Law of Attraction (22 page)

It was a Wednesday night, and Jack knew he could find Anna there now. He stopped walking halfway down the hall, though, and looked down at his feet. He was still wearing his galoshes. There’d been a thunderstorm this morning, and he’d put the rubber boots on for his walk to the subway. Then he’d gotten so busy he’d forgotten about them and worn them all day. Now he noticed that they looked goofy, like clown feet sticking out of his suit trousers. Jack turned back to his office and pulled the galoshes off of his dress shoes. As he walked out again, he felt both better and sheepish. If he were going to see anyone else, he wouldn’t have thought about his footwear.

Anna was sitting at the conference table, taking notes as she read a transcript. She was deep in thought and didn’t notice Jack. Her suit jacket was draped over a chair, her shoes sat on the floor next to her, and her feet were tucked under her as she worked. Her hair hung in a blond curtain around her face. She pulled it back as she read, distractedly pinning it behind her head with a pencil, exposing the soft nape of
her neck. Jack blinked and looked away. He rapped his knuckles on the door frame.

“Knock, knock,” he said. Anna looked up, startled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She smiled when she saw it was Jack. “Hazard of the job. You sit around reading about the bogeyman all day, you start to jump at shadows.”

He sat down in his usual seat across from her. They had spent hours in this room, sitting across from each other as they pored through reports and evidence. They both had other duties, so they worked on this case in the mornings before court, and then after court finished in the evenings. They’d spent many late nights in the war room, both because there was a lot to do and because they enjoyed each other’s company—the chance to bounce ideas off of each other instead of toiling away in their own separate offices. Besides his daughter and the nanny, Jack realized, Anna was usually the first person he saw every morning and the last one he saw each night. He didn’t mind. She was easy company.

Jack slid the envelope across the table to her.

“Tell me if you can guess what that is,” he said.

She picked it up and studied it.

“You’ve gotta give D’marco points for persistence,” she said with a puzzled smile.

“Or something.” Jack stuffed D’marco’s letter, unopened, into a larger manila envelope.

“What are you going to do with the letter?” Anna asked.

“I’ll send it to his lawyer. And we’ll write another letter to both Wagner and the judge explaining this. It all has to be on the record.”

It was a hassle for Jack. They had to document everything in fairness to the defense attorney, and to cover themselves, in case anyone ever accused them of improperly contacting the defendant. But, Jack said, the one who would really be inconvenienced by this was Nick Wagner, who clearly couldn’t control his client.

“It makes you wonder what’s going on in that lawyer-client relationship,” Jack said.

Anna nodded, but then changed the subject. “Do you have time to talk about medical records?” she asked. Jack nodded. “I’m having a hard time getting some stuff from Greater Southeast Hospital.”

“Sure.”

Jack relaxed in his chair as she described the problem. It was just
one of a hundred logistical issues that came up with every criminal case. But Jack enjoyed talking about it with Anna, the two of them hashing out challenges in the war room, surrounded by the quiet office. He hadn’t admitted it to himself yet, but this was becoming his favorite part of the day.

•  •  •

D’marco paced the length of his cell, fuming. His lawyer had visited him earlier today, and yelled at him for writing to the prosecutors. The fucking prosecutors had sent his letter to Nick! Without even opening it! Nick had given him an earful. When D’marco tried to explain, Nick had just gotten angrier, and walked out on him. Now D’marco was the furious one.

The system was stacked against him.

No one respected him.

He knew what he had to do.

This weekend, when Ray-Ray was in again, D’marco would tell him to toss a gun onto the ledge. Ray-Ray might be a little nervous about it, but he would do what D’marco asked.

D’marco would get his gun—and he would use it to escape from the jail. And then he would find that lady prosecutor. All he needed was five minutes with her.

20

R
ay-Ray wiped the damp rag indifferently over the dark, shiny wood of the four-top table. More crumbs fell onto the white marble floor than into the dirty tub of dishes he’d been aiming for, but he ignored them. He wasn’t going to get any awards for being the busboy of the year—and he didn’t care. He held on to this job for one reason: so he could report steady employment to his probation officer and keep his cushy gig as a weekender in the D.C. Jail. Meanwhile, if the Center Café wasn’t completely spick-and-span, it wasn’t Ray-Ray’s problem. He knew the manager would follow after him with a broom, sighing and grumbling—but she wouldn’t fire him. That was all he really cared about here.

The restaurant where Ray-Ray worked was a chic café inside the central hall of Union Station, and one of the most visited tourist spots in Washington. Union Station’s central hall was massive and beautiful, with gleaming white marble floors, huge white pillars, and a soaring, barrel-vaulted ceiling of carved golden panels. Towering statues of nude Roman legionnaires guarded the ceiling, looking stern and dignified despite their strategically placed modesty shields. The huge lobby was lined with tourist shops and fancy stores.

Right in the middle of the lobby was the Center Café, Ray-Ray’s workplace. The restaurant was a circular, double-decked structure made of dark wood, open to the historic hall it sat in. Although the café was two stories, the soaring ceiling of Union Station still towered high above. The restaurant had no walls; it was set apart from the lobby by wooden planters filled with flowers and ivy, giving it the feel of an outdoor sidewalk café. Every table had good views of the comings and goings of Union Station.

The hallway echoed with the voices of dozens of people walking around outside the café. Union Station had a little something for everyone: it was an historic site and a shopping mall, it had a food court and a movie theater in the basement, and beyond the beautiful main hall, it
held a teeming train station. All kinds of people passed through here: millionaire law firm partners, nose-ringed nonprofit interns, tourists in shorts and knee socks, and thugs of every degree.

The Center Café’s patrons tended to be the more upscale types. Ray-Ray didn’t think anything of the man wearing a suit and tie who walked up as he was clearing off a table.

“Excuse me,” the man started.

“Hostess’s over there.” Ray-Ray inclined his head without making eye contact.

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to you. Ray-Ray, right?”

Ray-Ray looked up, suddenly suspicious. It was never a good sign for a white man in a suit to be asking for him. And since Ray-Ray had agreed to smuggle a gun into the D.C. Jail for D’marco, he’d been feeling anxious. He wondered if this guy was here because the plan had somehow gotten out. Ray-Ray hadn’t bought the gun yet—he was so uncomfortable with the idea that he’d been putting it off. He couldn’t be in trouble just for
talking
about it with D’marco—could he? He met the man’s eyes nervously, but didn’t say anything.

“My name’s Nick Wagner. I’m D’marco Davis’s lawyer.” Nick held out the identification card clipped to his belt loop. It had his name and the words
OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC DEFENDER
printed on it.

“Oh, hey, man.” Ray-Ray exhaled with relief. This guy wasn’t here to get him in trouble. He was on D’marco’s side. Ray-Ray set the tub of dirty dishes on the table behind him, wiped his hands on his apron, and reached out to shake the attorney’s hand. “What can I do to help? Here, have a seat.”

Nick and D’marco sat at the table Ray-Ray had just been cleaning.

“Thanks for your time,” Nick said with a smile. After a few minutes of small talk, the lawyer got to the point. “D’marco tells me that you might know who Laprea was dating right before she died.”

Ray-Ray winced. He still felt bad for telling D’marco that rumor. And the worst of it was that he didn’t have any more information.

“Aw, man. Wish I did. But I just heard some stuff on the street. Just talk, y’know. Some folks seen a police cruiser hangin’ around outside her house a coupla times, seen the same cop goin’ in and out. I heard it was a white cop. Ain’t never seen him myself.”

“Do you know anyone who did see him?”

“Nah. I don’t even remember how I heard it. There was just talk.”

“What made folks think they were dating? I mean, were they ever
seen out together or anything like that?”

“Nah, man. Nothing ’pecific. Rumors is rumors.”

“How do you know the police officer wasn’t just investigating her case?”

“Ha. You know how many cases in that neighborhood? Robberies. Beatdowns. Dealing. How often’s a cop stop by just to ‘investigate’ a misdemeanor assault? Never. You call 911, they slow up, take they report, and go. Or don’t even take a report.”

Nick nodded. “Do you know anyone else she was seeing romantically?”

“Uh-uh.” Ray-Ray remembered what D’marco had told him: that Laprea was pregnant with someone else’s child when she died. D’marco had acted like it was no big deal, but Ray-Ray could tell that the news hurt D’marco badly. “You tryin’ to find that baby’s father?”

“Doing the best I can, but we’re not having much luck.”

“Oh.” Ray-Ray felt sorry for his friend. Nick seemed to read his face.

“It’s actually better this way. If the father’s unknown, I can argue to the jury that someone else was close to her, and it could be
anyone
—and maybe that other guy killed her. Maybe that’s reasonable doubt. If the father were identified, the prosecutors would interview him, bring him to court, and what if he has an alibi? Or he’s some putz that wouldn’t hurt a fly? Unless the father happened to have a longer record than D’marco—and we know he doesn’t, because he wasn’t in the police DNA database—we’re much better off with a mystery man.”

“Mm,” Ray-Ray replied, not entirely convinced. “You gonna get D’marco a good plea, right?”

“Yeah, but the case against him is strong. No matter what, he’s gonna have to serve some serious time. He needs to start coming to terms with that.”

Nick stood up, pulled a business card out of his suit jacket, and handed it to Ray-Ray. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

“Okay, I will. Good luck, man.”

“Thanks.” The lawyer walked out into the main hall and merged with the crowds of people.

Ray-Ray carried the tub of dirty dishes back to the kitchen and set them down by the slop sink. He lifted a dirty plate and held the sprayer to it while he thought. He rinsed the same plate for five minutes, thinking about what the lawyer had just said, and what a tough spot
D’marco was in. Ray-Ray wondered if Laprea might still be alive, and D’marco out of jail, if he’d just kept his mouth shut. In a way, Ray-Ray knew, D’marco’s troubles were Ray-Ray’s fault.

He would get the gun tonight, Ray-Ray decided. And he would throw it to D’marco tomorrow, along with the usual three-thirty package of heroin. He owed his friend that much.

•  •  •

“Are there any further questions for this witness?” Anna asked.

She looked at the blank faces of the grand jurors. The jurors stared back, bored. A few hadn’t looked up from their newspapers during the whole presentation.

“Shall we excuse the witness then?” she asked.

The jurors murmured their acquiescence. Anna opened the waist-high door to the witness box to help D’marco Davis’s cousin step down.

“With our thanks,” Anna said, as the man walked out of the room with a scowl. Anna glanced at Jack, who nodded at her. She’d done just fine.

When Jack first invited her to assist him in the grand jury, she had been intrigued. Misdemeanor cases didn’t go through the grand jury, and Anna had never been inside one. The whole grand jury process was filled with an air of mystery.

Everything that happened in the grand jury was secret. The jurors and the prosecutors weren’t allowed to talk about what happened inside the grand jury to anyone outside of it. That was designed to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations. A witness could bring their own lawyer, but the lawyer had to wait outside the grand jury door while the witness testified inside. There was no judge and no defense attorney. It was just the prosecutor questioning the witnesses, with the occasional question from a juror. If, after hearing all the evidence, the grand jury found that there was probable cause to believe that someone committed a crime, it would return an indictment, an official charging document that sent the defendant to trial. It was a tremendous power, and unlike almost every other part of the criminal justice system, it was a power exercised entirely behind closed doors.

Anna had almost expected the grand jury to look like the all-white Krypton courtroom from the opening scene of
Superman.

She had been slightly disappointed the first time Jack had allowed
her into the grand jury room. Instead of a whirring crystal fortress, the grand jury room looked like a college seminar room, but with the rows of Formica tables and plastic chairs curving around a witness stand instead of a chalkboard. A tired-looking court reporter sat to the side of the witness stand, typing on her stenographic machine and periodically opening an old tape recorder to flip the tape. The jurors themselves were random civilians who had been mailed letters instructing them to report for jury service. Many of them didn’t want to be there. And in cases like this one, they were quickly bored.

It was November—three months after Laprea’s murder—and Jack and Anna had called more than fifty people to testify before this grand jury so far. Most of those witnesses didn’t know, or at least claimed not to know, anything relevant to D’marco’s case. But because so many people wouldn’t talk to them voluntarily, Jack and Anna used their subpoena power to get people to talk to them in the grand jury. They had put dozens of D’marco’s neighbors on the witness stand, each of whom claimed not to have seen or heard anything unusual on the night of the murder.