Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests Read online

  Compilation copyright © 2009 by Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

  Introduction copyright © 2009 by Linda Fairstein

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: April 2009

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright notices for individual stories appear on page 421.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-05333-4

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  THE PROSECUTION RESTS: AN INTRODUCTION

  THE SECRET SESSION

  DESIGNER JUSTICE

  FOLLOW UP

  BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

  THE LETTER

  SPECTRAL EVIDENCE

  KNIFE FIGHT

  DEATH, CHEATED

  MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

  THE FLASHLIGHT GAME

  MOM IS MY CO-COUNSEL

  QUALITY OF MERCY

  THE MOTHER

  RED DOG

  A CLERK’S LIFE

  TIME WILL TELL

  THE EVIL WE DO

  NIGHT COURT

  HARD BLOWS

  CUSTOM SETS

  BANG

  GOING UNDER

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

  COPYRIGHTS

  ALSO BY LINDA FAIRSTEIN

  Killer Heat

  Bad Blood

  Death Dance

  Entombed

  The Kills

  The Bone Vault

  The Deadhouse

  Cold Hit

  Likely to Die

  Final Jeopardy

  ALSO FROM THE MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

  The Blue Religion

  (Edited by Michael Connelly)

  Death Do Us Part

  (Edited by Harlan Coben)

  THE PROSECUTION RESTS: AN INTRODUCTION

  As a prosecutor in the great office of the New York County District Attorney for thirty years, I tried dozens of felony cases—murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and assaults of every variety. I worked shoulder to shoulder with the smartest cops in the city before ever taking the results of their investigations into the well of the courtroom and presenting the gathered evidence to a jury of the defendant’s peers. My adversaries were among the most talented members of the defense bar, skilled in the art of advocacy and the ability to communicate with those good citizens chosen to judge the fate of their clients.

  There were powerful moments of eliciting facts from witnesses that established the necessary elements of brutal crimes, a few terrifying occasions when the mendacity of my own complainants was exposed by the opposing counsel, the astounding triumphs afforded to my colleagues and me when a revolutionary scientific technique called DNA analysis was first introduced to the criminal courtroom in 1986, and every now and then a dazzling turn at cross-examination which nailed the hired gun, the expert witness of an opponent.

  My favorite moment in the trial was always the point at which I rested, at which I announced to the judge and jury that I had completed the People’s case. It was the culmination of months of preparation and organization, mastering the facts and scrutinizing the details, interpreting the alleles and loci of genetic fingerprinting, and packaging everything I could gather to present to the jury in a logical, persuasive, and trustworthy fashion. Defense counsel had taken his best shot at my witnesses, and might or might not go on to offer his own version of events, but my burden on behalf of the state had been satisfied.

  The old maxim claims that a trial is a search for the truth. But as all the participants know, that search should have been completed long before any of us walk through the courtroom doors to try to convince the jurors of our position. From the discovery of the commission of the crime, police officers are charged with the responsibility of evaluating the evidence they collect—eyewitness descriptions and circumstantial facts, and now the remarkable forensic tools that have so radically affected the criminal justice system.

  Then district attorneys are called in on the cases. We take our witnesses as we find them—some of them “innocent” victims, but many of them flawed human beings—people who lie, cheat, steal, and have violated most of the other commandments before they ever raise their hands and swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Defendants are arrested and indicted, hiring private counsel or assigned public defenders to represent them at trial. The search for truth goes on throughout the entirety of the pre-trial period—lawyers for both sides seek testimonial, documentary, and scientific evidence to corroborate their witnesses or exonerate those wrongly charged. Most of the time, I like to think, our system of justice has served us well.

  The Mystery Writers of America invited authors—bestselling storytellers as well as new voices—to explore the complicated characters that inhabit the courtroom. In this wonderfully mixed collection of well-told tales, you’ll meet rogue lawyers and victims who lie; people who want the system to work and those who use it for revenge or a more personal form of justice; the alibi witness who is eviscerated on the stand and the killer who gets away with murder. These are stories about the criminal justice system, and, may it please the court, I—for one—am grateful they are fiction.

  I am delighted to offer the exhibits in this anthology to you as part of my case in chief. Again, it’s like my favorite moment at trial. I’ve given you the best of my fellow MWA writers, and now I get to sit back at counsel table while you evaluate the evidence.

  The prosecution rests, but I hope your enjoyment of these stories is just beginning.

  —Linda Fairstein

  THE SECRET SESSION

  BY EDWARD D. HOCH

  Judge Bangor himself entered Harry Fine’s chambers a few weeks following Harry’s swearing in as the newest justice on the state’s Court of Appeals. It was a snowy January morning with the windows tightly closed, and Harry’s first thought was that the Chief would probably light up one of his cigars in violation of the building’s no-smoking rule.

  “Harry, do you have a few minutes?” he asked, closing the door behind him without waiting for a reply.

  Judge Bangor was the ultimate father figure, a stern but fair man who’d headed the Court of Appeals since Harry was admitted to the bar a dozen years earlier. He was over six feet tall with snow-white hair and a commanding voice that had many attorneys quaking in their boots and rushing back to the law library after a session with him.

  “Certainly, Chief,” Harry said at once, rising from his chair. “What can I do for you?”

  “Sit down, sit down!” He took the maroon leather armchair opposite Harry’s desk. “What I’m about to tell you is in confidence. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to tell you at all, but something’s come up which may require our action.”

  “You certainly have my curiosity aroused,” Harry said with a smile.

  “Did you ever wonder what prompted Colin Penny’s resignation, opening up the seat for you?”

  “He sai
d he wanted to spend more time with his family and maybe return to private law practice.”

  Judge Bangor snorted. “I doubt if you’ll see him in a courtroom again, at least not in this state. Any sitting justices, especially on the Court of Appeals, are open to bribery attempts. It goes with the territory in this state. Certain accusations were made against Judge Penny, accusations that could damage a person’s career even if they went unproven. Rather than allow these to be made public, we convened a secret session of the court—”

  “A what?”

  “Perhaps that is the wrong term to use. In any event, all five justices—including Judge Penny—gathered in private to examine the charges and rumors circulating about his conduct. Much of the evidence concerned a large political donation, beyond the legal limits, made by a lumber company that won the bidding to cull a portion of state forestland. Another bidder had sued, claiming the winner had prior knowledge of the bidding. His claim was rejected by a lower court, but it was working its way up to us. That was when Penny accepted a large political donation from the lumber company.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Harry Fine asked. There was something unsettling about the conversation and he wanted it to end.

  “Because it has become necessary, Harry. In our secret session we heard the case against Colin Penny and listened to his meager defense. Then he left the room while the four of us discussed his fate. I must tell you, the vote to force his resignation was not unanimous. Susan Quinn was on his side and spoke vigorously in his defense, but the vote was three to one, or three to two if we count Judge Penny’s own vote. He was told he would have to resign.”

  “He went along with that?”

  “He had no choice. The reporter who had the story agreed to kill it if Penny offered his resignation. Otherwise it would have been all over the papers.”

  Fine shook his head. “Highly irregular,” he muttered.

  “This is my court, Harry. I will do everything in my power to douse any flicker of scandal before it ignites.”

  “You still haven’t told me why I need to know this.”

  Judge Bangor paused and reached for a cigar in his breast pocket, then thought better of it. “The reporter who threatened to break the story about Penny’s illegal contributions now says there is a second member of the court involved. I see us going through this whole nightmare again. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

  “Who’s the reporter?”

  “Maeve McGuire. You’ve probably seen her bylines.”

  Harry Fine nodded. “She’s a pretty good writer. Ran a short interview on me after my appointment last month.”

  “I read it. That’s why you’re the perfect one to contact her.”

  “Contact her about what? I can’t ask her to kill a story.”

  “Of course not. But you can have a friendly conversation with her, find out what’s going on. All I have is a tip, and I can’t pursue it personally for various reasons.”

  “Couldn’t one of the other justices—?”

  “Hardly! If the information she has is accurate, any one of them might be involved.”

  “Surely not Susan Quinn!” The feisty brunette judge, only a few years older than Fine, had introduced him to his new position by tutoring him in the arcane rituals of the Court of Appeals.

  Judge Bangor shrugged. “It might be Quinn or Frank Rockwell or Zach Wanamaker. Find out what you can.”

  “I doubt if she’ll reveal any big secrets, not to me at least.”

  ____

  FINE PHONED MAEVE McGuire and invited her to lunch the following day. Not wanting it to appear clandestine in any way, he suggested they meet at the Temple Bar, a restaurant across from the appellate court that was frequented by lawyers and judges. As the hostess showed them to a table near the window, he saw Judge Rockwell at a nearby table, raising his eyebrows.

  Maeve saw it too and commented, “Does he think he’s spotted a blooming romance?”

  “I hope not. My divorce isn’t final yet.”

  She was an intense, attractive young woman who rarely smiled even when joking. Harry Fine read her columns intermittently and had seen her around the courts on occasion. He had consented to last month’s interview after winning the appointment to fill Colin Penny’s term.

  “I hope you phoned to give me the inside scoop on the appellate court,” she chided him now. “The word is that Bangor rules with an iron fist.”

  “You probably know more about it than I do,” he told her. “What’s the latest scandal?”

  She shrugged. “One a year is quite enough. I assume you know about your predecessor.”

  “Judge Penny? I’ve heard talk. I’ve even heard he might not have been the only one accepting illegal campaign contributions.”

  “Tell me more!” she urged, flashing one of her rare smiles.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. “Did Judge Bangor send you?”

  “Let’s enjoy our lunch and not worry about who sent me.”

  She shook her head. “Look, Judge Fine, I interviewed you for my paper, but that doesn’t make us lifelong friends. I have nothing to tell you. As you probably know, I agreed to kill a story about Judge Penny because he resigned from the court. That was a one-shot, and it won’t happen again. Anything more that I discover about illegal contributions or bribes will end up on our front page.”

  “Of course! I’m not trying to influence you in any way.”

  But the luncheon went downhill after that. She dashed off as quickly as possible, pleading another appointment, and he finished his coffee alone. He was just paying the check when Frank Rockwell stopped by his table on the way out.

  “Courting the press these days, are you?” he asked.

  “Not really. She interviewed me last month and I felt I owed her a lunch in return.”

  “Never get too friendly with the press,” the gray-haired justice advised. “They’ll screw you every time.”

  Fine smiled. “Thanks for the advice, Judge.”

  Whatever Bangor had hoped would come of the lunch with Maeve McGuire, it hadn’t happened. Fine hated to admit failure to the Chief and decided to try another possibility on his own. With no pending sessions that afternoon, he drove out to Willow Road, where his predecessor Colin Penny resided. It was an upper-middle-class neighborhood of older colonial homes, and Penny’s house was only a few doors away from Judge Wanamaker’s, where Fine had attended a New Year’s Day open house a few weeks earlier.

  Zach Wanamaker was at the courthouse, of course, and there was no sign of his wife as Fine drove past the house. He was in luck with Penny, though. The former judge was sweeping a light coating of snow from his driveway in an obvious make-work effort to keep busy at something. Fine pulled up and parked.

  “I was driving by and saw you out here,” he said, getting out of the car.

  “Hello, Judge.”

  “I think you can call me Harry,” Fine told him, already regretting that he’d stopped. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. I think I’ll be going back into private practice soon. Taking good care of my old office?”

  “Sure,” he answered with a smile. Penny was a decade older than him, a hard age to be starting over. Already his face was lined, and he seemed to have aged since Fine had last seen him. The word was that his wife had moved out after his forced resignation and was staying with their son’s family in Arizona. “Stop in and see us sometime.”

  Penny tried to smile but couldn’t quite make it.

  “I don’t think that would be wise. I’m the black sheep these days.”

  “I’m sure you weren’t the only one who took a contribution now and then.”

  “No,” he agreed, “but I was the only one Maeve McGuire found out about.”

  “Well—” Fine glanced up at the sky, searching for a way out of the conversation. “Think we’ll get any more snow?”

  “Any minute, now that I’ve finish
ed sweeping.” He turned away and headed back to the house. “Good seeing you, Judge.”

  Fine returned to his car and drove back to the office.

  ____

  HE REPORTED TO Judge Bangor later that afternoon. Judge Susan Quinn was present too and was especially interested in Fine’s brief conversation with Penny.

  “How did he seem?” she wanted to know.

  “Maybe a little bitter,” Fine said. “But it’s hard for me to tell. I never knew him that well.”

  Judge Bangor wasn’t interested in Penny’s feelings.

  “Did he say anything about someone else on the court being involved?”

  Susan, at age forty-six, still wore her hair at shoulder length despite some traces of gray. She was married to a successful surgeon, and the two were popular partygoers in local society. She interrupted to defend Penny. “Isn’t it bad enough you forced his resignation?” she asked.

  He turned to her and said, “My dear, this appellate court is the most important thing in my life. I intend to keep it pure and uncorrupted no matter who suffers. Now then, Harry, what, if anything, did Colin Penny say to you?”

  “Nothing, really. I remarked that there were probably others who’d accepted donations, and he replied that he was the only one the reporter found out about.”

  “Was he speaking specifically of the appellate court?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a general comment.”

  Susan shook her head. “Chief, you’re carrying this to extremes. Harry has told you everything he knows.”

  “Very well,” Judge Bangor agreed. “We’ll adjourn this session for now.”

  THE REST OF the week passed quietly. January was often a slow month on the court calendar, and the Chief called only one joint session on Friday concerning a statute of limitations case. Zach Wanamaker cast the deciding vote to uphold the lower court’s ruling, and everyone scattered for the weekend.

  Fine went down to the parking garage with Wanamaker when it was over. “Going skiing this weekend?” he asked, knowing that the older man spent time on the slopes whenever he could. He was in good physical shape, with a ruddy outdoor complexion.