The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3) Read Free Page B

but Marcel, my investigator, is smartly holding me back. He's doing this to give us time to properly prepare the scene and the District Attorney candidate. Once the police are notified and the press intercepts the call, Mira's life will come crashing down around her. The election will likely be lost when the newspapers hit the streets. But right now it appears she'll be the last to know, as she sits on the couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, her face a blank, shut off from the world.
    Her eyes close and remain that way. Marcel looks at me and shrugs. We both look at our newest client. She is still wearing the little black dress and string of pearls that carried her night at the annual Cook County Democratic Party Dinner kicking off the campaign season. It is July and elections are just four months off.
    Her eyes open and swim back to reality. She focuses on me, the attorney she called when she realized there was a dead body in her living room. I say "realized," because Mira is claiming she was in a blackout when the shooting occurred. Of this she is certain: the dead body wasn't on her floor when she returned home from the dinner. She knows this to be a fact because she remembers coming inside her condo and locking the door behind her. The next thing she knew she was coming awake on her sofa. She sat up, dizzy and faint, and that's when she saw the body. She instantly recognized the man.
    She lives alone, a single woman without children, a woman known in Chicago legal circles as a willing sleepover partner and Chicago's very own Escoffier of intimate, morning-after brunch.
    "Are you sure you hadn't invited him home with you?"
    "I did not invite him. We argued at the fundraiser and I came home alone."
    "Did anybody see you arguing?"
    "Only everyone, I imagine. He was loud and under the influence."
    Under the influence , I am thinking. Only a prosecutor would say under the influence . The rest of the unwashed--which includes me--would say he was drunk. Or maybe knee-walking. Or toasted. Under the influence ? Only if we'd watched too much TV. No, Mira was a hands-on prosecutor, the kind who had learned the ropes by trial and error, and her words, while sparse, were always informed, always precise. That was the Mira Morales I knew from having defended three jury trials against her. We had each won one then split the third on a hung jury that went away on a plea after the smoke cleared. The score was tied, so she felt she was neither stooping nor reaching when she called me. I am known for being nuts-and-bolts in my trial practice. I am also known for smoke-and-mirrors. Mira evidently felt like she needed a helping of each. But for right now, the nuts-and-bolts lawyer will help her prepare for the arrival of the police once I put in the call to advise of a dead body in my client's living room. My goal is to shield her from all questions and to guide the inquiry away from her.
    If I can do that, it's a first-round win.

5
    N ot ten minutes after my arrival we are joined by my investigator, Marcel Rainford. Marcel has been with me seven years, a one-time employee of Interpol and Scotland Yard. We crossed paths during that time. He was transplanted to America after a contract was issued on his life by a group of Sicilian Mafiosi upset with the inroads he had made on their European heroin kingdom. The U.S. State Department was instrumental in changing Marcel's surname and hiding his real identity in its cloistered terabytes of bureaucracy. He signed on with Chicago Police Department when he arrived stateside; two years later, he received medical retirement after being shot in the face on a routine robbery call. The wound left him disfigured even after six surgeries. But it didn't affect his investigator's bent for justice and truth--two character defects in my world of criminal defense. But he works hard to overcome his better self. The fact of the matter is Marcel has crossed the line separating fact from fiction, as did I long ago when