A musty smell greeted Ashlyn O'Laighin in the catacombs of the MCI Norfolk. She looked along the long corridor in awe, as she did every time, at the end of which a lifelong prison sentence awaited many a convict. But at least it's better than it used to be when there was the death penalty, she thought.
Arriving at the prison gate, Ashlyn nodded at the corrections officer and placed her badge and cell phone in the small metal drawer in front of her. The officer routinely pulled it over to his side of the glass, compared the data, and placed the cell phone and badge on the shelf beside him. "Well, are you going to visit one of our extraordinary guests today, counselor?" he asked with an ironic undertone.
"New case, new game."
The officer waved Ashlyn through the metal detector. The device made no sound. Then he just took a quick glance at Ashlyn's briefcase. He already knew the prosecutor from various visits to the MCI and had never had any complaints. "All right, then you can go on. You know the way."
Ashlyn walked along the dreary path to the meeting cells, where the lawyers met with their clients, as she had done many times before. She followed the color-coded corridor past the stairs and corridors through the middle of the cell block in the star-shaped building. In the cold, neon-lit corridors, one cell door followed the next. Metal nets were stretched between the floors, partly to make it more difficult for prisoners to escape to neighboring floors and partly to protect them from suicide attempts by jumping from a height. In addition, the prison was hopelessly overcrowded and urgently needed modernization in many areas.
"Hello," Ashlyn greeted the officer in charge very politely when she arrived in the visitors' area for lawyers. This was not entirely unselfish because the other woman assigned the speech cells and decided whether and how quickly a prisoner was presented. And that depended to a large extent on how the lawyers behaved.
"Hello, counselor. Who shall it be today?" the guard replied with a smile. While some of her colleagues treated the MCI guards as subordinate service providers, Ashlyn had made a conscious effort from the outset to treat them with kindness and respect.
"Brandt, Nicholas Brandt. He came in yesterday."
"Just a moment, I'll see where to find him." The guard checked her computer and then assigned Ashlyn a cell at the end of the corridor, which was quieter due to their distance and, therefore, more popular with defense attorneys. 'Should be here in about ten minutes,' she said, then typed something on her keyboard.
Ashlyn thanked her and went to the cell. It was bare and gloomy, with only a tiny amount of light coming through the barred window. In the center was an old table with four mismatched chairs. She put her briefcase on one of the chairs and looked out the window while she waited for her unwanted client. Although technically, Brandt wasn't even her client yet. Anja Brandt had insisted that Ashlyn represent her husband, but as long as Nicholas Brandt had yet to sign a power of attorney, she wasn't officially his attorney.
Seven minutes later, the door opened, and Brandt entered the cell.
He might have been in his early forties. He was just over 5'7"and had narrow shoulders. Under his orange prison overalls, the beginnings of a belly could be seen.
"Please," Ashlyn said, pointing to the chairs.
Brandt returned the greeting in a friendly manner and took a seat. He looked at his counterpart with interest and sat down as well.
"My name is Ashlyn O'Laighin. I actually work for the DA's office. But your wife insisted that I represent you after a detailed conversation about your case. However, I can only do that if you authorize me."
Brandt looked at her intently, nodded, then leaned back in the old chair and looked at his hands, which he had folded on the table. "So, under normal circumstances, you would see that I never get out of here again?"
Ashlyn frowned a little and licked her lips. "Under normal circumstances, that would be true, but in a careless moment, your wife explained your case to me in detail, and my supervisor thinks it's more than appropriate for me to take on your defense."
"Can I trust you will do everything you can to represent me adequately, even if it goes against your will?"
She gritted her teeth and thought for a moment, then finally nodded. "If I don't, I'll have to ask the bar association. And believe me, I'd hate to lose my job and my license to practice law. So yes, you can count on me to represent you adequately." She frowned as Brandt looked at his hands. "Mr. Brandt, you are accused of killing one person and seriously injuring two others. This is a serious matter. Are you aware of that?"
Now Brandt looked up from his hands directly into Ashlyn's eyes. His gaze was alert. He obviously knew exactly what was at stake here. For a brief moment, the lawyer thought she saw something like a fleeting smile cross Brandt's face.
"Before I can represent you and we can talk about the case, you have to officially hire me," she said, reaching into her briefcase. She pulled out a document Saunters had given her before the trip to the MCI. It was a standard power of attorney for criminal cases. After entering Brandt's name in the designated field, she pushed the copy across the table with a pen.
Brandt grabbed the power of attorney and read it word for word, seemingly with particular diligence. He then signed it and handed it back to Ashlyn.
The blonde took a deep breath and nodded. "Good. That takes care of the formalities. Now, please tell me in your own words what actually happened." She looked at her new, unwanted client expectantly.
Brandt held her gaze without flinching. "I won't do that," he replied, and from one moment to the next, his face took on a sober, almost emotionless expression. "I have nothing more to say to you."
Then he rose, turned on his heel, and left the cell without another word. The meeting was over.
xxx
Maggie Ross concentrated as she read through her report for the second time. She prepared the information regarding the injured party's injuries in the Brandt case on behalf of the DA's office. From a forensic point of view, the results were precise. The autopsy had shown beyond doubt that Eric Sanchez had died from his bullet wounds and that these matched the descriptions of the witnesses at the scene of the crime exactly. The same applied to the wounds of the two survivors.
So far, so good.
Nevertheless, something puzzled her. Sanchez hadn't had the slightest chance of surviving after the fatal shots, while the other two victims of Brandt's shots had only sustained relatively minor injuries. That was unusual. Maggie rechecked the results of her investigation and wondered whether she should include this anomaly in her report. She decided against it, though. That would have taken her too far into the realm of speculation. How the homicide division and the DA's office handled their report and what conclusions they drew from it were not within her jurisdiction. For her, only the objective medical findings counted. And she had documented them as precisely as she always did.
xxx
The smoke hung cold in the small back room of the shisha bar. The interior had seen better days. Old wallpaper hung in tatters from the walls, and the posters with their Mediterranean landscapes had long since faded.
The age of the man sitting on one side of the small table in the middle of the room was difficult to estimate. Anything from his late forties to his early sixties was possible. His gaunt, furrowed face was framed by short-cropped, silver-gray hair and a meticulously trimmed gray full beard. On the other hand, his olive-brown skin color suggested a southern European descent. He wore an elegant black turtleneck sweater over a gray designer jacket, with a gold Rolex peeking out from under the left sleeve.
On the other side of the table sat Abid Tawfeek. He was a bit younger, maybe in his early thirties, and shifted nervously on his chair. And not without reason: his counterpart was Kamil Gazal, his boss, and he was highly annoyed.
"So. How could this happen? Did you screw up?" Gazal asked with a strong southern accent. His voice was harsh and threatening. He fixed Abid with his cold blue eyes without blinking even once.
"We couldn't have foreseen this," the younger man replied defensively. "We just—we— "
Gazal cut him off with a wave of his hand. "I want to know who screwed this up. Today. And make sure nothing falls back on us."
He looked his counterpart directly in the eye. His rugged look said more than a thousand words.
xxx
Ashlyn looked around the small, modernly furnished dining room of the café until she spotted Jalen Simms, her uncle Nick and his Wife Katherine's son. He was sitting, dressed casually and stylishly as always in blue cargo pants, a white T-shirt, and red sneakers, at a small wooden table on the right side of the room. On the white-painted walls were pictures showing the coffee's journey from harvest to roasting. In the background, Cuban music was playing a little too loudly.
Ashlyn and Jalen had known each other forever. After graduating high school, they went their separate ways for a while. While Ashlyn had first studied to be a teacher, Jalen had joined the police force. After three years in service, he had quit. The cop life, with all its regulations and ever-increasing administrative demands, was not to his taste. Instead, he had set up his own private investigation business.
"Well, have you brought another criminal to justice and made our society a little bit safer?" Jalen teased the lawyer with a grin.
"No, honestly, I'm not currently working with the DA's office." She placed her old brown briefcase on one of the chairs, put her light brown cashmere coat over it, and sat down. Jalen pushed a cappuccino across the table to her. The attorney accepted the cup with thanks and took a big gulp. The coffee was strong and hot, exactly how she liked it.
"Yes, I heard you made a stupid rookie mistake. How are you doing, by the way?"
Ashlyn pulled the corners of her mouth down. "I have a client I didn't really want in the first place. I might need your help with him."
Curious, the PI raised his eyebrows. "Okay. What is it?"
"The Killer Official."
"The one from the bakery on Sunday?"
"Exactly."
"And what can I do for you?"
"I'm not sure yet either. Nothing at the moment, but maybe later. Something's not right about this. And as I'm sure you know, I can't go to my sister's or brother-in-law's house with this. Not to mention my uncle."
Jalen nodded slowly. 'What does your client say?'
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Nothing. I saw him at the MCI today and got a power of attorney for his representation. But instead of talking to me, he just signed it silently and then left."
"Okay," Tobias replied skeptically. 'Sounds really strange. Now what?'
"I'll pull up the file and see what's been investigated so far."
"Who's suing?"
"Bauman!"
"Then you can count on me when it starts," Tobias replied dryly. Ashlyn was not at all surprised by this remark. She knew full well that Tobias had clashed with the smug prosecutor a few times as a detective. And maybe now was the time for her good friend to return the favor.