Sedona Law 5 by Dave Daren (e book reader android .TXT) 📗

“What do you mean?” I asked with a frown.

“Chet was supposed to call you this morning,” he said. “We’ve ended the investigation on the Steele case and are charging Alfred Dumont. The paperwork has been filed.”

“No,” I argued as I dropped the chair back onto all four legs. “You can’t do that. Chet had a deal with me.”

“Sorry,” Durant replied. “This case is full of dead ends, and everything all points to one man. You’re a great lawyer, Henry, but a shitty investigator. And that’s fine. Stick to what you’re good at.”

“I’ve found a lot of loose ends,” I protested with a frown, “and I had until the close of business today.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “I know. But you’ve got nothing solid, from what we can tell. I mean, I followed your advice and had our officers sitting around listening to some God awful synthesizer gibberish, and some guy rambling on about Luke Skywalker. Geez, Henry. I’m all for intuition, but you’ve got to be reasonable here. These are trained professionals. I need my men out in the field.”

“Trained professionals?” I scoffed. “Your officers double time it by working shifts at Best Buy, and have on three, not one but three, separate occasions erroneously charged suspects with a capital offense. Now, why are you so reluctant to actually do police work?”

“I don’t take kindly to your implication,” Durant snapped, and I could tell I’d gotten under his skin with that last comment.

“I wasn’t implying anything,” I retorted. “I’m just asking a simple question.”

“The order came from above, Henry,” Durant yelled. “You don’t like it, go over my head, asshole.”

“I will,” I responded firmly, “and believe me, you won’t like it.”

Durant hung up on me, and I shook my head. This was the second time I had been hung up on in two days.

Then I called Chet.

“Hey, Chet,” I said once he picked up. “It’s Henry Irving.”

“Hello, Henry,” Chet replied in a distant tone.

I got right to the point. “I heard the investigation on the Steele case has been halted.”

“That’s right,” he sighed. “We appreciate your help, Mr. Irving, but the city needs to do its job and properly move cases through the justice system. We welcome your defense of your client once the charges have been processed.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I demanded as I jabbed my index finger into the table before me. “We had a deal.”

“I asked if you would assist the investigators based on some past foibles,” he said, “but it is clear this time the investigation was done properly. So, the--”

“No,” I cut him off. “You gave me until the end of the week--”

“It is the end of the week,” he interrupted me this time, “and again, we do appreciate the work you’ve done--”

“Cut the formal bullshit, Chet,” I retorted. “This isn’t a fucking press release. I could make a call, and you’d be on the other end of a professional investigation so fast your head would spin.”

“Alright,” Chet said. “You want me to cut the bullshit? You’ve got fifteen of Sedona’s law enforcement officers sitting in an office listening to endless hours of eight track tapes of … a fifty year old Star Wars nerd geeking it out with his Casio. We’ve only got twenty eight officers in the whole city! And this is your best lead, so far as I can tell. Look, you’ve made some good calls in the past. And I commend you for that. Really, I do. I think you deserve some kind of honor or medal or something. We’ll look into that. But you’re wrong on this one. Sometimes SPD does do its job properly.”

“Sometimes,” I pointed out sharply, “and when you’re talking about a capital offense, that needs to be all the time.”

“I get we’ve made some mistakes,” Chet growled, “and the city cannot apologize enough for those. I know we really fouled it up with your sister, and again I can’t apologize enough. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Actually,” I laughed, “it does. I’ve got some leads, and if I prove you wrong, I’m going to launch a Federal civil rights investigation against all of SPD. I’ll drag you, Durant, and the whole lot of you into court. And right or wrong, you don’t want that bullshit.”

There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line, and for a second I thought I’d been hung up on for the third time.

Then Chet sighed. “What kind of leads do you have?”

Got him.

“They’re not solid,” I replied quickly. “I need more time.”

“How much more time?” he asked.

“Forty eight hours,” I answered.

“Alright,” he muttered. “I’ll give you forty eight hours. After that, I’m charging him.”

“Fine,” I agreed, “but I want the cops going through those tapes. I want them making spreadsheets, running the audio through foreign language apps, taking notes. We need to know why this guy wanted these tapes in a safe. This is a murder investigation! It needs to look like one.”

“I’ll give it to you for forty eight more hours,” Chet sighed.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“But this better come up with something,” he grumbled.

“It will,” I promised before I ended the call.

When I got off the phone, I rubbed my face with my hands and exhaled sharply. Then I went to check on Vicki in the conference room, who had her head buried on the table listening to more Casio nonsense.

“The cops halted the investigation,” I reported.

“What?” She popped her head up. “I thought we had until the end of the day.”

“We did,” I sighed. “They jumped the gun and filed the paperwork to charge Alfred.”

“Seriously?” She scowled. “We’ve got so much … ”

“I know,” I mumbled as I dragged my hands through my hair,