Intersecting Lines – The Trial
Part 14 – Dirty Humphries
In Court
Alex's viewpoint
Another day in court crossing swords with Humphries, she'd grown in confidence as she'd held the court spellbound while she laid out the conspirators actions, almost as if she was feeding on the attention. Mikki had called her an attention-whore as we'd gotten ready for this morning's session and I couldn't find it in me to disagree with that damning assessment.
Today she was dressed in a short-cut red leather jacket over a body-hugging white silk tee, teamed with tight white stirrup pants, a red leather belt and patent red leather stilettoes that had heels so high even Maura might have baulked at them, the whole effect highlighting her legs and tight ass, making her look taller and slimmer; a scarlet woman right down to the color. Andrea had tried cross examining yesterday afternoon but Humphries had been dismissive, looking my way and telling Andrea to 'send Cabot out here, it started with her, it can end with her'. We'd discussed it and decided that in the interests of keeping her happy and talking, I'd continue the cross.
"Tell me detective, why tell the court, why tell the world, what you've done?" She glanced my way then went back to staring across at the other defendants, her voice carrying a hint of amusement, mixed with disdain.
"Because I know them Cabot, those cowardly sons of bitches would have tried to dump the rap for as much as they could on me" She smiled mockingly at her former partners. "They tried it earlier so I knew they'd try it again" That smile was turned on me. "If they're going to throw me to the wolves, they're gonna be right there besides me" She looked back at the defence tables. "Kennedy and Powell were okay, dumb but okay and I didn't know about his sister, but I knew Osmond and Farrar were weak links. As soon as Johnson put any pressure on him he rolled over, spilling his guts" Her lips twisted angrily. "I knew he was fucking weak, we should have got rid of him long ago"
"Kennedy however wanted to keep him on for the surveillance and kidnapping work did he not?" I suggested.
"Yeah, another of his stupid decisions, one of a long line of them" She shook her head and looked to me. "If it had been my call I would have killed them both ages ago, pulled the work in nice and tight where everything was unlikely to leak" She looked pensive for a moment. "Given how no one ever came close to any of the jobs that Tony and I did, it might have been better if we'd got rid of Kennedy and Powell as well" I stood there for a moment, stunned, then rallied.
"You are suggesting killing the other's; Kennedy, Osmond and the others, and taking up all the assassinations yourself, well in conjunction with your partner?"
"Yeah, why not?" She looked at me and smiled. "I had been getting away with it for a decade, would have for decades more, if I could have talked to Hernandez I would have suggested it to him, get rid of the dead wood and he could deal direct with the people doing the work" She shrugged and glanced at Kennedy. "Not to mention cut out the middle man and his ten thousand dollar per job skim job"
Appalled, I came to a conclusion right then and there; Humphries was dangerously delusional, making me wonder how in hell she'd ever made it as a cop.
Los Angeles LAPD Major Crimes
Unknowingly, seated in Brenda's office Sharon's assessment wasn't too far different.
"Oh my lord…" At her comment I shook my head, my voice low and wondering.
"How did someone like her make it through the psych eval to get into the academy?" Sharon too shook her head as she replied; her eyes still on the screen in the corner of my office where we'd been watching Alex and Humphries cross swords.
"I honestly have no idea, but I can tell you that Internal Affairs will be looking into her original profile and digging into whoever signed off on it" She pursed her lips as she thought it through for a moment then continued. "If they find evidence that entry standards were lax god help the person who approved her evaluation"
"What will they do?" Sharon narrowed her eyes in thought at my question before replying slowly, thinking it through.
"Get in a couple of external psychiatrists and psychologists to review the work of the person who signed off on Humphries" She shook her head. "If they find out there was a pattern of errors, well I wouldn't be surprised if Professional Standards don't end up going through the academy's entry selection and evaluation procedures"
I nodded slowly, Professional Standards were a small but immensely powerful section within Internal Affairs; where IA looked at wrong-doing by individual officers, Professional Standards looked at the actions and culture of the Department as a whole, their attention on a division within the Department was the stuff of nightmares for the heads of that division. It was common knowledge that anyone leading a division that received an adverse audit by Professional Standards...well, from that day forwards their career in law enforcement ceased to prosper.
In Court
I paused for a moment, something she'd said bothered me; reviewing her words I realised what it was, she'd said she'd been getting away with it for a decade, something I had to go after.
"You mentioned that you had been doing this for a decade, my understanding was that this arrangement, the scheme that Kennedy had set in place, was barely two years old" She nodded once, smiling smugly, as if I was a dim student who'd impressed her.
"Yeah, I was wondering if you'd pick up on that. Kennedy had been running his little side job for about two years, that's true, but I'd been carrying out my own personal war on crime for years before that"
"Are you telling the court you had been involved in similar schemes before?" She smiled smugly.
"Thought you knew it all didn't you?" She glanced at the cameras and continued. "Not even close to it" She smiled. "I've been taking dealers off the street for years, with no one any the wiser"
New York 1PP
Ed Tucker regarded the television in the corner of his small office with distaste. He hated crooked cops with a passion and quite obviously the cops on trial were as corrupt as it came. The issue was that he found himself on the same side as Alex Cabot, something he found particularly discomforting.
On one hand she was the partner of Benson, a woman he wanted to nail to the wall, something he'd do the moment he managed to find something that would stick; on the other hand Cabot was making a damned good case, together with that other prosecutor, to send those seven rotten cops to jail to rot, even if Humphries was a good looking piece of ass.
The revelation that the arresting cops were all gay had been…interesting, birds of a feather and that sort of thing he supposed, a real shame as most of them were pretty damned hot, a real waste. The extended coverage was making Cabot and the other woman, Hobbs, minor media celebrities, the camera seemed to linger on them a little too much, not surprising he thought; he had to admit the other blonde woman was easy on the eye given her age, something he guessed was mid-forties, while Cabot was straight up hot, he could easily see Benson's reasons for fucking her, hell he'd do her in a heartbeat if Cabot wasn't such an obviously man-hating dyke. I mean why the hell else would she fuck Benson; if she was a badge bunny who got off on fucking cops there were no end of guys who'd be more than happy to fuck her straight, he being one of them.
On the other hand the woman was rich as fuck, something he was sure was what had attracted Benson to her in the first place, well that and the fact she was a nice piece of ass, and now she was using that money to protect Benson. She'd escaped him in New York, in part because Cabot had pulled strings and greased palms to make it happen, he was sure of it. It was also why no one wanted to give Benson up, no matter how hard he dug no one would turn over on her.
Tucker shook his head. They would, he'd find someone who hadn't been bought off or who wasn't afraid of Cabot's money and influence and when he did he'd have all the proof he needed to drag Benson and maybe Cabot back to New York where he could serve them up to Thomas on a platter.
Doing that would practically guarantee him that Captain's gig, Captain Tucker had a nice ring to it, one he could get used to hearing, especially if it was coming from Bensons sweet-assed fuck-buddy Beckett when he took over as her Captain at the 16th Precinct.
In the meantime he had to keep digging, something would turn up, while he kept looking he spent some time sitting back and watching as Cabot hammered another nail into the coffin she was building for those corrupt cops, both admiring and despising her all at once.
In Court
"You and Hobbs here think you have all the answers but you don't know shit" Humphries stated. I decided right there that I'd let her get away with enough, it was time to prod the beast and see what it did.
"I know enough to know you're going to death row, never to be eligible for parole" She sneered at me, her eyes cold and her voice angry.
"For those scumbag dealers, fuck that!" Her voice calmed as she continued. "I killed criminals, parasites on the system, the people who the system either didn't, wouldn't or couldn't touch. I was doing the criminal justice system a favour" She looked over at the jury, her eyes scanning across them as she continued. "I saved the system the cost of a trial and then paying to keep the scum in prison, they got a quick death, which was better than many of them ever offered the victims of their poison" With that she shrugged. "I saw it as dispensing justice to those the justice system couldn't, or wouldn't" Humphries looked at me then back to the jury, or maybe the camera, they were in the same direction. "Do you know the difference between you and me Cabot?" I tipped my head to regard her then prodded her once again.
"I'm sure you'll tell me" She smiled coldly at me.
"You do things within a broken system, one that sees more scum skate through what's laughingly called the criminal justice system than get convicted" She frowned. "Even if the system does somehow convict them, too many of them get out with a slap on the wrist from some bleeding heart liberal judge, or a light sentence, served in jail where they learn to be better, more vicious criminals from the other scumbags in there" She shook her head even as she warmed to her subject. "We send punks to jail, which is like a finishing school for criminals and what we get back are arrogant, smarter, more dangerous assholes". She looked into the camera closest to her. "Juvie kids stealing from the corner store go into JD and out comes arrogant punks snatching purses, we send them to the slammer and they come out as muggers, we toss them back in and they get out as home invaders and armed robbery experts, the cycle continues, rinse and repeat until they end up on death row because they've killed people" She raked her eyes over the jury then ignored me as she turned back to the camera and spoke.
"If I committed any crime it was that I was acting as a vigilante, stopping the cycle"
I narrowed my eyes as I suddenly saw where she was going with this, while she admitted her crimes she was trying to distance her actions from the others in the eyes of the jury and hope to be treated differently by claiming different motivations, playing on the sympathetic perceptions of the public towards vigilantes, fuelled by movies and television shows like the Punisher and Daredevil. I glanced to Andrea and saw her look back at me, she'd seen it too and she shook her head slightly, exchanging an unspoken message, 'no way in hell.
I turned back and faced Humphries full on.
"You were paid to kill eight people by Sinaloa, which hardly makes you some justice-dispensing vigilante, you were a paid killer, an assassin for coin" She looked at me and for a second I was surprised, she wasn't angry, instead she was smug.
"Cabot, you don't know shit about me and what I've done" Deciding to provoke her I let a little insolence into my voice.
"Then why don't you educate me and everyone else about the real Julia Humphries then?"
New York NYPD 16th Precinct
"Shit Cabot, you're playing with fire" At Rollins' comment the other members of SVU looked up at the television.
"What?" It was Amaro; Rollins looked his way.
"Cabot's baiting Humphries but she's a dangerous nutcase" They were interrupted by Munch from where he was seated at his desk finishing off the last of his lunch.
"Don't let it bother you Rollins, Cabot's stared down worse scumbags than this psycho" He was backed up by Fin.
"Yeah, don't let Teflon's uptown girl looks fool you, she's tough as nails" He looked over at the screen and snorted. "That whack job thinks she's the one in charge, but let me tell you, just when she thinks she's on top Cabot's gonna lower the boom on her" He brought a meaty fist smacking into the palm of his hand. "Boom, headshot"
Munch nodded and waved at the screen as he spoke for Amaro and Rollin's benefit.
"Just keep watching the show kids, this one's not even close to over yet"
In Court
"I've been killing the criminal filth of this city for over a decade, and no one ever came close to finding me" Humphries smirked triumphantly. "Over four dozen drug dealers dead in a decade and no one the wiser" I froze at her words, she'd just admitted to what? Off to one side I could see her public defender had just buried his face in his hands, he'd obviously realised his 'client' was determined to go out with a bang and to hell with him.
"I helped take those fuckers off the street permanently, I saved the system the cost of a trial where some SJW lawyer convinces a bleeding heart liberal judge that they were just misunderstood and they let them go, I saved the cost of putting them in jail, when everyone knows that dealers get back out in the street so fast it's not even a sick joke" She shrugged. "I helped deal with the problem, permanently, the way the LAPD couldn't and no one was ever the wiser" I shook my head slowly.
"Really, killing people was 'taking them off the streets'?" I put her words in quotes.
"I did it for over a decade Cabot, I would have for decades more, I was careful" She raked her gaze over the Defence table contemptuously. "Unlike Kennedy and Powell, those stupid fuckers got lazy and sloppy and so here we are"
"You admit you have been murdering people for over a decade?" I asked, still not quite believing her.
"You deaf Cabot, that's what I just said" She smiled happily and looked to the camera. "I took drug dealers off the street, the ones the drug squad couldn't or wouldn't do anything about, made sure they couldn't peddle their drugs to school kids anymore" She tipped her head and looked to me and smiled. "I did you and the DA's office a favour Cabot, saved the waste of time of a trial and made sure the streets were a little safer for everyone. You should be thanking me for making your job easier" She ended her comment with a smirk as I stared at her, she meant it, she really didn't care she'd murdered dozens of people, the woman was a rattlesnake in human form, cold and reptilian.
Los Angeles LAPD Major Crimes
I was up out of my seat and striding into the murder room, already barking orders as heads came up.
"Right, we have a lead, well a series of leads actually, I want any unclosed murders of drug dealers over the last ten years or so"
"That's gonna be a lot of cases Chief" It was Provenza. Before I could reply Jane spoke up from her desk.
"Maybe not, she has a coke habit, so we look at coke dealers dead with their stash stolen, that should narrow it down a bit" Flynn nodded.
"Yeah, anyone where they were killed with witnesses or no chance to steal their stash, like a drive by, we can probably discount" He was backed up by an unlikely source, Kahn.
"That is correct, I can query the program via a set of parameters that should isolate those cases that fit the criteria" At everyone's sudden interest he looked a little embarrassed and temporised as he looked to me. "It will not be perfect but it should capture most of the cases that match your requirements" I nodded once, not missing Jane giving him the thumbs up.
"Detective, please, we have a chance to tie Miss Humphries here to a whole passel of unsolved cases so get to it" I looked round the rest of the room. "Everyone else, the moment Detective Kahn here starts turning up cases, if each of you would be good enough to grab one and start digging" I looked down at Kahn and smiled. "I'll take the first one you find" He nodded, simultaneously worried and proud.
"Yes Chief!" I looked around and my eyes fell on Flynn.
"Lieutenant Flynn, if you would be so kind as to call Chief Kelso in Narcotics, please convey my compliments to him and ask if he could visit me at his earliest convenience, I'm sure he and his team will be happy to contribute to cleaning up Miss Humphries trail of bodies and who are we to not share the pleasure of that?" He nodded.
"On it Chief"
In Court
"Your claims to be acting as a vigilante are not backed up by the facts detective; you were paid twenty thousand dollars a time to kill targets selected by a Mexican drug cartel" Humphries wasn't taking that lying down.
"No Cabot, I was taking money from a cartel that otherwise would use that money to support their actions, buying more product, paying more gangers to sell their product, corrupting people here and in Mexico, I took their money and they gave me the names of targets I wouldn't have otherwise got to" I nodded and gave her a bit more rope.
"Like who?" She shrugged before responding.
"One guy, he was a guns procurer, because of me, that's a pile of weapons that didn't make it onto the streets here or in Mexico" She looked to the jury then the camera. "Another was a woman who ran strings of scared young girls up into LA and San Francisco, bound for the illegal Cartel-run brothels in both cities, she's dead now, no more dragging young girls up here where they get fucked over by ugly fat fuckers in brothels in this city, all because of me" She shook her head. "Another was a cartel liaison to the Latino street gangs, running guns and drugs to the gangs. He's dead and that screwed up that cartel's plans to push more coke onto the street"
"All of which you got paid for" I said flatly, but Humphries was unfazed.
"Yeah, and so fucking what?" She shook her head and looked to the camera again. "I also killed a lot of others I didn't get paid for, the one's I'd been hunting down for almost a decade" She turned a contemptuous glance on me. "I was doing what you and the LAPD and the courts couldn't, taking them off the streets permanently, making this city safer for everyone"
Los Angeles LAPD Media Centre
"Oh she's smart, she may be a psychotic bitch but she's not dumb" At that comment Ana Romanov looked over at her fiancée, Natalie was sitting back in her chair watching the trial's latest revelations.
"Yeah, she got away with it for over a decade and no one got a sniff of her" Natalie shook her head and looked to Ana.
"No…well yes, that too…but what I meant is she's pitching her message to a specific audience, that sort of vigilante talk is red meat to the far-right, the hardline talk shows, the YouTube commentators, some of the newspapers that push the tough on crime message and populist politicians in particular" Ana shrugged.
"It's not going to help her though, she's confessed to being on the cartel payroll as a killer" Nat shook her head, a frown marring her features.
"I'm not so sure, I wonder if she's been working up to this since she got arrested" Natalie looked to her lover. "She must have realised that when her defender told her that Hernandez was testifying they were all screwed, so she's trying to paint herself in a different light to escape the worst of the consequences" Natalie grimaced. "I mean it wasn't like she had much to lose" Ana sat back and thought about it then nodded.
"A last roll of the dice to see if she can escape death row you mean?"
"Exactly, she's playing to an audience outside the courtroom, hoping public opinion will sway the case" Ana smiled at that.
"I think we can rely on Alex and Andrea to put paid to that" Natalie looked back to the screen to see Alex sparring with Humphries, her voice worried.
"I sure hope so"
Los Angeles LAPD Major Crimes
We'd got a lucky break, Flynn had remembered that Humphries had a laptop in her apartment and we got it out of evidence then set Khan loose on it. Mike Tao hadn't had the chance to go digging through it before his promotion to Captain in the tech side of the Special Investigation Squad. Now he was happily turning his squad of techies into little Taos, apparently he was doing really well up there, but that transfer had meant that he hadn't had time to tear Humphries laptop part. Now we were doing just that and Khan was sifting it for information. What he was doing might have important results but the actual doing was as interesting as watching paint dry so instead we were watching the trial continue, Humphries was trying to be cagy about her involvement in sending the gangs after us, no doubt aware that paying street gangs to kill cops wouldn't play too well in her attempts to paint herself as a crime-fighting vigilante, when Khan looked up.
"Well, I can confirm one thing, the suspect was a very regular cocaine user, there are what looks like trace particles trapped in the keyboard" I nodded.
"Yeah, when we first searched her place we found cocaine residue everywhere, especially the bathroom, kitchen and lounge" Flynn looked my way and spoke up, his voice teasing.
"What the hell was she doing in the kitchen Rizzoli, baking cakes with it?" There were grins around the room as I shook my head.
"Any flat surface…" I got a nod as Khan looked my way and continued.
"It would seem so, I am continuing to run a deep search of the hard drive however I have cracked the email password" He looked a bit disgusted. "In this day and age what fool uses their badge number as a password?" I saw a sudden wince from both Provenza and Flynn at that, making me smirk a little as Khan continued. "I have found a number of regular once a month emails from a bank downtown, one that Humphries apparently used to run a savings account, the amount in the account is relatively small, a few thousand dollars at most; the emails were the regular monthly statements including account-keeping charges however upon checking them I have noticed they note a fee for maintaining a safety deposit box" Provenza and I exchanged a smile as Flynn spoke up, his voice cheerful.
"Bingo"
Two hours later and, having served her with a warrant, Provenza and I followed the bank's manager out of her office and through the bank to the safety deposit area. Two minutes more and she was turning the mill key to unlock it, then stepping back to leave it to us to actually open. I looked to Provenza and made an 'after you' gesture, getting a nod as he opened the lid, the smile that appeared telling me all I needed to know even before he stepped back to let me see what was inside. I looked down and smiled with him, two pistols, a 9mm Beretta and what looked like a SIG in the same calibre, sitting on a pile of envelopes. I pulled a set of blue latex evidence gloves out of my jacket pocket, put them on and pulled out the SIG, seeing Provenza also pulling on some gloves; a cursory exam confirmed my suspicion.
"The SIG's a 9mm, same as the Beretta" Provenza had opened a small, A5 envelope, finding it stuffed with hundred dollar bills, ten of them in fact, a neat $1000. He did a quick check, opening a few other envelopes and finding the same then did a quick count before looking up.
"$62,000 dollars here, now we know where she was keeping her cash" I nodded.
"She did say she's done seven jobs on her own and one she shared, so assume that's $150,000 or so, she's running an expensive lifestyle and clothing, maybe this is her stash?" I got a look from Provenza as he nodded.
"Let's get all this evidence bagged and get the pistols down to forensics ASAP" I nodded, returning the gun and reaching for my cell.
Yeah, I'll ask Maura to put a rush on it"
In Court
Another day, another ensemble for Humphries, today it was a pale blue, tightly-fitted dress with cut-outs showing skin at her waist and shoulders, at least it made an vain attempt to reach her knees, matched with a long white leather jacket and white stilettoes. I'd wondered about her wardrobe and idly mentioned it to Andrea, Mikki and Liv at lunch yesterday, Mikki had then asked around and we'd learned that Humphries was paying a friend of hers to bring in outfits from her home to the courthouse, once they'd been scanned and searched they were passed through to her and she got changed in the ladies before the trial each day, carefully watched by two female deputies while she did.
She certainly knew how to dress to accentuate her body, something the media had picked up on. Natalie had let me know two night's back that they were comparing how Humphries and I looked and dressed, something that had me raiding my wardrobe for something a little nicer. Nat had offered to help and had come over last night with some of her nicest clothes, Maura' wore different sizes to me but she'd brought some wine and between the three of us we'd mixed and matched a number of outfits.
This morning I was in one of Nat's tight white pencil dresses and one of my black suit jackets teamed with a set of sky high Balenciaga black patent leather heels. I'd certainly got Liv's raucous approval when I'd walked out this morning after dressing, plus texts from Maura and Liv congratulating me on how good I looked on television.
"Detective Humphries, we have ascertained that you contracted with the Barrio Bangers street gang to undertake the attack on the officers investigating the actions of you and your fellow defendants undertook on behalf of Sinaloa" I walked a little round closer towards the jury as I continued. "Your involvement with Los Lobos Del Muerte is circumstantial I will grant you, but your actions in retrieving the money they were paid for their attempts on Doctor Isles, Deputy Chief Johnson and Commander Raydor are not"
Los Angeles LAPD Morgue
Maura Isles carefully carried the two weapons, still in their evidence bags, downstairs to the range, exchanging greetings and some small talk with the armourer, Lieutenant O'Farrell, while she carefully broke the bag's seals and checked each weapon then passed them to O'Farrell who loaded and discharged a single shot from each pistol into a water-filled tank. Each time they carefully retrieved the shell and cartridge and bagged them, noting the time and date and which weapon they were from, they then both signed the stickers, then returned the pistols to their evidence bags, added new stickers and both to seal the bags and both initialled them, Finally they signed the record sheets that stayed with the tank, ensuring the evidence chain remained unbroken and could withstand any challenge in court.
That done, she bid O'Farrell adieu and returned to the morgue, setting up the microscope and scanner before opening each evidence bag and examining each round in turn under the microscope. A click of a button scanned the rifling and made both a photographic record and a digitised image of the bullet's rifling, she saved the electronic record to a file and retrieved the image, slipping it into a larger evidence bag and slipped the bagged SIG in as well, together with the slug in its baggie, replacing the seals on the slugs and cartridges then marking up the bag with date and time and her name, before doing the same with the Beretta. That done she returned to her desk and, while sipping a chamomile tea, called up the database of pistol riflings and submitted the scanned image of the SIG's slug.
Sitting back she mused that what she'd just done had once involved painstaking work under a microscope, then many tedious hours comparing file cards by hand, an uncertain and massively time-consuming process. Now with a few keystrokes she was searching both the LAPD's and a wide range of local and national forensics ballistics registers for matches, something that happened automatically. She'd barely had time to take a few sips of her tea before a soft chime from her computer indicated her search was finished.
She looked to the computer and smiled. The search listed 28 possible matches, from closest to least probable. Anything with a confidence of over 95% was almost certainly a match, the ones below that less and less likely as the confidence went down, those she'd compare on the screen but for now she had enough to keep her busy. She repeated her steps with the Beretta bullet and was soon rewarded with 23 matches.
Smiling to herself Maura settled in for a slightly tedious, somewhat boring but extremely satisfying morning's work. With a little luck, she could help Alex and Andrea send Julia Humphries to jail, never to be paroled, never to kill anyone ever again.
That would well and truly be a job well done.
Los Angeles LAPD Major Crimes
We were sitting round the Murder Room, waiting on Maura's team to do their forensics magic on the two 9mm pistols we'd recovered from Humphries safety deposit box, plus over sixty thousand in cash. The cash was now safely in evidence while the pistols were now downstairs being matched for ballistics against any open cases. In the meantime I was scanning the media.
"Dirty Humphries?" I shook my head in exasperation and anger. "You have got to be fucking kidding me" The rest of the murder room had stopped at my voice with Buzz the first to speak.
"What was that Jane?" Looking up at his voice and seeing everyone else looking my way I waved my hand at the computer screen as I explained what had set me off.
"The media's tagged her as 'Dirty Humphries', apparently they actually believe that nut case's claim that she's some kind of 'misunderstood' vigilante" Provenza shrugged as he spoke.
"Nice play on words Rizzoli, but it isn't true, not even close" I shook my head as I tried to work through the anger running through me.
"The bitch killed two innocent women, tried to have us killed multiple times, turns out she's a delusional and murderous psychopath with a cocaine habit and now she's claiming to be some sort of misunderstood vigilante" I'm sure the look on my face expressed my opinion of that idea as clearly as my next comment. "Fuck. That. Shit" Flynn looked over at me and smiled grimly.
"It doesn't matter what she might think Rizzoli, she's still going to spend the rest of her life in prison looking over her shoulder, waiting to be shanked" I shook my head again, I felt like spitting in disgust.
"It's just her grandstanding's pissing me off" Buzz shrugged from where he was leaning against the door to the media room.
"Humphries may be grandstanding, but DDA Cabot's not bothered" He waved at a screen over near the whiteboards. "I mean look at her" I glanced over and nodded slowly. Alex was prowling around the area between the witness stand and the jury box, hands moving as she spoke, drawing Humphries out that little bit more, all so they'd all go to jail together.
"I suppose" I shrugged. "I just can't believe the bullshit that woman's shovelling though" Khan went to say something before he stopped, he looked towards the door as I heard the sound of heels approaching, smiling as Maura walked into view, wearing a peppermint green dress and matching heels with a charcoal jacket; seeing me I got a smile from her that made everything just that little better.
"Good afternoon everyone" There was a chorus of welcomes as we all waited. Maura smiled slyly to herself and hefted a folder she was carrying. "I'm sure that while there are many things we could be discussing this afternoon, there is only one subject on your mind" There were nods all round, we all knew what we wanted, fortunately Maura put us out of our misery quickly. "Then I am pleased to confirm that we can trace the ballistic characteristics of the two pistols found in Detective Humphries' safety deposit box to 14 separate, previously unsolved, murders of drug dealers here in Los Angeles over the last nine and a half years" There was a sudden outbreak of smiles and woops all round at that, solving 14 cases in one go was pretty damned impressive if I say so myself.
"Pardon me, Doctor Isles…" It was Kahn. Maura turned to him and smiled, somewhat heightening his nervousness, I'd noticed he got all awkward around Natalie, Alex and Maura, like they kinda intimidated him, though I didn't get why, I didn't think any of them were particularly intimidating, not normally anyway.
"Yes Detective Kahn?"
"We're you able to find the suspect's fingerprints on the weapon?" Maura smiled a little wider and nodded.
"On both weapons and on the ammunition within both weapons" I smiled along with the rest of the team, that was motive, means and intent right there; so many criminals wiped the weapon but forgot the brass casings of the ammunition. I glanced at the screen and nodded, then spoke up.
"We need to let Alex and Andrea know, they're gonna love this"
In Court
I sighed and exchanged a look with Andrea, it had been a long day and while we'd pretty much guaranteed that all of them a guilty verdict I'd ended the day exhausted, dealing with Humphries and her worldview had been draining. Behind us Mikki and Liv were chatting quietly as we made our way back to our office here in the court complex.
"She can't believe this vigilante BS can she, she's gotta be trying to pull her scam on the jury right?" said Mikki, getting a response from Liv.
"Maybe…or maybe she's so delusional that she actually has a worldview that messed up and somehow believes that's true, I don't know" Liv looked to me for a second before her eyes went back to scanning the corridor as we walked. "What do you think Al?" I shrugged and glanced at Andrea.
"I've come to the conclusion I despise her, so I don't think I'm the right one to be giving an unbiased opinion, maybe Andrea has a less…personal opinion?" Andrea nodded.
"I'm with Mikki on this…" That got her a quick and lovely smile from the woman in question. "…she's smart enough, based on her assessment scores in the academy and for promotion to detective, that she's worked out this is her only way to somehow get out from under a life sentence, she's hoping for either the jury to be swayed by her arguments, or maybe sway popular opinion enough so that the governor influences the court to offer leniency" She shrugged. "I don't think she has a hope in hell, not after Hernandez' evidence, but I guess she thinks it's worth a try"
Anything I was going to say ended as we rounded the last corner and saw Jane Rizzoli standing in the corridor outside the DA's offices. She looked up at our footsteps and smiled happily, obviously it wasn't bad news.
Turns out it was good news, very good news.
