Prosecco Pink (37 page)

"But Masterson wasn't really an Einstein himself, right?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm not saying he was innocent, just that it looked a little too neat to me."

That was the first time I'd heard anyone say that. It was pretty much common knowledge that Masterson was guilty, and the not-guilty verdict was always pointed to as a cautionary example of how high-priced lawyers could game the system to secure "justice" for the well-heeled.

The food came, and we ordered another round of drinks. I decided I liked Leslie. She had grown wise and cautious through years of experience, I guessed, but rather than being bitter and jaded she seemed to process and dispense information with a sense of humor and a shrug. I was not surprised when she ordered dessert. By the time we parted ways, the wine had made Leslie more than a bit giddy. She thanked me profusely and joked I was the best date she'd had in years. Unfortunately for me, that sentiment was mutual.

CHAPTER FOUR

I had forgotten to close the shades the night before, and by 6:30 my bedroom was bathed in piercing sunlight. I knew it was too early to get up, but I couldn't get back to sleep. My mind was racing with thoughts of breakfast.

I needed to work off the pound of beef I'd eaten the night before, but I always felt uncomfortable using the building's gym at this time of day. Okay, I
hated
using the gym at
any
time of day. It was full of motivated people who were burning carbs or toning thighs before heading off to their normal jobs as bankers or casino execs. I got most of my exercise dancing twenty hours per week, but that wasn't quite enough to keep my abs trim, and my thirty-something butt needed a little help if I wanted to compete for tips with eighteen-year-old girls who didn't know a porterhouse from a pancake. I knew if I thought about it another second, I'd find some way to rationalize being lazy, so I grudgingly put on my running clothes and headed out to the Strip.

At this hour the street was busy with morning traffic, but the wide sidewalks on either side of Las Vegas Boulevard were a ghost town. I ran past the scattered physical remains of the previous night's revelries: random call girl slips intermixed with assorted beer bottles, cigarette butts, and torn scraps of free newspapers advertising helicopter rides and Lake Mead cruises and Ferraris for rent. I encountered a few underage teens staggering about, sporting guilty grins and bleary eyes as they made a last brave stand before crashing. One kid gave me a double take then made a two-handed gesture and yelled something in Russian (I think.) at me. A Catholic priest stood a lonely post collecting for charity, and a few casino workers emerged from buses and shuffled off to work. I reached the south end of the Strip at Mandalay Bay and headed back. 

I returned to my condo feeling refreshed, and after watching a full hour of
The View,
I figured I had procrastinated enough. It was time to do more homework: I needed to look at the court's file on the Masterson case. Although the court system made some filings available online, I knew their criminal cases were still only accessible in person at the clerk's dungeon of massive file cabinets. The kind of work I hated. Handling paper would probably give me paper cuts, I theorized, and my nighttime customers would not like it if I showed up covered in Band-Aids.

I wanted a babysitter, so I picked up the phone. "Mike, I need to go downtown to the courthouse. Can you show me around?" Mike Madsen was a private investigator who had the misfortune of being assigned as my supervising detective during my first year with a license. It meant he was supposed to supervise my work ten hours a month and certify to the licensing board that I wasn't a complete nut job. An observant Mormon, Mike seemed like a fish out of water in a town that deemed vice a virtue. I harbored a natural suspicion of people who didn't drink coffee or alcohol, but Mike had the tall, muscled body of an Iowa farmhand, and his eyes were big and sapphire blue. And I had to respect the fact that he was a different breed from the skuzzy male clientele I dealt with most of the week.

He didn't sound enthusiastic about accompanying me downtown. "Haven't you been down there a lot already?"

"No," I lied. "I need someone to show me the ropes." I wasn't above using my helpless woman voice.

"All right. But I have to testify at eleven-thirty."

"Fine. You at your office? I'll swing by and pick you up."

That was a relief. The prospect of facing piles of papers by myself gave me unpleasant flashbacks to college, not to mention the aforementioned danger of paper cuts. Mike would protect me.

I dialed downstairs, and they said my car would be waiting for me out front in five minutes. I sometimes felt guilty about spoiling myself with things like valet service, but I'd worked hard for a decade at a job most people found demeaning, and I figured I was due a little pampering. When I got down to the lobby, Tommy the valet (I didn't know his last name.) was leaning on my car with a shy smile on his face. Vegas was full of beautiful people in the most unlikely places, and Tommy was one of them. He was probably twenty-two, but he looked sixteen. He didn't just have boyish good looks—he had jailbait good looks, especially in that tight gray valet uniform.

Tommy opened the door on my silver Audi TT. He blushed and smiled widely at me like a trained chimp, and then he shut the door without so much as a word. Oh well. At least I'd made him blush. I waved and headed out.

Mike's office was about ten blocks from the county courthouse. Downtown Las Vegas was experiencing something of a renaissance, but it was still a museum of 1960's architecture and buildings built primarily for function rather than form. That is the polite way of saying that Mike's office was dumpy. He met me at the street.

"This is your car?" He sounded a little offended.

I hadn't found occasion to tell Mike about my other job, and I didn't plan to. I figured it would be uncomfortable for the guy supervising me to learn that I probably earned five times what he did in a year, not to mention
how
I earned the money. He already seemed a little afraid of me, and I didn't want him offended by me as well.

"Just a little splurge," I said. "I got it to celebrate getting my PI's license."

"
Probationary
license," he corrected as he climbed in. Mike's idea of dressing for court meant a short-sleeved white shirt and a red tie, like a Bible salesman. The shirt looked cheap, but it showed off Mike's tanned, muscled arms. He was about the sexiest dork I'd ever met.

The Regional Justice Center is an imposing, all-business building completed earlier this century at a time when the county actually had money. It's about twenty stories tall, brick and glass, and is made up of a number of rectangular boxes that make it look like a big city hospital. Mike led the way to the clerk's office on the third floor. When we arrived the lobby was empty, and I approached a woman behind the glassed-in counter and requested the
State v. Masterson
file. The clerk, a middle-aged woman whose bold glasses made her look fashionable but not any younger, barely raised an eyebrow. She asked if I knew the case number but then disappeared before I could answer. Apparently she knew exactly where the file was.

The file was not as mountainous as I feared. Mike pointed to a small table in the office lobby, and we brought over the two file folders the clerk had given me. I knew they must have backup copies somewhere, but the clerk watched us surreptitiously to make sure we didn't run off with the file.

"So what kind of case are you working on?" Mike asked.

I pointed to the name on the file folder.

"State versus Masterson," he mouthed. Mike thought about it for a second and then pulled open the file. He dug out the criminal complaint and began reading. "What exactly are you planning to do with this file?"

"I'm friends with Rachel Hannity, George Hannity's widow. She's asked me to take another look."

He folded his arms and bobbed his head seriously. "Uh huh. Take another look at what?"

"She's thinking about a civil case," I said nonchalantly. "Her lawyer thinks they can get a judgment if I can get a little more evidence."

"Wow." He sounded genuinely impressed. "That's kind of a big deal."

No shit
it's a big deal
, I thought.

We pawed through the binders in silence, like two teenagers on a study date. I wasn't looking for anything specific in the court's file, but my conversation with Les Trondheim had convinced me that I didn't know half of what I needed to know about the case. My half of the file contained pretty standard stuff, much of it in the form of pre-trial motions. In college I had spent most of a semester shadowing a criminal defense lawyer, and that was enough for me to forget law school forever. Despite what you see on TV, most legal work involves pushing papers around. The Masterson case didn't seem any different. There had been some motions about juror sequestration and suppressing evidence, but nothing too interesting.

The transcripts of the trial were more helpful. One officer described the gruesome crime scene, a stoplight intersection halfway between the city and George and Rachel's home in the suburbs. I hoped Rachel wasn't forced to listen to that line of gory testimony.

Mike cleared his throat. "The DA called your friend Rachel to the stand about halfway through the trial, and Cody's lawyer made about a million objections along the way."

"Who was his lawyer?"

"Charlie Frank. He's—"

"I know who he is. He was the mob's lawyer, wasn't he?"

"One of the best," Mike said. He had me read a section of the transcript that looked pretty damning for Masterson. Rachel was on the stand testifying that her husband, like most people, would not pause at an intersection and roll down the window for a complete stranger in the middle of the night. The assailant had to be someone he knew, or at least recognized.

"Well," I said, "that kind of blows up the defense's whole car-jacking theory. George wasn't the sort of guy who would stop to chat with a stranger in the middle of the night."

"Nobody is."

Mike sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "Add to that the gun found at his house, and the fact that the killer had to be someone, like Cody, who Hannity knew. And there wasn't really another plausible theory to sell to the jury, either."

"Maybe I can quit right now," I said, only half-joking.

"I wouldn't. You only get one chance at a civil trial, and you don't want to go in unless you've got something rock solid."

Maybe Mike wasn't as dumb as he seemed.

I had read enough of the transcript, and I knew I would have voted to convict Cody Masterson. It was 11:15, and Mike excused himself to leave for court. I thanked him and flashed a big smile. He didn't blush.

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