The Attorney

by Steve Martini

  “He left,” says Susan.

  “Isn’t it a fact that he berated the lawyers in your department. Called one of them names that I will not mention here and stormed out of your office?”

  “He was angry.”

  “Angry enough to leave when he didn’t have wheels. He didn’t have his car there, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where his car was?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how he got to Mr. Madriani’s office for the meeting that morning?”

  “I believe Paul—Mr. Madriani picked him up.”

  “Where?”

  “At his boat.”

  “At Mr. Hale’s boat, at the docks at Spanish Landing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” Ryan seems particularly pleased with this last piece of information. Apart from the fact that he couldn’t get this short of putting me or Jonah on the stand, I’m left to wonder why he cares.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  “I don’t like what I’m seeing.” Rahm Karashi is a medical resident student at the university. Six days a week he works at the county hospital. This morning his rounds include the county jail, which includes taking Jonah’s vital signs, blood pressure, and pulse before he leaves for court, checking his medication regimen.

  At the moment, Jonah is lying on a cot in a holding cell, waiting for the van to take him to court. He has a blood pressure cuff on his arm.

  Dr. Karashi is on a little rolling stool he’s brought into the room. He tries it again, cup of the stethoscope pressed against the inside of Jonah’s right elbow. The doctor is slowly turning the pressure valve attached to the cuff. He listens for a few moments, then shakes his head. It’s the third time he’s taken it since Harry and I have arrived, looking to see if it’s the result of anxiety, morning jitters before another day of trial. Maybe it’ll drop. It doesn’t.

  “I’m all right,” says Jonah. “It’s just the stress. It’s always high when I know they’re gonna take it.” He looks at me, as if I’m going to be angry if the trial is delayed for reasons of health. At the moment, the way things are going, it would be a blessing.

  The physician takes the cuff off Jonah’s arm. “Relax for a moment,” he says, then taps on the door for the guard and motions for Harry and me to join him outside.

  As soon as the solid door to the cell is closed, he speaks. “I don’t like it. Don’t like it at all,” he says. “The medication should have taken hold by now. He’s been on it for a week. You’re sure he’s taking it? Sometimes they don’t, you know. If they’re depressed.”

  “All I know is what they tell me. The staff says he takes it each night, before bed.”

  “This is not good.” Dr. Karashi looks at the blood pressure readings on the chart in the file. “It is definitely up,” he says.

  “How serious?” says Harry. Beyond life threatening, what Harry means is would they stop the trial?

  “You want my opinion, I think it is sufficiently serious that he should be hospitalized. At least for observation.”

  “That would mean at least suspending the trial.” Harry’s smiling.

  “I will of course have to inform the supervising physician at County,” he says. “Recommend that he inform the court.”

  “Maybe we should bring in Mr. Hale’s own physician?” I say.

  “That would be a good idea. The prosecutors will want their own, of course.”

  “You’re not it?” says Harry.

  “No.” Karashi smiles. “They will want one of the senior staff physicians. Probably the head of cardiology from County to examine him.” Someone with whom Ryan can plead for a favorable prognosis is what Dr. Karashi means. He has been around long enough to know how the game is played. The last thing Ryan wants at this stage is a defendant who is too ill to continue, after we’ve seen all his evidence, heard his witnesses. A mistrial at this point is Ryan’s worst nightmare.

  “You should get an EKG,” says Karashi.

  “How soon?”

  “I cannot tell the court that it’s life threatening,” he says. “But I would recommend perhaps tomorrow. In the afternoon. Court often ends early on Friday,” he says. “I think I can schedule it.”

  I thank him. Karashi puts his stethoscope back in his little black bag. “If you can reduce the stress on him at all, I would recommend it,” he says.

  “How do we do that?” says Harry.

  Karashi gives him a look, a shrug. No answer.

  We thank him, and he leaves.

  I can see Jonah through the small square of inch-thick acrylic in the cell door. He is now sitting up at the side of the cot, looking twenty years older than he did on the day he walked into my office only a few months ago, to tell me about Amanda and her mother.

  “What good is anything we do if he dies before a verdict?” says Harry. “Maybe we should talk to the judge.”

  “It won’t do any good unless we’ve got a solid medical recommendation,” I say. “Let’s get his physician in. This evening if we have to, after court.”

  What Ryan has in store for the morning is not something intended to reduce stress—Jonah’s or mine.

  He has Susan back on the stand, and Ryan is back in her face.

  I called her house last evening, to talk to Sarah. It was an awkward moment when Susan answered the phone. “We can’t talk,” I told her.

  “I know. Not until I’m finished testifying,” she said. She knew the rules, as if perhaps Ryan had already warned her.

  I could detect no bitterness or anger in her voice. Instead, just an air of resignation.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I’m calling from home.”

  She said nothing, but I could tell she thought this was foolish. It seems like another age since the Mexicans followed me from the jail that night. I checked the street in front of my house, drove up and down several times. At this point I am almost too tired to care. There were no unusual cars that I could recognize, no heads silhouetted above the backs of seats. I tried to remember what Cyclops might look like with its lights out: an older-model Mercedes, limo. It looked clear, so I parked the car, not in the driveway, but in the garage.

  I went inside and called Susan’s. I spoke with Sarah, said good night to her. She seemed confused, very quiet as if maybe Susan might be in earshot. She asked me if everything was all right, wondering why she was at Susan’s, and I was at our house. My daughter asked me if I’d had a fight with Susan. She hasn’t seen any of the activity in the court, and Susan and I have taken great care not to discuss matters in front of her. But children are perceptive. They can read tension in a relationship like vibrations before an earthquake.

  I told her not to worry, that everything would be fine. That it was simply work, something I had to take care of. I’m not sure she accepted this. In my own mind, I’m not sure I do either.

  Ryan is moving at the podium, using his hands. “Later that same day, Ms. McKay. I’m talking about the seventeenth of April,” says Ryan. “Did you learn that the police had found Ms. Suade’s body at her place of employment?”

  Today Susan looks more collected. In a dark power suit, blue pinstripes, pants and jacket, she’s had a night to sleep on it, to get ready for whatever Ryan has to throw at her. Her natural competitive instincts now kicking in.

  “I learned she was dead,” says Susan. “I don’t think I was told where her body was found. At least not on the phone.”

  “Fine.” Ryan accepts this.

  Ryan is looking down at a legal pad as he stands at the podium, penciled questions so that he doesn’t miss anything. He looks up at Susan on the stand.

  “Who told you about Zolanda Suade’s death?” he says.

  “As I recall, Mr. Brower called
me and told me that he’d heard something about it on the police scanner in his county car.”

  “Do you know why he called you?”

  “No.” Curt, to the point.

  “I mean this would not be something within the jurisdiction of your department, would it?”

  “No.”

  “Would it be fair to say that Mr. Brower called you because of Mr. Hale’s death threats made in your presence earlier that day?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “So he must have thought this was significant?”

  “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Did he mention Mr. Hale’s threats to you when he called you on the phone to tell you about Ms. Suade’s death?”

  “He might have. I don’t remember.”

  “Other than those threats, the fact that both of you had heard them, can you think of any other reason why Mr. Brower might call you with the information regarding Ms. Suade’s murder?”

  “I don’t think he said it was a murder at the time,” says Susan.

  “Fine. Her death. Can you think of any other reason, other than the threats, why he might call you?”

  Susan thinks for a moment. Finally she shakes her head.

  “You have to speak up for the record,” he says.

  “No.”

  “What did you do immediately after receiving this telephone call from Mr. Brower?”

  “I asked him to come into the office.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wasn’t it after the end of the business day?”

  “It was probably late afternoon. I can’t recall the exact time.”

  “Would you disagree if I told you Mr. Brower’s cell phone records indicate the call was made after six o’clock in the evening?” says Ryan.

  “Maybe it was early evening.” Susan concedes the point.

  “But you had him come into the office anyway. Why?”

  “I wanted to find out what he knew. What he’d heard.”

  “Regarding Zolanda Suade’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have talked to him on the phone about that, couldn’t you?”

  “It was an open cell line.” Susan is quick on this. Apparently she’s thought about it. “It was official police business. Information Mr. Brower had picked up on police bands. I didn’t think it appropriate to discuss on the phone,” says Susan.

  “I see.” Ryan smiles. “But it wasn’t anything involving your department?” Ryan knows precisely where he’s going with this. Susan and Brower were both percipient witnesses, not to a murder, but to death threats made in my office. Why did Susan want to talk to Brower, the other witness, unless she had something devious on her mind?

  “I simply wanted information,” she tells him.

  “You were just curious?”

  “There was the matter of Mr. Hale’s missing granddaughter. That was departmental business.”

  “So you thought that somehow the issue of Mr. Hale’s missing granddaughter was involved in Zolanda Suade’s death?” Ryan will more than settle for this.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I see. But you wanted to find out?” says Ryan.

  “Yes.”

  “So did Investigator Brower come into the office?” Suddenly it’s gone from Mr. to Investigator, cloaking Brower in his law enforcement mantel.

  “He came in,” says Susan.

  “So he wasn’t in the habit of declining requests from superiors even if he was off duty?” says Ryan.

  “He was a professional investigator.” Without realizing, she uses the past tense.

  “You speak as if he’s gone,” says Ryan.

  “He is . . .” she stops herself. “He’s a professional investigator.”

  “In fact he was a sworn peace officer, law enforcement, isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why he had access to secure police bands on his radio, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you talk about, you and Investigator Brower when he got to your office?”

  “He told me what he’d heard on the police bands.”

  “What was that?”

  “Not much beyond the fact that Ms. Suade’s body had been found and that the police were investigating.”

  “Did you ask him anything in particular?”

  Susan thinks for a moment. “I might have asked him if he’d heard how it happened.”

  Ryan raises an eyebrow.

  “How Ms. Suade was killed,” says Susan.

  “I see. And did Investigator Brower have this information?”

  “As I recall, he said something about the police saying she was shot. That paramedics responded, but that she was dead at the scene.”

  “Did he tell you where this was? The scene?”

  “Her office, I believe.”

  “So he did tell you where the body was found?” Ryan jumps on it as if Susan may have misrepresented what she knew earlier.

  “After he came into the office,” says Susan. “That’s when he told me the location. I don’t think he ever told me on the phone.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean did you go home? After your meeting in the office with Investigator Brower? Did you go home?”

  “No.” Moment of truth. Susan knew this was coming.

  “Where did you go?”

  “I went to the Cineplex. South Area Mall,” she says.

  “You went to see a movie?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you go to the Cineplex?”

  “I went to see Mr. Madriani.”

  “Ah! Did he know you were going to join him at the show?”

  “No. He was there with his daughter.”

  “How did you know he was there if he didn’t tell you?”

  “I called his office. Found his partner.”

  “That would be Mr. Hinds?”

  “That’s right. And I was told that Mr. Madriani had gone to the Cineplex to see a movie.”

  “With his daughter?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And why did you go to the Cineplex if it wasn’t to see the movie?”

  “I wanted to tell him what had happened.”

  “I see. About Zolanda Suade? The murder?”

  “Yes.” Susan is no longer quibbling over the fact of whether she knew it was murder.

  “Did you go to the Cineplex alone?” Ryan already knows the answer. Brower has been thoroughly debriefed.

  “I drove there by myself.” Susan’s trying to evade the issue.

  “Did you meet anyone else there, besides Mr. Madriani?” says Ryan.

  “Mr. Brower,” she says.

  Ryan’s eyebrows are now halfway up to his balding crown as he looks at the jury. “You had Mr. Brower meet you at the Cineplex?”

  Susan doesn’t answer immediately; instead, she takes a deep breath. “I thought it would be best if Mr. Madriani heard the details of what we knew directly from Mr. Brower, since he was the one who heard the information on the police bands.”

  “Let me get this straight,” says Ryan. “You went to the Cineplex to find Mr. Madriani and you asked Mr. Brower to meet you there in order to provide information to Mr. Madriani regarding Zolanda Suade’s death?”

  “Well, he had been to see her that morning.”

  “Who?” says Ryan.

  “Mr. Madriani.”

  “Did you think he had something to do with her death?”

  “No!” S
usan nearly comes out of the chair.

  Ryan is looking at me now, the jury following his gaze.

  “Then what did all this have to do with Mr. Madriani?”

  Susan doesn’t respond, so Ryan takes the opportunity to sharpen the point. “Let’s not even talk about why you did this,” he says. “Let’s talk about what you did next. Did you find Mr. Madriani at the Cineplex?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him about Ms. Suade’s death. What little I knew.”

  “And did you have Mr. Brower talk to him?”

  “I think so.”

  “You had him come all that way, but you can’t remember if you had him talk to Mr. Madriani? That’s why you brought him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I think Mr. Brower spoke to him.”

  Ryan smiling. “And what happened next?”

  “We talked for a while,” she says.

  “And?”

  “And I took Sarah Madriani home. Went in and finished watching the movie with her, and then took her to my house.”

  “Where did Mr. Madriani go?”

  “He went to Ms. Suade’s office.”

  “Where the body was?”

  “I don’t know if it was still there.”

  “Of course. Did Mr. Madriani go there alone? To your knowledge?”

  “No.”

  “Who went with him?”

  “Mr. Brower.”

  Ryan pauses for effect, feigned surprise.

  “Mr. Brower? Who suggested that Mr. Brower go with Mr. Madriani?”

  “I can’t remember,” she says.

  “Could it have been you?”

  “It might have been.”

  Ryan smiles at the jury. Susan’s evasions are not looking good.

  “And whose car did they go in, to the scene of the crime?” says Ryan.

  “It was Mr. Brower’s.”

  “His county vehicle? With county plates?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did they use that car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could it have been to get through the police lines?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me get this straight,” says Ryan. “You asked Investigator Brower to come into the office after you found out about the murder. You called Mr. Madriani’s partner to find out where he was because you didn’t know. You went to the Cineplex to find Mr. Madriani, and you told Mr. Brower to meet you there. And then you asked Mr. Brower to take Mr. Madriani to the scene of the crime in his county vehicle. Why did you do all of this?”