Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gloria Pascal got together with her friends every weekend so they could ride their bikes on country roads.
Along the way, they stopped for lunch and traded stories about work and family.
Today’s ride was on a mountain bike trail that was a challenge.
But Gloria relished the challenge as much as she treasured these weekly adventures with her friends.
The trail they were following led through forest, and the shade was a relief from the heat. Gloria was feeling good and pedaling hard when her front wheel hit a concealed root and she tumbled sideways down a short incline.
The fall knocked the wind out of her, and she lay on her back, stunned, while her friends stopped and made their way to her.
“Are you okay?” Heidi Rich asked her.
Gloria sat up. “I don’t think I broke anything.”
“Can you stand up?” Megan Faraday asked.
Gloria struggled to her feet.
“Your bike looks okay,” Heidi said.
“You’re lucky. I crashed like this once and I—”
Heidi stopped midsentence. “Is that a person?” she asked, pointing to something wedged against a tree trunk at the bottom of the hill.
“I’m going to see that in my dreams tonight,” Chad Remington said as he stared at Billy Kramer’s mutilated body.
“This is really inconvenient,” Oscar Vanderlasky complained.
“I bet it fucked up Kramer’s plans too, Oscar,” Audrey Packer replied, appalled by Vanderlasky’s lack of empathy, but not surprised.
“Hey, the guy was a scumbag, but he was going to help me do some real damage to the Lucifer’s Disciples. So, pardon me if I don’t get all weepy.”
Chad shook his head as the detectives began the climb to the top of the hill through the crowd of forensics experts who were combing the area for clues.
“Do you think Vanderlasky has human DNA?” Audrey asked.
“Don’t ask me to bet on that,” her partner answered.
“Do you think Walter Zegda did Billy in?”
“That’s a bet I might take, if someone leaked what he told Muriel Lujack.”
“Cogen’s killer could have silenced him if he thought Kramer could out him.”
“Zegda could have killed Cogen and Kramer.”
“That’s true. Kramer said Cogen and the Disciples were in business together. Cogen was facing a slew of criminal charges. If Zegda was worried that Cogen would sell him out to make a deal, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.”
“I’m getting a headache,” Audrey said.
“Sometimes I wish it were like TV, where every case gets wrapped up in an hour,” Chad said with a shake of his head.
Jack Blackburn’s trial was scheduled to begin soon, and Karen was worried.
Oscar Vanderlasky’s case rested on the evidence of the beer glass.
Karen had asked Naomi Baker if she could ask her client about the glass, but Baker had refused to set up an interview until she had worked out a plea bargain.
Karen was working on a set of jury instructions in Blackburn’s case when Morris Johnson walked into her office.
“I have good news and bad news,” Johnson said after he shut the door to Karen’s office and plopped down on one of her client chairs. “Which do you want first?”
“Hit me with the bad stuff so we can end on a high note.”
“Billy Kramer is dead, and he didn’t die easy. My sources are telling me that the kill looks like several murders attributed to Walter Zegda and the Lucifer’s Disciples.”
“Oh no,” Karen Wyatt said. “There goes our chance to prove that Kramer brought the beer glass to Cogen’s house.”
“Did Cynthia Woodruff know he did?”
“I don’t know. But anything she would try to tell a jury about what Kramer told her would be objected to as hearsay.”
“Isn’t there an exception to the hearsay rule that would let us get in what Kramer told her?”
Karen thought for a moment. Then she sat up and smiled. “There is.”
Karen told Morris what she could argue if Oscar Vanderlasky tried to exclude statements Billy Kramer had made to Cynthia Woodruff or the police or DAs.
“You think that will work?” Morris asked.
“I’m pretty certain, but we don’t even know if Kramer said anything to Woodruff or the authorities about the beer glass.”
“I’ll try to interview her, and I’ll go through the discovery.”
“Is that all the bad news?”
“It is.”
“Then tell me something good.”
“I went through the court records and found all the cases Muriel Lujack is handling. One of the defendants she’s prosecuting is Raymond Castor. He’s a Disciple, and one of the police reports lists Nikki Randolph as his girlfriend.”
“You think that she’s the person who told Muriel that her boyfriend knows the name of the DA on the take?”
“It has to be.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Money talks, bullshit walks.”
“A charming phrase.”
“But oh so true. DAs can’t bribe people. We can.”