The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  Not really. “Sure.”

  Mace crutched down the front steps and sidewalk. He beat me to the passenger door of his truck and held it open like a perfect gentleman. Justice, of course, jumped in first.

  Mace hopped around to the driver’s door, threw his crutches in the back, climbed into the driver’s seat, and gingerly lifted his bad leg in with both hands. He scooted back in the seat at an angle so he could keep the left leg straight.

  “You need me to drive?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Mace said. “Once I get in, I’m fine.”

  He drove to my favorite park on the Chattahoochee River. Before we ate lunch, Mace hobbled down to the river and started throwing a stick for Justice. Each throw went a little farther, and Justice seemed to be having the time of his life. Then Mace hobbled over to the woods next to the boat ramp and picked up a nice fat stick about three feet long. He stood on one leg and hurled it almost across the river. Justice did a flying belly flop into the water and swam like a bandit all the way to the stick, barely able to hold it out of the water as he swam back to Mace, proud of what he had done. Mace threw it again, and Justice took off. And the game was on. Mace seemed determined to eclipse his last throw every time, and Justice seemed equally determined to bring it back and beg for more. I eventually found a seat in the shade and caught myself smiling at the two alpha dogs trying to outdo each other.

  When I finally thought Justice might drown if he went in one more time, I called off the dogs, so to speak, and suggested we start the picnic. Mace had gone all out. There was a cooler with a fruit salad, Gatorade to drink, a chef salad with sliced meat and eggs, and three kinds of dressing in little Tupperware containers. I wondered how he had carried the cooler to the truck in the first place. He’d also brought celery, carrots, and two PowerBars for dessert.

  “What are you, some kind of health nut?” I asked.

  “Basically.”

  We spent the first half of lunch talking about workout routines and the second half trying to piece together exactly what had happened with Caleb Tate, Aaron Gillespie, and Antoine Marshall. I found it hard to stay mad at a man who had tried to save my life. I also discovered that Mace James was a lot less arrogant and more fun to be around than I had ever imagined.

  Some things had become clear in the last seven days. Gillespie was the one who had been hypnotizing Caleb Tate’s clients and helping them pass the polygraphs. With a little digging, detectives had found two former patients of Gillespie’s who claimed he had taken advantage of them sexually during their counseling sessions. The working hypothesis at the DA’s office was that he had done the same thing with Rikki Tate and that Caleb had found out. We assumed Caleb Tate had threatened to report Gillespie unless Gillespie played ball.

  The women who had been abused by Gillespie, including Rikki Tate, all fit a similar pattern. They had been abused as children. They were prescribed narcotics by Gillespie. They were apparently in that 20 percent of people who were easily subjected to hypnosis. When I learned these facts, I thought about my relationship with Gillespie and it creeped me out. He had tried to pump me full of narcotics and had tried his suggestive routine on me as well, but fortunately it had not worked.

  The link between my mom and Gillespie had also been clarified. By checking some old hard drives in storage at my mom’s psychiatric center, investigators learned that Mom had at one time counseled Rikki Tate. The notes from those counseling sessions had been stolen the night of my mother’s murder. But the existence of the counseling relationship and the fact that my mom had been researching psychiatrists who used narcotics and deep-trance hypnosis to sexually exploit their clients made it clear that Mom’s death was no accident.

  Antoine Marshall had obviously been working for Gillespie and Caleb Tate. Perhaps he had not expected my father to be home that night. Perhaps Marshall had been instructed to kill both my mom and my dad. Either way, my mom must have been ready to blow the whistle on Gillespie, and somehow he and Tate had found out.

  Mace assumed that Antoine Marshall had been hypnotized and had committed the murder under hypnosis.

  “Isn’t it far more likely that they paid him to murder my mom and then hypnotized him afterward so he could pass the polygraph?” I asked.

  Neither of us could prove our theory, and we agreed to disagree. “This much I know,” Mace said. “Antoine Marshall was a changed man in the end.”

  I took a bite of the fruit salad. We were sitting at a picnic table under a pavilion, but even with the breeze, it was stifling hot.

  “You’re probably right,” I said.

  Mace looked at me, his eyes registering surprise. “It takes a lot for you to say that.”

  “My brother’s been preaching at me all week,” I said. I didn’t mention the fact that coming so close to death also had a way of forcing a person to reevaluate. “And I think he’s right about something. Not being able to forgive someone is like a cancer. Even if you get revenge, it pretty much destroys your soul.”

  “Spoken like a true defense lawyer,” Mace said.

  “Let’s not get carried away.”

  We talked for a while about the prior Saturday night. From what Mace had learned, Gillespie and Tate had planned to make it look like a murder/suicide. The gun used to kill Mace James would have my fingerprints on it. Tate would claim I was waiting at the end of the sidewalk when they came out of the house. Mace started walking toward me, and I opened fire. I fired at Tate, and he fell to the ground. Thinking I killed him, I left. My body would be discovered, full of drugs, in my 4Runner on some abandoned road.

  Gillespie would testify about my psychotic break. A ranting e-mail sent to Bill Masterson from my own computer earlier that evening would confirm that I had snapped. An eyewitness. The word of a psychiatrist. Fingerprints on the gun. An incriminating e-mail. What more did they need?

  That night, Gillespie apparently had a change of heart. Instead of giving me a fatal drug overdose, he knocked me out with ketamine. He obviously had some kind of plan to keep me alive and make the deaths of Caleb Tate, Mace James, and Rafael Rivera look like a gang killing. None of us could figure out the details of how that plan would work.

  In a way, the events of last Saturday night had brought some closure, but in another way, they just raised a new set of questions. And there would be no trial to sort it out; all of the conspirators were dead, killed in a shoot-out that occurred while I was lying unconscious on the ground.

  “I understand you were quite a hero,” I said to Mace.

  “If you call getting shot in the leg and crying like a baby heroic,” Mace said. He decided to change the subject. “Tell me how you ended up with Justice.”

  I told Mace the story of my first dog, how Snowball had been poisoned when I was in law school. A few weeks later, some friends brought Justice by in a crate and left him outside my door. They had their own suggestions for names, but I decided to call him Justice.

  On the way home, Mace James earned some more brownie points when he stopped at the local PetSmart.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  “You’re going to turn Justice into a girlie dog if we don’t get him a real bone,” Mace said. I put Justice on his leash, and Mace got out on his crutches. The three of us walked around the store and looked at the puppies that had been brought in by the SPCA.

  “What kind of dog did you have as a kid?” I asked Mace.

  “A mutt. A big mutt.”

  “Shocker.”

  Eventually, Mace found what he was looking for. It was the biggest bone in the store. First the biggest stick on the bank of the river and now this. “Here you go, boy,” he said to Justice. He peeled back some of the plastic so Justice could sniff the bone, and the two boys cemented their friendship on the spot.

  On the way home, Justice sat behind us in the second seat of the cab, chewing on his new bone and wondering if the day could possibly get any better.

  Mace seemed to think this was the perfect moment t
o discuss a little business. “We’ve still got our deal with Rashad Reed, right? He gets out in two based on his help in Caleb Tate’s case?”

  “Is that what this was all about? A picnic in the park to soften me up on Rashad Reed?”

  “Yeah. And I figured taking a bullet in the leg trying to save your life wouldn’t hurt either.”

  “Okay. Point taken. I’ll go for three.”

  “Three?”

  “Rashad Reed really didn’t do anything in Tate’s case,” I said. “But at least my dog likes his lawyer.”

  “If it wasn’t for Rashad Reed and David Brewster, Gillespie and Tate might have gotten away with everything. I think you’re getting a gift at two.”

  I didn’t respond right away. I had every intention of honoring the original deal, but I wanted to make Mace sweat it out a little. After all, I didn’t want the word spreading around that I was getting soft.

  News of Rashad Reed’s likely deal had spurred a few others in the past week. Masterson was pretty sure the logjam was broken now that Caleb Tate wasn’t around to keep the gang leaders together.

  “All right,” I said, after waiting a sufficient amount of time. “But don’t get used to it. I gave you my word, so I’ll honor our deal. But, Mace James, that’s your last plea bargain. At least with me.”

  “Man,” Mace moaned, “no wonder Masterson had a hard time finding a pulse. It’s hard for a body to pump blood without a heart.”

  I punched him in the arm, but I was pretty sure he didn’t feel it.

  He was seven years older than me and he worked on the dark side of the law. But he was a man of faith, and he knew that the way to a woman’s heart was straight through her dog. I could get used to spending time with Mace James, I decided.

  The next morning, I woke up to somebody ringing the doorbell at 8 a.m. I had finally gotten back into a normal sleep pattern without drugs, and I didn’t appreciate somebody coming by that early on a Sunday morning. Justice and I marched down to the door, opened it, and almost tripped over the cage sitting in front of us.

  Oh no. Without even looking, I knew what was happening. I had been through this same routine with Justice. I didn’t have time to train another puppy. I was perfectly happy with the dog I already had.

  When I knelt down, the brown little furry thing in the cage was as cute as he could be. I opened the card on top of the cage. Apparently it wasn’t a “he” after all.

  I thought maybe Justice could use a little sister. I’m not a purebred like him, but the SPCA says I’ll be just as big. I’ve got a little brown Lab in me if that helps. And, oh, by the way, they also said they would have to put me down if I didn’t find a home.

  I know you’ve got a big heart, and I felt like maybe you needed somebody who could keep Justice company. Maybe you could call me Grace.

  “You are so cute,” I said, sticking my finger in the cage. Justice was sniffing Grace as if welcoming this new little girl into our home already. But I knew we wouldn’t have to. At the bottom of the note, there was a PS:

  If you’re too busy to puppy-train right now, maybe you could pawn me off on a defense lawyer I know. He says that he’ll be at the river at noon and that you have to come if you want to give me back.

  I carried the cage inside, smiling to myself. I sent a text message to Mace James confirming that his ransom note had paid off. He texted back, inviting me to church before our rendezvous at the river. I surprised myself by accepting.

  I also replied to another text, this one from LA. He wanted to hang out that afternoon.

  LA seemed perfect for me. He believed in law and order, just like I did. He was younger and had a full head of hair and could have stepped from police work straight into modeling. Plus, he was another dog lover.

  I sent a message telling him that I would be busy. Grace started barking and wanted to get out and play. I shook my head, knowing what I was getting into. Justice and Grace, they would make for some intriguing companions.

  Epilogue

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  On Tuesday, November 6, Bill Masterson won the election for attorney general by four percentage points, propelled in part by the dramatic turn of events that had ended Caleb Tate’s case. Masterson had become the Wyatt Earp of Georgia, taking law and order to a whole new level.

  After a rousing acceptance speech at the Atlanta Hilton and a little postcelebration drinking with some friends, Masterson told everyone he was heading home to get some well-earned rest. Instead, he went straight to the office.

  It would be his last night as DA. He would resign immediately so he could start focusing on the transition to attorney general, a job that technically started in January. Regina Granger would be appointed as the interim DA until a special election could be held.

  Masterson turned on the lights in his office, kicked off his shoes, and poured himself a bourbon. It wasn’t often that he had a moment of quiet reflection to consider the events of the past several years.

  Men didn’t reach his elevated status, he told himself, without a fair amount of baggage. There was Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. His brother John and Marilyn Monroe. And more recently, Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York, who had been sleeping with prostitutes while serving as New York’s attorney general. And who knew how many others? Great men who accomplished great things but had skeletons in their closets that nobody knew about.

  The difference between the John Kennedys of the world and the Eliot Spitzers wasn’t that some had superior moral compasses; it was just that some of them were smart enough to never get caught.

  And that’s why, on the night of his greatest achievement, Bill Masterson was in his corner office tying up a few loose ends. Details were the difference between success and failure.

  It had been thirteen years since his troubles first bubbled to the surface. Rikki Tate, who was then known as Rikki Pearlman, had an impressive list of johns. And her lawyer was no fool. When Caleb Tate first came to Bill Masterson to cut a deal for Rikki, he proposed a side agreement as well. Rikki would conveniently forget one of her clients, so long as that man agreed to recommend no jail time for the young escort and occasionally return a favor on selected future cases for her lawyer. When Masterson went along with the deal, he knew that the devil had just slapped a mortgage on his soul.

  But Masterson and Caleb Tate were professionals, and everything was fine until Rikki’s conversion to Christianity. When she started telling Caleb that she just couldn’t live with herself unless she told the truth about Masterson, Caleb had come straight to Masterson. Caleb had grown disenchanted with his wife and her holier-than-thou ways. He had a brilliant plan for taking care of her that would land both Caleb and Masterson on the front page of the paper, coverage that both men desperately needed. They each knew Gillespie was their ace in the hole, the man who could rig the counseling records of Rikki Tate to say whatever the coconspirators needed. Masterson had agreed to eventually nol-pros the Caleb Tate case so they wouldn’t have to risk a renegade jury.

  When Tate spent three days in jail, he thought up the no-plea-bargaining idea, which took the plan to a whole new level. That serendipitous twist had propelled Masterson to the AG’s office and made him a player on the national stage.

  Jamie Brock had almost ruined everything. Her insistence on prosecuting Tate, even when Masterson decided to nol-pros, was problematic. The first plan was to rig the DA computer files so it appeared that Jamie’s father would be implicated in a bribery scheme if the case proceeded. This required bringing Rivera into the conspiracy. But Jamie surprised everyone by still insisting on going forward. That’s when Masterson and Tate had implemented plan B—the tape recording of Rafael Rivera that imploded the state’s case.

  The casualties could have ended with Rikki Tate if Mace James had minded his own business. But once James started figuring things out, he had to go. Masterson never intended to let Jamie die. He knew Gillespie was supposed to give her an overdose of narcotics. But Masterson had always intended t
o show up at Caleb Tate’s house like the cavalry, kill Tate, Gillespie, and Rivera before they could implicate him, and rush Jamie to the hospital in time to save her life.

  He’d had to improvise a little, but things had turned out even better than he’d expected.

  There was a saying that Masterson subscribed to completely—two men can keep a secret, as long as one of them is dead. A corollary, of course, was that four men could keep a secret as long as three of them were dead.

  The investigation into the shoot-out at Caleb Tate’s house was now complete. The hardest thing for Masterson had been explaining his sudden last-minute appearance. But he was a man of details. He had told Gillespie to keep Jamie’s cell phone with them in her 4Runner at all times. That way, according to the plan, Gillespie could send a text from Jamie’s phone while at Caleb Tate’s house, helping to place her at the scene of the crime.

  Knowing this, Masterson had called some colleagues with the state police after receiving Jamie’s fake e-mail rant against Tate and Mace James. He had asked them to triangulate her cell phone. That gave him the excuse he needed to go to Tate’s house, where he knew his coconspirators would be. Once there, he parked at the end of the driveway, snuck up behind Jamie’s 4Runner, and called for backup. Before help could arrive, he took decisive action and shot Gillespie, saving Mace James in the process.

  The timing had been tricky, and the story wasn’t perfect, but it satisfied the investigators.

  Now he needed to tie up the final details. He accessed the DA’s computer database and pulled up Robert Brock’s case files for Milton County. Six months ago, he had changed the names of the actual judges on many of Brock’s successful cases to Judge Snowden’s name. He had even scanned in a few substitute orders with her name and forged her signature so the backup documents matched. He had done the same thing with two other defense lawyers.

  And now, on his last night in the office, Masterson undid all those changes. The DA’s electronic database was once again an exact copy of the actual court files. When he completed the task, he proofread the resignation letter that he had drafted earlier in the week, anticipating this moment. He stuck it in an envelope, put Regina’s name on the outside, and placed it in his out-box.