Inadvertent Disclosure (15 page)

“I do.” Russell sat a little
straighter in his chair, glad to be consulted.

Sasha was pleased to see
Connelly and Russell were male bonding, because she really didn’t have the
patience or the time to deal with any alpha male nonsense. She had a killer to
catch.

The issues swirling around the
judge’s death were, unfortunately, multiplying. Why had the sheriff tried to
break into the judge’s apartment?  Where were the missing tapes? Who had been
threatening the judge?  Did Danny Trees and PORE have anything to do with any
of it?

And, most troubling, what was
Gloria hiding and why?

CHAPTER 22

After cramming the good, but
greasy, pizza from Sal’s down her throat, Sasha needed to take a constitutional
of her own.

Connelly and Russell had their
heads together over the crime scene photos, not exactly her thing on a full
stomach. So, Sasha told Gloria she’d be back in thirty minutes and headed out
the door into the hallway.

As she pulled the door shut
behind her and turned left toward the stairwell, she narrowly avoided colliding
into a pinstriped chest. She stopped short and looked up. A breathless Drew
Showalter was applying the brakes, as well, one hand up to soften any impact.

“Sorry,” Sasha said.

“No, no, I apologize,” he said,
“I was distracted. I’m glad to run into you, as it were.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I read about your
appointment, of course. Front page of the
Clear Brook Crier
, you know.
Congratulations; that’s quite an opportunity.”

He said it matter-of-factly,
but she wondered if the local lawyers had been put out by it. She guessed it
really wasn’t her problem.

 “Thanks, I guess. I’m sure
we’d all rather the judge be alive.”

Showalter reddened and
stammered, “Absolutely. And I’m sure you’re quite busy, but, as I mentioned in
my voice-mail message last week, I do need to speak with you about our little
discovery matter.”

He inclined his head toward the
judge’s chambers. “Can you spare a few moments?”

She stifled a sigh. “I was just
heading out for a quick walk. Why don’t you join me?  We can walk and talk.”

She strode toward the stairwell
without waiting for an answer, leaving him no choice but to join her if he
wanted her ear.

He scissored his long legs to
match her brisk pace.

“What can I do for you?” she
asked over her shoulder, pushing open the fire door. “As I understood your
message, you just wanted to make sure I don’t have any questions about the
materials. I don’t.”

He cleared his throat twice
before answering. “I’m sure the VitaMight matter is on your back burner now,
what with the investigation, but there’s a small matter regarding my client’s
document production.”

She turned toward him. “Which
is?”

He coughed out another
throat-clearing grunt.

Then, in a rush, the words
tumbled out. “We’ve made an inadvertent disclosure. I’d like you to return the
e-mail and attachment Bates labeled KP 00476 through 00477.”

Inadvertent disclosure. She
allowed herself a small smile. That was a lawyer’s way of saying “I screwed up.
Badly.”

Then she frowned. Inadvertent
disclosure meant Showalter had accidentally turned over privileged
documents—usually, it was a communication between the client and the attorney
or a memo the attorney had created in preparation for trial. But, she had a
near-photographic recall and was certain she hadn’t reviewed any privileged
materials on the disk he’d sent.

“You’re claiming privilege?”

She stopped on the landing and
looked him square in the face.

“Not exactly.”

He cranked his neck to the side
and grimaced.

“Well, what exactly are you
claiming?”

It was easy enough to think the
polite thing to do would be to give back whatever Showalter had given her in
error, but the reality was, she was obligated to do whatever was in her
client’s best interest. The Disciplinary Board didn’t award points for proper
etiquette. And, as she understood it, Pennsylvania law required her to return
privileged material produced in error and nothing more.

She couldn’t even imagine what
other ground he’d have. This wasn’t a case that involved trade secret or
proprietary information, unlike a lot of her business litigation matters. In
those cases, the parties would sign a confidentiality agreement, promising not
to use each other’s client lists or pricing matrices or whatever. But, she and
Showalter hadn’t entered into such an agreement because they had a
straightforward breach of lease case.

Showalter took his time forming
an answer.

“The documents in question are
not relevant to the issues in the case and, as such, aren’t responsive to your
document requests. They were produced in error. Let’s not make a federal case
of it, eh?”  He shot her a too-wide grin.

Relevance?  Responsiveness? 
Was he kidding?  Nobody, literally nobody, would try to get back documents
because they were irrelevant. In fact, most of the attorneys she knew
deliberately padded their document productions with irrelevant, useless
documents to bulk them up and waste opposing counsel’s time.

She pushed open the door to the
lobby and shook her head.

“I’ll take a look at the
documents and talk to my client, but my inclination is no, Drew. What’s the big
deal, anyway?”

He trailed behind her as she
pushed through the ornately carved doors leading to the courthouse steps.

“Sasha, please. I need them
back.”

He squinted at her in the
sunlight.

“I said I’ll talk to my
client.”

She was more confused than
irritated. After reviewing his electronic files, she hadn’t understood why he’d
fought the document request in the first place, now he was making an
extraordinary request that only piqued her interest in the documents.

He leaned over her, blinking
rapidly.

“A refusal is not the act of a
friend,” he said in a soft voice. Then he popped an antacid out of a foil roll
and stuck it in his mouth.

Sasha looked at him for several
seconds, but she couldn’t think of anything to say in response. So she turned
and walked down the wide white steps to the sidewalk.

Had she turned around, she
would have been surprised to see a satisfied smile spread across his face.

CHAPTER 23

“A refusal is not the act of a
friend.”

Connelly and Russell were still
poring over some papers spread out on the late judge’s desk; they jerked their
heads up when she yanked open the door to chambers and spat out the sentence.
She’d turned the phrase over in her mind while she’d walked through town and
still didn’t know what to make of it.

“
The Godfather
,” they
said in unison.

Another reference to
The
Godfather
. Men and their movies, she thought with no small amount of
exasperation.

“Figures.” She craned her neck
to get a look at the papers, “Is that the coroner’s report?”

“Nope. Better.” Russell’s eyes
gleamed with excitement. Over his shoulder, Connelly shot her a skeptical look.

“Really? What?”

“On a hunch, Stinky paid Danny
Trees a visit. He wanted to know if Jay had been back. Everyone in the house
said they hadn’t seen him, but the sheriff asked Danny for permission to search
the room Jay had used. The duffel bag was still in there and these were right
on top.” He picked up the papers and waved them at her.

Sasha took the crumpled papers.
The top was a printed sheet on generic white printer paper. It read “Lunch at
Bob’s every day. Then he stands at the window and dictates.” Underneath was a
printed list of sporting goods stores in a fifty-mile radius. It had come from
a website called The Huntsman and was dated two days earlier.

Connelly spoke up, “We’ve
called several of the stores on the list. They all sell ammunition; no one
admitted to selling the 120-grain Nosler Partition to anyone fitting Jay’s
description.”

She turned to Russell, “So,
he’s been back?  The printout’s only two days old.”

“Looks like. The thing is—and
this is credible—Danny doesn’t keep tabs on the weirdos living in his house.
People come and go. He never locks the side door. So, this Jay character could
have easily slipped back in and then out.”

“The sheriff thinks Jay’s the
shooter?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Did you ask him about the
judge’s keys?”

Russell frowned. “No. He flew in
here very excited and left in a hurry. He’s arranging a press conference.”

“Press conference?  Don’t you
think he’s jumping the gun?”

Russell shook his head. “This
wasn’t all that was in Jay’s bag. He had the missing tapes.”

That changed things.

"All of them?"

Another shake of the head.
"All but number 2, the one from the dictaphone. We figure he must have it
on him. Listen, Stinky’s all hopped up now. He wants to talk to you before the
press conference. He said to come see him as soon as you get back, okay?"

Russell looked miserable. His
adrenaline was pumping, flooding him with excitement about having a suspect.
But, the suspicion that Stickley was up to something picked at him under the
surface. Sasha could read it on his face.

Seeing no reason to compound
his discomfort, she just nodded and turned to go find Stickley. Connelly
followed her out. In the hallway, he pulled her into the stairwell.

Even now, after all these
months, her heartbeat ticked up when he touched her. He kept his hand on her
arm and leaned close, searching her face.

"Jay's not your guy. You
know that right?"

His warm brown eyes, flecked
with gold, clouded with concern.

"I don't know anything,
Connelly. And neither does Stickley. I'm going to tell him his media blitz is
premature, but the only evidence we have certainly does suggest Jay is the
killer."

Connelly gave her a sharp look.
"What about the attempted break in? You think some random hippie waltzed
in to the sheriff’s office and took the keys from the evidence locker?"

She shrugged. He had a point.

"No, I still think that
was Stickley, trying to cover up his slipshod job of securing the scene. But,
it could have been Russell. Or the receptionist. You're right, there's
something else at play here, but we do need to find Jay. And fast. Even if it's
to clear him so we can move on."

"You're not going to find
Jay. And making a lot of noise about looking for him is going to have
consequences."

She narrowed her eyes.
"Connelly, if you have something to say, say it. I don't have time for the
intrigue and innuendo."

His jaw tightened. Then he let
out a long, slow breath and said, "I've said all I can say, Sasha. You
need to get Stickley to back off Jay."

He took her by both shoulders.
"Trust me, okay?"

She removed his hands. "I
do. You, however, obviously don't trust me. If you did, you'd just come out and
say whatever it is you're driving at."

She dropped his hands and
stalked off in search of the malodorous sheriff.

CHAPTER 24

Carl sat with his feet propped
up on his scratched wooden desk, the phone receiver jammed between his shoulder
and ear, and glared at the phone’s base as if Griggs could see him.

“It’s done. We have a press
conference in a half hour. Your pretty little prosecutor and I will announce
there’s a suspect in the murder of Judge Paulson and ask for the public’s help
in finding him and bringing him to justice.”

He paused to pick at his front
teeth. There was nothing between them. But, the habit had developed when he
switched from cigarettes to hard candy. He was always finding slivers of
peppermint or butterscotch stuck on his teeth. Still, he was glad he’d finally
kicked the habit.

Of course, everyone said his
food would taste better after he quit. Turned out that wasn’t the case, since
he’d lost his sense of smell entirely thanks to the damned cigarettes. With no
sense of smell, everything just tasted bland. He took a second to think about
the injustice of it all before continuing.

“You just better hope nobody
finds the damned hippie, Bob.”

The attorney general brushed
off his warning and said, “You’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it,
Sheriff.

 He gave a loud guffaw at his
own stupid joke.

Carl made a jerking off motion
with his hand and really wished the asshole could see him.

“Did you find a judge who will
play ball?”

Griggs said, “Jesus, Stickley,
not over the phone. We’ll talk about it when I come to get the tapes tonight.
You better find that last tape in the meantime.”

The sheriff bristled. He
considered giving the man a piece of his mind but swallowed it. They had to
work together long enough to make the commissioner happy and get paid. Maybe,
after his bank account was swollen with cash, he’d let Griggs know just how
much he hated his puke guts.

A rap at his door jarred him
out of the fantasy of telling off the attorney general.

“I have to go,” Stickley said.
“I’ll see you tonight.”