Presumption of Guilt

by Rachel Sinclair

  Sometimes, when she had periods of lucidity, which was often the case, she realized that her illness was inherited. She remembered that her mother was taken away from her when she was just a small girl, and her father never did tell her where her mother went. But she would remember the police coming to the door, and her mother being taken away in handcuffs. She was only 3 when this happened, so she never quite knew why the police were there and why her mother was gone. It was only when she got older, and her father told her that her mother was in a long-term institution after having killed a man because voices in her head told her to, that she understood. Her mother was very sick.

  And then she became just as sick. Only she wasn’t as lucky as her mother was. She spent six months in the hospital when she had her first breakdown, and then her husband divorced her and cut her off completely. He didn’t even leave her on his insurance. He had money, a lot of money, and she should have been entitled to a decent settlement from him, but he was able to afford a high-dollar lawyer, while she had none. He was able to leave her without a penny by showing the judge that all the property the two had owned during their marriage was his separate property. This was true enough, as she came into the marriage without anything at all, but she thought that at least some of their property was considered marital. But her husband cooked the books to make it look like the two had actually lost equity in their home during their marriage and that the investments he brought into the marriage also went down in value. Plus, he had an iron-clad prenup that she willingly signed because she loved him when she married him.

  So, she got nothing. No property and no kids. She knew that what had happened with her son meant that she was a terrible mother, and her mental breakdown also made the judge concerned that she couldn’t be alone with her daughter. So, he got full custody of the kids. Which was just as well, because, even after that stay in the hospital, she never got well. She was forced out of the hospital because she couldn’t pay anymore, but she certainly couldn’t work and care for herself.

  She was eligible for disability, but could never get it together to apply.

  That was why she considered her mother to be much luckier than herself. Her mother, because of what she did in killing that man, whoever that man happened to be, stayed in the hospital and was cared for there. She had visited her mother, and saw that she watched television with some of the other patients, she got meds on time, she had a bed to sleep on and was fed breakfast, lunch and dinner. Her mother never had to sleep outside on the sidewalk, she never went hungry, and she even had crafts and hobbies she was into.

  The woman thought, after seeing her mother in the hospital, that maybe she, herself, should kill somebody. If she did, then she, too, could live in a mental institution for the rest of her life. She could be taken care of just like her mother was.

  But she didn’t have it in her to kill somebody. She wished that she did.

  She didn’t have it in her to kill a person.

  But her son did.

  Chapter 16

  Avery

  After Christian agreed to come and work for me on this case, or, rather, I agreed to take him on, things were going to start rolling. I immediately went to the lessee’s office and rented out another space in the suite for him. My office suite, located on the 25th floor of a high-rise in downtown San Diego, had 15 office spaces. These spaces were all rented out to different attorneys, all of us doing our own thing. I was friends with most of the people around the suite, but I didn’t practice with them. We all tried to cover for each other in courts whenever we had a conflict of some sort, and we shot cases to one another for a finder’s fee – I would get word of somebody who needed a will, and I would shoot that case over to Don Lombard, who was the estates and trusts attorney, and Don would find out about somebody who needed a criminal attorney, and I would get that case. I might find out about somebody who was injured in an accident, and I would refer the case over to Natasha Watters, the personal injury attorney in our suite, and she might pass along a DUI to me.

  And so it went.

  There were only two offices that were available in the suite, so I jumped on one of them for Christian. It was two doors down from my suite, and, like all the offices on my side of the hall, it had a balcony. Just like my suite, his suite featured hardwood floors, 15 foot ceilings, and was about the same size as mine – about 30x30. I told Christian that he could decorate it the way that he wanted to, and he and I had been in touch for the past few weeks while he was working with his soon-to-be former employer. He had given in his notice when I hired him, and was eager to get away from his old job so that he could really dig into the Esme Gutierrez case.

  As for the protestors and the threatening emails, things had calmed down. Enough condo dwellers had had it with the protestors, so there was an emergency town-hall meeting to address the situation. It was decided that it was high time that the city repair that particular stretch of boardwalk, so that’s what the city did. The city couldn’t ask them to leave unless they were disturbing the peace, because they had a First Amendment right to be there. So the city put barriers 100 feet apart on the boardwalk, right in the place where the protestors had stood. That meant that the protestors couldn’t stand right beneath my balcony to protest, they had to protest down the walk a little bit. That deterred them, because it defeated the purpose of harassing me.

  I was still getting threatening messages, but Christian managed to fix that for me, too. He planted viruses on the servers of every single person who threatened me. That word got around soon enough - if you send me a nasty email, you’ll get a virus in return, so, before I knew it, the hateful messages had dwindled to a trickle.

  That was how I dealt with the hate mail. For the actual death threats, I turned those over to the FBI. A few people were arrested, but, mainly, the people sending the death threats managed to cover their tracks. They were generally smart enough to use somebody else’s IP address, like the library, taking their laptops up there and sending their messages from that address while using spoofed email addresses. So, it was more complicated trying to track them down, but the FBI was getting to them, one by one, and, one by one, men and women were being brought in for questioning and getting charged with making terroristic threats.

  There was only one person who managed to avoid the FBI, though. It was the guy, or woman, who had sent me the email that had chilled me to the bone. The author who had written the message that started out rational, intelligent and almost empathetic, and then ended with the threat that I would die if I kept on Esme’s case. I didn’t know why that person couldn’t be tracked down, but Christian told me that this guy was probably a computer genius who was able to cover his tracks better than almost anybody else.

  That didn’t comfort me. I wasn’t too thrilled with having none-too-bright people threatening my life. I really wasn’t digging having some kind of evil genius threatening me. I tried not to think about it, because I had to do my job. Esme needed me to keep my cool. But this guy, whoever he was, unnerved me.

  I hadn’t had a message from him since that first night, but, when I got into the office the morning that Christian was finally going to join me, that changed.

  I was monitoring my personal email much better than I was before the threatening messages had started pouring in, so I booted up the computer and logged onto my personal Gmail account.

  And I saw it.

  The subject line was Miss me???

  I got into the body of the email and started to read.

  Miss Collins,

  I believe that I corresponded with you earlier. I told you that I felt some sympathy for you and your situation. I understand that you were in prison, wrongfully convicted, and I can relate to this. I, too, am in prison, and I, too, was wrongfully convicted. So, I get it. You got out of prison and wanted to help as many people like yourself that you could.

  But Esme Gutierrez is not worthy of your time. She’s not innocent. If you free her, you will be freeing a murderer bac
k onto the street. I know that you don’t want that on your head. Try to look yourself in the mirror after you walk Esme and she goes on to do it again.

  I’m sorry, but I must stop you before it’s too late. When I wrote you before that if you continue to represent Esme that you would die, that wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. It’s a simple calculation, really – if you get to the court and you get Esme acquitted, then she’ll be free to do it again and again. But if you are sacrificed and Esme does not have a high-caliber attorney, then she will be convicted and she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison. Where she belongs. So, I must take you out to save society. I’m sorry that it has to be this way. I know that you are only doing your job. You seem like a very nice person. But you have to give up this case if you want to live. It’s as simple as that.

  Do not even try to find out who I am. You will not be able to. Neither will your new associate, Christian. I understand that he’s a computer genius, but he does not know who he’s dealing with. If he did, he would not allow you to go ahead and keep on this case. Trust me on this.

  There’s the stick, now the carrot.

  I have information on who killed your friend, Becky Whitfield.

  Interested now?

  X

  I sat there and looked at that email for what seemed like forever. It was as if I thought that it would change somehow or disappear if I just willed it to. I touched the screen of my computer and put my hand to my chest. I felt my heart pounding beneath my fingers, and I massaged the skin on my chest lightly. It was difficult to think about which part of this email terrified me more. Was it the fact that he knew that my new associate, Christian, was a computer genius? Was it the fact that he even knew that I had a new associate? After all, Christian had not yet entered his appearance on this case, so how did this guy even know that I had a second-chair? Was it the way that he stated as a fact that my client, Esme, was guilty? Was it the casual way that he told me that he would kill me to save society?

  Or was it the fact that he stated that he had information about who killed Becky?

  Did he have this information?

  How would I even know? He wouldn’t give me information about who he was, and he confidently said that even Christian wouldn’t be able to track him down. If this guy was a skilled computer hacker, like Christian, then he would be able to do anything at all to cover his tracks. In fact, he must have been good at covering his tracks, because the FBI had not yet been able to figure out who he was.

  I shut my laptop down and went down to see Christian. He was getting settled into his new office, and I noticed that all the women attorneys in the office were spending a great deal of time with him, giving their opinions on his décor and bringing him baked goods and flowers and things like that. I thought that was sweet, but I also knew that these ladies had an ulterior motive for getting to know the newest attorney on the block. Christian was quite easy on the eyes and he had the charm to match.

  When I went to talk to him, Alexis O’Neill, an attorney who specialized in medical malpractice, was standing in Christian’s doorway, talking to him about something. She saw me and smiled. “Avery, was just chatting with your new associate,” she said. Then she turned to Christian. “Well, if you need me, you know where to find me.”

  “Thanks, Alex,” he said, already calling her by her shortened nickname. He was busy unloading legal treatises onto his wooden bookshelf in the corner of the room. “I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”

  I watched Alex walk down the hallway to her own office with suspicion. She was going through a messy divorce, which was being handled by Max, short for Maxine, an attorney in our suite. I heard her crying in Max’s office more than a few times, and I knew that her divorce was hard for her, to say the least.

  I could be wrong, but I thought that I saw her toss her rich brown hair more than once as she talked to Christian, and I saw quite a bit of eye-batting. Why I cared if she was flirting with him, I didn’t know, but I only knew that it bothered me.

  But not nearly as much as that email bothered me.

  “Hey,” Christian said, coming over to me with a smile. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, I thought that we could get our schedules lined up on this case. I don’t know what you have going on with other cases, so I need to figure things out. I have an interview with Jacob and Colleen tomorrow, the father and the step-mother of the victim. And my investigator, Regina Baldwin, is following up on some leads that she got from a friend of hers, Juan Castro. He told her that he knew Aria because she was running around with a friend of his named Julian Rodriguez. Regina’s going to talk to Julian while I’m going to be talking to Jacob and Colleen. In the meantime, I thought that you might start with trying to track down somebody who, uh, sent me an interesting email.”

  Christian nodded his head and took a potted plant that was an apparent gift from one of the other women in the office and put it out on the balcony. He smelled the air with a smile on his face. “You can’t imagine how nice it is to work in an office with a balcony. I spent most of my time with my other firm in the library. Lots of windows, but quiet as a tomb. Kinda lonely, really.” He walked over to me. “Now, tell me about this email.”

  “Maybe you should come down to my office,” I said. “And read it on my laptop. It’s gotten me freaked out, if you want to know the absolute truth.”

  He went down to my office, and I opened up my laptop and logged back on. The email was right there, because I hadn’t actually shut down the email, I just shut the laptop when I walked out of the office.

  He read the email, his hand on his chin. He narrowed his eyes. “How does he know about me, I wonder?” he said. “That’s odd. I haven’t even entered my appearance in this case, so how would he even know that I’m working with you, let alone that I’m a so-called computer genius?”

  “I know. That’s the weird thing for me, too. I have no idea how this guy seems to know this. And what’s up with him using Becky as bait? I mean, what good does it do for him to say that he has information about Becky’s murder if he doesn’t care to reveal his identity?”

  He raised an eyebrow. His scent was somewhat distracting me, because he was wearing some kind of subtle woodsy cologne that smelled like it was high-dollar. Everything about this guy was somewhat distracting, but I had to concentrate on the matter at hand, so I tried to ignore my feelings.

  “I’m obviously going to have to try to find out where this guy is,” he said. “The FBI hasn’t been able to find him, though, so it might be hard. He probably is an expert spoofer, which means that he can not only spoof his email address but also his IP. But it’s not impossible to try to find him. That’s actually the least of the issues right here. To me, it’s more concerning that he knows about me. That would tell me that perhaps he knows somebody who knows you.”

  I thought about who it was who knew that I had hired Christian to work this case. The people at his job were aware of him coming to work for me, because he told them that that was where he was going. Esme knew that he was coming to work for me. I had visited her to tell her that I was going to get a second-chair for her trial, and she was quite excited that I was going to have somebody help me. Regina knew about him, too. And my brother knew about Christian. He had met him when I had Christian over for dinner one night, and the two bros bonded immediately over their shared love for college basketball and Quentin Tarantino movies.

  That was it, though. I had no idea how I was going to work backwards from those people to figure out who this guy was.

  “It’s creepy that he seems to know about my personal life,” I said to Christian. “I mean, if he knows about you, then what else does he know about me?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Christian said. “Man, are you sure that you don’t want to hire a bodyguard?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t. I got a high-dollar security system that’s so sensitive that I’ve set it off more than once, and so has Aidan, and I ha
ve a gun and a permit for concealed carry. I think that those steps are as far as I want to take things right now. I don’t want some random dude sleeping on my couch, which is what he’s going to have to do, because I don’t have space for anybody extra in my condo.”

  “Well, let’s try to figure this out,” Christian said “Aidan is a law student, in his third year. Didn’t you tell me that he nailed down a job for when he gets out of school?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s working with a firm that hired him as a summer associate last year. Nixon and Pierce. It’s a PI firm, and he’s going to be working for them as a new associate in the fall. Assuming he passes the bar.”

  “And what kind of activities does he do besides go to school and working at Starbucks?” he asked.

  “Well, he does some work for the firm that’s hired him, Nixon and Pierce. It’s low-paid stuff, but it’s helping him get acclimated more into the firm. Right now, he’s been doing work on involuntary commitments to mental hospitals. I think that’s what he’s going to be specializing in. He seems to really like the work.”

  Christian nodded his head. “So, your brother is representing the people who’ve been involuntarily committed to mental hospitals?”

  “Yeah. The firm takes some of those cases pro bono, but they generally try to concentrate on patients who have the money to hire them. They also take cases where people have been confined in mental hospitals because they committed a serious crime. Sometimes these people go into remission from the mental illnesses for a time, and they hire Nixon and Pierce to help them get out. That doesn’t usually work out so well, but sometimes it does. Nixon and Pierce would represent them in their hearings for release.”