RESIDENT EVIL PIERSHERRY

Chapter 4

WHEN AGENT WILKINS suggested that he and Piers drive her home
from the hotel, Sherry reluctantly accepted. As much as she was eager to
put some distance between herself and Piers, she didn't want him to think
that his attitude was getting to her.
Sitting in the back of Wilkins's car--at least she assumed it was
Wilkins's car since he was the one driving and she couldn't picture Piers
owning a Lexus--she rested her head against the cool leather seat and
looked out the window. She'd been stuck in that hotel room for so long that
the brightness of the daylight had been jarring and surreal when she'd first
stepped outside. It was nearly noon, which meant she now was going on
almost thirty hours without sleep. She doubted even Starbucks had a fix for
that.
Fighting the lulling motion of the car, she turned away from the window.
With her head against the backseat, she observed the man sitting in front of
her through half-lidded eyes.
Piers Nivans.
She might have laughed at the irony of the situation, if she wasn't so
damned tired. And also, as a general rule, she found it prudent to refrain from
strangely laughing to oneself while sitting in a car with two FBI agents--one
of whom already distrusted her with an intensity that was palpable.
Not that Sherry was surprised Piers still felt that way. She recalled all
too well the look on his face when she'd told him they weren't going to file
charges in the Martino case.
It had been three years ago, late on a Friday afternoon. Earlier in the
day, she had been called into a meeting with her boss, Silas Briggs, the U.S.
attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He'd told her that he wanted to
talk about the Martino case, and she assumed they were going to discuss
the charges she planned to pursue against the various members of Martino's
organization. What Silas told her instead came as a shock.

"I've decided against filing charges," he declared. He said it as soon as
she sat down, as if wanting to get through the conversation quickly.
"Against Martino's men, or Martino himself?" Sherry asked,
assuming at first that Silas meant he'd made an immunity deal with
somebody--or several somebodies--in exchange for their testimony.
"Against everybody," Silas said matter-of-factly.
Sherry sat back in her chair, needing a moment to process this.
"You don't want to file any charges?"
"I realize that you're surprised by this."
That was the understatement of the year. "The FBI has been working
on this case for over two years. With all the information Agent Nivans
gathered while undercover, we have enough evidence to put Martino away
for the rest of his life. Why wouldn't we prosecute?"
"You're young and eager, Sherry, and I like that about you. It's one
of the reasons I snatched you away from Hatcher and Thorn," Silas said,
referring to the law firm she had worked at prior to coming to the U.S.
attorney's office.
Sherry held up her hand. True, she was new to the job, and she
definitely was eager, but she'd had four years of trial experience as a civil
litigator before becoming a prosecutor. Nevertheless, if Silas didn't think she
was ready, she wouldn't let pride get in the way. "Hold on, Silas. If this is
because you don't think I have enough experience to try this case, then just
give it to somebody else. Sure, I'll be a little testy, I'll probably mope
dramatically around the office for a day or two, but I'll get over it. Hell, I'll even
help whoever you reassign to the case get up and ru--"
Silas cut her off. "No one in this office is going to file charges. Period.
I've been around long enough to know that a trial like this will quickly escalate
into two things: a media circus, and a black fucking hole for the United States
government. You think you have enough evidence now, but just wait: after
we openly declare war on Martino, you'll have witnesses flipping on you--or
worse, mysteriously disappearing or dying--and before you know it, you'll be
two weeks into trial without a shred of hard evidence to back up all the
promises you made to the jury in your opening statement."
Sherry knew that she probably should've just backed off at that
point. But she couldn't help herself. "But Agent Nivans's testimony alone will be enough evidence to--"
"Agent Nivans saw a lot of things, but unfortunately his cover was blown
too early," Silas interrupted her. "And while I certainly appreciate the two
years he spent investigating this case, if we go forward with pressing
charges and we don't get a conviction, the fallout will be on us-- not Agent
Nivans or anyone else at the FBI. I'm not willing to have my office take that
risk."
Now Sherry did fall quiet. Roberto Martino and his minions were
responsible for nearly one-third of all drug trafficking in the city of Chicago;
they laundered their money through more than twenty sham corporations;
and they extorted, bribed, and threatened anyone who got in their way. Not
to mention, they killed people.
Going after criminals like Roberto Martino was the reason she had
joined the U.S. attorney's office in the first place. In the dark time surrounding
her father's murder, that decision had been the one thing--in addition to
Collin and Amy's support--that had kept her driven and focused.
Generally, she had liked working at her old firm. With her father having
been a police officer, and her mother having worked as a court reporter until
she divorced Sherry's father and married a pilot she'd met during a
deposition she was transcribing (in his divorce case, no less), her family had
gotten by reasonably well. But they certainly hadn't been wealthy. Because
of that, Sherry had appreciated the independence and security that had
come with the $250,000 salary she'd been earning by her fourth year in
private practice.
Her father had been proud of her success. As Sherry had learned
again and again from the police officers who offered their condolences at her
father's wake and funeral, he'd apparently bragged incessantly to his partner
and other cop friends about her achievements.
She'd remained close to her father and his side of the family after her
parents' divorce--particularly after her mother moved to Florida with her new
husband, who retired from the airline shortly after Sherry entered law
school.
His death had hit her hard.
One late afternoon during Sherry's fourth year at the firm, the
captain in charge of her father's shift called her at work with the grave words anyone with a family member in law enforcement dreads hearing: that she
needed to come to the hospital right away. By the time she'd burst frantically
through the doors of the emergency room, it had been too late. She'd stood
numbly in a private room as the captain told her that her father had been shot
to death by a drug dealer while responding to what they had believed to be
merely a routine domestic disturbance call.
Those first couple of weeks after her father's murder, she'd felt . . . gray
was the word she'd used to describe it when Collin had asked how she was
holding up. But then she'd pulled herself together and went back to the firm.
In many senses, knowing how proud her father had been of her hard work
had made it easier to do that--she knew he would want her to carry on, to
keep going with her career as far as she could. But something had been
missing.
Four weeks after the funeral, she was in court when she figured out
what that something was. She'd been waiting to argue an evidentiary motion
that once would've seemed particularly important, but after her father's death
had felt dismayingly insignificant. Then the court reporter called the case
before hers.
United States versus Markovitz. A simple felon-in-possession of a
firearm case. It had been a straightforward court appearance, nothing flashy,
a motion to suppress evidence filed by the defendant. Procedurally the
motion was very similar to the one Sherry herself was scheduled to argue
that day, so she'd paid attention, wanting to gauge the judge's mood. After a
brief oral argument, the judge ruled in favor of the government, and Sherry
saw the look of satisfaction in the assistant U.S. attorney's eyes.
Since her father had been killed, she hadn't once felt that same kind of
satisfaction.
But that morning, as she watched the defendant being escorted out of
the courtroom wearing his handcuffs and orange jumpsuit, she felt as though
something had been accomplished, no matter how small the degree. Justice
had been served. The man who had shot and killed her father had been a
felon, too. Maybe if more had been done, maybe if that gun hadn't been on
the streets, maybe if he hadn't been on the streets . . .
She could do something about that, she'd realized.
That very week, she applied for an assistant U.S. attorney position.