And Justice For Mall by E. J. Copperman

Author:E. J. Copperman [Allan, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2022-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

PART 2: GETTING OLDER EVERY MINUTE

TWENTY-THREE

‘They had cops everywhere. Every entrance to the mall was covered. There’s video surveillance from every possible angle.’ Angie was sitting on my desk and I was pacing in front of it, unable to harness my nervous energy.

‘And they’ve got nothing,’ I answered her. ‘They have no idea who that maniac was or where she’s taken Riley.’

There had been a regrettable scene in which I had berated Valdez for letting Riley be abducted. It was regrettable because I hadn’t actually cursed out the lieutenant, invoked the name of Trench and then drafted a letter reporting her incompetence to the chief of detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department. I regretted that.

Then Patrick and I had left. There was no point in having Valdez or her aides question us, because we’d seen the same thing everyone else had. At least twelve iPhone videos of the scene had already been posted to YouTube, which had taken nine of them down because Riley’s face had not been blurred and she was a minor. They left the other three. YouTube has an interesting set of parameters.

Live news reports had begun only minutes after Grenade Gertie had dragged Riley off the scene. Even local stations couldn’t get to the mall fast enough, and the twenty-four-hour networks were a good few steps behind them, despite all having Los Angeles affiliates. I didn’t especially care that we weren’t getting great press, but having Riley’s actual face broadcast would, in fact, have been a help. They don’t blur the faces of the kids on the milk cartons because they want those kids to be found. I didn’t know where Gertie had taken my client, but I was willing to bet there were people somewhere between the mall and there.

I’d asked Patrick to drop me off at my office because I felt like I should be at the center of activity and I knew Trench wouldn’t let me stay at police headquarters. I wasn’t talking to Valdez.

And now it seemed I had to learn about jailbreaks. In my years as a prosecutor, I had never had to deal with one. They’re not nearly as common as the movies would like you to believe, which is why they still make the news. I’d never even known an attorney whose client had escaped from detention. This was unwanted, unfamiliar territory for me.

As Jack Schoenberg’s attorney of record, I had been notified by the Department of Corrections of the escape, but had been given scant details. From the incident report filed with the LAPD, I knew that Jack and his accomplice, Peter Lucchesi (‘Uncle Pete’) had been released from their cells for outdoor exercise, which the Department of Corrections referred to as ‘leisure time’, and on their way had overpowered the guards escorting them, stolen various access cards, and made it off the grounds by hitching a ride unseen on a truck bringing laundry supplies. They’d gotten out of the truck somewhere along its route and had, essentially, vanished into thin air.

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