Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (45 page)

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Also by
J. Carson Black

The Laura Cardinal Novels
Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Dark Side of the Moon
Cry Wolf
The Laura Cardinal Novels
(omnibus)
The Shop
Icon
The Survivors Club

The Maggie O’Neil Mysteries
Roadside Attraction

Writing as Margaret Falk
Darkscope
Dark Horse
The Desert Waits

Writing as Annie McKnight
The Tombstone Rose
Superstitions

Short Stories
The BlueLight Special
Pony Rides

CRITICAL VULNERABILITY:

AN AROOSTINE HIGGINS NOVEL

MELISSA F. MILLER

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Melissa F. Miller
All rights reserved.

Published by Brown Street Books.

For more information about the author, please visit
http://www.melissafmiller.com
.

Brown Street Books eBook ISBN: 978-1-940759-02-9

Cover design by Clarissa Yeo

CHAPTER ONE

Thursday Afternoon

Sidney Slater was ordinarily not a yeller. At worst, he treated the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who worked beneath him in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division with mild disdain and poorly hidden contempt, as if he were so much smarter than his underlings that he couldn’t really fault them for any perceived failings. But, today, he seemed to be making an exception especially for Aroostine.

His face was a mottled purple, and actual spittle sprayed from his lips as he shouted at her.

She wondered idly if he might have a stroke.

“Are you listening to me, Higgins?”

Unless he had a soundproof door, everyone in the office was listening to him. She decided to keep that point to herself.

“Yes, sir.”

“This was supposed to be a slam dunk. The company already settled; all you had to do was prosecute the individuals. You
begged
me for a shot. Said you were ready to first chair a federal case. Didn’t you
assure
me you wouldn’t screw up this trial? Didn’t you?”

Slater half-rose from his desk chair and slammed his palm down on a stack of papers, sending them fluttering across the carpet.

She bent to retrieve them, taking her time and letting her long hair fall across her face like a black curtain. Only when she was certain she had rearranged her expression to mask her own rising anger did she straighten to standing and hand him the papers. She had sacrificed too much for this shot—so much that she couldn’t bear to think about losing it.

“Yes. I did say that. And I am ready. I’m not going to screw up, Sid.”

She hoped her neutral tone would inspire him to calm down, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. His eyes bulged out and his voice grew louder.

“I don’t care! Don’t waste time pointing your finger at someone else. Tell me what the devil you plan to do about this motion
in limine
.”

She tilted her head and tried to figure out why he was so worked up. The fact that the defendants’ lawyers had filed a motion to exclude evidence wasn’t exactly unheard of—it was fairly standard. Yes, the particular piece of evidence that they wanted to keep out of court was critical to her ability to prove her case, but she didn’t think their argument was even all that persuasive. What was she missing?

The motion asked the judge to prohibit her from introducing a crucial two-minute-long tape-recorded cell phone call between the two individual defendants—sales representatives employed by the software company that had settled. During the call, they detailed their efforts to bribe a Mexican government official.

For obvious reasons, the defendants didn’t want the jury to hear them, in their own words, admit to clear violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And, it was likely true that without the recording, the government wouldn’t be able to convict the salesmen. But Sid’s reaction was extreme—did he expect her to somehow have prevented the defendants from filing the motion?

He was staring at her stony-eyed. Waiting for her to say something.

“What do I plan to do about it?” she finally asked, buying time.

“Yes, Higgins,” he said through clenched teeth. “What do you plan to do?”

“Well,” she said carefully, “I was thinking I’d oppose the motion.” She bit back the rest of what she wanted to say—
You know, like every other lawyer in America would do in response to totally ordinary motions practice?

“You don’t know, do you?” The anger seemed to leak out of him all at once, leaving nothing but resignation.

“Know what?”

“Your opposition is due today.”

She shook her head at him. “That can’t be right. The case management order said oppositions to motions
in limine
are due eight days before the trial. I have, what, a month and a couple days? In fact, I don’t know why they filed it so early.”

Sid sighed and shuffled through the papers on his desk.

“I don’t know why you didn’t get this. Judge Hernandez issued an order on Monday moving up the trial date. Jury selection starts a week from tomorrow.”

What?

He pushed the paper into her hand, and she scanned the order numbly, ignoring the blood rushing in her ears.

“How can he do that?”

“He’s the judge. He can do whatever he wants.”

“But
why
would he?”

“Because as the most liberal appointee on the bench, Judge Hernandez seems to think it’s his solemn duty to yank my chain whenever he can. That’s probably why he had this so-called courtesy copy sent over.”

D.C. politics. Of course.

“I still don’t understand why I didn’t get an electronic notification, though.” She scrolled back through her memory, she was
sure
she hadn’t missed an email from the court system.

Sid rubbed his forehead. “The court system just switched over to a new database. They did the work last weekend, so none of the active cases would be impacted. But, apparently, as usual, they screwed up.”

Adrenaline washed over her, and she tried to keep her voice steady. “I can’t get an opposition drafted that fast. I’ll have to ask for an extension—”

“You will not.”

She blinked.

He went on. “You’ll find a way to get it done. There’s no way the Department of Justice is going to go begging for more time.”

She considered pointing out that he was cutting off
her
nose to spite his face, but she didn’t have time to waste arguing with him. She had fewer than ten hours to research, draft, and file an opposition to a motion
in limine
that would tank her case if it were granted.

“Understood. I’ll get something on file, no problem. You won’t regret giving me this case, Sid.”

He shook his head in disgust and waved her to the door. “I already regret it. Just get it done.”

________

Aroostine yawned. Her back was tight, her neck was stiff, and her eyes burned. The wave of nervous energy that she’d ridden through the first several hours of the evening had waned and finally evaporated. She was drained. She rolled her shoulders then rubbed her eyes with her fists and checked the time.

11:30 p.m. No wonder. Way past her bedtime.

Even when she’d been in law school, during exams, she’d kept to her schedule while her classmates were chugging Red Bull and pulling all-nighters.

Joe used to call her Ben Franklin because of her early-to-bed, early-to-rise habits.

He had a point: her natural rhythms were closely tied to sunrise and sunset. She rose at dawn and did her reading before breakfast. After classes or work, she would study hard with no breaks, not even one, straight through from dinner until nine o’clock. But then, as the old clock on the mantle chimed the hour, she capped her highlighter, powered down her laptop, and drew a hot bath. She’d be in bed, lights out and, at least according to Joe, snoring adorably by nine-thirty. No exceptions.

Joe.

Unbidden, a picture of Joe, his mouth curved into a gentle grin and a teasing glint in his clear blue eyes, popped into her fatigued mind. The memory made her chest ache. She closed her eyes and blinked away his image and, with it, the tears she didn’t have time to shed. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by thoughts of Joe.

She had to maintain her focus. The motion was nearly finished. All she had left to do was to confirm all her case citations were correct then upload the document to the court’s electronic filing system. She ran the program to cite check the cases and waited for it to spit out its results.

She scanned the results and, satisfied, e-signed the opposition and loaded it to the court’s site. A wave of accomplishment and relief washed over her. She’d met the deadline with a few minutes to spare.

She started to pack up so she could drag her tired body home. But now that the work deadline had passed, Joe resurfaced in her mind. She felt her frustration and rage building.

Before she realized what she was doing, she picked up the smooth, heart-shaped stone she used as a paperweight and whaled it at the wall. It hit the cloth-covered particle board with a satisfying thud and fell to the institutional carpet.

She wasn’t ordinarily a thrower, but
man, that felt good
.

Until about twenty seconds later, when she heard light tapping at her door, and her office neighbor eased it open to peer inside.

“Everything okay in here? I heard a noise.” Mitchell examined her from behind his tortoise-shell framed glasses.

She felt her cheeks flush.

“Uh, yeah, I … dropped my paperweight.” She gestured lamely toward the gray heart on the floor.

“Dropped it, huh?”

“Dropped it.”