THE PROSECUTOR Read online

  “It’s Giglio material, right?” Emma asked.

  Penny cocked her head. “You’ve brushed up.”

  “Yes. I’m also a first-year law student at Northwestern. I left a job at a public relations firm so I’d be available during the day to work on my brother’s case. With the hands-on experience, I figured I might as well go to law school. I waitress at night and work my classes in around everything else.”

  “Wow. You’re good.”

  Emma shrugged. “Not really. My brother is innocent and he’s slated to spend the next twenty-five years in prison. I can’t let that happen.”

  Penny’s expression remained neutral, her lips free of any tightening or forced smiles. No pity. Good. They didn’t need pity. They needed a shrewd legal rainmaker.

  “That’s why I’m here. I’d like to review the information you’ve collected and possibly take your case. Pro bono. I’m not going to lie: this will be tough. The victim’s father is a Chicago P.D. detective. The State’s Attorney will go to war with us to keep your brother in prison, but I won’t back down. If Brian’s rights were violated, I’ll prove it. Besides that, I’m hungry for a big case and I think yours might just be the one.”

  Suddenly, Penny Hennings seemed young. Idealistic maybe. Not the battle-hardened defense attorney her father was. Did it matter? Her wanting to step out from under her father’s shadow and make a name for herself was a great motivator.

  She’s a rainmaker, smart and determined.

  Emma gestured down the hall to the basement door. “Would you like to see what I have on the case?”

  Penny smiled. “You bet I would.”

  * * *

  ZAC PUSHED HIS ROLLING cart stuffed with case files from the courtroom to his fifth-floor office. Along the way he passed other prosecutors dragging their own heavy loads and their stone faces or smirking, sly grins told the tales of their wins and losses.

  Zac’s day had consisted of jury selection for a murder trial he was scheduled to prosecute. The pool of candidates wasn’t ideal, but his evidence was strong and he’d parlay that into a win.

  He nudged the cart through his doorway and turned back to the bull pen for Four O’clock Fun. On most days, prosecutors coming from court gathered to compare notes, discuss the personalities of judges and opposing lawyers, anything that might be good information for one of the other ASAs. Some days, Four O’clock Fun turned into a stream of stories that would scandalize the average person, but that prosecutors found humorous. For Zac, gallows humor was a form of self-protection. A way to keep his sanity in the face of the day-to-day evil he grappled with.

  “Zac,” Stew Henry yelled, “Pierson got his butt kicked by Judge Alred today.”

  “Seriously?”

  Alred had to be the easiest-going guy on the bench. It took a lot to aggravate him. Two steps toward the bull pen, Zac’s cell phone rang. He checked the screen. Alex Belson, the public defender on the Sinclair case, returning his call.

  “Have to take this,” Zac yelled to the bull pen before heading back to his office. “Alex, hey, thanks for getting back to me.”

  “No prob. Got to say, screwy timing since your sister called me today, too.”

  “My sister?”

  What’s that about?

  “Yeah. She’s taking the Sinclair case. Wants copies of all my notes.”

  Zac dropped into his chair to absorb this info.

  “You didn’t know?” Alex asked.

  Penny had left a voice mail earlier in the day, but he’d been in court and hadn’t had a chance to get back to her. “I haven’t talked to her today.”

  Another call beeped in and Zac checked the screen. Penny. “Alex, let me call you back.” He flashed over to his sister. “Pen?”

  The sound of a horn blasted. Outdoors.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you in your office?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m walking into the lobby. Be there in two minutes.”

  She was here. “What’s this about your taking the Sinclair case?”

  “Word travels fast. How’d you know?”

  “The PD told me. Pen, I caught this case.”

  Silence. Yeah, little sister, soak that up. If this case went forward, Zac would be battling his baby sister in court. At twenty-nine, only two years his junior, she was equally competitive when it came to winning her cases. Plus, she had their legendary father as co-counsel.

  In short, it would be a bloodbath.

  Unfortunately for his sister, Zac planned on winning and giving Dave Moore justice for his daughter.

  “So,” Pen said, “I guess my calling you to find out who Ray assigned proved fruitful.”

  “You don’t want this case. It’s a dog.”

  “Not a chance, big brother. See you in a minute.”

  Zac hung up and stared through the open doorway where raucous laughter from Four O’clock Fun raged on. That Alred story must have been a good one. He should have stayed and listened. He could use the laugh.

  Two minutes later, Penny swung into his office. Behind her strode a woman wearing tan pants and a black sweater. Emma Sinclair. He’d never met her, but had seen photos of her, including the one from the morning paper still sitting on his desk. That photo hadn’t done Emma any favors. In person, her dark hair extended below her shoulders and, when Zac took in the soft curve of her cheek and her big brown eyes, something in his chest pinged. Just a wicked stinging that reminded him he was in desperate need of a woman’s affections.

  Except she was his opponent.

  Why the hell was Penny bringing her here?

  “Hello, Zachary,” Penny said in that sarcastic, singsong way she’d been addressing him for years. She stepped forward to give him the usual kiss on the cheek, but caught herself.

  Yeah, welcome to Awkwardville. For the first time, they were squaring off against each other in the professional arena. Considering that his father and his two siblings were all attorneys, Zac had known he’d eventually face one of them in court. The only thing that had saved him thus far was the Chicago crime rate providing enough cases to go around.

  Until now.

  Pen gestured to Emma. “Zachary Hennings, meet Emma Sinclair. Brian Sinclair’s sister.”

  Zac stepped around the desk and shook hands with Emma. What he expected, he wasn’t sure, but for some reason her warm, firm grip surprised him. Their gazes met for a split second and the intense, deep coffee brown of her eyes nearly knocked him on his butt. But he couldn’t think about Emma Sinclair and her alluring eyes and how they affected him. He had to think of Chelsea Moore.

  Dead Chelsea Moore.

  He released Emma’s hand and stooped to clear the files off the second chair in his office. The place was a mess. “Have a seat.”

  On his way back to his desk, he shot Penny a what-the-heck? look. She grinned. She wanted to play, he’d play.

  While doing so, he’d also remind his baby sister that he wasn’t a guy who liked to lose.

  * * *

  EMMA WATCHED ZACHARY HENNINGS—did he really want people calling him Zachary?—head back to his desk while she took the seat he’d cleared for her.

  He relaxed back in his desk chair, Mr. Casual. As if she’d believe he could be comfortable with Penny as the attorney on a high-profile case and the sister of the convicted sitting in front of him. He certainly looked the part, though. Then again, he had that yacht-club look about him. His short, precisely combed blond hair and perfect bone structure just added to the patrician image. The only thing slightly ruffled about him was the unfastened top button on his shirt and his loose tie. The look fit him, however. Country-club rugged.

  If she’d met him elsewhere, she’d have steered clear of him. In her experience, men who looked like that were either arrogant and patroniz
ing or ignored her altogether. Being Miss Completely Average, she didn’t have the high-maintenance looks men like him went for and that was just fine with her. What she needed was a dependable, rock-solid man who could roll with the insanity of her life.

  Something told her Zachary Hennings had no interest in a woman with complications. Maybe that was an unfair judgment, but it wasn’t for her to worry about.

  “So,” Penny said. “Let’s talk about this video.”

  Zachary held up a hand and gave a subtle nudge of his chin in Emma’s direction. “Is this appropriate?”

  “She’s my intern.”

  Her intern. Funny.

  “Say what?”

  “She’s a law student who knows this case better than anyone. Trust me, in her first year at Northwestern she knows more about the law than the two of us combined did as first years. Suck it up. She’s staying.”

  Obviously amused by his sister’s antics, he cracked a wide grin. Emma cut her gaze to Penny, then back to Zachary before biting her lip. Down deep, the warrior in her wanted to join the fray, but watching these two hammer away at each other would be just as much fun.

  “You were saying about the video? I need a copy, of course.”

  “Of course.” She pulled her phone, hit the screen a couple of times and stuck it back in her purse. “On its way. I’m planning on filing a PCR.” Penny turned to Emma. “Post-conviction relief.” Emma nodded and Penny went back to her brother. “A video like this, you know we’ll get our hearing based on newly discovered evidence.”

  He shrugged. “No judge in Cook County will vacate a sentence in the murder of a cop’s daughter without something better than that video. And hello? Did the detective not have brain cancer? How do we know disease hadn’t brought on hallucinations?”

  “Please, Zachary. You’ll need to try harder than that.” Penny stood and adjusted the hem of her jacket. “Anyway, I only stopped to see which lucky prosecutor would face me in court. Now that I know, I’m off to make notes on this new evidence. Better start thinking about the State’s reply, big brother. See you at dinner on Saturday.” She gave him a finger wave. “Toodles. Love you.”

  Emma sat speechless as Penny strode from the office. Her attorney was one crazy chick, which might not be a good thing, considering that Brian’s freedom rested in her hands. But Penny had something. Maybe it was her brash attitude or her willingness to take a chance on Brian, but whatever it was, Emma liked it. A lot.

  From his desk chair, Zachary snorted. “She’s nuts. Get used to it.”

  Emma stood. “Maybe so, but I like her spunk.”

  “She has plenty of that.”

  Before she turned for the door, Emma stared down at him. “My brother is innocent.”

  “He was convicted by a jury of his peers.”

  “And juries never make mistakes?”

  No answer. It didn’t matter. “I’ve studied the evidence,” she continued. “The public defender blew this one. I can promise you my brother didn’t strangle anyone. I’d know.”

  According to the prosecution’s theory, Brian had left Magic—the nightclub—to meet the victim in the alley beside it. After he murdered her, apparently using the belt from her jacket, he supposedly went back into the club and partied for another hour.

  “Were you with him that night?”

  “No. But I know my brother. He stole four dollars from my wallet when he was twelve. An hour later the guilt drove him mad and he confessed.”

  Zachary shrugged. “He was twelve. He’s a man now. People change.”

  “Not my brother. He was living at home with my mother at the time of the murder. Want to know why?”

  “Is it relevant to my case?”

  “My brother is in prison. Everything is relevant.”

  Zachary tapped his fingers on the desk. “I’ll bite. Why was he living at home?”

  “Because our father died ten years ago and I’d moved out. He didn’t want our mother to be alone. He had a good job and could have easily afforded to be on his own, but he couldn’t stand the idea of his mother being by herself. That’s not a man who commits murder.”

  Emma stopped talking. The past year had taught her the value of silence. Silence offered that perfect span of time when each person decided who would flinch. She stared down at Zachary Hennings.

  A fine-looking man she desperately hoped would flinch.

  Finally, he stood. He was a good six inches taller than she was, but she held her ground and kept her head high. “No offense, Ms. Sinclair, but you’re far from impartial and the daughter of a good cop is dead. Any one of us, given the right circumstances, has the capability to commit murder.”

  “Not my brother, Mr. Hennings. You’ll see.” She turned to leave.

  “It’s Zac. My father is Mr. Hennings. And I can tell you I’ll study the case file. I love to win, but I have no interest in keeping an innocent man in prison. That being said, twelve reasonable people heard evidence and decided his fate. I’m not going to go screaming to the judge that it was a mistake. Prove it to me and we’ll take it from there.”

  Chapter Two

  In the beat-up hallway outside Zac’s office, Emma spotted Penny waiting for her. The moment she got close, Penny headed for the elevator, the two of them moving at a steady clip.

  “I’ll get started on the petition,” Penny said. “What’s your schedule the next couple days?”

  “I have a class in the morning and then I work tomorrow night. On Saturday, I work at four, but I have all morning and early afternoon open. Sunday I have to study. What do you need?”

  “We need to analyze the video and compare what he says to what we know happened around the time of the murder. There has to be something else that will support our case. I think we’ll get our hearing anyway because that video is pretty darn compelling, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more.”

  Emma pushed through the lobby door and a burst of cold, early-April wind blew her hair back. Penny remained unruffled, her hair perfectly intact as she whipped through the doorway. Emma would have loved to be that put together, but she didn’t have a sense of fashion so she stuck with the basics of slacks and sweaters. Basics were easy and kept her from looking like a fashion disaster.

  Penny stopped on the cement steps of the towering building. Behind them, the early rush of employees leaving for the day funneled by.

  “I already have a time line built,” Emma said. “I’ll go through the video and do a second time line with what the detective says. And, oh, I’ll get myself on the list to visit Brian tomorrow. I can squeeze that in before work and show him the two time lines. Maybe he can help.”

  “Good. Anything that seems off, note it and I’ll have one of our investigators check it out.”

  Investigators. All this time, Emma had been trudging around town, fighting every step of the way, begging every defense lawyer, reporter, blogger, anyone who could help, and finally, finally, someone believed in her. Her breath caught and she smacked a hand against her chest.

  Penny drew her eyebrows together, marring her perfect porcelain skin. “You okay?”

  Maybe. “You have investigators.”

  “The firm does, yes.”

  Months of exhaustive, energy-sapping worry erupted into a stream of hysterical laughter. “Investigators.”

  Penny’s eyes widened. Poor woman must have thought her client was insane. Emma laughed harder and grabbed her lawyer’s arms. “I’ve been alone with this for so long. No one has helped. No one. Even my mother has been too depressed to lend a hand, and now you tell me you have investigators. And it won’t cost me anything. You have no idea what that means to me.”

  Finally, the tears came. A flood of them gushing to the surface and tumbling down her face. God, she was tired. Insanity might not be far behind aft
er all.

  Penny stepped an inch closer. “Listen, we’ve got a long road. I’m good, but we’re dealing with the murder of a cop’s daughter. We’re about to climb Everest with no oxygen. Can you make it?”

  Emma nodded. This one she knew for sure. “I’ve already climbed to ten thousand feet without oxygen. I’m not stopping now.”

  “Good. Then let’s do this. Call me with any updates. I’ve got to go.”

  Penny charged down the cement steps and Emma pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. Two missed calls. One from Mom. She dialed. “Hi.”

  “Hi. You had a call. That Melody. The one Brian was dating.”

  Brian’s old girlfriend—well, she couldn’t really be called a girlfriend. Melody, according to Brian, was more like a friend with benefits. The fact that this friend had called their house on the day an article ran about Brian could not be a coincidence. Particularly since Melody, again according to Brian, had spent a few minutes with him around the time of the murder. He’d left the club and walked Melody to her car around 12:30 a.m. that night. The defense never called Melody as a witness and, with Brian not testifying at trial, Emma assumed this information had been deemed irrelevant. Not that she understood it, but she didn’t understand a lot of the nuances about Brian’s trial.

  “What did she want?” Emma asked her mother.

  “I don’t know. She started talking, then stopped and said she needed to speak with you.”

  “Did she leave a number?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mother read off the number and Emma repeated it to herself. “Got it.”

  She disconnected and entered the number into her phone before she forgot it. Pedestrians continued to stream from the building and she moved to the side. Another gust of wind caught her coat and she yanked the zipper up to shield herself from the cold air. Stepping away from the pedestrian traffic, she pressed the TALK button, heard the phone ring and waited for Melody to pick up.

  Brian’s public defender had been no help when it came to Melody. He’d never even pursued her claims because she couldn’t prove that Brian had been with her that night. According to the lawyer, she could be covering for him.