THE PROSECUTOR (2 page)

“Zac,” Stew Henry yelled, “Pierson got his butt kicked by Judge Alred today.”

“Seriously?”

Alred had to be the easiest-going guy on the bench. It took a lot to aggravate him. Two steps toward the bull pen, Zac’s cell phone rang. He checked the screen. Alex Belson, the public defender on the Sinclair case, returning his call.

“Have to take this,” Zac yelled to the bull pen before heading back to his office. “Alex, hey, thanks for getting back to me.”

“No prob. Got to say, screwy timing since your sister called me today, too.”

“My sister?”

What’s that about?

“Yeah. She’s taking the Sinclair case. Wants copies of all my notes.”

Zac dropped into his chair to absorb this info.

“You didn’t know?” Alex asked.

Penny had left a voice mail earlier in the day, but he’d been in court and hadn’t had a chance to get back to her. “I haven’t talked to her today.”

Another call beeped in and Zac checked the screen. Penny. “Alex, let me call you back.” He flashed over to his sister. “Pen?”

The sound of a horn blasted. Outdoors.

“Hi,” she said. “Are you in your office?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m walking into the lobby. Be there in two minutes.”

She was here. “What’s this about your taking the Sinclair case?”

“Word travels fast. How’d you know?”

“The PD told me. Pen, I caught this case.”

Silence
. Yeah, little sister, soak that up.
If this case went forward, Zac would be battling his baby sister in court. At twenty-nine, only two years his junior, she was equally competitive when it came to winning her cases. Plus, she had their legendary father as co-counsel.

In short, it would be a bloodbath.

Unfortunately for his sister, Zac planned on winning and giving Dave Moore justice for his daughter.

“So,” Pen said, “I guess my calling you to find out who Ray assigned proved fruitful.”

“You don’t want this case. It’s a dog.”

“Not a chance, big brother. See you in a minute.”

Zac hung up and stared through the open doorway where raucous laughter from Four O’clock Fun raged on. That Alred story must have been a good one. He should have stayed and listened. He could use the laugh.

Two minutes later, Penny swung into his office. Behind her strode a woman wearing tan pants and a black sweater. Emma Sinclair. He’d never met her, but had seen photos of her, including the one from the morning paper still sitting on his desk. That photo hadn’t done Emma any favors. In person, her dark hair extended below her shoulders and, when Zac took in the soft curve of her cheek and her big brown eyes, something in his chest pinged. Just a wicked stinging that reminded him he was in desperate need of a woman’s affections.

Except she was his opponent.

Why the hell was Penny bringing her here?

“Hello,
Zachary,
” Penny said in that sarcastic, singsong way she’d been addressing him for years. She stepped forward to give him the usual kiss on the cheek, but caught herself.

Yeah, welcome to Awkwardville
. For the first time, they were squaring off against each other in the professional arena. Considering that his father and his two siblings were all attorneys, Zac had known he’d eventually face one of them in court. The only thing that had saved him thus far was the Chicago crime rate providing enough cases to go around.

Until now.

Pen gestured to Emma. “Zachary Hennings, meet Emma Sinclair. Brian Sinclair’s sister.”

Zac stepped around the desk and shook hands with Emma. What he expected, he wasn’t sure, but for some reason her warm, firm grip surprised him. Their gazes met for a split second and the intense, deep coffee brown of her eyes nearly knocked him on his butt. But he couldn’t think about Emma Sinclair and her alluring eyes and how they affected him. He had to think of Chelsea Moore.

Dead Chelsea Moore.

He released Emma’s hand and stooped to clear the files off the second chair in his office. The place was a mess. “Have a seat.”

On his way back to his desk, he shot Penny a
what-the-heck?
look. She grinned. She wanted to play, he’d play.

While doing so, he’d also remind his baby sister that he wasn’t a guy who liked to lose.

* * *

E
MMA
WATCHED
Z
ACHARY
H
ENNINGS
—did he really want people calling him
Zachary?
—head back to his desk while she took the seat he’d cleared for her.

He relaxed back in his desk chair, Mr. Casual. As if she’d believe he could be comfortable with Penny as the attorney on a high-profile case and the sister of the convicted sitting in front of him. He certainly looked the part, though. Then again, he had that yacht-club look about him. His short, precisely combed blond hair and perfect bone structure just added to the patrician image. The only thing slightly ruffled about him was the unfastened top button on his shirt and his loose tie. The look fit him, however. Country-club rugged.

If she’d met him elsewhere, she’d have steered clear of him. In her experience, men who looked like that were either arrogant and patronizing or ignored her altogether. Being Miss Completely Average, she didn’t have the high-maintenance looks men like him went for and that was just fine with her. What she needed was a dependable, rock-solid man who could roll with the insanity of her life.

Something told her Zachary Hennings had no interest in a woman with complications. Maybe that was an unfair judgment, but it wasn’t for her to worry about.

“So,” Penny said. “Let’s talk about this video.”

Zachary held up a hand and gave a subtle nudge of his chin in Emma’s direction. “Is this appropriate?”

“She’s my intern.”

Her intern. Funny.

“Say what?”

“She’s a law student who knows this case better than anyone. Trust me, in her first year at Northwestern she knows more about the law than the two of us combined did as first years. Suck it up. She’s staying.”

Obviously amused by his sister’s antics, he cracked a wide grin. Emma cut her gaze to Penny, then back to Zachary before biting her lip. Down deep, the warrior in her wanted to join the fray, but watching these two hammer away at each other would be just as much fun.

“You were saying about the video? I need a copy, of course.”

“Of course.” She pulled her phone, hit the screen a couple of times and stuck it back in her purse. “On its way. I’m planning on filing a PCR.” Penny turned to Emma. “Post-conviction relief.” Emma nodded and Penny went back to her brother. “A video like this, you know we’ll get our hearing based on newly discovered evidence.”

He shrugged. “No judge in Cook County will vacate a sentence in the murder of a cop’s daughter without something better than that video. And hello? Did the detective not have brain cancer? How do we know disease hadn’t brought on hallucinations?”

“Please,
Zachary
. You’ll need to try harder than that.” Penny stood and adjusted the hem of her jacket. “Anyway, I only stopped to see which lucky prosecutor would face me in court. Now that I know, I’m off to make notes on this new evidence. Better start thinking about the State’s reply, big brother. See you at dinner on Saturday.” She gave him a finger wave. “Toodles. Love you.”

Emma sat speechless as Penny strode from the office. Her attorney was one crazy chick, which might not be a good thing, considering that Brian’s freedom rested in her hands. But Penny had something. Maybe it was her brash attitude or her willingness to take a chance on Brian, but whatever it was, Emma liked it. A lot.

From his desk chair, Zachary snorted. “She’s nuts. Get used to it.”

Emma stood. “Maybe so, but I like her spunk.”

“She has plenty of that.”

Before she turned for the door, Emma stared down at him. “My brother is innocent.”

“He was convicted by a jury of his peers.”

“And juries never make mistakes?”

No answer. It didn’t matter. “I’ve studied the evidence,” she continued. “The public defender blew this one. I can promise you my brother didn’t strangle anyone. I’d know.”

According to the prosecution’s theory, Brian had left Magic—the nightclub—to meet the victim in the alley beside it. After he murdered her, apparently using the belt from her jacket, he supposedly went back into the club and partied for another hour.

“Were you with him that night?”

“No. But I know my brother. He stole four dollars from my wallet when he was twelve. An hour later the guilt drove him mad and he confessed.”

Zachary shrugged. “He was twelve. He’s a man now. People change.”

“Not my brother. He was living at home with my mother at the time of the murder. Want to know why?”

“Is it relevant to my case?”

“My brother is in prison. Everything is relevant.”

Zachary tapped his fingers on the desk. “I’ll bite. Why was he living at home?”

“Because our father died ten years ago and I’d moved out. He didn’t want our mother to be alone. He had a good job and could have easily afforded to be on his own, but he couldn’t stand the idea of his mother being by herself. That’s not a man who commits murder.”

Emma stopped talking. The past year had taught her the value of silence. Silence offered that perfect span of time when each person decided who would flinch. She stared down at Zachary Hennings.

A fine-looking man she desperately hoped would flinch.

Finally, he stood. He was a good six inches taller than she was, but she held her ground and kept her head high. “No offense, Ms. Sinclair, but you’re far from impartial and the daughter of a good cop is dead. Any one of us, given the right circumstances, has the capability to commit murder.”

“Not my brother, Mr. Hennings. You’ll see.” She turned to leave.

“It’s Zac. My father is Mr. Hennings. And I can tell you I’ll study the case file. I love to win, but I have no interest in keeping an innocent man in prison. That being said, twelve reasonable people heard evidence and decided his fate. I’m not going to go screaming to the judge that it was a mistake. Prove it to me and we’ll take it from there.”

Chapter Two

In the beat-up hallway outside Zac’s office, Emma spotted Penny waiting for her. The moment she got close, Penny headed for the elevator, the two of them moving at a steady clip.

“I’ll get started on the petition,” Penny said. “What’s your schedule the next couple days?”

“I have a class in the morning and then I work tomorrow night. On Saturday, I work at four, but I have all morning and early afternoon open. Sunday I have to study. What do you need?”

“We need to analyze the video and compare what he says to what we know happened around the time of the murder. There has to be something else that will support our case. I think we’ll get our hearing anyway because that video is pretty darn compelling, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more.”

Emma pushed through the lobby door and a burst of cold, early-April wind blew her hair back. Penny remained unruffled, her hair perfectly intact as she whipped through the doorway. Emma would have loved to be that put together, but she didn’t have a sense of fashion so she stuck with the basics of slacks and sweaters. Basics were easy and kept her from looking like a fashion disaster.

Penny stopped on the cement steps of the towering building. Behind them, the early rush of employees leaving for the day funneled by.

“I already have a time line built,” Emma said. “I’ll go through the video and do a second time line with what the detective says. And, oh, I’ll get myself on the list to visit Brian tomorrow. I can squeeze that in before work and show him the two time lines. Maybe he can help.”

“Good. Anything that seems off, note it and I’ll have one of our investigators check it out.”

Investigators.
All this time, Emma had been trudging around town, fighting every step of the way, begging every defense lawyer, reporter, blogger, anyone who could help, and finally, finally, someone believed in her. Her breath caught and she smacked a hand against her chest.

Penny drew her eyebrows together, marring her perfect porcelain skin. “You okay?”

Maybe
. “You have investigators.”

“The firm does, yes.”

Months of exhaustive, energy-sapping worry erupted into a stream of hysterical laughter. “
Investigators.
”

Penny’s eyes widened. Poor woman must have thought her client was insane. Emma laughed harder and grabbed her lawyer’s arms. “I’ve been alone with this for so long. No one has helped. No one. Even my mother has been too depressed to lend a hand, and now you tell me you have investigators. And it won’t cost me anything. You have no idea what that means to me.”

Finally, the tears came. A flood of them gushing to the surface and tumbling down her face. God, she was tired. Insanity might not be far behind after all.

Penny stepped an inch closer. “Listen, we’ve got a long road. I’m good, but we’re dealing with the murder of a cop’s daughter. We’re about to climb Everest with no oxygen. Can you make it?”

Emma nodded. This one she knew for sure. “I’ve already climbed to ten thousand feet without oxygen. I’m not stopping now.”

“Good. Then let’s do this. Call me with any updates. I’ve got to go.”

Penny charged down the cement steps and Emma pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. Two missed calls. One from Mom. She dialed. “Hi.”

“Hi. You had a call. That Melody. The one Brian was dating.”

Brian’s old girlfriend—well, she couldn’t really be called a girlfriend. Melody, according to Brian, was more like a friend with benefits. The fact that this
friend
had called their house on the day an article ran about Brian could not be a coincidence. Particularly since Melody, again according to Brian, had spent a few minutes with him around the time of the murder. He’d left the club and walked Melody to her car around 12:30 a.m. that night. The defense never called Melody as a witness and, with Brian not testifying at trial, Emma assumed this information had been deemed irrelevant. Not that she understood it, but she didn’t understand a lot of the nuances about Brian’s trial.

“What did she want?” Emma asked her mother.

“I don’t know. She started talking, then stopped and said she needed to speak with you.”

“Did she leave a number?”

“Yes.”

Her mother read off the number and Emma repeated it to herself. “Got it.”

She disconnected and entered the number into her phone before she forgot it. Pedestrians continued to stream from the building and she moved to the side. Another gust of wind caught her coat and she yanked the zipper up to shield herself from the cold air. Stepping away from the pedestrian traffic, she pressed the
TALK
button, heard the phone ring and waited for Melody to pick up.

Brian’s public defender had been no help when it came to Melody. He’d never even pursued her claims because she couldn’t prove that Brian had been with her that night. According to the lawyer, she could be covering for him.

As if a casual friend would risk a perjury charge.
Whatever.

Emma didn’t want to revisit her frustrations with Bri’s public defender. Unless she could prove his incompetence, it was best left alone. Instead, she’d remind herself that she now had Hennings and Solomon on her side.

“Melody? It’s Emma Sinclair.”

“Hi, Emma. Thanks for calling me back.”

“Sure. What can I help you with?”

“How’s Brian?”

He’s in prison
. “He’s holding up.”

“I saw the article in the paper.”

“They did a nice job.” She wasn’t about to give an outsider too much information.

“Is there anything I can do to help? I told the prosecution and the defense lawyer that I’d testify. They never contacted me, even after I gave the detectives the receipt from the parking garage.”

Suddenly, all movement around Emma ceased—a huge, jarring halt that caused her body to stiffen. “There was a receipt?”

Breathe.
Get loose
. Too many hopes had been bludgeoned by the cruelty of injustice and she’d learned to temper her optimism. Whatever this receipt was, it couldn’t have been anything stunning or the public defender—she’d hope—would have uncovered it.

“Yes,” Melody said. “I used a credit card to pay for the garage. It was one of those machines. You stick the ticket in, put your credit card in the slot and you get another ticket that lets you out of the garage. Brian was with me.”

Emma paused a second, let the cold air wash over her while she mentally played find-the-missing-receipt. She’d amassed boxes and boxes of notes on the case and had never heard about a parking receipt. Didn’t mean the thing wasn’t sitting around somewhere, but she would have remembered seeing it.
If
she’d seen it.

Oh, and she could just hear the prosecutors moaning about how it wouldn’t prove that Brian had been with Melody and unless they had solid proof, Melody could be protecting her lover.

“Unfortunately, none of this proves where Brian was at the time. I’ve hired a new lawyer, though. Can I have her contact you?”

“Yes. I mean, he shouldn’t be in jail. He didn’t do it.”

“I know. I’m not giving up.” She gripped the phone tighter. “Thank you for calling, Melody. I appreciate it. I know Brian will, too.”

Emma hung up and stared at the phone. Now she had a receipt to chase down, another lead to work with. People continued to file out of the building, their voices and footsteps clicking against the cement.

4:40.

By the look of the mountain of files in his office, Zac Hennings would probably still be at his desk. He struck her as the diligent type—a man who’d sit and study his notes, losing all track of time. Maybe she’d march up and demand—no—
ask
about the receipt. Playing nice with the new prosecutor might get her a little cooperation.

If not, too bad. She wanted answers.

* * *

A
LREADY
, Z
AC
HAD
DETERMINED
one thing. The video had to be deep-sixed. On a decent day, a detective’s deathbed confession was a nightmare scenario. Couple that with Zac’s rabid sister and the persistent Emma Sinclair and he had one hell of a problem. Emma didn’t have his sister’s flashy clothes and sarcastic manner, but she obviously had a quick mind and adjusted to conflict easily. With these two, he’d have his hands full.

First thing was to obtain copies of all the case files and interview the detectives.

Still at his desk, he tapped the screen again and the dying detective’s face appeared. Damn, he looked bad. It could be a major problem in court. Who wouldn’t be sympathetic to someone dying of cancer?

He set the phone down and jotted notes as the now-deceased detective spoke.
Witness unsure. Alley dark. Couldn’t positively ID. Showed a six-pack
—the old photo lineup where the witness was given photographs of possible suspects and asked if he could identify any of them. In this case, according to the dying detective, the witness
thought
that
maybe
Brian Sinclair
could be
the guy.

All of it should be documented in the case files.

Zac shook his head as the detective confessed to coaxing the witness with leading questions.
He had dark hair, right? And a white shirt, correct?

Zac studied the detective’s sallow face, seeking anything that might indicate that brain cancer had caused mental impairment. Outside of the papery, sagging skin that came with chemo treatments, his speech was clear and he seemed rational. Zac checked the date on the bottom of the screen. Six weeks ago. He’d have to research the effects of brain cancer in the weeks prior to death. To refute this evidence, he’d simply need to prove that the man had lost cognitive brain function. In which case, everything on the video would be thrown out.

Problem solved.

Next. Identification of the white shirt worn by the accused might be something for Penny to run with. The murder happened in March. It could have been cold. Did the assailant wear a jacket? That had to have come up in court.

Again, all this information should be in the case files, which Zac didn’t have. He scooped up his desk phone and dialed his office assistant. “Hey, Beth. Have you seen the files from the Sinclair case yet?”

“I put them in your office. They’re in a box by the corner window.”

On the floor sat one square file box, maybe eleven by thirteen inches. A corner of the lid was torn, as if someone had tried to lift it and it ripped. “That’s it?”

“That’s all that was delivered.”

One box. On a six-month investigation. There should have been stacks and stacks of reports particularly General Progress Reports—GPRs—where detectives recorded notes. Those GPRs were what he needed. Typically handwritten by the detectives, the reports told the story of who said what. Anything on the investigation’s progress should have been documented for use in trial.

So why did Zac only have one small box?

He’d have to track down the old prosecutor—the one who’d been fired by the new State’s Attorney—to see what happened to the rest of the documentation.
Yeah, he’ll be more than willing to talk.

Zac stood, grabbed the box and set it on his desk. At least it had some weight to it. Inside he found a few supplementary reports, along with a lineup report. He perused one of the pages for any mention of a white shirt. Nothing. He checked the next page. Nothing.

Not off to a good start. He continued flipping through the files. Nothing about a white shirt. He dropped the stack of papers back in the box and propped his hands on his hips. He’d have to read through every document and study it.

Someone told the detectives that Brian Sinclair was wearing a white shirt that night and it wasn’t their star witness. That guy had only confirmed the shirt’s color. Zac considered the guy’s statement, rolled it around in his mind.
Massaged
it. What he came up with was that the detectives, in a typically aggressive move, had convinced the witness they had Brian Sinclair dead to rights and all they needed was corroboration on the white shirt.

Which they got.
Hello, video
. If he couldn’t discredit this sucker, Penny would argue that Sinclair’s constitutional rights under
Giglio v. the United States
had been violated. In
Giglio
the Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution had to disclose all information related to the credibility of a prosecution witness, including law enforcement officials.

Bottom line, if the cops had pressured the witness into falsely identifying Brian Sinclair, his testimony could be thrown out.

And then they’d be screwed.

* * *

E
MMA
FOUGHT
THE
STAMPEDE
of people exiting the building and rode the elevator to the eighth floor. As suspected, Zac was still at his desk, his big shoulders hunched over a legal pad as he took notes. A fierce longing—that black emptiness—tore at her. She’d always been drawn to men with big shoulders and the way her smaller body folded into the warmth and security of being held.
Pfft
. Right now she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out with a man, never mind been held.

Dwelling on it wouldn’t help her. She’d have to do what she always did and keep her focus on Brian. Then she’d pick up the pieces of her life.

She knocked on the open door.

“Enter,” Zac said, his gaze glued to his notes.

“Hello again.”

His head snapped up and a bit of his short blond hair flopped to his forehead. A sudden urge to fix the disturbed strands twitched in her fingers. Wow. Clearly she’d been without male companionship for too long. Even so, this was the man who wanted to keep her brother in prison. She had no business thinking about her hands on him.

“Ms. Sinclair?”

She stepped into the office, keeping back a couple of feet from the desk. “Hi, Zac. And it’s Emma.”

He dropped his pen and reclined in his squeaky chair. “Can I help you with something?”

You sure can.
She waggled her phone. “I just took a call from a friend of Brian’s.”