep breath and nodded, pressing her back into the sofa, feeling staked out.

“Okay,” she said. “For starters, if Gloria was there, I never saw her.”

“Start at the beginning, from when you walked into Odyessy’s house.”

“We’ve been over this a hundred times.”

“And we’re going to go over it as many more times as it takes. I’ve got nothing on Gloria. If I can’t shake her on cross, you’ll have to testify. So tell us everything that happened.”

“Fine. I went there to tell Dwayne that I was withdrawing from his case because he’d threatened Bonnie. I took my gun because I was scared of him. When he let me in, I could tell he had a gun in his waistband. My gun was in my right jacket pocket. I put my hand in my pocket and held on to my gun just in case.”

“That’s good,” Claire said. “Then what happened?”

Alex took a breath. “We were in the living room, just the two of us. Dwayne was doing his big, bad, sexy beast bullshit shtick, showing me his gun and making everything a sexual innuendo. I asked him how stupid he thought he was possessing a gun in violation of his bond.”

“How did he take that?”

“Not well. He accused me of coming to his house and disrespecting him. He told me that Wilfred Donaire had disrespected him too, so I better watch what I said.”

“How did you react to that?”

“I was scared but I tried not to show it. That’s when I told him I had to withdraw because he’d threatened Bonnie. And I told him that the police were protecting Bonnie and that if he came near her, they’d stop him.”

“What did Dwayne say in response to that?”

“He started pressing me about why did I care so much about what happened to Bonnie, and I guess he figured out from my reaction that we were together.”

“What happened next?” Claire asked.

Alex shook her head, her jaw tight. “He said, ‘How long you been diving into that muff?’ and I told him that I wasn’t going to talk about my relationship with Bonnie. That’s when he pulled out his gun and said that if he couldn’t get to Bonnie, he’d have to settle for me. So I shot him, twice. He fired his gun as he was falling to the floor.” She paused, taking a deep breath, her eyes wet. “I must have been in a state of shock, because the next thing I remember is Rossi yelling at me to put my gun down. I dropped my gun and that’s when Odyessy shot me. I slumped down against the wall and that’s when I realized Odyessy was holding Dwayne’s head in her lap and that he was dead.”

Claire waited a moment. “Is that everything?”

“Yes. Just like I told you every time before.”

Claire glanced at Kate, who had stared at Alex throughout her recitation.

“Oh,” Alex said as she stood, “now you’re asking Kate if I’m telling the truth? Is this trial prep or an inquisition?”

“Alex!” Claire snapped. “You know-”

“That’s okay,” Kate said. “It’s trial prep and, trust me, Ortiz’s cross-examination will be your own personal inquisition. For what it’s worth, I think you’re telling the truth. You’re filled with shame and guilt, but I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

Alex shrugged her shoulders, then let them sag, as if she’d put down a heavy burden, and took a deep breath, letting it out. She stood without saying anything for a moment.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” Kate asked.

“For believing me.”

“I told you I was on your side.”

“And now I believe you.”

“At least,” Lou said, “now we know why Ortiz pulled the plea bargain off the table.”

“Except for one thing,” Claire said. “In the bench conference we had Monday morning, he told the judge that he didn’t know where Gloria was or what she was going to say.”

“But he had a good guess, and that means he had to have at least known that she was in the house when Alex shot Dwayne.”

“Or,” Blues said, “that she could have been.”

“What are you getting at?” Claire asked.

“It’s simple. If Ortiz knew she’d been in the house some other time, there was a chance she was there that day. And the closer to the day of the shooting she was there, the more likely she was also there that day.”

“I’m with you,” Lou said. “So who was she hanging out with? Odyessy or Dwayne?”

“My money’s on Dwayne,” Blues said. “Odyessy isn’t much of an attraction.”

“So,” Claire said, “if she was with Dwayne, she probably knows whether he killed Kyrie Chapman and the Hendersons.”

“If you’re right, you better hope Gloria pulled the trigger, because otherwise the jury might just believe her,” Kate said.

“Are you guys trying to freak me out?” Alex asked.

Claire put her arm around Alex. “You know we’re not. We’re just thinking out loud. Same as you would do. Now, go home, have a glass of wine with Bonnie, and get some rest. We’ll see you in the morning.”