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Fat Tuesday
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ISBN-13: 9781538712665
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication Date: 04-03-2018
Pages: 464
Product Dimensions: 5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.30(d)
Sandra Brown is the author of seventy-two New York Times bestsellers. There are over eighty million copies of her books in print worldwide, and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. She lives in Texas. For more information you can visit www.SandraBrown.net.
CHAPTER ONE
"He'll walk." Burke Basile extended the fingers of his right hand,
then formed a tight fist. This flexing motion had recently become
an involuntary habit. "There's not a chance in hell they'll convict."
Captain Douglas Patout, commander of Narcotics and Vice of
the New Orleans Police Department, sighed discouragingly.
"Maybe."
"Not 'maybe.' He'll walk," Burke repeated with resolve.
After a moment, Patout asked, "Why did Littrell assign this
particular assistant to prosecute this case? He's a newcomer, been
living down here only a few months, a transplant from up north.
Wisconsin or someplace. He didn't understand the ... the
nuances of this trial."
Burke, who'd been staring out the window, turned back into
the room. "Pinkie Duvall understood them well enough."
"That golden-tongued son of a bitch. He loves nothing better
than to hammer the NOPD and make us all look incompetent."
Although it pained him to compliment the defense lawyer,
Burke said, "You gotta hand it to him, Doug, his closing argument
was brilliant. It was blatantly anti-cop, but just as blatantly
pro-justice. All twelve jurors were creaming on every word." He
checked his wristwatch. "They've been out thirty minutes. I
predict another ten or so ought to do it."
"You really think it'll be that quick?"
"Yeah, I do." Burke took a seat in a scarred wooden
armchair. "When you get right down to it, we never stood a
prayer. No matter who in the D.A.'s office tried the case, or how
much fancy legal footwork was done on either side, the sad fact
remains that Wayne Bardo did not pull the trigger. He did not fire
the bullet that killed Kev."
"I wish I had a nickel for every time Pinkie Duvall said that
during the trial," Patout remarked sourly. " 'My client did not fire
the fatal bullet.' He chanted it like a monk."
"Unfortunately, it's the truth."
They'd tramped this ground at least ten thousand
times--ruminating, speculating, but always returning to that one
irreversible, unarguable, unpalatable certainty: The accused on
trial, Wayne Bardo, technically had not shot to death Detective
Sergeant Kevin Stuart.
Burke Basile wearily massaged his shadowed eye sockets,
pushed back his unkempt wavy hair, smoothed down his
mustache, then restlessly rubbed his palms against the tops of his
thighs. He flexed the fingers of his right hand. Finally, he set his
elbows on his knees and stared vacantly at the floor, his shoulders
dejectedly hunched forward.
Patout observed him critically. "You look like hell. Why don't
you go out and have a cigarette?"
Burke shook his head.
"Coffee? I'll go get it for you, bring it back so you don't have
to face the media."
"No, but thanks."
Patout sat down in the chair next to Burke's. "Let's not write it
off as a defeat yet. Juries are tricky. You think you've got some
bastard nailed, he leaves the courthouse a free man. You're
practically assured an acquittal, they bring in a guilty verdict, and
the judge opts for the maximum sentence. You never can tell."
"I can tell," Burke said with stubborn resignation. "Bardo will
walk."
For a time, neither said anything to break the heavy silence.
Then Patout said, "Today's the anniversary of the Constitution of
Mexico."
Burke looked up. "Pardon?"
"The Mexican Constitution. It was adopted on February 5. I
noticed it on my desk calendar this morning."
"Huh."
"Didn't say how many years ago. Couple of hundred, I guess."
"Huh."
That conversation exhausted, they fell silent again, each lost in
his thoughts. Burke was trying to figure out how he was going to
handle himself the first few seconds after the verdict was read.
From the start he'd known that there would be a trial. Pinkie
Duvall wasn't about to plea-bargain what he considered to be a
shoo-in acquittal for his client. Burke had also known what the
outcome of the trial would be. Now that the moment of truth
was--if his prediction proved correct--approaching, he geared
himself up to combat the rage he knew he would experience when
he watched Bardo leave the courthouse unscathed.
God help him from killing the bastard with his bare hands.
A large, noisy housefly, out of season and stoned on
insecticide, had somehow found its way into this small room in the
Orleans Parish courthouse, where countless other prosecutors and
defendants had sweated anxiously while awaiting a jury's verdict.
Desperate to escape, the fly was making suicidal little pflats against
the windowpane. The poor dumb fly didn't know when he was
beaten. He didn't realize he only looked a fool for his vain
attempts, no matter how valiant they were.
Burke snuffled a self-deprecating laugh. Because he could
identify with the futility of a housefly, he knew he'd hit rock
bottom.
When the knock came, he and Patout glanced first at each
other, then toward the door, which a bailiff opened. She poked
her head inside. "They're back."
As they moved toward the door, Patout checked the time,
murmuring, "Son of a gun. Ten minutes." He looked at Burke.
"How'd you do that?"
But Burke wasn't listening. His concentration was focused on
the open doors of the courtroom at the end of the corridor.
Spectators and media streamed through the portal with the
excitement of Romans at the Colosseum about to witness the
spectacle of martyrs being devoured by lions.
Kevin Stuart, husband, father, damn good cop, and best
friend, had been martyred. Like many martyrs throughout history,
his death was the result of betrayal. Someone Kev trusted,
someone who was supposed to be on his side, furthering his
cause, backing him up, had turned traitor. Another cop had tipped
the bad guys that the good guys were on the way.
One secret phone call from someone within the division, and
Kevin Stuart's fate had been sealed. True, he'd been killed in the
line of duty, but that didn't make him any less dead. He'd died
needlessly. He'd died bloody. This trial was merely the mopping
up. This trial was the costly and time-consuming exercise a
civilized society went through to put a good face on letting a
scumbag go free after ending the life of a fine man.
Jury selection had taken two weeks. From the outset, the
prosecutor had been intimidated and outsmarted by the defense
attorney, the flamboyant Pinkie Duvall, who had exercised all his
preemptory challenges, handpicking a perfect jury for his client
with hardly any argument from the opposition.
The trial itself had lasted only four days. But its brevity was
disproportionate to the interest in its outcome. There'd been no
shortage of predictions.
The morning following the fatal incident, the chief of police was
quoted as saying, "Every officer on the force feels the loss and is
taking it personally. Kevin Stuart was well respected and well
liked among his fellow policemen. We're using all the resources
available to us to conduct a complete and thorough investigation
into the shooting death of this distinguished officer."
"It should be an open-and-shut case," one pundit had
editorialized in the Times Picayune the day the trial commenced.
"An egregious mistake on the part of the NOPD has left one of its
own dead. Tragic? Definitely. But justification to pin the blame on
an innocent scapegoat? This writer thinks not."
"The D.A. is squandering taxpayers' money by forcing an
innocent citizen to stand trial for a trumped-up charge, one
designed to spare the New Orleans Police Department the public
humiliation that it deserves over this incident. Voters would do
well to take into account this farce when District Attorney Littrell
comes up for reelection." This quote was from Pinkie Duvall,
whose "innocent citizen" client, Wayne Bardo, ne Bardeaux, had a
list of prior arrests as long as the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
Pinkie Duvall's involvement in any court case guaranteed
extensive media coverage. Everyone in public service, every
elected official, wanted to hitch a ride on the bandwagon of free
publicity and had used the Bardo trial as a forum for his or her
particular platform, whatever that might be. Unsolicited opinions
were as lavishly strewn about as colored beads during Mardi
Gras.
By contrast, since the night of Kev Stuart's death, Lieutenant
Burke Basile had maintained a stubborn, contemptuous silence.
During the pretrial hearings, through all the motions filed with the
court by both sides, amid the frenzied hype created by the media,
nothing quotable had been attributed to the taciturn narcotics
officer whose partner and best friend had died from a gunshot
wound that night when a drug bust went awry.
Now, as he tried to reenter the courtroom to hear the verdict,
in response to the reporter who shoved a microphone into his face
and asked if he had anything to say, Burke Basile's succinct reply
was, "Yeah. Fuck off."
Captain Patout, recognized by reporters as someone in
authority, was detained as he tried to follow Burke into the
courtroom. Patout's statements were considerably more
diplomatic than those of his subordinate, but he stated
unequivocally that Wayne Bardo was responsible for Stuart's
death and that justice would be served only if the jury returned a
guilty verdict.
Burke was already seated when Patout rejoined him. "This
can't be easy for Nanci," he remarked as he sat down.
Kev Stuart's widow was seated in the same row as they, but
across the center aisle. She was flanked by her parents. Leaning
forward slightly, Burke caught her eye and gave her a nod of
encouragement. Her return smile was weak, suggesting no more
optimism than he felt.
Patout waved to her in greeting. "On the other hand, she's a
trouper."
"Yeah, when her husband's gunned down in cold blood, you
can count on Nanci to rise to the occasion."
Patout frowned at Basile's sarcasm. "That was an unnecessary
crack. You know what I meant." Burke said nothing. After a
moment, with forced casualness, Patout asked, "Will Barbara be
here?"
"No."
"I thought she might come to lend you moral support if this
doesn't go our way."
Burke didn't wish to expound on why his wife chose not to
attend the proceedings. He said simply, "She told me to call her
soon as I know."
Vastly different moods emanated from the camps of the
opposing sides. Burke shared Patout's estimation that the assistant
D.A. had done a poor job of prosecuting the case. After lamely
limping through it, he now was seated at his table, bouncing the
eraser end of a pencil off a blank legal tablet on which was jotted
not a single notation. He was nervously jiggling his left leg, and
looking like he'd rather be doing just about anything else, including
having a root canal.
While at the defense table, Bardo and Duvall seemed to be
sharing a whispered joke. Both were chuckling behind their hands.
Burke would be hard pressed to say which he loathed
more--the career criminal or his equally criminal attorney.
When Duvall was distracted by an assistant from his office and
turned away to scan a sheaf of legal documents, Bardo leaned
back in his chair, steepled his fingers beneath his chin, and gazed
ceilingward. Burke seriously doubted the son of a bitch was
praying.
As though he'd been beckoned by Burke's hard stare, Bardo
turned his head. Connecting with Burke's gaze were flinty dark
eyes, which he doubted had ever flickered with a twinge of
conscience. Lizard-thin lips parted to form a chilling smile.
Then Bardo dropped one eyelid in a wink.
Burke would have come out of his chair and lunged toward
Bardo if Patout, who'd witnessed the insolent gesture, hadn't
grabbed Burke by the arm and restrained him.
"For chrissake, don't do something stupid." In a tense
undertone he said, "Fly off the handle, and you'll be playing right
into the hands of those bastards. You'll lend truth to every
negative allegation they made about you during this trial. Now if
that's what you want, go ahead."
Refusing to honor the reprimand even with a comeback, Burke
yanked his arm free of his superior's grasp. Smug grin still in place,
Bardo faced forward again. Seconds later, the court was called to
order and the judge resumed the bench. In a voice as syrupy as
the sap that dripped from summer honeysuckle, he admonished
everyone to conduct himself in an orderly "maunnah"
when the verdict was handed down, then he asked an aide
to summon the jury.
Seven men and five women filed into the jury box. Seven men
and five women had voted unanimously that Wayne Bardo was
not guilty of the shooting death of Detective Sergeant Kevin
Stuart.
It was what Burke Basile had expected, but it was harder to
accept than he'd imagined, and he had imagined that it would be
impossible.
Despite the judge's instructions, spectators failed to restrain or
conceal their reactions. Nanci Stuart uttered a sharp cry, then
crumpled. Her parents shielded her from the lights of the video
cameras and the rapacious reporters who swarmed her.
The judge thanked the jury and dismissed them; then, as soon
as court was loudly and formally adjourned, the ineffectual
prosecutor quickly stuffed his blank legal pad into his new-looking
attache case and walked up the center aisle as though it had just
been announced that the building was on fire. He avoided making
eye contact with Burke and Patout.
Burke mentally captioned the expression on his face: It's not
my fault. You win some, you lose some. No matter what, the
paycheck comes on Friday, so get over it.
"Asshole," Burke muttered.
Predictably, there was jubilation at the defense table and the
judge had given up trying to control it. Pinkie Duvall was waxing
eloquent into the media microphones. Wayne Bardo was shifting
from one Bally loafer to the other, looking complacently bored as
he shot his cuffs. His stone-studded cuff links glittered in the TV
lights. Burke noted that his olive-complexioned forehead wasn't
even damp. The son of a bitch had known he had this rap licked,
just as he'd beaten all the others.
Patout, acting as spokesman for the NOPD since the incident
involved his division, was busy fending off reporters and their
questions. Burke kept Bardo and Duvall in his sights as
they triumphantly worked their way through the crowd of
reporters toward the exit. They dodged no microphones or
cameras. Indeed, Duvall cultivated and relished publicity, so he
basked in the spotlight. Unlike the prosecutor, they were in no
hurry to leave and in fact loitered to receive the accolades of
supporters.
Nor did they avoid making eye contact with Burke Basile.
On the contrary, each slowed down when he reached the end
of the row where Burke stood, right hand flexing and releasing at
his side. Each made a point of looking Burke straight in the eye.
Wayne Bardo even went so far as to lean forward and
whisper a hateful, but indefensible fact. "I didn't shoot that cop,
Basile. You did."
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