Cross Justice (20 page)

“Objection!” the prosecutor cried. “What is the relevance here? Mr. Bell has no connection whatsoever to this case.”

“With the court’s indulgence, I’m trying to establish that connection,” Naomi said.

“You’re on a short leash, Counselor,” Varney said, sweating now despite the fact that it was quite cool in the courtroom.

Naomi said, “Marvin Bell has been giving your family money, correct?”

She lifted her chin, said, “Yes.”

“Be tough without that money, wouldn’t it?”

I noticed Sharon’s mother had gone very tense; she was sitting forward, holding on to the back of the bench in front of her.

“Yes,” Lawrence said quietly.

“Tough enough that you’d lie about a rape if he asked you?”

“No,” she said, and then she reached across herself with her left hand to scratch her shoulder, in effect shielding her heart.

“You realize you’re under oath,” Naomi said. “And you understand the penalty for perjury in a capital crimes case?”

“No … I mean, yes.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Strong said. “The defense is badgering the witness.”

“Sustained,” Varney said, patting his brow with a handkerchief.

Naomi paused, and then said, “Did Coach Tate ever come to you asking about your uncle? Marvin Bell?”

Lawrence looked confused. “If he did, I don’t remember.”

“Funny,” Naomi said, returning to the defense table. “We talked to Lacey Dahl, a good friend of yours, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Dahl will testify that she heard Coach Tate ask you about Marvin Bell a few days before you claim the rape occurred,” Naomi said. “She heard it outside the women’s locker room at the high school. Do you remember now?”

Lawrence fidgeted. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What did he ask about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did he ask whether your uncle was involved in the drug trade in Starksville?”

“What?” Lawrence said, offended. “No, that never—”

Before she could finish, Judge Varney let out a howl like he’d been stabbed. His contorted face turned beet red, and his entire body went rigid. Then he moaned like a wounded animal and pitched forward onto the bench.

“
THREE DAYS?” I
said later that afternoon, standing outside the track stadium at Starksville High School with Bree. We were talking to Naomi with my cell phone on speaker.

“Maybe five,” my niece replied. “Judge Varney’s riddled with kidney stones and passing two. Strong says resuming trial Friday is the best we can hope for, but more likely Monday.”

“It’s probably a blessing,” Bree said.

“Why’s that?” Naomi asked.

I said, “Unless you and Stefan aren’t telling us something, Bree and I have both looked at the evidence, and other than Stefan’s suspicions about Marvin Bell, we don’t see anything that links him to drug trafficking.”

“There’s circumstantial evidence,” Naomi said.

“That’s not good enough,” Bree said. “We need to prove it.”

I said, “If we can peg Bell as a drug lord threatened with exposure, suddenly his niece Sharon’s story feels dubious, and we have a strong motive for his framing Stefan.”

“Still leaves the DNA evidence,” Bree said.

“I think I’ve got that covered,” Naomi said. “Stefan and Patty used condoms. I’ve got an expert witness willing to testify that it is entirely possible that the semen found on Rashawn and on those panties was stolen from the trash and then planted.”

“Put both those things together and there’s your reasonable doubt,” I said.

“But we don’t have Bell,” Bree said. “And Patty Converse a no-show in court today didn’t help.”

“I’m on my way to her apartment,” Naomi said. “She’s not answering her phone.”

“Let us know,” I said, and I hung up.

We went into the stadium and climbed into the stands. Many of the same athletes from the other day were there, including Sharon Lawrence, who shot Bree and me a glare as she jogged past with several of her friends.

Bree said, “The other night Cece Turnbull said Rashawn was very upset about something in the days before he died.”

“I remember that,” I said.

“Would seeing a rape be upsetting enough?” she asked quietly.

I looked over and saw she was serious.

“It would be upsetting enough,” I said.

Was Stefan’s version of events all lies? Had Rashawn seen him with Lawrence? Had my cousin assaulted the boy to shut him up?

Jannie was again running with the older girls. Coach Greene had them skipping in two-hundred-meter intervals. I couldn’t remember Jannie ever doing that in a training session, and I noticed she was having difficulty staying with the college athletes.

When it was over, Jannie went to her bag, threw on a hoodie, and then came over to the fence with an unhappy expression.

“I suck at skipping,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m doing it.”

“Did you ask?” I said.

Jannie shrugged, said, “It’s supposed to help with your explosiveness.”

“There you go,” Bree said.

“I’m plenty explosive when it counts,” Jannie said.

“Couldn’t hurt to get more,” I said, noticing that Coach Greene was crossing the track toward us, carrying Jannie’s gym bag and looking serious.

“Dr. Cross,” she said, not looking at Jannie. “We have a problem.”

“How’s that?” I said, standing.

She held out Jannie’s bag by the handles. It was open.

Jannie frowned, tried to see what the coach was talking about as I climbed down. But Greene held it away from her, said, “I want your father to see first.”

I stepped up and looked in the bag. There, nestled in a wrinkle of Jannie’s sweatpants, was a small glass vial filled with white powder.

“
THAT’S NOT MINE!”
Jannie protested the second she saw it. “Dad, there is no chance that’s mine. You know that, right?”

I nodded. “Someone put that in her bag.”

“Who would do that?” Coach Greene asked. “And why?”

I looked over at Sharon Lawrence, who was stretching and talking with her friends, seemingly oblivious to what was happening across the track.

“I can think of someone, but I’ll let the police deal with that,” I said.

“You want me to call the police?”

“You touch it?”

Greene shook her head.

“Then yes, call the police. It’s easily proved whether it’s my daughter’s or not,” I said. “Either her fingerprints are on it or they’re not.”

The coach looked at Jannie. “Are they?”

“No way,” Jannie said.

“Was the bag open?” I asked.

“The bag was open,” Jannie said. “I got my hoodie out and came over.”

“Was that how you saw it, Coach?” I asked.

“Eliza Foster, one of my athletes at Duke, noticed it and called me over.”

“So it was put in there either before practice or right after Jannie put on her hoodie and came over to talk to me,” I said.

“Eliza would have no reason to do anything like that,” Greene said.

“I want there to be concrete evidence that this was absolutely not my daughter’s. Jannie will even provide a blood sample that you can drug-test. Right?”

Jannie nodded. “Anything, Dad.”

I got out my wallet, dug out a business card, and handed it to the coach. “Call this guy. Sheriff’s Detective Guy Pedelini. He’ll handle the situation correctly.”

Greene hesitated, but then nodded. She walked away with Jannie’s bag, punching in the phone number on her cell phone.

Jannie looked about to cry when she sat down beside me and Bree.

“You’ll be fine,” I said, hugging her.

“Why would someone put that there?” she asked, looking torn up.

“To get at me and Bree through you,” I said. “But it won’t work.”

Detective Pedelini showed up ten minutes later. I let him speak with Greene first, waiting patiently with Jannie and Bree. He put on gloves and bagged the vial. He nodded to me and then went to talk with Eliza Foster.

When he was done, he came over and shook my hand in the twilight.

“Coach says you want it tested.”

“I do.”

He looked at Jannie. “You’re willing?”

“Yes,” Jannie said. “Definitely.”

“Any idea who might do this?” Pedelini asked.

“I’d start with Marvin Bell’s niece,” Bree said. “If Sharon Lawrence would lie about a rape for him, she’d plant drugs for him.”

The sheriff’s detective pursed his lips, said, “I’ll talk to her. Meantime, take Jannie to the office. I’ll call ahead for someone to take the prints and blood.”

Pedelini walked off toward the other girls, who were acting annoyed that they weren’t being allowed to leave.

“Dad?” Jannie said as we stood up and got ready to leave. “Can you make sure I can still go down to Duke to train for the four-hundred on Saturday?”

“Meet you at the car,” I said.

I went over to Coach Greene, asked her. She hesitated.

“She’s innocent until proven guilty, Coach.”

“You’re right and I’m sorry, Dr. Cross,” she said. “In all my years coaching, I’ve never had anything like this happen. Unless those tests say different, Jannie can come run with us on Saturday and any other day she wants.”

I turned to leave, started toward the tunnel beneath the stands.

But Marvin Bell and his adopted son, Finn Davis, blocked the way.

“For such a big-time cop, you don’t listen so well,” Marvin Bell said.

“Yeah?” I said. “What did I miss?”

“Your niece brought up my name in court today,” Bell said.

“Your niece was testifying in court today,” I said.

“That’s bullshit,” said Finn Davis.

“It’s bullshit that she was testifying or that she’s Mr. Bell’s niece?”

Bell smiled sourly. “I warned you about besmirching my name in court.”

“Besmirching?”

“Slandering, whatever you want to call it,” Bell said.

“It’s only slander or besmirching if it’s not true,” I said.

Davis said, “Listen, Detective Asshole. That poor girl was raped by that sick fuck Stefan Tate. It took guts for her to go on that stand and face her rapist.”

“No argument there,” I said.

“Then quit trying to tear her down,” Bell said. “You go on and think anything you want about me, but you leave Sharon out of it. She is a victim in all of this, and I won’t have her made into a punching bag.”

“And I won’t have someone try to frame my daughter in retaliation.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Someone just put a vial of white powder in her gym bag,” I said. “That’s a sheriff’s detective out there investigating. I figure Sharon for the job.”

“Horseshit,” Bell said.

I took a step, got right in their faces, said, “No, gentlemen, horseshit is you trying to kill me and strong-arm my family. You’re on notice. I am officially declaring war on the two of you.”

BREE DIDN’T SAY
much on the ride home after we’d taken Jannie to the sheriff’s office, where she’d provided blood and urine for analysis. I asked for and received samples from the same specimens, a precaution.

When we got home and went inside, I put the samples in a brown bag in the fridge. Jannie started telling Nana Mama about everything that had happened. Ali lay on the couch, watching another episode of
Uncharted
with Jim Shockey.

“Where is he now?” I asked. Shockey had traded his cowboy hat for a bandanna and was wading in murky water in a jungle.

“Like, the Congo?”

“That Jim Shockey gets around,” I said. “Bree come in?”

“I’m out here,” she called from the porch.

I went out, found her sitting in a rocker, looking out through the screen. She wasn’t happy.

“We okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said quietly.

“Why?”

“Did you have to say that to Bell and Davis? That you were declaring war on them?”

“I was speaking from the heart.”

“I get that, Alex. But now you’re more of a target than you were before.”

“Good,” I said. “We draw them out, and we shut them down.”

She looked up angrily. “Why do you always put yourself in harm’s way?”

My chin retreated. “Bree, you of all people should know that it’s part of—”

“The job?” she asked. “I don’t think so. I don’t put myself in harm’s way intentionally, and you do all the time. Did you ever stop for a second and think that it’s a pretty goddamn selfish habit?”

“Selfish?” I said, bewildered.

“Yes, selfish,” Bree said. “You have a family that needs you. You have a wife that needs you. And yet, at the drop of a hat, you’re ready to risk our happiness and well-being.”

I was speechless for several moments. I’d never heard Bree talk like this before. My late wife and Ali’s mother, yes. But Bree, no.

I hung my head and said, “What should I have done?”

“Defuse the situation,” she said. “Make them think you’re no threat until you’ve got damning evidence against them. But it’s too late, you escalated the threat, Alex, and—”

“Bree,” I said, holding up my hands. “I get it, and I’m sorry. In my own defense, because Jannie was being used, I got a little hot under the collar. It won’t happen again.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said, getting up from the rocker and going inside. “But you remain a target.”

I stood there a moment feeling a weight that hadn’t been there ten minutes before. She was right. I’d pushed when I should have been smarter and laid off.

In the kitchen, Jannie was finishing up a dinner of country-style ribs with Nana Mama.

My grandmother studied me, said, “You in hot water?”

“Trying to get out,” I said, heaping rice on my plate and then helping myself to the ribs, which were falling off the bone and smelled incredible.

“Thank you, Nana,” Jannie said, clearing her plate. “That was great.”

“Easy recipe,” she said, waving off the compliment. “Orange juice and barbecue sauce. Then slow cook them at two fifty for four hours.”

“Still great,” I said after taking a bite.

Sitting down, I ate and watched Jannie for any sign that she was anxious about the events of the past couple of hours. But she seemed confident when she left the kitchen.