“Gimme a break. Also, I think you should stay at my house tonight.”
“No way,” Reheema said, and hung up.
By eleven o’clock, after a short but intense car ride, they arrived at Vicki’s house, but they were barely speaking. Vicki trundled downstairs with a sheet, a thermal blanket, and a feather-filled pillow, while Reheema sulked on a chair in the living room. Zoe rubbed against the leg of her jeans, her tortoiseshell tail curled into a question mark.
“Here we go,” Vicki said, hitting the living room. “I’ll make up the couch. It’ll be nice and comfy.”
“I want to sleep in my own house.”
“Somebody could be trying to kill you. Namely, me.” Vicki dumped the bedclothes on the coffee table.
“This is dumb.”
“It is not.”
“It is, too.”
“I’m taking no chances.”
“If somebody’s gonna kill me, they could kill me here. This way, you’re in trouble, too.”
Eek. “Nobody can hurt you with a tiny but very potent AUSA like me on guard.” Vicki looked at Zoe, who blinked, green-eyed. “Also, a cat with a heart problem.”
“I want my gun.”
“No.” Vicki made a mental note to take the gun from her purse and put it in a drawer upstairs. She couldn’t get it through the metal detectors at work; they kept confiscating it at security and giving it back to her. Evidently she wasn’t the first AUSA to be carrying, but it was a huge pain in the butt and was making her nervous, besides.
Reheema got up, grabbed a white sheet, and helped Vicki tuck it around the couch cushions, a task they finished jointly, albeit in silence.
“You still pouting?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.” Vicki smiled and sat down on the couch, newly made. “You did well today.”
“I know.”
“I think what you found out fleshes out what happened to Shayla, if you’re interested.”
“More thinking out loud?” Reheema sat back down on the chair, in resignation, if not approval.
“Well, you said that Mar was killed last summer. That’s about when Jackson’s mother told me she decided to change her life. That would make sense, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, so let’s assume Jackson dabbles in crack, and—”
“You don’t dabble in crack. It dabbles in you.”
“What I mean is that Jackson is running with a druggie crowd, and her boyfriend is Browning, ace crack dealer. He moves her into a nice place and sets her up.”
“Knocks her up, too.”
“I hate that expression.”
“Sorry, Miss Vicki.”
Vicki smiled. “Okay, anyway. Then she gets pregnant and realizes that she has to keep her body clean and change her life. Or she’ll end up like her friend Mar, or her baby will.”
“People wake up.” Reheema nodded. “Not often enough, but they do. Some do.”
“So? So what? We learned more about Jackson, but not enough. Or enough to know why she’d frame you, as part of her rehab. Her calling our office would have happened about the same time.” Vicki sighed, her fatigue catching up with her, as well as nagging thoughts about Dan. “The problem is, what do we do now? We’re at a dead end.”
“Not necessarily. I still got people to canvass. Lots of people weren’t home today. I’ll go back again tomorrow and talk to the ones I missed. They’ll be home because I heard it’s gonna snow again tomorrow, so everybody’ll be hunkering down.”
“Were they nearby neighbors?”
“Not really, but you never know. I never quit a race, and I won’t start now.”
Vicki smiled. “Okay, good. Because I have to go back to work.”
“No problem, I’ll keep the car and the phone. If you call, leave a message. I got the code.”
“Done.”
Reheema scratched the top of Zoe’s multicolored head. “Did Dan the Man say anything about my mother?”
“He already talked to the U.S. Attorney, who’s gonna talk to the commissioner himself.”
“When’s that gonna happen?”
“I think today or tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Reheema paused. “I didn’t bother Bethave today, as much as I wanted to.”
“Good restraint.”
“Not at all. I figured it’d only make her run. She has to think we let it go.” Reheema half-smiled. “I’ll take the couch.”
“No, I will.”
“What if Dan the Man comes home and finds me in your bed?”
“He won’t.” Vicki gave a short laugh, and Reheema cocked her head.
“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?”
“Not really. Well, maybe a little.”
“Like what?”
Vicki couldn’t decide how much to tell her. “He wants me to behave myself, is all.”
“Ha! Then he better come get his damn cat,” Reheema said, and burst into laughter.
A minute later, so did Vicki.
Even though she knew it was completely lame, Vicki got up early the next morning and spent way too long trying to look hot for her estranged boyfriend, blow-drying her hair and putting on her best jeans and blue cashmere sweater. Reheema dropped her off at work on her way to canvassing, and Vicki stepped off the elevator at eight o’clock into an empty elevator bank; by the time she got to reception, she realized that the media, staff, and curiosity-seekers wouldn’t be in today, only the hardworking, fully committed, blown-dry AUSAs. Like me!
Vicki waved to the one receptionist, who buzzed her in without a thumbs-up, and she went down the hallway, which was also empty. She braced herself and popped her head into Dan’s office, but he wasn’t at his desk, though his light was on. Fine. Be that way.
She had work to do and couldn’t mope around forever. She went to her office with a cup of fresh Starbucks, took off her coat, pushed up her sweater sleeves, and closed her door so she wouldn’t be tempted to look up and see if Dan was there. The night’s sleep had brought no change in perspective on their fight; in other words, she still knew she was right and he was wrong. But she missed him.
She sat down at her desk, finished her grand jury script, then started on the other witnesses. The medical examiner, Dr. Soresh, would have to testify, and Vicki looked through her mound of mail for his report, which had come in last week. She found a thick brown envelope with the familiar seal and braced herself. Autopsy reports were always awful to read; she’d start with Jackson’s and move on to Morty’s only when she felt strong enough. All she had to do was get the basics from each: official cause of death, number and location of entrance and exit wounds, to sketch the case for the grand jury.
Vicki slid out the papers. POSTMORTEM REPORT: JACKSON, SHAYLA read the boldface line at the top. She scanned the first page, containing the grim details about Jackson: “Pregnant Black Female, Age 23; Height 5'4"; Weight, 145.” After that, it stated Cause of Death — exsanguination and internal injury due to gunshot wounds — and Manner of Death — Homicide. Vicki made a note of the Manner of Death for her script and turned the page. EXTERNAL EXAMINATION read the top of the page, and the description of the external examination of the body began at the top: “The head is normocephalic. The scalp hair is black and is up to six inches in length. The irrides are brown and the sclerae showed petechiae…”
Vicki skipped ahead, then was sorry she had. The cold, typed detail of the chest wounds, in old-fashioned Courier font, were gruesome, and she skimmed them quickly to get to the facts she needed and finish this awful job. She skimmed down to abdomen, which described in medical detail the gunshot wounds to Jackson’s abdomen and her uterus beneath, which were all the more horrifying because of the level of medical detail. Just when Vicki thought she couldn’t take any more she noticed something in the detail:
The fetus, approximately eight months and one-week in gestation, was a female of mixed race, apparently African American and Caucasian.
She blinked, surprised. Vicki
had assumed Shayla Jackson’s baby was Browning’s, but the report meant that it couldn’t have been. What did it mean, if anything? Could that have been why they broke up? She skimmed the rest of the report for another reference, but didn’t find any.
Suddenly her phone rang and she jumped. “Allegretti,” she said, hoping it was Dan.
“Vicki, it’s Jane, in reception? There’s a buncha boxes just got delivered for you from ATF, Special Agent Pizer. Label says the matter is Kalahut.”
“My new case. I’ll be right there.” Vicki got up, almost relieved to leave the grisly postmortem report behind for a minute. She opened her door and checked Dan’s office on the fly, but it was still empty. She went to the reception room, which was dominated by fifteen cardboard boxes with ATF stickers, stacked in the center. “You weren’t kidding.”
“They delivered a few boxes last night, too,” Jane said from behind her bulletproof window. “They’re in the file room.”
“There’s too many to put in my office. Do we have a spare conference room, at least for a few days? I got a meeting with Agent Pizer today.” Vicki checked her watch. 11:05. “At noon.”
“Hold on.” Jane checked the conference room log. “C is free until Friday. It’s the little one, with no windows.”
“I’ll take it. Where’s the dolly?”
“In the closet.”
“Thanks.” Vicki retrieved the orange dolly, loaded the boxes, and wheeled them into the conference room, making three trips, then she headed to the file room for the remainder. The file room smelled vaguely of dust and was empty, large, and windowless. Four cardboard boxes with ATF stickers sat stacked on the counter. Vicki loaded two boxes on the dolly and was about to leave when she remembered the missing transcript from Shayla Jackson’s grand jury testimony. It would only take a second to look for it.
She checked her watch: 11:15.
She’d have to get it done fast.
FORTY-THREE
Vicki pushed the dolly aside and went around the counter to the case files, which were kept in cabinets arranged alphabetically by the defendant’s last name. She stopped at the Be–Bu drawer, pulled it out, and went though the files for United States v. Bristow. No luck. Just in case the transcript had been misfiled, she pulled out Branigan, Brest, Bristol, and Bruster, and thumbed through them, but it wasn’t there. She thought a minute. It wasn’t that old a file, less than a year, and it would still be active. Maybe it was misfiled under Jackson, which would have been an easy mistake to make. She went to the Ja–Jo cabinet and found the Jackson files; there were at least fifty of them.
Argh. Vicki didn’t have much time. She pulled out each Jackson file, one defendant at a time — Alvin, Adam, Boston, Calvin — and checked every one for Shayla Jackson’s transcript. Still no luck. She closed the cabinet with a final click, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that transcript. It would be Jackson’s own words and the details of what she knew about Reheema. It had been convincing enough to get a grand jury to indict. Where the hell was it? Vicki thought back to her walk with Cavanaugh and tried to remember what he had said about the transcript:
“I admit it, I wasn’t into filing. Maybe it got misfiled.”
Vicki reasoned it out. If Cavanaugh hadn’t filed the transcript in Reheema’s case file before he left the office, then, after he left, it would float around and somebody would most likely send it to the file room. What would the file clerks do with it? It would be a transcript, clearly from a grand jury proceeding. They’d be too diligent, or too scared, to throw it away, so they’d stick it somewhere. Where? Vicki realized the answer as soon as she’d asked the question:
The To Be Filed bin! It was a paper version of a homeless shelter. All sorts of stray legal documents were stuck in To Be Filed; papers that nobody could throw away without guilt, or fear of termination. The file clerks were supposed to file the documents from the To Be Filed bin when they got free time, which was never. Vicki looked around for the To Be Filed bin and on top of the first panel of cabinets sat not one but three overflowing bins, all labeled TO BE FILED. Maybe they reproduce?
Vicki went up on tiptoe, slid the first bin off the top of the cabinet, then set it on the floor and sat down in front of it, crossing her legs. She started skimming the papers and setting them aside on the rug; she felt energized by the thought of finding the transcript and by Mocha Java, grande size. The first document was a proffer letter in United States v. Streat, the second was a trial transcript in United States v. Gola, the third was a motion to suppress in United States v. Washington, and so on. Each case caption listed a litany of aliases and nicknames: “Psycho Chris,” “Ant,” “Shakey,” “Baby Al,” and “Boxing Bob.” The bin was truly a miscellany, documents thrown into a stack, with the only common thread being that nobody knew what else to do with them. Vicki kept reading and in time finished the first bin. No Jackson transcript.
She got up and traded the first bin for the second, then sat back down and got to work. More stray documents, the mundane and the fascinating, all heaped together. By the end of the second bin and still no Jackson transcript, Vicki was telling herself to keep going because the oldest stuff would logically be in the third bin and Cavanaugh had left the office some time ago. She got up, traded bins, then sat down and kept looking, setting the papers to the side as she read. She slowed as she neared the end of the third pile, like a reader making a good book last. But when she finished, there was no transcript.
Damn it to hell! Vicki sighed and checked her watch. 11:45. The ATF agent would be here in fifteen minutes, if the snow didn’t slow her down. It had started this morning, and by the time Vicki had gotten into work, there’d been two inches’ accumulation. She hurried to put the stacks of miscellaneous papers back in the bin, then stopped at one of the documents when something caught her eye. She picked it up. It was a standard plea agreement in a drug case, United States v. David “Kermit” Montgomery. But it wasn’t the caption that caught her eye, it was the address of the defendant: 2356 Pergola Street, Apt. 2.
Vicki paused. How did she know that street name? Then she remembered, because it was such an unusual name. Pergola was the Bethaves’ street. She flipped through the plea agreement, curious. The indictment was against Montgomery for conspiracy to distribute, and the guilty plea had been entered for a lesser included offense and jail time of six months.
Vicki raised an eyebrow. Merry Christmas, Mr. Montgomery. It was a sweet deal for conspiracy to distribute, especially in this climate. Whose case had this been? She turned to the last page and checked the signatures. Strauss and Bale, who signed every plea agreement, and underneath them, the AUSA who had worked the case: Dan Malloy.
Vicki blinked. Odd. It wasn’t like Dan to let anybody off so easy. Still, so what? She had to get ready for that Kalahut meeting. She stuck the plea agreement on top of the other papers, stood up with the To Be Filed bin, and replaced it on the top of the file cabinet. She had to get out of here. The Jackson transcript was gone. She went over to the dolly to leave, then stopped. Pergola Street. Looking would take only another second, and she’d come this far.
Vicki went back to the file cabinets, took the plea agreement out of the bin, and double-checked the name. David Montgomery. She went to the M’s, opened the drawer, and thumbed though the files to see if there was a case file for David Montgomery. She flipped through Martin, Michelson, then, Montgomery. In fact, there were three David Montgomerys, aka, respectively, “Meenie,” “Holy Man,” and finally, the one she’d seen on the agreement, “Kermit.” Bingo.
She pulled out the third Montgomery file, which was fairly thick, and opened it. It was a typical legal-size manila folder, and on the left side, attached by a steel fastener, a copy of Montgomery’s mug shot was attached to his criminal record. He had narrow, almost slitted eyes, and a small mouth, unsmiling. Next to his mug shot, it read: “Black Male, D/O/B 1/2/72, Height, 6'2", Weight, 210 lbs.” Vicki skimmed down the record of offenses: assault with a deadly (knife), ag
gravated assault, attempted murder for hire.
She felt her heart stop. Knife assaults. A murder for hire. A hired killer, on Mrs. Bethave’s street? Could Montgomery be the man who had knifed Reheema’s mother to death? The man Mrs. Bethave had been so afraid of? It was too great a coincidence, wasn’t it? How many hired killers could there be on Pergola Street?
Vicki suppressed her emotion, so she wasn’t jumping to conclusions. She checked the date of the plea agreement. Eight months ago. So Montgomery would be out of prison by now, having served only six months. He’d be free. Living on Pergola Street. Her mouth went dry. She checked Montgomery’s house number, 2356. What had Bethave’s house number been? Vicki couldn’t remember, but it was in the 2000s; she remembered because she had driven across Twentieth Street to get there. So they lived on the same block of Pergola.
Her thoughts raced ahead. Mrs. Bethave had freaked out when Albertus had signed her the killer’s name, as if Montgomery could see Vicki and Reheema at the house if they didn’t leave fast enough. She could imagine how it would have happened, if Montgomery was the one: Saturday had been the day of the snowstorm, and Albertus could have been playing on the street, as the Holloway kids had been, on Vicki’s block. Albertus could have run into Montgomery on the street, and Montgomery could have handed Albertus the cell phone he’d taken from the woman he killed the night before. Arissa Bristow.
Vicki put it together, with a start. David “Kermit” Montgomery. Kermit. The frog. The man who had answered her cell phone that night had spoken in a gravelly voice. Dan had noticed it, too. Was that why Montgomery’s nickname was Kermit? Because of his froggy voice? My God.
Abruptly, the door to the file room opened, and Vicki almost jumped out of her skin. She turned, and in the threshold stood Jane, the receptionist. “Vicki, oops, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. That ATF agent has been waiting outside, for your meeting.”
“Oh, jeez. Thanks.” It was all Vicki could do to slip the file behind her and to collect herself. “Please, tell her I’m sorry, I’ll be right there.”