The Judge's List (The Whistler #2)(79)
“Well, if he’s guilty, why would he cooperate? In my opinion he would either disappear or lawyer up. But he will not make himself available.”
“And he’s a flight risk?”
“Yes, in my opinion. He’s smart and he has assets. He’s done a superb job of avoiding detection for the past twenty years. I think this guy could vanish in a split second.”
“Thank you.”
Lacy sat down and looked at the faces around the table.
Vidovich said, “It’s obvious that we need his prints, his current ones. Agnes, talk to us about a search warrant.”
Still unsmiling, she cleared her throat and looked at her notepad. “I met with Legal yesterday in Washington, and they think we can do it. A prime suspect in a murder, two of them actually, the Biloxi case, and a mysterious partial print there that matches nothing. Legal says we can push hard for a warrant. The U.S. Attorney in Mississippi has been briefed and has a magistrate on standby.”
Lacy said, “May I ask what you plan to search?”
“His home and office,” Vidovich said. “They’re covered with his prints. We get a match, game over. No match, and we apologize and leave town. Betty Roe can go back to her Sherlock Holmes routine.”
“Okay, but he’s a fanatic about security and surveillance. He’ll know the instant someone kicks in a door or somehow gets inside. Then he’s gone.”
“Do we know where he is at this moment?”
A unified shaking of heads. Vidovich glared at Harris who said, “No, we haven’t been watching him. No reason to. There’s no case, no file. He’s not a suspect, yet.”
Lacy said, “He’s also on leave for medical reasons, claims he’s in treatment for cancer, according to a source we have here in Pensacola. His office told one of our contacts that he would not sit on the bench for at least the next two months. The district court’s web page confirms this.”
Vidovich frowned and rubbed his jaw as everyone else waited. He said, “Okay, let’s start with surveillance and find the guy. In the meantime let’s get a search warrant from the magistrate in Mississippi, bring it to the magistrate here, and sit on it until we find him. At that time, he can’t disappear and we’ll execute the warrant.”
They discussed surveillance for an hour: Who, where, how. Lacy and Darren grew bored, their initial excitement dissipated, and they finally asked to be excused.
Vidovich promised to keep them in the loop, but it was obvious their work was over.
Leaving town, Darren asked, “Are you going to report this to Betty?”
“No. She doesn’t need to know what’s going on.”
“Are we done with her? Can we close the case?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, aren’t you the boss?”
“Certainly.”
“Then why can’t you say that BJC is no longer involved?”
“Tired of it?”
“We’re lawyers, Lacy, not cops.”
* * *
—
The three-hour drive back to Tallahassee was a relief. It was almost noon on a Friday, on an oddly cool spring day, and they decided to forget about the office.
* * *
—
As they discussed his fate, Judge Bannick drove ten minutes to his shopping center and disappeared into his other chamber and his Vault. He wiped his computers clean, removed the hard drives, gathered the thumb drives from the hidden safes, and scrubbed the place again. Leaving, he reset the security cameras and sensors, and left for Mobile.
He spent the afternoon roaming a mall, drinking espressos in a Starbucks, drinking club soda in a dark bar, loitering along the harbor, and driving around until dark.
35
The plain, white, legal-size envelope contained copies of her three little poems. It was sealed and addressed in heavy black ink—Jeri Crosby. No postal address was given, but then none was needed. The words Hand Delivered were scrawled under her name. He waited until 9:00 p.m. and parked at the curb two short blocks away.
* * *
—
Jeri was idling away another Friday night, flipping stations on TV and resisting the temptation to go online and look for more murders. Lacy had called after lunch with the news that the FBI was in town and assuming control of the investigation. Jeri should be in a better mood now that her work was over and Bannick was being pursued by the pros. She was learning, though, that obsessions die hard and it was impossible to simply flip a switch and move on. She had lived in his life for so long, she couldn’t force him out of her being. She had no other purpose, other than her neglected work and her lovely daughter. And she was terrified, still. She asked herself how long the fear would last. Would she ever go a full hour without glancing over her shoulder?
The doorbell jolted her. She fumbled with the remote, got the TV muted, grabbed the nearest pistol from a table by the door, and peeked through the blinds. A streetlamp lit the front lawns of the four condos in her row, and revealed nothing. She wasn’t about to open the door, not at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night, and could think of no one who would be stopping by without calling first. Not even the political candidates worked such hours. She waited for it to ring again, gripping her pistol and resisting the urge to look into the peephole. Long minutes passed, and the fact that whoever was out there did not ring again, and did not really want to see her, made the situation worse. Could it be some kids pulling pranks? That had never happened before, not on her quiet little street. She realized she was sweating and her stomach was in knots. She tried to breathe deeply but her heart was racing.