The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  He finished at about 4:30 a.m. and took a final swallow of bourbon. He turned out the lights and thought about how much he would miss this place.

  The justice system wasn’t perfect. Sometimes it needed a little help from men like him. He was determined to make up for his past mistakes by doing a good job as attorney general. Georgia needed an AG who would kick butt and take names, and Bill Masterson was just the man.

  He left the office, backing out of his reserved parking spot one last time, and headed home to get some sleep. In two months, he would start his job as Georgia’s top law enforcement official.

  There would be a new sheriff in town. And the bad guys had better watch their backs.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  Regina Granger’s second press conference as the interim district attorney for Milton County did not garner much interest. I was there, sitting in the back row. Next to me sat Mace James. LA was leaning against a side wall.

  The room had been set up for more than a dozen reporters, but only five had come. They assumed that Regina had called the press conference to announce her intention to run in the special election—a foregone conclusion. The reporters looked bored, checking their smartphones as Regina talked about the organizational changes she had made in her first thirty days. The plea-bargaining crisis was behind us, and things had returned to some semblance of normalcy.

  As Regina talked, my mind drifted to the events of the last few months. I still found it hard to believe that I had been spending so much time with a defense lawyer, someone seven years older than me, and someone who had defended my mother’s killer. But after that first picnic together, we found excuses to get together again. It turned out that we had a lot in common and, yes, some pretty stark differences, too. But I liked hanging out with a man who was challenging and unpredictable and not at all threatened by my strong opinions.

  I knew we had something special after I told him about Judge Snowden and my dad. I had to say something. I felt like a fraud carrying around that secret, but it still took me three days to get up the nerve. I told him when it was just the two of us, sitting on the back porch, the dogs playing in the grass.

  I told him everything—how I had struggled with whether to say anything before Antoine’s execution, how I had eventually passed the information on to Masterson, how he had relayed it to the AG’s office, and how it had led me to sign the affidavit trying to save Antoine’s life. Mace took it stoically, staring at the back lawn as I spoke. He asked a few questions and got pretty quiet.

  He left that night without a hug or a thanks or any other display of emotion. As I watched his truck pull out of the cul-de-sac, I was certain that he would never come see me again.

  The next day, he came back. And this time, he was all business. “I checked the court records for all of Snowden’s cases,” he told me. “Your dad’s as well. And Caleb Tate’s. What you’re saying doesn’t make sense.”

  We compared notes, and later that day I checked our research against the DA’s database. That’s when I discovered that somebody had changed the names of the judges in the database. My father’s cases all still had the same results, but somebody had made it look like Judge Snowden had presided over most of his winning cases.

  I told Mace about the mysterious runner in the Peachtree Road Race, the one who handed me the note about being careful who I trusted, the note that mentioned morphine. I had assumed that Caleb Tate paid someone to slip me the note—trying to keep me from trusting LA and talking to him about my dad’s involvement with Judge Snowden. But how did Tate know about the morphine? I had concluded that either he had been working with Rivera all along, just setting us up, or he really did have a source on the inside.

  Now I realized it was both.

  We broadened the investigative circle to include LA and Regina Granger. On election night, when Bill Masterson changed the DA’s files, we knew we had him. From there, LA did the legwork. He interviewed women who had been in the same escort service as Rikki Tate nearly thirteen years earlier. There were rumors that one of Rikki’s clients was a powerful public official who had never been caught. On a hunch, LA enlisted one of Rikki’s church friends to call Bill Masterson and tell him that she knew about Masterson and Rikki. After all, new believers like Rikki liked to confess their past sins. LA had the woman wired when Masterson paid her the hush money.

  For me, working on the Masterson investigation caused some of the greatest heartache and confusion of my life. The only bright spot was that it felt like I had regained my father. The man I knew and loved was exactly who I thought he was—hardworking, principled, committed to his clients, and successful in front of a variety of judges. But the man who had taught me how to practice law was a fraud. And now, as Regina Granger prepared to make an announcement that would take down Georgia’s attorney general–elect, I couldn’t help but feel melancholy.

  The Bill Masterson I knew had defended me when defense lawyers attacked. He had shown me tough love and taught me how to hold my own in the courtroom. I had seen him risk his life to convict gang leaders and refuse to prosecute cases when he believed the cops had it wrong. This was the man who had been beside me and given me strength as I watched the execution of Antoine Marshall.

  But, of course, all that was nothing but an act from a man living a double life.

  I looked at LA, and he gave me a wink. If he was upset about my relationship with Mace James, he never showed it. And who could blame him? He had undoubtedly moved on to women more beautiful and fun-loving than me. We had been thrown together by the pressures of the Tate case, but we were very different people.

  “I also want to read a short statement about a recent indictment,” Regina Granger said. “I won’t be taking any questions, however.”

  Two of the reporters glanced up from their smartphones. The others shrugged it off.

  “No matter how long I serve in law enforcement, I am sure that this day will be one of the saddest moments of my professional career,” Granger continued.

  She now had everybody’s full attention.

  She swallowed hard and stared straight ahead, gathering her composure. Bill Masterson was her friend too. More than that, he had been her mentor. He had appointed her as his chief assistant years ago and just recently offered her an endorsement for her campaign.

  “Yesterday, a Milton County grand jury indicted Attorney General–Elect Bill Masterson on multiple counts of murder in the first degree. As I speak, Milton County deputies are placing him under arrest. I don’t believe in perp walks, and I don’t believe in trying my cases in the press. When you leave today, I will have copies of the indictment for each of you. In fact, you can take multiple copies since so many of your colleagues decided not to show up.”

  Regina paused for a long moment to keep her emotions under control. Her struggle brought my own emotions to the surface. Masterson had been like a second father to me, and I felt my eyes tearing up. I recalled the chest of my natural father, rising and falling as he took his last breaths. And I had that same feeling now, like I was losing a second father. I had watched Antoine Marshall’s execution with this man, and now, if Regina Granger was successful, Bill Masterson would someday be on the other side of the glass.

  I reached over, and Mace James took my hand. He had no sympathy for Masterson. He held Masterson responsible for Antoine Marshall’s execution and for all the other deaths that had occurred in Milton County just to advance Masterson’s political ambitions. “There’s a special place in hell for men like that,” Mace James had said.

  But now he squeezed my hand to comfort me.

  “Bill Masterson was a friend and a mentor,” Regina Granger said. “We worked together on many cases—even risked our lives on a few. But nobody is above the law. These are capital crimes. And they deserve the ultimate penalty. When you get your copies of the indictment, you will see that we are asking for that.”

  Regina closed her eyes for a moment, and hands shot up. The five reporters sounded like t
wenty, but Regina, true to her word, wasn’t taking any questions. She set her jaw and walked away from the podium.

  “God have mercy,” I said.

  “I hope he gets the needle,” whispered Mace.

  Acknowledgments

  During my younger and more abrasive days as a lawyer, I once wrote that an opponent’s legal brief was “a parade of sentences vainly in search of an idea.” I’m afraid that the same might be said of my stories without the help of the literary drum majors listed here.

  I’ll start with Lee Hough, who is both agent and friend, and who always gives great advice at the concept development stage. Thanks also to Michael Garnier, Mary Hartman, and my wife, Rhonda, who helped work on this story even before Tyndale did the heavy editing. I wouldn’t even try to do this without you. On this book, I tapped the expertise of Andrew Hall, one of Georgia’s finest criminal defense lawyers, who helped this Virginia attorney fill in the cavernous gaps in his understanding of Georgia criminal procedure. All of that is before the editing magicians at Tyndale take over.

  Thank you, Karen Watson, for asking the tough and probing questions at the concept stage. (Have you ever considered law school?) As always, your insights (and encouragement) were invaluable. Thanks to Jeremy Taylor for bringing the story into sharper focus and the characters into another dimension. And thanks to Stephanie Broene, the third member of the Tyndale triumvirate, who provided reams of encouragement with just the right touch of constructive critique.

  But that’s not all. Sometimes, a book is inspired by real events, by people who are larger than life. That’s the case here. And I need to thank them too.

  Poison. The suspicious death of a spouse. The loss of a father. The pursuit of justice. These are the themes of The Last Plea Bargain. They did not come from thin air.

  I am indebted to Ginger Somerville-Grant, Sara Somerville, and Alita Miller for allowing me to represent them in their nine-year quest to avenge their father’s death. Your fight for justice inspired many of the themes I tried to capture in these pages. Thanks for never giving up. Sometimes, the good guys win.

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  “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

  ROMANS 12:21

  About the Author

  Randy Singer is a critically acclaimed author and veteran trial attorney. He has penned eleven legal thrillers and was recently a finalist with John Grisham and Michael Connelly for the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction sponsored by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal. Randy runs his own law practice and has been named to Virginia Business magazine’s select list of “Legal Elite” litigation attorneys. In addition to his law practice and writing, Randy serves as a teaching pastor for Trinity Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He calls it his “Jekyll and Hyde thing”—part lawyer, part pastor. He also teaches classes in advocacy and civil litigation at Regent Law School and, through his church, is involved with ministry opportunities in India. He and his wife, Rhonda, live in Virginia Beach. They have two grown children. Visit his website at www.randysinger.net.