By seven thirty, she was jittery from caffeine and cross-eyed from staring at her phone. Gloria’s e-mails covered men, other women, family, being broke, getting high, being homesick, and a litany of other mundane topics, but there was nothing about Dwayne Reed, Wilfred Donaire, Kyrie Chapman, or Jameer Henderson. That was as far as she got before leaving for her meeting with Judge West.
His horse farm wasn’t out in the country. It was tucked away in an undeveloped area east of downtown and surrounded by residential developments. A long and winding narrow driveway kept it hidden from the street. The driveway ended at a white clapboard farmhouse. A dirt track led from the farmhouse to the horse barn. Alex’s headlights picked out the judge’s SUV next to the barn. She followed the track, parking next to his car. Judge West was waiting, holding the reins to a horse in one hand and a lit cigar in the other.
“Are you out of your mind calling me?” he said to her.
She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. “Entirely possible, but you’re the one who told me to break the rules.”
He took a sharp draw on his cigar, yelling at her through the smoke. “I didn’t tell you to kill your goddamn client and then call me asking for help in the middle of your goddamn trial, over which I happen to be presiding!”
She held her palms up. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I thought-”
“You thought what? That we’re partners? Buddies? Pals? Is that what you thought?”
She let out a deep breath. “I thought we wanted the same thing. I thought I could trust you. I thought you were the only person I could talk to who could help me.”
“You’ve got pretty goddamn good lawyers. Don’t you trust them?”
“Not with this,” she said, pointing her finger back and forth from him to her. “Not with what we talked about doing.”
Judge West flicked the ash from his cigar, grinding it in the dust. He stroked his horse’s face, pulled a carrot from his pocket, and fed it to the horse.
“Your lawyers must have told you what Gloria Temple is going to say on the stand.”
“I know the gist of it. Claire is supposed to talk to her tonight and get the details.”
“So how can I help you with that? I doubt that your lawyer, good as she is, can come up with a reason for me to exclude Gloria’s testimony without looking like a damn fool.”
“Gloria isn’t going to testify willingly. Claire will find out if Ortiz made a deal with her to give her immunity for whatever trouble she’s in. But if I know Ortiz, he won’t tell Claire everything and neither will Gloria, because that might knock the pins out from under her testimony. That’s the stuff I need to know.”
Judge West patted his horse again. “Here’s what I can do. You tell your lawyer to bitch like hell that Ortiz is holding out on her. Tell her to demand to see the files on whatever they’ve got on Gloria. I’ll order Ortiz to produce the records and I’ll give you and your lawyers a couple of hours to look them over.”
Alex grabbed his arm. “Thanks. That’s great. Really!”
He shook her hand off his arm. “You’re welcome, but remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You said that we both want the same thing.”
“We do.”
“And that’s what?”
Alex swallowed hard. “Making sure guilty people go to jail for a long time.”
“Don’t forget that,” he said.
Chapter Fifty-One
Alex trembled as she drove away. Judge West had made it clear that their secret partnership didn’t include a pass if he decided she was guilty. That he agreed to help her meant that he hadn’t made up his mind, but his offer came with a warning to be careful what she asked for. If Gloria was telling the truth, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn on Alex.
The judge and her defense team had one thing in common. They had shifted the burden of proof to her to convince them of her innocence, and she knew why. It was the facts. Claire had chipped away at the prosecution’s case, but the core facts had gone unchallenged.
She had gone to Odyessy’s house carrying a concealed weapon and looking for Dwayne after he threatened to rape Bonnie. If she had only wanted to inform Dwayne that she was withdrawing from his case, all she had to do was leave him a message. Instead, she shot him without giving him a chance to defend himself. Bad facts make for guilty verdicts.
Lou Mason called her when she was near downtown.
“What’s up?” Alex asked.
“Our luck might have just changed. Claire went to Ortiz’s office to talk to Gloria. When Claire got there, she was gone.”
“What do you mean, she was gone?”
“I mean that she told Ortiz she had to use the john and she never came back.”
Alex’s heart kicked into high gear, banging against her chest. “Christ! Didn’t Ortiz send someone with her to the bathroom?”
“Yes, a female rookie cop, and Gloria decked her. Ortiz knows that if the cops can’t find Gloria by morning, he’ll have to rest his case without her testimony.”
“Yeah, but if they can find her, he can call her as a rebuttal witness after we rest.”
“Not if we don’t put on any evidence. He rests, we rest, and then we go straight to the jury.”
Alex’s hands were shaking so badly she pulled into a parking lot. “Did Ortiz give Claire any more details about Gloria’s testimony?”
“No. He says it’s a moot point until they find her. That’s bullshit, but it won’t matter if everything breaks right for us in the morning.”
“My God, the whole thing is unbelievable.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s still a long way till morning, but I like our chances a whole lot better right now than I did a little while ago. I’ll keep you posted if anything else happens.”
Alex wished she agreed with Lou, but her gut wouldn’t let her. The police would blanket the east side looking for Gloria, and Hank Rossi would kick in every door to find her. When they did, she’d be back to square one except that Ortiz would have one more thing to hold over Gloria’s head and one more card to play with the jury, now that her reluctance to testify would make her more persuasive, just as it had with Jameer Henderson.
Sitting in the deserted parking lot mulling a series of possibilities, each one worse than the last, she got angry at being so helpless to do anything. Hoping that Rossi wouldn’t find Gloria only made her feel even more helpless, if that was possible. Desperate to do something, anything, she opened the one file from Gloria’s phone she had yet to review.
The file held photographs. Gloria was in a number of them. Alex recognized her from the photograph Mason had taken. There were pictures of a dog, pictures of people whom Alex assumed were Gloria’s friends and family, pictures of Gloria she took holding the camera in front of her, and pictures taken at a bar, people crowded together, raising beer bottles in a salute. There was nothing in the pictures of Gloria that jumped out at Alex. She was, to all appearances, an ordinary person, laughing and smiling in some of the photographs, caught in candid moments of surprise or reflection in others.
Scrolling through the pictures, she almost skipped over another photograph of Gloria. Alex had seen enough images of her that one more wasn’t worth studying, but the background in this photo caught her attention.
Gloria was standing in front of the door to a house. Something about the door looked familiar to Alex. She enlarged the image, her breath catching in her throat when she saw a horseshoe tacked to the wall above the frame. She’d seen a door with a horseshoe above it twice before. The first time was when she examined the crime scene photographs in the Wilfred Donaire case. He’d been murdered in his backyard. The horseshoe was mounted above the back door to his house. She saw it again when she and Grace Canfield visited the scene, Grace pointing out the horseshoe, saying how little luck it had brought Wilfred.
