Sleight of Hand

CHAPTER Thirty

“F*ck, f*ck, f*ck,” Christopher Rauh said as he stomped around his office.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Rick Hamada said. “But there is definitely enough to go to a grand jury. Especially now that we have the ballistics report on the bullet that was found during Carrie Blair’s autopsy.”

Robb and Santoro were smart enough to say nothing. They had already laid out their case and it was up to their superiors to decide what they wanted to do with it.

“Arrest Blair for murder and there is going to be a shit storm,” Rauh said.

“Which I am going to have to weather,” Hamada reminded him. “I’ll be prosecuting, which means I’ll be hit with the fallout if Blair walks.”

“So you’re okay with going for a murder indictment?” Rauh asked.

“We have a body, a motive, strong forensic evidence, and the murder weapon. Yeah, I’m good to go,” Hamada answered.

Rauh looked down at his desk. Then he looked at Santoro and Robb.

“You did good work. I’m proud of you. You didn’t let me stop you from going after Blair.”

“Thanks,” Santoro said. Robb didn’t say anything. She was still pissed off at Rauh.

“Okay. You two work with Rick to get the case in shape for the grand jury. If we get an indictment, you get to make the collar.”

The meeting broke up and Hamada followed the two detectives into the hall.

“I second what Chris said,” Hamada told them. “Let’s meet tomorrow morning and work up this sucker.”

Robb smiled but Santoro didn’t. Stephanie had pushed to go to Rauh and Hamada as soon as they received the ballistics report. On paper, the case looked solid. But Santoro wondered if the case wasn’t too solid. He hadn’t voiced his doubts because Robb’s arguments for going after Horace Blair were based on solid evidence, and his doubts were based on a queasy feeling.



Stephanie had a meeting with an assistant commonwealth attorney, so she walked with Hamada to the prosecutor’s office. Santoro went to the jail and asked the officer who was manning the reception desk for the visitors’ log for the time Barry Lester was incarcerated. Arthur Jefferson had visited several times. Most of those visits had been in the past few days, which was not surprising. Lester’s only other visitor was a woman named Tiffany Starr. That sounded like the type of phony name a stripper or hooker would use, which meant that Miss Starr probably had a rap sheet.

When he returned to his office, Santoro ran Starr’s name and discovered that she was on parole for a narcotics offense. Parole and Probation was on the floor below the Homicide Bureau. Half an hour later, Santoro returned to his office with a copy of Tiffany Starr’s pre-sentence report. Reading a tale of another wasted life was depressing.

Tiffany’s given name was Sharon Ross and she was the daughter of Devon and Miranda Ross. The Rosses were well off, and Sharon had gone to private schools, where her grades were mediocre. Her first brush with the law came as a juvenile, when she ran away from home. Shoplifting charges soon followed. The pre-sentence writer suspected that Sharon was using cocaine as early as the eighth grade and was stealing to finance her habit.

In her sophomore year of high school, Sharon spent two months at a fancy clinic, but rehab didn’t take and she was readmitted in her junior year. She dropped out of school at the beginning of her senior year and married Fredrick Krantz, an auto mechanic who was also a drummer in a rock band that played in one of the clubs Sharon frequented. They ran away to Oregon, where the marriage unraveled. Sharon returned to Virginia, where she faked a résumé and got a job as a bookkeeper. She was fired soon after for embezzling money.

Sharon received probation with a requirement that she go into rehab for her drug problem. When she violated the conditions of her probation, the judge sent her to prison in hopes that tough love would work where all else had failed. In prison, Sharon developed a heroin habit. After leaving prison, Krantz adopted the name Tiffany Starr and began dancing at various strip clubs. That is where she met Barry Lester.

Santoro was about to put the pre-sentence report away but he hesitated. He had the feeling that something he’d read was important though he didn’t know what it was. He started rereading the report from the beginning, and it didn’t take him long to see what he’d almost missed. Sharon Ross’s father was Devon Ross, and Kyle Ross was Sharon’s brother. On the Monday that Carrie Blair disappeared, everyone had been talking about Commonwealth v. Kyle Ross. Santoro tried to remember why. He recalled that there was something about evidence that had gone missing. Then Carrie disappeared and the case was quickly forgotten.

Santoro called the Narcotics Unit and learned that Mary Maguire was the prosecutor who had tried the Ross case. Maguire’s secretary told the detective that Maguire was handling a pretrial matter on the second floor of the courthouse.

Santoro walked over to the courtroom where Maguire was working and sat in the rear. When court was over, Maguire stuffed her paperwork in her attaché and Santoro intercepted her outside the courtroom.

“Judge Stiles can be a real hard-ass. I thought you handled him nicely.”

“Who are you?” Maguire asked, not bothering to hide her impatience.

Santoro showed her his ID. “I’m a detective over in Homicide.”

“Homicide? How can I help you?”

“I wanted to ask you about a case you tried, Commonwealth v. Ross.”

Maguire flushed angrily. “Thanks for ruining my day.”

“Pardon?”

“I was hoping never to hear about Commonwealth v. Ross ever again.”

“Why is that?”

“I had the single most embarrassing moment I’ve ever experienced trying that case.”

“What happened?”

Maguire told Santoro about the cocaine that was mysteriously transformed into fizzing baking soda.

“And Charles Benedict was the lawyer?”

“I’m certain he switched the cocaine, and Carrie was convinced she knew how.”

“Carrie Blair?”

“She was my supervisor. The judge had her come down so she could decide whether to dismiss. She was furious. She told me not to blame myself because she knew what happened.”

“And what was that?”

“She never told me.”

“But she suspected Benedict?”

“I can’t remember if she came right out and said it, but I’m sure she was convinced that Benedict engineered the switch.”

“Has anyone followed up on the investigation?”

“No. Carrie was going to do it. Then . . . well, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you want to know about the Ross case?”

“It came up in something I’m working on.”

“Something involving Benedict?”

“I can’t answer that right now, sorry.”

“I get it, but I wish the worst for that bastard.”



Santoro had discussed Ross with Maguire as he walked her to her office. The important additional information he’d gotten from the young prosecutor was that Carrie Blair seemed angrier at Benedict than Maguire would have expected. On the way back to his office, Santoro wondered whether Blair and Benedict had a history. He also wondered if Benedict, whose specialty was drug cases, had ever represented Kyle Ross’s sister.

When he got to his desk, Santoro looked up the court records for Sharon Ross’s cases. Charles Benedict was listed as the attorney of record in her last two brushes with the law.

Santoro let his mind wander. It seemed far-fetched, but Santoro was nagged by the idea that Charles Benedict might have something to do with Carrie’s murder. He wondered if Carrie had come in contact with the attorney after court on the day she disappeared.

Santoro swiveled toward his desk and searched his file for the log of the information found on Carrie Blair’s office and home computers and Carrie’s phone records. He didn’t find any calls or e-mails from Carrie to Benedict, but he did note that Carrie had run an Internet search on a private investigator named Dana Cutler a few days before she’d disappeared. Why was Blair interested in a private investigator?

Shortly before Carrie conducted the Internet search for information about Cutler, she had called the Department of Motor Vehicles. Then she called a lawyer named Alice Forte and a number in Seattle, Washington. When Santoro dialed the Seattle number he was connected to an answering machine for the Queen Anne Players. Now Santoro was thoroughly confused.