BEYOND JUSTICE Page 28

  The door clicked open.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," said Dodd. My ears were burning, my face flushed. But I didn't let go of Rachel's hands.

  "Give us another five," Rachel said.

  "You got it." He stepped out and shut the door.

  Rachel gripped my hands, got even closer. "All right, I'm just going to say it."

  "Good...I think."

  "I don't know how it happened exactly. But Sam, I've developed feelings for you." I sat there looking into her eyes not knowing what to say. Strange, but I wasn't surprised. It wasn't arrogance. It was mutuality.

  "Rachel."

  "Wait. Before you say anything. It won't work. Truth is, as much as I worked for it, as much as I hoped for it, I've never prepared myself emotionally for the day that you'd become a free man. But last night, while in bed, I was thinking about it. And I just... I just couldn't." Rachel's words accelerated. "I'm your attorney, for heaven's sake! And there's Aaron, I know it's been a few years, but you lost your wife, I mean, what was I thinking falling in love—?"

  I put a finger to her lips. Before I could think, much less utter a word, I ran my hands through her silken hair and drew her towards me. I pressed my lips to hers and we began kissing, desperately yielding to the inevitability of it all. Between breathes, she kept trying to say my name.

  Finally, she stepped back and said, "This isn't what I planned."

  I pulled her back and kissed her again. This time we held each other until it ebbed on its own. Her eyes were still shut, lips still parted. I brushed the hair from her face. "It's never about our plans."

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  You idiot, Anita couldn't help but thinking. Despite her training, she very well could have ended up like one of Brent Stringer's victims. All because he had made her feel... what—desirable? Feminine? That freak was going to get a piece of her mind, lawyer or not. Jodi the Piranha had returned to her office, anyway.

  Anita trailed O'Brien's squad car as he drove Brent Stringer back to San Diego Central. The hot midday sun should have caused the grey leather upholstery of her Six, a BMW 650i, to waft that new leather smell she'd always loved so much. It now seemed stupidly bland. She'd traded in her previous Beamer for a newer black one. On a Detective's salary, she couldn't quite afford it. But this was San Diego and she had decided long ago that she was, in fact, too sexy for her car—a vintage VW Bug.

  O'Brien pulled into a parking space on Front Street. Heat waves visibly rose from mirages, pooled in the asphalt. The tower of the damned arched up, glaring at all who approached.

  Jim and his partner led Stringer out and to the receiving entrance. Even from a distance, the sound of the chains scraping against the pavement irritated Anita like sandpaper on a chalkboard.

  The alarm on her Six chirped twice, its headlights winked. Anita strode briskly to the officers. "A word," she said.

  "Listen Pearson," Jim said, reseating his black sunglasses and holding one of Stringer's arms. "You heard what his attorney said."

  "Just a couple of minutes."

  Stringer winked at O'Brien whose shoulders heaved. "You pull anything and I'm going to get named because it happened on my watch."

  "Trust me," Anita said. I'm not looking for any legal trouble. This is personal."

  "That's the part I'm not comfortable with."

  "Come on, Jim."

  "No way."

  "Five feet."

  Jim removed his shades. "What?"

  "I just have a few things to say to this guy. You and your partner can stand five feet away, right here in plain view."

  He turned his head to the side and stared at the entrance. "I'm sorry, Anita. No."

  "All right, look." She reached behind her back and pulled out her gun, held it by the muzzle, walked towards the squad car. The officers yanked Stringer back. She set her weapon down on the roof of the vehicle and then returned. "You can keep your guns aimed," she said.

  Jim pulled his lips into a taut line. "The department's already under scrutiny, all the wrongful conviction suits since we pulled this slimeball out from under his rock." He shook Stringer. Rattled his chains. "Pearson, you gotta promise—"

  "I swear. Just talk, is all."

  "Two minutes." Jim nodded to Anita's gun and Davis went to retrieve it. With his own weapon, he pushed Stringer into the shadow of the building.

  "One wrong move...," Jim said.

  "Better keep an eye on her," said Stringer, turning to show his hands cuffed behind his back. Anita took him by the arm and gripped it such that her nails dug into his flesh. He didn't say a word, didn't so much as flinch.

  Finally, she stopped and confronted him. His demeanor seemed so genuine, so sincere, Anita had to keep reminding herself what he really was. But she missed him. The way he'd made her feel, how he could draw her tears with the beauty of his letters, his thoughtfulness, and at the next moment make her sides ache from laughing. And laughing was not something that came easily.

  "A question," she said.

  "Anita," he said. "I know how all this looks, but you have to—"

  "I haven't asked it yet."

  His eyes still trained on her, pleading, he said, "Are we off the record?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, go ahead and ask," he said.

  She took a deep breath. "How could you?"

  "I'm innocent."

  "You've been boasting about the murders!" A couple of uniformed SDPD officers passed by and entered the building. Anita looked away until they were out of sight.

  "That was just legal strategy," Stringer said.

  "Strategy my sweet—!"

  "No, really. I'm going to instruct my attorney to switch to an insanity plea later. I had to act that way during the confession. Don't you see? I'm not some psycho serial killer, not Kitsune. I'm one of his victims. I've been—"

  "Stop it! Just stop!"

  He took a cautious step forward, reached out to her with his eyes. "Anita, please. If you believe nothing else, believe this: I love you." His words ripped through her like a jagged knife. A single tear fell from her eye. God, she wanted to believe him. There was no other man for her, even if that man had only been an illusion.

  "Why?" she needed to know.

  "After all we've been through. Won't you help me, Annie? "

  Don't call me Annie. Never call me Annie again! "Please, just tell me."

  "I just need you to testify that—"

  "WHY!"

  "Why what, you irksome little girl!" Stinger shouted, his chains jangling. O'Brien and his partner lifted their weapons and took a couple of steps forward.

  Anita waved them off. Sniffed. "Why me?"

  In that instant, Stringer's expression morphed, like one of those billboards with rotating louvers. Then, the earnest lover, wrongfully accused, pleading with the one person who might still believe in him, now a hideous creature, with his smile a canine snarl. And though she was already at a safe distance, Anita took a step back.

  "I chose you, Anita Pearson," he said, pausing as if withholding just a tiny bit longer would cause her even more pain, "because you were easy."

  The ice walls refrosted, refortified, her jaw trembling from the fierce clamping, Anita flew at him. Threw her entire body weight into a right hook to his nose. Stringer fell back, landed on his back. As his back hit the pavement, he laughed.

  "Get this scumbag out of my sight!" Anita shouted to O'Brien.

  "I chose everyone else because they were remarkable, noteworthy," Brent said, his countenance a maniacally glazed sheet of ice. "But you. You were simply for my amusement. Poor misunderstood Annie. Poor little orphan Annie. Did you like my poetry?

  One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impair'd the nameless grace... Illiterate slut! That was Lord-frickin'-Byron!"

  "Shut up! Shut the hell up!" she was covering her ears now, internally cussing her inability to cope. Jim and his partner heaved Stringer to his feet.

  "One more word and I'll tazer your sorry ass," Jim war
ned.

  Anita turned her back.

  Stringer's chains scraped the concrete. Stopped abruptly.

  Just long enough for him to offer one final parting shot.

  "You're pathetic!"

  Anita spent the rest of the day at the Pistol Range. She named every target she shredded, Brent.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Kenny Dodd's grin betrayed that he was on to us. Thankfully, he made neither mention nor allusion. Just pretended he hadn't seen me lip-locked with my attorney. Everything was back to normal in the room except for the fact that Rachel now sat next to me.

  On the next video, Brent Stringer proceeded to explain how he pulled everything off. I verified each familiar step and grew more and more queasy. Somehow Jenn had ended up on Stringer's database because of an email she sent him through his official fan website. That was the initial point of contact. He'd sent bogus and anonymous e-card email links that appeared to be dead. When Jenn clicked them, they silently downloaded hidden surveillance software.

  He also uploaded keystroke trackers through Instant Message sessions with Bethie. Invisibly, they installed themselves onto our home computer shortly after my name and picture appeared in the news over the Coyote Creek school shootings.

  "From that point on," Stringer said. "I studied Hudson's life, his credit card spending habits, his daily and nightly schedule. He was the perfect subject. Consistent, predictable."

  Walden stared at the ceiling. "And Hudson's work computer?"

  "Oh, the kiddy porn? Brilliant. And I do say so myself."

  "Right."

  "Child's play, if you'll pardon the expression." A demented grin. "USB flash drive. Plugged it into his computer before he returned to his desk. It takes a mere ten seconds for an autorun executable to install itself and run as a background service."

  "About the night you murdered Jennifer and—"

  "Murdered? No, no, no. Wrong word. They were beatified!"

  The D.A. cleared his throat. "No sign of forced entry, no physical trace of you, no hairs, no DNA." Nice ass-armor, Walden.

  "As I said, Hudson was the perfect subject and entirely too easy. Before he returned to his cubicle to meet with me for that Superdad interview, I got the model number of his security alarm panel from the manual he left on his desk. Later, I got the override codes from manufacturer's technical support line. I stole into his garage as soon as he drove off that night for his client meeting. As for traces? Come now. What can I say? Clever as a fox."

  "So you'd devised a method of leaving zero evidence."

  Stringer yawned. "Yes, yes. Latex gloves, hair nets, shoe covers—blah, blah, blah. Don't you watch CSI?"

  "But what about the DNA? They matched the semen found on Hudson's daughter to his own."

  "Ah, now that was beautiful, wasn't it?"

  "What did you do, bribe someone down at the crime lab?"

  "That'd be without class, Tommy-boy. And besides, bribery’s so...unimaginative."

  "Well?"

  "Let's be clear about one thing, before you launch a witch hunt over the chain of custody of evidence. The semen was in fact Samuel Hudson's." There came an uncomfortable pause. Under the table, Rachel grasped my hand. Dodd pulled on his collar and cleared his throat. I wanted to disappear.

  Stringer smiled. "But Sam never raped his daughter. No. He was a model father—another reason he was chosen."

  "Then how?"

  "For an officer of the court, you're pretty thick, aren't you? Hudson's life ran like clockwork. Every Thursday night, while his wife and kids went to Bible study meetings, Sam went to meet clients at dinner meetings.

  "Every Wednesday night, he and his wife had a date night. And that didn't mean going out to dinner or the movies. They had sex every Wednesday night. You can learn a lot from those webcams and microphones in people's bedrooms if you have the right spyware running."

  Some three years after the crime, the mystery finally started to unravel—stitches tearing off a festering wound that time could not heal. I was reliving the violation all over again.

  "Thursday is trash day in Rancho Carmelita," Stringer continued. "Based on his online orders from condoms-express.com, I knew Sam's mode of birth control and hence where to find samples of his DNA. A bit messy, but easily dealt with."

  "So you're a dumpster-diving deity? You planted Hudson's own semen on his daughter's body." Walden said.

  "You may bow before my brilliance."

  The revulsion was exceeded only by the urge to grab Stringer by the throat and snuff out the smugness on his face. Rachel must have sensed my tension because she put her hand on my back and rubbed it. "Turn it off," I said, my fist trembling.

  "Are you sure?" Dodd said. "We still—"

  "TURN IT OFF!" I bolted up from my chair. It slid back, scraped the concrete floor and slammed into the wall. For nearly three years, I imagined what I'd do to the sick bastard, if ever I got my hands on him. Now, with a face to put on these violent thoughts, I felt so much closer to it. I stopped, trying to remind myself, Do not repay evil with evil.

  "Shut it off, please," Rachel said.

  Dodd hit a button and flipped down the LCD. "Well. I think there's enough to go on there."

  "Counsel," Rachel said. "I think my client needs some time to—"

  "No," I said and pulled my chair back into place. "It's all right. Let's finish this."

  We went over every detail of Stringer's statement, verifying credit card accounts, email accounts, ISPs, and yes, even the scheduled date nights. These questions would come up in the upcoming depos, and when I took the stand.

  By the time the interview was over, I felt as if I'd just finished a marathon. I asked Rachel if we could meet later that afternoon instead of right after this meeting. I needed time to settle down. She completely understood. We started for the exit.

  Walking through the door, I saw something that turned my legs into putty. I grabbed the doorframe. Dodd noticed and caught me by the arm. Shocking as the confession had been, nothing could prepare me for what awaited outside the meeting room.

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Directly outside, a steel gate enclosed a corridor connecting the main entrance to the bowels of San Diego Central. A metal grid divided this corridor. Though you couldn't fit more than a finger or two in the grid, you could see clearly through it. I stepped out and heard not one, but two buzzers sounding.

  Over at the entrance gate, a pair of guards brought a prisoner in. An everyday occurrence you get used to. But something about this inmate alerted me. He turned his face to the ground as he approached in the opposite corridor. Without taking my eyes off of him, I walked to the grid. Just steps before our paths brought us directly across from each other, the inmate looked up. It must not have been more than a second or so, but our eyes locked for an eternity.

  "Oh no," Rachel whispered.

  Fire and ice blasted through my veins. I slammed my hands against the grate, stabbing fingers through, clutching, clawing.

  "Well, well, well. What have we here?" said Brent Stringer, a malevolent smirk slashing through his features. He pulled free from the guards and put his face just outside my fingers' grasp.

  "What is this!" Rachel demanded.

  Dodd sputtered. "I didn't work his schedule."

  "Sick sonofabitch!" I said, snarling at Stringer. "You killed my wife—"

  "Don't forget, I did your little girl and beat the crap out of your son!"

  I let out a savage cry that echoed through the corridor. Grabbed the grate, rattled it as hard as I could, slammed it, and shouted.

  "Move it!" The guard grabbed Stringer's arms and shoved him down the corridor. He kept his face turned to me, mocking me with his eyes. Kenny Dodd gently took hold of my arm. I spun around and shoved him back so hard he fell onto the ground.

  "Sam, no!" Rachel cried. I leapt back to the grate, threats and vituperation on the tip of my tongue. I squeezed the metal grate as if it were Stringer's throat and didn't let up until
it began to hurt. He was so close I felt as if I could will him to death. No one would blame me. He'd shown no mercy, not even to a child. It would be the justice he deserved.

  A distant echo, Rachel was calling my name. She touched my arm. By sheer reflex I coiled back a fist. She winced, shouted my name one last time and I realized it was her. "I'm sorry," she said. "You weren't supposed to see him."

  "I...He was just..."

  She took my hands in hers and held them firmly. Dodd got up, straightened his tie, and blew air through his lips. I couldn't speak. All manner of emotion raged within.

  "Is he going to be all right?" Dodd said.

  I held up a hand and nodded yes. "Give me a moment." I went back to a corner in the corridor and began slamming the grate again. Over and over and over again. After a minute, my hand became numb. I kept slamming it, shouting, until finally Rachel stepped over, her eyes beseeching. "Sam."

  I shouted and slammed the grate one last time. She reached out, the velvet pads of her fingertips touched my face.

  Then the dam burst.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  It must have been the quickest hearing in the history of the San Diego Superior Court. Judge Matthew Schermerhorn had been wrestling a docket bloated with exonerations, of which mine was merely the first.

  It was reported that upwards of three hundred and fifty people attended in the audience, many overflowing into extra courtrooms and watching via closed-circuit television.

  As I approached the tall mahogany doors of the courtroom, I remembered the first time I had been brought before the court—shackled like an animal. Immediately I remembered Dave Pendelton's words, as he sat directly behind me in the gallery. "Keep your head up."

  Cameras flashed, whispers hovered. Excitement infused the air like an open field during a lightning storm. But I dared not appear overconfident. Anything could happen. Rachel said that this judge was a straight-shooter. But one never knew, temperaments and all.

  Decked out in a charcoal suit Rachel had brought me, I shifted in my chair, tugged at a sleeve here, fixed a wayward collar there. All while she presented Brent Stringer's recorded confession. The entire courtroom bristled as they viewed the video. Stringer claimed responsibility for everything I had been accused of. He explained just how easy it was to hack into a computer and implant surveillance software. Identity theft was merely the prelude to his fugue of malice.