A Matter of Life and Death by Phillip Margolin (ereader with dictionary TXT) 📕

said in the DA’s office. He called me with the information on Thursday afternoon. He didn’t have a location, but he said I could follow Carasco.”

“Did he know the judge was going to attend the fight?”

“No, but it was the only way he could think of to help me get to the fight.”

“This is good to know.”

“Will you have to tell Ian I broke my word?”

“I’m not sure. It depends on whether or not revealing his involvement will help you.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

“Come in,” Vanessa told Carrie and Roger, whom she’d summoned to her office to discuss the case against Luis Ortega.

“Can we go to a grand jury with what we have?” Vanessa asked when the detectives were seated.

“The case isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be,” Roger said, “but he was using an alias and asking questions about the illegal fights, so there’s a strong argument that Ortega was in Portland to avenge his father’s death. That’s motive.

“Then, he was at the Grandview during the time period when the judge was killed. That’s opportunity. And he fled the scene, which is evidence of guilt.”

“Has the lab come up with any trace evidence that puts Ortega in apartment 5?”

“Not yet. And there is one complication,” Roger said.

“Oh?”

“We did what you suggested and timed the shortest route from the barn to the Grandview, then from the Grandview to Rostov’s house. If Rostov followed Carasco to number 5, killed him right away, then drove home, he could have arrived home in time for Lockwood to have her confrontation with him.”

“Why is that a complication?”

“Rostov’s prints are in the apartment. They were probably placed there when he beat up Hayes’s pimp, but you can’t date fingerprints. Ortega can argue that Rostov had as much opportunity to kill Carasco as he did, and Rostov’s prints were inside the apartment, and his weren’t.”

“Damn. Were there any other latents found in number 5?”

“Only what you’d expect: Hayes, Hennessey, Carasco, Tepper, and two men who are known associates of Rostov.”

Vanessa was about to ask another question when her intercom buzzed.

“Put her through,” Vanessa told her receptionist.

“That was Robin Lockwood,” Vanessa told the detectives when the call was finished. “She’s been hired by Luis Ortega, so we’d better get all of our ducks in a row.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

“Hi, Amanda,” Robin said. “You’ll never guess why I’m calling.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“I’ve just been hired by Luis Ortega, Carlos Ortega’s son. He’s been charged with murdering Anthony Carasco, and I need a second chair. And before you say no, you need to know that he swears he didn’t do it, and he sounds like he’s telling the truth.”

Amanda sighed. “Have you checked to see if Mike is prosecuting?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have called if he were. But this is Vanessa’s case. Are you in?”

Robin studied the crime scene photographs that had been taken in the bedroom of apartment 5 at the Grandview. After a few minutes, she put them down, closed her eyes, and rubbed the lids.

Robin and Amanda had been seated across from each other at the table in Robin’s conference room for hours. In front of the attorneys was the discovery Vanessa had sent over in the Anthony Carasco homicide investigation. It included the photos, the autopsy report, the crime scene report, reports on the raid at the barn, and transcripts of interviews with Andre Rostov, Ian Hennessey, Stacey Hayes, Luis Ortega, Bert Solomon, Helen Raptis, and others, as well as duplicates of all of the reports from Joseph Lattimore’s prosecution.

“What do you think?” Robin asked her cocounsel.

“The case against Ortega is thin.”

“Because?”

“They have him in the lot at the Grandview, but there’s no DNA, fingerprints, and so on that put him in apartment 5,” Amanda said. “Then there’s the gun. They don’t have it, so there’s no evidence that connects Luis to it.”

“He lied and ran when the detectives confronted him, and he ran when the security guard confronted him,” Robin said.

“True, but he stayed at the airport hotel for a few days after Carasco was killed.”

“And there’s the alias,” Robin said.

“Yeah,” Amanda answered. “We won’t be able to deny that he was in Portland hunting for his father’s killer, but the police didn’t know that Carasco was behind his wife’s murder until after Kevin Bash and Rostov were interrogated. So, when he followed him to the Grandview, Luis wouldn’t have known Carasco had devised a plot that resulted in Carlos’s murder.”

“Hennessey had given him reason to believe the judge might have been involved, and Luis followed him to the fight. Vanessa will argue that Luis confronted Carasco and got him to confess.”

“That would be pure speculation without evidence that Luis was in apartment 5,” Amanda said.

“Do you see any other suspects?” Robin asked.

“Rostov jumps out. Dillon and Anders figured out that he could have followed Carasco to the Grandview, killed him, and driven home just after you got there.”

“What’s his motive?” Robin asked.

“Maybe the judge didn’t pay him for beating up Tepper, or he was afraid that Carasco would sell him out if he was arrested.”

“What do you think about Stacey Hayes?” Robin asked. “They seem to be handling her with kid gloves.”

“You think she might have killed Carasco?”

“I can make a case for it,” Robin said. “The murder was in apartment 5, and her gun is the same caliber as the murder weapon.”

“She told Dillon and Anders that she didn’t have the gun when she left the apartment.”

“We only have her word for that. Doesn’t it make more sense that she’d take the gun with her for protection against Rostov and his goons? And she has plenty of motive. After seeing Tepper beaten to a pulp, she might want revenge on the man who ordered it. Plus, she could lure Carasco to the apartment, and no one knows where she was from the night Tepper was beaten until she was spotted in Bellingham.”

Amanda yawned.

“Don’t do that,” Robin said. Then she yawned, and the women laughed.

“My brain has