by Dan Decker
“I never said he was.”
Instead of calling her a liar, I just widened my smile.
She let out a sigh of exasperation. “Are you here to tell me that he is done talking to us?”
“I am not here to say anything yet. I just want to know what you found inside.”
“You know better than that.”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
“Was it though? I know you believe you are being a zealous advocate by trying all these things, but law enforcement does not think much of you.”
It was just one step away from saying she did not think much of me, but that was not true, I could see it in her eyes. If she felt that way she would have said so.
“I run interference to make sure you do your jobs, of course, you guys don’t like me.” I chuckled. “Just keeping all you honest.”
“It makes me angry whenever a defense attorney talks about honesty. Especially in the courtroom. Most of your clients are guilty, yet you act like none of them are.”
“Come on Stephanie, you have to be more open-minded than that. You have to look beyond just the day-to-day of your job.”
“I have a dead boy in there. I have to go tell his parents what I found. I have to recommend a shut casket for the funeral. I have to track down this guy’s murderer while you and others like you are actively trying to run interference.” As she spoke her eyes turned to Timothy and narrowed even further.
“It is always nice when you can show up with a ready-made explanation.” I meant to say that from an empathetic perspective, but she bristled.
“I am trying to do my job. You seem to take great satisfaction in keeping me from doing what I need to keep the city safe.”
“The city must be kept safe, but not at the expense of the innocent. Never at the expense of the innocent.”
“When was the last time you ever defended somebody who was innocent? They’ve all been as guilty as Ted Bundy.”
I smiled and walked away, confident that most of this was about our past relationship and not the present circumstance. She did not have anything on Timothy. If she did he would already be in handcuffs.
“Jorgensen.” I turned back. “I know you never believed me on that one, but you should have. He did not do it. As sure as I stand here, an innocent man did not go to jail that day. Just be glad you do not have it on your conscience.”
“How do you even sleep at night?”
I did not answer.
I’m not sleeping tonight, am I?
“They think you did it,” I said without preamble as soon as I got back to Timothy.
“She said that?” An incredulous look crossed his face as he spoke. “She told you that?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t have to. Trust me kid. You go back and talk to her and you wind up in jail for twenty to twenty-five years, if not life. The worst thing you could possibly do is talk to her right now. Just say the word and I go back and tell her you have nothing more to say. We walk down the hall, we walk past them, and get into the elevator. Unless they are going to put you under arrest, there is nothing they can do to stop you from leaving.”
I leaned in. “All you have to do is give me the word.”
“I don’t know. I think you have read the situation wrong. She just didn’t act like she thought I did it.”
I shrugged. “No problem. Just know this. Once my services on a matter have been refused, I never take the case. If you want me to represent you, now is your time to make this decision. I can find some other good attorneys for you to consider should you decide to go with somebody else.”
Timothy looked like he was going to faint and I felt bad for the kid. I did not know what else to do for him, but he was in a bad spot.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “I don’t like this at all. I feel like you are putting pressure on me.”
I did not regret for one moment what I was doing.
“Would you rather I say placating words and tell you everything is going to be okay? Or do you want to hear the truth? I can reach out and touch your arm reassuringly in the same way Detective Gray did back there, but the big difference between her and me is that I will be your advocate. She works for the state. Never forget that. Her job is to put people behind bars. I keep them out. She is better than most, in that she wants to put only guilty people in the slammer, but she has made mistakes. She is making one right now. She thinks you did this.”
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “If you go back there and talk to her. You are only going to solidify that in her mind. Nothing you can say or do right now is going to change that. If you want to talk about pressure, think about what you are getting from her. It is subtle. It is insidious. She has made you believe she thinks you are innocent when nothing could be further from the truth. Everything she has done has been to elicit information from you. Even the innocuous, seemingly unimportant details you have already foolishly given her have been woven into her theory of the case. I guarantee it.”
I looked Timothy in the eye. “I hate to tell you this, but if you go back there you will go to jail, probably for a long time because you’re fool enough to not keep your mouth shut. They like the smart ones. It’s easy for them to manipulate you because you think you can handle the situation. You might be intelligent enough, but you are out of your depth. You are in way over your head.
“It’s the dumb ones they have to look out for, because they’re too stubborn to be susceptible to some of their more subtle tactics. Your one shot is to stop talking to them and retain me or somebody else to represent you. I don’t care if it is me. It is probably better if it isn’t. If you feel like I am putting pressure on you, fine. Go find another attorney you like better.
“I can tell you one thing. Every criminal defense attorney that you are ever going to talk to is going tell you to shut up. You’re in a bad spot. You cannot talk your way out of this. This is counterintuitive, I know, but it’s your only way through.”
Timothy looked like a cornered rat by the time I was done. My heart felt for him, but I kept my face like stone. He needed somebody who could help him. He did not need empathy. He needed my services.
He needed me to tell him the unvarnished ugly truth.
He ran his fingers through his hair, grimaced, looked like he was going to throw up, and then growled. “This goes against my instincts. This goes against everything I am feeling right now.”
“Think like you are an attorney. Pretend you are in my shoes right now. What is your advice to yourself? Do you trust those people back there that are pretending to be your friends or are you going to shut up?
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I hear what you are saying, but it just seems like you’re wrong.”
“I am tired of wasting my time, kid. Go back and tell Stephanie whatever you want but don’t come crying to me. You dig your grave the moment you talk to them. Forget about being on law review. Forget about being a lawyer.
“Forget about your life. Forget about it all.”
I only went one step.
“Okay,” he said with a ragged voice that was so quiet it was barely audible. “Tell them I am done talking.”
May 29 - 5:47 am
The sky was just barely starting to lighten as I took my seat behind my desk with Timothy on the other side in one of my guest chairs. Stephanie had tried to get to him as we had left his apartment building, even going so far as to ride down the elevator and follow us into the parking lot. She had really pushed the bounds of what was appropriate behavior after I had told her my client had no further comment. She kept trying to have a conversation with me that was really intended for him.
It was slick and had almost worked a couple times. I could see the doubt on his face by the end.
I had opened the door to my car and practically forced him inside. Then I had leaned up against it to keep him in while had spoken with Stephanie.
“You got the wrong guy,” I had said after a calming breath, my instinct had been t
o chew her out but that would have gotten us nowhere.
“Let me talk to him so I can figure that out.”
“You know better than that.”
As we sat in my office I could tell Timothy did not believe he had done the right thing as he took a sip of Coke from a can I had fetched from a refrigerator in the back.
His hand shook as he set it down on my desk. I usually required people to use coasters, but I let it slide this time. It had taken everything I could to just get that kid out of there, it was going to be a while before he believed he was in trouble.
“Let’s just start from the beginning,” I said. “When did you discover the body?”
“I came back from the law library where I studied until 3:30 or so in the morning. When I came in I noticed a funky smell and tried to find the source. At first, I thought it was because he had not done the dishes in days, but I later found the smell was coming from his room.”
“Did anybody see you at the library tonight?”
I normally let my clients tell their story uninterrupted so I could get a feel for whether or not they were hiding things, but he was already so badly shaken that he needed the confidence I could provide by showing I was taking charge of the situation.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was deserted. There might have been some people, but I just can’t remember. Final exams start next week and I am not prepared. I need to be studying. Sheesh.” He let out a long sigh as he rubbed his head. “My crim law final is up first. I was studying murder one.”
Then why were you talking? You should have known better.
I shook my head but kept my thoughts to myself. Now was not the time to chastise him. His grip on reality was tenuous enough as it was. I expected him to bolt from his seat and run all the way back to his apartment or to pull out his cell phone to dial Stephanie. She had managed to give him her business card which he now held in hand, fiddling with it as he contemplated his situation.
“Okay. Did you drive or walk from the library?”
The question made him pause as he tried to clear his mind to remember.
“Drove.”
I nodded and wrote this down on my legal pad. It was not so much for me as for him, it was just more evidence that I had the situation in hand.
I was asking questions and taking notes. Hopefully, it would have a calming effect, it had worked before on other irritated and antsy clients.
“Was there anything strange about your apartment when you got to the door? Did it look like it had been forced open? Were there any smudges on it?”
As I waited for him to answer I reviewed in my mind what the door had looked like, but I had been so preoccupied with the obstinate officer that I had not noticed anything particular about it.
“No. Nothing like that. The lights were off when I entered too.”
“When you flipped them on, did anything in the room strike you as out of place?”
He started to shake his head but stopped. “The blinds were closed. That stuck out. We never close the blinds. Not in the front room. We are on the fourth floor, there is no need.”
“Did you open them when you walked in?”
He shook his head. “No. They were still closed when I left.”
“Anything else jump out at you as being different?”
“Nope, that was it.”
“After you noticed the smell, did you investigate immediately or did you do something else?”
“I put my bag down.”
I waited, hoping he would just tell me more details, but he did not. “Where did you put the bag?”
“In my room, on my bed.”
“Was anything out of place when you entered your room?”
“No.”
“Did you check if anything was missing?”
“No, I had no reason to at that point.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I went back out and called for Gordon, but he didn’t answer. That was unusual. He likes to stay up late. He barely takes his classes seriously.” After a long pause he looked up at me. “Took. He barely took his classes seriously. This is crazy. This is insane. How could this have happened?”
I waited to give him a moment to compose himself, after several deep breaths Timothy looked at me.
“I am ready to go on. The questions are helping.”
I nodded. “After calling out for Gordon, I am assuming you did not get an answer. Is that correct?”
“Yeah, nothing.”
“And then?”
“I tried to find the smell. I went back to the kitchen sink, we had a stack of dishes in there, it did smell, but it was the wrong odor and not as bad. Gordon’s door was shut, I tried knocking, but of course there was no answer. I tried knocking again, but there still was no answer.” He licked his lips. “The smell hit me hard when I opened the door. I flipped on the light switch. What I saw….”
“Let’s not go there for now.” I would not need a description of the body. I would have pictures to examine that would tell me far more than Timothy could remember. “Have you been in Gordon’s room before?”
“Sure. Every now and again. I didn’t go in often. He would leave the door open when he was doing things. When I walked around I would see inside, sometimes I stopped to chat with him from outside.”
“Did anything seem out of place?”
Timothy closed his eyes as if picturing the scene. He shuddered. I looked on without emotion. I normally would not have been so thorough about my client’s perception of the crime scene, but I doubted Timothy could have done what he would shortly be accused of doing.
As Timothy continued to think, I studied his face looking for any sign of deception. It was an old habit of mine that I had developed over the years. The thing was, Stephanie was not wrong when she said most of my clients were guilty.
The truth was they were.
And that did not make my job easier. In fact, it made it harder, because they still had the right to due process. I still had to put the prosecution through their paces, making sure they proved everything required before sending my clients to jail, or using the weaknesses of their cases to negotiate better deals for my clients.
Almost all of my clients claimed innocence, but I had begun to develop a sense of these things over the years. Timothy, as worried as he was about the situation, still had a lot of anxiety about his classes. If anything, that seemed to be on his mind more than finding his dead roommate. He had mentioned his concern for his classes several times during the ride over.
This was not evidence he was not guilty but I doubted he would have been killing his roommate instead of studying.
His shock and terror seemed genuine.
“While you are thinking about that, can you tell me if you and Gordon had any arguments?”
“Sure. Occasionally. He slacked off on doing his dishes. He never took out the trash and would leave the place a mess. Let’s just say there is a reason why I spend most of my time studying at the library instead of back at my place. He was loud and noisy. Like I said, almost the exact opposite of me. He came to college to have fun, I came to get degrees and set myself up for life.”
“So, there was tension between you, sounds like normal roommate stuff. Did it ever go beyond that?”
While Timothy framed his answer I carefully watched for any emotion, trying to decide if he was holding something back. I had expected him to say that he and Gordon had a positive relationship, and while I would not put it past Stephanie to claim Timothy killed Gordon because he was a terrible roommate, I doubted that would fly in the courtroom. They would need a stronger motive.
“No. He sometimes tried to get me to do things with him, occasionally inviting me to parties or trying to set me up on dates, but I always politely refused.” Timothy shook his head. “I didn’t like the women he ran with. They were not my type.”
There, I thought as he looked away. There is something right there.
But what was it?
“How did you become roommates?”
“I think I met him on Craigslist. I was just looking for somebody. Anybody. I should’ve been a bit more discerning.”
“Back to Gordon’s room, anything come back to you that was strange about it?”
“Other than the dead body? Nothing. I am sorry. Nothing.”
“Keep thinking. I will get pictures of what the room looked like, so I am more interested in knowing if anything was taken.”
Timothy nodded. “I understand but I am still drawing a blank.”
“Next, I need you to describe…”
The doorbell rang. It took me a moment to process the sound because it almost never did. During business hours we always had somebody here, even during lunch. My first instinct was to reach for my phone because I had a doorbell camera installed at my front door at home, but we did not have anything like that at the office.
Timothy paled.
I walked to my office door and opened it, keeping my face still when I saw Stephanie at the front door with a couple of cops.
May 29 -6:41 am
When I got to the door I recognized the cop who had tried to keep me from entering Timothy’s building. His badge read Officer Hopkins and he looked triumphant. Stephanie looked ready for a fight.
I paused to flip on the lights before opening the door, brandishing my smile like a sword.
“Didn’t think I would see you so soon this morning, especially since you are so adamant that Timothy Cooper had nothing to do with this. How can I help you?”
I purposefully stood in front of the door so they could not slide past me.
“We have a warrant for the arrest of Timothy Cooper. Is he here?”
“Can I see it?”
Hopkins handed it over. I reviewed it. Even though it seemed to be in order, I pretended to study it for longer than necessary while I considered my best approach to the situation.
A moment later, Stephanie spoke. “Is Timothy here?”
“I will let my client know that an arrest warrant has been issued.”
