“Apologies for Detective Greene,” Fernandez said, pulling out his pen. “The only homicide detective I’ve ever met who doesn’t drink coffee.”
Torn shook his head in mock disgust. “That true, Detective?”
“Only tried it once,” Greene said.
“Must have been for a woman,” Torn said, laughing for the first time since Greene had met him.
Greene broke out into a bit of a smile. “I was living in France at the time, so at least it was good coffee.”
It was almost twenty years ago. Chief Hap Charlton had sent him on a special assignment, and when it was over Greene took a leave
from the force for a year. That was pretty standard for someone who’d almost gotten killed in the line of duty.
Greene had gone to Europe. Went to all the places his school friends got to see when they were nineteen, not thirty-two. In late October he ended up in a small town in the south of France, just west of Nice. One cool night he went to the movies and left with the
ouvreuse
—the woman who tore your tickets as you walked into the theater.
Françoise was so French that she’d never left the country, except for the occasional day trip across the border to the Italian towns on the coast. Nice, she liked to remind Greene, was really an Italian city. Their second night together they went to a café, and when he ordered tea instead of coffee, she laughed. The next morning she brewed her own espresso and insisted he try it. He gagged on the dark liquid. His first and last cup of coffee.
Her day job was as a graphic artist, but her real passion was fixing cars. On the weekends the two of them would spend hours pulling engines out of old-model Peugeots and touring the hilly backcountry, away from the pretension of the Côte d’Azur.
“I had my first cup of coffee in Italy, during the war,” Torn said. “Loved it.”
Greene nodded. “How are your horses?” he asked.
“Frisky as hell,” Torn said. “They like it good and cold.”
“I understand Katherine liked to ride,” Fernandez said, trying to jump into the conversation.
Torn gave Fernandez a look that seemed to say, Quit the cutesy segues into talking about my daughter. “Kate was a natural rider,” he said, taking another sip. “You need two things to be good on a horse—balance and hand coordination. She was blessed with both. Like her mother.”
“I know this is very difficult for your family,” Fernandez said, taking a sip of his own espresso.
“Really?” Torn said. “How do you know that?”
“Surely for you and your wife the death of your only—”
Torn’s hand came down on the table hard, making a loud, thumping
noise that rattled around the chrome-plated table. A few young waiters turned to look.
“Don’t ‘surely’ me, Fernandez. And quit telling me how difficult this is for my family.” Torn’s face was growing red with anger, making his blue eyes pop out. “I don’t want someone telling us how we’re surely supposed to feel about Kate dying.”
Fernandez nodded. He looked over at Greene. Confused.
Torn reached into his pocket. “Look, here’s my parking chit. Can you guys take care of it for me?” He stood up to leave.
Greene stood up immediately. Fernandez scrambled to his feet and reached for the receipt. “Dr. Torn,” he said, taking the receipt, “I’ll pay for it myself.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet.
Torn teetered a bit on his feet, arms crossed in front of his chest. Fernandez handed over thirty dollars. Torn shook his head and sat down, stuffing the money into his front pocket.
“The judicial pretrial is this afternoon,” Fernandez said, sitting. “I’ll meet with the defense counsel in the judge’s office. He’s going to push us hard to take a plea to something less than first-degree murder. Second degree, even manslaughter. We’re not going to budge.”
Fernandez looked over at Greene, satisfied with himself. Usually families of victims hated it when Crowns were forced to plea-bargain their cases down to lesser charges.
“You decided without asking us?” Torn demanded. He glared at Fernandez. Then at Greene. “You want to win big, don’t you?”
“The Crown doesn’t win or lose,” Fernandez said. “We have a very strong case.”
“What’s the point? The man is sixty-something years old.”
“Sixty-three,” Greene said, getting back into the conversation. He could see this was going off the rails. “You don’t want to put your wife through a trial, I’m sure.”
“If he pleads to second degree, he gets ten or so years, right?”
“Ten’s the minimum. At his age, he might get eleven or twelve,” Fernandez said.
“That’s my point,” Torn said. His voice was rising again, echoing around the empty restaurant. “We lived through this once with Kate. All the publicity. It was horrible.”
Fernandez wrinkled his brow.
“When Brace and Katherine first became involved, it was big news,” Greene explained to Fernandez.
“Kevin was the country’s top broadcaster. His happy family, their pictures splashed over all the magazine covers,” Torn said. “Then he runs off with a receptionist who worked for his book publisher. Kate’s tall. Beautiful. Press made her into the home wrecker from hell.”
Torn stood up. It was clear he wasn’t going to sit down again.
“I refused to talk to Kevin at first,” he said. “But then I learned that when their boy was taken away, he took the girls in and raised them well. That counts in my book. He was good for Kate. Gwen Harden, the old goat who was her riding instructor, said Brace was the only husband who actually watched her when she rode in competitions. Not like those other guys, who spend half the time on their cell phones.”
“Doctor, we appreciate your input,” Fernandez said. He was on his feet now too. So was Greene.
“She was something to watch on a horse. I saw it myself. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. I don’t know how she ended up dying. But you want to send Brace to jail for twenty-five years? I’ve seen enough death in my life. That police chief of yours wants to make Kevin his poster boy for domestic assault. Shake the taxpayers down for more money. Make a deal today, or my wife and I are taking our horses to West Virginia. I’m not putting her through all this again.”
Torn whirled and walked out of the restaurant. Fernandez looked stunned.
Greene reached down and tugged the parking receipt from between his fingers. “Give it to me,” he said. “I can expense it.”
Fernandez slowly released the thick paper.
“Can you make a deal?” Greene asked.
“My hands are tied. Orders from on high,” Fernandez said, shaking his head. “Torn’s right. They want Brace delivered on a platter. Got a hunch my career prosecuting homicides depends on it.”
Greene studied the young prosecutor carefully.
“Did you notice how he kept talking about his daughter dying?” Fernandez said.
“As opposed to being killed or murdered,” Greene said, handing him thirty dollars.
“Dr. Torn is not what you’d expect, is he, Detective?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Greene replied.
“Why not?” Fernandez asked. He looked very curious.
“Because,” Greene said, slipping the parking receipt into his wallet, “the longer you do this job, the more you stop anticipating how people will react to a death in the family.”
G
ood afternoon, Counsel,” Judge Summers said to Fernandez and Parish as he ushered them into his chambers. It was exactly 1:30. Summers would want to be finished by 2:00. Parish had arrived about ten seconds earlier. “Time to get down to work,” Summers said as he slipped on his reading glasses and picked up his initialed Waterman pen. “Let’s start with all these darn forms.” He opened a red file in the middle of his desk. “More paperwork these days than in the navy, for goodness’ sake.”
Summers went through a series of pedantic questions.
“Is the identity of the accused an issue?”
“No,” Parish said.
“Is the jurisdiction of the alleged crime an issue?”
“No,” Parish said again.
“Is the accused mentally competent to stand trial?”
“Yes,” Parish said.
With each answer the judge carefully ticked off a box on his form. These questions were just the warm-up for the harder stuff. After a few more perfunctory questions Summers looked over his reading glasses at Fernandez.
“Is the Crown alleging motive?” he asked in a neutral tone, as if he were asking how to spell someone’s name. This was the money question.
“The Crown has no obligation to prove motive,” Fernandez said.
“I know the law, Mr. Fernandez.” Summers took off his reading glasses. “And I know juries. They want two questions answered: how and why. One stab. How can you prove intent with just one stab? Without the why, you’ll be lucky to get them to convict on manslaughter.”
This must be a classic Summers pretrial, Fernandez thought. The moment he sensed a crack on either side, he pounced. Summers was known to yell, scream, cajole, and swear at even the most senior lawyers, Crown or defense, it didn’t matter. Once he’d weakened you, he’d go after the other side. Then, with both of you on your knees, he’d force a deal. Anything to settle a case.
“We’re still investigating the issue of motive,” Fernandez said.
“Huh,” Summers snorted, as if he’d just swallowed a fly. “It’s a domestic homicide. Forget about this being Kevin Brace, much-beloved broadcaster. These things are a dime a dozen. Motive 101—he’s sixteen years older. Maybe his machinery is no longer quite up to snuff, finds her with a younger man. O. J. Simpson. Simple. I’ve seen it fifty, maybe a hundred times.”
“That’s certainly a possibility,” Fernandez said. “But we have no proof of any such motive at this time.”
Summers gave a big scowl. “Anything else for motive? Think he was after her insurance money, so he stabbed her in the bathtub, hoping to make it look like an accident?”
“We are not alleging that, Your Honor,” Fernandez said. When Summers was pouring it on like this, if you showed any sign of backing down you were in trouble. “And we do have Mr. Brace’s confession.”
“I read that, Mr. Fernandez.” Summers liked to let you know that he’d done his homework. He looked over at Parish and held her gaze. “You mean the utterance he made to the old Indian newspaper guy?”
“Yes,” Fernandez said.
Summers nodded, and for the first time since they’d come into his chambers, he was quiet. Finally he looked away from Parish and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 1:50. Ten minutes to go, Fernandez thought.
Taking a deep breath, Summers turned back to Parish. Like a hungry real estate agent determined to close a big house deal, he’d go back and forth from buyer to seller, probing, until he got the concessions he needed to narrow the gap.
“Ms. Parish.” Summers put his glasses on again. “I’m sure your client would plead to manslaughter in a heartbeat.” He was not so much asking Parish as telling her. “No record, crime of passion, only one stab wound—sounds like about five, maybe seven years to me. He’d be a prime candidate for early remission at one-third time. So he’d do another two years—most of it at one of those farms with a golf course. Brace likes to golf, doesn’t he?”
Summers was selling the deal. Trying to move the goalposts closer together.
“Didn’t your client say anything about provocation? You know, a younger man, something like that?”
“I’m afraid not, Your Honor,” Parish said.
Summers shook his head. “That’s a damn shame.”
“If the Crown made an offer for manslaughter,” Parish said, “I’d be glad to take it to my client. And I emphasize the ‘if.’” It was a smart move by Parish. She was throwing it back to him.
Summers looked at Fernandez. He raised an eyebrow, zeroing in.
“Mr. Fernandez, can we expect an offer? The Crown, of course, could ask for much more time. Ten, twelve years. I’m sure you’d furnish me with a compelling victim-impact statement from the family. She was an only child, was she not?”
“Yes, she was, Your Honor,” Fernandez said. “But we’d never agree to manslaughter. I’d withdraw the charge before I took a plea to that.” Fernandez was careful not to shut the door on a plea to second degree. It was unspoken, but he knew everyone got it.
“Uh-uh,” Summers said, raising a finger at Fernandez. “There’s one word a criminal lawyer must never use: ‘never.’ A trial is like a boat in high seas. You never know which way the currents will take it.”
Fernandez smiled. “I agree, Your Honor,” he said. It was always important to let Summers have the last word. “We will be proceeding with the charge of first-degree murder.”
Summers seemed to take this in. Then he exploded. He slammed his fist down on the red file. “Goddamn it, you two. This is not some poker game. A woman is dead, her husband in jail. These are real people, not some political football. Mr. Fernandez, without motive, you don’t have a chance for first-degree murder. First degree, I remind you, is a planned and deliberate killing. And, Ms. Parish, the poor woman is dead, naked in the bathtub. The bloody knife is hidden in his kitchen. That’s no manslaughter. Manslaughter, I remind you, is a killing without intent.”
The judge sat back in his chair. “This is a second-degree murder, minimum ten years without parole. A lot better than twenty-five years without parole for a first. Mr. Fernandez, you ask for twelve or thirteen years, and, Ms. Parish, you ask for the minimum ten.”
Summers stood up gruffly and grabbed his file. “I want you both back here in a week, and I want this thing settled. No way am I giving up a courtroom for a month for a useless preliminary inquiry. I’ll see you both in seven days.”
Fernandez stood up. “Thank you very much, Your Honor,” he said. It was one minute to two.
“Thank you too, sir,” Parish said.
Outside in the hallway Fernandez looked at Parish. “That’s about what I was expecting,” he said.
Parish laughed. “I’ve seen him much worse.”
They both knew they’d come back in a week with nothing new to report and that Summers would put on another show. It would be futile. Clearly, they were going to trial.
N
ancy Parish rushed into her office and threw her coat onto one of the two client chairs facing her desk. Without breaking stride, she sank into the chair behind her desk, tossed her briefcase onto the floor, and with one hand tapped her phone to call her voice mail while with the other she flicked on her computer and opened her e-mail.