“Well now you know—yes, I feel the same. Tomorrow night?” Bree leaned over and softly kissed Tess. “You poor baby. You’ve had an awful day.”
“My place?”
“As long as I don’t have to sleep on the sofa,” Bree replied.
Tess clucked her tongue. “Sleeping? That’s not on my agenda.”
Bree was sitting across from Tess at her kitchen table and multiple half-empty food cartons were scattered between their two finished dinner plates. It was now Saturday evening, and they each had a refilled glass of wine in front of them.
They’d discussed potential professional issues that might arise at work because of a relationship, and they’d both agreed that love conquered all—they’d make whatever changes to their careers deemed necessary if such an issue arose. Then they moved to the topic of what the police chief had discovered.
“Okay, down to business. Stella Myers called me this afternoon,” Tess said. “This was after she’d talked to your friend, Ned Donahue.” Bree cringed. “She told me that the guy who attacked me last night is in deep trouble. His confession corroborates other information that the Commission’s investigators have gathered so far. The complaints about some of our colleagues were filed by a couple of crime victims who claim the outcomes of trials were influenced by bribes, but it’s likely those complaints were just the tip of things.”
Bree’s eyes widened and Tess continued.
“So, are you ready for the details of what she told me?”
“I’ve been dying to know.” Bree leaned forward. “Go on.”
“First, the Commission will now undoubtedly pursue formal proceedings, but their options are limited. With what Stella discovered, her department, in addition to the county sheriff, are turning things over to the FBI—corruption of public officials is in their jurisdiction at all government levels, and this looks big.” Tess took a long draw of her wine before she moved on to the events of the night before. “The man who attacked me last night was Nick Hatchett. He was the guy who approached youat Maria’s Café, literally the bagman for this enterprise. He’s the guy on the outside who does the legwork. The liaison. Arranges, collects, and delivers payoffs.”
“Why approach me?” Bree asked.
“You’re new. Testing the waters to see if you were open to recruitment. You’re hearing criminal cases, and those seem to have been the most lucrative. The traffic court was also involved—bribe-based quashing of traffic violations. But let me back up. The short of it is that it was about bribes—money paid to encourage a certain outcome.”
“And last night? Your attack?” Bree asked.
“I’m getting there. It seems I was taking my new position too seriously, asking for too much information. For the original random case-assignment documents that the final case calendars were built from. They were afraid I’d dig deeper, notice a pattern in the change in assignments, changes made to facilitate judicial bribery. My first show of interest in the assignments triggered the attempt to run me off the road, and then my follow-up requests this past week must have panicked them. Hatchett even caused the fender bender involving Bernard’s wife so he wouldn’t be available to walk me out to my car.”
“It sounds like this Nick Hatchett has gone from bagman to hitman.”
“We’ve both seen it,” Tess replied. “What some people will do to protect a lucrative endeavor.”
“Who all is involved?” Bree wasn’t stunned. “Who was this guy working with in our courthouse?”
“I know you’ve got a stake in this, but one thing at a time.” Tess pointed at her scar. “This was the result of a big bribe in a drug case. A case initially randomly assigned to me. After the case assignments were already set, a person with more money than ethics decided to make a very big bribe to help his repeat-offender, drug-dealing son avoid his third strike. There was a sudden need for me to be out of the picture, off the case.”
“So you were shot? Extreme.” Bree’s tone was now incredulous. “Same guy as last night?”
“It seems Hatchett took it into his own hands to solve the problem.”
“But what’s his connection to the court?” Bree asked.
“He’s Alan Larkin’s stepbrother. He receives a significant bankable cut. I did notice when I was reviewing calendars yesterday that after I was shot, Alan picked up the case thanks to some interesting juggling.”
“Holy smokes, I didn’t see all this coming.” Bree paused and Tess watched her as the gears were obviously turning. “Was Huffington throwing cases too then?”
“Not according to Hatchett.”
“So, Huffington’s just an asshole, but not a crook,” Bree replied, and they both chuckled.
“And Vera’s involved in the voiding of traffic violations. And guess who else is tangled up in this?”
Bree spent a moment thinking. “Someone had to be fixing the case assignments. I can’t believe this, but I’d have to guess that Helene’s in on it.”
“You’d be guessing correctly, according to Hatchett. She’s the one who sounded the alarm on my calendar requests.”
“Is that it? Alan, Vera, and Helene?”
