Page 39 of Charmed Forces

I gulped. Me. Of course, me! And that would definitely be a smoking gun. Sure, it could be proved that I wasn’t the killer, but could it be proved I didn’t tamper with the evidence to aid my brother? Probably not.

That left me in a quandary: my hope for the camera footage to exonerate Daniel clashing with my hope there wasn’t any so I wouldn’t be considered a suspect.

“I can talk my way out of it,” I decided. “I went for a jog. So what if it was near Sun Street? I was trying out a new route. How am I supposed to know what my brother does at work? I came home. I went out for ice cream. Nothing unusual. I told Captain Brandt as much already.”

“Stick to that and fight any temptation to embellish,” said Solomon. “Keep being perplexed.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” I said. I walked into the living room to check the TV again but there were no updates. My phone had a couple of messages from my parents and I shot off a quick reply:Leads to follow. No developments yet.It wasn’t enough, but had to suffice. Lily wanted to know if I’d heard anything and told me she was opening the bar again today.

“I want to see what’s on at the courthouse,” I said after Solomon made another call to one of the teams he had out on assignment. “Ready?”

“You bet.”

The courthouse was an imposing building with twenty steps to ascend from street level and six stone columns at the entry with beautiful scrollwork from bottom to top. The ten-foot-tall oak doors were original, although the metal detectors and X-ray machines were definitely from my generation. I handed my purse to the guard, stepped through the machine and it beeped. A moment later, and one belt lighter, I was returned my possessions and waved on.

Inside, we headed to one of the large digital displays positioned in the airy lobby. “How are we supposed to narrow this down?” I asked, gazing at the unexpected number of cases on the screen.

“Look for anything that has a closed hearing over the next week. If this is a highly sensitive case, it’ll likely be that one.”

“This only displays the hearings for today and tomorrow and nothing is closed,” I said as I scrolled through. Next to me Solomon was scrolling on his phone. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Checking the courthouse website for any special interest cases. The kind that might attract media attention. They alert journalists to such cases. I found three but none of them appear to be the kind we’re looking for. Let’s head over to the records office.”

Once we got to the front of the short queue, the surly clerk at the records office listened to our request, then tapped a few keys. “Can you be more specific?” she asked.

“The prosecutor will be the state,” said Solomon.

“Yeah, that narrows it down,” she snorted. “There was a sealed case on Thursday but the District Attorney put in a motion first thing this morning to postpone.”

“Can you tell me who the defendant is?”

“What part of sealed case don’t you get?” she asked as she looked over the rims of her glasses. “All the documents are sealed.”

“And that’s the only case like it this week?”

“That’s correct.”

“Thanks for your help,” said Solomon. As we walked away, he said, “We’ll get the information another way.”

“The DA?”

“Probably not. If this is the case we’re looking for and their witnesses are dead, they’re probably spitting feathers already. The office will be in chaos and they’ll be looking for any person to blame. Let’s not offer ourselves up.”

By the time we reached the agency, Delgado was already there. Our resident tech wizard, Lucas had also joined him, a tablet in hand, and the four of us moved into the boardroom. I wanted to ask Lucas how he managed to down the power grid but decided I was better off not knowing.

“The courthouse confirmed there’s a sealed case on Thursday that’s now been postponed. I want to know what it is,” said Solomon. “The prosecutor is the DA. We need the name or names of the defendant and the particulars of the case. Each party should have shared their witness list by now so I want to see that too.”

“We also need to know what the police know,” I said.

“Do you want me to hack MPD?” asked Lucas as casually as if he were asking for his meal to be “super-sized.”

“No, I’ll just access the hive mind,” I said, thinking about my family members. If Garrett was being frozen out, would he know anything else? Jord worked burglary, not murder cases so I doubted he knew anything either. But what about one of my aunts, uncles, or cousins? Many of them were beat cops and between them they probably knew everybody on the force. “And I think I might check out the morgue too.”

“Glad you volunteered for that,” said Delgado. “Lucas and I can handle the information search.”

“Let’s be quick, people. As soon as Daniel’s name is released to the press, there’s a chance all our sources will dry up,” said Solomon.

“I’m not sure they’ll do that,” I said when something occurred to me. “If there’s any suggestion Daniel is a dirty cop, every case he’s ever been involved in will come under the spotlight. That will be a big mess for MPD as well as the DA.”

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