Breaking Conviction by Greer Rivers
Chapter Nineteen
The hospital loomed in front of them as they sat waiting in Hawk’s sedan.
“We’ve been going to this place too damn much lately.” Hawk spoke low in his deep voice, but received no response. What with Draco being in a coma, the victims they’d saved, Ellie getting hurt a week prior… he’d only said what Wes and Phoenix had been thinking.
Wes blew out a breath before seeing ADA Marco Aguilar coming out of the hospital and waving toward them.
“That’s my cue.”
“Don’t fuck it up,” Phoenix muttered and Wes rolled his eyes. One day he and Phoenix were going to have to have a heart-to-heart, but now was certainly not the time.
“Don’t plan to, asshole. Thanks for the pep talk.” Wes got out of the car before Phoenix could respond or Hawk could reprimand them for acting like children. He’d been having to do it more and more lately, ever since Phoenix decided to be even more of a whiney little fuck.
Marco jutted his chin and straightened his lapels on his suit. “Ready for this?”
Wes nodded and fell into step next to him.
“When’d the government start working on the weekends?” Wes asked with a smirk, indicating Marco’s suit.
Marco mirrored him and looked down. “Man, you assholes called me out of Mass.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry, man.”
Marco waved him off. “Mi abuelita will get over it. If the big guy upstairs is making this possible then I’m gonna do my job. I don’t think you understand how fucking rare this is. I’ve never had a defendant willing to speak with us and waiving his right to an attorney pretrial. It’s practically a miracle in its own right. Strickland’ll be able to ask for one at any moment, but Henry says that for some damn reason the guy’s ready to spill his guts.”
Wes nodded. “What’s the game plan? I think we should work in tandem. I don’t want to ruin any possibility for a case. I know Rusnak’s untimely demise probably—”
“Fucked my cases all to hell? Yeah, no kidding. Don’t tell a judge I said this, but the guy deserved his reckoning. Who knows how high up he was in the chain of command, though.”
“Not too high I’m guessing, since he got eighty-sixed.”
Marco huffed out a humorless laugh. “True. Well, one thing I definitely want to go over is what Investigator Burgess had been working on for the past year. Apparently, there’ve been some women missing over the course of many years.”
Wes almost stumbled, remembering what Naomi had noticed about who he’d inwardly started calling ‘the women with no future.’ “No shit?”
Marco shook his head before scanning the sterile hospital hallways. Wes had no idea where they were going, but apparently Henry had briefed Marco. “Yeah, I’m actually really glad the feds have agreed to work with BlackStone as a private contractor, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to talk about any of this shit,” he murmured. “But here’s the thing, Investigator Burgess saw connections that I don’t think anyone else bothered to, or wanted to see—”
“Or they were paid not to see,” Wes pointed out.
“Possible. But what’s crazy is he wasn’t working on cases of missing women from just Ashland County, but all over the southeast. Many of the ones who were actually found were murdered, overdosed, stuff that could very well indicate they were mixed up in bad shit too. But there were a few he had question marks beside.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re still missing and someone” —he gave Wes a pointed look— “needs to find them. It’s out of my purview as a prosecutor for the county, but someone needs to fucking look into it and the feds are dragging their feet. They are recent missing persons and with the track record Burgess figured out, I’m afraid we might be running out of time.”
“Shit, if the government’s dragging their feet, then we’ll look into it for sure…” They paused their conversation to let a nurse rush past them and halted their steps again when a doctor followed her down the hall. Anxiety prickled over his body and he began to widen his strides. “I think we need to go faster, man.”
“Why? What’s up?” Marco asked, but didn’t hesitate to follow beside him. The guy was nothing like the attorneys Wes was used to working with. He was Wes’s height and build and he kept up with Wes’s jog, like he could do it all day.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, unable to explain his trepidation. “I just have a bad feeling. We need to move.”
They picked up the pace, with Wes following Marco’s lead since he still didn’t know where they were going. After opting out of taking the elevator, they ran up the stairs. With each step, Wes’s heart started pounding louder in his ears and he hoped to God he was being paranoid.
They broke out of the stairwell to chaos as officers and hospital staff crowded around a room at the end of the hallway.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, fuck—” Wes let the curse words fly as he and Marco ran to the room. Loud beeping and shouts echoed down the hallway and Marco and Wes finally met the crowd when officers started pushing them away.
“Sir, you can’t come—”
“Fuck that, Romano, don’t ‘sir’ me,” Marco snapped with all the authority of a prosecutor who didn’t give a shit about propriety. “I was authorized to be here with my associate to speak with Mitchell Strickland. What the hell’s going on?”
The officer, Officer Romano apparently, blanched and backed up a step. “Marco, man, I’m sorry. His vitals went crazy a few minutes ago. I heard someone say something about a heart attack. The doctors have been working on him ever since.” He pointed his thumb behind him with a grimace. “It doesn’t look good.”
As if on cue, the frantic beeping took off in one long beep.
“Clear!”
A low whirring before a loud thump resounded from the room and he heard the doctor repeat herself. But the long drawn-out tone persisted in the silence. After what seemed like an eternity, the beeping stopped and the silence slammed into him before the doctor’s voice rang out.
“Time of death. Nine thirteen.”
Wes closed his eyes and sagged against the wall. He took his glasses off and massaged his eyes as Marco started yelling at the doctors and local cops he worked with every day.
“No one fucking touch that body, do you hear me?”
“Excuse me?” the doctor who’d called out the time of death scoffed. “Who the hell do you think you—”
“I’m the prosecutor who’s going to make sure nothing questionable has happened while you were in charge of a prisoner who’s supposed to be under interjurisdictional custody. Now back away from Strickland.” The cold look on Marco’s face sent daggers at the doctor. Credit to her, though, that she only gulped and nodded slightly. Lesser men would’ve no doubt pissed themselves. “One of you officers, get caution tape and the coroner here ASAP. I want an autopsy, but no one goes near that hospital bed until the feds come, got it?”
Low murmurs of agreement came from the Ashland County officers and they immediately backed up from the door as doctors held their hands up and walked out the door. Half of them probably didn’t even know the extent of Marco’s authority and that this was probably even above his paygrade. But Wes knew from the Army that if anyone spoke in the commanding tone that Marco had just used, nearly everyone would listen.
Marco was on the phone for less than a minute before he leaned against the wall beside Wes. Wes knew he needed to call Hawk. They needed to regroup and figure out their next step, but at this point, for just a second, he needed a breather to understand what just fucking happened.
“So you’re thinking what I’m thinking?” Wes asked, not looking at Marco.
Marco blew out a deep exhale. “Jeffrey Epstein?” Mentioning the infamous name of the man who had been “suicided” in jail years before while awaiting various charges related to sex trafficking.
Even though it was the furthest thing from funny, Wes huffed out a laugh before answering.
“Yup. Mitchell Strickland just got fucking Epsteined.”
