First Offense, page 20
CHAPTER
33
Dani jumped out of bed as soon as she awakened, even though she normally liked to sleep in Sunday mornings. She threw on her robe and slipped into her slippers, then padded out the front door. She smiled when she saw the New York Times in her driveway, quickly retrieved it, and brought it upstairs to her bedroom, where Doug was just rousing himself from sleep.
“You have it already?” he asked.
“Yep.” Dani tore off the plastic wrap around the newspaper, then thumbed through it to find the Science section. There it was, on the front page. She began to read it aloud to Doug. “Westchester special-needs school teaches children with extra-special talents.” She showed Doug the picture of Jonah that accompanied the story, then read quietly to herself. When she finished, she read the section about Jonah to Doug.
“At the age of thirteen, Jonah Trumball was the youngest composer to have a symphony performed by the Westchester Philharmonic. The conductor of that orchestra hailed the young Mr. Trumball as a ‘musical genius,’ who has created a ‘lush, evocative piece that will stand the test of time.’ Now fourteen, Jonah continues to compose sophisticated music despite having difficulty performing the most basic mathematical functions learned by elementary-school children.
“Jonah is one of several musically talented students at the Carlton School. Another—” Dani stopped reading and looked up. “That’s it about Jonah. It goes on to describe Lucy’s operatic voice and Eddie’s piano playing.”
“I think it’s a fine article. Jonah will be pleased.”
“I suppose I can be forgiven if I violate the copyright laws by making dozens of copies of the article.”
Doug laughed. “Yes. I think for once you can be a proud mother instead of a crusading lawyer.”
Back at work on Monday, Dani felt nothing like a crusading lawyer. Sitting on her desk when she arrived at the office were the results of a DNA test run on one of her clients. It matched the DNA of the victim. It happened once in a while. A client who’d convinced Dani of his innocence turned out to be guilty. She knew she should take it in stride. No one in the office had a perfect record of predicting innocence. Her record, in fact, was the best. Still, it always rankled her when her judgment was found to be wrong. A guilty person had taken up the time she could have spent working to free an innocent person. She prepared a letter to send to the guilty client, advising him of the DNA results, then took out her folder of inmate letters and began the search for her next client.
As she reread each file, her thoughts kept turning back to Frankie Bishop. He wasn’t even an official client of HIPP, yet even if he hadn’t been Bruce’s nephew, she’d have felt she had to see his case through to the end. She’d never helped a child before. Although there were young men and even some women who’d entered prison while still in their teens, by the time HIPP became involved in trying to overturn their convictions, they were long past childhood. Frankie was still a boy, a young boy, and it broke her heart whenever she thought of the ordeal he’d been through. Dani wondered if it was her maternal instinct in play, made more acute because of the baby growing inside her.
She pushed aside the folders on her desk and called Noah Jacobs. “I’m just checking in for a status report on your pedophile case,” she said when he answered the phone.
“Good news for us, bad news for you. I think we’ll have it wrapped up in a week.”
“Oh.” Dani felt a heaviness throughout her body. As she chewed at her lips, all she could think was that it wasn’t enough time. Not nearly enough.
“Hollander’s given us a wealth of information,” Jacobs continued. “We’ve already rescued more than sixty kids, and arrested nine more procurers and twelve pimps. And there’s more to come. This is the biggest child-trafficking case the office has handled since I’ve been here.”
“So you won’t need Frankie’s testimony?”
“Looks like it. It could all fall apart next week when the paperwork is signed, but I doubt it. Everything Hollander’s told us so far has panned out, so he’ll get his deal.”
“And what is the deal for him?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Probably not, but tell me, anyway.”
“Twelve years in a minimum-security prison.”
No, Dani didn’t like that at all. This scum of the earth who had destroyed the childhoods of so many, who’d taken their souls if not their lives, didn’t deserve to ever come out of prison. Still, she understood that sometimes a bad deal for the prosecution was the lesser evil. As reprehensible as it was to her, saving so many children—if they weren’t already too damaged to be saved—was more important than one man.
“If you can, would you give me two days’ notice before Frankie is cut loose as a witness?”
“Sure.”
After ending the call, Dani found Tommy at his desk. “Anything on the judge?”
Tommy shook his head. “I’m keeping my search legit—just like you want—and I can’t find any money trail.”
Dani’s legs felt like weights were attached as she walked back to her office. Maybe it won’t be terrible for Frankie if he’s sent back to Eldridge. As far as they know, he’s kept quiet about what goes on inside. Maybe that’s good enough for them. Somehow, thinking it might be okay didn’t make her feel any better.
She placed the inmate folders back on the center of her desk. Focus on work. Don’t think about Frankie. She managed to get a few productive hours in before her assistant buzzed and told her Josh Cosgrove was on the phone.
“Please, tell me you found something,” Dani said.
“Maybe. We need to dig further to find the source, but we turned up a deposit of $545,000 in a brokerage account held jointly by the judge and his wife, from two and a half years ago.”
The heaviness that had weighted Dani’s body down all morning and into the afternoon began to lift. “That must be it! He started sending all the kids before him to ML Juvenile Services just shy of three years ago. It has to be a payment from Wilcox.”
“Well, we don’t know that for sure yet. But it’s out of character with all his other accounts, so I thought you’d want to know.”
“Keep digging, Josh. I bet that’s just the first. Maybe he got smarter after that one and figured out better places to hide the money.”
“Don’t worry, Dani. We’ll keep going on this.”
“Frankie only has a week.”
There was silence on the line for a moment, then Dani heard a deep sigh. “I expect we’ll need more time. I’m sorry.”
As Josh hung up, Dani could feel the heaviness return to her body.
CHAPTER
34
“I have a new number,” Howard Humphrey told Roger Wilcox. “Same area code. 555-4732.”
“Why? You just got the last burner three weeks ago.”
“It got wet. Stopped working.” Humphrey had no intention of telling Wilcox the real reason. No point in getting him more agitated over the Bishop boy. He was already over the edge, as far as Humphrey was concerned.
“I’m glad you called,” Wilcox said. “You’re down on referrals this month.”
“Can’t be helped. I won’t send you a kid without evidence of wrongdoing.”
“We have a deal.”
“I’m not a magician.”
“Magician or not, it’s up to you to get me the kids. I don’t care how—just do it.”
Humphrey hung up and sat back in his chair. He looked around his study, the walls covered with plaques he’d received for good works. He’d dedicated his life to public service, choosing that path instead of the more lucrative route of a private law practice. But, along the way he’d made a deal with a devil, and like all such deals, it could only end in ruin for him.
Roger Wilcox marched into the front doors of Eldridge Academy and barked to the guard at the reception desk, “Tell Cummings that Wilcox is here.”
Almost immediately, another guard appeared to bring him to the warden’s office. Cummings was standing at his desk when Wilcox strode in.
“Roger, I wasn’t expecting you. Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m not here on a social visit. I’ve gotten word that the Bishop kid won’t be needed as a witness soon. That means he’ll be coming back here. I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“As soon as he arrives, he’ll be brought into my office. I’ll reinforce the message already given him. I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”
“You’re not being paid to think. I do that. Your job is to carry out my instructions.”
“He’s been gone months and hasn’t said a word.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If he had, wouldn’t it have come out already?”
That was the easy answer, Wilcox knew. Assume silence meant everything was good. But too often he’d seen nonchalance bite him in the back. Maybe the kid was just waiting for the right time. Maybe once the threat of returning to Eldridge was gone, when he’d finished his sentence, he’d start squealing. He’d seen just that happen before, and it had cost him dearly in lost contracts, lost money. Now even more was at stake. He’d gotten word from a well-paid source that the Justice Department was investigating him for abuses within his prisons. If they learned of that boy’s death at the hands of his guard, it could be the final straw to shut him down completely. He wouldn’t let that happen.
“I want an example made of him,” Wilcox said.
“We’ve already done that.”
“A stronger example than just beating him up.”
“What are you suggesting?”
Wilcox stared into Cummings’s eyes, then leaned forward. “You like this job?”
“Sure.”
“You damn well know what I want.”
Cummings nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Hah! You really think I’d leave this to you? So far, you’ve botched everything. If you hadn’t let the other boy die, we wouldn’t have this problem. No, you’re going to sit here with me, and we’re going to figure out how to get to this boy.”
Thirty minutes later, a plan in place, Wilcox stood up and turned to leave. As he reached the door, he turned back to Cummings. “Always nice to see you, Joe. Have a good day.”
Frankie’s nightmares had finally begun to subside. At first, he’d awakened screaming several times each night. Images of Mark and Daisy filled his head. Not John. He’d been frightened when John had him in the motel, but not the way he’d been with Mark. Mark oozed malevolence. Maybe it was because of what he knew Mark did to Daisy, maybe because of what he feared the man Mark sold him to would do to him. It hadn’t mattered that he was safe now. That Mark was locked up and couldn’t reach him.
The psychologist sent by the feds had helped him. With her guidance, he began to recognize when he was dreaming and quiet his fear. Now he only occasionally saw Mark’s face during the deepest part of the night. He still dreamed of Daisy, though. In his dreams, she was always crying, her frail arms locked around her chest. He hoped her parents were helping her, like his mother was helping him, although he worried that wasn’t the case. He knew she was in a safe house, also, and had asked the FBI agent guarding his house if he could call her, but had been told no.
He knew he’d be going back to Eldridge. Dani had told him that he wouldn’t need to testify against Mark and John at a trial. He was relieved he wouldn’t see them again, but scared of what he’d find when he was locked up again. She said she’d know two days before it happened, and that she would fly once more to Florida and speak to the warden. Warn him against Frankie getting hurt again. She said she could do that without letting Big Joe know Frankie had told her the truth. She said he’d be safe. He hoped she was right.
Three days later, Dani got the phone call she’d dreaded.
“It’s your two-day warning,” Cosgrove said.
“Any luck with a money trail?”
“Just the opposite. The large deposit in the brokerage account? It came from an inheritance from his wife’s mother.”
“Damn.”
“We did uncover something interesting, though. Right after the hearing on returning Frankie to Eldridge ended, Humphrey made a phone call to Wilcox.”
“That is interesting. Although Humphrey could probably come up with a reason why he needed to speak to him that’s legit. After all, he sends a lot of kids to his detention centers.”
“True. Except he called Wilcox on a burner phone, and we were able to get a trace on the number assigned to it. A judge doesn’t need to use that kind of phone to conduct legitimate business, especially when the call was made while he was still in the courthouse, and when he has a regular phone.”
“How’d you discover it if it’s a burner?”
“We saw from his credit-card history that his wife made a large purchase at a particular Verizon store, so we checked with that store. She charged an iPhone and a prepaid cell phone. But here’s the thing: the store said that every other month she comes in and pays cash for a prepaid phone. So my guess is she slipped up this month.”
“They have a scheme going on. I just know it. Humphrey has to be getting money from Wilcox.”
“There’s one other thing. With the case near the finish line, Jacobs wanted to tie up any loose ends. Someone had ordered an attempted assassination of Frankie.”
“What?”
“Our agents apprehended a hit man near the safe house the night Frankie and Jessica returned from the hearing. They subdued him before he had a chance to do any harm, but he already had a rifle in his hand and was in a position to shoot.”
Dani was gripping the phone so tightly, it seemed possible she would crush it. The baby had begun kicking, as though she could feel her mother’s anger. “How could you not tell me this?”
“At first, the agents thought Hollander had sent him. The would-be assassin wouldn’t talk, but it just made sense that Hollander would try to shut Frankie up. We moved Frankie and Jessica to a new house as a precaution, in case he sent someone new. A few days after the assassin was apprehended, Hollander finally broke down and started spilling. That made sense, too—he’d gotten word that the assassin had failed, so realized his best option was to cut a deal.”
“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
“Yeah. A big one. Right before finalizing the agreement with Hollander, Jacobs offered to take a full year off the sentence if he admitted to hiring the assassin. Hollander swore up and down it wasn’t him. And Jacobs now believes him.”
“But, if not Hollander, then . . . oh, my God!”
“Yeah. We’re now thinking it might have been Wilcox. Or Humphrey. Or both.”
Dani felt like her heart was going to stop. “That must be what Humphrey’s phone call to Wilcox was about. Frankie can’t go back there. They’re going to kill him!”
“I don’t know what to tell you. We can’t keep him. We have no proof Wilcox was involved.”
“Just one extra day. Can you do that?”
“Yes. If you think it’ll help.”
“It will.” Dani didn’t know what she’d do with that time, but hoped that she’d think of something to help Frankie. She just had to. But first, she needed to alert Jessica. As much as she dreaded telling her, Dani knew she must. She placed a call to Jessica’s cell phone, and when it was answered, Dani said, “I have bad news.”
Jessica’s hands were shaking when she got off the phone. Would their nightmare never end? If Frankie were sent back to Eldridge, she was certain he wouldn’t leave alive. And if Dani was successful in keeping him at home? Then no safe house. No FBI guard. No one to watch over him.
She needed Alex. He would thwart an attacker. He was fearless. What would he do? What would he want me to do? And then it hit her. “You’re never alone,” he’d told her each time he was deployed in a combat zone. “My fellow officers, the men in my battalion, they’re my family, and they’ll treat you and the boys like their own family.” Maybe Alex hadn’t come home, but many of his friends had. She picked up the phone and called Peter Burke, a captain who’d served under Alex and the only one she knew who lived in Florida. By the time she finished the call, her hands had stopped shaking. Now she prayed silently, let Dani be successful.
CHAPTER
35
Two days later, Dani was back at the circuit court in Cypress County, sitting in Judge Humphrey’s antechamber. She’d gotten there promptly at nine a.m. and was waiting for him to arrive. The room’s decor was spartan—just his assistant’s desk and four chairs against one wall. The large, round clock on the wall opposite Dani read 9:12. The judge still hadn’t arrived.
Five minutes later, he opened the door with a cheery “Good morning” to his assistant. His smile immediately dimmed when he saw Dani.
“Did we have an appointment, Ms. Trumball?”
“No, but I’m hoping you can spare me five minutes.”
“I have a very busy calendar.”
“I promise it’ll be quick. It’s important.”
Humphrey nodded to her, and she followed him into his chambers. Like most judge’s chambers, it was furnished with fine wood furniture and plush seating. Humphrey settled himself behind his desk, then pointed to a chair for Dani to sit. Dani sat, then opened up her briefcase and removed a petition.
