Stone Cold

Chapter Fifty

Alex didn’t go home. She wasn’t ready to face Bonnie and tell her about Gloria Temple. She needed time to think, to clear her head and decide what to do. She got in her car and drove. She wasn’t going anywhere in particular. She just had to keep moving.

If her defense team didn’t come up with something to discredit Gloria, Alex would have no choice but to take the stand. After hearing Gloria’s testimony, the jury would expect to hear her version, but telling her story wouldn’t be enough even if Kate Scranton believed it. Not if Gloria Temple was a credible witness. Patrick Ortiz would work her over until there was nothing left of her story, her reputation, or her future.

She assumed that Claire would find out whether Ortiz had made a deal with Gloria in exchange for testifying, but that didn’t mean Ortiz would tell her everything about the case against Gloria. Defense lawyers called that prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors called it a reasonable interpretation of the rules.

Blues and Lou had spent months chasing after Gloria without learning anything useful. Now that Gloria had been found, if they had more time, they might discover something to make a liar out of her. But they didn’t have time. Gloria was going to be the first witness in the morning.

Alex knew from years of defending criminals that her clients made a lot of bad decisions when they gave up trying to think of good ones. For the hundredth time since she pulled the trigger and killed Dwayne Reed, she felt a kinship with them. She opened her wallet and took out the scrap of paper with Judge West’s cell phone number on it.

Calling him was a bad decision, but she wouldn’t make it worse by using her own phone. She stopped at a convenience store and bought a cheap prepaid cell phone she could get rid of, making it impossible to trace the call back to her. Judge West answered on the second ring.

“Who the hell is this? How’d you get this number?”

“It’s Alex Stone.”

When he didn’t respond right away, her stomach convulsed and she thought she would throw up.

“This is a bad idea,” he said at last.

“I know and I’m sorry, but I need your help. I’ve got to talk to you about Gloria Temple. She’s the money.”

After another long pause, he said, “I’ve got a horse farm. I look in on the horses around eight o’clock.” He gave her the address and hung up.

Alex decided to pass the time drinking coffee in a downtown diner. Taking a back booth, she opened her phone and found the e-mail Kate had sent with the files from Gloria’s cell phone attached. She downloaded the files and starting working her way through them. The files were lengthy and the screen on her phone was small, making for tedious work.

She couldn’t imagine that Lou and Blues hadn’t already been through the files, but they hadn’t said anything about them. Either they hadn’t found anything or they didn’t want to talk about what they had found. If it was the former, she hoped she’d recognize something that they hadn’t. If it was the latter, she was in for a shock.

By seven thirty, she was jittery from caffeine and cross-eyed from staring at her phone. Gloria’s e-mails covered men, other women, family, being broke, getting high, being homesick, and a litany of other mundane topics, but there was nothing about Dwayne Reed, Wilfred Donaire, Kyrie Chapman, or Jameer Henderson. That was as far as she got before leaving for her meeting with Judge West.

His horse farm wasn’t out in the country. It was tucked away in an undeveloped area east of downtown and surrounded by residential developments. A long and winding narrow driveway kept it hidden from the street. The driveway ended at a white clapboard farmhouse. A dirt track led from the farmhouse to the horse barn. Alex’s headlights picked out the judge’s SUV next to the barn. She followed the track, parking next to his car. Judge West was waiting, holding the reins to a horse in one hand and a lit cigar in the other.

“Are you out of your mind calling me?” he said to her.

She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. “Entirely possible, but you’re the one who told me to break the rules.”

He took a sharp draw on his cigar, yelling at her through the smoke. “I didn’t tell you to kill your goddamn client and then call me asking for help in the middle of your goddamn trial, over which I happen to be presiding!”

She held her palms up. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I thought-”

“You thought what? That we’re partners? Buddies? Pals? Is that what you thought?”

She let out a deep breath. “I thought we wanted the same thing. I thought I could trust you. I thought you were the only person I could talk to who could help me.”

“You’ve got pretty goddamn good lawyers. Don’t you trust them?”

“Not with this,” she said, pointing her finger back and forth from him to her. “Not with what we talked about doing.”

Judge West flicked the ash from his cigar, grinding it in the dust. He stroked his horse’s face, pulled a carrot from his pocket, and fed it to the horse.

“Your lawyers must have told you what Gloria Temple is going to say on the stand.”

“I know the gist of it. Claire is supposed to talk to her tonight and get the details.”

“So how can I help you with that? I doubt that your lawyer, good as she is, can come up with a reason for me to exclude Gloria’s testimony without looking like a damn fool.”

“Gloria isn’t going to testify willingly. Claire will find out if Ortiz made a deal with her to give her immunity for whatever trouble she’s in. But if I know Ortiz, he won’t tell Claire everything and neither will Gloria, because that might knock the pins out from under her testimony. That’s the stuff I need to know.”

Judge West patted his horse again. “Here’s what I can do. You tell your lawyer to bitch like hell that Ortiz is holding out on her. Tell her to demand to see the files on whatever they’ve got on Gloria. I’ll order Ortiz to produce the records and I’ll give you and your lawyers a couple of hours to look them over.”

Alex grabbed his arm. “Thanks. That’s great. Really!”

He shook her hand off his arm. “You’re welcome, but remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You said that we both want the same thing.”

“We do.”

“And that’s what?”

Alex swallowed hard. “Making sure guilty people go to jail for a long time.”

“Don’t forget that,” he said.