She’d prepared for this trial like nothing else she’d ever done. She knew every word of every deposition, every document down to the page number in the trial bundle. But the toxicology report coming in today had been an unexpected curve ball. Suddenly that trial bundle, her strategy, her prepared cross-examination questions, everything felt alien now instead of familiar and practiced.
The power of attorney document was already in the bundle. It hadn’t meant much before now. It wasn’t that important. But with evidence that Frank Avellino was being drugged into submission around the same time the power of attorney had been executed – well, that threw everything into a new light. A mundane legal document that had been signed by her client now looked sinister. The whole trial bundle was now new territory. Each document could be a time bomb, waiting to blow up in her face.
She was about to stand up. All eyes on her.
When she stood she would need to ask a question. A good question. Something to quell the brush fire of imagination that now swept through the jury. There was only one problem. She didn’t have a question. Her mind was blank.
Sweat bled through her skin like she was a peach being crushed by the heavy silence. Even if she did think of a question, she now couldn’t be certain the panic wouldn’t strangle her before she could ask it aloud.
A strong hand took hold of her wrist. She turned. Bloch was holding her, drawing her closer into a whisper.
‘Buy some time. Get a short continuance. I’ve got new information,’ said Bloch, and she angled the large screen of her cell phone toward Kate. The screen display read, ‘Two New Files Shared to Dropbox.’
Before she forgot what she was going to say, Kate rose.
‘Your Honor, we request a short continuance.’
Stone looked lazily at the jury, and then the clock on the wall behind them.
‘Looks like we’ve had a long day. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, and stood up. The courtroom gathered itself to stand as the judge made his exit. Eddie and Harry remained seated the whole time. Kate could almost feel the shade being thrown at those two by the judge as he made his way to his chambers.
‘What have you got?’ asked Kate.
‘I’ve no idea. Not yet,’ said Bloch. ‘It might be nothing. Or it might be a new lead on Frank Avellino’s killer.’
It took five minutes to deposit Alexandra in an Uber. Kate and Bloch couldn’t wait until they got back to Kate’s apartment so they found a quiet corner in the Corte Café on Lafayette and sat down with coffee. Bloch ordered a meatball sandwich. Kate, a chicken salad. With fries.
Since they were handed the toxicology report that morning, Bloch had been busy. She’d maintained a close relationship with several law enforcement agencies and various precincts in the New York area. The feelers went out ten minutes after she’d read the toxicology results. Word got around that Bloch needed help and all New York’s finest and available hands went to work. It didn’t matter that Bloch was now a private detective, working for a defense lawyer. She was a name, and her father had been too. NYPD look after their own. She asked them to look for any pharmacy or pharmaceutical wholesaler robberies in the last year.
The first Dropbox file revealed the results of the search.
There had been thirty-seven robberies of interest. Most of them on pharmacy premises, but two were wholesalers and there had been one hit on a transportation truck.
In none of them had Haloperidol featured or been part of the haul.
‘Zip on the robberies,’ said Bloch.
‘What about drug dealers?’ asked Kate.
‘Nah, Haloperidol is not a recreational drug. There’s no high. No buzz, either. It’s not exactly a downer. More of a knock-out punch. It messes you up. Turns people into a pile of paranoid jello.’
‘But I thought every kind of drug was on the black market, surely.’
‘Not when it’s so readily available with the right pharmacist. You hand over a fake prescription and five hundred bucks and you’re lit.’
Swiping the document away from her phone screen, Bloch then accessed the second file. Inside was an email and video.
‘There’s a ViCAP hit,’ said Bloch. ‘Looks like NYPD are investigating this as a hate crime. An Indian pharmacist and a cashier were taken out last month. There’s video.’
Mercifully, the video had no sound. This was a public coffee shop, and there were customers all around. It looked like security camera footage from a large chain store of pharmacies. Kate recognized the branding on the counter. Someone dressed in black leathers and a crash helmet entered the store, moved away out of shot then walked casually up to the pharmacist at the counter and took an axe to his head. Flinching, Kate looked away and mouthed the word, ‘Jesus.’
When she opened her eyes, she found an old lady at the next table looking at her strangely.
‘Look at that,’ said Bloch, pointing to the screen.
Rewinding the video with a turn of her finger on the screen, Bloch played it again. The cashier saw what had happened to the pharmacist and made a wild run for the front doors. Only they didn’t open, not one inch, and the cashier slammed her head into the glass, cracking it. She bounced back off the doors and fell to the ground. The figure in black was upon her in seconds. Two blows to the back of the neck with the axe. Then the figure moved out of shot to the right-hand wall, the doors opened, and they left.
It was one thing seeing the aftermath of violence. It was quite another to see it happening, even if it was just on a large phone screen.
‘I don’t think this helps,’ said Kate, shaking her head. ‘It’s probably nothing to do with our case. I can’t see how it relates.’
Bloch went back to the email, read over the notes that accompanied the video.
‘This is important. I think this could be Frank’s killer,’ said Bloch.
‘How?’ Kate shook her head again, this time in disbelief. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘I need to do some more digging. But there’s something here. I can feel it. Did you see how she moved?’ asked Bloch.
‘She?’
‘She. That’s a woman. You can tell by the hips. A confident woman. This was no racially motivated crime. For a start there’s no graffiti, no message left. Dumb racists who are violent and stupid enough to kill always have a message from some group or cult.’
‘Plus, she killed the cashier. The cashier was white.’
‘Nation First, the KKK, or whatever white supremacist group you care to mention, have no qualms about killing white people if they have to. But in this case, they didn’t have to. She planned to kill the cashier. Look …’
The video played, and Kate watched the figure more closely this time. It was clear to her now that it was a woman. The figure moved out of camera shot as soon as she came into the store.
‘There. She came in, and the first thing she did was lock the sliding doors. So when the cashier saw what she did to the pharmacist, the cashier would run headlong into the doors, only they wouldn’t open as she expected. She could’ve left the cashier alive. She didn’t. Nothing was taken from the pharmacy. No cash. No drugs. The killer used a blade. The axe is perfect for this. Heavy enough to cause massive damage, but light enough to wield and conceal.’