Above The Law Page 11

  "I know you were sleeping with him," Casey said, raising her voice above the engine.

  "Go to hell," Mandy said, her face twisted with rage.

  She swatted Casey's hand like a fly, then beat it with her fist, pounding the fingers. Casey cried out, let go, and cursed as the Range Rover shot off down the driveway and disappeared through the gates.

  CHAPTER 32

  THE NEXT MORNING CASEY RODE BESIDE JOSe IN HIS TRUCK. Jessica, from the medical examiner's office, followed them in a white county van along with a forensic investigator. On their way down to Wilmer, Casey told the story of the senator's wife.

  "So much for working the inside," Jose said.

  "So much for spontaneous combustion," she said.

  "What's that got to do with it?"

  "You're mocking my approach to Mandy Chase," she said. "That's my comeback."

  "To mock my approach to romance?" he asked.

  "I thought it sounded good."

  "It doesn't," Jose said. "You make it sound like you don't care. You can't mess with a man's confidence that way."

  "Your confidence runneth over."

  "Anyway, you didn't expect the wife to just confess that her screwing with Elijandro is what got him killed, did you?" he asked.

  "Maybe show some reaction."

  "She cursed you and almost ran you over."

  "Something a little more emotional. Tears? A gasp?"

  "Maybe he didn't mean that much to her," Jose said. "She just moves on to the next one. Some women are like that."

  She glanced over at him, but his eyes kept to the road, the long lashes curling skyward.

  "Next time, you'll try," she said.

  "Neither of us are going to be too welcome anywhere in Wilmer after this," he said. "Did you tell Gage I'm coming to the dig?"

  "I thought it best to surprise him."

  "I was thinking," Jose said. "If we're right, and they're lying about Elijandro jumping up in front of the senator, then an autopsy might help prove it."

  "Prove what?"

  "That Elijandro was just sitting there, waiting for a turkey," Jose said. "If he just sat there and took a bullet to the back of the head, forensics is going to be able to show that from the angle of the bullet."

  "One more crack in their story," Casey said.

  They pulled off the highway and Casey read from her BlackBerry, directing him toward a cemetery on the south end of the small town. Beside the entrance, marked by two yellow brick columns stained with bird droppings, a man in a dark suit stood next to an old station wagon with wood-paneled sides. Dark plastic glasses sat crooked on a mostly bald head vaguely bearing the shape of a lightbulb. In the backseat of the car, two Mexicans sat without sound or movement in jeans and grubby white T-shirts.

  Jose's truck rumbled up alongside the undertaker with the ME van behind them. Casey rolled her window down.

  "Mr. Morris?"

  Morris glared up at her and removed a cupped hand from behind his back. In it he'd concealed a cigarette that he sucked on hard before nodding, tucking it away, and blowing out the smoke.

  "When the chief gets here, you can follow me," he said without looking at Casey.

  Jessica got out of the van, walked up, and said, "Ready?"

  "I just told her," the undertaker said, "when the chief gets here."

  "We don't need to wait for the chief," Jessica said. "I'm with the ME's office."

  The undertaker studied her for a moment, then said, "You might not need to wait, but I do."

  Casey shook her head at Jessica to go along with this and they both returned to their vehicles.

  Casey sat looking out over the low stone markers lined in rows beneath a smattering of red cedars that lent the feel of a golf course to the place. When Gage's cruiser arrived five minutes later, the big chief got out wearing his mirrored sunglasses, spoke to Morris, and got back into his car without looking their way. Casey studied the big man's mouth, certain his lower lip protruded in a pout. Morris cranked up the old wagon and rolled in through the gates. Gage followed him, then came Jose and the county van. The little caravan wound its way through the stones and the trees until they reached a slope many acres into the cemetery.

  Here the path turned to dirt. The grass and trees ended, as did the shiny granite headstones. They traveled only a short way over the rough ground before the wagon stopped and Morris got out, followed now by the two Mexicans, who bore spades they removed from the back of the wagon. The investigator with Jessica, a heavyset man with dark wavy hair, also removed some tools from the van to assist.

  Insects buzzed and a hot breeze wafted the high, parched grass. A band of cicadas added to the sound of heat, singing from a twisted mesquite tree on the edge of the cut grass where the paying customers rested. Morris pointed out a spot of freshly turned dirt marked by one of the hundreds of gravestones that looked like small loaves of bread laid down in the weeds. The group stood around the grave and when Gage saw Jose, he surprised Casey by offering him a small smile.

  "I've got this," Jessica said, offering up a copy of the court order to Gage.

  The chief held up his hand. "All set. I got mine faxed to me yesterday."

  Casey waited for the big man to explode. She searched his face, unable to fathom how he could go along without making any protestation or at least showing discomfort or disdain.

  To the Mexicans, Gage said, "Get digging. I got work needs getting to."

  Jessica's ME investigator spoke up and said, "When they get close, I'd like to do the last part of it."

  The undertaker spoke to the men in Spanish and they nodded their heads without stopping their work.

  "They'll need to dig a bigger hole than that," Casey said under her breath, not wanting to betray her ignorance. She'd never seen an exhumation before.

  The Mexicans stopped suddenly and spoke to the undertaker, who waved Jessica's investigator forward as though offering him a seat in a fine restaurant.

  "How about a little more than that," the investigator said, pointing with the small trowel he held, the jowls of his heavy face trembling at the sight of the small hole.

  The undertaker shrugged and sent the Mexicans back at it. Three more strokes and one of the shovels struck metal with a clang. The Mexicans stepped back and looked at the investigator, who stood.

  "What?" he said, peering into the small, shallow hole.

  "Pay dirt," the undertaker said. "Want them to finish it up, or you looking to use that spoon?"

  The investigator knelt at the hole's edge and scraped away some dirt.

  "This is an…" the investigator said, puffing and continuing to dig.

  Casey peered over his shoulder as the trowel scratched away. She saw the circular gleam of stainless steel.

  "Urn," the investigator said, finishing his sentence and looking back over his shoulder at Casey and Jessica. He wiggled the trowel and extracted what looked like a martini mixer. "It's an urn."

  "So much for DNA," Jessica said.

  Everyone looked at Morris, who stood smoking and looking off at the other graves, unconcerned. Gage fought back a smirk.

  Casey stepped toward the chief and said, "You people cremated him?"

  "What the wife wanted," Gage said, removing a piece of paper from his front pocket, unfolding it, and handing it to Casey. "Signed it right there."

  Casey looked down at the creased paper and saw Isodora's signature.

  "You like playing games?" Casey asked, looking back at the chief.

  "Yeah," Gage said with a puff of laughter. "When I win."

  CHAPTER 33

  DO I LOOK LIKE A TURNIP?" THE DA ASKED. "IF THIS WERE Brad Pitt, maybe you could get the National Enquirer to run with it. You want me to convene a grand jury on a US senator?"

  Casey glanced at Jose, who sat with her across from Dustin Cruz's desk.

  "We're not looking for an indictment yet," Jose said. "We just think that if you investigate, that's where this is going."

  Cruz looke
d at Jose and blinked, as if noticing him for the first time.

  "Did she tell you about the last conversation we had in this office?" Cruz asked Jose.

  Jose looked at him and cocked his head.

  "Last time," Cruz said, "she sat there telling me about how the press was going to react to me prosecuting a young woman for murder. Forget that I've got a confession. She's going to make the killer look like the victim with a bunch of talk about old rape cases, and stink me up for women voters.

  "Remember that conversation?" Cruz asked, turning to Casey. "Rosalita Suarez?"

  "She's an innocent woman," Casey said with a shrug, "and my client."

  "So that means you can fight dirty?" Cruz said. "Go to the media?"

  "We're not here about that," Jose said, spreading his fingers and raising his hand. "This is different."

  "This is a US senator," Cruz said, his thick eyebrows arching.

  "Exactly," Jose said. "Your office could investigate this thing and get people to talk. They've got a hundred or so Mexicans out there, people in the house, on the grounds, the ranch-you could get in there with some subpoenas and get things going. Hell, the undertaker, the police chief, the wife even, get them on record, build a case."

  Cruz huffed through his nose. "You think that makes me hungry to stick my neck out? Let's say you can prove the dead guy was banging the wife, which you can't. You got headlines, but not much else. Let's say you get a DNA match with the blood on the shotgun slug, so what? They already said he shot the guy. They said it was an accident."

  "With a deer slug?" Jose said. "They were hunting turkeys."

  Cruz made a face. "That's what? Maybe fifty-fifty that a jury will even follow you?"

  "What about cremating the body like that?" Jose said. "Destroying the evidence?"

  "The wife signed off," Cruz said.

  "She had no idea what she even signed," Casey said.

  "Look," Cruz said with a grim smile, "Chase's no Sunday-school teacher, but you go to kill the king, you better damn well make sure you do it. That's advice for you two. I have no interest in this. None."

  "Looking for a spot on the federal bench?" Casey said, blurting out her words.

  Cruz forced a smile and said, "Nice thought. Wrong party. I'm not a fan of Chase. All those white-toothed television commercials with a bunch of happy kids around him don't fool me for a second.

  "I'm just not stupid," he continued, narrowing his eyes at Casey, "and maybe the enemy of my enemy is my friend? You ever heard that one?"

  CHAPTER 34

  CASEY AND JOSe CLIMBED BACK INTO HIS TRUCK AND HEADED for the coffee shop where their day had begun so she could get her car. The sun beat down on the metal snake of traffic, glinting off windshields, pulverizing the blacktop so that it quavered in the heat.

  Traffic on the highway suddenly slowed to a crawl. Up ahead, Casey could see the flashing lights from the accident that had slowed things down. As they closed in, she saw the belly of a tractor trailer turned on its side. Pallets of disposable diapers had spilled from the truck onto the road and median, like snow from a land of giants.

  A burst of white foam and smoke drew her eyes back to the wreck. A fireman sprayed down the naked engine of the big truck. The cab of the rig had plowed a compact car into the guardrail. Emergency workers scrambled to extract what looked like a body from the accordion of steel.

  Casey noticed a new Audi sedan pull out of the line of traffic and off to the side. A man in a tailored brown suit hurried out of the car and rushed toward the open bay of an ambulance. A woman strapped into a stretcher, bleeding all over the sheets but fully conscious, strained to see the crumpled car. The man in the suit, whom Casey knew instinctively to be a lawyer, bent over the woman and handed her a card. Casey's stomach turned.

  "And they bitch when lawyers get a bad rap," she said under her breath.

  "What a mess," Jose said, easing the truck into the only lane moving through.

  "The person in the car or the diapers?" Casey asked.

  "The senator and the dead ranch hand," Jose said, stepping on the accelerator as the traffic opened up.

  "That, too," she said, nodding.

  "If I'm working this case," he said, glancing her way, "and I presume that's what I'm still doing-"

  "Yes, please. I'm not giving up."

  "The wife is the key," he said.

  "The problem we'll have with the wife is spousal privilege," Casey said, using her thumb and forefinger to take hold of her lower lip. "She can't testify against him."

  "At all?"

  "Not unless someone else was present," Casey said. "Anything said in front of a third party loses the privilege. You said they have a hundred or more people working out there. Servants all around?"

  "More like slaves," Jose said. "Doesn't it make you sick, a guy like Chase who's always bitching about a secure border, talking about these people like they're criminals? Where would he get his staff with a secure border? He wouldn't be out there hiring Caucasians. He might have to pay them minimum wage, more even."

  "In my old life," Casey said, "in my ex-husband's world, everyone knew that if you wanted the inside scoop, you asked the servants."

  "I doubt we'll get invited for dinner," Jose said, "but I can poke around the immigrant community out there and see if there's a way in. I wish I still had my badge, something that would make people more apt to talk."

  Casey sat silently for a few minutes, thinking, the tension building up in her like steam in a kettle.

  When they got off the exit for her car, the words burst from a seam in her mouth in a hot jet. "We can make them talk."

  "Someone deputize you without telling me?" he asked.

  "We can bring them in on our own," she said, forcing the words to slow. "Or threaten to."

  "Oh. Kidnap them?" Jose said with a shitty grin.

  "No. I'm serious. Subpoena them."

  "How?"

  "We agree Chase murdered Isodora's husband, right?"

  "My gut says it was no accident," Jose said. "But you just heard the DA; he's not going to even look into it, let alone investigate. Where are you going to get a subpoena?"

  "I'll prosecute him myself," Casey said, breathing short, shallow breaths of excitement.

  "You're a defense lawyer."

  "I used to be a prosecutor," she snapped.

  "Now all you have to do is get elected."

  "No, listen. I'm talking about a civil court," she said. "Remember that accident back there? Did you see the lawyer giving that lady his card?"

  "I saw the body and the blood," he said.

  "The woman they loaded into the ambulance had a lawyer working her before she even knew her husband was dead," she said. "I saw him get out of his car and swoop down on her like a vulture. He'll be looking to file a wrongful death suit."

  "I thought 'ambulance chaser' was a joke," Jose said.

  "It's big money," she said, ticking off the reasons. "Loss of a lifetime of earnings for the family, pain and suffering for the survivor. That's where you get your multimillion-dollar damages."

  "What's that got to do with this?"

  "We sue Chase for wrongful death," she said.

  "With no proof at all?"

  "That's the beauty. All you need is a reasonable belief," Casey said. "Civil court is a whole different ball game."

  "You can subpoena people?" Jose asked.

  "Same as a criminal case. I can get even a halfway-decent judge to order the cooperation of anyone we say we need to prove our case."

  "And if they just won't talk?" Jose asked.

  "They can go to jail for contempt," Casey said.

  "Didn't OJ get sued by the family?" Jose asked, pulling into the parking lot of the coffee shop. "But wasn't it after he got off?"

  Casey's stomach went tight.

  "Can you do it before?" Jose asked, shutting off the engine.

  Casey sat silent for a moment, tugging on her lip, nodding.

  "Why not?" she said.r />
  "So this isn't exactly textbook," Jose said slowly, a touch of irony creeping into his voice.

  Casey sat, thinking. She'd been here before, out on a limb, doing things others hadn't and making waves. Her stomach soured. It hadn't always turned out well.

  Still, she said, "But there's no reason we couldn't do it."

  "If you're going to invent some new legal strategy," Jose said, "maybe you should save it for some Latin King drug dealer. We're talking about a US senator. This isn't going to be done quietly. They'll bring everything at you."

  "But if I do it," Casey said, tightening her face and turning to him, "if I try Chase for Elijandro's death in civil court and I can get all the evidence out, then Cruz will be wishing he took the case."

  Jose nodded. He reached out and covered her clenched hand. Softly, he said, "I don't want them making a fool out of you."

  "So I let him go?" Casey said, raising her voice, stiffening her back with indignation. "Is that it? He's a US senator, so he's above the law? Bullshit. Not if I can help it. It's unconventional, but there isn't a goddamn reason why I can't do it. Trust me. This I know."

  Jose patted her hand, studying her, then gripped it tight and offered a small smile of collaboration.

  "Okay, I'd ask you to dinner tonight," he said, "but I think I'm going to head out to Chase's ranch to speak some Spanish, talk to the help."

  "And I've got to get Isodora," Casey said, grinning at him, relieved and bubbling again, ready to act. "Jessica said if we get DNA from her and the baby, your lab guy can use it to show that the blood on the bullet is Elijandro's. And she'll need to sign an application to the surrogate court so we can get this suit started."

  "What does she need to apply for?"

  "When you have a wrongful death," Casey said, talking fast, slipping comfortably into the familiar territory of the law, "the court has to assign an administrator to sue on behalf of whoever died. It's a formality, but it's got to be done so I can get things going. Besides, I've got an idea on how I can use this to get her back into the country."

  "But she's where? Sharon said Higueras? Higueras, where?"