Supreme Justice

Chapter Thirty-three

Jack Stamm was a bachelor whose passions were law and distance running. He had thinning wavy brown hair, kind blue eyes, and a ready smile that made voters forget that he was north of forty.

“Sit down,” Stamm said, motioning Monte Pike, Max Dietz, and Arnie Lasswell toward three chairs that had been set up on the other side of his desk.

“Monte,” the DA said, “we’ve had an interesting development in an old case. Fill him in, Arnie.”

Lasswell turned toward Pike. “A hiker discovered a dead man on a trail in Tryon Creek State Park.”

“I heard about that,” Pike said.

“The man had been shot somewhere else and dumped in the park along with a duffel bag that contained clothing and a handgun. Also in the duffel were four passports and other ID. They were all for the dead man but in different names. One of the names was John Finley.”

“John Finley, like the guy who rose from the grave?” Pike asked.

“The same,” the detective said.

“Holy shit!” Pike’s eyes were bright and a huge grin spread across his face.

“Yesterday, Ann Paulus, Sarah Woodruff’s neighbor, told me that she saw Finley going into Woodruff’s condo. She’s not a hundred percent certain of the day, but she’s pretty sure it was the evening he was killed. She also heard an argument and a loud bang-maybe two-from the apartment.

“This morning, Dick Frazier called me from the crime lab with some very interesting news. During Finley’s autopsy, the medical examiner found two hollow-nose, Smith & Wesson 140-gram bullets. She sent them over to the crime lab. Dick made a digital image of the bullets by putting them on a microscope and rotating it. Then he scanned the images into a computer and ran them through IBIS, the Integrated Ballistics Identification System.

“Three years ago, we investigated a gang- and drug-related murder. The victim was killed by a hollow-nose Smith and Wesson 140-gram bullet fired from a.38 Special. According to IBIS, the bullets that killed Finley and the bullet that killed the victim in the gang slaying were fired from the same gun. When I went down to the evidence room to retrieve the gun it wasn’t there.”

“Where is it?” Pike asked.

“That is a mystery. It was introduced during the trial, but we don’t know what happened after the conviction, although I now have a strong suspicion. According to the log sheet, the gun was returned to the evidence room after the trial, and there is no record of it being taken out after that. The verdict was appealed, so I thought the gun might still be in the court of appeals, but they don’t have it. What’s important here, though, is that Sarah Woodruff was one of the officers who worked on the gang slaying, and the log sheet showing that the gun was returned has her signature on it.”

“You think Woodruff logged in the gun but stole it?” Pike said.

Lasswell nodded.

“Then killed her boyfriend, again?” Pike asked gleefully.

“Right now, she’s our prime suspect,” Lasswell said.

“I’m already working the case with Arnie,” Dietz told Stamm. “I’d like to prosecute.”

“I know you would,” Jack Stamm said. “That’s why I called you in here. I wanted you to hear this from me, not secondhand. I’m giving this case to Monte.”

“But-” Dietz started.

Stamm held up his hand. “You want to redeem yourself. That’s natural. But you’re too emotional about Woodruff.”

Dietz cast a quick glance at Arnie Lasswell. Had the detective complained about him to Stamm?

“I want someone with an open mind handling the case,” Stamm continued. “Monte is going to be lead counsel, and you’re not going to be involved. I know that’s harsh, but I’ve given this a lot of thought, and that’s how it’s going to be.”

Anger darkened Dietz’s complexion. “If that’s your decision…?”

“It is,” Stamm said.

“I was preparing for a trial,” Dietz said. “If you don’t need me anymore…”

“Sure, Max,” Stamm said. “And don’t think my decision affects my high opinion of your work as a whole. I just don’t think you’re the best person for this case.”

Dietz was too furious to speak, so he just stood up and left the room.

Stamm turned his attention to Pike. “Tread carefully, Monte. This blew up in our faces the first time through. I do not want to find myself on national television apologizing to Sarah Woodruff again.”

Max Dietz stomped back to his office with his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched. A pulse beat in his temple. When he’d shut the door and slumped onto his chair, he closed his eyes and took long, deep breaths to get his emotions under control. He knew he had to do something if he didn’t want his career to unravel completely, and he couldn’t think in his present state.

When he was relatively calm, Dietz took stock of his situation. He had been in Stamm’s doghouse ever since the debacle that was the first Woodruff case. Convicting Sarah Woodruff of murder would save his career, but he wasn’t going to get that chance. Max had once been the heir apparent to Stamm’s throne. Now Pike was Stamm’s new golden boy. What could he do about that?

A sudden thought jolted Dietz upright in his chair. He knew something Pike and Arnie Lasswell didn’t. He knew about the China Sea. He hadn’t told anyone about Tom Oswald’s information. If anyone had gotten the bright idea that it was Brady material, he would have been forced to tell Mary Garrett what he knew, and Garrett would have argued to the jurors that John Finley was killed by drug dealers or spies.

But what if Finley had been killed by drug dealers or spies? What if Monte Pike indicted Sarah Woodruff and took her to trial, and it turned out that drug dealers or government assassins had killed Finley? Monte Pike wouldn’t look like such a hotshot then, would he? The little prick would suffer the same humiliation Dietz had suffered, and Max would be the smart one again.

Dietz pulled out a legal pad and started to jot down ideas. He needed information, and the only people who could provide information in a situation like this were insiders. Dietz wrote the names of contacts in the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s office, and… Dietz grinned.

Max had met Denise Blailock four years ago while they were working on a joint task force investigating Miguel Fuentes, the advance man for a Guatemalan cartel that was trying to make inroads into the local heroin trade. The DEA agent was pale and plain with washed-out brown hair, but she had a nice smile and a body that had attracted the DA’s attention the minute she’d entered the conference room.

Dietz’s second wife had walked out on him two months before he met Denise, and he hadn’t been laid since. When the task force meeting broke up, Blailock and Dietz had dined at a local steak house. During a dinner of T-bones and scotch, Dietz learned several important things about the federal agent. First, she was totally devoted to her career in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Second, as a result of a brief, savage, and regrettable teenage marriage, the only serious relationship she was interested in was the one she had with her job. Third, she was a strong proponent of recreational sex, in which the couple had engaged after dinner at a motel by the airport.

Dietz and Blailock had seen each other occasionally since their first tryst, the longest stretch being a week in Las Vegas the previous winter. Dietz dialed DEA headquarters and asked Blailock if she was doing anything after work. Over dinner, the DA filled in his friend on the downward path his career had taken since the Woodruff fiasco and his plan to restore his fortunes. Blailock told him that she’d never heard of the China Sea or the incident in Shelby, but she promised to poke around.