Exposed (11 page)

Maddie managed to talk for the rest of the meal as he sat attentively and chimed in with occasional comments and questions. He was a great listener. It was a skill so few people had, and she appreciated it. By the time he’d wolfed down the last morsel of pepperoni, the restaurant crowd had thinned.

He pushed his plate away and rested his arms on the
table. He leaned in conspiratorially, and Maddie found herself leaning closer, too.

“Maddie, can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Why do you keep looking at my hands?”

She glanced at the long, thick fingers that were curled around his beer bottle. She hadn’t realized he’d noticed.

“Habit, I guess.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“I pay attention to how people touch stuff.”

“Why?”

“People have unique styles of handling things,” she said. “For instance, that you hold your beer by the top, where the neck tapers in, when you’re taking a sip. If I needed to get prints, that’s where I’d go first.”

He was looking at her a little warily now, and she smiled. Most people would probably be shocked to know the sort of details CSIs picked up on.

“Also, you eat your pizza taco-style. You fold it in half.”

He rubbed his chin, where a way-past-five-o’clock shadow darkened his jaw. “Damn, I never thought about it. I’ll have to watch my hands around you. No cleaning my ears or subtly adjusting things in my pocket.”

“Yeah, that’s not too subtle. And men do it all the time, thinking they’re being discreet.” She caught a glimpse of his watch and gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s after one!” She jumped up from her chair. “We have to work tomorrow. And you still have to drive back.”

“It’s no big deal.” He left some bills on the table and
followed her from the restaurant. “I’m used to long hours.”

They stepped into the brisk night air, and Maddie’s breath formed a cloud in front of her face. She shivered and fisted her hands in the pockets of her coat. He’d left his suit jacket in the back of his car, but he seemed unbothered by the weather as he walked alongside her. For some reason, she felt comfortable around him, but she resisted the urge to huddle close to him for warmth.

“How long’s your drive?” she asked.

“Half an hour. I live on the north side of the city.” They reached the car, and he opened her door. “Easy access to San Marcos, Austin, most of the municipalities covered by our field office.”

His tone was businesslike, but the look in his eyes was not as he watched her slide in. She leaned her head against the seat as he walked around and got behind the wheel.

The drive back was quiet, and Maddie’s thoughts drifted as he glided through deserted intersections to the neighborhood where she lived. It was less than a mile away from the gas station where she’d seen Volansky, in the flesh, only a few hours ago.

“You should think about getting that alarm activated.”

She gave him a sideways look. Had his thoughts been on the same path as hers?

“It probably wouldn’t cost much, and your homeowner’s insurance might knock a few bucks off your rate.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. It was something she’d been meaning to do for years, but she’d never
gotten around to it. Now she felt foolish for putting it off.

She glanced at him behind the wheel of the car, completely relaxed. She remembered the tension in his face as he’d sped through yellow lights and careened around corners in pursuit of a fleeing criminal.

She remembered the sound of those gunshots, and suddenly her stomach tensed. One instant. That’s all it took. She, more than anyone, knew how something young and vibrant and beautiful could be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

Maddie looked away. She watched the trees pass by. She watched the tidy little lawns and the manicured flowerbeds and the houses that were locked up securely for the night. A wave of loneliness washed over her.

She could ask him in. He would stay. He would peel her clothes off and warm her bed and make the world feel good again for a few hours.

And no matter how good it was, she’d wake up utterly alone—maybe not in body but in spirit—and she’d have a fresh new batch of regrets. Or worse, she’d have no regrets at all. She’d feel nothing. Just the dull blankness that had been a fixture of her life since Emma died.

She glanced at Brian’s strong profile in the seat beside her. She didn’t want to do that. She liked him too much to let him see that side of her. It wasn’t something she felt proud of.

He swung into her driveway. Before she could think of a tactful protest, he was out of the car and coming around to her door.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said brightly as he walked her up the sidewalk.

“You bought it.”

She stopped at the base of the steps and turned to look at him. “Well, thanks for the beer, then. And the invitation. I—”

He kissed her. Maddie’s breath caught as his mouth pressed against hers and his hand cupped the side of her face. In her shock, she simply stood there and registered every detail of the moment—the chill of the air, the warmth of his fingers against her cheek, the firmness of his lips. Her hand slid around his waist, and she registered the solid heat of him through the fabric of his shirt.

He eased back, and she blinked up at him as he gently stroked his thumb over her jaw.

“I’ll call you about that brass.” His voice was low and warm.

“What . . .”

“The shell casing.” He dropped his hand, and she felt a rush of cool air against her skin.

“Oh.”
That brass
. “All right.”

“Good night, Maddie.” He turned toward his car, and she caught the smile on his face as he walked away.

Scott Black hated testifying. He didn’t like ties, or suits, or endless hours wasted on benches outside courtrooms. He didn’t like attorneys, period, and he especially hated criminal defense lawyers.

With one exception.

“Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

“You may.”

Rae Loveland rounded the defense table and strode toward him with a gleam in her eye. Her high heels clacked against the floor, and she halted in front of him.

“Mr. Black, do you recognize this document?”

“I do.”

“Could you describe it for the jury, please?” She handed him a thin stack of papers and returned to the lectern.

“It’s a report from our ballistics lab. An analysis of a firearm.”

“Thank you.” She tucked a strand of that long dark hair behind her ear. “And can you read the part at the top where it describes the firearm being analyzed in this case?”

“A Beretta nine-millimeter.”

“A nine-mil, like the one allegedly collected from my client at the time of his arrest.”

“Objection, Your Honor.” The county prosecutor got to his feet. “These facts are already in evidence. We showed the videotape of the arrest, and the defendant clearly had the gun stuffed in his pants.”

“Sustained.”

Rae didn’t miss a beat. She’d known her opponent would object, but she was planting seeds of doubt wherever possible.

“Mr. Black, can you tell us what you did with this firearm after it arrived at your ballistics lab for analysis?”

Your
ballistics lab. Scott sensed the wording was deliberate, but he couldn’t see her game plan yet.

“I fired it into the tank to create a reference bullet.”

She looked at the jury. “You just ‘fired it into the tank’? Did the gun arrive at the Delphi Center already loaded?”

“It arrived empty. We don’t accept loaded firearms.”

“So, could you walk us through exactly what you did, step by step, please?”

Scott nodded, Mr. Cooperative. “I put on gloves. I removed the empty firearm from the foam-lined case that was used to transport it. I loaded a magazine into the weapon. I put on safety glasses, and I fired two rounds into the tank.”

“To create a reference bullet.” She looked at him. “What is that, exactly?”

“It’s a sample bullet for comparison with another bullet possibly fired by the same gun.” Scott made eye
contact with the jury as he got to the technical part. “The inside of a handgun’s barrel is rifled, which imparts spin to stabilize the bullet’s flight when it leaves the gun. No two firearms make the same marks on fired bullets. The marks are unique to each weapon.”

“And what did you do with your reference bullet?”

“I viewed the striation pattern—the unique marks—under the microscope and created a picture that I added to a database of known firearms to see if it matched anything already on record.”

“And did it?”

“We didn’t get any hits.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “None at all?”

“No.”

She turned to face the display screen beside the jury box. “I’d like to direct your attention to the photograph shown here. It’s a picture made in the laboratory showing the bullet that was removed from the crime scene. Do you recognize it?”

“Yes.” Scott glanced at the photo of the mangled scrap of metal caked with dried blood.

“Did you compare this bullet with the reference bullet you created to see if it contained the same striation marks?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your conclusion? Did the marks match?”

“I wasn’t able to see the striation pattern.”

“You’re saying it didn’t match?”

“I’m saying the bullet was too damaged and misshapen to get usable marks.”

“I see. So you failed to discover these unique
identifiers on the crime-scene bullet.” She turned to face him with a curious look in her pretty blue eyes. “Is that unusual?”

“Fairly unusual, yeah. But when a bullet travels through a cop’s shoulder and a wooden door and gets embedded in a cinder-block wall, that lowers our chances of getting anything.”

Her eyes sparked. She definitely wasn’t happy to have the jury reminded that her scumbag client was accused of shooting an off-duty police officer who’d tried to stop a convenience-store robbery.

Scott had worked a lot of holdups, but this one was especially callous. The assailant—who’d been wearing a rubber Halloween mask—had shot the cop at point-blank range and calmly picked up his brass before collecting ninety-six dollars in cash and walking out the door as the man lay bleeding on the linoleum.

“Your Honor, permission to approach the witness again?”

The judge gave permission, and she strode up to the stand, looking primed for battle.

“Mr. Black, I’d like to direct your attention to your report again.” She picked up the paperwork and flipped the pages. “Could you read your notes at the bottom of page three there?”

He cleared his throat. “Possible blood spatter, trace amount, grip.” He looked at the jury. “I noticed a smear of blood on the pistol grip.”

She returned to the lectern as Scott’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it, and the call went to voice mail.

“You said ‘trace amount.’ I take it that means small?”

“Yes.”

“And you were the first person to notice this? Even after the gun had been examined by a police detective? He didn’t see this smear?”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

“You’ll have to ask him,” Scott said, earning a stern look from the judge.

“Sustained.”

“And what did you do after you noticed this trace of blood on the pistol grip?”

“I’d already finished my tests, so I sent it to DNA so they could analyze the blood, see if it came from the victim.” Scott was pushing it with that last part, but the judge let it go, and he suspected they’d already firmly established that the blood on the pistol grip belonged to the cop, who’d been on medical leave for eight months.

Rae turned to the jury box. “So you sent the gun from your ballistics lab to the DNA lab so they could analyze this tiny trace of blood, the
sole
direct evidence connecting my client to the victim, is that correct?”

The prosecutor jumped to his feet. “
Objection
, Your Honor.”

“Sustained.” The judge gave her a warning look. “Watch it, Ms. Loveland.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” She turned back to Scott. “Is there any chance the tiny amount of blood you discovered could have been picked up at the ballistics lab? While the gun was in
your
possession, not my client’s?”

“No.”

“It’s not possible? The reports show that the gun and the bullet were in your lab on the same day.”

“It’s not possible.”

“How can you be sure?”

He looked at the jury again. “Because we’re very careful with our procedures to prevent the possibility of contamination. We don’t mix up the evidence like that. We wash our hands between each step in the analysis. We wear gloves when we handle everything.”

“You wash your hands between every step?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“You
always
wear gloves?”

“When we’re handling evidence, yes.”

She looked down at her notes, and he could tell she was winding up for a curveball.

“Mr. Black, do you recall what you were doing on the morning of April twelfth of last year?”