The Good Client

by Dan Decker

  “I wouldn’t assume it was a pistol,” Winston said. “Some rifles shoot 9 mm.” I looked at him. “A rifle is easier to shoot and almost anybody could have done it from that distance.”

  “Good to know,” I said while looking down.

  The couch was in between me and Winston.

  A tear in the fabric I had noticed before but had not thought much about, jumped out at me. Something looked off about that part of the couch from this perspective, like there was a small bulge or something.

  I pressed my hand against it.

  Something felt off.

  When I applied more pressure, I was sure now that there something hard on the other side. It was so subtle that I could not blame the police for missing this. Winston came to see what I was doing as I pushed my gloved hand into the fabric, feeling a little like a doctor performing surgery. When my fingers wrapped around something hard, my heart was suddenly in my throat.

  I pulled out a small pistol.

  We had just found the smoking gun.

  16

  Jun 7 – 12:46 PM

  “I suppose it wasn’t a rifle but we won’t know for sure until you have that looked at.” Winston gave me a look as he came out of the bedroom. “What are you gonna do with it?” He and I stared down at the pistol where I had placed it on the couch as if it were likely to bite us.

  It already felt like it had bitten me.

  Winston’s words about how I needed to prepare myself that Timothy Cooper was the killer flung around my brain like a super ball that had been fired from a slingshot. It would have been one thing to find the brass but not the weapon itself. Finding the gun here when Timothy was the only person who had access was about as damaging a thing as we could have found.

  My only hope was that his fingerprints were not on either the weapon or the brass. If they were this case was over. I would do my best to get a good deal for him, but the situation was looking bleak.

  I had been thinking too optimistically when I had found the spent shell.

  How in the world did the police miss this?

  I had looked into the kid’s face when he told me that he had not done this and had believed him.

  I had dealt with countless liars over the years in my profession. Some had been slick and—no doubt about it—some had even been able to hoodwink me, but in the end, I’d always figured them out.

  At least the ones I know about. I grimaced. No, this can’t be Timothy.

  While I was undoubtedly putting my client in further jeopardy by turning this information over, I had no choice.

  I snorted, my blood boiling because they had failed to find this, thrusting me into an ethical quagmire.

  How many innocent people had gone to jail because the police had been unwilling to re-examine a new piece of evidence because it did not fit their preconceived notions?

  Not all officers of the law were closeminded, but some did not think a defense attorney had anything to offer that they had not already considered themselves. It would be bitterly ironic if I was the one who found the evidence that did my client in.

  In a past case I had found evidence that should have immediately resulted in getting the case dismissed against my client. After I turned it over to the prosecutor, she sat on it for weeks. It had taken a motion and several visits before I finally got them to consider it.

  Marcia Bowen, the prosecutor, had not even been remotely interested in the truth. She had only wanted a conviction. She had made me sick.

  Her refusal to see what was as plain as day had cost me hours of work while I struggled to get anybody to listen.

  In the end it had resulted in an embarrassing situation for her in court and she had blamed me. I’d done everything I could for her and had finally asked for an in-camera meeting with the judge where I presented him with all the evidence of the actions I had taken to try to get her to listen.

  He had done what she’d refused to do.

  Bowen had left the employ of the state shortly after that and I had not heard from her since.

  They had already not liked me much before and that little situation had not done me any favors since. I had made them look bad and that was something none of them were going to forget any time soon.

  I shook my head while trying to decide how best to handle this stinky swamp.

  I had turned up a gun, and because of that I was confident they would not have any problem taking a second look at this, unless of course they already knew that it would exonerate my client, something I was starting to believe increasingly unlikely.

  Timothy had access. The door was not forced. There is no sign of struggle in Gordon’s room.

  I did not know how a malpractice lawsuit could be brought against me on this, but I figured Ron Cooper would find a way.

  Winston approached and whispered in my ear, as if somebody were likely to overhear what he was about to say. Maybe he thought the cops had bugged the place.

  “We are the only ones who know about this.”

  I glanced at his face and saw a knowing look in his eyes that turned my insides to ice. It was bad enough it was already so tempting to hide the evidence, I did not need my investigator egging me on.

  I shook my head.

  “No way. We can’t bury this, as much as I want to. If word ever gets out and trust me it might just happen someday, we’d be in trouble. What if Timothy had a change of heart and decided to sing like a canary? What if he told the police where to find the murder weapon and it wasn’t there?”

  I frowned. “No, we have to play it straight.” I muttered under my breath. “We have to play it straight in the right way. I just don’t know how we’re going to do that.”

  As I spoke I looked at the door. I had given it a cursory glance on the way in and it had not looked forced to me. I motioned Winston over.

  “You think somebody broke in after the police left?” I asked.

  Winston edged me out of the way and spent nearly ten minutes reviewing both the door and the jamb, from inside and out.

  He shook his head. “Nothing here.”

  “Great.”

  He didn’t say it, but his eyes said it all: Your client did this.

  I instructed Winston to go do his investigation of the other rooms while I paced and tried to come up with a strategy that would not put my client in any more risk than he already was.

  17

  Jun 7 – 1:07 PM

  Winston did not find anything in Timothy Cooper’s room. He took pictures of a bunch of papers so I could review them back at the office and then thoroughly documented everything else in Cooper’s room. I was going to show a few of the pictures to Cooper to see if he thought anything was missing.

  The kid did this. He did it.

  The words kept flinging around my skull, despite my attempts to push them away.

  The pistol gave me a stomachache that wasn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

  I was starting to wonder if maybe it had been planted by the police as a way to get back at me for what I had done to Bowen. That situation had not been my fault, but I would never convince them of that.

  Perhaps they left it here, wanting me to come looking, and were going to have a way to come back at me if I tried to hide it.

  I doubted Stephanie Gray could be part of anything like that, but I could easily see the surly cop doing that.

  I groaned at the thought.

  No, the only way I was going to even approach this situation was through Stephanie Gray. The typical procedure would be for me to contact the prosecutor, Frank Ward. I still did not have my plan fully formulated, but could not sit on this much longer.

  I pulled out my phone and sent her a text.

  “Have you had lunch yet?”

  I put it back in my pocket and went to see how Winston was coming. He was now in Gordon’s room. He had his phone out and was shooting a video, going over the room while making comments so I had something to review later.

  I would normally have asked hi
m to do this, but had been so frazzled I had forgotten. I was grateful he remembered how I preferred to operate.

  When he saw me, he held up a finger and continued to do his examination of the bedroom.

  I stared at the bed, trying to imagine what it had been like for Gordon to see somebody pointing a gun at him.

  Had he been surprised? Was it somebody he knew? Was it payback for something he had done a long time ago?

  Did Timothy blow out his brains because he couldn’t keep up on the dishes?

  My thoughts were going a mile a minute when my phone buzzed.

  Winston did not look like he was anywhere near done, so I walked back into the room and pulled it out.

  “What do you want, Mitch?” Stephanie Gray had sent to me in a text.

  “I’m famished,” I sent back. “Can you meet me for lunch?”

  “I am super busy right now. I have more cases than just your client. I don’t see why we should meet.”

  “Trust me, you’re going to want to hear me out. How about Drake’s Place?”

  Her response did not come right away, so I put my phone back in my pocket and waited until Winston was done with his video.

  “What did you come up with?” I asked at the end.

  “Nothing I’m sure they didn’t figure out too.” His energy level had gone down, along with my own. We both knew what it was looking like for Timothy and while we were still trying to act as though this wasn’t going to send him to jail for life, each of us understood why the other was acting as he did. “That pistol and cartridge are outliers; they did a thorough job otherwise. For some reason they missed them.”

  “I’m going to stand over here by the bed,” I said, “you tell me where you think the shooter was.”

  Winston rubbed his chin and nodded while I moved.

  “If I didn’t know about the brass,” I said, “I would say it was from inside the bedroom. I suppose it is possible the shooter might have kicked it underneath the loveseat to hide it, in the same way the pistol had been buried in the sofa, but it would have had to go over the thick rug in the middle of the floor.”

  Winston shook his head. “It does not seem likely, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said, unable to avoid imagining Timothy doing that. In my mind’s eye he had a vicious look on his face.

  “The most likely explanation is that—” I almost said Timothy, “—the shooter shot Gordon from the middle of the room and did not pay attention to where the brass landed.”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  No, it was not looking good for Timothy.

  Not at all.

  18

  Jun 7 – 2:02 PM

  As I entered Drake’s Place, I remembered the last time I had been here to meet Stephanie. It had been during law school. Stephanie and I had been very much involved at the time, or so I had thought. She had chosen to break up with me here, something I had forgotten when I had suggested this as our meeting spot.

  After I got a table, the event came back to me quite vividly when I noticed the booth where we had sat that night.

  The breakup had come out of nowhere.

  We had been together for almost a year and I was starting to think there was a long-term possibility for us. Clearly, I was wrong in my assumptions. After she had ended it, things had not changed for me. I had always been good at school, but had turned my focus to legal studies in a way I never had before.

  I had always been on the Dean’s list, but the next semester I shot to get all A’s, which was an accomplishment at my school. The waitress took my drink order and I pulled out my phone to make notes about Timothy’s case while I waited. I had sat facing the door so I would see when Stephanie came in.

  Susie had been unavailable, so I had called Ellie over to wait with Winston while I met with Stephanie. Even though I ran the risk of this meeting getting back to Britney, it seemed best to have two witnesses on hand while I delicately brought the police into the situation. Not only would it keep Winston from doing anything stupid, but we needed to establish some sort of chain of custody for the evidence until we got it into the hands of the police. Unfortunately, it meant that both Ellie and Winston might be called as witnesses in court, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances with such short notice. My intention was to show we took reasonable steps as soon as I discovered the spent brass.

  I was very glad I had found the pistol when Winston was with me. It would have been a lot more challenging to explain afterward, particularly since I was hoping there would be a way to exonerate Timothy when the weapon and spent shell casing were examined. It was probably vain, but my gut still told me Timothy had nothing to do with this.

  But everything lines up the other way, doesn’t it?

  I looked up when the door opened, but it wasn’t Stephanie. She was ordinarily punctual, but I figured that meeting up with an ex-boyfriend who was now an antagonistic defense attorney meant she would feel like she had a few minutes of leeway before she needed to leave her office.

  That was just fine with me, because I still was not sure how I was going to handle her.

  I had a general idea of how I wanted it to go, but feared Stephanie was going to go for the jugular the moment she realized what I was about to turn over to her.

  Not to mention the fact she’s gonna feel like a fool for missing this. A piece of brass, sure, but the murder weapon? That was unthinkable.

  It was not going to go well for her or her team.

  This was part of the reason why I wanted to meet with her instead of Frank Ward, I hoped to give her a chance to handle this how she wanted so she could at least present it in the best possible light to her superiors.

  I did not want to dwell on how she would respond and was trying to think of a way to leverage this into something for Timothy, even if it was small.

  You’re not doing your best, a voice in the back of my head told me, now is the time to be looking at a plea deal. You’re too attached because you believe he did not do it.

  You are not zealously representing your client.

  I told the voice to take a hike.

  I would go for a plea bargain if the time came and there was no other option forward. I would push hard and get the best I possibly could.

  But as long as I thought Timothy was innocent, I was going to fight to keep him out of jail, even if it put a future plea bargain in potential jeopardy. If that was not zealously representing your client, I didn’t know what was.

  I eventually put my phone down. I was unable to think in this place. The music was a little loud and there was just too much other noise.

  Instead of focusing on the last memory I had of this place with Stephanie, I focused on others we had made here, hoping that would put me into a better mood for this potentially bombastic situation. It had the effect I wanted and by the time she walked through the door, looked at me, and let out an exasperated sigh, I was able to greet her with a genuine and pleasant smile.

  This was not the same smile I usually gave other people, this was the smile I usually reserved for Britney.

  “You have a lot of nerve to suggest meeting here,” Stephanie said as she sat across from me.

  “I admit, there are mixed memories of this place.” My smile had caught her off guard and it made me smile all the more.

  It had not been my intention to be off-putting with her, but my calm demeanor apparently had that effect. For a moment I wondered if it was something I could use in the discussion that was about to come, but then discarded the idea. I needed her in a good place when I told her about their mistake. That meant I needed to do everything I could to put her at ease.

  “So has your client come to his senses and decided to ask for a plea bargain?” Stephanie asked.

  “No. We’re going to give you a chance to drop the charges before you look foolish.” The words left my mouth before I had a chance to think about them, but they felt right so I went with them. “You remember Marcia, don’t yo
u?”

  She leaned forward. “If you came here to gloat over that, you can forget ever asking me to meet you again.”

  I shook my head. “Furthest thing from my mind. I want to save you and your team some embarrassment.

  “Embarrassment?” Stephanie guffawed. “What do we have to be embarrassed about?”

  I looked at her. “I’m about to do you a huge favor here, and I want to know my client isn’t going to be penalized for it.”

  “What do you have?”

  “I need to know my client is going to get something from this.” I almost added something about it figuring into a good plea deal if it came to that, but I did not. She was the wrong person to talk to about that anyway.

  Timothy is innocent.

  The words sounded hollow inside my head.

  “Why aren’t you bringing this to Frank?” Stephanie asked with more than a little irritation. “He’s your point of contact.”

  “Because I thought this would be better coming from you.” I leaned forward. “You guys made a mistake, a serious one.”

  She went red in the face. “Either tell me what the mistake is or I’m leaving. Don’t go trying to use a screwup to make things better for your case.”

  “What will you guys have?”

  I looked up at the waitress who had approached while glancing at something on her notepad so she had missed Stephanie’s last words and the tone of our conversation.

  I smiled at the woman, glad for the interruption.

  “I’ll have the corned beef sandwich,” I said and then pointed to my almost empty glass, “and a refill on the Coke.”

  She looked at Stephanie. “And what will you be eating today?”

  “I’m not gonna be here long enough to eat, thank you.”

  The waitress flipped her pad shut and walked away with a sniff of indignation.

  Stephanie leaned forward, her hands turning white as she gripped the table, the waitress already gone from her mind.