Read Online The Kills by Linda Fairstein - Free Book Online Page B

you. We'll stop with your witness at five
o'clock tomorrow and then I'll give you a chance to see if the kid'll
cooperate."
    "Fine,
Your Honor." I had a better chance of winning the lottery than sitting in
a room with Dulles Tripping by the end of the next day.
    "Anything
else?" he asked, unhooking the clasp of his robe and handing it to the
court officer to hang until the morning.
    "Judge,
I'd just ask you to remind the defendant, now that proceedings have started,
that the order of protection is in full force. He is not to attempt or have any
contact with his son, whether in this courthouse, at his school, or-"
    "That's
really unnecessary, Alex," Robelon objected. "We don't even know what
school the kid goes to or where he's living."
    "I
have no idea what you or your client know at this point. I'm in the rather
unorthodox position of not having access to my own witnesses. It's quite clear
that the family court, by allowing telephone calls and several meetings between
Mr. Tripping and his son, undercut the order of one of the criminal court
judges-"
    I knew
how to get under Moffett's collar. "Which she had no business doing. Alex
is right about that. Be a good boy, Mr. Tripping, understood?"
    "Yes,
sir." The defendant seemed to be smirking at me as he answered Moffett.
    The
elevators stopped on the seventh floor and I ran my security badge through the
scanner, walked down the quiet corridor and up to my eighth-floor office.
    Ryan
Blackmer, one of my favorite young lawyers, was keeping Mercer company in my
office when I dragged in. "You need me?" I asked.
    "Just
a heads-up. Mind if I work on an investigation at Bayview?"
    The
prison facility on Manhattan's West Side was the only place in the county where
female inmates were housed. "Be my guest. What is it?"
    "Prisoner
claims one of the guards-he's a captain, actually-has been having sex with
her."
    "Wouldn't
be the first time. But those can be awfully hard to prove."
    "She's
doing seven years on a robbery with physical injury. Her lawyer claims she
hasn't had a single visitor since Christmas, when her husband left her for her
younger sister. Now she's four months pregnant. Might be as easy as a fetal DNA
test."
    "Go
for it," I said as the phone rang.
    Mercer
answered it. "I don't think she's in the mood," he said, holding out
the receiver to me.
    "Chapman?"
    "I'm
running out of steam, Coop. Never shut my eyes for a minute last night and I'm
just about to go lights-out."
    "I'm
too busy to tuck you in."
    "I
need a favor."
    It was
hard to refuse Mike. He had saved my neck on more occasions than I could count.
"Shoot."
    He
laughed. "But first, what do you give for 'Famous Funerals'?" I
glanced down at my watch. The "Final Jeopardy" question.
    "Nothing.
The subject's too close to home at the moment."
    "Laid
to rest in London's Highgate, his orator described him as the 'best hated and
most calumniated man of his times.'"
    From the
days when I was immersed in my major in English literature, I knew that one of
my favorite authors was interred there. "George Eliot's buried in
Highgate. But she doesn't fit. And Bram Stoker's notorious vampire, Miss Lucy.
Otherwise, not a clue. Skip the education and tell me what the favor is."
    "That
was Engels describing his buddy Karl Marx to the eight mourners who gathered at
the graveside. Only eight. Imagine that. So can you stop at the morgue on the
way home?"
    "Sure.
I didn't want to eat any dinner or polish up my opening statement."
    "I
know your style. You had your opening in the can a month ago. You've already
written the summation."
    Mike was
right. I had learned from the old school, the guys who had mastered the art of
criminal trial work under great prosecutors. Start your preparation with the
closing argument. That way you could make a coherent presentation from the
outset, building your case with a sound structure and layering in any new
information that you gathered during the testimony of the witnesses. I had
outlined those arguments