Trial Junkies (A Thriller) Read online

  Trial Junkies

  Robert Gregory Browne

  ~

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Robert Gregory Browne

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

  All rights reserved. Publishing in the United States of America by Penname Press, a division of Braun Haus Media.

  This book is a First Edition Digital Original, May 15, 2012

  Cover design by BHC

  Cover photos:

  Courthouse: © GOL - Fotolia.com

  Military Girl in Handcuffs: © TA Craft Photography - Fotolia.com

  BOOKS BY

  ROBERT GREGORY BROWNE

  Supernatural Thrillers

  Kiss Her Goodbye

  Whisper in the Dark

  Kill Her Again

  The Paradise Prophecy

  Suspense/Mystery Thrillers

  Down Among the Dead Men

  Trial Junkies

  Short Stories

  Speechless (Thriller 3: Love is Murder)

  Bottom Deal (Killer Year)

  TRIAL

  JUNKIES

  PART ONE

  Hail, Hail

  The Gang's All Here

  — 1 —

  THEY FOUND HER body in Dearborn Park.

  She had been left to die in a vacant lot on Clark Street, lying in a pool of her own blood, multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen, her face slashed, her throat slit ear to ear.

  Hutch hadn't seen or spoken to Jenny in nearly ten years, but she had never been far from his mind. And the thought that some mad man had mutilated the woman he had once loved—still loved, if you wanted the God's honest truth—sent him rushing to his trailer to relieve himself of the Spanish omelet the craft service had served for breakfast.

  Hutch hadn't received any phone calls about this. No old college pals breaking the bad news in a distant, halting voice. Chances were pretty good that most of them would hear about it exactly the way he had—a simple, unassuming headline on the opening page of the Chicago Post website:

  LOCAL ATTORNEY STABBED TO DEATH

  Hutch was a Chicago native and surfed the Post daily, but this was the kind of story he would usually pass over on his way to the sports page. He was living and working in Hollywood these days and had decided long ago that it was best to ignore such things. He had a pretty good life here and was still selfish enough to want to tune out any outside interference. No point in upsetting the balance he had struggled so hard to regain these last few months.

  But then he saw Jenny's photograph and the world tilted sideways. She looked older, but just as beautiful as ever, those clear, intelligent eyes staring up at him as if to say—

  Where were you, Ethan?

  Why didn't you return my calls?

  He was in the make-up chair when he saw it, Christine applying a nasty-looking bruise to the side of his face. He didn't bother to excuse himself. Didn't bother to say anything. Just looked into those eyes, tossed his iPad to the counter, then jumped up and bolted across the sound stage toward his trailer.

  By the time he staggered out of the bathroom, wiping a sleeve across his mouth, his assistant Sonya was waiting for him, frowning in disapproval.

  "Rough night?"

  Hutch had a bit of a reputation, but her assumption was wrong. He had spent the night at home, hammering out pages of a novel that he knew in his gut would never be published. But writing it allowed him to step out of his skin for a while and stretch his creative muscles in a new and different way. A kind of self-administered therapy designed to keep his mind occupied.

  That was the theory, at least. Truth was, he had no real writing talent, but just enough of an ego left to think he could pull it off. Whatever the case, he hadn't spent the night drinking, as his performance in the bathroom might suggest.

  He hadn't had a drink in six months.

  "I'm done for the day," he told her.

  Sonya looked bewildered. "Done? We haven't even started."

  "Make an excuse for me. I'll be at home."

  "You're kidding, right? You're in the middle of a shoot, Hutch. You can't just walk out."

  "Tell them I'm sick. Tell them I have food poisoning."

  "Do you seriously think Tony's gonna buy—"

  Hutch held up his hands, cutting her off. "Look, I know the studio's paying you good money to make sure I'm on my best behavior. And when the shit hits the fan I'll be sure to tell them how hard you tried. But I'm out of here. Tony can shoot around me today."

  He had half a mind to walk for good. He'd only taken this gig because both his agent and manager had insisted on it. An actor needs to act, they said. Stay in the public eye. And this could go a long way toward erasing all the negative publicity he'd gotten after the meltdown.

  But he knew that the chances of making it to series were pretty much nil. The network was shooting eleven pilots this season and had only two slots to fill. He was up against Selleck, a teen zombie drama, and a reboot of an old, but very popular cop show set in Miami.

  His money was on Selleck and the zombies.

  Sonya said nothing for a moment, looking at him with her patented scowl. Then her expression shifted as if she suddenly realized that there was something more at work here than a simple alcohol-fueled puke fest.

  She softened. "What happened, Hutch? What's wrong?"

  "My past just reared up and bit me in the ass, is all."

  "Meaning what?"

  He slumped to the sofa. "I just found out an old girlfriend of mine was murdered."

  "What?"

  He looked up at her. "So, if you don't mind, I'd like to go home and grieve for a few hours before I start subjecting myself to Tony's torture."

  Sonya studied him blankly, then stepped toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're serious, aren't you? You're telling me the truth."

  He ignored her. He didn't want her sympathy. All he could think about was Jenny and those eyes looking up at him, and how badly he had ended things.

  And now it was too late to make good.

  He got to his feet. "Have Eddie pick me up at the main gate, will you?"

  A moment later he was out the door.

  — 2 —

  HUTCH HAD NEVER been good at funerals.

  The last one he had attended had been his parents' memorial service, two years after he left Chicago. They had died in a plane crash—a story that gained huge traction in the media—and his appearance there had created such a stir with the paparazzi that he vowed he would never attend another, no matter who might be lying in the casket.

  This was back when the paparazzi were actually interested in him. Nowadays they looked at him as little more than a washed-up curiosity. A source of ridicule and scorn.

  Not that he cared.

  In the three days since he'd read about Jenny's death, he had been through the usual gamut of emotions—denial, anger, an almost unbearable sense of guilt and regret. He had printed out the photograph from the Post web page and carried it on the flight to Chicago, taking it from his shirt pocket every so often to look into Jenny's eyes.

  Where were you, Ethan?

  Why didn't you return my calls?

  Would calling her have changed anything? Would she still be alive?

  There was no way to know, but in his gut he felt as if he were somehow t
o blame for what had happened to her. A feeling that fed into his addictive tendencies with an unrelenting singularity of purpose.

  But he hadn't taken a drink. Hadn't snorted any coke. Even when he desperately wanted to.

  That was something, wasn't it?

  Now, he stood in the loft of St. Angela's Cathedral in the heart of his home town, hiding those emotions behind the darkest pair of dark glasses he could find. He had no idea if anyone would recognize him—his celebrity wattage had dimmed considerably—but he saw no point in taking chances. The last thing he wanted was to turn Jenny's service into a circus. Better to keep his distance and pay his respects in private.

  Down below, the church pews were starting to fill up with friends and family. He saw faces he knew and felt a sudden tug of nostalgia, remembering better days, when he and his friends had been so full of hope and promise.

  But what drew his attention was the shrouded casket in front of the altar and the thought that Jenny lay inside, her body stitched up but apparently too gruesome to be put on display.

  Which was just fine with Hutch. He didn't need to see her like that.

  But at that moment, he felt consumed by hatred. Hatred for whoever had done this to her. The police had been remarkably discreet over the last few days, news reports speculating that they had a suspect, but no names had come forward. No faces. And Hutch wished he had that suspect in front of him right now, so that he could do to the beast what the beast had done to Jenny.

  Retribution was what he wanted. Retribution for the woman he had loved.

  And had thrown away.

  Where were you, Ethan?

  Why didn't you return my—

  "You gonna hide up here all afternoon?"

  Startled, Hutch turned and saw a familiar face. He hadn't heard her come up the stairs and was thrown slightly off-kilter, immediately slipping into his old standby—the movie star smile. It wasn't appropriate for the moment, but he had little else to fall back on, and it helped cover the rage that was percolating inside him.

  "Nadine," he said. "How've you been?"

  The years had been good to her, but there was a hardness in her expression he'd never seen in their college days. "Let's play catch up later. Why don't you come down and join the rest of us?"

  Then she turned and started down the stairs, pausing briefly to glance back at him. She and Jenny had been best friends once and had always resembled each other—so much so that people often mistook them for sisters. She had those same intelligent eyes that bore into you as if you were a hostile witness caught in a lie.

  Now they were colored by sorrow.

  "Well?" she said.

  His smile gone, Hutch merely nodded, then followed her down the stairs.

  — 3 —

  IF THERE'S ONE thing the Catholics know how to do, Matthew Isaacs thought, it's put on a good show.

  Not that his own people couldn't tap dance with the best of them, but these folks had a knack for turning a ritual into an art form, complete with gaudy costumes, a full choir, and a kind of solemn pomposity that put most other religions to shame.

  As he took in the pageantry from his fifth row pew, Matt wondered how they'd managed to throw this Mass together so quickly after Jenny's death. Apparently someone had made a hefty donation to the local diocese. Probably daddy dear. He had enough money to buy the whole church and half the block it stood on.

  Judging by what Jenny had told them all in college, her father was very serious about his faith. But Jenny herself had been a lapsed Catholic. Was pretty much agnostic. In all the years Matt had known her, she'd never made a secret of her beliefs. Or lack thereof. He hadn't seen her in quite a while, but he doubted she had changed.

  Not many people do.

  But funerals are never really about the dead. They're designed to give your loved ones closure. A sense that the deceased's spirit is traveling to a better place, to a world where violence and disease and old age don't exist.

  As much as he wanted to, Matt didn't believe any of it. Just like Jenny. In fact, he'd say he believed it even less than she had, convinced that religion and faith and dreams of an afterlife were nothing more than a panacea for fear. To his mind, when you were gone, you were gone, and no ritual created by man would change that simple fact.

  Part of him hoped he was wrong. But he doubted it. And his lack of faith certainly didn't keep him from appreciating a good show.

  It had started right on time, the choir launching into an appropriately solemn tune, sung in Latin, the voices of angels echoing through the cathedral. They were several stanzas into it when Andy McKenna nudged Matt in the ribs and whispered, "Alert the media. Look who the cat just dragged in."

  Matt followed Andy's gaze and turned his head slightly to see two people moving toward them up the aisle—a man and a woman.

  The woman was their old friend Nadine Overman, whom he had just spoken to outside. He knew she had taken Jenny's death hard, but she looked as stoic as ever.

  The man, however, was a surprise. A guy wearing glasses so dark it was impossible to see his eyes.

  Didn't matter. Matt would recognize him anywhere.

  "You've gotta be kidding me," he murmured.

  "Can't believe he has the nerve to show up here after all these years," Andy said. "You know I sent that asshole a screenplay and he completely ignored me? Didn't say boo about it."

  Matt frowned. "Since when did you start writing screenplays?"

  "Hey, you think all I do is crunch numbers all day? I got aspirations."

  "You and twenty billion other people. The question is, do you have any talent? And I'm guessing no."

  Andy frowned. "Remind me again why we're friends?"

  "Because I'm the only one who puts up with you."

  They faced forward as Nadine and Hutch moved past them to a pew on the left and sat down. Matt started counting to ten, wondering if Hutch would have the decency to take off the dark glasses. At the count of eight he did, focusing his attention on the priest who was stepping out in front of the altar as the choir continued to sing.

  Matt was about to tell Andy what a narcissistic prick he thought Hutch was—even the way he sat seemed arrogant—but then he decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn't really know that to be the case at all. That was merely projection based on supposition and Matt liked to believe he was an objective observer, a rarity in the news business these days. He relied on facts to do his job and he really had no idea what kind of man Hutch was anymore.

  Matt didn't pay much attention to celebrity gossip, but the last he'd heard, the poor guy was coming out of his second stint at rehab and was trying to revitalize a sagging career—a humbling experience for anyone. So maybe he should cut Hutch some slack, even if the guy had abandoned his friends the moment his star caught fire.

  When it came down to it, Matt himself hadn't been all that communicative with the group over the years. Except for Andy. While most of them had stayed in Chicago, they had all moved on to their own careers, their own lives, marriages, divorces, kids...

  Maybe the only reason they resented Hutch was because he was the most visible of them all. There was a time when you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing his face, or hearing about some new movie he had signed to star in.

  Their reaction was a classic case of crabs in the bucket syndrome. They'd all seen Hutch climbing out and wanted to pull him back in. And when he finally broke free, they resented him for it.

  Matt had seen it time and again at the Post. Just recently, Jim Kelsey, one of their top political reporters, started doing guest spots on CNN, and the rest of the staff almost went nuts with envy. Considered him a traitor.

  But not Matt. He knew the newspaper business was a rotting carcass that hadn't yet been buried and he didn't begrudge Kelsey his success. Or Hutch, for that matter.

  Why should he?

  But he'd never say any of this to Andy. The entire dynamic of their friendship centered around the cynical put-down, an act they'd been per
fecting since the moment they were thrown together in a dorm room in college. Jenny had quickly labeled them the Curmudgeon Twins, and it was a role they both enjoyed playing. So Matt figured that admitting to Andy that underneath the crust was a soft, doughy center, would probably crush the poor bastard.

  And with this in mind, he dismissed all the nonsense he'd been thinking for the last few seconds and nodded toward Hutch, saying, "Look at the guy. He even sits like an arrogant douche."

  Andy grinned. "Probably the stick up his ass."

  Matt gave his friend an appreciative chuckle, then caught himself and remembered where they were and why they were here.

  It wouldn't do to disrespect Jenny. She was one of the sweetest people he'd ever known.

  He looked around at all the somber faces and saw that most of the old gang was present, including Monica Clawson, who had lost some weight but still had those glorious tits. Tom Brandt, who was teaching history at Circle, their alma mater—or the University of Illinois to virgin ears.

  And, of course, Nadine and Hutch.

  The only one missing was Ronnie. Matt had no idea what she was up to these days, no idea if she was even alive, but he was pretty sure he would've heard if anything bad had happened to her.

  She and Jenny had never really gotten along—mostly because they had both been madly in love with Hutch. (What else was new?) But when Matt had talked to Nadine, Nadine had been pretty certain that Ronnie would show.

  So where the hell was she?

  Late, as usual.

  Further proof that most people don't change.

  — 4 —

  YOU'D MISS YOUR own damn funeral.

  It was a phrase her mother had pretty much worn out over the years. Just another one of the many clichés Mom liked to pull out of her butt in her never-ending quest to harass and belittle her only daughter.