“Thought we needed to talk some more. I heard you tell that deputy that you had to be in court. Figured that’s where I’d find you.”
She panicked for a moment, worried that he’d seen her coming out of Judge West’s chambers, searching her memory, relieved that she didn’t have a mental picture of him in the hall.
“You went looking for me?”
“Best way I know to find somebody.”
He said it with a disarming grin. She knew who he was and what he was. She’d seen what he’d done-or what she suspected he’d done-to the Henderson family and heard how he’d threatened Bonnie. If she had to draw a picture of a nightmare, it would be a portrait of him. Yet there were moments like this when he gave a glimpse of humanity. She couldn’t tell whether it was real or a sociopath’s trick.
“What do you want to talk about? Did you change your mind about the plea bargain?”
His grin vanished. “I ain’t never gonna change my mind ’bout that shit.”
“Then what do you want to talk about?”
“I wanna make sure we unnerstan’ each other, you and me.”
“Understand about what?”
“What you gonna do.”
He’d rattled her, the way he’d appeared out of nowhere igniting a vision of him doing the same to Bonnie, only in the dark and for an unspeakable purpose. The image forced her to regain her composure and squelched any thought she might have had of reneging on her agreement with Judge West.
“I’m your lawyer, Dwayne. That’s what I do.”
“And you ain’t gonna tell nobody what I tell you. Not about Wilfred, not about nuthin’, no matter what I do.”
She looked up into his unforgiving eyes and realized that this moment was the next small step along the path she’d chosen. She could explain that the attorney-client privilege only went so far, that if he told her that he was going to commit a crime the privilege didn’t apply and she’d have to tell the police. Or not.
“That’s right. In fact, the more I know, the better I can do what I have to do. I’m like a priest. You can confess all your sins, even the ones you haven’t committed.”
He drew his head back. “Sins I ain’t committed?”
“Yes. Is there something on your mind, something you did or you’re going to do that I need to know about? Maybe something having to do with that promise you told me you had to keep?”
He came down to her step, clamping his hands on her shoulders, digging his fingers into her flesh, and leaned in, his mouth at her ear, his words clipped.
“That shit don’t concern you. Somethin’ goes down and I need you, I let you know. In the meantime, you keep your fuckin’ mouth shut ’bout my business.” She tried to turn away, but he grabbed her chin and forced her face back to his. “You a good lawyer. Don’t make me your last client. You feel me?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, sauntering the rest of the way down the stairs without looking back. Tremors raced through her as she watched him go. She pressed her arms against her sides, anchoring her body, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly when she stopped quivering.
She’d had her phone on silent while she was in the courthouse. She opened it, checking to see whether Bonnie had replied to her text. When she saw that Bonnie hadn’t responded, she started to dial her number but stopped when the phone rang. It was Tommy Bradshaw.
“I got your text. Tell your client that the deal is off the table-permanently,” he said. “And tell him that I’m going to make it my personal mission in life to nail his ass and watch him get the needle.”
Any other time on any other case, Bradshaw’s comments would have pissed her off. She’d have fired back, telling him to save his threats for someone who gave a shit. But not this time. Her battle wasn’t with Bradshaw.
“I’ll do that. Did you talk to Mitch Fowler about putting Rossi on Dwayne?”
Bradshaw cleared his throat, and when he answered, the fire had gone out of his voice. “Yeah, about that. Fowler says he needs Rossi on the investigation.”
“Jesus, Tommy! Doesn’t Fowler realize that Dwayne is part of the investigation?”
“Take it easy, Alex. Of course he does, but he wants Rossi tracking down leads and putting the case together, not babysitting Dwayne.”
“I’m not going to take it easy! What’s going to happen to Bonnie?”
“Nothing. When I told Fowler that Dwayne had threatened her, he agreed to have a patrol car go by your house at night. Sorry, but that’s the best I could do.”
She closed her phone without thanking him, convinced that the best he could do was nothing more than another way of saying the system sucked. All she could think of was Bonnie and what Dwayne had promised to do to her.
Her fear for Bonnie’s safety had wedged its way into her heart and mind alongside the still fresh horror from the slaughter of the Henderson family. As sickened and outraged as she was by their murders, there was nothing she could do to salvage their lives.
Not so with Bonnie. Bradshaw’s promise to send Dwayne to death row did little to reassure her when she thought about two things Judge West had told her. Nothing in life is guaranteed, even in his courtroom, and, if he was convicted, it would be ten years before Dwayne was executed. In an uncertain world, she was now certain of one thing. Ten years was too long to wait.
Chapter Twenty-One
Commander Mitch Fowler stood outside his office in the Homicide Unit addressing the detectives in all three squads. They had been on the Chapman and Henderson murders since Saturday, no one grabbing more than a few hours’ sleep each night.
Hank Rossi sat at one of the scarred and dented fifty-year-old metal desks, listening as Fowler summarized where the investigation stood, which Rossi knew was ass deep in bullshit. If it weren’t, they’d have solved both crimes and would be hungover from celebrating.
Rossi and Fowler had come through the academy together, Rossi itching for a life on the street catching bad guys, Fowler reaching for the next rung up the administrative ladder. Rossi forever looked like he’d either been up all night or slept in his clothes. Fowler was as clean, pressed, and starched as his dress uniform. They hadn’t gotten along at the academy, and nothing had changed since.
It was their mutual bad luck that found Fowler serving as Rossi’s boss. The lines between them were drawn when Fowler first took command of Homicide, coming down on Rossi after his hard-nosed tactics had landed another suspect in the ER.
“Banging heads isn’t the way the detectives under my command are going to do things,” he told Rossi.
“So what do you want me to do the next time some asshole comes at me with a knife? Kiss him?”
“All I’m saying is tone it down. Nobody else in Homicide gets in as many scrapes as you do.”
“And nobody else closes as many cases as I do, so what’s your problem, Commander?”
Fowler puffed up his chest. “This sort of thing reflects poorly on my leadership.”
“And that would be a joke if your leadership wasn’t so pathetic.”
Fowler’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. “It’s the chief. I have to take this call, but we aren’t finished.”
Rossi knew they were. He was too good at what he did for Fowler to do anything about the way he did it. Fowler admitted as much by continuing to assign Rossi to the heaviest cases.
It was nine o’clock, Monday morning. More than forty-eight hours had passed since the murders, and every detective in the room knew that the chances of solving either case, let alone both, dropped by as much as fifty percent when that window closed.
By now, anyone who knew something or thought they did would have calmed down, the loss of emotion putting distance between them and the crime, fear of retaliation eroding any lingering inclination to cooperate. That’s why many shootings on Kansas City’s east side were never solved.
“The neighborhood canvass was a bust,” Fowler said. “Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody knows anything.