A Murder of Justice Read Online Free PDF

pushed into Emerson’s outer office at eight-fifteen.
    Shana looked up from her computer and frowned petulantly. “He’s been waiting.” She snapped an index finger toward Emerson’s door. The inch-long scarlet fingernail resembled a bloody talon.
    Frank felt an acid clot of irritation in his throat.
    Emerson stood behind his desk, a green glass slab supported by two matte black metal sawhorses. Resplendent in a creamy silk shirt and an Italian designer tie, he held a folder several inches thick. He studied the contents for a moment or two after Frank and José entered. Then he closed the folder and held it up.
    “Looks like somebody did some street cleaning.”
    “Somebody did murder one,” José said.
    As if he hadn’t heard or didn’t care, Emerson regarded the closed folder in his hands. “Hodges was a busy boy,” he whispered to himself. He got a sly look that put Frank in mind of something slithering through the grass.
    “He’s in cold storage now,” Frank said.
    Emerson continued staring thoughtfully at the folder. Then, as if the comment finally registered, he put the folder on his desk and looked at Frank.
    “Oh, no. Skeeter’s got one more job to do. A job for us.”
    Without having to look, Frank knew that José was doing his slow eye-roll. He looked anyway. José was.
    He looked back at Emerson. Emerson’s eyebrows were raised in a question mark.
    “Beg pardon?” Frank asked.
    “I said, ‘How many people you think Skeeter clipped?’ ”
    “Rounded off to the nearest hundred?”
    “Get serious.”
    José yawned. “Belt-and-suspenders estimate? Fifteen. Twenty. Most of them competitors.”
    “Okay. And how many times did he go to trial?” Emerson asked.
    “None.” Frank shook his head.
    Emerson sat down in his high-backed black leatherchair. It looked like it came off the bridge of the starship Enterprise . He tilted back. “And why was that?”
    “Why was what?” José asked.
    “Why didn’t he go to trial?” Emerson eyed the space just in front of him, the question hanging there, rotating slowly in midair. “I’ll tell you why,” he said, eyes still on the question. “Witnesses died, disappeared, or suddenly got Alzheimer’s.”
    “Or they’d swear Skeeter was singing in the choir or babysittin’ their kids,” José added.
    Emerson shifted his gaze to José, then to Frank, and back to José.
    “We have cases where we know Skeeter was involved, but no evidence. But now, like you say, he’s no longer on the street. We don’t have to bring him to trial. We only have to dig a little. Push a little. Bend a little.”
    He tilted forward and pushed Skeeter Hodges’s folder across the glass. “So why don’t you two see if some witnesses have reappeared or had a miraculous memory cure?”
    “What you want us to do,” José said, “is pin a bunch a cold cases on Skeeter so we can make our numbers.”
    Emerson’s lips thinned. “I want you two to do some retrospective investigation,” he said tightly. “Bring justice. Is that too much to ask?”
    “What you’re asking us to do,” Frank countered, “isn’t investigating, it’s picking through a garbage dump.”
    Emerson’s face flushed. He jabbed an index finger at the two detectives.
    “You two prima donnas,” he shouted in a strangled voice, “are not . . . by God . . . going to fucking define . . . what your job is in this goddamn department!”
    His eyes bulged and his finger trembled as he went on. “There are procedures . . . recognized procedures . . . legal procedures . . . for closing cold cases. And you will damn well get busy, or you will turn in your badges.”
    Winded, Emerson paused. “Is that clear?” he asked in a flat, metallic voice.
    “Clear. . .” José hesitated, then tacked on a silent “But . . . ?”
    “Yes?” Emerson asked.
    “You mind if we track down Skeeter’s killer while we’re at it?”
    J osé shook his head. “You had to know that was