Outlaws

by Tim Green

  Madison lost the suppression hearing for Boris Hauffler's eyewitness account of Cody leaving the house after Jeff Board had been killed. It hadn't been all bad, though. She was able to leam some things about Hauffler that she knew would help her at trial. Although Hauffler's testimony would get to the jury, she suspected that she could damage him severely on the stand. Getting a judge to believe beyond a doubt that a witness was completely incompetent or that the police had coerced him into a positive ID was tough. However, discrediting a witness in front of a jury was a completely different matter. Hauffler, she learned during the hearing, didn't like young aggressive women. Madison would use this fact to get under the man's skin at trial and make him look like a near-sighted old crank who had limited night vision and a chip on his shoulder.

  The real push for Madison would come two weeks before the trial actually began. She would begin to prepare Cody and all her witnesses for the stand. She would finalize her strategy and focus on getting an acquittal for her client. During the four weeks since Cody's arraignment, Madison hadn't even seen him, and her determination to keep from thinking of him as anything but a client on trial for murder seemed to be paying off.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  On the Tuesday that they were to begin preparing for trial, Cody appeared at Madison's law offices at nine o'clock in the morning. He was dressed in a plain white T-shirt and jeans. He looked remarkably out of place in the lavish and formal setting of the old firm. It was his one day off, so he was going to be comfortable. He walked into the conference room, where Madison sat waiting with Marty. The moment she saw his handsome face and his tormented smile, every emotion she'd suppressed for the past month came rushing back. She choked back a sense of self-disgust, and tried to get her emotions under control, standing and shaking his hand briskly.

  They all sat down, and Madison cleared her throat before telling Cody that for the next ten days, until she started jury selection, she wanted him essentially by her side every step of the way. He might remember new things or make connections that would help in preparing his defense. They would be going over the prosecution's list of witnesses again and again, reviewing the depositions and looking for motivations, weaknesses, and contradictions that she could exploit on cross-examination. They would go over his story every day, practicing his direct testimony, and then she would cross-examine him in the same manner she knew Rawlins would cross-examine him at the trial.

  Madison handed Cody a schedule that laid out the times and basic content of their next two weeks.

  Cody looked carefully at it and then looked up with a somewhat embarrassed smile. "This is great," he said. "I like how thorough you're being. It's great.

  "The only thing is," Cody said, looking to his agent, "I asked Marty to tell you that I can't be doing this kind of stuff during the day. I have to be at practice."

  Madison looked from Cody to Marty. "Well," Marty started with a slight blush, pushing his glasses up his nose, "I didn't think it was something that should really come from me. 1 thought it was something that we all needed to sit down and talk about together."

  "1 thought you couldn't practice because of your knee." Madison said.

  "I can't practice," Cody replied, 'but I have to be at the meetings and watch what's going on so I know what I'm supposed to be doing in the games. I have treatment on my knee, too."

  "There's really nothing to talk about," Madison fumed, rapping her fingers against the paper. "This is the schedule."

  "Uhh, no," Cody insisted, looking for Marty to support him. "I don't think so. I have to be at the Outlaws facility during the day. We're going to have to do this some other way."

  "I don't think you understand me," Madison said, stiffening her back. "This isn't some college biology exam that we can shift around because of your football schedule. This is a murder trial, Cody. You're the defendant. I'm the attorney. I determine what happens here. And for the next two weeks, I need your time to prepare you for this trial. In case you haven't noticed," she added with almost a wicked undertone, "this thing doesn't look so good for you."

  "I'm innocent," Cody said flatly.

  "I'm not talking about your guilt or innocence," Madison replied, exasperated. "I'm talking about proving it to a jury."

  "Look," Cody said, "I'm not stupid. I'm not talking about not doing everything you're saying. I'm just saying that we can do it in the evenings, after practice is over."

  Madison threw her hands up in the air and said, "I happen to have a life! I happen to be a single parent with some problems of my own right now. I'm sony. Do you really think that you're the only one involved here? Are you really such a cookie cut-out of all the egocentric animals that play that goddamned game?"

  A slow smoldering anger started to bum in Cody's eyes.

  "No," he said, "I'm not. Are you really the tight-assed, nose-in-the-air lawyer-bitch that Joe Thurwood always made you out to be?"

  "I don't have to sit here and listen to this!" Madison stormed, rising from her seat and heading for the door.

  Marty grabbed her by the arm, and she shook him loose.

  "Wait a minute, Madison," Marty said, obviously upset.

  "No, you wait a minute, Marty!" she said. "You get your damn football player under control!"

  "I'm going to get both of you under control!" Marty yelled.

  The room fell silent. Marty recovered from surprising even himself with his uncharacteristic outburst and said firmly, "Sit down, Madison!"

  Madison closed her mouth tightly and sat.

  "All right," he said with passion, "now listen. Cody has a legitimate concern here. You want him to know about this trial backwards and forwards, and he will. But he's trying to hold his life together, too. Now I know that it's very important to you to be home for dinner with Jo-Jo and put him to bed at night, and I respect that, Cody does too. But I don't think it's asking the world for you to work on this after Jo-Jo is in bed, say from nine until midnight. You've got an office in your home, and you've been working those hours the past four weeks anyway. I think you can do it, and I think you should. This is a trial here, Madison, and I can't believe you're acting like you can walk out like it's a damn high school dance!" Marty threw himself down in his chair and stared at her.

  Madison stared down at the papers in front of her and tried to regain her composure. Marty was so right that it hurt. There were so many emotions churning around inside of her. There was this trial, her ex-husband, her son, Marty, Yusef Williams, and now Cody Grey, each one demanding her exclusive attention.

  "All right," she said. "All right."

  Striker sat alone, reading in his chair. His leg jiggled nervously up and down. He was anxious. He usually didn't get that way. He usually managed to remain completely calm, almost disinterested; but this was his biggest operation. And it was personal. It was for the rest of their lives. He laughed inwardly. He had thought of their lives, not just his own.

  Striker was getting old. He was almost fifty. His life was changing and so was he. He wondered if that was why, for the first time in his life, he was even thinking of settling down with one woman and one way of life. When this operation was complete, it would be a life of luxury and leisure. They would change identities and travel the world, staying in the finest hotels, eating the finest food, drinking the finest wines. There would be no more danger, no more looking over his shoulder. It was time, and, if he was going to do it with someone else, she was obviously the one.

  Striker closed his book and wished that she were there with him at that moment. He realized that the more he saw her, the more he missed her when she wasn't there. Before Jenny, the opposite had always been true. He was even glad that she and her husband were no longer speaking. He had secretly begun to grow jealous of the time she spent with Cody. Striker chided himself for thinking like a love-smitten teenager. He felt this way more and more lately, and he didn't particularly like it. It was a dangerous way to think. It clouded his judgment. He knew that. In one way, it almost
made him want to eradicate the whole thing, eradicate her. That would be the professional thing to do, and he knew it.

  The people who were following him had attached themselves like parasites. At times he almost forgot they were there. But each day their very presence, and the limitations it put on him, sucked some of the life out of his existence. He had worked hard to lull them into thinking that his life was nothing but ordinary. Maybe part of his anxiety was dealing with that every day, knowing that they were there and that right now there was nothing he could do about it. His only relief was an occasional foray out into the night, and even that he only did out of necessity.

  Tonight, however, was one of those nights. He had packages to pick up and packages to deliver. Striker changed into some dark clothes and black shoes. He stuffed the Beretta he carried everywhere into its shoulder holster and quietly left his apartment, taking the stairs down to the basement. He unlocked a steel door and entered the tunnel that led to the steam substation that would take him well beyond the view of the men who were watching him.

  Striker had an old Pontiac that he kept on a busy side street near the university, where its constant presence drew no unwanted attention. He got into the car and headed north to the outskirts of town near the airport. About a mile from the airport was a self-storage garage that Striker used as a clandestine warehouse. The large concrete room was filled to the ceiling with boxes of surplus ammunition and weapons that he had acquired in his dealings over the years. He had enough materials to launch a small-scale invasion.

  After rolling down the door behind him, Striker used his flashlight to locate a box that contained a twenty-pound slab of C-4 plastic explosives. It looked like a harmless block of modeling clay. Striker opened a suitcase that he'd taken from the trunk of his Pontiac and set it on a workbench that was in the middle aisle of the storage room, between the boxes. The suitcase had been fitted with a false bottom about an inch deep. Striker took a length of piano wire from his pocket and began slicing one-inch-thick pieces of C-4 off the main slab. He lined the slices up next to each other in the bottom of the case and then mashed them all together so they would stay firmly in place. The bomb he was constructing would be powerful enough so that it would be quite some time, if ever, before the authorities would be able to identify the person who was carrying it when it went off.

  After the C-4 was in place, Striker walked to the front of the room and fished around some more with his flashlight until he found a box that contained remote detonation devices. The remotes were disguised to look like everyday hand-held cell phones. He extracted one of these with the matching detonator and brought them back to the workbench where he pressed the detonator into the mass of C-4. It stuck, looking like some kind of modem relief sculpture. He carefully resealed the suitcase and closed it up, then stuffed the remote into his jacket pocket before flicking off the flashlight and hoisting open the garage door. Striker glanced furtively to his left and right. He crossed the parking lot and got into his car. Within an hour, he was back in his reading chair. It was three A. M.

  The next day Cody was out on the practice field, paying close attention. The defense was running through the coverages they would be playing against the Lions' three-wide-receiver formation that weekend. He was less than thrilled that Biggs was actually out there on the field and doing some light running. If the younger player's leg kept holding up, it wouldn't be long before he would be able to replace Cody. The word was that Biggs would run for about three weeks and then start light practicing. Two weeks from that point, he would be ready to go. It could be more,- it could be less.

  Besides the money Biggs was being paid, it would be easy for the coaches to justify replacing Cody for the simple fact that he could barely walk during the week, and therefore could not practice. The only thing he was good for was playing his ass off after his weekly miracle of modem medicine. That was good, but in an ideal world, the team would have a free safety who could both practice and play. It was better for everyone. But practice for Cody was out of the question. Hell, at four-thirty in the afternoon on a Wednesday, he was having a hard time just standing there watching. No doubt a healthy Biggs would mean Cody's return to the bench. He felt everything closing in on him at the same time.

  A few minutes later, a loud chopping sound from above caused Cody, like most of his teammates, to look up. It was a news helicopter. It landed on one end of the field and a camera crew hopped out. Within five minutes another flew in and landed as well. Then a van from another station wheeled up and began to immediately assemble a remote satellite uplink. Cody had the sinking feeling that the sudden appearance of the press had something to do with him.

  When practice broke, Cody hobbled toward the locker room with everyone else. Before he got off the field, a third helicopter came down out of the sky. A CNN crew hopped out, bent over to avoid the spinning copter blades, and ran toward him like they were all playing parts in some kind of war movie. The press surrounded him, and a CNN reporter stopped him in his tracks, not so much by blocking his path as with the question he asked.

  "So how do you feel now that the police have found your shoes and matched them to the ones that left bloody prints at Jeff Board's home?" the reporter brazenly asked.

  "What?" Cody said, shocked.

  "Are you still contending that you're innocent?" a bleached blonde from channel seven barked at him.

  "I. .. 1..." Cody stammered. "Let me by."

  He started to push through the small crowd of cameras.

  The CNN reporter jammed the microphone in front of his face. "The shoes have Jeff Board's blood all over them! They're your shoes! They're Outlaws turf shoes! They have number forty printed on them! Are you going to admit to the murder?"

  "What?" Cody was in a daze now. How was it possible? The first horrible thought that came into his mind was that maybe he really did do it. It was the first time he actually wondered. There was a witness. He couldn't remember the night himself. Now his shoe.

  The questions were coming at him so fast now he didn't even hear them.

  "I don't know," he mumbled, then stumbled by them all into the safety of the locker room, where his teammates stared at him in disbelief. He glanced around and knew that the word had spread like an electrical charge. He knew, too, that he wasn't the only one wondering if in fact he was really a murderer.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Madison and Marty sat in her office. Both of them were silent. They had been for almost five minutes. A little after four, they'd gotten the news from Rawlins's office that the bloody turf shoe had turned up in some weeds down by the river under the South First Street Bridge. An anonymous caller who claimed to be a jogger and said he didn't want to get involved had tipped off the police. Van Rawlins had already hit the airwaves guaranteeing a conviction. It was brazen political grandstanding, but under the circumstances it wasn't surprising.

  Madison was sitting behind her desk, thinking, and Marty was watching her. He could tell she was greatly disturbed. He could tell it went beyond the news that was a brutal blow to their case. They had already talked about a motion for adjournment to delay the trial, but they knew that would be futile. Once a trial was set, it had to be something more than additional evidence to keep it from taking place at the appointed time. Considering the gravity of the evidence, they both wondered privately if a delay would make a difference anyway.

  "What is it you're thinking?" Marty finally said.

  Madison looked up at him in a way that let him know she'd forgotten he was there.

  "I'm thinking that he did it, Marty," she said quietly. "I know I'm not supposed to think about it one way or another, but you always do, you know. I always think about it. It's not often I think I'm representing someone who actually did it, but I can't come up with any other explanation. Can you?" Her question was more of a plea for help.

  Marty looked at her and pushed his glasses up before he said, "Anything's possible, Madison, you know that. Someone could have gotten a pai
r of his shoes. We're talking about murder. People will go to great lengths when they kill someone. Maybe Cody was framed."

  "Who?" she asked. She hoped he had an answer.

  "1 don't know," Marty shrugged. 'This guy Board was a real jerk. Maybe he messed with someone else, and they were just waiting for the chance to get him, the chance when they could make it look like it was someone else."

  "And that same person not only has access to a pair of Cody's shoes, but also kills the man on the very same night Cody threatens to kill him? How?" Madison was exasperated. "And he also coincidentally looks exactly like Cody when he runs from Board's house? And, oh, yeah, he's so thorough that he actually thinks to stop and not only steal the investigatory file on Cody Grey but erase Board's entire computer hard drive?" "We've got an alibi," Marty suggested weakly.

  "Oh, yeah," Madison scoffed. "I forgot! He's going to get up there and say he left the bar at twelve-thirty and went right home. Yeah, we can insinuate that his wife heard him come in then. They can't call the wife to contradict it. I can probably even sneak it by the jury in a way so they believe it. But I'm talking about you and me, Marty. We know damned well that he didn't come home until two-thirty! We know in reality he doesn't even have an alibi!"

  Marty shook his head and said, "Anything's possible. I mean, who the hell was this anonymous caller, the jogger?"

  "Oh, come on, Marty!" she said. 'Think about what you're saying. Only you could even say that with a straight face. Whomever the caller was, they're Cody's shoes, with Board's blood on them!"

  Madison paused and said, "I think we should try to plead it out with Rawlins. I think we should push the alcoholic blackout and go for involuntary manslaughter, settle for voluntary, or if Rawlins won't take it, I think we should focus on that at trial. Concede the fact that he killed him and try to legitimize it as much as we can. Show the jury what a bastard Board was, how he was threatening to ruin Cody's life, all that stuff. We might be able to get him a sentence of fifteen to twenty. Hell, if we could do that, he could be out in eight!"