Devil's Corner Read Online Free PDF Page B

was finished. But he wasn't saying anything more. Maybe he wasn't finished anyway? He couldn't have been, because he hadn't said what she needed to hear, which was:
    I love you.
    "You look weird." Dan cocked his head. "You think it's strange to have a best friend who's a girl?"
    "Not at all," Vicki answered flatly. She slid her hand out from under his and got up for more wine. She would have to start drinking heavily, if they were going to keep being Friends Without Benefits.
    Later, before she eased her aching body into bed, Vicki called her parents and left a message on both of their cell phones, because she knew it was the first thing they checked each morning. In the messages she told them not to worry about anything they heard on TV, online, or on the car radio into work, because she was fine.
    Vicki didn't mention that she was hopelessly in love with a very married man or that, first thing in the morning, she was going to investigate a triple homicide.

SIX

    The William Green Federal Building was a modern redbrick edifice that anchored Sixth and Arch streets, attached to the United States Courthouse and situated at the center of a new court complex that Vicki thought of as a Justice Mall. The Neiman Marcus of the Justice Mall would be the Constitution Center, a glitzy shrine to sell the Bill of Rights, and the Gap would be the Federal Detention Center, a generic column of gray stone, except for its horizontal window slits. The FDC almost didn't get built because nobody wanted a federal prison reminding the shoppers—er, tourists—that the City of Brotherly Love was also the City of Brotherly Robbery and Weapons Offenses. But the FDC was ultimately approved because officials agreed to construct a secret underground tunnel from the prison to the federal building, so the shoppers wouldn't know. It was through this tunnel that defendant Reheema Bristow was being escorted this morning.
    Vicki waited in a plastic bucket chair in a proffer room on the secured fourth floor of the federal building. They were called proffer rooms because defendants "proffered" here, i.e., offered to tell the government incriminating information, off the record, in return for immunity or a recommendation to the judge for a downward departure on their sentence. This proffer room was unfortunately identical to the others: white boxes, uniformly windowless and airless, containing brown Formica conference tables and a few mismatched chairs.
    Vicki collected her thoughts. The straw purchase case might have collapsed, but she wasn't dropping the charges until after she had questioned Bristow just one time. Nobody would be the wiser; the defense didn't know the identity of the confidential informant because Vicki wasn't required to divulge until right before trial or even before the CI took the stand, if witness intimidation was an issue. She was bending the rules a little, but Morty's death provided more than enough motivation. She'd thought of the plan last night when she couldn't sleep, replaying the awful shootings in her mind.
    She crossed her legs and willed herself to stay centered; the record showed that Bristow could be provocative. Straws weren't usually held in custody, but Bristow had turned her temporary detention into an almost year-long stay by mouthing off to the magistrate judge during her hearing. Whatever Bris-tow brought this morning, Vicki could handle it. She brushed an imaginary hair off her black wool suit, her hair swept back into a black barrette and curling loosely at the nape of her neck. She had picked out the outfit on autopilot, then realized she was dressed in mourning. Only determination held raw grief at bay.
    Suddenly, the door to the proffer room opened and the defense lawyer bustled in. "I'm Carlos Melendez," he said, and extending a hammy hand. "It's freezing cold, isn't it? They say snow this afternoon." He looked about sixty years old, his still-thick hair coiled in tight steel-gray curls, contrasting with his