Rossi sat back in his chair. Bonnie had set him up, only not in the way he had imagined, taking advantage of his cockiness, letting him think this was going to be his big breakthrough. But she had to know he wasn’t going to go away, which meant he still had a play to make.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Bonnie smacked her hand on the table. “Why not? Alex told me she can’t be retried even if she were guilty.”
“Then what do either of you have to be afraid of? Why not just tell me the truth?”
Bonnie paused, nodding. “What if we told you that you were right? What then? What would you do?”
It was a question Rossi had asked himself many times. The answer varied. Sometimes it was that he’d take it to the U.S. attorney’s office and the Missouri Bar Ethics Commission and let them sort it out. Other times, he wasn’t so certain, thinking just knowing he’d been right would be enough. That was before he suspected that something was going on between Alex and Judge West, raising the possibility that Alex could go to jail for obstruction of justice if nothing else.
“That depends on how much both of you tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what Alex has told you, but she may have done more than kill Dwayne Reed. She may have also obstructed justice in order to get acquitted. And, if she did, she can go to jail for that even if she can’t go to jail for murder.”
“You would destroy our lives for that?”
“It’s not me who would destroy your lives. It’s Alex and you, if you helped her in any way.”
Bonnie rose, went to the small desk in the kitchen, and took a sheet of paper from a drawer, reading from it.
“Marcus Ramsey. Julio Estevez. Rolando Chism. Frankie Meadows. I assume you recognize those names, Detective, since you killed each of them. Shot them to death, from what I understand.”
Rossi blanched. He knew those names by heart and couldn’t forget them if he tried. The better question was how Bonnie knew them.
“What’s your point? Each of those shootings was in the line of duty. And where did you get those names?”
“From a lawsuit.”
Rossi planted his hands on the table, leaning in at her. “What lawsuit?”
“The lawsuit that the families of those men are going to file against you and the police department and the city.”
“That’s not happening. Those incidents go back fifteen years. The statute of limitations ran a long time ago.”
“Except for Frankie Meadows. You gunned him down less than two years ago. His wife consulted a lawyer I recommended to her who thinks she’s got a pretty good case. Now, I don’t understand the law, but it has something to do with you and the department engaging in a persistent pattern of denying the civil rights of minorities through the use of excessive force and intimidation. All the men you killed were either black or Hispanic, but you knew that.”
“Every one of those shootings was investigated by Internal Affairs and the county prosecutor and each one was found to be justified.”
Bonnie pursed her lips. “Well, you know how some people are, Detective. They’re just never satisfied until things turn out the way they want them to. Especially when they suspect that you planted incriminating evidence to cover up what really happened.”
Rossi sat back. “So that’s what this is about. You’re trying to blackmail me with the threat of a bullshit lawsuit so I’ll lay off Alex.”
“Every night for the last year, Alex wakes up, sweating and shaking. The nightmares are always the same. Dwayne Reed coming after us. Raping us. Murdering us. And even when Alex kills him again and again in her dreams, it’s just as terrifying. I hold her and tell her everything is going to be all right, that she did the right thing, but it doesn’t do any good. Tell me, Detective, is it like that for you? Do you see those men in your nightmares? Is that why you spend so much time in bars at night drinking alone?”
Rossi stiffened, trying to keep a lid on his anger, knowing if he blew up, he’d only make things worse.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think I do. You see, I hired a private detective, a woman named Lucy Trent. She’s very good at what she does. She found out a lot about you and she found the families of the men you killed.”
“If you think you can scare me off, you don’t have any idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Actually, Detective, I think I do. I think I’m dealing with a fundamentally decent man who did his best under impossibly difficult circumstances and who genuinely regrets taking the lives of those men. If you were anyone else, you wouldn’t drink so much.”
Rossi threw up his hands. “Why do you think coming after me is going to change anything for Alex?”
“Maybe it won’t. But at least you’ll know what it’s like to spend your life defending yourself for having done what you knew was right.”
Rossi set his jaw. “Then have at it.”
He rose and turned to go.
“Before you leave, Detective, come over to the window and look out in my backyard for a minute. There’s something I want you to see.”
Bonnie opened the blinds. Rossi hesitated but joined her. Looking out, he saw four women, three of them black, one Hispanic, along with a dozen others ranging from newborns to young adults. They were on the patio, a few talking in hushed tones, most of them silent.
“Who are they?”
“Those are your widows and their children and their grandchildren. The men you killed were drug dealers and thugs, no better or worse than Dwayne Reed. Maybe their wives and children knew all about them and maybe they didn’t. Either way, they haven’t forgotten that you killed their husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They want justice and peace. Go talk to them. Tell them that they’re wrong. Tell them that you have no regrets. Tell them that the men they loved got what they deserved.”
Rossi stared at them, swallowing hard. He looked at Bonnie.
“I was exonerated.”
“And so was Alex.”
Bonnie waited until Rossi drove away before opening the door to the patio.
“I want to thank you for coming over this afternoon. It’s so nice to get together outside of the hospital and see how all the kids are doing. The pizzas will be here in about twenty minutes. Who wants a soda?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Alex drifted to the back of the courtroom, tuning out Judge Steele’s eulogy for Robin, focusing instead on their brief conversation. He’d been every bit as charming as she had imagined him until she mentioned Joanie Sutherland’s name and the light went out of his eyes. There had to be more behind his reaction than his decision years ago to put Joanie into a diversion program instead of sentencing her for shoplifting. He could have stayed in contact with her, using his position to take advantage of her only for her to turn the tables and blackmail him.
The friendship between Judge West and Judge Steele added another tantalizing element to her speculation. If Steele had killed Joanie, he’d have been ecstatic when Jared Bell was arrested for her murder. He might have talked to West about the case, nudging him to get the right public defender appointed to represent Bell. She discounted that possibility because Robin assigned the cases, not Judge West, leaving her to wonder whether West had somehow pressured Robin to assign Jared’s case to her. She decided that while there were too many moving parts for that to have happened, she had to dig deeper into the relationship between Judge Steele and Joanie.
Alex left the memorial for Robin, brooding about what Bonnie had said, that she didn’t have to go through this alone and that no matter what happened, Bonnie would be there. It was the kind of promise that lovers often made but less often kept because what ended up happening was more awful than either could have imagined. But she wanted to believe that Bonnie was different, that they were different, and that together they were stronger than either could be on her own.