Hardass (Bad Bitch) Read online

“Don’t use it.”

  I dropped it as soon as my fingers touched the device. “Why?”

  “You’ll be more present if you have to go off memory, and I’m wary of digital files with possible confessions on them. You’re a lefty, so sit to my left.” He motioned to one of the metal chairs.

  He’d noticed what hand I used? “Um, okay.”

  I sank down where he’d instructed and got my legal pad ready for use. We didn’t have much other paperwork to go on. Just the press coverage from the killings and the grand jury indictment. We hadn’t met with the State to get their file yet. That would no doubt be a cornucopia of information—likely all damning.

  The Bayou Butcher had been killing for three years. His victims numbered at least seven, though there may have been more. The bodies were always dumped in remote bayou inlets. Hookers, mostly, who’d been tortured and disfigured before they were killed. Each was missing the pinky finger on her left hand. Trophies taken by the killer, no doubt.

  A chill went through me at the thought of meeting the person capable of such evil.

  Mr. Granade took the seat next to me, his leg touching mine beneath the steel table. “Don’t worry. This isn’t my first rodeo. You’re safe. Trust me.”

  I let out a deep breath. Despite the bars, and the criminals, and the metal everything all around, I actually did feel safe with him at my side. His words with the guard certainly helped. If Mr. Granade wouldn’t let the guard touch me, then there was no chance an inmate would get anywhere close.

  “So, um, I guess I should have asked earlier, but why is he in Angola instead of the county jail?” I began doodling and forced myself to stop.

  “Good question, Ms. Montreat. I asked the same when I found out he’d already been shipped here. He’d been receiving more than a few threats at county, so the State wanted him somewhere safer. That was the story Matt gave me, anyway. I’m certain they just wanted to make it harder for us to get to him.”

  “The State plays dirty.”

  “You have no clue.” He wrote the date and time in a slanting, stark hand, at the top of his notepad. My bubble writing could not compare to his elegant lines.

  “So that Matt guy is on this case, too?”

  “Yep. The second he sees I’ve been chosen as defense counsel, he signs right up to prosecute.” He wrote our names on the right side of the page under the heading “Attending,” mine on top of his and Rowan’s at the bottom.

  “Y’all got some sort of beef?”

  He grimaced and stopped writing. “Something like that.”

  “What hap—”

  The door creaked open and a man in orange (it’s the new black) was led inside. I recognized him from his mug shot and multiple press photos. Tall and slender with a shaved head, his eyes were beady and shifted from Mr. Granade to me and back again. His hands were cuffed, with a length of chain extending from them down to the shackles on his ankles. He wasn’t winning any footraces anytime soon.

  Mr. Granade and I stood.

  “Mr. Ellis.” Confidence radiated from Mr. Granade. His charm switch was officially flipped.

  “Hey.” He shuffled to his chair, the chains jingling far too jauntily for the situation.

  “I’m Washington Granade, but you can call me Wash, and this is my associate, Caroline Montreat. Please, have a seat.”

  I nodded at Rowan during my introduction. He focused on me as he dropped into his seat. The guard fastened Rowan’s chains to something under the table and yanked to make sure it was solid. Once satisfied, the guard left and shut the door behind him. We were alone with a suspected serial killer, one who kept looking at me with too-wide pupils. I began to regret wearing my cobalt blue sexy top for Mr. Granade. I shifted in my seat, surreptitiously moving my lapels closed and blocking the view.

  Rowan still watched me, his gaze catching mine and holding it.

  “Mr. Ellis, let’s get started.” Mr. Granade clicked his pen.

  “I ain’t done nothing.” The accent had a slight Cajun tinge. Rowan finally switched his gaze over to Mr. Granade.

  I took a breath and tried to calm my rapid-fire heartbeat. He definitely gave me the creeps, but that didn’t mean he was a killer.

  “I understand. I do. But I’m going to need you to shoot straight with me. I need you to tell me everything. Every detail about how you wound up here. So start at the beginning.”

  “My mama send you two here?”

  “Your mother is paying for your defense, yes. But we work for you. You’re our client. We’ll do everything we can to get you out of this.”

  “I shouldn’t be here. I don’t need your help. Well, maybe I need some of hers.” He leered at me, his two bottom teeth absent from roll call.

  Mr. Granade slammed his fist down, the metallic clang jolting me. “Cut the shit, Rowan. You are a trial away from lethal injection. Seven women, seven bodies, seven death sentences. Either you cooperate and let us help you or we’ll refund the retainer and let you hang. No skin off my back either way.”

  The guard peeked through the reinforced rectangle of glass in the door. Mr. Granade’s other hand rested on my knee and gave me a reassuring squeeze. His skin was warm, his palm slightly calloused. I shook my head at the guard. We got this.

  “Damn, boy. You ain’t have to yell.” Rowan flinched back in his seat.

  “I do when you threaten my associate. Treat her with respect or we walk.” Mr. Granade’s tone was harder than the steel beneath his fist.

  Rowan shrugged, seemingly conceding defeat. “Whatever, man. Just get me out of this shit. I didn’t do nothing.”

  Mr. Granade took his hand away from my knee, but I wanted it back. I forced my slightly shaking hands to stay on the table, ready to write, instead of grabbing his and squeezing. This was the big leagues. I needed to adjust my game accordingly.

  “Let’s start with preschool. Give me your educational background, your life background. I want a full picture—parents, schools, friends, girlfriends, where you lived, who you lived with, your relationship with your parents, everything. I need to know you better than you know yourself by the time we’re done. You follow?”

  Rowan nodded, his attention now fully on Mr. Granade.

  We questioned him for hours. By “we” I mean Mr. Granade questioned him while I took copious notes. Rowan told a life story that wasn’t altogether unbelievable but had plenty of holes, especially during the prior three years when the murders occurred. His meth habit didn’t help on the memory front.

  Rowan had a normal childhood, good family—wealthy, even—and a decent education. All the ingredients necessary to make a contributing member of society were present, but at some point, he went wrong. Hard drugs and hard living made him look a lot older than his thirty-five years.

  More than that, he did a lot of reprehensible shit. His lengthy rap sheet was one of the reasons the cops got on his trail in the first place. A murder charge he’d ducked five years ago definitely didn’t help—another hooker, her body washing up along the banks of the Mississippi with Rowan as her last known john.

  When we were finally finished and my notepad was almost completely full front to back, Mr. Granade called for the guard.

  “You got any commissary money set up yet?” Mr. Granade asked.

  “Nah, I don’t think so.”

  “All right. I’ll get with your mom to get that taken care of. Here’s my card. They’ll let you keep it. I expect a call from you anytime you have any problems, issues, anything. Got it?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Don’t say anything important over the phones. They’re tapped. And I hope I don’t have to remind you not to talk to anyone about your case. Just Ms. Montreat or myself. Not even your mother. Got me?”

  Rowan nodded and darted his gaze over to me. I tried to fight the feeling of bugs crawling around on the back of my neck.

  “Sorry about that earlier, Ms. Montreat. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “Apology accepted.” I tried
to smile at him. It may have turned out as a pained smirk.

  He didn’t seem to notice and gave me a gap-toothed grin. The guard swept in, unchained Rowan, and escorted him out.

  The second the door clicked shut, I asked the question I’d been dying to ask ever since Rowan started talking. “You think he did it?”

  Mr. Granade turned his blue stunners on me. “What does that matter?”

  “Doesn’t it matter? I . . . I just thought you’d know if, well, I don’t know . . .”

  He watched patiently as I stumbled over my words and finally gave up.

  “It’s our job to give him the best defense we possibly can, Ms. Montreat. His guilt or innocence isn’t for us to decide.”

  “Okay.” I gathered up my things and stood before following him to the door. He rapped his knuckles on the metal, signaling the guard to let us out.

  I stood on my tiptoes and whispered into his ear. “So you’re saying you think he’s guilty, right?”

  He shook his head and shot a smoldering look over his shoulder. “What am I going to do with you, Ms. Montreat?”

  Chapter Three

  Wash

  The ride back to New Orleans almost killed me. What was I thinking when I allowed her to work this case with me? The rod in my pants could answer that question easily. Wouldn’t even need two fucking guesses.

  Fuck. She shifted in her seat, her floral scent circulating around the cabin and making me desperate to get close to her. Too close. Instead of pulling over, yanking her out of the car, and shoving her into the backseat, I rattled off a list of legwork I needed her to do. Of course, the thought of legwork drew my eyes down to her supple thighs, displayed nicely in her short skirt. Thank God for my sunglasses or she’d know I’d been checking her out the entire time we’d been in the car.

  I tamped down my thoughts as best I could. They were almost foreign to me. Had I found women attractive before? Sure. I’d even fucked my fair share. But never an associate. I didn’t fish off the office dock.

  We had a strict policy in our firm—do not date the associates, do not lust after the associates, and certainly do not fuck the associates. I had been the leader in implementing the strict anti-fraternization rule after a few firms in town had their reputations irreparably tarnished by scandals involving too-young associates and too-gray partners. I reasoned any office relationships were a distraction and, as I did with all distractions, I forbade them. Any such fraternization would result in immediate dismissal—it was the rule, and I stuck by it.

  But Caroline Montreat had somehow managed to make me break the rules I lived by from the very moment she walked into the office. It was completely out of character for my partner, Trent, to hire her. Trent Palmer had an even worse reputation than I did for being a hardass, and Caroline definitely didn’t fit our firm’s culture, to say the least.

  I glanced over to her. She chewed her bottom lip and wrote down all my instructions in an unintelligible scrawl. I tried to stop looking at her body, but she didn’t make it easy. Then again, her curves would have been evident even if she’d been wearing a nun’s habit.

  I put my eyes back on the road. I had to settle down and treat her just like I did all my other associates. I was an exacting boss, and I prided myself on encouraging excellence in all my younger counterparts. I couldn’t let her be an exception to that, especially since she already showed so much promise.

  “Tomorrow morning we’re going to hit the ground running. Call over to the district attorney’s office and set a time in the afternoon for us to get their discovery. Document Rowan’s entire timeline and pin him down as best you can around the dates the bodies were found. And I want every scrap of information on this Tyler Graves character he mentioned. Phone numbers, addresses, relatives, everything. I have a feeling he’s going to be useful.”

  Rowan had given us a storied past of all manner of depravity, but one thing stuck out more than all the rest. One of his acquaintances—Graves. Violent and with a penchant for hurting hookers. He could be a perfect scapegoat, the shadow of reasonable doubt I needed to get Rowan out of the death penalty.

  Rowan. What a fucking degenerate. I’d defended several just as bad, but not many who were worse. Caroline’s question flitted around my mind—was he guilty? I honestly didn’t know. His story was plausible, full of drugs and other crimes he’d committed along the road to an eventual early grave. But there were still plenty of nagging questions, ones I needed to clear up before we got anywhere near trial in three months.

  Several things about him worried me, not the least of which was that he gave a statement to the police when he first got popped. Idiot. Of course, he couldn’t recall a word of what he said. Being high on meth while talking to the cops was a sure way to land in Angola for good.

  “So the State will just give us their file? The whole thing?” Caroline chewed on her pen, her dark pink lipstick coloring the translucent top.

  “That’s the law. Only things they can play keep-away with are their own notes and mental impressions. I don’t want those anyway.” I smirked. “You should know this. I realize you didn’t graduate with flying colors, but I thought you did well in criminal procedure.”

  “I was just asking.” She turned toward me, her anger quick before she got it under control. “You said you had an issue with the prosecutor, so I didn’t know if it would be a problem.”

  “Matt can pull some dirty tricks, but he tends to follow the rules on constitutional issues.”

  “What sort of dirty tricks?” She twisted the pen around in her mouth, more lipstick on the top.

  A mental flash of those lips wrapped around my cock had me shifting in my seat. I was out of control. I was able to hide it—barely. When the guard at Angola tried to feel her up, I almost boiled over. It wouldn’t have ended well for him.

  “He’s just an unpleasant person. Let’s leave it at that.” Telling her about my history with Matt Turnbull was not an option. Some things were best left buried, even though Matt showed up with a shovel and proceeded to dig every chance he got. Chances like this case, like every high-profile case I worked.

  “An unpleasant person? You mean he’s a dick?” She smiled. I got the feeling that, behind her sunglasses, her brown eyes were twinkling.

  “Yes. Just so. Thanks for clearing that up, Ms. Montreat.”

  She ignored my sarcasm. “Well, we’re going to eat his lunch in this case, so maybe he’ll be nicer next time.”

  “Pretty cocky for your first time out, aren’t you?”

  “Cocky?” She quirked an eyebrow, her mouth an enticing pink pout.

  We were close enough to New Orleans to get NPR again, so I turned the radio up and let her question die in a story about the lost art of muslin embroidery. She settled back into her seat, but not without a little smile.

  She was playing a game with me. It was ballsy and, I admit, unexpected. I enjoyed watching her move her pieces all around the board.

  She didn’t realize I was the most competitive person in the car.

  Chapter Four

  Caroline

  “He clocked the handsy guard?” Terrell sipped his white wine.

  “No.” I leaned back in my ratty comfy chair and tucked my feet up under me. “Where did you even get that?”

  “Oh, I was just making your story more entertaining, is all.” He took another sip and started flipping through the channels.

  This was our nightly ritual: debriefing and bitch session. We’d been roommates in law school and didn’t see any reason to change it, especially since we’d lucked out and were working at the same firm—even though Terrell went to Tulane, whereas I went to a city school with a less than stellar reputation. I was pleased, even if Terrell’s parents weren’t.

  The New Orleans Lynches were a formidable clan, full of some of the city’s foremost doctors and lawyers. They were dissatisfied that their firstborn had thrown his lot in with an “opportunistic climber” like myself. I smirked at the memory of Terrell re
laying that little bit of intel. Of course, that was back before Terrell had come out, so they just assumed I was after his trust fund.

  Sometimes, I was glad I hadn’t come from money. Then again, I looked around our apartment—far nicer than what we should have been able to afford as fresh-out-of-school lawyers—and was happy Terrell and his trust fund assisted me in living far beyond my means. Cheers.

  I took a gulp of wine. “Mr. Granade was plenty entertaining. Trust me. He was just so, so—”

  “Alpha?”

  “Yes!” I laid my head back and stared at the swirling ceiling fan. “Like, he was the usual him but turned up even more, you know?”

  “Sounds fascinating.” He kept flipping channels until he landed on a show about some woman addicted to eating soap. “Disgusting. We have to watch it. What about the serial killer? Did he tell you to rub the lotion on your skin or else you’d get the hose again?”

  I snickered into my glass. “No, but I have no doubt he would, given the chance. He’s a burnout meth-head who likes hitting hookers more than drawing breath.”

  “Guilty, huh?”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Granade didn’t say, and I couldn’t tell. He’s definitely a bad man, but I don’t know if he’s the Bayou Butcher.” I remembered the way Mr. Granade had touched my knee under the table to reassure me. I sighed.

  Terrell rolled his eyes and turned up the volume on the TV. “Well, did Mr. Granade say if he likes cock? Mine in particular?”

  I spit my wine all over my pajama pants.

  “Hey, don’t waste it! This is some of the good stuff from Lynch Lane.” Terrell jumped up and grabbed a paper towel from our kitchen. “Here, clean yourself up. Raised in a fucking barn, I swear.”

  I snorted as he laughed and plopped back down on the couch.

  I dabbed up the spilled wine and thought for a moment about wringing the paper towel into my mouth. “I’m pretty sure he’s all about P in the V.”

  Terrell snorted. “Yeah, yeah, they all say that until they’re screaming my name, and then I don’t return their calls the next day.”