JD05 - Conflict of Interest

by Scott Pratt

  “Adilah was your wife? How did she die?”

  “She was killed in a car accident. Her sister was driving. They got sideswiped by a truck, went off the road down a small hill. The car rolled a couple of times. Killed Adilah instantly.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His eyes had become moist and his voice shaky at the mention of his wife, and I wondered again why he had come. He was ill and he was obviously still grieving, yet he’d traveled half way around the world to find us. He’d mentioned that he had children in Malaysia, and I wondered why he hadn’t remained there with them. Was there no comfort for him there? I thought briefly about how complex and difficult the relationships must have been, the American living in a foreign land, showing up out of nowhere and carrying a pile of emotional baggage so heavy that the only way he could drag it through life was to numb himself with alcohol. He reminded me very much of Sarah in that regard.

  “Tell me about your life, Joseph,” he said. “Tell me what I’ve missed.”

  I was reluctant at first, but he seemed genuinely interested, and before I knew it an hour had passed. I told him about Caroline and Jack and Lilly and Sarah, about my time in the Rangers, about law school. He asked a lot of questions, and I answered most of them honestly but without revealing too much of myself. I wanted to treat him with respect and I wanted to get to know him at some level, but at the same time I found myself not being able to open myself to a man who had basically lived a lie his entire life. I did, however, invite him to lunch that Sunday at our house and he accepted, saying he would be “honored.”

  Just as I was getting ready to walk out the door, he said, “Joseph, I want to ask a favor of you. Ever since the first day we spoke, I’ve been thinking about what you said about Lucas Venable’s family and what you said about him lying in a grave marked with my name. I have to make that right.”

  I nodded, wondering what he wanted me to do.

  “I know his parents are still alive and I know where they live,” he said. “I need to go there, but I’d like you to go with me.”

  “Why?” I said. “It really isn’t any of my—”

  “I know it’s a lot to ask and I’m sorry, but I’m afraid if I go alone I won’t be able to do it. I don’t think I’ll be able to face them. Would you go with me, please? I’ll pay for the plane tickets. I’ll pay for everything. We could fly to Milwaukee, rent a car and drive to Fairfield, and then fly back the same night. Just one day. Would you consider it?”

  “I’m in the middle of a case,” I said. “I don’t think I have time.”

  “One day, Joseph. Just one day. Please.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible,” he said. “I don’t know how much time I have left.”

  I called Mary Monroe from my truck as soon as I left the old man’s room. Her father answered her phone.

  “I need to talk to Mary,” I said. “Can we meet somewhere?”

  “I don’t think Mary should talk to you,” Charles Russell said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you now have a conflict of interest. It just wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  His tone was cold and distant, almost robotic.

  “That’s exactly why I want to meet with her. Everything has changed. We need to decide how to go forward, whether I continue to represent Richard, whether I continue to represent Mary, or whether I should get out altogether.”

  “Mary has already spoken to another lawyer,” he said.

  “What? When?”

  “This morning. As soon as we heard about her murderous, soon-to-be-ex-husband. The lawyer’s name is Margaret Bain. I believe you know her.”

  Margaret Bain was a well-known divorce lawyer who represented only women and who handled criminal cases on occasion. She was educated at Cal Berkley, she was liberal to the point of being radical, she was openly lesbian, she was abrasive and prickly, and she had the reputation of being a man hater. I knew her only casually from her rare appearances in criminal court and her occasional lectures at bar association meetings, back when I used to attend them. I’d actually witnessed her pull a gun on another lawyer after a county bar association meeting that degenerated into a drunken melee at the country club in Johnson City a dozen years earlier. Margaret had gotten into a verbal altercation with a lawyer named Tom Munson and had eventually invited him to the parking lot for what she said would be “a well-deserved ass whipping.” Like everybody else there that evening, I’d had too much to drink and I couldn’t resist following the crowd out the door to see what would happen. Margaret marched through the parking lot to a vehicle with Tom right on her heels. She unlocked the door, reached into the console, and came back out with a hand cannon that was worthy of Dirty Harry. She stuck the gun barrel into his forehead, pulled the hammer back, and said, “If you ever call me a dyke again, you better do it with respect.”

  Tom wet his pants, but he didn’t call the cops. Nobody else did, either. The only thing that came of it was that the attendance at bar meetings dwindled significantly for a couple of years.

  “Have you hired her?” I said.

  “She’s agreed to represent Mary.”

  “So she’s filing for divorce?”

  “What would you do if you found out that your spouse had murdered your child and stolen three million dollars of your father’s money?”

  “It sounds like you’ve tried and convicted him already. Are you familiar with the term presumption of innocence?”

  “Feel free to presume all you want, Mr. Dillard. As far as we’re concerned, Richard can burn in hell for all eternity. We’ve spoken with the police. We know about the DNA, the clothing, the ransom note. We also know some other things. From this point forward, you can consider us witnesses for the prosecution.”

  “Slow down, Mr. Russell. Let’s at least talk about this.”

  There was no response.

  “Mr. Russell? Mr. Russell?”

  I looked down at my phone. The call had ended. Charles Russell had hung up.

  CHAPTER 31

  Early the next morning, I went back to the jail in Jonesborough to talk to Richard before his initial appearance in federal court in Greeneville, which was scheduled for one o’clock in the afternoon. The courthouse in Greeneville was less than thirty minutes away, but I knew the federal marshals would pick him up well before it was time to be in court. Nobody keeps a federal judge waiting.

  I’d spent a great deal of time the previous evening thinking about Richard’s behavior when I’d asked him about his sperm being found on Lindsay’s pajamas. His reaction had been so forlorn that the more I thought about it, the more I accepted the possibility that it could have been genuine grief. It could have been the first moment that Richard knew, or perhaps accepted, that his daughter was dead. If he’d killed her, he would certainly have known she was dead, unless he’d gone temporarily insane and experienced some kind of episodic amnesia or psychological disassociation.

  Richard looked washed out when the guards brought him in, even more so than the day before. Instead of the standard issue orange jumpsuit, he was wearing only a paper gown, open in the back, very similar to those worn by hospital patients. As soon as I saw the gown, I knew he’d been placed on suicide watch, which is probably the most humiliating form of incarceration the state has to offer. Suicide watch inmates are placed in a cell alone with no bed, sink or toilet, clad only in the paper gown, and monitored closely by both male and female guards. Richard’s eyes betrayed hopelessness above the dark bags that had formed, he was unshaven, and his hair was oily and unruly.

  “Can you talk without losing control of yourself today?” I said.

  My tone was matter-of-fact. I was still somewhat unnerved by the possibility that he had committed such an unspeakable crime, and it was a struggle to speak to him in a civil manner, but before I’d walked into the room, I’d told myself to put my emotions aside and try to offer him at least some modicum of respect. I tried to force myself to presume he was
innocent, or at least fake it as well as I could.

  “I can’t get the image of her face out of my mind,” he said softly. “She’s smiling. She’s beautiful.”

  “I don’t usually ask my clients this question, Richard, but I guess I’m getting old and cantankerous. I just don’t have the capacity to put up with some of the things I used to, so I’m just going to ask you flat out. Did you kill her?”

  He clenched his cuffed hands into a tight ball and shook his head.

  “No,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I didn’t. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kidnap her or fake a kidnapping. I didn’t steal Charles’s money. I didn’t do any of the things they’re accusing me of.”

  “Look at me,” I said. “Don’t look at the table. Look me in the eye and explain to me how your sperm made its way onto her pajamas.”

  He continued shaking his head, but he lifted his eyes to meet mine.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  “Did you have sex with her? Did you try to have sex with her? Did you make her touch you? Did you masturbate and ejaculate on her?”

  “No!” he said, his voice taking on some volume and authority. “I’ve never, ever, not once, even thought about doing anything of the kind, let alone done it. I’m not a child molester, I’m not a pervert, I’m not a murderer and I’m not a thief. I loved Lindsay more than anything in this world. I’ve never done anything that would harm her.”

  “Just so you know,” I said, “the police would very much like to find her body. If you snapped somehow, if you did something you didn’t mean to do and you panicked, you could probably help yourself a little – and I mean very little – by telling them where she is.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “If I’m going to stay on this case, I want you to take a polygraph. We won’t have to give the results to the police, which means that if you fail, then me, you and the examiner will be the only three people who know it. I also want a doctor to do a forensic psychiatric examination of you. I want an independent expert to examine the DNA evidence, an independent expert to examine the computer files they say contain the ransom note, and independent experts to examine any other forensic evidence the police have developed. You’ll have to pay for all of that, plus my fee. You’re going to be locked up so you won’t have access to anything. I’ll need you to assign a power of attorney to someone of my choosing who can manage your business affairs until this is over so we can pay for everything. It’ll cost a lot of money, Richard, and there are already two extremely difficult complications – the lawsuit you’re involved in and your divorce proceeding.”

  He blinked several times, as though he couldn’t process the information I’d just offered.

  “Divorce? Mary wants a divorce?”

  “I talked to her father. She’s hiring a divorce lawyer and she’s going to be a witness against you. I don’t know what she’s told the police or what she plans to tell the police, but she’s apparently turned on you.”

  He took a deep breath and released it slowly.

  “It’s him,” Richard said.

  “What do you mean, him?”

  “Charles. He’s behind this.”

  “Behind what?”

  “All of this. He hates me. He’s framing me.”

  “So you’re saying that Charles Russell engineered a sham kidnapping of his own granddaughter, engineered the fake theft of his own money, has somehow managed to get a hold of some of your sperm, placed it on Lindsay’s pajamas and planted them in a dumpster at your place of business, broke into your office and used your computer to type out a ransom note, and is now trying to railroad you into the death penalty? Why, Richard? Why would he do that?”

  “Because he hates me.”

  “Why does he hate you?”

  “He’s jealous of me.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I wish I was recording this so I could play it back for you. This is what you want me to present as a defense? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client’s father-in-law is so jealous of him that he concocted this elaborate scheme to frame his son-in-law for murder, kidnapping and theft? Do you think he killed Lindsay, Richard? Just to flesh out the scheme?”

  “He wouldn’t kill her.”

  “Then where the hell is she? Do we point the finger at Mary, too? Mary must be involved somehow. Charles wouldn’t steal Lindsay and torture his own daughter in the process just to frame you because he’s jealous. They must be doing this together, right?”

  “Are you enjoying this?” Richard said. “Are you enjoying the sarcasm?”

  “No, Richard. I don’t think enjoyment would be a word I’d use to describe what I’m feeling right now.”

  “Mary isn’t involved. She loves me, she loves Lindsay. She just isn’t that kind of person. But Botts, Botts would be right in the middle of it.”

  “Ah, the mysterious Mr. Botts. So your theory now is that Botts is Charles’s accomplice and Mary is oblivious. That should be simple to prove.”

  “You don’t know Charles. You don’t understand him the way—”

  “Enough, Richard,” I said, holding up my hand like a traffic cop stopping a vehicle. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve heard this kind of thing before. Client commits a crime. Client gets caught. Client comes up with incredible explanation for evidence that is unexplainable. Then more evidence comes along so client starts tweaking things a little bit here and a little bit there. He weaves new explanations into his story. He bends and twists and molds his version of the facts until he has a version of the story that he thinks works for him, and before you know it, he’s gone over the story in his mind so many times he actually starts believing his own lies. That’s where we’re headed. That’s where you’re going.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “I said that’s enough! Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to appear in federal court with you in a couple of hours. I’m going to tell the judge that I’m there for the initial appearance only, that you haven’t hired me to represent you at trial. And you haven’t hired me, Richard. You understand that, don’t you? Representing you on a first-degree murder is going to cost you a great deal more than the twenty grand you paid me a few weeks ago, but I don’t want you to pay me yet. We’ll enter a plea of not guilty at arraignment. As soon as it’s over, I’m going to arrange for you to take a polygraph test here at the jail sometime in the next few days.”

  “I thought polygraph results aren’t admissible in court.”

  “Admissible in court? You know the legal jargon, do you? I find that interesting. You’re right, though. They aren’t admissible, but my experience has been that they’re usually accurate. And if you fail, you won’t have to pay me. I have no intention of representing a man who raped and murdered his own daughter. If you fail the polygraph, I’m out.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Richard’s initial appearance went off without a hitch. I never cared much for practicing in federal court, but there was at least one thing I could say for the judges. They weren’t grandstanders like so many of the state judges. They didn’t have to run for election because they were appointed for life, and as a result, they were far more apt to simply tend to business. The courtroom was packed with media and the steps and the sidewalk outside were covered with angry citizens chanting ugly mantras, but I walked past them as quickly as I could, eyes straight ahead, trying not to listen to the idiotic questions that were hurled at me like rotten eggs. I silently marveled at questions like, “Mr. Dillard! Mr. Dillard! Did your client kill his daughter?” Did the morons really think I would answer?

  The proceeding was held in front of a federal magistrate named Denise Mingo. I entered a not guilty plea on Richard’s behalf while he stood silently beside me. There was a brief argument over bail, but I knew we’d lose. Richard was accused of first-degree murder in one of the highest profile cases the area had ever seen and he had plenty of money. Judge Mingo wasn’t about to let him ou
t on bail so he could use his wealth to run. The entire hearing took less than ten minutes. As soon as it was over, I walked back out the door, back through the crowd, got into my truck and drove away toward Johnson City.

  Caroline had an appointment with her oncologist at 3:00 p.m. to get the results of a bone scan she’d been given a few days earlier. The pain in her back had become worse with each passing day and she often complained of pain in her arms and legs. We’d both attributed the pain to her helping her students perform acrobatic tricks – she called it “spotting” – but it had persisted for so long that she finally went to see her oncologist to find out whether the cancer treatments she’d had could be causing problems in her bones. I arrived at the oncologist’s office at 2:30 and found Caroline in the waiting room. I squeezed her hand and we sat in silence until a nurse came out to retrieve us. We walked back into an exam room and had just gotten settled when a young, balding, Middle Eastern man walked in and introduced himself as Dr. Hamadi.

  “Where’s Dr. Jobe?” Caroline said. Jobe was her regular oncologist.

  “He’s with another patient right now,” Hamadi said. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the results of your bone scan show thirteen different areas of concern.”

  I heard Caroline take a quick breath and looked over at her. Her lower lip was trembling and a tear had already slipped from her left eye.

  “Areas of concern?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Unfortunately, when breast cancer metastasizes to other areas of the body, it goes to the bones about eighty percent of the time.”

  Caroline’s fingernails were digging into the palm of my right hand. I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak for a few seconds.

  “Are you telling us it’s back?” I said.