“Ugh. You’re so nice. Why does it always have to be the assholes who are successful in business?”
Ricci’s phone vibrated. She checked the ID and answered. “Hello?”
Aster leaned back in the booth and drank more soda as she spoke. He remembered as a kid going to convenience stores and mixing a little bit of each soda in a concoction he called a Long Island iced tea because he’d heard his mama say that was her favorite drink. At eleven, it was the greatest thing in the world, and he wondered if now at twenty-eight it’d make him gag.
“We’ll be right down,” Ricci said.
“Who was that?”
“Billy at the jail. You’ll never guess who was just brought in.”
“Who?”
“The Crimson Lake Executioner.”
“What?”
“I know, right? Let’s get there before someone scoops him up.”
As Ricci sped them downtown in her truck, Aster stared out the window. A case with this much media attention was a guarantee of constant local, national, and maybe even some international coverage. That meant interviews for the defense attorneys, articles, speaking engagements, and maybe even book deals afterward. Smaller firms and solo practitioners paid staff at the jails to notify them when someone like the Executioner was brought in.
“You sure we should do it for free?” Ricci said as she raced through a yellow light.
“Yes.”
“He might have money. He’s a doctor.”
“We gotta sign him. I don’t care about the money. And slow down. I’d hate to die right before getting rich.”
“These cases are a ton of work, Dylan. He could be forgotten after the trial and not bring in any new business.”
“Or he could make us famous and 2 Chainz could put us on retainer.” He glanced at her. “He’s a famous rapper.”
“I know who he is, jerk.”
“He’s not singing about trucks and horses, so I didn’t know if you knew.”
“Hey, country music is the most popular music in America. You’re the weirdo for not listening to it.”
The Clark County Detention Center was a modern building of glass and steel and looked more like a trendy office building than a jail. It was meant to defuse the anxiety the surrounding neighborhood would feel with a jail in their midst—any anger would fade over time as people forgot it was a jail since it didn’t look anything like one. The interior had white corridors that Aster thought gave it the sterile feel of a hospital.
They paid to park in the lot next door and hurried over. Once inside the jail, they looked over the deputies behind the desk and saw Billy’s pudgy, familiar face at the end of the row.
“Billy,” Aster said, “anyone been in to see—what’s his name, Lil?”
“Michael Zachary.”
“Anyone been in to see him?”
“You’re the first.”
“Sweet.”
Billy glanced at the deputy next to him, who was helping a visitor. “Two hundred bucks,” he whispered.
“What? I usually give you fifty.”
“This guy is huge. We had to almost arrest a bunch of reporters who kept trying to get in to interview him. He’s gonna be all over the TV.”
Aster tapped the counter, watching him. “One hundred.”
“Two hundred.” He glanced at the deputy next to him again. “Better hurry. I heard Steven Smith is comin’ down to talk to him. That guy’s got at least five billboards. Think how many he’ll have if he’s defending the Crimson Lake Executioner.”
“Fine, be a dick. Two hundred. But get me in right now.”
After being searched and led through the metal detectors, Ricci and Aster were given visitor badges. They were directed to C Block on the fifth floor. It was for offenders deemed a risk to themselves or others.
They were led back to his cell by a large deputy with a tattoo peeking out over his shirt collar. The cell door creaked as it slid open, the bars gray and dappled with rust near the top and bottom. Michael Zachary sat on his cot.
The last client Aster had visited in C Block was a four-hundred-pound gangster accused of crushing his brother’s skull when he found out his brother was sleeping with his wife. Michael Zachary looked like a nerdy accountant whose mom might still be driving him to work. It brought a smile to Aster’s face: no way would a jury think this guy was a brutal psychopath.
“You got your attorney here,” the deputy said.
“My attorney?”
Ricci said, “Thanks, Deputy, we’ll call you when we’re done.”
Aster stepped inside the cell as Ricci leaned against the bars. He noticed the sink. All of Zachary’s personal items were lined up neatly in a row, and his extra set of clothes was folded precisely and positioned at the very end of the cot. Clients with obsessive-compulsive disorder could be difficult to manage since trials were mostly sloppy seat-of-your-pants roller-coaster-type work. Not something that a person with control issues handled well.
“Dr. Zachary, my name is Dylan Aster, and this is Lily Ricci. We’re criminal defense attorneys. We’re here to defend you.”
“I don’t understand. I already have an attorney. Charles Duffman.”
“Yeah? Where is he? I bet you called him and he said he would make it down when he could, yeah? You seem like the kind of guy who has an attorney on retainer. Probably through some really expensive, bullshit legal insurance scam through the hospital?”
He looked from one of them to the other. “Yes.”
“If you got a property dispute with your neighbor and need someone to draw something up, fine, get legal insurance and they probably won’t screw it up that bad. Worst that can happen is you have to hire a real law firm to redo the work. But criminal law, Dr. Zachary, is something else entirely. And those guys suck at criminal law. He’ll take it for the money and to get interviewed on the news, but he won’t know what he’s doing. I’ve never met Mr. Duffman, but I guarantee you he doesn’t know anything about this world.”
Aster turned fully to him and held Zachary’s gaze.
“I know which prosecutors hide evidence and which ones are by the book. I know which cops are dirty, which ones are addicts who use on the job, and which ones try to have sex with suspects when no one’s looking. I know which judges fall asleep on the bench and which ones hear every word we say and which ones are only on the bench because they’re some politician’s nephew. Nevada has the death penalty, you know that, right?”
His eyes went a little wider, and Aster could see that his breath quickened.
“Um, no. No, I didn’t.”
“Well, you could be looking at the death penalty. I read about your case on the way over. They’re accusing you of killing one woman, trying to kill your live-in girlfriend, and potentially kidnapping a fourteen-year-old girl. That’s a death penalty case if I’ve ever seen one. You can’t trust Charles Duffman, who’s probably got big automobile accident cases to worry about. He’s not going to put in the work this needs. He’s not following around the lead detective for a week to see if he’s having an affair or talking to Kathy Pharr’s lawn guys to see if they ever saw anyone hanging around the house. Duffman won’t do that, but we will. And we’ll do it completely pro bono.”
“You’re going to do all that for free? And why exactly would you do that?”
“I’m going to be honest with you, because going forward we need complete trust and honesty with each other: I’m doing this for the publicity your case is going to generate. It’s going to be all any of the news stations and gossip magazines talk about while the trial is going on. You’re going to be famous—well, infamous—and your attorney is going to get a lot of that attention, and hence a lot of new clients.”
Zachary chuckled. “So you’ll defend me for publicity, huh? Isn’t that a bit shallow?”
“Is that a worse reason than why Mr. Duffman would defend you?”
Zachary said nothing.
Aster sat next to him on the cot. “I’m exc
ellent at what I do. And the only way the publicity works for me is if I win and you walk out of that courtroom. If I lose in front of the whole world, I’m not exactly going to have clients lining up out the door. Our incentives are very much aligned.”
Ricci chimed in. “Dr. Zachary, Dylan is the best trial attorney I have ever seen. We left the public defender’s office together, and do you know what he was known for when we were there? Never losing a trial. And it’s not like when prosecutors say they’ve never lost a trial because they can pick and choose what cases to take to trial and what cases to deal on. Many private defense attorneys will plead out the bad cases or fire their clients if they won’t do what they tell them. But public defenders like us had to take all the cases we were assigned, and we had to take most of them to trial because we couldn’t fire our clients when they demanded one. We had to take the worst cases, the ones with the worst odds, to trial, and Dylan never lost. Not once.”
Aster leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I can win this case.”
Zachary looked at Ricci, then Aster. He nodded. “Okay . . . okay.”
35
Aster had Zachary sign a representation agreement he had Billy print off. Then he told Billy to make sure to put a note in his e-file at the jail that he was represented so no other attorneys could visit him.
Back at the office, Ricci pulled up the court docket, and they saw that Zachary’s case was going federal. Federal grand juries convened on Tuesday mornings twice a month—which meant tomorrow.
Federal grand juries were as close to professional juries as existed in the United States. Defense attorneys were not allowed in the room. The government would present evidence that charges should be filed against someone, and they could bring to the grand jury any witness they wanted. No one but the prosecutor was allowed to question them, which was what had led the chief of the New York Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler, to famously say that grand juries would indict a ham sandwich.
Aster had always wanted to try getting around the rule that defense attorneys were not allowed in the grand jury room, and this presented a perfect opportunity.
Ricci stayed with him for a couple of hours in the office, harassing the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office for their evidence. They weren’t obligated to hand anything over yet, but sometimes speaking to a receptionist or clerk that you’d been friendly with in the past could get you the police or FBI reports.
When she left, Aster locked up and headed back to the jail.
It was dinnertime when he arrived, but the inmates in C Block had to eat in their cells. Aster was escorted by a deputy, who asked if he wanted an attorney-client room. He declined. He’d found, at least at first, when trust was still being built, that clients opened up to him more if he sat with them in their cells.
He looked down at the tray of food on Zachary’s floor: a soggy sandwich, chips, and carrots.
“Sorry to interrupt your supper.”
He said supper and made a note to say dinner. He’d spent the first twelve years of his life in West Virginia, and it seemed like he’d spent the rest of his life controlling the accent and idioms that it had ingrained in him. In court, he had to make a conscious effort to not slip into a West Virginian twang.
“It’s fine,” Zachary said. “I can’t eat this food anyway. You know, I keep seeing you pull up your collar to hide that scar. A good plastic surgeon could get rid of it; it’s not terribly deep. What happened, anyway?”
“I met a cop once that wasn’t the nicest person. But I’m here to talk about you.” Aster sat down next to him. He had a legal pad with him, and he took out a pen from his pocket and said, “You have a grand jury tomorrow. Do you know what that is?”
“Not really.”
“There’s going to be between sixteen and twenty-three jurors who hear evidence from the prosecution and decide if there’s enough of it to bring charges against you. The jurors are trained, they do this for eighteen months whenever they’re called, so they know how to get through these things quickly. And they nearly always choose to indict—to bring charges—but not every time.”
“Do I have to say anything?”
Aster shook his head. “No, you don’t even have to be there, but if you are and you decide to testify, only the prosecutor can question you. No other attorneys are allowed in the room to question anyone. But I’m going to get around that.”
“How?”
“Let me worry about that. Anyway, I don’t have the reports in this case, but there was a pretty detailed article in the Las Vegas Sun. I think they’ve overreached on this because of the media attention. See, the federal government can’t just pick up any murder case it wants. There’s requirements for a murder case to be filed in federal court, like the victim is a federal employee or a judge or something like that. There’s about a dozen different ways to bring it to federal court, but what they’re going forward on here is the sexual assault prong. There was semen found inside Kathy Pharr, along with some vaginal bruising and bruising on her thighs, but the semen was too degraded for a DNA match, so they’re asking the grand jury to assume sexual assault took place during the murder and that the semen is yours.”
“Assume?”
Aster nodded. “Assumptions are enough for a grand jury. I think what they’re doing is hurrying to get the charges filed so they can start tainting the jury pool in the media. They’ll hold a press conference and list the dozens of charges you’re indicted on. They hope that the jurors that’ll eventually be on your jury will see it and that it’ll put pressure on me to plead you out early.” He clicked his pen. “So before I ask you anything, I need you to listen carefully to me. Don’t tell me if you did this. The law doesn’t care if you’re guilty or innocent, and neither do I. My job is to test the prosecution’s case and make sure they’re following the constitutional protections you have. My job, Doc, is to save your ass if I can. So if you did it, I don’t want to know.”
“Because if I told you I did it, you couldn’t put me on the stand to say I didn’t, could you?” Zachary shook his head. “Our damn justice system. That’s what it’s come to. Innocent people being railroaded and the guilty going free.”
“They found the bandages and ricin in your garage and your alibis don’t hold up well, so maybe save the indignation, Doc. I just want to stick to facts. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“So first question is, if they, by some miracle, can retest that semen found inside Kathy Pharr, is it going to be matched to you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You weren’t having an affair?”
“No. I would never in a million years cheat on Angie. I love her.”
“Most men who cheat on their wives and girlfriends love them, Doc.”
Zachary turned fully and looked Aster in the eyes. “I swear to you, I did not know Kathy Pharr.”
Aster nodded. “Did your girlfriend know her?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
“She owns a yoga studio, yeah? Has she gone back to see if Kathy Pharr was maybe a student of hers at some point?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“You said you don’t know who Kathy Pharr is, but have you ever met her? I’m not talking about hanging out with her, but have you ever maybe gone to a party she was at, or has she been to your work, or anything like that?”
He shook his head. “No. I have never seen that woman before in my life.”
Aster took a few notes. “Ever have any domestic abuse allegations against your girlfriend or anyone from your past?”
“No, never.”
“None? Not even a call to the police?”
“Well, I mean, there was a call once. An old girlfriend in college. I’d been drinking and things got out of hand. But I didn’t touch her.”
“See, this is what I’m talking about when I talk about honesty between us. Now, if I hadn’t asked that follow-up question about the call, you wouldn’t have told me about it
, yeah? If you’d kept that from me, do you know where I woulda heard it the first time? In the courtroom. And it would catch me off guard. I wouldn’t have a good explanation for it, and the only person getting hurt from that is you. Do you understand?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“Okay, good. So let’s get to the alibis. Where were you on April thirteenth, the day Kathy Pharr was kidnapped?”
“Out of town. I went to a seminar on advancements in medical glue.”
“Medical glue?”
“Yeah. There’s a new product coming out that’s ten times more effective than stitches or the current glue we have. It’ll have some amazing uses for soldiers in battlefields and car accident victims that are bleeding out too fast, things like that.”
“Well, to each his own, yeah. Do you have this glue at home?”
“No, it’s not even on the market yet. I wouldn’t have access to it even if I wanted it.”
Aster wrote some notes and said, “Pharr was kidnapped at around midnight, and her body was found by a real estate agent who was getting the home ready for a viewing at nine o’clock the next morning. Where were you exactly during those times?”
“I would have just been at the Airbnb in San Diego where I was staying. I didn’t go out or anything. I went to the conference, went to bed, and got on a flight the next day. I have the documentation for the Airbnb I stayed at. Get my phone and I can show you.”
“Who can I call who spoke to you out there?”
“Well . . . I mean, no one.”
“How long was the conference?”
“Just a day. About six hours.”
“How many other people were there?”
“I don’t know. A hundred, hundred fifty.”
“You were at a conference with a hundred and fifty people for a day, and there’s no one I can talk to who saw you there?”
“I didn’t know their names,” he barked. “If you paraded me in front of them, they’d probably remember me, but I don’t know any of them.”
Aster nodded as he wrote. “I’ll need the title of the conference and a contact I can call over there. I’m going to get the names of the people who were there and pass your picture around. If we can get just a couple people who saw you there on the night Kathy Pharr was taken, that destroys the prosecution’s case.”
Crimson Lake Road (Desert Plains) Page 14
