It was only 8:30 in the morning and only hours after Ric Flair's arrest but Adam Pearce's day had already gone from bad to worse.
"Let me get this straight, Mr. Pearce. Your agent requested a warrant to place a surveillance unit on the yacht of Mr. Flair. Yet the warrant was never obtained because of a…how did you put it?...a clerical oversight?" Judge Ted DiBiase stared down at Pearce from the bench.
"Yes, Your Honor," Peace calmly answered. "The request was made in good faith."
"Which is irrelevant," Charlotte Flair objected. "Without a warrant, my client's Fourth Amendment rights were violated. There are numerous precedents…"
"I'm well aware of the precedents, thank you, Ms. Flair," Judge DiBiase firmly interrupted.
"Your Honor, the agent acted in good faith," Pearce continued. "He was in deep undercover and had no idea the warrant would be denied. As Your Honor knows, previous identical warrants have been issued. There was no intent to violate the defendant's Constitutional rights. This was an honest mistake by an overworked clerk who just didn't follow through processing the request for the warrant."
Judge DiBiase nodded. "Understood."
"And still irrelevant. My client owns the yacht where this surveillance device was placed. Therefore, he had every expectation of privacy while on board that yacht," Charlotte interjected. She stopped when the Judge held up his hand. She and Pearce stood quietly while DiBiase wrote in his notebook.
Sitting at the defendant's table, Ric Flair silently watched with a slight smile on his face.
Judge DiBiase took a deep breath. "It is the ruling of this Court that the undercover agent did, indeed, act in good faith; and the Court finds no fault with him."
Pearce glanced at Charlotte who remained impassive.
"However, the precedents are clear," DiBiase continued. "Without a proper warrant, any surveillance devices placed under these circumstances is a violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. Therefore, anything recorded, either visually or audibly on the defendant's yacht is inadmissible."
"We plan to appeal your ruling, Your Honor," Pearce immediately spoke.
DiBiase chuckled. "Good luck with that, Mr. Pearce. The defendant is remanded to custody. Bail is denied. We're adjourned." He pounded his gavel once then stood and walked out.
Charlotte turned to quietly speak with her father as Pearce left the courtroom.
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No one in Pearce's office dared to look at him as he stormed back from the courtroom. He glared at the clerks who were busy double-checking each warrant application to make sure there would be no more surprises.
Pearce stopped at the desk of his administrative assistant. "Get me on a conference call with Davenport Chief of Police Dean Malenko and Acting D.A. Adam Cole." He didn't stop to hear the quiet 'yes sir' as he walked into his office and slammed the door behind him.
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"You never checked to see if the warrant had been issued?"
Pearce winced at the shriek in Adam Cole's voice.
"You realize what this means?" Cole furiously seethed. "Because of the incompetence of your office, we have nothing to charge Randy Orton with for the murder of Michael Mizanin. We have nothing to charge Shawn Spears with for providing those security codes to a criminal organization through Maxwell Friedman. And we have nothing to prove Ric Flair murdered Maxwell Friedman."
"I'm aware of that," Pearce curtly replied. "I'm very aware of the repercussions of this error."
"Error?" Malenko coldly spoke. "An error is writing the wrong year when writing a check on January 2nd. An error is matching a dark blue sock with a black sock. An error is putting salt in your coffee rather than sugar. This isn't an error, Agent Pearce. This is gross incompetence."
"You know what I think I'll do?" Cole coldly stated. "I think I'll give your phone number to the parents of Maxwell Friedman. You can explain to them how this error means no one is ever likely to be charged with the murder of their son. Then I'll give your phone number to the parents and widow of Michael Mizanin, and you can explain to them how no one is ever likely to be charged with the murder of their son and husband."
With that, Adam Cole hung up.
Pearce sighed. "Chief Malenko, I am…"
Malenko hung up. He took deep breaths to control his anger as he opened a desk drawer and pulled out an address book. He quickly found the name and phone number he wanted.
"Austin."
"Austin, this is Malenko."
"Malenko, you son-of-a-bitch! How are ya?" Steve Austin leaned back in his chair and planted both boots on the top of his desk. He smiled, fondly remembering the investigations they'd run during Malenko's tenure with the FBI.
"Fine until I got a call from one of your people who has royally screwed up," Malenko growled.
"Who?" Austin barked.
"Adam Pearce. NYC."
"That grandstanding little pissant. That piddling little law degree of his makes him think he can run an investigation and then take it into Court," Austin snorted. "What did he do?"
"It's what he didn't do." Malenko quickly explained the situation.
Austin spent the next minute cursing Pearce, his ancestry, and his intelligence…or lack of it.
"Two murders, Austin. We're probably never going to bring anyone to justice for either of them," Malenko grumbled. "I gotta tell two sets of grieving parents and a grieving widow with a baby and toddler we can't do one damn thing."
"Give me the word, and I'll be on a plane to New York," Austin promised. "I'll grab that little pissant by his short hairs and frog march him to Davenport, I-O-W-A and throw him at their feet."
Malenko almost agreed. "I'm tempted," he admitted. "But that could further compromise the other cases that can be prosecuted against Flair. But you need somebody to go over everything with a fine-tune comb and get him out of the Courtroom."
"Oh, that and more's gonna happen," Austin promised. "I guaran-damn-tee that personally."
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Bobby Fish, Kyle O'Reilly, and Roderick Strong looked at Cole's closed office door when they heard him loudly cursing. When something hit the wall, they performed a quick rock-paper-scissors ritual.
Shaking his head, Kyle slowly walked to the door and cautiously opened it. "What's wrong?" he asked, barely sticking his head through the slight opening.
"Not now," Cole angrily seethed.
Kyle quickly closed the door and walked away. "Don't go in," he advised the others.
Cole was tempted to throw something else at the wall but didn't. More of that would just bring the others in no matter what he ordered. Instead, he threw himself back onto his desk chair and began kicking the desk.
Because of Pearce's screw up in not getting the surveillance warrant, everything Friedman had said to Flair was inadmissible.
Their warrant to arrest Shawn Spears was now invalid. As were the search warrants for his workspace, home, and bank accounts.
Their warrant to arrest Randy Orton for the Mizanin murder was now invalid.
And the evidence of Friedman's murder at the hand of Ric Flair was inadmissible.
Thinking hard for a few minutes, he then stood and walked to open his office door. "Bobby, contact Orton's attorney. Tell them we have a scheduling problem and will be interviewing his client at 11am. With my apologies."
Fish raised an eyebrow at Cole's mocking voice on the last sentence.
"Roderick, contact Spears' attorney. Tell them the same and will be interviewing his client at 1:30pm. With my apologies."
Roderick sketched a quick salute in return.
"When you're done bring both files to the conference room. We're going over them with a microscope." Cole then looked at Kyle for a few seconds. Of all of them, Kyle could look the most innocent and baby-faced. That was going to come in handy. "Kyle, I have something…special for you. My office."
Minutes later, Kyle left Cole's office and winked at Fish and Roderick before walking out.
Cole took several deep breaths then picked up the phone and dialed Malenko.
"I was just going to call you," Malenko sighed. "I was speaking with a friend at the FBI and clued him in on Pearce's screw up. He'll be on the next flight to NYC to straighten things out. Not that it helps us, but at least Pearce is going to be on the hot seat and Austin has no problem in setting the fire."
"Good," Cole replied.
"Let me call you back in a few minutes," Malenko requested. "I need to contact my detectives at the MVP Security Agency. They need to stop their investigation."
"Let them know that I've sent one of my men over there. Tell your detectives not to leave until he arrives. He'll explain to the owner."
As Malenko hung up, he wondered at the sudden calmness in Cole's voice.