Judge and Jury Page 9

  “But my father didn’t object?”

  “He requested the assignment. He knew if I didn’t get a partner I would end up being transferred or turned into the telephone operator or something. He kept me on active duty.”

  “And it worked out?”

  “Fantastically. He was such a good man. So fair. Such a strong sense of justice. Could be a little self-righteous at times, but I didn’t care. Best partner I ever had. Not to diss the ones who came after. But he was the best.” She paused. “Which is why I’m so unhappy to see all the troubles you’ve been having.”

  “Oh...you know...”

  “I live in this city, son. You’ve been all over the news, over and over again. I could hardly miss it.” She smiled. “Glad you beat that murder rap. Looked like trumped-up baloney from the get-go. I could smell the stink through the tv set.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “Not surprised the bad guys came gunning for you. You’re just like your daddy in that respect.”

  He tilted his head. “Can you explain...?”

  “Looks to me like you’ve been doing the exact same thing he used to do. ‘Cept he did it on the streets and you do it in the courtroom.”

  He hadn’t thought about it like that.

  “But you both want the same things. Justice. No one getting railroaded. Looking out for the little guy.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “The apple did not fall far from the tree. It’s good to know there are still some people like you Pikes around.”

  “Well, thanks...”

  “Why didn’t you bring your kids with you?”

  “I...don’t actually have kids.”

  “What? A boy your age?” She pulled a face. “Are you—”

  “No, I’m not gay. Just...busy.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a fool, Dan. Kids are the hardest challenge in the world, but when you get a little older, they’re the only thing you’ll care about. And this world needs more people like you and your daddy. So get with it already. Start cranking out those kids.”

  “I’ll...see what I can do.”

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But I suspect this is not what you came to talk about. Why did you seek me out after all these years?”

  “A friend of mine suggested my dad’s partner would be a good source of information. She helped me score the police files on his case.”

  “Find much there?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. Think they gave you everything?”

  He shrugged. “I think they gave me everything they had. My friend was in a position to make sure of it. But I think the files had been expurgated. Probably years ago. I’ve filed a lawsuit—”

  “Read all about it.”

  “Good. That saves a lot of time. Were you...there? The night Jack Fisher got shot?”

  “Of course. Your dad drove. I was in the passenger seat.”

  “Did you...see it?”

  “No. Oddly enough, I was looking at the twenty-two gangsters shooting at me, not the two cops guarding our rear flank. But I heard the shot. And I saw Jack fall.”

  “So you don’t know who shot him.”

  She craned her neck. “I know what it looked like, son.”

  He thought as much. That’s why he didn’t notice her for a deposition. He didn’t want to record any unhelpful testimony that might not otherwise surface. “Tell me what you saw. Or heard. Or experienced.”

  “I’m not going to be much help to you. I was otherwise engaged, trying to avoid dying in a painful rapid-fire hail of bullets. I heard a gunshot behind me. Sounded like it came from where your father was. I’m pretty sure ballistics later traced the bullet to his gun, but you might check that.”

  “I will.”

  “I heard Jack shout. Heard him fall. Assumed one and one made two, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure.” But in his experience, the mathematics of crime could often be deceptive. “Anything else you can contribute?”

  “That helps you?”

  “Either way. Better to hear it now than be surprised at trial.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but there was some serious bad blood between your papa and Jack Fisher.”

  “I’ve been told that my mother...was previously married to Fisher.”

  “Right. And now both husbands were working together on the same police force. Talk about oil and water. Your daddy was a crusader. Jack, I’m sorry to say, was a bigot. He didn’t like anyone who didn’t look like him. He didn’t like women, except maybe in bed. He was brutal, cruel, and tended to draw his weapon first and ask questions later.”

  “I’m amazed my mother never mentioned her previous marriage.”

  “I’m not surprised. It was a bad mistake and she probably preferred to sweep it under the rug. The marriage to Jack didn’t last long. Word was...”

  “He hit her?”

  “Yeah. Pretty bad, from what I hear. Slammed her head into the wall. Made her mouth bleed. Sent her to the emergency room twice. We didn’t have Sweeney Shelters back then, and sometimes women with no income of their own didn’t know what to do. But she eventually got away.”

  “And divorced him.”

  “And eventually married your dad. And was much happier...till...you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But your dad and Jack were constantly at loggerheads. Jack was the type who couldn’t let anything alone. He would made crappy comments. Shoving Ethan around or bumping into him on purpose. Making innuendoes about how he knew what his wife was like in bed, or that she liked him better in bed because he...you get the idea. I always thought they was headed for a showdown.” She looked down at the floor. “But I never suspected it would go down like it did.”

  “Do you know...” Dan wasn’t even sure how to phrase it. It all seemed so impossible. “Did my mother have any children? I mean, when she was married to Jack?”

  Beth thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. It’s been too long. Why?”

  “Oh, I just wondered. Did my parents didn’t have any children other than me? Maybe someone who didn’t survive?”

  “Never heard that either. But wouldn’t that be an easy thing to check? Public records and such?”

  “Maybe. I have someone working on that. Were you involved in the...aftermath of the shooting?”

  “Not much. Your father was suspended. I was reassigned. I was not asked to testify at the trial. They used that turncoat Ellison and kept everyone else on the sidelines.”

  “You didn’t believe Ellison?”

  “I didn’t know what to believe. But I didn’t think much of one officer testifying against another. We just don’t do that. There’s an unspoken code, you know? And why would he? Hell, even if it was true—if anyone ever asked for it, it was Jack. Just keep your mouth shut and let it be. I think someone got to Ellison. Made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, if you know what I mean.”

  He did. And he knew who the most likely suspect was, too.

  “I wanted to reach out to you, Dan, especially after I heard about your mom, but I didn’t want to overstep myself. It’s not like I was a family friend or anything.”

  “I understand. You shouldn’t feel guilty. I can tell you were a good friend to my dad.”

  “You know,” she said, obviously changing the subject, “we could use some volunteers out here on the weekends. Can’t afford more staff, but we get overrun with kids sometimes.”

  He blinked. “And you think I’d be a good candidate?”

  “Why not? I read that you were some kind of gourmet chef. You could help out in the BellaBlaze kitchen.”

  “Sorry. I’ve never worked with clay.”

  “All the better. You can tell them about real cooking. Nutrition. Balanced diets. Building good eating habits.”

  “I’m more of an outdoors person.”

  “Give it a try. You might find you like it. Kids can be amazing.”

  “W
ell...I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “You know, Dan, if you’ve learn anything from this whole sorry business, it should be about how precious life really is. And how fleeting.” She looked out into the museum. “That’s why I started working out here. My kids are grown and they moved away, and I missed having young people around. You got to slow down every now and again and sprinkle a little joy into your life.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But—”

  He stopped short. He was gazing toward the kitchen...

  And saw someone just beyond it suddenly duck out of sight.

  He took a closer look. Whoever had been there before was gone.

  Was he being watched? Followed?

  He passed Beth his card. “If you think of anything else that might help, please let me know.”

  “I will. Good to finally meet you. Keep up the good work.”

  He made his way out of the museum and back to his car, looking every which way at once.

  What was going on here? Had Sweeney decided to engage in some unauthorized discovery by having him followed? Or had the cartel decided they needed to take out the attorney who kept interfering with their operations?

  He started the car and blazed down the road as fast as he could manage. Drove all the way home with the top up. He tried to tell himself it was the rumble of the engine making his arms vibrate, but deep down, he knew that wasn’t it at all.

  Chapter 13

  Garrett sometimes felt like the least appreciated member of this team. Sure, he was low profile. Some of that was deliberate. One of the aspects of being a prosecutor he had liked least was that he seemed to always be on the front lines, getting attention he didn’t want that invariably made his job harder to do.

  He was better at the computer terminal than he had ever been in the courtroom, where theatrics and strategy seemed to trump research and evidence too much of the time. He preferred his current role as chief research hound—and acerbic commentator on whatever Dan was doing at the moment. He never asked for that role, either, but the world worked best when there was a system of checks and balances in place. Someone had to play devil’s advocate. Or to put it in the common parlance, someone had to call Dan on his BS. He liked Dan, but the man had blind spots.

  Sadly, their current case was all about Dan’s blind spots, which was why he was currently in his upstairs office laying new skidmarks on the information highway. The idea of baiting Sweeney, then suing him for slander was clever, ingenious even—but fraught with danger and unlikely to produce any result that completely satisfied anyone. Worse, it put a target on their backs. But Dan remained blind to all that, or if not blind, at the very least, undeterred. Worse, he was convinced Dan’s focus was all wrong.

  The most important clue The Captain dropped was the reference to Dan’s sister.

  Why would the man say such a thing? Just to taunt Dan? Like a kid on the playground—I know something you don’t know? No, there had to be more. How would this drug smuggler know anything about Dan’s family history? He must’ve heard someone talking about it, but why spill the beans as he was being taken into custody?

  Dan thought the man has slipped, that in his anger, The Captain had revealed something he shouldn’t. But Garrett had another theory. Was it possible that this dangling reference to an unknown sister was more than a taunt?

  Maybe it was a piece of cheese placed on the tripwire of a mousetrap.

  At any rate, he was going to look into it, while Dan was busy trying to win his case and exonerate his father. Once he knew the truth, he would decide what to do with it, which might or might not involve telling Dan. He was in a much better position to have perspective on this. And if he discovered this was dangerous, was a trap, he could bury it before it lured anyone to their doom.

  In Florida, most courthouse records were online, which made research almost too easy to be considered a skill. Public records confirmed much of what they had heard. Dan’s father, ethan Pike, married a woman named Alice who had been married previously to Jack Fisher—the man he would later be accused of murdering. Judging from some of the allegations in the divorce Petition and how long the action dragged along, it had been an acrimonious divorce—but then, weren’t they all? The Petition alluded to domestic violence without giving much in the way of details.

  All divorce petitions required a precise identification of the parties involved, as well as an identification of any children of the marriage. No children were mentioned.

  He would have to try someplace else if he wanted to know more.

  He heard someone sashay past in the corridor outside his office.

  “Jimmy!”

  His partner stopped and poked his head inside. He held half a sandwich. “You bellowed?”

  “Busy?”

  “Working on the brief for the Motion to Exclude. Needed to stretch my legs. Get some blood flowing.”

  “And heighten your blood sugar levels?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “A mid-afternoon PB&J is good for you. It’s brain food.”

  He doubted Jimmy’s physician would agree.

  “You must be on the trail of something important,” Jimmy said. “Something about Dan’s dad?”

  Now how did he know that? “Are you mirroring my computer?”

  Jimmy laughed and took another bite. “Maybe I’m just a mind reader. Maybe that phlegmatic façade of yours is more transparent than you realize.”

  “Or maybe you heard the voice of God in a burning bush, but I doubt it. How’d you know?”

  “There’s Rays game on today. Which”—He glanced at his phone—“started fourteen minutes ago.”

  Garrett slapped his desk. “Damn. I was planning to—” He stopped short. “Oh. That’s how you knew.”

  Jimmy tapped the side of his head. “Dan isn’t the only one with keen powers of observation.”

  Apparently not. “You still have a friend in the records department at DHS?”

  “I have friends every—”

  “Yes, but answer the question.”

  “I do have a contact there.”

  “Works from home or office?”

  “She works from home.”

  “Can you send her an email? Ask for a favor?”

  “Which would be?”

  “I don’t care. Anything that makes her enter the archived records. Ten years or older. After you’ve forwarded her email address to me.”

  “This sounds a little skeezy. Are you contemplating something inappropriate?”

  “It’s my opinion that all the records should be public. That’s why they’re called public records. As citizens, we have a constitutional right—”

  “Yadda yadda yadda. But answer the question.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Right.” He snarfed down the last bite of his sandwich. “I’ll forward the email address.”

  Garrett didn’t have to wait long. Once he received the email, he could ID Jimmy’s friend’s IP address. Once he had that, all he needed to do was to get into the DHS database, wait for that IP address to make its appearance, and follow it inside, mirroring the keystrokes to create a back door.

  Hacking in public records was astonishingly easy. Granted, he had major computer skills, but he wasn’t the only one who did. Given the importance of online data to modern society, you’d think there would be more protection. Government couldn’t keep pace with the continuing exponential increase in hacker skills.

  At first, he was disappointed. Just as the divorce petition had suggested, there was no child of the marriage between Alice and Jack. But he kept digging, following links, hopscotching around the records for that period, searching for connections.

  Until he found something. Bingo.

  The first problem was that the child was not “of the marriage.” The child was born before the marriage. Just barely, but before.

  The second problem was that the records had been erased.

  A lesser hacker might’ve missed this altogether, becaus
e someone had entered this database and deliberately expunged the birth certificate and everything relating to the child’s birth.

  A baby girl. So far he could tell, never even given a name. The certificate just read: BABY GIRL

  The trouble with putting things on a cloud storage system, of course, was that nothing ever completely disappeared. Despite someone’s best efforts to bury the birth certificate, he managed to find it.

  Dan did have a sister. Half-sister, or so it appeared. The certificate listed his mother as the baby’s mother, though this was several years before she married, divorced, remarried, and gave birth to Dan.

  And Dan knew nothing about it. Which meant that, despite everything that family had been through, no one had ever mentioned the girl to him. Not once.

  How was that even possible? No one was that good at keeping a secret. And even if his parents were, wouldn’t someone else know? A sibling, a grandparent, a best friend—someone?

  And why would anyone want to cover up the existence of a little girl anyway?

  He found no reference to this child anywhere else, though to be sure, his search was impacted severely by the fact that he didn’t have a name. The most logical conclusion would be that the baby did not survive. He found no parallel death certificate, but it was possible it had gone the same way as the birth certificate, except more effectively.

  What was the big secret?

  He didn’t know the answers and he had few clues to move forward, except maybe one. The birth certificate did have the names of the delivering doctor and the attending nurse. A quick search revealed that the nurse had died three years ago, but the doctor was still alive. Retired and in his early eighties, but alive.

  Is it possible he knew something about this? A major long shot—but when all you had were long shots, that was the trail you followed.

  Everything about this made his stomach hurt. Who would have the power to hide records, bury trails, erase a person from existence? What did they want so desperately to hide?