by Jeff Lindsay
“So here’s what I think,” Sanders said. He picked up his coffee cup again, glanced inside, and then set it down again. “I think you really were sleeping with Mrs. Hobson. We’ll check your DNA against Mrs. Hobson’s sheets and we’ll know for sure. But I think it was you. I believe that part. And sometime this morning, you left—hey, was it before or after Mr. Hobson got home?”
Randall just shook his head, numb. After a moment, Sanders shrugged. “We’ll find out,” he said. “I’m guessing before—unless you know the code for the alarm system?”
Randall shook his head dumbly.
“Yeah. Didn’t think so, but we’ll see. Anyway. You go back to your own place. And you turn on the TV—and there it is, all over the place. Your girlfriend has gone and killed her husband.”
“That’s not—Katrina could never—”
“And even worse—she killed him over you!” Sanders said loudly, pointing abruptly at him, and Randall flinched. “So we got guilt, and maybe we got real love?” He raised an eyebrow, but Randall said nothing. “Or maybe you just like getting close to all that money. It’s possible. But I guess there’s some feeling there, huh?” He shrugged. “So you figure, come on down here and confess, jerk my chain around for a while, and maybe get your lady love out of the slammer. Am I right?”
And he waited for Randall to say something with that same expression of mild patience, just sat there, until Randall finally had to say something or scream. “It’s not— There had to be some mistake. Katrina could never . . . never do something like that.”
“The evidence is pretty solid,” Sanders said. “It sure looks like she did.”
“. . . Evidence?” Randall said.
“Fingerprints and so on. You know. It looks pretty conclusive, Randall. It really looks like your girlfriend did it.” Randall said nothing, and after a moment Sanders went on. “There’s maybe one or two small holes? A few things maybe you could tell us?”
CHAPTER
19
Katrina wanted to scream. More accurately, she still wanted to scream, had wanted to ever since those two detectives with their Frick and Frack comedy act had accused her of killing Michael.
Even when Tyler Gladstone, her attorney, had finally come down and bailed her out, she was still fighting the desire—no, the need—to open her mouth as wide as it would go and let out a pure, loud, air-raid siren of a scream. Of course that wouldn’t look good, and she’d battled the urge to give in and let one rip.
But now, as it dawned on her that even Tyler—her very own attorney!—thought she’d done it, she was losing the battle. Oh, he’d been very careful choosing his words, naturally—but she could tell what he meant when he said things like, “It might be difficult to make a jury believe your version of what happened.”
“My version?! Tyler, goddamn it, what the fuck does that mean?!”
“Katrina, please, calm down,” he said soothingly.
“Calm down? You want me to calm the fuck down?! Then fucking DO something!”
“I got you out on bail,” he said. “Which was not easy, believe me.”
“Well, whoopity-fucking-do! And that’s it? You’ve got no more masterful lawyer tricks up your sleeve?”
“Come on, Katrina, I’m not a criminal attorney,” he said. “And for a case like this, with all the evidence against you—”
“Tyler, so help me God,” she said. “If you’re going to sit there and hint that you think I killed Michael, I really will kill you.”
He held up both hands, as if to shield himself from her attack. “All I’m saying is, it doesn’t look good. The police think they have a strong case, and apparently the district attorney thinks so, too. In fact,” he said, lowering his voice, as if he were telling her a great secret, “the DA is going to prosecute this case herself. Which means she thinks it’s a slam dunk because she’s up for reelection.”
“Well, Jesus fucking Christ!” Katrina stormed. “That’s fucking great! And so what’s your plan, Tyler? To let her win?!”
“My plan,” Tyler said, his voice still even and unruffled, “is to bring in an expert.” He smiled for the first time, paused for effect, and then said with great relish, “Jacob Brilstein.”
“Oh,” Katrina said, and for a moment, all the rage drained out of her. Jacob Brilstein was far and away the most brilliant, flamboyant defense attorney in the tristate area. Many times he had taken on an apparently hopeless case and somehow won his client acquittal. “Has he really never lost a case?”
“Oh, I think he may have lost one or two,” Tyler said. “He just doesn’t get those splashed all over the front page. But damned few losses, Katrina.” His smile grew. “Damned few losses.”
* * *
—
K atrina perched on the edge of a glove leather sofa. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, and it begged her to lean back and relax into its soothing embrace. But Katrina could not possibly relax. She was still numb with shock and completely bewildered by all that was happening—and the speed at which things were moving. Just yesterday morning her husband had been murdered—and she had been blamed for it and put in jail, for God’s sake. And now she sat in Jacob Brilstein’s midtown office, with a view through his large window of the sun setting over Manhattan. It was a large room that seemed cramped with all the piles of folders and books, and the assortment of bizarre objects strewn around the room: a ball-peen hammer with a red ribbon on the handle, a bowling ball with a chunk missing, five or six toy guns and knives—they had to be mementos of memorable cases. There were also some quiet, reassuring paintings on the wall—the kind Katrina called “motel art”—and a glass coffee table holding a crystal vase with fresh-cut flowers in it. The whole effect was of sitting in an eccentric uncle’s odd but comfortable room, an ambience designed to put you at your ease, and that was impossible for Katrina. Murder—jail—interrogation by detectives—! She had been flung savagely into a world she could never have imagined entering, and now she was stuck there! Katrina could no more be at her ease right now than she could fly.
And everybody just assumed that she had killed Michael! Which was completely crazy—even if he really was a pedophile like the detectives said. Or maybe especially if he was a pedophile! Because if that was true, killing him would have been stupid—she could have divorced him quickly and kept the house, the yacht, whatever she wanted. Pedophiles did not get a good break in divorce court.
But since she knew she didn’t kill Michael . . . who did?
The obvious answer was Randall. It seemed unlikely—Katrina felt sure she knew Randall. After all, she wasn’t stupid; she knew how to judge people, and she couldn’t sleep with a man so many times without learning his true character. And Randall was a sweet, mild-tempered, cultured guy—he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and she was absolutely sure he couldn’t kill another human being.
But she had heard Michael confront him—and she was certain Randall had feelings for her, strong feelings, beyond just the sex. Wasn’t it possible that Randall was full of adrenaline from being discovered, and then Michael yelled at him—she had heard that—and Randall just lost it, just for a moment? Wasn’t it conceivable that he would give in to a moment of weakness and kill Michael out of love for her?
No. It just wasn’t even thinkable. Randall was a lamb, a gentle and sweet man. It was out of the question. He couldn’t possibly have killed Michael.
Which left Katrina herself. Or . . . who?
And so she fretted, and sweated, and fidgeted. And Brilstein himself did not help. After a cursory introduction, he had spent over an hour grilling her—worse than the detectives!—asking her very sharp questions, making her go over everything that had happened several times, all the improbable, unbelievable events that had led to this meeting. And now, for the first time, he seemed to relax, and Katrina longed to do the same but could not.
“Well, well,” Brilstein
said softly as he glanced over the copious notes he’d taken. “Well, well, well . . .” He flipped through a few more pages, nodding, twice adding a quick note, and finally he dropped the legal pad into his lap and looked up at her. “So you may think I’m being jocose if I say, good news and bad news?” Jacob Brilstein said. “But . . . ?” He raised one carefully groomed eyebrow and looked at Katrina with a half smile. “I am actually saying it?”
“I suppose I—I mean, what’s the, um, the good news . . . ?”
His smile widened. “Based on what you’ve told me, it’s not nearly as complete a case as they think it is.” He lifted one hand and turned it over, back, over.
“That is good,” Katrina said.
“Like I said. But the bad news . . . it is very close to being complete, and based on what I have already heard from the district attorney’s office, the other side thinks it’s open-and-shut.” He smiled briefly. “They like to say things like that, ‘open-and-shut,’” he said with more than a hint of mockery.
“Oh,” Katrina said. “So, um . . . and what do you think, Mr. Brilstein?”
“Please, call me Jake,” the attorney said. “We are going to be spending a lot of time together, so . . . I hope I can call you Katrina as well?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“Well, Katrina,” Brilstein said, “there are one or two holes here—holes I could drive a truck through.” He nodded, then frowned. “Don’t get me wrong, the district attorney is very good, for somebody who isn’t Jewish. Smart. And she will be working her tight little WASP ass off to plug these holes.”
“Oh,” Katrina said. “Is there a—I mean, um . . .” She trickled to a stop, not really sure what she meant to say.
It didn’t faze Brilstein. “Of course there is,” he said. “This whole business with the alarm system, for instance, the timeline. You say it was off when your husband came home, right?”
“Yes,” Katrina said. “Randall had to—I mean, he usually just left quietly, when—um . . .” And oddly, Katrina found herself blushing.
“Naturally,” Brilstein said, ignoring her discomfort. “But it was on when the cops got there, and nobody knows the code except you and your husband. So the DA is going to hit that hard because there was no one in the house except you and Mr. Hobson.” He shook his head. “Which is what they want us to think, right?”
Brilstein stood up abruptly, causing his legal pad to fall to the floor. “But,” he said loudly, beginning to pace as though addressing an imaginary jury, “you heard him argue with your boyfriend. And then you heard the boyfriend leave, the alarm came back on—” He spread his arms dramatically. “Yes, of course, that means your husband was still alive when the boyfriend left. BUT”—he lowered his voice—“the DA also wants us to forget,” he said, stopping and pointing a dramatic finger, “that before Mr. Hobson turned the alarm on, when it was off for several hours—absolutely anybody could have come in, any enemy of Mr. Hobson. And once inside, they could easily hide in the office and wait. Isn’t that right?” And he spun and looked at her.
Katrina nodded.
“Of course it’s right. And in that hours-long period, with the alarm off, that is exactly what happened! An unknown person, with bad intentions toward Mr. Hobson, came into the house, hid themselves, and waited!”
Brilstein paused, and then looked around as if surprised to find he was only in his office. He smiled and sat back in his chair, retrieving the legal pad from the floor. “Once I get the whole True Mentor thing into the record, I can sure as hell make the court believe your husband had enemies.” He nodded to himself, glancing down at the legal pad and tapping the pencil again.
And then, just as abruptly, he frowned. “But the boyfriend,” he said. He looked up at her, and to Katrina he seemed worried. “Your boyfriend is the wild card here, Katrina. In the first place, just having a boyfriend does not look good—to some of these people, adultery is halfway to murder.”
Katrina felt a lump growing in her stomach. She swallowed but said nothing. Until she’d met Randall, she would have agreed.
“Worse than that—apparently, he walked into the police station and confessed that he killed your husband.”
“Oh my God!” Katrina said. Her heart and stomach seemed to collide, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t even thought of it before—but it made a kind of terrible sense. Randall would think he was protecting her, and . . .
“He didn’t,” Brilstein said.
Katrina blinked at the attorney. “. . . What?” she managed.
“He didn’t kill your husband,” Brilstein said patiently. “For whatever reason, they’re pretty sure of that.”
“Of course not—oh, that idiot . . .” Just hearing what he had done made her more certain than ever that he couldn’t possibly have killed Michael. She found that she was actually smiling. It was so sweet of Randall—to try to take the blame for her.
“It’s not a good thing, Katrina,” Brilstein said. “Now that they have him, they’re not going to let go of him. They’ll want him to testify, and we don’t know what he’ll say on the stand. And the DA will put him on the stand, I’d bet my life on it.”
“He won’t—I mean, Randall would never—”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Brilstein said, and for the first time he sounded irritated—with her. “Until now. You have no idea the kind of pressure they can put on somebody—and if it’s a question of testify or take fifteen years in the slammer, you can bet even Vito Corleone would sing like a lark. No, you better get used to the idea that he will testify against you.”
The lump in Katrina’s stomach lurched upward and then settled back down twice as big as it had been. She would have bet her life on Randall, but when Brilstein explained it like that . . . And after all, how well did she really know Randall Miller? She knew he was gentle and cultured—and wouldn’t a man like that do anything to avoid the horrors of prison life?
“So there’s that. And in addition, we may have something sudden and unexpected thrown at us, and there’s no way to stop it or be ready for it.” He closed his eyes, sighed deeply, opened them again. “Still, there’s hope here.” He gave her a reassuring half smile. “I have won cases that were a lot worse, and that’s the truth. But this one—” He shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. It’s an uphill fight.”
Katrina: “But that’s—I mean, I really am innocent—”
Brilstein waved that away as if it were an annoying plume of smoke. “Of course you are. All my clients are innocent. That has nothing to do with this case, or any case.” He looked at her like he was studying her for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s like this, Katrina. The court will want to believe you killed your husband.” He raised a hand to cut off her automatic objection. “Because you are rich, good-looking, have a lot of money—and on top of that, you’re rich.” He shrugged. “For some reason, that never gets any sympathy. And it makes reasonable doubt a lot harder.”
“I give a lot to charity,” Katrina said meekly.
Brilstein laughed. “And we will absolutely keep that off the record.”
“What? Why? I thought that would be good!”
“Oh, it’s splendid,” Brilstein said in a voice rich with irony. “But the moment we tell them, ‘My client gave $4 million to charity last year!’ every single person on the jury will think, ‘More than I make my whole life. And that bitch can afford to throw it away like it’s nothing.’”
“. . . Oh . . . ,” Katrina said.
Brilstein sighed, ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I have a feeling it all hinges on the security system. We can create reasonable doubt by underlining that it was off and some bad actor got in. But if the DA finds a way to counter that, to make the court believe that it was actually turned on the whole time—” He took a deep breath. “Well, in that case, we hope for the old Brilstein Luck to kick in.”
“Jesus Christ,” Katrina blurted. “We’re going to depend on luck?!”
“Yes,” Brilstein said quite seriously. “One of the cops breaks the evidence chain. One of the witnesses says something contradictory. The prosecution asks the wrong question.” He waved a hand to indicate an infinite number of possibilities. “A lot of things happen in the course of a trial. Wild cards. You just have to recognize them when they turn up and be ready to take advantage.”
“Jesus Christ,” Katrina said again. She found it hard to believe that Brilstein was admitting that her life—her actual, literal life—depended on blind chance. If he didn’t have the reputation of being the best, she would have fired him on the spot.
“It’s not so bad as that,” Brilstein said, sensing her despair. “When I say ‘luck,’ what I really mean is ‘instinctive intelligence based on experience.’” He patted the folder and nodded. “There will be an opening. And I will see it and jump in. This I promise.” And he raised his right hand as if swearing an oath. Then he dropped his hand, paused, and shook his head. “But the boyfriend . . . ,” he said.
As if it had been a cue, the phone on Brilstein’s desk buzzed, loud and annoying, and Brilstein glared at it. “For the love of— I said no interruptions, and—” He took a breath and picked up the receiver. “This better be good,” he said.
Apparently, it was good. Brilstein looked startled, glanced at Katrina, and then snatched up a pencil and legal pad and began jotting down notes. “Uh-huh . . . Okay—and what time was this? . . . Where is he now? . . . Okay, all right, good. Get me the contact information, will you please, Caitlin? Thanks.”
Brilstein hung up the phone and looked thoughtfully at his notes. Katrina watched him, feeling only an anxious uncertainty. She was half sure the call had been about her, about her case—she would have to get used to thinking of it that way. But there was no way to tell from Brilstein’s expression whether it was positive or very bad.
