Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 52699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Bright red blood was splattered all over the walls. Still fresh, a few droplets dripped to the floor.
Pairs of shoes lay scattered in the hallway. Two suitcases lay wide open, their shirts and pants stuffed high as if someone didn’t get a chance to finish getting away.
A guy lay in the middle of the floor, half his head smashed in.
I stared at his chest, watching to see if it would rise and fall if he still had a chance at life.
He remained still as stone, his fingers splayed on the wood.
I leaned down to check for a pulse, but Damien grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t touch anything in this room unless I tell you to, and don’t step in any blood.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” I asked.
“For what?”
“Someone murdered this man.”
“What an insightful observation, Miss Tanner.” He snapped pictures with his camera, deftly maneuvering across the floor without getting a single drop on his shoes as if he’d done this countless times before.
Two bloody handprints stared at me from the window. Underneath them was a baseball bat with a handle of blood.
My heel snagged on the edge of the rug, and Damien caught me before I fell forward.
“I need you to focus a lot harder on not touching anything.” He narrowed his eyes. “No one can ever know that we were here.”
I nodded, and he slowly let me go.
He snapped more pictures, bent low, and reached for something under the couch. Pulling out an AirPods case, he placed it in a plastic bag and tucked it into his pocket.
Then he made a call. “Anything else you can think of to tell me before the police get here? We’ll be back to the firm in an hour and you’ll meet my partner over coffee.” He looked at me. “Grab that umbrella behind you.”
I obliged, and he placed it into the plastic bag before ending the call.
He grabbed my hand and helped me step around the splatter before shutting the door. Then he returned to the stairwell, and I followed him to the car.
“Are you going to tell me what we just did?” I asked. “Or are questions off limits at the moment?”
“We helped our client, Miss Tanner.” He pulled onto the street.
“Is our client a murderer?”
“I don’t defend murderers.”
“The man on the floor in there might think otherwise if he were still alive.”
“He’s been dead for four hours.” He paused. “Someone hit him in the head with a baseball bat.”
“Our client, right?”
“The prosecutor will probably think so.”
Sirens sounded behind us, and I watched blue and white lights dancing in the rearview mirror.
I shook my head as the cop cars pulled in front of the same building we’d left. Within seconds, dozens of uniformed officers rushed inside.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not sure why you have a client list full of shady people, but I draw the line at doing stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what, Miss Tanner?”
“Lying.”
“So, only lies about fake recommendations are acceptable in your world?”
“That’s a victimless crimes.”
“Tell that to the person who might’ve deserved your spot,” he said. “Everyone is willing to break the law the moment it benefits them.”
I held back a sigh. “We just walked all over a crime scene and took away what looked like evidence.”
“I don’t remember doing that.” His voice was deadpan.
“It’s obvious that whoever you were talking to did this and they deserve to go to prison.”
“Maybe.” He made a right turn. “Sometimes the guilty people win and the innocent people lose. I’m trying to never lose.”
“But how can you sleep at night if you ever have a hand in putting an innocent person away? Or letting a guilty person walk free?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mr. Hamilton’s legacy is that no one is above the law,” I said. “So, if our client is responsible for the scene I saw in there, I’m legally obligated to—”
“Our client is a rape victim who wasn’t aware that her ex-husband made parole this week.” He looked over at me. “He came over yesterday and beat the hell out of her with a pistol, then he sodomized her with a baseball bat, all before telling her he was coming back to finish the job in the morning. So, she decided to beat him to it. What would be justice in this situation for her, Miss Tanner? Should we work hard to get her sent to prison?”
I said nothing.
“I thought so.” He switched lanes. “The law isn’t black and white. It’s an ugly hue of grey.”
Damien leaned over and unbuckled my seatbelt around midnight.
We were sitting outside a luxury hotel in the West End for another stakeout. Besides him asking me if I was too hot or cold, we hadn’t said much of anything to each other.
I was still silently mulling over his earlier words, and his phone was practically a never-ending hotline for clients.