Devil's Corner Read online

  “You guys couldn’t have known,” Bale said, an uncharacteristic softness to his tone, and Vicki felt a tear arrive without warning. He pretended not to notice, and she blinked it away.

  “I should go see my CI.”

  “Name was Jackson, right?”

  “Yes. Shayla Jackson.”

  “Did you meet with her before tonight?”

  “No.” Vicki felt her cheeks grow hot. “I talked to her on the phone to schedule the meeting. I waited to talk to her because I thought she’d speak more freely in person. Obviously, I made a terrible mistake.”

  “No, you didn’t. It wasn’t a bad call.”

  “Yes, it was. None of this would have happened. I should have known.”

  “Stop. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, you know that. I’d have done the same.” Bale put a hand on her shoulder. “What’d Jackson say before the grand jury? That’ll tell you something.”

  “I don’t know. The transcript wasn’t in the file.”

  Bale frowned. “Now, that shouldn’t be. You gotta keep your files better.”

  “I got the file as is, remember? The only background info in the file is a memo from the old AUSA, saying that Shayla Jackson called the office and offered to testify that the defendant bought the guns for resale.” Vicki felt another wave of regret that she’d waited to meet with Jackson. If she had known more, the CI would be alive tonight. And Morty. She pressed the thought away, but she knew it would return. “The coke confuses me. Jackson didn’t sound like the type. I wonder if this has anything to do with the straw case.”

  “How?”

  “Well, Jackson knew I was coming over tonight. It was risky for her to meet with me here, if she had coke in the house. It doesn’t make sense.” Vicki was thinking out loud, a bad habit in front of a boss. “What if she was killed to prevent her from talking to me tonight? Or from testifying?”

  “In a straw purchase case, it’s unlikely. How many counts is it?”

  “One.”

  “So, five years at most. It’s penny-ante. Who’s the straw?”

  “Her name is Reheema Bristow. No priors, held two jobs.”

  “So, nothing special. They pick straws who have valid ID, no record, and a steady employment history, in case the gun dealer checks. Straws don’t have the juice to get anybody killed.”

  “Maybe whoever she resold the guns to does.” Vicki couldn’t dismiss it so easily. “And the timing’s funny. Bristow’s trial comes up next week, or would have.”

  “What’s this do to your case?”

  “It’s over.”

  “No corroboration for Jackson’s testimony?”

  “No.”

  Bale frowned again, this time puckering his pinkish lower lip. “Okay, go on up, but you know the drill, don’t touch anything. The locals don’t like you walking over the scene, but they already sketched and took pictures. Just be careful; the techs haven’t finished upstairs. You want company?”

  “No thanks,” Vicki answered. Bale was already nodding to a uniformed cop, trying to commandeer him to baby-sit, but turned away before he could see the cop hadn’t budged an inch. No city cop was doing anything for the feds, other than lending him a Maglite.

  “We’ll talk later, at the office.” Bale squeezed her shoulder again. “Don’t stay long upstairs. Go home and rest yourself.”

  “Sure. Thanks for the water.” Vicki turned to go.

  Not knowing what she’d find.

  THREE

  Vicki lingered at the threshold of the upstairs bedroom. A team of crime techs clustered at the foot of the bed, working around Jackson’s body, obscuring it from view. One tech vacuumed the light blue rug for hair and fiber samples, and another bagged Jackson’s hands to preserve evidence under her fingernails. A police photographer bundled in a dark coat videotaped the crime scene, and another took photographs. Flashes of white strobe rhythmically seared the bedroom.

  Vicki told herself that she was waiting for the police personnel to finish their job, but she was getting used to the primal odor of fresh blood and fighting to keep her emotions in check. She had seen three murder scenes at the D.A.’s office, but she had never experienced anything like tonight, in which a federal agent and a witness had been killed. The crime struck at the justice system itself, and Vicki wasn’t the only one feeling its gravity. The crime techs seemed unusually subdued, absorbed in their tasks. Nobody was going to screw this one up.

  The police photographer, an older man with bifocals, turned and asked, “Excuse me, am I in your way?”

  “No, the investigation comes first,” Vicki answered, and hoped she sounded convincing.

  She glanced around the bedroom, sizing it up. Even by city standards, it was small; typical of the two-bedroom brick row houses that lined the blocks around Roosevelt Boulevard. Vicki could see the other bedroom down the hall, at the back of the house and figured she’d use the time to check it out.

  She walked down the hall, and the lights were on inside, revealing a spare bedroom full of stacked boxes, gathered evidently from a liquor store. Two crime techs in latex gloves were slitting the neat brown packing tape with boxcutters and searching the boxes. Handwritten in black Sharpie next to the Smirnoff and Tanqueray labels, they read CDS and SUMMER CLOTHES.

  “Looks like she was moving,” Vicki said to the techs, then heard herself. “Duh.”

  “You must be a detective,” the red-haired tech joked.

  “No, an AUSA.”

  “Worse.” The tech laughed.

  “So what are you finding?”

  “It’s fascinating. Inside the box that’s labeled summer clothes, there are summer clothes, and the box that says CDs has CDs.”

  “I’ll leave now,” Vicki said with a tight smile, and pondered the discovery as she returned to the master bedroom and stood again at the threshold. The techs were still at work over the body, and she made a mental note that the bedroom hadn’t been packed up yet. If Jackson was leaving, it wasn’t imminent.

  Vicki looked around the bedroom. The oak dresser and night table had been ransacked and drawers hung open, and the bed, a king-size, sat opposite the two front windows. It had been covered with a quilted comforter of blue forget-menots, which had been yanked off, and even the mattress was off-kilter.

  One of the techs muttered, “Sheee. Whole lotta blood.”

  “Whaddaya expect?” another asked.

  Vicki eyed the messed-up bed. Stuffed plush animals tumbled on the pillows: a pink teddy bear, a fuzzy puppy clutching a white heart, and a greenish snake with black diamonds. There hadn’t been any toys downstairs, so the stuffed animals had to be Jackson’s. Vicki felt a twinge.

  Her attention was drawn to the other messy areas in the bedroom; to the left was a closet whose white louvered doors hung open, with clothing spilling out. She walked over, giving the body and the techs wide berth. A stack of sweaters and sweatshirts had been pulled out and onto the rug. Empty Nine West shoe boxes lay scattered and open on the bedroom floor, as if they had been pulled from the closet in haste. The burglars hadn’t stolen Nine West sandals. Had the cocaine been in the shoe boxes?

  Vicki turned and scanned the bedroom again. Next to the closet, the dresser, a modern oak one, sat ransacked against the wall. She went over and caught sight of herself in the large attached mirror. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her small nose pink at the tip from crying, and her hair, jet-black and shoulder-length, looked unprofessionally messy. And Morty’s blood was still on her coat lapel. She looked away.

  The corners of the mirror were festooned with plastic leis, a multicolored array of Mardi Gras necklaces, and a black foamy cap that read Taj Mahal. Photographs had been stuck inside the mirror’s frame, and Vicki eyed them. There were five pictures, and everybody in them was dressed up. The venues were tony, if the prominent advertising backdrops were any indication: the NBA All-Star game, the BET awards. Three of the photos were of the same young man: an African American about thirty years old, with a broad
smile and largish eyes. He had a muscular, compact form, a heavy gold chain around his neck, and his hair was shorn into a close fade, revealing a script tattoo on the side of his neck, indecipherable.

  The other photos were also of the young man, but this time he was standing on the boardwalk, the ocean behind him, being hugged by a young woman with an equally broad smile. She looked to be about twenty-something and wore heavy makeup, a white halter top, jeans shorts, and platforms. Lots of gold jewelry but no wedding ring. A sea breeze blew through her straightened hair, and in the last photo she wore a foamy black cap, turned sideways. Taj Mahal. The same hat as on the mirror.

  Vicki felt a pang. The woman must be Shayla Jackson. The man must be her boyfriend.

  Her gaze fell under the lamplight on the bureau, where an open jewelry box gleamed like a cartoon treasure chest. The trays overflowed with hoop earrings, gold bangles, diamond-studded tennis bracelets, gold chain necklaces; it was several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, and amazingly, none of it had been disturbed, much less stolen, by the teenagers. Obviously, Teeg and Jay-Boy were no ordinary burglars.

  Clutter around the jewelry box hadn’t been touched either. Bottles of expensive perfume — First, Chanel, Shalimar — lay next to a pen, a pair of Gucci sunglasses, and a few scattered bills for Philadelphia Electric, Verizon, and Philadelphia Gas. Vicki looked closer. They were utilities bills for this house, and the postmark was last month. The bills were addressed to Jackson, but she hadn’t opened them. She had crossed out her own name and address and written in its place “Jamal Browning, 3635 Aspinall Street.”

  Assuming it was Jackson’s handwriting, which seemed likely, even Vicki could connect these dots. Jackson was sending Browning the bills for the house. He was keeping her. He had to be the boyfriend in the photos. Vicki hadn’t seen drug paraphernalia anywhere downstairs, much less money counters or digital scales used by big-time dealers. Jackson probably wasn’t a coke dealer, especially of fish-scale coke; more likely, hers was a stash house and she was keeping the drugs for someone else. Someone she would risk her neck for by keeping it on her premises; someone who trusted her with such valuable merchandise. Jamal Browning, her boyfriend. But why was she moving?

  “It’s a goddamn shame,” one of the techs said, behind Vicki. She braced herself and turned on her heel. Even so, she was completely unprepared for the awful sight.

  Shayla Jackson lay on her back on the blue rug, between her periwinkle-flowered bed and the wall, her slim arms apart and her pink palms skyward. Her brown eyes, the same lovely ones in the photo, lay wide open and staring fixedly at the ceiling. Her legs, slim and long in jeans, lay horribly twisted, and she was barefoot. She was wearing a dark, loose V-neck sweater, now soaked with black blood. Bullet holes strafed the front of her chest, cutting a blood-drenched swath between her breasts. The blasts exposed red muscle and white sternum, and the skin unfurled like common cloth to expose the cruelest blow of all: Jackson’s bloodied midsection puffed high and round.

  “She was pregnant?” Vicki asked, appalled, and one of the kneeling techs looked up.

  “Eight months,” answered an Indian doctor working on Jackson’s body, his glossy head bent over her chest wounds.

  “My God.” Vicki shook her head. Her stomach flipped over. She gritted her teeth to keep queasiness at bay.

  “Who are you?” The doctor looked up, his round eyes flickering with annoyance. He wore a maroon sweater vest under his lab coat, which had a black nameplate that read Dr. Mehar Soresh.

  Vicki introduced herself and said, “This is my case.”

  An African-American tech added: “She’s the AUSA almost got shot with the ATF agent.”

  Dr. Soresh returned to his examination. “Then you’re one lucky lady tonight.”

  Vicki didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t know where to start. She had gotten her partner killed.

  Dr. Soresh continued, “In answer to the question you were about to ask, the child could not have been saved. Mother and child were dead when they hit the floor.”

  Vicki wasn’t about to ask.

  “Furthermore, my theory is that the first bullet was to the uterine area, so the baby died first.” Dr. Soresh extracted a long silvery probe from his black bag. “Somebody wanted this baby dead, that’s for sure.”

  Vicki’s thoughts raced ahead. Was it Browning’s baby? Was it somebody else’s? Who would want a baby killed? And what, if anything, did it have to do with the straw case? The questions forced her to think clearly. “Dr. Soresh, do you know who’s going to identify the body? Who’s next-of-kin, do you know?”

  Soresh didn’t look up. “Mom’s coming in from Florida. Tampa, I think. She’ll come to the morgue, look on the TV screen. We make it easy on ’em, not like on CSI. Big dramatic thing, undraping the body, ta-da.”

  “No boyfriend is coming?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “A baby mama drama,” the black tech said, and Dr. Soresh shot him a dirty look.

  “I don’t know, that’s not my bailiwick. I have Mom coming in at noon tomorrow. She’s next-of-kin, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Will you send me a copy of your report, when you’re finished?”

  “Sure. What’s your name again?”

  “Allegretti. I’m an AUSA.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks,” Vicki said, getting her bearings. Morty was dead and so was a pregnant woman. And a baby, gone. She didn’t know how or whether any of this connected to her straw purchase case, but she intended to find out.

  Starting now.

  FOUR

  Downstairs, the crowd in the house had grown, and Vicki made a beeline through the badges for Bale, who was shooting his French cuffs, revealing a flash of gold cuff link as he stood talking to the U.S. Attorney, Ben Strauss. Strauss, a blond six footer gone gray, towered over Bale in a dark blue suit and no topcoat. The first and last time Vicki had seen Strauss was when he addressed her as one of five new assistant U.S. Attorneys, after they’d returned from orientation. Strauss had impressive credentials, almost twenty-five years working for Justice, even if he came off a trifle Aryan, as compared with Bale; standing together, the two men were a twin cone of soft-serve chocolate and vanilla.

  Bale spotted Vicki first, as she reached them. “How’s my girl?” he asked, looping an arm around her, pulling her into their circle.

  “Hanging in,” Vicki answered, and Strauss nodded somberly.

  “I’m sorry about Morty. I know you two were friends.”

  “Thanks.”

  “He was a great agent, one of the best. I had been meaning to drop you an e-mail about the nice result you two got in Edwards. Good job.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You were a good pair. I’m sure he taught you everything you know, right?”

  “And then some.”

  “Morty never liked me, you must know that.”

  Maybe he’s not so bland. “He never said anything like that to me,” Vicki said, though it wasn’t true. Morty had disliked the U.S. Attorney for his grandstanding and headline grabbing. Strauss churned out initiatives all the time, press-released and posted on the DOJ website; Project Clean Sweep, Project Clean Schools, Project Clean Block. Morty had nicknamed him, predictably, Mr. Clean.

  “Good. Well. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d like to think that.” Strauss patted Vicki’s arm stiffly, his eyes a razor-sharp blue.

  “Vicki’s had a rough night,” Bale said, drumming up positive reinforcement.

  “She sure has, a rough night,” Strauss repeated, properly cued. “I’d say this is trial by fire, isn’t it? Maybe you should take some time off. Tomorrow, and the weekend.”

  “Actually, I’m wondering if this is connected to my straw case. I know we found the coke, but I think this was a stash house. Jackson wasn’t the dealer, not for that kind of weight. I think she was just keeping it for—”

  “I drew the same conclusion and so did ATF,” Bale interrupted. Stra
uss’s pale eyebrows lifted.

  “Her boyfriend’s name is Jamal Browning.” Vicki knew she was talking out of turn, but it had never stopped her before. “I think he keeps her, and he may be the father of her baby, because there’s bills on her dresser with his address. Her moving puzzles me, though. They weren’t moving in together or she wouldn’t be forwarding bills to him by mail. If they were breaking up—”

  “You did some detective work, huh?” Bale smiled in a way that said shut up, which Vicki ignored.

  “I don’t think there was another man in the picture, not yet. First off, she was pregnant, and it’s hard enough to meet anybody. Second, there’s still her boyfriend’s photos on her mirror and—”

  “Vick, let’s finish this discussion later,” Bale said, his voice low. He shifted from one fancy loafer to the other. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “Agreed.” Strauss glanced around to see if anybody had been listening. “We don’t need leaks.”

  “But time matters.” Vicki lowered her voice, even though no one was snooping. “Tonight, everything’s fresh, and at bottom, this is a murder case. In the D.A.’s office, we would always—”

  “You’re in the bigs now.” Bale frowned. “We’re lawyers, not cops. Morty’s in very good hands, the very best. Philly Homicide’s on it, and the FBI and ATF are breathin’ down their neck. They’ll collect the evidence and run it down.”

  “The Mayor’s Office has shown a special interest, too.” Strauss checked his watch. “I’m on my way to see him right now. We’ll press-conference in the morning.” He turned to look out the open front door of the row house. Klieglights shone outside, from the TVs and other press. “They’re swarming out there. A triple homicide, a cop murdered.” He glanced back at Vicki. “I don’t have to tell you, no statements to the press.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good.” Strauss clapped her on the shoulder, then nodded to Bale. “How, we’ll talk tomorrow.”