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“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? Where the hell did they go, Micah?” Zack was frantic. He’d just fallen asleep on perhaps the best night of his legal career when sleep was interrupted by a phone call. The Berea families were gone. The case, most likely, was gone with them. “Kidnapped?”
“It sure looks that way,” Micah dreaded.
“What are the chances they escaped?”
“No clue. There were at least six men, probably more outside. Escape is possible, I guess, but doubtful. We’ve got some footage from the security cameras, but it doesn’t show us what happened to the families,” Micah conceded.
“Text it to me,” Zack demanded. Two minutes later, his phone buzzed.
Zack studied video footage from a few hours ago. The screen split into three images—the lobby, the seventh-floor hallway, and the eighth-floor hallway. Micah had viewed it already, but for Zack, the whole thing was torture. Six armed men entered the lobby. In the eighth-floor video, two of the security men rushed into the hallway. Love and another man were left to guard the families.
The six assailants went up the stairs and were lost for a bit—Micah fast-forwarded the video. Four more men emerged from the seventh-floor decoy room. The elevator door opened, and a man got out, distracting the four guards. At the same time, six men burst out of the stairwell and stunned two of the guards with some kind of dart gun. The other two guards struggled with the seven men for a while but were completely outnumbered and outmaneuvered.
The assailants opened the room and found it empty. Immediately they split into three groups and headed for the stairs.
On eight, Micah led the families to the back stairway. They passed from view, and Micah turned off the tape.
“What happened next?” Zack demanded.
“We went out the back way and were ambushed by more of these guys. I took them down, but by the time I finished the last guy off, the families were nowhere to be seen. I don’t know if they escaped or got kidnapped,” Micah cringed
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! I’ve got the biggest trial of my life in a week, and my star witnesses are gone? Shit! Shit, shit, shit! What am I going to tell Jenny?”
“It’s all my fault,” Micah conceded. “I’ll tell her.”
“No, no, I’ll tell her, and, Micah, what more could you have done? You’ve been amazing, man. I’m sorry I got so pissed off.”
“You have a right to be pissed off, Zack. I blew it. I wish I knew how, though. I was so careful. I did everything right. God damn it! I promised those people! I looked them in the eyes and guaranteed their safety.”
“Let’s think this through,” Zack paused. “If they’ve got them, they’ll kill them or make them disappear. If they don’t have them, maybe John or Pat will contact us before trial.”
“No, they won’t,” Micah argued. “Why should they? I guaranteed their safety, and I fucked it all up. Why should they trust me? No, Zack, presume they aren’t coming.”
“Damn! We were so close. I could taste it!” Zack scoffed. “So, either way, they’re gone. That leaves me with the guilty plea, Phillip Jack, Rothenberg, the Tracey family, the Farmington cops, Costigan, Glimesh, and Foley. I’ll have to subpoena Foley. I can force him to admit to knowledge and the priors. I’ve got Bartholomew’s deposition. He took the Fifth for almost every question, but it will piss off any jury. Jurors will assume his guilt.”
“I thought that was a lock. I thought you were looking for priors to nail the church,” Micah presumed.
“You thought right, but first, I still have to prove the charged offenses occurred,” Zack explained. “Gerry pleaded guilty to Fourth Degree ‘touching’ only. It’s still possible, if I get a large verdict against Bartholomew, the church might negotiate and pay the verdict for public relations reasons.”
“That’s true, Zack, but damn, those families! I guaranteed their safety. If anything happened to them . . .”
“And the impact of their testimony in front of a jury would have been unbelievable,” Zack ruminated. “Micah, you’re a private investigator, right?”
“Right?”
“You find missing people, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Find them, dammit!”
“Way ahead of you on that score. My guys are turning the area upside down as we speak. If the families are still around town, we’ll find them. We did it once—we can do it again.” He tried to convince himself, as well as Zack Blake.
“That’s what I want to hear! Go do your fucking job! Seriously, Micah, if you’re doing everything you can possibly do to find them, what more can I ask? Keep me posted.”
“I will, Zack. I won’t sleep until I find them,” Micah promised.
“I know you’ll do your best.”
Zack hung up the phone. What a colossal blunder! Micah had done a great job on this case. He found the priors, the investigating cop, the plea agreement, and the families, only to lose them.
Can I win the case without them? He doubted it. Oh, he’d win all right. He’d get a large verdict against the priest—a penniless scumbag cloaked with a vow of poverty. The church’s contribution would be nothing compared to the size of the verdict. It might be a nice payday. He’d do the best he could with what he had and let the chips fall where they may. He still had a good case. The jury would hate Bartholomew. Perhaps they’d punish the church for the sin of employing him. The families might still show up. Did he have enough evidence to convince a jury the church knew of Bartholomew’s propensities and covered it up? Jack could convince them of that, couldn’t he? Maybe. His whole case was now reduced to a big maybe.
