“John Connolly was the only one caught. He was the only one prosecuted. He was the only one who went to jail. You think he was the only one involved? How likely is that? He was involved, but no one else in the entire office could figure it out in more than a decade? C’mon.”
“You really think Hewitt’s mobbed up?” Stone whistled doubtfully. “I ran a check on him; he’s got a solid rep, even with our people. He doesn’t seem like the type.”
Sanchez looked back up the driveway. Hewitt was nearly to the end of it now. The flashlights had been turned off as the sun came up, and the property had lost the otherworldly feeling to it. Now the dead men outside had the full edge of reality to them. “I don’t know. I’m just saying there’s something bad going on here, and I don’t trust them.” She looked up at Stone. “Now, are you ready to deal with the mess inside?”
Stone nodded.
“Good. Let’s get this done.” She walked back into the building.
As Stone followed her, he took one last look down the driveway. Hewitt had disappeared now. That was for the best, he thought. Given Sanchez’s opinions, they would never be able to be productive as long as he was there. Still, in his heart, Stone couldn’t accept the notion that Hewitt and the FBI might be involved.
Chapter Seventeen
The morning of Devon ’s arraignment, Finn arrived at the office later than usual. He’d dropped Sally off at school, and by the time he got back to Charlestown, it was nearly nine o’clock. Kozlowski was already cloistered away in his back office when Finn pushed open the door to the brownstone. Lissa was working at her desk. She looked up to say a quick hello and then put her nose back into her computer screen.
Finn had a couple of hours before he had to appear with Devon, and he planned to use the time effectively. He had a number of briefs and motions in other cases he had been neglecting, and he knew that if he didn’t get to them soon, he’d start missing deadlines. Tardiness was the only true cardinal sin in the judicial system. You could be a terrible lawyer in other respects-you could mis-cite precedent and fudge facts; lack logic and structure in your arguments; have trouble putting together a competent, grammatical English sentence-and you’d still receive a fair and reasonable hearing. But heaven help the lawyer who missed a deadline. For that transgression, the weight of the legal system would land with full force upon the lawyer’s client.
Fortunately, Finn liked writing. Since leaving the world of the mega-firm, he no longer had endless amounts of time to spend polishing his written work, but he still had a good feel for telling his clients’ stories. His approach was simple: state relevant facts and apply the appropriate legal principles from the case law in as few words as possible. Judges appreciated his brevity.
He was shortening a brief in a civil case for one of the few corporate clients he had when the phone rang. He picked it up. “Finn here,” he said.
“Mr. Finn, this is Detective Stone.”
“Detective,” Finn replied. “What can I do for you?” He tapped away at the keyboard as he spoke, rushing to complete the brief so that he could get it filed on time.
“We’d like you to come down to the station today to have a talk.”
“We?” Finn was deleting a redundant paragraph and only half paying attention.
“Me and my partner. Any chance you could make it this morning?”
“Today’s a little busy for me,” Finn said honestly. “What’s this about?”
“It’s about Eddie Ballick. We understand you talked to him yesterday.”
“I did.”
“We’d like to know what about.”
Finn was wrapping up the conclusion in his brief, typing out the last few words. “I can’t really talk about that, Detective. I was doing work for a client.”
“We’d still like you to come down.”
Finn finished the last sentence. He scrolled to the top of the document and started reading it through to make sure it made sense. “I’m very busy today,” he said. “Why are you interested in my conversation with Ballick?”
“Because he was murdered last night.”
Finn stopped reading the brief. He blinked hard and looked at the phone in his hand. A million questions ran through his head. He didn’t ask any of them; all he managed to get out of his mouth was a feeble, “What?”
“He was murdered, Mr. Finn,” Stone replied. “What time can we expect you at the station house?”
Finn hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. He looked over at Lissa, who had overheard his half of the conversation. “What was that all about?” she asked.
“That was about Eddie Ballick. He was murdered last night. Apparently he b-”
Lissa raised her hand to stop Finn. “Hold on,” she said. “No point in going through this twice.” She stood up and walked to the door at the back of the office, which led out to both a back door and to Kozlowski’s office. “Koz!” she yelled. “You need to get in here.” She walked back and sat down at her desk again.
A moment later, Kozlowski emerged. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“That was Detective Stone on the phone.”
“Stone? What did he want?”
“Ballick was murdered last night.”
Kozlowski stopped. He turned and looked at Finn. “That can’t be good.”
“No, I wouldn’t think. They found him early this morning. Four of his boys, too. Stone didn’t give me all the details, but from the sound of it, it wasn’t pretty.”
Kozlowski sat on the chair in front of Finn’s desk. “What are you going to do?”
“I put them off; told them I was too busy today, and that I’d get back to them as soon as I could. Devon ’s being arraigned this morning.”
“You think he’s caught up in all this?”
“If not, it seems like one hell of a coincidence. Either way, I want to have a long talk with Devon before I deal with the police. And that talk will be a lot easier to have once he’s out on bail.”
The courthouse was a twenty-story slab of gray concrete in Center Square, downtown. It was cut in an unadorned, utilitarian style that seemed calculated to betray the mechanical nature of the judicial system.
Finn parked in a nearby underground garage and entered the building, flashing his bar card at the door to bypass the line of civilians waiting to pass through the metal detectors. He went straight to the courtroom and inquired about Devon ’s whereabouts from the clerk. She told him his client was in transit, and that he wouldn’t have time to meet before the hearing. That was frustrating; he had much to discuss with Devon.
Finn took a seat at the back and watched the courtroom. It was packed with lawyers milling around, hustling in and out, shuffling stacks of court files. Clients dragged their feet and looked about with angry, distrustful eyes. Police officers strutted in and out through the swinging doors at the back. Justice was a messy process.
Arraignments are short affairs. They’re designed to advise defendants of all the charges against them, ensure that they have legal assistance, obtain initial pleas, and set bail if appropriate. In a few misdemeanor cases, plea agreements will have been worked out even before the arraignment, but in most serious matters an initial plea of not guilty is entered, and plea arrangements are reached through negotiations afterward.
On that day, the Honorable Myron Platt was presiding over the arraignments. Platt was in his mid-fifties, with a slight paunch and a receding hairline. He had been appointed a few years before in the final days of an outgoing gubernatorial administration as a reward to a loyal political hack. The bench was not the dream job he’d hoped for, and he let his boredom show. In most other respects, however, he was reasonable-even if that reason was primarily a by-product of disinterest.
Two assistant district attorneys sat at the prosecutors’ table, alternating on cases as they were brought up for preliminary dispositions. One was a young man Finn didn’t recognize who was probably less than two years out of law school. The other was a woman in her forties whose name was Kristin Kelley, against whom Finn had tried a number of cases in the past.