Stone Cold

Chapter Eight

Police Headquarters was located at Eleventh and Locust in a square-cut limestone building erected as part of the same Depression-era public works project that had produced the courthouse. It was one block from Alex’s office on Oak.

A desk sergeant looked up from his newspaper long enough to grunt and point her to the stairs leading to the second floor, home to the Homicide Unit. Homicide was organized into three squads, 1010, 1020, and 1030, all sharing the same cramped bullpen, battered desks shoved against one another and stacked with open cases, some of them hot, some of them cold.

Detective Hank Rossi was waiting for her, nursing a cup of coffee, the only one in the bullpen. Tall, rangy, and dark eyed, he was rumored to have a drinking problem. Whether it was true or not, he kept up a perpetual head of steam. In twenty years as a homicide detective, he’d skated past accusations that he’d planted evidence and strong-armed confessions. Quick to use his gun, he’d been involved in more shootings than most detectives over their entire careers, killing four suspects and wounding six others, the prosecuting attorney ruling that each shooting was justified. Criminals were his least favorite people, but defense counsel ran a close second, a status he relished making clear.

“You’re looking particularly rugged this morning, Counselor,” Rossi said. “Must drive the ladies crazy.”

Alex neither hid nor broadcast that she was gay and didn’t care who knew or didn’t know. She just lived her life. She didn’t keep her hair short, choose clothes that were more masculine than feminine, and avoid wearing makeup as a gay badge of courage. That’s what she liked, plain and simple, but it made her an easy target for men like Rossi, who were okay with lesbians only as long as they could watch them have sex in a porn movie. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of letting him piss her off.

“Something to think about the next time you polish your pistol. Where’s my client?”

“Interrogation two.”

“He’s only been out twelve hours. Who’s he supposed to have killed?”

“Jermaine Jones,” he said, pointing to a file on his desk bearing the Cold Case stamp.

“A cold case? You’re joking. How cold is it?”

“It’s got some hair on it. Jones was a drug dealer in Reed’s neighborhood. They came up together. Could be they had a beef, things got out of hand.”

Alex shook her head. “Is that all you’ve got? I expected more out of you, like maybe some newly discovered evidence you just planted or a confession you beat out of him.”

Rossi shrugged. “It’s early in the investigation. Could be something will turn up.”

“Which means you don’t have anything to hold him on and you’re just jerking him around because you’re pissed off that he was acquitted. You ought to be harassing the jury instead of my client.”

Rossi stood and squared his shoulders, crowding her. “Wilfred Donaire was my case. I worked it from day one. I know more about it than you could ever hope to know, and I know that your client is guilty. He’s got no business being back on the street.”

Alex stood her ground. “So the jury hurt your feelings. He was acquitted. Get over it. It’s still an open case. Pretend you’re O.J. and find the real killer. Arresting Dwayne on a bogus murder charge you know you can’t make stick isn’t going to change that.”

“Maybe not, but it’ll send him a message.”

“Yeah. What message? That cops like you can harass him whenever they feel like it? I think he’s gotten that message his whole life.”

“The message is that this isn’t over. That I’m going to be on him from now until his luck runs out, and when it does, I’m going to be right there to take him down.”

“Well, bully for you, Dirty Harry. In the meantime, I suggest you cut him loose before I make you famous.”

“Famous? How are you going to make me famous?”

“I’ll start by calling a press conference on the courthouse steps to announce the lawsuit I’m filing against you for violating my client’s civil rights and anything else I can think of.”

Rossi glared at her before walking away, muttering, “Goddamn defense whores.”

He returned a moment later, shoving Dwayne Reed ahead of him, Dwayne stumbling and sporting a rising welt under his left eye to go along with a split lip.

“What happened to you?” Alex asked him.

Dwayne’s face hardened. “Slipped and fell takin’ a piss.”

Alex looked at Rossi, raised eyebrows asking the obvious question.

“Like he said,” Rossi answered, “he slipped and fell. Happens all the time.”

“I bet it does. Let’s get out of here, Dwayne, before you have another accident.”

Alex waited until they were on the street. “I can file a complaint against Rossi, but it will be his word against yours.”

Dwayne shook his head. “It between him and me.”

Alex knew that. She also knew that Dwayne believed that relying on the system to protect him would make him a chump and that he would get his payback in his own way and in his own time.

“Don’t be stupid, Dwayne. You got off this time. Next time you may not be so lucky.”

He tapped her on the arm. “Girl, luck got nuthin’ to do wit’ it. I had you. That’s all I needed. I do it again, I give you a call, for real.”

Alex’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean if you do it again? Do what?”

“What needs doin’.”

She never asked her clients if they were guilty, because that question depended as much on the facts as on the law. She did ask them what happened, letting them tell her as much or as little as they chose, knowing that they would lie until there was an advantage to telling the truth.

Dwayne had denied killing Wilfred Donaire from the moment she met him, never wavering even though he didn’t have an alibi. But now she had to break her rule and ask Dwayne the ultimate question.

“Are you telling me that you murdered Wilfred Donaire?”

He grinned. “Jury say I didn’t do it. That good enough for me, and I know all about that double jeopardy and attorney-client privilege shit. No way they can come back on me now, and no way you can tell nobody nuthin’. So here’s what’s what. Nigger disrespected me. Can’t let that shit slide.”

Alex struggled with her clients’ guilt or innocence in every case, compartmentalizing her judgment because it didn’t matter and would only make her job harder if she believed they were guilty. She’d struggled even more with Dwayne’s case, her gut convincing her that he was guilty when the evidence couldn’t. His confession left her holding on to a parking meter, breathless, faint, and speechless.

“Hey,” Dwayne said. “Don’t be like that. You good at your job, damn good. You saved my ass. I owe you for that. So long as you don’t tell nobody nuthin’, we’re cool. You tell anybody what I say, well, then, that be a serious muthafuckin’ problem. You feel me?”

He didn’t wait for a response, knowing that the question was more important than the answer. She watched him walk away, disappearing around the corner. When he was gone, she collapsed to her knees, hands braced on the curb, and threw up in the street.

From behind, she felt a hand on her shoulder steadying her and then helping her up. It was Rossi.

“You all right?” he asked.

Alex wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Just a little wobbly. Must have been something I ate.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it. What happened? Did Dwayne find a conscience and confess, or was he just gloating that you got his guilty ass off?”

She pulled away from his supporting hand, straightening. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Tell you the truth, it would make me sick too. But I’m willing to take that chance. Tell me what he said.”

“Did you forget about attorney-client privilege?”

“Fuck that, Counselor. We’re out here on the street, middle of the night, not another soul in sight. Can’t get much more off the record than that. Besides, we can’t charge him again even if he stood on the courthouse steps and shouted for all the world to hear that he murdered Wilfred Donaire.”

“That’s not what the jury found. Why do you think Kyrie Chapman forced Jameer Henderson to testify against Dwayne?”

“Who knows? And it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t prove Dwayne didn’t do it,” Rossi said.

“I didn’t have to prove Dwayne was innocent. Only that there was reasonable doubt.”

“I was there for your closing argument. You said Kyrie killed Wilfred and used Jameer Henderson to lay it off on Dwayne.”

“And the jury bought it.”

“And it’s a load of crap. It’s more likely that Jameer was telling the truth about Dwayne. Kyrie found out what Jameer knew and made him testify against Dwayne.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Who the fuck knows? Maybe he had a beef with him and maybe it was just his idea of fun.”

“Except Jameer said Kyrie told him what to say, not the other way around.”

Rossi shrugged. “Like I said. It doesn’t change a thing for me. Dwayne was guilty, and if you didn’t know it before the jury verdict, you sure as hell know it now.”

Alex took a deep breath, her stomach still churning. “You’ll never hear that from me.”

Rossi smiled. “I already did. Your statement is lying there in the street. ” He touched his finger to his forehead, giving her a mini-salute. “Have a nice day, Counselor.”