Retribution (31 page)

‘Don’t try to deny it. You have. In the past week, you have stood me up at the Medical Examiner’s office and dodged at least six of my phone calls. You call Manny back, but not me, and you schedule my prefile last.’

‘You’re right. I guess I have been avoiding you.’

‘Now I want to know why. Why do you like Manny better than me? He’s definitely more irritating. And he smokes in your office when you’re not here.’ He came in from the doorway and sat down in front of her.

‘Along with Glocks, don’t they issue you guys umbrellas?’

‘It’s a Baretta and no, they don’t. They don’t care if I get soaked and sick, just as long as I can still fire off a shot if necessary. Don’t change the subject.’

‘Look, Dominick, this, this thing between us… it should be professional. And nothing more. You’re my lead on this case and it’s not a good idea for us to,
well, get involved. I guess I just didn’t know how to tell you that.’

‘Sure you did. You obviously have been rehearsing what you were going to say to me in your head for over a week now.’ With his palms on her desk, he leaned over close to her face. His wet black hair curled against his forehead and small drops of water trickled down his temples in zigzag lines, on to his neck. He smelled like Lever soap again. She watched the droplets run down his neck, disappearing into his blue dress shirt, which clung to his chest from the rain. ‘Maybe I’m being arrogant, but I don’t believe you. I thought we…’ He hesitated for a moment and she watched his mouth as he searched for the right thing to had something going there. That maybe there was something between us. And I was pretty sure from that kiss that you thought so, too.’

She felt her face flush and she hoped no one had chosen that moment to walk by her door, which was still open. She looked down quickly, away from his probing brown eyes.

‘Dominick, I,’ she stammered, trying to collect her thoughts.
‘I… we
need to keep this professional. My boss… the media would have a field day if they knew –’

He sat back in the seat in front of her desk. ‘Oh, the media wouldn’t give a shit. Maybe for two minutes. And even if they did, who cares?’ He reached into the Dunkin’ Donuts bag and pulled out two containers of coffee. He handed her one over the desk. ‘One sugar and cream, right?’

She smiled weakly and nodded. ‘Yeah. One sugar and cream. Thank you. You didn’t have to.’ There were a few minutes of strained silence between them while she
stirred her coffee. The rain was pounding hard against her window. It had rained nonstop now for three days. Outside, you could not see the other side of the street, and the parking lot looked flooded. Tiny figures tried desperately to run to the courthouse, taking large galloping steps through the puddles. Someone had lost a file, and white papers were everywhere on Thirteenth Avenue, cemented by the driving rain to the pavement.

In a low voice she broke the silence in the room. ‘Then you understand where I’m coming from?’

He sighed and leaned toward her desk again. ‘No. No, I don’t. Look, C.J., let’s just put this out on the table. I like you, I do. I’m attracted to you. And I was pretty sure that the attraction was mutual. I thought that maybe we could take this somewhere, to another level, but I suppose not now.

‘I do know this much, though. Something has gotten to you since Bantling was arrested, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t think it’s the media. Or your boss. So if you want me to accept what you’re saying – fine, I accept it. If you want me to
understand
it, then I can’t help you.’ He ran his hand through the top of his wet hair, slicking it back off his face again.

‘But, whatever. I’m here for my prefile. Friday at two
P.M
. Right on time.’ His voice was resigned now, and he put his briefcase on the chair next to him and opened it. ‘Oh, and I forgot one other thing… ‘ He reached back into the Dunkin’ Donuts bag. ‘I brought you a Boston Cream. I threw my body over it so it wouldn’t get soggy.’

Only the first twenty minutes of his prefile seemed awkward, and after that the tension in the room lightened, and for a while, the conversation even felt
comfortable again, like putting on old slippers. She knew he was mad at her and that he was hurt. It was ironic that after promising that he wouldn’t hurt her,
she
had been the one to hurt him. And that was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to tell him how she really felt, how she wished it could be as he said, taken to another level. But she swore him in, took his statement, and said nothing.
Chalk up yet another small sacrifice for the greater good.

The Chief Assistant, Martin Yars, had the case set to go before the grand jury on the following Wednesday, September 27, just a few days before Bantling’s scheduled arraignment date on Monday, October 2. Dominick would be testifying before the grand jury, presenting the entire investigation into Anna Prado’s death in the hope that they would return an indictment against Bantling for capital first-degree murder. On the surface, in all the reports, the case was strong. They had a mutilated body, and although DNA wasn’t yet back, the blood in Bantling’s shed matched Anna’s blood type, O negative. It also looked like they had a murder weapon. The scalpel SA Jimmy Fulton had found also had trace amounts of blood on it, and the narcotic drug haloperidol, found in her system, matched the prescription found in Bantling’s house. It all made for the perfect case, except for Chavez and his troubling revelation on Monday. Nevertheless, she fully expected an indictment would be issued and that it would be for capital murder. Before the grand jury at this stage of the prosecution, only the state gets an opportunity to present its case, not the defense; there is no presiding judge, and hearsay is totally admissible. So as C.J.’s criminal law professor at St John’s once pointed out, the state can pretty much indict a ham sandwich if it wants to.

C.J. did not tell Dominick about the bad stop. No one else could be brought into that dark coven, even though the question of who had called in the anonymous tip still burned in her mind without an answer. After careful consideration, C.J. had finally decided that it must have been a coincidence. There were a number of black XJ8 Jaguars in SoBe – maybe Chavez had pulled over a Jag other than the one the caller had tipped about. Or maybe Bantling had shot someone the bird out the window and pissed off some idiot who thought it would be neat to call in a false tip. To question it any more than that would be like leaving open a door to a room you wanted no one to enter.

It was still pouring rain outside when they ended their prefile some three hours later and Dominick rose to leave. The wind whipped sheets of water against her window, and she reached into her desk and pulled out an umbrella.

‘You just now got dry. Save yourself. I’ll have security walk me to my car with theirs.’

‘Security? Ha. It’s after five on a rainy Friday. Security went home hours ago, along with the rest of your office, I think. Thanks, but no thanks. I’m a tough guy. Water runs right off me.’

‘Suit yourself. Don’t catch cold, though. You’re needed in front of the grand jury on Wednesday – and oh, I almost forgot. I just got notice today of the Arthur Hearing. Go figure, Bantling wants a bond. It’s set for one P.M. next Friday, the twenty-ninth. I’ll need you for that, too. Can you make it?’ An Arthur, as it was known, was much more involved than the preliminary First Appearance, where the judge simply read off the arrest form to find probable cause. Even if an indictment had
already been issued by that time, C.J. still would need to prove through witnesses that ‘proof was evident and presumption great’ that Bantling had committed first-degree murder, which meant, at the very least, calling her lead detective to the stand. Hearsay was again admissible, but, unlike grand jury testimony, all witnesses now would be subject to cross-examination. Defense attorneys often used an Arthur Hearing as a discovery tool to see what kind of a case the state had, and how good their witnesses held up under cross, knowing full well that there would be no way the judge would grant them a bond. C.J. suspected that to be Lourdes Rubio’s goal in this case.

‘Are you handling it?’

‘Yes. Yars only handles the grand jury. It’s all me from here on out.’

‘Then how could I say no? Of course we need to keep this strictly professional, so you better send me a subpoena anyway.’

She felt her face go hot again. ‘Very funny. Thanks for, um, understanding, about keeping this – our friendship, that is – professional between us.’

‘I never said that I understood. I said I accepted it. Big difference.’

She walked with him past the deserted maze of the secretarial pool to the security access doors just outside the elevator bay.

At the door he turned to her. ‘Manny and I are meeting for drinks at the Alibi to go over some things. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like. All three of us can remain professional over a couple of beers.’

‘Thanks, but I’d better not. I’ve got lots of things to finish up.’

‘Alright, then. Have a good weekend, Counselor. I guess I’ll see you on Wednesday, after the grand jury.’

‘Stay dry,’ she called out just as the elevator doors closed, leaving the dark office hallway deserted once again.

43

It took the grand jury less than an hour to indict William Rupert Bantling on first-degree murder in the death of Anna Prado. And it only took them that long because they had ordered lunch during deliberations and the bill was on the state only if they ate
before
they finished with the case.

Within a matter of minutes after the indictment was handed down, the media hordes had descended on the news and devoured it, and then instantaneously regurgitated the information on the pristine marble steps of the Dade County courthouse through dazzling white smiles, analyzing ‘what it really meant’ for captive TV audiences around the world.

C.J. had not expected a decision to be that quick. In fact, she was in a hushed meeting with the State Attorney himself, Jerry Tigler, when one of the secretaries ran into the conference room with the news and turned on the TV. C.J. and Tigler, along with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, and the FBI’s Miami Special Agent in Charge all watched on live television as a flustered and red-faced Martin Yars, Chief Assistant for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, painfully stumbled through even the simplest of words on the courthouse steps, ineptly trying to satisfy the insatiable questions of the dozen or so press corps who had nailed him unexpectedly for interviews on the way to his car. It looked bad. It sounded worse.

The impromptu meeting at the State Attorney’s Office had been called at the joint request of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It seemed the feds wanted Cupid, and they didn’t want to share. All eyes in the room were silently glued on Yars, who had chosen now, of all times, to develop a bad stutter. After a few more difficult moments, blessedly, even Channel 7 took pity and went to commercial. Tom de la Flors, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, broke the uncomfortable silence in the room.

‘See, Jerry? That’s exactly the sort of thing that I was talking about. Our office has the resources and the experience to handle this media circus.’ He shook his head and dropped his voice a few octaves to a more personal whisper that could still be heard by all in the room, and he looked straight at Tigler, who was squirming uncomfortably in his fake-leather high-backed chair. ‘Can we be honest here, Jerry? This case is a political firecracker, and we all know it. One drop, one mess-up, and the whole thing can explode. Right in your face. Right in an election year. And I know how rough it can be to keep the opinion polls friendly and the voters turning out on election day chanting your name. I was a state judge once; I know how it works. And the polls don’t lie, Jerry. They haven’t been happy with how your office has handled this case from the get-go. Eighteen months before a suspect was arrested, and he’s only been indicted on one of the murders. The other victims’ families are all screaming bloody blue murder to every reporter who will listen. And they are all listening, Jerry – they are all listening.’

As if on cue, the FBI’s Miami SAC, Mark Gracker, chimed in. ‘The FBI is prepared to assume the entire
criminal investigation. We will, of course, need all evidence obtained to date by the Cupid task force to be submitted to the FBI crime lab for reexamination.’

De la Flors paused for a moment to let what had just been said sink in. Then he leaned back in his chair and in a resigned voice that sounded to C.J. strikingly similar to that of a father who has just had to reprimand his child, continued on. ‘The U.S. Attorney’s Office is prepared to go forward on
all
the murders, Jerry, not just Marilyn Siban’s. I think it would all just be smoother if we could agree beforehand and save each other a lot of unnecessary bickering in court.’

C.J. sat in her chair doing a slow but steady boil, listening to the thinly veiled threats escape de la Flors’s mouth through his perfect white teeth and slick smile. She wanted Tigler to get up and slug him, but knew that he would have to find his balls first, and that could take years.

Tigler looked around the table and squirmed again in his seat at the helm of the long table. Finally, after a long moment, he cleared his throat and found his voice. ‘Well, Tom, I appreciate your concern. I do, but I think at this stage of the game we have things under control over here. C. J. Townsend is one of our finest prosecutors, and I’m confident that she can handle this case.’

Jerry Tigler looked out of his league. His brown suit was frumpy and outdated, and his hairpiece had shifted across his head during the meeting due to the nervous buildup of sweat underneath. He was no match for the diamond-smiled, Calvin Klein-wearing, former judge and now larger-than-life, appointed-by-the-president, U.S. Attorney Tom de la Flors.

‘I’m not so sure you understand, Mr Tigler,’ Gracker
started in again. C.J. watched as he jabbed his pudgy little finger on the conference table, an attempt to command more attention to his small self. ‘The Bureau has worked hundreds of serial homicides. We have the resources available to work the murders of all eleven victims.’