Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 4

  I tapped my pen on my cheek. “I don’t know. I’m going to write it down, though, and maybe something will come to me. So, you were with Kayla, your wife was at home, your wife no doubt knew that you were Kayla and hasn’t yet confronted you on the fact that you have a mistress. Go on, what happened when you got home and saw your father-in-law lying on the floor with gunshot wounds in his head and chest?”

  He sighed and hung his head. “I called the police, of course.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, I’m just going to assume that you’re perfectly innocent of killing your father-in-law. We’ll get into why the police are so quick to accuse you later, namely, we’re going to get into the issue of motive. But, for now, I’m going to assume that you didn’t have a thing to do with Judge Sanders dying.” I took a deep breath. “Under that assumption, you were framed, big time.”

  “Of course I was.” He seemed to get excited. “You believe me, then.”

  “I don’t. It’s my job to be skeptical. I told you that I’m only going to assume that you’re telling me the truth. And here’s my thought – whoever it was who killed Judge Sanders left the gun on the scene. They no doubt used gloves. They no doubt knew that you were liable to pick up that gun when you came on the scene. That would be the only reason why they would leave the gun just laying around.”

  He leaned back. “Who would do that? Who would frame me?”

  “You got any enemies? Besides me, I mean?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Where do I begin?”

  “Where indeed? Let me ask you this. What you did to me in college – was I the only one?”

  His face got red. “No.”

  “I thought not. How many other girls did you did that to?”

  I looked at the ceiling. “Five.”

  My blood started to boil. This guy needed to be in prison. He did. I had the chance to put him there, even if he didn’t have a damned thing to do with his father-in-law’s death. Society would thank me for making sure this jackass went to prison for something.

  I wrestled with this while I looked at him. “Five. Okay, I’ll go ahead and put these five women on your enemies list. I need their names.”

  “I can’t give you those.”

  “You will give me those.”

  “No, I literally can’t. They were randos from various parties. I didn’t know their names then, so I certainly don’t know them now.”

  I counted to ten and stared at the ceiling. Was I going to be able to go through with this? All I needed was evidence that this guy might have killed Judge Sanders, and then I could make sure he fried. If I passed him onto a different attorney, that attorney might make sure that he went free, even if he were guilty. I couldn’t chance that. I had to stay the course. As hard as it was, I was going to have to stay the course.

  “Randos. The women you raped were randos. You can’t even refer to them as human beings – you’re dismissing them as randos. As if that makes it alright – you never got their names, so you don’t have to feel guilty for what you did to them. Is that about the extent of it?”

  He paused. “You’re right. I need to be more respectful in my language. Okay, they were women that I met at various fraternity parties. I never knew who they were. I never had them in class or anything like that. I never saw them again. Is that a little better?”

  “Better in what way?”

  “Well, I’m not calling them a derogatory term like rando.”

  I took a deep breath. “Regardless, I would imagine that they know who you are. They’re on your enemies list, whether you know it or not. Now, who else is on your enemies list?”

  He swallowed hard. “This is hard for me to talk about.”

  “Boo hoo. You need to talk to me about this, because I need to know who might go through the trouble to frame you. Maybe I can figure out if there’s an intersection between these people hating you and them wanting your father-in-law dead as well.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It’s like this. Let’s say that you know of somebody who might want your father-in-law dead. He was a powerful senior judge who was quite liberal in a fairly conservative district. Let’s just say that there was somebody out there who wanted him dead so that a Republican can appoint his successor. That’s a good theory. Now, if there was somebody who wanted Judge Sanders dead because they didn’t like the opinions he writes and that person also hates you – two birds, one stone. They get rid of the judge and they get to frame you for the murder.”

  He leaned forward. “You’re being awfully flippant about this whole thing.”

  “It’s not my job to get emotionally involved with the facts. Now, I need a list of people who hate you. I can start to glean, from that list, who might also have a reason to kill Judge Sanders.”

  “I’ll work on that list at home. It’s a long list.”

  “I’m quite sure that it is.” You don’t go through life being an amoral sociopathic douchebag without pissing off a lot of people. That was for sure.

  “Is there anything else you need to know about?”

  “Yes. Was there an autopsy done?”

  “No. Why would there be? It’s pretty obvious how he died. No question there.”

  I sighed. “Seriously? No autopsy was done? I mean, come on. Your father showed classic signs of being poisoned right before he died, and nobody cared to look at that angle?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Signs of poison? Really?”

  “Really. Weight loss, hair loss, depression, aching bones, nausea – all this in a man who was previously healthy. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. That all spells arsenic poisoning to me.”

  He cocked his head. “Huh. Nobody even thought about that.”

  “It can be undetectable. Unless the doctor is specifically looking for it, he might not find it. I’m going to have to have his body exhumed. I hate doing that.”

  “I see.” He nodded his head, as if the light bulb just came on. “Poisoned. Somebody was after him long before he died.”

  “Well, it’s possible that it was more than one somebody. It’s odd that whoever decided to poison him didn’t just let the poison take its course. Why go through the trouble of poisoning him if you’re just going to go ahead and and kill him with a gun?” That was another good question for me to ask. Another answer that I needed to find out. Then again, maybe he wasn’t poisoned – maybe it was all a coincidence.

  “How would he have been poisoned though? I mean, if it’s in the water at home, mom would have gotten sick, too. Same thing if they put it into one of their juices that they drink at home. Why wasn’t mom sick too?”

  I swiveled in my chair. “I guess I’m going to have to go to his office and find out if there’s something there that might have supported the poison. Maybe he drank a bottle of a scotch there and he didn’t share it with anybody.”

  “No. Dad didn’t drink.”

  “Listen, I was an alcoholic. For many years, I was.” I narrowed my eyes. “Mainly because of what you did to me, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyhow, I was an alcoholic. I hid it well from most people, including my family. They never knew that I drank at all. I would go to dinner over there on Sunday and not even have a sip of wine. They all assumed that I didn’t drink wine with them because I didn’t drink. The real reason was that I knew that I wouldn’t stop with a glass or wine or two. I would be compelled to drink the entire bottle. I never wanted them to know about my compulsion, so I just didn’t drink at all around them. Your father-in-law was probably the same way.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Find out if he was a closet drinker. Maybe that would explain where the poison would have come in. How the killer could have delivered the poison.”

  “I will.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Why are you going to have to do all this investigation? Why isn’t the police force doing the same investigation?”

  “Because they already arrested you. I mean, they’ll hopefully do their own
investigation, but they’re not going to look very hard if they already have their man in custody. It’s my job, when I’m working on a SODDI defense, to turn over every stone. That’s the only way to convince the jury that the police arrested the wrong person. That the wrong person is on the stand.”

  “SODDI defense?”

  “Slang for ‘some other dude did it.’ That’s what we’re working with, here – a SODDI defense.”

  Michael picked up my paper weight and examined it. “Harper, I really meant what I said. I’m very sorry for what I did to you. I don’t know why you’re agreeing to represent me, but I’m grateful that you are.”

  I pursed my lips. I knew why I was going to represent him. If he was guilty, he was going to fry. I was going to make sure of it.

  Even if weren’t guilty…I struggled with my desire to sink him anyhow. I remember reading a book by Albert Camus. It was called The Stranger. The narrator in that book was a nihilist. He had no empathy for anybody, no feeling whatsoever. He laughed when a neighbor beat his girlfriend. He had no feelings for his mother who just died. He ended up in prison because he shot a man in self-defense. What I got out of that book was that the guy deserved to be in prison, even if he was really innocent of murder – when you’re that detached from the world and from emotions, when you have no empathy, then it’s only a matter of time until you commit a murder for real. Him ending up in prison was just a pre-emptive strike, in a way.

  And so it was for Michael. He was a serial rapist. He currently was a unrepentant cheater. He had an enemies list. He was just a bad guy. Maybe he deserved to go to prison no matter if he was innocent or not.

  “Well, okay then.” I looked at my watch. “I have a hearing, so…”

  “I’ll give your assistant a personal check. Would that be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  At that, Michael left and I stared at the ceiling. What was I doing? What was I getting into? Could I go through with representing him? Could I sink him if he was innocent? How was my psyche going to handle this?

  Whatever. I had a hearing to go to. Elmer’s hearing. Fun, fun. I didn’t mind Elmer, though, or guys like him. At least you knew what you were getting with a guy like him. But with a guy like Michael…he was slick. Wily. Cunning. Smart. It was entirely possible that he actually did kill his father-in-law. I was going to have to do my own background check of him and his relationship with Judge Sanders. There was some reason why the police were so quick to jump to conclusions. So quick to arrest him.

  They must have known that he had motive to kill his father-in-law – I was going to have to find out what it was.

  Five

  I got into court, and there was Elmer, sitting in the jury box with the other inmates. I wondered which Elmer I was going to encounter. The charming one who called me darlin’, or the unhinged beast who almost killed me.

  I walked over to him, and I immediately found out which Elmer I was dealing with.

  “Hey,” he said, his gruff voice with the slight twang called out to me as I approached him. “You’re going to plead me not guilty today, right? And ask for a trial?”

  “I’m going to plead you not guilty, because it’s usually not appropriate to plead somebody guilty at the arraignment. But I’m still going to impress upon you the importance of thinking of pleading this out. The prosecutor’s not messing around here. You could end up on the gurney before this is all said and done.”

  “So be it.” He lowered his voice, well-aware that if he raised his voice to me that he would be led out of the courtroom immediately. This judge didn’t take that kind of bullshit. “Listen you bitch, I’m your boss. You’re my fucking employee. I call the shots, and I’m telling you that you’re going to try this bitch.”

  I looked over at the bailiff, hoping that he was hearing what Elmer was saying to me. I needed him to step in and help me out if I needed witnesses as to why I needed off the case. Unfortunately, however, the bailiff wasn’t paying attention to Elmer and me.

  “I’m going to ask to withdraw,” I said to him.

  “If you do, you’re a dead woman.” His blue eyes had the dead look that creeped me out in the jail. “And you know what I’m capable of.”

  “You’re not going to intimidate me.” I had been threatened, over the course of my career, by scarier dudes then this one. There was the serial killer a few years back who I pled out. He regretted the decision to take the plea after he got the sentence, and proceeded to send me threatening letters for six months afterwards from his jail cell. He had threatened to send his buddies after me if I didn’t appeal, even though I had explained, time and again, that you can never appeal a plea bargained sentence. There had been the murderer who had cornered me in my office one night after hours. I pepper-sprayed his eyes, and he, too, threatened me for months afterwards.

  Now here was this Elmer guy, rougher than most, and undoubtedly violent. But I couldn’t let him and his words change my mind about him. I had been around this job long enough to know that a guy like him would threaten me no matter what I did. If I tried the case and I went down in flames, as a case like this undoubtedly would, and he got the death penalty, he would threaten me. If I pled him out, he would threaten me. If I withdrew from his case, he would threaten me.

  Elmer was a shit sandwich no matter what I did, so I might as well cut my losses early.

  “I’m going to withdraw,” I said.

  “You can’t. You’ve been assigned to me.”

  “I can. You attacked me and I have a witness for that. And-“

  At that, he stood up, leaped over the short wall between the jury box and the courtroom, and immediately tackled me. I could feel his blows raining down on me, and I felt a sickening feeling that my leg was broken. I had landed wrong, and this enormous man was on top of me, and, because he was so enraged, he undoubtedly had the strength of ten men. I cried out in pain. I couldn’t breathe, and I could feel something breaking. It might have been my leg, it might have been my ankle. All that I knew was that the pain was excruciating.

  All at once, I could feel myself fading to black.

  Six

  I woke up in the hospital. I didn’t quite realize what had happened. All that I knew was that my sister Albany was next to me, and she was talking to Tammy.

  “What happened?”

  “Hey girl,” Albany said. “You got attacked in the courtroom, and now you’re here. And I had to take time off of work to make sure you made it home okay. You’re such a malingerer.”

  “Malingerer? What you talking about?” Albany and I liked to rib each other as being “malingerers,” ever since both of us ended up in the hospital after a car accident and each of us had a long recovery. I teased Albany about faking the injury so that she could get out of household chores, and she did the same to me.

  “I’m teasing. Anyhow, here’s what happened, according to those in the know, meaning the other lawyers who were in that courtroom. You were in there with some fat ass, and he tackled you. The reason why you’re here is because he crushed you so bad that you lost consciousness. You’re the talk of the town now.” She nodded approvingly. “You’re my badass sister, so I knew that even a fat ass couldn’t keep you down.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” I said, feeling laughter coming and feeling a tightness in my chest as I took gasps of air. “Seriously.”

  “Well, we need to get you out of here. Your kids are waiting for you to come home. Isn’t that music to your ears – your kids need you. Bet you never thought you would be saying that, huh?” She shook her head. “The things you do to get off a case.”

  “Am I off that case?”

  “Of course you are,” Tammy said. “Elmer got taken away and put into solitary, and he had a guy assigned to him. I guess the thought is that this guy will respect a man more than a woman, and he might not be as much of a douchebag. We’ll have to see if that’s the case, though. He might end up representing himself, which means that he can appeal any conviction on the g
rounds of ineffective assistance of counsel.”

  “How does anybody represent such a guy?”

  “You tell me. Anyhow, I’ll get the doctor in here so you can get the Hell out of this hospital,” Tammy said.

  She left to go and find the doctor and I looked at my ankle, which apparently was twisted. “This thing hurts like a mother,” I said. “Too bad I can’t take painkillers for it.”

  “Yeah. I’ll get you hooked up with a decent acupuncturist,” she said. “I have some good ones that do a great job with pain.” That was Albany’s main focus – alternative medicine. She was into acupuncture, Reiki, and saw a chiropractor once a week. I wished that I had the time to pursue all of this too.

  The doctor came in and looked at my ankle and said that I was free to go.

  Thank god. I had to get out of this place as soon as possible. Life was awaiting me, and I couldn’t afford to take a break. Not with two young girls needing me, a death case that I was working, and just everything else that was coming at me from all directions.

  Albany drove me home. “Sis, I have to say, I’m worried about you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  She shook her head. “You’ve got so much on your plate, it seems. I just don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”

  “I’m not. Listen, this is my life. And this is actually what I like. Being busy all the time. I don’t want to have to think about things too hard. If I did, I might end up back at the bar.”

  “That’s what we’re all afraid of.” Albany’s hands gripped the wheel. “I know that you have it all together, but it always seems that you’re on top of a house of cards. I just don’t want it to collapse again.”

  I sighed. “So what would you have me do? Get a job at a grocery store? I have a mortgage from Hell, and I need the income from these cases that are coming in all the time. I also have two girls at home and a nanny that I need to pay. Now is not the time for me to be slowing down.”