Read Online A Murder of Justice by Robert Andrews - Free Book Online

a conservative think tank funded by a Coloradobeer baron. But despite the view, there was something about the place that was truly French.
    “Okay,” Kate said as the waiter left. “You’ve heard all you want to about a city lawyers’ conference at Harvard. Your turn.”
    “Hoser and I got the call just before eight, Friday night. . . .” Over his roast veal and her sole meunière, he filled in the details: Teasdale’s discovery, the murder scene, Skeeter Hodges’s history.
    A tarte Tatin arrived for dessert, its apples bubbling in caramel under a puffed dome of pastry crust. The waiter punctured the crust. Like a balloon with the air let out, the tarte collapsed. A tendril of warm cinnamon teased Frank’s nose. As the waiter did the dissection, scooping thin-sliced apples, crust, and sauce onto two plates, Frank pulled a single folded sheet of paper from his coat jacket and handed it to Kate.
    “Your boss’s press release,” Frank said.
    She unfolded it and glanced at the banner across the top. “Two months ago.” She read the brief statement, then looked at him questioningly.
    Frank pointed to the sheet of paper at Kate’s elbow. “The mayor of the District of Columbia says the homicide closure rate is sixty percent.”
    She nodded.
    Frank speared a bit of apple and pastry and brought it cautiously to his lips. It was still hot. He put the fork down to let it cool.
    “It’s not. I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope figuring. My grocery-store arithmetic puts solved cases down around thirty–forty percent. You only get to the mayor’s numbers if you add in the cases closed administratively. And what that release ignores is the impact of the cold cases.”
    He tried the tarte. It had cooled just enough. The first taste made you listen for angels singing.
    “What about them?”
    Kate was giving him an impatient look. He thought better about going for another forkful.
    “Over fifteen hundred in ten years.” Frank went back to the mental math he’d cranked out while waiting at National. “So you’re a citizen of the District. You live east of the river”—Kate understood he meant the Anacostia, not the Potomac—“maybe in the projects, maybe in a little house on what used to be a nice street but now’s a shooting gallery.”
    He paused to retrieve more of the airport math. “East of the river, most of those fifteen hundred cold cases probably come within a five- or six-mile radius of your house. Now think about it. . . . Each of those people might have five relatives. Maybe three or four friends. Multiply the eight or nine people who knew the victim by the number of cold cases. Now we have almost fifteen thousand people who see that people they know get killed and other people they know get away with it. Fifteen thousand people learn that lesson in their personal lives.”
    “Something else.”
    “Oh?”
    “Enemies of the victim,” Kate said. “Even if they didn’t do the deed, they also learned that they can get away with murder.”
    “Nobody pays.”
    “What you mean is, nobody gets revenge .” Kate’s eyes narrowed. “That what you’re saying? How about justice?”
    Frank thought about that. “Revenge? . . . Justice? You’re a lawyer, I’m a cop, we see them differently.”
    “Tell me.”
    “I think you see revenge and justice as distinct things.”
    “And you don’t.”
    “ Different , but not distinct.”
    “I thought lawyers had cornered the market on wordsmithing,” Kate said. “How’s different different?”
    “Revenge is different from justice, but it’s related , not distinct.”
    “How?”
    “Revenge and justice are yin and yang. Always together, always in a dynamic . . . push-pull.” Frank hooked his index fingers together and pulled them against each other. “Government doesn’t work when people gun each other down in the streets to settle scores. Government says, ‘We will settle your scores. You people stop shooting each other. . . .