2

Nikki Moreno leaned around the folks in the back of the long line at the Norfolk Courthouse metal detector, propped her sunglasses on top of her head, and caught the attention of one of the sheriff’s deputies. She flashed her famous Moreno smile, and he waved her to the front. D. J. Landers, a sleazy defense attorney who had caught up with Nikki in the parking lot, followed hot on her heels. Too hot, in Nikki’s opinion. He had already hit on her twice, and now he chattered in her ear as if they were best friends, undoubtedly realizing that Nikki was his ticket to the front of the line.

“I’m five minutes late already,” Landers said. “But as fate would have it, my hearing’s in front of Judge Finney, and I just happen to bump into his beautiful and talented law clerk this morning in the parking lot.” Landers made a little tsk-tsk noise to emphasize what an incredible stroke of luck this was. “Hey, maybe she’ll cover for me. Tell the judge she insisted I fix her breakfast after last night.”

Nikki snorted without turning around. “We’ve got to get you off those mind-altering drugs,” she said, placing her briefcase on the belt. She sashayed through the detector, content to let the deputies ogle every inch of her long legs and masterfully designed body. Landers, on the other hand, gave her the creeps. She could feel his beady little vulture eyes drilling into her from behind, and she wanted to slap him.

“I’ve got this one,” one of the beefy deputies said. “Total pat down. She looks dangerous.”

“You have no idea,” Nikki shot back, picking up her briefcase as she graced the deputies with another smile. These guys were her buds, enjoying the friendship that develops between a law student clerking at the courthouse and the deputies who guard it. An attractive, young law student, that was. One not afraid to push the upper limits on skirt length or make a fashion statement with ankle and shoulder tattoos.

Before heading away from the guards, Nikki turned to address the annoyance who had slithered through the metal detector behind her. Landers was tall and bony, forty-five or so, with a spray-on tan, a thin black mustache, and jet-black Grecian Formula hair slicked straight back. His face was all angles and bones, and Landers somehow always managed to look like he hadn’t shaved in a day and a half—no more, no less.

“Good luck on your prisoner lawsuits,” Nikki offered, referring to the well-known practice of prisoners suing the sheriff’s department for alleged abuse. Landers looked stunned. He hadn’t said a word about any kind of prisoner suit. “A huge verdict might put an end to using Tasers altogether,” Nikki continued. “I had no idea how dangerous they were.”

“Huh?” Landers said, reaching for his briefcase. But a deputy already had a hand on it.

“Better run this through again,” the deputy said. “And, sir, I’ll need you to step back through there as well.”

The other deputy winked at Nikki as she took off down the hallway. She felt safe with these guys around.

“Have a great day,” Nikki said over her shoulder, never doubting that the eyes of the deputies would follow her down the hallway as far as humanly possible.

Judge Oliver G. Finney opened the proceedings in Courtroom 3 with a five-minute tongue-lashing of Landers for being late, topped off with a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine—a hundred bucks per minute. “And that’s generous,” Finney claimed. He motioned to the prosecutor. “Mr. Taylor’s time alone is worth twice that much.”

Landers gave Nikki a say-something look, but Nikki immersed herself in the papers in front of her that suddenly required immediate attention.

Just before court, Finney, who in his spare time wrote test questions for the puzzles and games section of the Law School Admissions Test, had given her some sample questions to try. “You know I stink at these,” she protested.

“Precisely why I give them to you,” Finney replied. “If you get more than 25 percent of the answers correct, I know the questions are too easy.”

Landers tendered his check, and Finney got down to the real business at hand. Nikki had glanced at the docket sheet earlier and knew that the defendant, a guy named Terrel Stokes, faced several drug charges that could earn him twenty years minimum. He slouched low in his seat at the counsel table, his movement restricted by handcuffs and leg irons. Despite the restraints and the orange jumpsuit that identified him as just one more accused felon, arrogance leached from the man like body odor.

“We are here today,” Finney said, “because the government’s key witness in this case was brutally murdered. The prosecution wants to use a prior written statement from the witness at trial, and the defense objects. Does that about sum it up, gentlemen?”

As the lawyers voiced their agreement and discussed procedural issues, Nikki turned her attention to the impossible word puzzle Finney had given her about where certain people sit on a bus given certain parameters. Arlene never sits next to Bill but will always take a seat beside Carli or Daphne. Daphne always sits in front of either Ella or Carli. If Carli sits next to the window in the second row and Daphne sits across the aisle, then Ella must sit . . .

Nikki thought about it for a few seconds, grunted in frustration, and circled choice D. Last time, she had gone with straight Bs, and Finney had accused her of not trying. This time, she would vary her answers.

Finney brought her back to the present with one of his increasingly common coughing fits. He held up his hand to the lawyers, managed a “Hold up a second,” then dipped his head and started hacking away. It was a deep and phlegmy cough, and it worried Nikki. A few seconds later, he regained control, though he still wheezed a little as he sucked in air.

Nikki’s judge was fifty-nine and starting to show his age, though his lean face still carried vestiges of the sharp and handsome features Nikki had observed on old bar association portraits. Finney had lost most of his hair on top, but you hardly noticed the long forehead because the deep-set blue eyes demanded your attention, sparkling with mischief when Finney smiled or slicing you like lasers when he frowned. The eyes were rimmed by thick auburn eyebrows laced, like Finney’s hair and long sideburns, with distinguished amounts of gray.

Finney was forever an enigma to Nikki—battle-tested and demanding in the courtroom, but an everyday Joe outside. He wore his hair longer than most men his age, so that it curled out a little at the ends, the only part not flattened into place by an old John Deere cap Finney insisted on wearing outside court. If you ran into Finney on the street, you might guess he was a NASCAR fan, but hardly a judge.

“You okay?” Mitchell Taylor asked as the judge regained his composure and took a big gulp of water.

“Fine, fine,” Finney said with a flick of the wrist. But Nikki knew that the coughing spells were increasing in both regularity and intensity. She wanted to strangle the judge for refusing to give up cigars. “Continue,” he said.

Mitchell Taylor looked down at his notes and picked up at the precise spot where he had left off. Always prepared. Never flustered. A buttoned-down prosecutor who had recently transferred to Norfolk from Virginia Beach. He would have been near the top of Nikki’s hottie list but for the fact that he was happily married.

“The facts for this hearing are essentially undisputed,” Mitchell said.

He picked up an enlarged photograph mounted on poster board. “This is Antoine Carter,” he said, waving the life-size picture of a face caked in blood. “The coroner says he choked to death on his own blood.” Mitchell placed the photo facedown on his counsel table while Landers furiously scribbled notes. Stokes sneered at Mitchell, his lips curling slightly upward with a maddening nonchalance, as if he had a Get Out of Jail Free card.

But Mitchell was a pro, too battle-hardened to give the defendant even the satisfaction of a glance. “Marks on the victim’s wrists and ankles, and around his chest and neck, led the coroner to conclude that he was bound hand and foot and forced to lie on his back, duct-taped to a table, while blood pooled in his throat and ultimately his lungs.”

Now Mitchell unveiled another picture, one that made even Nikki divert her eyes, though she had pretty much seen it all. Finney didn’t flinch.

“This is a close-up of the victim, Antoine Carter, with his mouth propped open,” Mitchell said. “As you can see, his tongue has been cut out.”

The deputy sheriff assigned to the courtroom turned her head, and the court reporter went pale. Only Detective Jenkins, a homicide investigator who had accompanied Mitchell to court in case the judge needed testimony, appeared as unaffected as Finney. Nikki forgot all about where her hypothetical passengers might have been sitting on her hypothetical bus. Who would do such a thing?

As if reading her mind, Mitchell grabbed a third blowup from his counsel table. Even as her stomach tightened, morbid curiosity forced Nikki to keep her eyes glued to the young prosecutor and what he might reveal next. “We believe this killing is gang related. This is a picture of Mr. Carter’s chest,” Mitchell said, his voice tense with anger. “As you can see, the initials BGD are carved into his skin. The blood that coagulated around these cuts indicates Mr. Carter was still alive when they did this.

“BGD stands for the Black Gangster Disciples,” said Mitchell, who firmed his jaw and turned to the defendant. “It’s one of the strongest gangs operating in Norfolk right now, and we have reason to believe that the defendant, Terrel Stokes, is its leader.”

At this Stokes grunted his disapproval, then narrowed his eyes and slowly shook his head at Mitchell, sending a chill up Nikki’s spine along with an unmistakable message: Mitchell would be next.

Undeterred, Mitchell turned back toward Finney. “The victim was scheduled to testify against Stokes in the defendant’s upcoming drug trial. We had flipped Mr. Carter, promising him we would take his cooperation into account at sentencing. We have a full written confession about his involvement in a drug ring headed by Stokes, and we want to use the confession at trial, since the witness himself is no longer available. That’s why we filed this motion in limine.”

D. J. Landers rose, arms spread wide. “And we object, Your Honor, because it’s classic hearsay and violates the defendant’s constitutional right to confront the witnesses.”

“Looks like he already did that,” Finney said.

“My client was in jail when Carter died,” Landers protested. “And the commonwealth doesn’t have one shred of evidence that my client was involved in his death. You can’t try a man for drug offenses based on written statements from dead witnesses.”

“You can when the defendant orders their death,” Mitchell snapped, still standing like a Marine in front of his counsel table. “You waive your right to confront your witnesses when you kill them—”

“If you kill them,” Landers interrupted. “Which, of course, didn’t happen here.” He turned to Mitchell. “You think my client killed your witness? File murder charges.”

Mitchell didn’t respond, his stare saying what words could not. Nikki knew that Mitchell had been criticized for taking cases too personally. It’s what she liked about him—passion.

“You won’t indict him for murder, because you don’t have any evidence,” Landers continued. His air of self-satisfaction curdled Nikki’s stomach. “So why don’t you spend your time looking for Antoine Carter’s killer instead of harassing my client with this baseless drug charge?”

The muscles in Mitchell’s neck tightened. “We searched the apartments of other suspected gang members. We found letters Stokes wrote from jail, telling a gang member that Antoine Carter would be testifying for the government. A few days later, Carter’s dead. What more do we need?”

“Those letters, written by my client, show that he didn’t believe Carter was a threat,” Landers explained, his voice even. “They show my client believed that Carter would never cooperate with the government.”

“Right,” Mitchell scoffed. “The letters go out the week of April 4. The very next week—April 11, to be precise—Carter dies, losing his tongue in the process. What a lucky coincidence for the defendant.”

Landers stiffened, fired back a retort, and the insults flew. For the next few minutes, Finney let the lawyers spar themselves out, his chin resting on his hand like a spectator at a chess match.

Finally he banged his gavel. “Gentlemen, that’s enough.” They both looked up at him, two schoolboys who had been prematurely untangled from a fight, seething to get back at each other.

“Let me see the letters,” Finney ordered.

“I object,” Landers said, his tanned face flushing.

“On what grounds?” Finney asked.

“They contain impressions of my client about his own lawyer,” Landers said, crossing his arms and taking a half step away from his suddenly poisonous client. “Those allegations are untrue, and the letters themselves are privileged communications.”

“Oh, come on,” Mitchell blurted, obviously sensing blood. “The letters are written by a prisoner and sent to a fellow gangbanger on the outside. How can they possibly be privileged?”

“I’m just saying—”Landers started, but Finney cut him off with a wave.

“Pass ’em up,” Finney said. “We’ll take a brief recess while I study them. And don’t worry, Mr. Landers. I’m not going to form any opinions about you based on what your client says in those letters. I’m perfectly capable of forming those judgments on my own.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Landers said, though Nikki was pretty sure the judge hadn’t meant it as a compliment.