The Good Client

by Dan Decker

  I pulled out my phone and called Winston.

  “Mitch, I was just about to call you.”

  “Have you got anything for me?”

  “As a matter of fact I do. You want me to come in?”

  I looked around my office and suddenly felt sequestered and claustrophobic.

  “Let’s meet offsite.”

  I gave him an address and hung up.

  30

  Jun 10 – 3:05 PM

  “You know, I’ve driven by this little hole in the wall restaurant every day for the last fifteen years and I’ve never stopped.” Winston took a sip of his coffee and put the mug down. “If I had known they had stuff like this, I would’ve spent thousands of dollars here.”

  “Well, now you know,” I said as I took a bite of brownie with vanilla ice cream on top. Marley’s made the best brownie I had ever tasted.

  Winston pushed over a manila envelope. “I think we found our motive.”

  “That quick, huh?”

  “I feel like a fool for not finding it sooner. It was staring me in the face all morning before I realized what I had.”

  I opened the envelope and pulled out the paper inside. It was a photocopy of one of the receipts Winston had given to me, the date was highlighted. I saw it immediately.

  “You mean to tell me Ron was in town the night of the murder?” I shook my head.

  “The autopsy report you sent over had the time of death at just after midnight.” Winston nodded to the receipt.

  “And Ron and Barbara checked into the hotel a little after 1:00 AM,” I said.

  “It’s two miles away, I checked.”

  “You just burst this case wide open.”

  “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t plea him out?”

  I shook my head but did not say anything. My discussions with clients were kept confidential and even though Winston technically worked for me, I took attorney-client confidentiality seriously, far more so than some other attorneys I knew. Winston was a contractor and he only needed to know the relevant information necessary to do his job. He did not need to know that negotiations were underway or that Timothy was giving serious thought to taking a deal.

  It was better he kept his mind on the investigation.

  “Have you tried to reconstruct what they were doing beforehand?”

  “I’m working on that next. I am going to see if I can track down what restaurants they like to go to. My guess is that they are regulars someplace, just like they are with the motel. If we can show them at a restaurant and then later at the motel with a big gap in between, we might just nail them to the wall.”

  “See if you can.”

  “Is that brownie any good?”

  “It’s the only reason I come.”

  Winston raised up a hand and called the waitress over.

  31

  Jun 10 – 3:38 PM

  My phone rang and I hit the speaker button, looking up from my in-depth review of the papers Winston had given to me earlier. “Yes, Ellie, what do you want?”

  “Timothy is here to see you, do you want me to show him in?”

  I was tempted to have him wait because I was not quite ready to meet with him but took a deep breath.

  “Sure.”

  Timothy walked into my office and sat. He looked like he had seen a ghost and I could tell that the last several hours had been weighing heavily on him.

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked.

  “Still not sure.”

  “If there is anything you have not told me about this case, I think now is the time, especially if you’re so close to taking an offer that is gonna send you away for the better part of your life. If you take this, it’s going to change everything for you. You won’t finish law school.”

  I let that sink in, because I knew that was the one thing that was most important to him right now. I remembered how focused I had been when in school.

  “You need to put all cards down on the table,” I said slowly to emphasize every word.

  “Okay, what are you getting at?”

  “Did Gordon know about the affair?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I once ran into my dad and Barbara at a restaurant. They were not careful. There’s a good chance Gordon knew.”

  “What restaurant?”

  “Monteverde.”

  “Hang on one second.” I pulled out my phone and texted that to Winston. “You said you met Gordon through Barbara, how did this happen?”

  “I worked for my dad one summer, Barbara is technically a client or at least was. Strangely, he felt that he needed to tell me that the actual representation ended before the relationship began. He wanted me to know he was ethical. Anyhow, to give them both plausible deniability to their spouses, they continue to pretend she is a client.”

  I raised my eyebrows not only because of the ethical considerations, but because of the disclosure Ron had made to his son. My guess was that Ron had not been as careful as he represented, he could be reprimanded if this got back to the bar. I resisted the urge to make a note because I did not want to interrupt Timothy. I wanted the flow of information to continue.

  “You met Gordon at your dad’s law office?”

  “No, there was a social for all the clients and she brought Gordon along. He and I started talking and before I knew it, we had decided to be roommates.”

  “The two of you have more in common than you represented.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “Care to tell me what that was?”

  Timothy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We both did rehab at the same place, it was years apart, but we knew some of the same people.”

  I gave him a stern look.

  “I know, I know. This is something you wanted to know, but it’s not like you think. I was barely a teenager. I found my mom’s pain pills and got addicted. My parents overreacted when they found out and sent me there to make sure I was clean. The truth was that it had been several weeks since I had last popped one when they found me out, but they didn’t believe me and sent me away. There you have it.”

  “All this just came up in casual conversation?”

  “You would be surprised. Addicts have a way of finding each other and sticking together. They encourage you to be open in rehab.”

  “Okay, got it. You talked with Gordon and you guys decided to be roommates, did you know at the time your dad and Barbara were a thing?”

  Timothy shook his head. “I didn’t. I discovered that later. Ironically, it was around the same time that I started to not care much for Gordon. It was kind of infuriating, seeing him every day when I knew what my father was doing with his aunt.”

  “Infuriating enough that you killed him?”

  “I didn’t.” He looked me in the eye. “I know you have your doubts now, especially after my angry outbursts and everything I kept back, but I didn’t.”

  “So why aren’t you going to fight all the way, why are you thinking about taking an offer? Is this to protect your dad?”

  “If I knew for certain he would take the fall, that would be one thing.”

  I studied him. “He’s not who you are protecting.”

  “No.”

  I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head, trying to piece together exactly what it was he was saying and not saying.

  I really wanted to ask him a question about his mother, but refrained. Timothy would have to be in the right place for me to do that. It was not the right place when he was considering an offer because it might push him over the edge.

  I held up the manila envelope Winston had given me but did not pull out the receipt. It did not seem like a good idea to tell Timothy where his father liked to go at night. “Did you know your father was in town the night Gordon was murdered?”

  Timothy looked up sharp. “What?”

  “Yep.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Winston is good. Is there anything else you want to tell me?” />
  Timothy swallowed and shook his head, but he was starting to look like he had seen a ghost.

  “So back to this offer?” I asked.

  “Do you think you can get him down to ten, out in five?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I motioned my head towards the lobby. “Wait out there.”

  “Why can’t I be in here?”

  “I don’t need the distraction. I’ll see what I can do, but no promises.” I looked up at him. “If I get ten, out in five, are you going to take this?”

  “Yeah, I think I will.”

  32

  Jun 10 – 4:01 PM

  I stared at the door after Timothy pulled it shut behind him. This whole thing was suspicious. It didn’t make any sense to me. I hated things that did not make sense. Perhaps this was part of why I had been drawn to the law. I had to find answers.

  The one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t have enough information. I pulled up Frank’s number and dialed it in, but waited on the final digit. Finally, I set the phone back in the cradle and hung up without completing the call.

  “I can’t send this kid down the river. It will kill him. His life will be over.”

  Even if he is a liar.

  The angry outburst, the sudden change in heart about a plea deal, and his willingness to go to jail, all had me thinking of one thing.

  One person.

  I went to my computer and did a Google search, found another number, and a moment later had dialed it into my phone without hesitating on the final digit.

  “Yes, what is it?” Cynthia Cooper asked after the first ring in a formal tone that reminded me that she was a professor.

  I had not spoken to her since the arraignment. In fact, if Timothy learned about this, he might claim I had breached his confidence. I had to be delicate in how I handled this.

  “Ms. Cooper. This is Mitch Turner. I represent your son. Do you have a moment?”

  There was a lengthy silence on the other end of the phone before she responded.

  “I do.” Her voice was still as prim and proper as before, but there was something else there too. I could not put my finger on it. “What do you need?”

  “I’m not sure if your son has brought you up to speed on the case, but could you give him a call, like right now? I think you need to know what’s going on. Please don’t tell him I called you. You’re going to want me to pick up the phone and call you again. How you handle this will determine if I do.”

  “You’re scaring me, Mister Turner.”

  “And you should be scared.”

  I had been on the verge of telling her more, but at the last minute had decided to keep it vague to mitigate the risk to my license. Reaching out to her at this critical time could possibly be damaging, but I had not revealed any confidential information. I had only given a person unsolicited advice. If she heeded that advice, she might learn something interesting.

  I drummed on my desk, then a moment later began to pace.

  An idea occurred to me and I called Frank.

  33

  Jun 10 – 4:11 PM

  “Has your client finally come to his senses?” Frank asked as soon as I got him on the phone. There was a gladness in his tone that made me think he expected us to agree to terms soon.

  “Frank,” I said cautiously, hoping he would pick up on my tone so my words would not hit him completely upside the head, “you have the wrong person on this. Can we put a pin in the plea deal for now? I want to pass you some evidence.”

  A long moment passed and then it was followed by another. This was clearly not what he was expecting. He was silent, but I imagined he was starting to panic because he had indeed overextended himself with the death penalty threat.

  “Look,” he said at length, “my people don’t make mistakes, we appreciate that you found the murder weapon and had the dignity to turn it over to us, but really, I don’t think you have found anything more we don’t already know about.”

  “Frank, I need you to trust me here. Just give me a little latitude, come meet with me. You and I might have had our run-ins in the past but I’d like to think overall, we have had a good professional relationship. Would that be fair to say?”

  “Sure. Better than some.”

  “I want you to look into somebody. I probably can’t send you my evidence,” while technically I could, it would not be a good idea to go against the expressed wishes of my client because he thought I was going to negotiate a deal, “but I just ask you subpoena some records from a local motel and find out what somebody else was doing the night of the murder.”

  “And how is this going to help me?”

  I rolled my eyes, this was unfortunately an attitude I had encountered before, but not usually from Frank. I could not help but think again that somebody more senior was “mentoring” him, and he was trying out what he got from this guy.

  “It will help because you’ll be serving justice.” I kept my tone calm, even though I was getting impatient. “Do you really want to send a young kid to jail for the rest of his life unless you are certain he did it, especially one with a bright future like Timothy Cooper?” I shook my head. “You don’t want to do that without examining every possibility. You want to make sure you got it right. You want to have ironclad evidence.”

  “What do you think I have? We have the murder weapon, we have your client’s fingerprints all over the room, there is no sign of forced entry, we have a reliable witness who says that there was considerable tension between the two of them. What else do we need?”

  The witness was new. I thought about calling him on it. I hesitated but decided not to pursue it, not yet, although I made a note to follow up on it later if this Ron Cooper angle did not pan out. I would review the disclosures first and check with Ellie to see if anything new had come in.

  “Come on Frank, you are better than that. You don’t want just to win, you want the right win. If you have the wrong guy—”

  “That’s what I am telling you, we don’t. Your client is as guilty as they come. He did this. And if you are trying to convince yourself otherwise, you’re smoking something.”

  “I found somebody who has a better motive for murder than Timothy.”

  “Who?”

  “I am not going to tell you unless you’re going to look into it.”

  “I’m swamped over here and don’t need a distraction just now. Especially one that will be unfounded.”

  “It isn’t. I have solid evidence. Something that will make you think twice.” I gave him a moment to mull that over and when he did not respond right away, I decided to lay down my last point of leverage. “Are you going to look into it or am I going to have to get this before a judge?”

  That finally did it. I could tell from his sigh that he did not want to end up like Maggie. I did not have official word on why she had left the department, but Stephanie had once made a comment that let me believe Maggie had been terminated because of the mishap. That was unfortunate, but I had given her every chance to do the right thing. Because he was on the inside, Frank would know the details of that, know that my threat to go to the judge was not idle.

  Unlike his death penalty threat.

  The prosecutor’s office wanted to maintain a professional image and they felt the best way to do that was to fire prosecutors who made high-profile mistakes. Maggie was not the only one. It was clearly a policy.

  “No promises,” Frank finally said. “How about we do this? I like your idea of putting a pin in it for the moment. I won’t file any of my amended paperwork just yet, while you guys consider my offer. I will spend one day looking into what you’ve got to see if there is any merit.”

  A grin split my face. “Deal.” It was better than I had hoped for, Frank might think my client was going to take a plea bargain, but I figured once I presented him with the evidence, he was gonna take a hard look at his case.

  “Marley’s?” I suggested. “At 4:30?”

  “I’ll see you there.”
>
  It was a significant step forward.

  I picked up the manila envelope and was about to head out of my office when I remembered Timothy was waiting for me on the other side.

  I picked my phone back up and dialed Ellie.

  “Is Timothy still out there?”

  “I had to send him into Tony’s office and have him shut the door. He’s in there yelling right now. I don’t know for sure who he is talking to, but I think it might be his mother.”

  I could not help but smile. “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

  “Even if I could I wouldn’t tell you.”

  I grunted. “I suppose that’s a good thing. I’m heading out right now. When Timothy gets done, tell him there’s been a development in the case and that I’ll call him tomorrow. Tell him Frank Ward and I have reached a momentary truce so he has several more days to think about the offer.”

  It was true enough and I also did not want to tell Timothy that I was about to turn information on his father over to the police.

  “Okay, I will do that.”

  “And Ellie, if he has anything to say when he comes out or if you can learn anything about his conversation with his mother, I would sure appreciate it.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  34

  Jun 10 – 4:35 PM

  I took it as a sign of passive-aggressive behavior that Frank still had not yet shown up. My brownie had been delivered and the ice cream on top was starting to melt, but I was going to wait until Frank walked in to start eating. I wanted to have something to slow down the conversation if it took an unexpected turn.

  While I waited I opened the manila envelope and pulled out a picture of the receipt. It suddenly occurred to me that I should make sure Winston was okay with me disclosing this to the police. I was not going to hand it over, I was just going to let Frank see it, but I needed to be careful nonetheless.