Tell Me No Secrets (14 page)

“I thought so. Your client is a dangerous man. He wasn’t being very cooperative.”

“It’s not his job to cooperate. It’s
your
job to make sure he’s treated fairly.”

“Did be treat Connie DeVuono fairly?”

“That’s not the issue here, Jess.” Don reminded her.

“Did you treat
me
fairly?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“You used me, Don.” Jess heard the combination of hurt and disbelief in her voice. “How could you do that to me?”

“How could I do what? What is it you think I’ve done to you?” A look of genuine confusion filled Don’s face.

Jess shook her head. Were, they really having this conversation? “You were with me the night Connie DeVuono disappeared,” she began. “You knew I suspected Rick Ferguson, that we were planning to pick him up. …”

“I knew you suspected him. I had no idea you were planning to pick him up,” Don told her.

“What else would I be planning?”

“At the very least, I thought you might wait a few more days. Jess, it’s been less than forty-eight hours since the woman disappeared.”

“You know as well as I do that she’s not coming back,” Jess said.

“I know no such thing.”

“Oh, please! Don’t insult my intelligence.”

“Don’t insult mine,” Don parried. “What do you expect me to do, Jess? Allow you free rein because you used to be my wife? I’m walking a very fine line here as it is, trying to pretend you’re just another prosecutor. Am I supposed to
let my feelings for you override my responsibilities to my client? Am I?”

Jess said nothing. She looked toward the wall that separated the two small rooms. She’d seen the smirk on Rick Ferguson’s face when she’d left the room to deal with Don. She knew he understood what was going on, that he was enjoying her discomfort.

“Now, either charge my client or release him.”

“Release him? No way I’m releasing him.”

“Then you’re arresting him? On what grounds? On what evidence? You know you have absolutely nothing to link Rick Ferguson to Connie DeVuono’s disappearance.”

Jess brought her hands to her lips, breathed deeply against her fingers. He was right, and she knew it. She had no hard evidence to justify holding him. “For God’s sake, Don, I don’t want to arrest him. I just want to talk to him.”

“But my client doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“He might if his lawyer would stop interfering.”

“You know I’m not going to do that, Jess.” It was Don’s turn to take a deep breath. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guaranteeing the accused the right to counsel, and the accused the right to remain silent, under the Fifth. I have every right to be here.”

Jess could scarcely believe what she was hearing. “What are you trying to pull? You know the recent Supreme Court ruling as well as I do. The Miranda warning, the right to have an attorney present, they only apply the first time an arrest is made. They don’t apply to a subsequent offense.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe we should let the attorney disciplinary commission determine the propriety of
your
actions, and let a court of law decide what rights my
client still has. If any. Let the courts decide whether the Constitution is still alive and well in Cook County!”

“A truly bravura speech, Counselor,” Jess told him, impressed despite herself.

“In any event, Jess,” Don continued, his voice softening, “you have to have probable cause to arrest my client. You simply haven’t got it.” He paused. “Now, is my client free to leave, or isn’t he?”

Jess looked toward the wall separating the two interrogation rooms. Even through the locked door, she could feel the force of Rick Ferguson’s contempt. “How did you find out we’d picked him up?” She hoped the defeat wasn’t too evident in her voice.

“His mother phoned my office. Apparently, she called Rick at work, and his foreman told her what happened.”

Jess shook her head. Wasn’t that always the way? It was probably the first time the woman had called her son at work in years, and it
would
be today. “What, did she run out of booze?”

“I want to talk to my client, Jess,” Don said, ignoring her sarcasm. “Now, are you going to let me talk to him or not?”

“If I let you talk to him, you’ll tell him to keep quiet,” Jess acknowledged.

“And if you hold him, you have to let him have counsel.”

“Is this what they call a catch twenty-two?”

“It’s what they call the law.”

“I don’t need you to teach me the law,” Jess said bitterly, knowing it was futile to continue. She walked into the hall and knocked on the next door. It was opened almost immediately by a uniformed police officer. Jess and Don stepped quickly inside. Another detective, wearing plainclothes
and an expression of resignation, as if he had known what the outcome of her conference would be all along, stood against the far wall, sucking on the end of an unlit cigarette. Rick Ferguson, in black jeans and a brown leather jacket, sat on a small wooden chair, his hands manacled to the wall behind him.

“Take those things off now,” Don commanded impatiently.

“I didn’t say a thing, Counselor,” Rick told him, staring at Jess.

Jess signaled to the detective, who, in turn, nodded at the uniformed police officer. In the next instant, Rick Ferguson’s hands were freed.

Rick Ferguson didn’t rub his wrists, or jump to his feet, as most prisoners would have done. Instead he rose slowly, almost casually, and stretched, as if he were in no hurry, like a cat awakened from a nap, as if he were thinking of sticking around. “I told her I had nothing to say,” he repeated, staring at Jess. “She didn’t believe me.”

“Let’s go, Rick,” Don advised from the doorway.

“Why is it you never believe me, huh, Jess?” Rick Ferguson held onto the final
s
of her name so that it emerged as a hiss.

“That’s enough, Rick.” The edge to Don’s voice was unmistakable.

“Almost made me miss Halloween,” he said, his lips stretching into the familiar, evil grin, his tongue flicking obscenely between his teeth. “Trick or treat,” he said.

Without a word, Don brusquely steered his client out the door. Jess heard the echo of Rick Ferguson’s laugh long after he’d left the room.

“I
want him charged with murder,” Jess told her trial supervisor.

Tom Olinsky peered across his desk from behind small, circular, wire-rimmed glasses much too small for his round face. He was an enormous man, close to six feet six inches tall and at least 250 pounds. As a result, he seemed to overpower almost everything that crossed his path. The granny glasses, a tribute to growing up in the sixties, while decidedly incongruous, humanized him, rendered him more accessible.

Jess fidgeted in the large leather wing chair across from Tom Olinsky’s oversized desk. Like the man himself, all the furniture in the small office at the end of the hall was too big for its surroundings. Whenever Jess set foot in this office, she felt like Alice after eating the wrong side of the cake. She felt diminished, insignificant, inadequate. She invariably compensated for these feelings by speaking louder, faster, and more often than was necessary.

“Jess …”

“I know what you’ve told me before,” she said stubbornly. “That without a body …”

“Without a body, we’ll be laughed right out of court.” Tom Olinsky came around to the front of his desk, his wide girth threatening to squeeze Jess out of the room. “Jess, I know you think this guy committed murder, and you’re probably right. But we just don’t have any evidence.”

“We know he raped and beat her.”

“Which was never proved in court.”

“Because he killed her before she could testify against him.”

“Prove it.”

Jess threw her head back, stared at the ceiling. Hadn’t she already had this conversation? “Rick Ferguson threatened Connie, told her she’d never live to testify.”

“For which we have only her word.”

“What about what he said to me?” Jess asked. Too loud. Too desperate.

“Not strong enough.”

“Not strong enough? What do you mean, not strong enough?”

“It’s just not strong enough,” Tom Olinsky repeated, not bothering to embellish. “We wouldn’t get past a preliminary hearing. You know that as well as I do.”

“What about a grand jury?”

“Even a grand jury is going to want some proof the woman is dead!”

“There have been numerous instances of people being charged with murder without a body ever being recovered,” Jess reminded him stubbornly.

“And how many convictions?” Tom Olinsky paused, leaned against his desk. Jess felt the wood groan. “Jess, do I have to remind you that the man has an alibi for the time Connie DeVuono disappeared?”

“I know—his sainted mother!” Jess scoffed. “He keeps her supplied with booze; she keeps him supplied with alibis.”

Tom Olinsky returned to his side of the desk and lowered himself slowly into the oversized leather chair. He said nothing, his silence more intimidating than his words.

“So, we just let him get away with it,” Jess said. “Is that what you’re telling me?” She threw her hands in the air, standing up and turning her head so that he wouldn’t see the tears forming in her eyes.

“What’s going on, Jess?” Tom Olinsky asked as Jess walked toward the door.

She stopped, wiped at her eyes before turning to face him. “What do you mean?”

“You’re more involved in this case than you should be. Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, without prompting. “One of the things that makes you so special as a prosecutor is the empathy you seem to develop with most of the victims. It makes you see things the rest of us sometimes miss, gives you an edge, makes you fight that much harder. But I’m sensing something more here. Am I right? And are you going to tell me what it is?”

Jess shrugged, trying desperately not to picture her mother’s face. “Maybe I just hate loose ends.” She tried to smile, failed. “Or maybe I just like a good fight.”

“Even
you
have to have something to fight with,” Tom Olinsky told her. “We just don’t have it here. A good defense lawyer—and your ex-husband is a very good defense
lawyer—would make mincemeat out of us. We need evidence, Jess. We need a body.”

Jess recalled the image of Connie DeVuono, eyes ablaze, sitting across from her in the small conference room—”Who will look after my son?” she’d demanded. “Will you?”—and tried to imagine the woman lying lifeless and cold on some deserted stretch of road. The image came easier than Jess anticipated. It made her want to gag. Immediately, she clamped down on her jaw, gritting her teeth until they ached.

Jess said nothing, nodding her head in acknowledgment of the stated facts, and left her trial supervisor’s office. The Halloween decorations along the corridors had been removed and replaced by an assortment of turkeys and pilgrims in anticipation of Thanksgiving. Jess returned to her office only long enough to pick up her coat and say good-bye to her cohorts, whose faces registered their surprise at seeing her leave so early, despite the fact it was after five o’clock.

Not that she wanted to leave work early. Not that she didn’t have a lot to do. Not that she had any choice, she told herself. She’d given her word. After ten days of
I really can’t, I’m up to my eyeballs
, Jess had finally given into her sister’s exhortations to meet Sherry Hasek, the new woman in their father’s life. Dinner at seven. Bistro 110.
Yes, I’ll be there, I promise
.

Her brother-in-law and her father’s new love, all in one evening, two headaches for the price of one. “Just what I need,” Jess moaned out loud, relieved at finding the elevator to herself. “Just what I need to cap off the end of a perfect day.”

The elevator stopped at the next floor and a woman got on, catching Jess in midsentence. Jess quickly twisted her mouth into a yawn.

“Long day?” the woman asked, and Jess almost laughed.

The day’s events replayed quickly in her mind, like a video on fast forward. She saw herself standing in front of Judge Earl Harris, her ex-husband at her side, demanding his client’s right to a speedy trial for assaulting Connie DeVuono. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” he’d intoned.

She saw Rick Ferguson’s mocking grin, heard her own weak response: “Judge, we’re forced to take a motion state because our witness isn’t available for trial today.”

“What day do you want?” Judge Harris asked.

“Judge, give us thirty days,” Jess requested.

“Getting awfully close to Christmas,” the judge reminded her.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Thirty days it is.”

“Sure hope the old lady shows up in thirty days,” Rick Ferguson said, not bothering to disguise the laughter in his voice. “I hate to keep dragging my butt down here for nothing.”

Jess leaned back against the elevator wall, scoffed out loud, pretended to cough. “You all right?” the woman beside her asked.

“Fine,” Jess said, recalling her later frustration with the auto body shop to which she’d taken her car first thing that morning. “What do you mean, my car won’t be ready by tonight? It’s just a windshield wiper, for God’s sake!” Now she’d have to take the El home, and it would be crowded and unpleasant, and she’d never get a seat. And she’d have to rush to make the restaurant by seven.

She could take a cab, she thought, knowing that no cabs would be waiting anywhere in the vicinity. Cabs hated
coming even remotely near Twenty-sixth Street and California, especially after dark. Of course she could have called for a taxi from her office, but that would have been too easy. Or she could have called Don. No, she’d never do that. She was angry with him, even furious. For what? For being objective? For believing there was a chance that Rick Ferguson might be innocent? For refusing to let his feelings for her trample over his client’s rights? For being such a good lawyer? Yes, all those things, she realized.

So she wasn’t really fine after all, Jess thought as the elevator stopped on the fourth floor to admit a bunch of tall black men in an assortment of multicolored wool hats. She was frustrated and fed up and furious. “Fuck it,” one of the tall black men uttered as the elevator doors opened to the ground floor.