Truth and Consequences Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Truth and Consequences

  Innocence Unit, Book Two

  by V. J. Chambers

  TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

  © copyright 2018 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  Elke Lawrence was in the conference room at the office for the Conviction Review Unit in Haven Hills. She was the head of the unit, but that didn’t mean she was above picking through the leftover donuts left out in the conference room.

  “…have to see her!” A high-pitched female voice drifted out from the front desk, where the paralegal and executive assistant to the unit, Amos Bradley, had his desk.

  Elke turned away from the donuts. There wasn’t anything left except a cinnamon powdered sugar donut, anyway, and she didn’t like the powdered sugar because she felt like it made her mouth dry. She left the conference room, which had been decorated by Amos recently. It had a potted plant and a few framed prints on the walls.

  “I’m sorry,” came Amos’s voice, “but if you don’t have an appointment, then you can’t see Ms. Lawrence.”

  The office was constructed entirely of glass walls. The bottom half of the glass was frosted a bit to obscure the sight lines and give a modicum of privacy. But because of the top half of the glass, Elke could see Amos right away.

  He was standing in the middle of the hallway, bodily blocking a middle-aged woman in a long jean skirt and blue blouse. The woman looked like she was about to cry.

  “No, I can’t make an appointment. I have to see her now. This is the only time I could come,” said the woman.

  Elke turned a corner and then she was in the hallway behind Amos.

  Amos had recently gotten his arm out of a sling. It had been badly injured while he was trying to escape from the Haven Hills Ripper. The first few weeks the CRU had been in operation had been positively hectic, but things had calmed down as of late. The past few cases they’d dealt with had been easy, nothing more than quick DNA testing which exonerated the accused. They were quickly getting the reputation of the good guys in the District Attorney’s office. They were righting wrongs left and right.

  Elke had never been so satisfied with her job in her life. When she had been a prosecutor, she thought that had been the ultimate in job satisfaction, but there was something about the work in the CRU that was infinitely more satisfying.

  Currently, they were between cases. They’d wrapped up a case in which a man had been exonerated for a drug-related murder the day before, presenting to the Conviction Correction Panel and getting their verdict, and they were all taking a few days to look for their next case. Elke had time to talk to the woman if it was important.

  “Amos,” said Elke.

  Amos turned to look at her. “Oh, you’re here.”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear,” said Elke, gesturing to the conference room.

  “Ms. Lawrence,” said the woman behind Amos. “I have to talk to you. I really have to.”

  “About what?” said Elke.

  “It’s my son,” said the woman. “You have to take his case.”

  Well, she was looking around for another case today. It couldn’t hurt to hear what this woman had to say. “All right,” said Elke. “I can’t promise we’ll investigate his case, but I can promise to consider it. Why don’t you come back to my office and we’ll talk about it?”

  The woman was so pleased, she really did start crying. “Oh, thank you, Ms. Lawrence.” She brushed at the tears on her cheeks. “Thank you so much.”

  Elke smiled. She gestured for the woman to follow her.

  Amos moved out of the way and let her through.

  Sniffling, the woman made her way down the hallway.

  Once they were back in Elke’s office, Elke closed the door and sat down at her desk, gesturing for the woman to sit down as well.

  The woman sat.

  “Now,” said Elke, “what’s your name?”

  “Gloria,” she said, “Gloria Fisher.” She sucked in a shaky breath. “Oh, this has all been a nightmare. You have no idea how awful it’s been. Curtis has been in prison for nearly five years, and his latest appeal was just denied, and I’m at my wit’s end. I don’t even know where to turn. But then I remembered that article in the paper about how you freed that girl and her boyfriend who were accused of killing her parents.”

  “Saanvi Mukherjee and Kevin Greene, yes,” said Elke.

  “Well, I thought that you might be able to help my Curtis, then.”

  “I can’t promise anything,” said Elke. “Honestly, if he’s not able to get an appeal, that doesn’t sound particularly promising.”

  “No, it’s only because they’re dead set against him,” said Gloria. “They never looked at anyone but him. They assumed it had to be the boyfriend, and they just stopped right there.”

  “Why don’t you back up a little bit?” said Elke. “What’s Curtis been convicted of?”

  “Murder,” said Gloria.

  “Of whom?”

  “His girlfriend Allison Ross. She was such a nice girl. He adored her. He would never have hurt a hair on her head.”

  Well, his mother wouldn’t think so, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was so. “Tell me more.”

  “They were together all the time,” she said, “but that day after school they weren’t together. Curtis has an alibi, and they’ve never even tried to find the girl that could corroborate his story.”

  “Hmm,” said Elke. In the Mukherjee case, the accused had had alibis as well, but they were ignored. “An alibi is promising.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes,” said Elke, “but it might not be enough. Eyewitnesses can be confused or they can even lie.”

  “Well, Curtis isn’t lying. He didn’t do this. Please say that you’ll look into his case. Please.”

  Elke had a stack of file folders she’d pulled to look through this afternoon. What was one more? She could have Amos run over and fetch it from records. If it seemed interesting, she could even have him make copies to distribute to the other members of the team, attorney Frankie Hart and police officer Iain Hudson. “I’ll look into it,” she said. “I promise.”

  * * *

  That night, after work, Elke stepped into the lobby of her apartment building. She lived only a short distance fro
m the office, which was how she liked it. She wasn’t one for a long commute. Iain lived in the building too, but she wasn’t exactly social with her coworkers.

  The minute she walked into the lobby, which was a spacious room with black and white tile on the floor and a dangling chandelier overhead, a young man stood up from the lounge area. The lounge was pitifully small, containing only two wooden, straight-back chairs in front of a faux fireplace and a small table covered in magazines that were all at least ten years old. It was across the lobby from the elevator bank.

  The young man hurried over to her. “Elke!”

  She was startled. “Patrick? What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen her brother Patrick since Christmas at her parents’ house, and he’d been preoccupied the whole time. He’d seemed to get an inordinate amount of texts on his phone.

  Patrick stopped next to her, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looked over her shoulder as if he expected someone to be coming through the door behind her. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  Elke looked over her shoulder too. Was there something there? But no, it was just the parking lot and the street beyond it. She turned back to her brother. “Are you okay?”

  Patrick shook his head. “Not exactly, no.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Can we go to your apartment to talk?”

  She nodded. “Sure, of course.”

  They rode the elevator to her floor and then went down the hallway together. At her door, she stopped to unlock three different deadbolts and a regular knob.

  “Whoa,” said Patrick. “You’re not fooling around with the locks, huh?”

  Elke had been a victim of harassment from the real murderers of Saanvi Mukherjee’s parents. Now, she kept her place locked up tight. “Can’t be too careful,” she said, getting the door open. She gestured with her head for Patrick to go in before her.

  He did.

  She brought up the rear, closing and locking the door behind them both.

  Patrick set down a duffel bag he was carrying and then sat down on Elke’s couch. The front door opened onto her living room. There was a breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living area and a hallway to the right that led back to the bedrooms.

  She sat down next to him. “What’s going on? Why aren’t you at school?”

  Patrick was a student at Arseda College. He would graduate in the spring. “They know where I live.”

  “Who’s they?”

  Patrick licked his lips. “You know, Felix’s crew.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “What?” Felix was her ex-husband. He had been the head of a massive drug ring—selling crystal meth and cocaine mostly—for their entire marriage. She had been clueless about it all. When Felix had first been accused of the crime, she had defended him, saying it must be a mistake. But eventually, evidence was found on her property, and she had to accept the truth about her husband.

  “I, uh, I maybe started doing some work for Felix,” said Patrick.

  “You don’t mean—”

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” said Patrick. “I mean, that’s what Felix said. He said that I would have so little of the product on me that it would be small time if I ever got caught. And he said it would do wonders for my social life. He wasn’t lying.” Patrick made a rueful face.

  “Just back up,” said Elke, who was starting to feel like an iron band was closing around her lungs. “You’ve been selling drugs?”

  Patrick grimaced. “He didn’t make it sound like that.”

  “Patrick, you’re not an idiot. You knew what you were doing.”

  “I guess.” He hung his head, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “How did this even happen?”

  Patrick sucked in breath, raising his gaze to meet hers. “Well, it was a few Christmases ago. I was complaining about not having extra money to spend, and Dad said I could always get a part time job, but I said that I didn’t want to cut into my studying time.”

  Elke snorted. “You mean your drinking time.”

  “No, I do need studying time,” said Patrick. “Really.”

  She shook her head. “Not important. Go on.”

  “Well, Felix was there, and he heard, and later on, he got me alone and he told me that he had an idea to help me out.”

  Elke’s nostrils flared. “That bastard.”

  “I did try to say no,” said Patrick.

  “You obviously didn’t try hard enough.”

  “He had an answer for everything. I said I was worried about getting caught. He said that would never happen. He said that I’d never have enough of the stuff on me to get in any real trouble. I said that I thought those kinds of drugs were dangerous, but he said that it was all propaganda by anti-drug organizations and that it wasn’t any more dangerous than cigarettes, which are legal. I don’t know, the more he talked, the more it seemed cool. It was good money, and I didn’t have to do much. People called me. Word spread. I just, you know, gave them what they wanted, and they gave me money.”

  Elke got off the couch. She clenched her hands into fists. God damn Felix. Even though he was locked up, he was still ruining everything.

  And getting her little brother involved in his criminal activity? She was appalled. She had always thought that Felix was a good guy when they were married, but she hadn’t known him at all. She shook her head, furious.

  “Anyway, after Felix got arrested,” Patrick continued, “I didn’t want to do it anymore. I tried to get out. And they said I could. They said that if I just did one last job for them, then I’d be free to go my own way. But, uh…” He shook his head. “I’m not.”

  She sat back down next to him. “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, they’re after me. I don’t know what they’re going to do if they find me, but I don’t think it’s good. There’s only one way to make sure I stay quiet, if you know what I mean.”

  “They threatened your life?”

  “Not in so many words,” he said. “But when guys show up at your place with guns and start shoving your roommates around, well… I don’t know. I’m not going to find out. My friend called me and told me they were looking for me, and I got out of Dodge.”

  Elke got back up again. “Jesus.” She crossed the living room to the breakfast bar and clutched the back of one of the stools there. “Every time I think I’ve discovered the worst there is to know about Felix, he descends to new depths.”

  “I thought maybe you could talk to him.”

  She turned around. “To Felix?”

  “He was always crazy about you. He really loved you, El.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re divorced now.”

  “Still, maybe you could get him to call off his dogs.”

  She sighed. “We need to go to the police.”

  Patrick stood up. “No. No way, we can’t.” He started across the room towards her.

  “If they’re trying to kill you, Patrick—”

  “I’ll be arrested,” said Patrick. “When I tell them that I was selling drugs—”

  “I can help you,” she said. “I’m a lawyer—”

  “Not that kind of lawyer.” He shook his head. “Look, I didn’t hurt anyone, okay?”

  “You sold people drugs. Who knows what happened from that. Overdoses. Car accidents. All kinds of—”

  “Okay, okay.” He clutched his head. “You’re right. I screwed up. I never should have started this. I should have told him no.”

  Elke bit down on her bottom lip. “Well, he was kind of hard to say no to.”

  Patrick caught her gaze. “Yeah.”

  “When Felix would get something in his head, then he would make it happen, come hell or high water.” She dragged a hand over her face. Maybe it wasn’t fair to punish her brother for what Felix did. Sure, Patrick wasn’t innocent here, but she was being hard on her brother. Felix had been his brother-in-law, and Patrick was young and impressionable. Felix could convince a person to sell his soul to the devil. She pointed
at Patrick. “Okay, look, we’ll try it your way. We’ll keep the police out of it. But this doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for what you did.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “After we get this straightened out, you will volunteer for community service, and you will give back to help compensate for the damage you’ve caused.”

  Patrick nodded slowly. “Okay. Actually, that sounds like a really good idea.”

  “I’ll try to go see Felix tomorrow,” she said. “Hopefully, you’re right, and I can get him to back off.”

  Patrick sat back down on the couch, letting out a noisy breath. “Geez, thank you so much, Elke. Really. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

  She went across the room and sat down next to him. “I’m just sorry I brought that awful man into our lives.” She hugged him.

  He hugged back. “It’s not your fault, El.”

  She hugged him tighter. She wasn’t sure if that was entirely true.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was a rapping knock on Elke’s office door.

  She looked up to see that Amos was there. Her door hadn’t been shut all the way, so it was swinging slowly open. She raised her eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “Uh, you called a meeting for 10:00 this morning?” said Amos. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

  “Geez,” she said. She’d completely forgotten.

  The whole evening before had been spent getting Patrick settled. She had a guest room, but it was full of exercise equipment and boxes she’d never gotten around to unpacking, even though she’d been in her apartment over a month now. She and Patrick had cleared out a space for the air mattress and gotten it all set up for him. Then she’d had to sort out dinner, which had meant ordering something in, because she was too frazzled to cook. She’d gotten to bed late and she hadn’t slept well. She was worried about her brother.

  Then this morning had been hectic too, trying to make sure she had enough food that Patrick could make breakfast if he needed to, and hunting down towels and soap if he wanted a shower. And during all that, Patrick had still been asleep, so she’d had to write him a really long note explaining where everything was.

  Anyway, she was preoccupied.