The Heavens May Fall Read Online Free PDF

Rupert here.”
    “Detective Rupert, this is Miriam Galibay. I have that information for you. The name of the person who purchased those earrings is Benjamin Pruitt.”
    Max nearly dropped the phone. “Ben Pruitt, the attorney?”
    “Well, I don’t know if he’s an attorney, but I have an address on Mount Curve Avenue, if that helps.”
    Max scribbled the address down, thanked Ms. Galibay, and ended the call. The urge to spit caused Max to tighten his lips together.
    Max typed Ben Pruitt’s name into the computer, and the Internet fed Max thousands of responses. He did a search for images and found dozens of pictures of the man he knew to be Ben Pruitt. About halfway down the page, he saw a picture of Ben standing next to a stunning redhead—the woman from the alley. Max clicked on the link and read a caption identifying the couple as Ben and Jennavieve Pruitt, attending a political fundraiser.
    Max called Niki as he ran out the door, giving her the victim’s name and address. He would meet her there.

Chapter 5
    On the drive back to Kenwood, Max thought about the last time he saw Ben Pruitt. It had been in a small conference room in the office of the Minnesota Professional Responsibility Board two years earlier. Pruitt’s disciplinary hearing lasted a little over an hour, but the road to get there took the better part of a year.
    It began with the trial of a man named Harold Carlson, a roofing contractor who crushed his girlfriend’s skull with a roofing hatchet, a particularly evil-looking tool with a hammer head on one end and a small axe on the other. Her sin had been to kiss another man, one of Carlson’s employees, a man who also owned a roofing hammer. Carlson would take the stand and swear that he never touched her. He had no idea how her arms and legs became burned with road rash and other marks consistent with being thrown from a moving vehicle.
    A motorist discovered the woman’s body in a heap along the road, and before the sun rose that morning, a trail of suspicion brought Max to Harold Carlson’s home.
    Max found Carlson asleep on his couch, the stench of hard liquor seeping from the man’s pores. Max also found the roofing hammer, with the girlfriend’s hair and blood on it, lying in plain sight on the seat of Carlson’s truck. Max had been alone when he found the hammer, and one of the techs had walked past the truck without having noticed it. Both sides knew that the case rested on Max’s testimony about finding the hammer.
    On cross-examination, Carlson’s attorney, Ben Pruitt, grilled Max, suggesting that Max found the hammer along the highway where the body had been found. Pruitt accused Max of then planting the hammer in Carlson’s truck. Pruitt’s questions pointed out that Max had the opportunity to plant the hammer. He’d been at the scene where they found the body. There had been moments when he hadn’t been observed and could have secreted the hammer into his car. He was alone when he claimed to have found the hammer in the truck, a location where a crime-scene tech, a woman trained to observe and find murder weapons, had walked past without seeing the large silver hammer. Max swatted the questions away with honesty. It happened the way it happened, and he didn’t have to explain it any further.
    But then Pruitt asked for and was granted permission to approach the witness. He held a single-page document in his hand, and as he walked up to the witness stand he spoke in a loud clear voice so that everyone on the jury could hear.
    “I’m showing you defense Exhibit 42. Do you recognize this document?”
    Max took a moment to read the document then answered. “I’ve never seen this document before.”
    “You don’t remember receiving a reprimand from your superiors for falsifying evidence in a case just two years ago?”
    Max looked at the Assistant County Attorney and wondered why the man hadn’t jumped up to object.
    Pruitt continued. “Falsifying evidence, just like