The Good Client

by Dan Decker

  “Of course,” she said, “you shall have anything you need from us.”

  Something subtle on her face told me Winston would have a hard time pinning them down for a discussion.

  12

  Jun 5 - 11:00 AM

  It had been a week since Timothy Cooper had woken me up in the middle of the night. After the initial bustle of the first day, things had slowed down. This was typical for criminal matters, as the system was loaded with many people winding its way through the slow and painful process.

  My first act of business after the arraignment was to terminate Timothy Cooper’s employment with my law firm, Turner, Smith, and Wilson. I had done this without consulting either one of my partners or any of our support staff. The partners, at least, had been supportive of the decision afterward.

  Timothy Cooper had not been happy and had even naïvely thought he would work alongside us as we processed his case, but I was not going to allow that to happen. The last thing I needed was him looking over our shoulders while we worked to save his life. I told him to focus on his studies to make sure that when we got him out of this jam he still had a spot in his law school class.

  Susie and Winston had given me small updates as the week had progressed, but neither had found anything earthshattering and I had other cases with closer deadlines. I had also put off a full debrief of Timothy to give him a chance to cool his heels after getting terminated.

  I looked up when Susie knocked on my door. “Are you still ready to meet right now or do you need to put it off?” She seemed anxious to talk and had mentioned several times how concerned she was for Timothy.

  I looked at a motion I was working on for another case that was due by the end of the day and waved her in. I’d been able to get more done on it than I had initially planned, so I could keep my meeting with her as scheduled.

  “Pull the door shut if you wouldn’t mind.”

  I started immediately after Susie was seated across from me. “First off, has Timothy been reaching out to you?”

  Susie nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been putting him off like you asked me to. He’s worried, but I just told him to focus on his studies.” She let out a low whistle. “He was not happy when I did because he thought I was gonna give him inside information.” She held my eyes. “I told him exactly what you told me.”

  “And he took it?”

  “Yeah, for now.” She leaned forward. “Are you sure you don’t want him helping out? There are some things that he could do, he’s very motivated.”

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not. We must be just as dispassionate about this case as we are for any other. The last thing we need is for emotions to get involved. If Timothy had chosen to hire Keith Williams, would Williams let him help?”

  “I suppose not.”

  I nodded. “What have you found?”

  “Unfortunately, not much. There are security cameras around the school, but they are not on every door. I checked with the security guards and reviewed the available footage, but did not find a video of when Timothy left the building.”

  “But you did find a video of when he entered?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, he entered through the main door. There is a side door that is locked from the outside, most law students use it when exiting the library. I have not yet asked, but assume that’s where he went out. It goes directly into the parking lot and is locked from the outside so it can only be used as an exit.”

  “So, we have a record of when he got there but no way of proving when he left.”

  “That is about the sum of it. I have spent the last few nights in the library, chatting up students who work late, but so far have not found anybody that can say with certainty he was there.”

  “Nothing is ever easy.”

  “No, it is not.”

  “What else have you got for me?”

  “Not much, I am afraid. Hopefully, Winston can find more. I have reviewed the initial disclosures from the prosecutors, but haven’t found anything exculpatory there either.”

  I had taken a couple hours over the weekend to review the information as well and had not been encouraged with what I had seen.

  Timothy and Gordon’s fingerprints were all over the apartment, which was to be expected, and there had even been a few other people who had turned up with prints inside as well but none had shown up when they had been run through law enforcement databases.

  I had just assumed Timothy had told the truth when he said he had not gone into Gordon’s room, but they had found his fingerprints in Gordon’s bathroom, on the mirror, faucet, and toilet. We of course would try to explain that away, but it certainly didn’t help our case.

  I would not hear the prosecution’s theory of the case until the day of the preliminary hearing, but my assumption was that they were going to look at this as evidence that Timothy had cleaned up in Gordon’s bathroom after blowing out his brains.

  We would get Timothy’s side of the story. I made a note to ask him about it but would wait until the right time. I wanted to have a full picture before sitting down with Timothy.

  “Anything jump out at you?” I asked her.

  “No. They don’t have much on him, but there’s also nothing to exonerate him. I had thought this would be a simple enough case, hoping to find evidence of when he had left the law library that would put him still there during the time of death, but no such luck.”

  “Don’t get too down on it. Keep looking, there might be other ways to prove he was there. If we found a couple of witnesses who saw him on the way out, that would be great. Even if we don’t, it doesn’t mean he did it. If you had to prove exactly what you were doing last night, could you?”

  Susie shook her head. “No, I spent most of the night alone in my apartment.”

  “Precisely, no evidence of guilt is not evidence of guilt. Just because we haven’t yet been able to prove he did not do it; it does not mean he did. Always remember that. A lot of people make this mistake, especially those in the media. That may be fine for a clickbait headline, but we must avoid falling prey to this type of logic error. We must be absolutely sure of anything we present in court and we have to poke holes in everything the prosecution does to make sure he is not found guilty.”

  “But the fingerprints put him in the bathroom, it just doesn’t make sense when he has his own.”

  “That could be readily explained by any number of things, it’s circumstantial at best.”

  Susie nodded. “Okay, so what do you want me to do next?”

  “I want you to take a break from his case.”

  My words caught her off guard.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. You’ve been spending too much time on this. I need you to work on some other things, hopefully coming back to this with fresh eyes next week. We still have plenty of time before the preliminary hearing. I’m finishing up with the plea deal for the Lopez case this week and will be turning my full attention to Timothy after that. Don’t worry, Timothy didn’t do it and we are going to prove it. It will just take time. The best thing you can do is let your mind relax and focus on other matters, so when I call for you again, you will be ready to turn your full attention to this with a new perspective.”

  13

  Jun 5 - 1:45 PM

  My phone buzzed and I pressed the speaker button without looking up from the motion I was drafting. It was in the final stages and I was just now reviewing it for typos and clarity.

  “Winston is here to see you,” Ellie said. “Did you have an appointment with him?” I sensed irritation in her voice because I sometimes made appointments without remembering to tell her. Fortunately for me this was not one of those times.

  “Nope, but go ahead and send him in. I am almost done with the Smith motion and have some time to chat.”

  “Will do.” The tension drained out of her voice.

  A moment later there was a knock on my half-open door as Winston pushed inside. He was an unassuming man who was just over five
feet tall. He usually wore cowboy boots that added an inch or so to his height, but that did not help much. He must have figured it significant enough because he always wore them. I had never seen him without those boots.

  “Sorry for barging in on you like this,” Winston said as he strode in, his boots thudding on the carpet, “but I was in the neighborhood and have a few minor developments I wanted to chat with you about. I figured it was best to have a face-to-face before I continued because I have found a couple rabbit holes. I want your guidance on what to do next.”

  “Have a seat.”

  As Winston sat he examined my office as if checking to make sure nobody else was there. This was not unusual behavior. The man was thorough and always looking to make sure he had a full read on his environment.

  “You changed your office up a bit.”

  I smiled, this was something he always did when he came to visit. When we had a scheduled appointment I would usually take down a picture or hide something just to see if he noticed. He had never failed to find what was missing. He took pleasure in this little game we played.

  I surveyed my own office, trying to figure out what he was talking about, but it did not jump out at me.

  “Your stapler,” he said with a wry grin, “it’s missing.”

  “So it is,” I said, trying to remember the last time I had used it. Perhaps one of my staff had forgotten to return it.

  “What have you got?”

  Winston let out a low laugh. “No smoking guns, unfortunately. Which reminds me, have they found the gun yet?”

  I shook my head. “If they have they haven’t told me. They did recover the bullet and it looked like a 9 mm but we don’t have the ballistics report yet. We’re due for another round of disclosures, it will hopefully come soon.”

  “Okay, fair enough.” Winston knew better than to ask for the file. At least not at this stage of the investigation. I wanted him to go out with as little information from the prosecution as possible, even though that took longer, because it meant that he approached the situation unbiased by any information we might already have. That was especially important in this case because of our personal association with the client. I didn’t want any of my suppositions or Timothy’s assertion of innocence getting in the way of finding the facts.

  “On Cooper himself, he is pretty clean. I didn’t come up with so much as a traffic ticket.”

  “That’s to be expected but I’m glad we did it anyway. Did anything else come up on him we should be aware of?”

  “Nothing man. I’ll send you the write up later so you can review it, but Cooper’s done a pretty good job of keeping out of trouble. I’m afraid you wasted your money on that one.”

  “I don’t see it that way. It helps me focus on where I need to put my attention. Did you turn up anything about Timothy Cooper owning a gun?”

  “Nothing, but I haven’t gotten into his apartment or looked into his parents.” Winston raised an eyebrow. “You want me to check into them?”

  “Not yet. We’ll start investigating alternative suspects once we have a better lay of the land.” It was normal for us in any investigation to look at every single person who had a relationship with the client and victim. It often turned out that somebody connected to the client could make a great alternative suspect. I did not expect that to be the case here as both his parents were so well put together, but at some point I would instruct Winston to do some research into them just to be sure.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Gordon had a whole list of priors. Nothing that gave him any jail time, but he was very active as soon as he turned eighteen, making me suspect that if we could access his juvenile report there would be some interesting information in there.”

  I made a note. If we didn’t come up with anything, we might try to get access. Unfortunately, as Gordon was the victim, it would not look good if we were trying to dig up dirt on him, especially from before he had reached the age of majority. It would be a tough sell to convince a judge to give it to me; hopefully, I came up with a better strategy.

  “No jail time,” I said surprised he had so much criminal activity without actually going to jail, “anything that could have been jail time that got pled down?”

  “Some drug charges. Small stuff. No DUIs. A shoplifting incident. He must have had a good attorney, because the charges were all dismissed. He did however spend some time in a rehab unit. I was not able to locate when, but it was long enough ago that I would be surprised if Cooper knew about it.”

  “I’ll ask him.” I made a note in my list of things to talk to Timothy about. There would be a toxicology report on Gordon’s body, it would be interesting to know if there was anything in his system when he got shot. I drummed my fingers on my desk.

  “Timothy came clean on drugs too?” I already knew the answer, but figured I would just double-check. “Not even a rumor?”

  “I told you, nothing. If you want me to look at his apartment, I would be happy to. Or I can take a peek in his car. The apartment probably hasn’t been released yet so it might have to wait.”

  I shook my head. “No access to the apartment yet, but I do have his keys. Once the police are done, we will do a walkthrough.”

  “Is Timothy gonna move back in?”

  “He better not.” I told him that it would look weird if he did and it could be something that gets brought up in court. “We’ll have to see what he does.”

  I glanced at my notes. “Back to Gordon. Did anybody else come up in connection to him?”

  “Yes, but nobody we can immediately finger. He has a bunch of iffy people back from when he was picked up on drug charges, but as near as I can tell he hasn’t had contact with them in several years. He’s not even connected to them on any of the social networks. By all appearances it would look like he has gone straight. Gordon was active on Facebook, posting once or twice a day, some of his ideas were a little bit out there, but whose aren’t these days?”

  “Was he politically active?”

  “Not from what I can tell. He’s not registered with either party. Sometimes he’s outraged about things on Facebook, other times he doesn’t comment on big events that you would think might irritate him based on previous statements. Perhaps he just didn’t follow the news that close and only reacted to things when he heard about them through other sources.”

  “What kind of student was he?”

  “Ah, I was getting to that. Here’s the funny thing. Cooper was under the impression Gordon was studying, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gordon is not enrolled in any school I can find. Maybe he was doing something online, but nothing around here.”

  I made another note so I could talk with Timothy about that, perhaps he knew more. It was not uncommon these days for people to take classes online.

  “Did Timothy say anything about his relationship with Gordon?” Winston asked.

  “I’m not gonna comment on anything Timothy told me.”

  Winston just nodded. If I didn’t tell him something it was because I had a reason and he had learned to trust me. He was used to me limiting the supply of information, at least until right before trial when I would have him review everything and give me some of his theories after I had formulated my own.

  “I have not yet done interviews of people that knew Gordon or Timothy, do you want me to start?”

  I drummed my fingers on the desk again. I had nothing else to go on. Not even somebody I could think of as a likely candidate for having done this, other than Timothy.

  “Let’s start with their neighbors and see if they heard anything.” The police would have already canvassed through them, but perhaps they missed or neglected to mention something that could be relevant to us.

  14

  Jun 7 - 11:45 AM

  I pulled the key to Timothy’s apartment out from my pocket, conscious of the security camera down the hall. As I put it into the lock and turned it, I felt like I was about to violate my client’s pers
onal space even though he knew I was going to do this at some point. It was essential I had my own view of the crime scene but it was unusual for me to have direct access like this without having to go through some sort of red tape or permissions process. It felt wrong somehow, though I could not think of any law or ethical rule I was breaking.

  I rapped on the door twice before I opened it, just to be sure nobody was home. It was unlikely I would find somebody here, but I figured it best to give a warning. The last thing I wanted was to surprise somebody and have to deal with a tense situation.

  After a moment, I pulled the door open and walked inside.

  The blinds were shut, just as Timothy had described the morning of the murder, so I used an elbow to turn on the light switch. After that I pulled latex gloves out of my bag and put them on.

  Even though the police investigation was complete, I wanted to disturb this place as little as possible while I did my own review. The last thing I wanted was to leave any trace I had ever been here, especially if the police decided to come back for another visit, which happened from time to time.

  I had intentionally not told Timothy that I was coming because I knew he would want to come with me. Perhaps this was why I was feeling a little weird about entering his apartment even though he had given me his keys with the expectation I would. I had not told him the scene had been released because I wanted to get here before he had a chance to mess with things.

  I inhaled deeply, the stench Timothy had described was gone but I caught the faint hint of bleach.

  From another pocket I pulled out a small digital camera and started snapping pictures. I preferred this to my phone because it had a higher resolution and I tried to avoid putting client files on my phone.

  I began with the kitchen.