The Defendants: Crime Fiction & Legal Thriller (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 1)

by John Ellsworth

  * * *

  Johnny Bladanni was on his way to Orbit when he stopped off in South Chicago. Big Jim’s Wholesale said the hand-painted sign on the rundown storefront where he roared the black Caddy up to the curb. He checked his hair in the mirror, slicked his eyebrows down with saliva, and jumped out. He looked up and down the sidewalk and was satisfied he was alone and no one was following. If they were following they were damn good. But he would lose them anyway, on the freeway. Who they were or why they might be following, he had no idea. He was born paranoid and had learned that paranoid was the best mental state for staying out of prison—or worse. It was the street warrior’s best psychology, screw what the pop psych books said about these or those feelings or emotions.

  He made his way inside Big Jim’s, was immediately waved through the steel-grated door at the rear, and found Frankie “Good Man” Goodnichi waiting for him by the work table. Frankie gave him a high-five and waved his hand over the gun. “She’s beauty, no?”

  Laid out before him, still tightened down in the gun vise where a final patina of Hoppe’s gun oil was being lovingly worked into its action, was an AR-15, complete with scope and flash suppressor. The gun would be loud, so there would only be time for one shot, and Frankie warned him about that. “You lay rubber as soon as you pull the trigger because this baby’s gonna send the doves scattering and the cops running Code 3. Wear these gloves. They don’t leave fingerprints inside. Toss ‘em from the window and leave ‘em there. If you’re within a hundred yards there’s no need to adjust for windage. She fires a .223 caliber projectile and she’ll knock a man’s hand off if you hit him in the finger. Every round hits, explodes, cuts, and slices and dices. Don’t point it at nobody you don’t mean to kill. That’s three grand.”

  Johnny withdrew Bang Bang’s expenses roll and counted off thirty hundreds. He placed them on the table and Frankie tenderly removed the weapon from its mount. He carefully slid it muzzle-first inside the gun bag. Next came a thirty round clip, “All dum-dums and armor-piercing ammo, though you don’t give a rats ass about that. What’s this guy do? He ain’t a cop with a vest or nothin’?”

  “Nobody lawyer.”

  “Oh, then shoot him for me too. Just kidding. One round and you’re gone.”

  “Thanks, Frankie. What do I do with the gun?”

  “Drop it. Use the gloves, drop it outside the car. You don’t wanna be pulled over with this baby in the backseat. She can’t be traced, you’ve used the gloves, so no worry. Just drop her and tear ass.”

  “Will do.”

  Johnny headed back to the sidewalk where he again checked both directions. Satisfied, he laid the gun in the back seat and carefully edged away from the curb. No fancy driving now until the deed was done. The hit was worth $10K. He was going to get his new wheels after all. He looked again at his palm, where he had carefully lettered the target’s name: Thaddeus Murfree.

  * * *

  She studied the fax on her desk. The SAAG was secretly happy and ready to flex some serious muscle around this sorry dump of a town. State workers would arrive at 7 a.m. and begin tearing out walls around the law library and installing new ones, installing paralegal cubicles, and a new phone system hooked directly into the AG’s main offices in Springfield and Chicago. They were going to ramp up for this. She had no doubt: she would soon have at her disposal more square feet and more manpower than any other entity in the Hickam County Courthouse. They really wanted this one nailed and they were going to spend taxpayer dollars to get the job done. She would have two paralegals, a junior associate, which meant one of the newer University of Chicago grads they loved to hustle onboard, and at least two undercover AG investigators to run down all the leads in the case. There would be a stack of witness statements a foot high by the time those two finished their tenure in Orbit. It was going to get hot and heavy. She only wondered if her opponent had any idea the drubbing he was in for.

  * * *

  Thaddeus arrived at the law library/office at exactly two p.m. SAAG Barre was sitting at the lone table in the law library. She looked tired and disgusted. Her hair was up, bun in back, but she was wearing an expensive silk suit with a small diamond necklace that fit perfectly to the hollow of her throat. There was no wedding band; there was no engagement rock. She was, and her deportment said, a woman of the world, alone, and in the hunt.

  For the afternoon, the maintenance staff had scrounged up a lawyer chair and she had positioned it on the far side of the table, so that the table now served as her desk. Makeshift, but effective, Thaddeus thought, as he took a standard law library chair across from her. He noticed how close they were—he could have reached out and coldcocked her. They were very close, compared to how a regular desk keeps a safe distance between two people. For a moment he felt empowered; he was the male, she was the female. By any law of any jungle, he should win here. He decided against the crazy inspiration to just hit her; that would only wind him up in the cell down from Ermeline. He chased the thought from his mind like some magic rabbit that wanted to lead him down the crazy hole. No, he had to play this just right, make his position known, and start convincing the SAAG that his client was innocent and that somehow things had come to look horribly bad for her.

  “I want to begin by saying—“he announced in his strongest voice, but she abruptly cut him off.

  “Here,” she said, and tossed an inch of documents at him. “Here’s your discovery. The dead guy photos are there but they’re all copies. I can get you glossies if you’ve got the stomach for it. Some lawyers don’t want the real close-ups. You’re probably one of those.” She smiled as she made the comment about his stomach for all this. “That said,” she held up a hand to counter his reply, “—let me finish, please. I am only going to say this one time, Mister Murfee.”

  “Thaddeus or Thad is fine.”

  “I prefer Mister Murfee. Keeps it official. I’m only going to say this one time and I’m only going to make this offer one time. I will allow your client to plead guilty in return for her serving a full life sentence, no possibility of parole or early release. I put an AG’s rush on the gun and knife and your client’s booking prints are a 100% certain match to what they found on the barrel and the knife handle. She held the weapons, pulled the trigger, cut the letters of her name. This offer must be accepted by nine in the morning or it is forever withdrawn. If it is withdrawn I will personally be in the witness room when your client receives the lethal injection. So far in my practice I have watched eight dirt bags get the needle. I put every last one of them on that table and I’m about to do the same to Ermeline Ransom. Any questions?”

  “I—I—”

  “I agree. You need to discuss this plea offer with your client. You should do that now. The deal is only good until nine a.m. At nine a.m. in the morning we both go to the Judge’s chambers and tell him we have a plea. He accepts the plea in open court on the spot. If that isn’t underway by 9:01 in the morning, there will be no deal. You will have put the needle in your client’s arm yourself. You may leave now.”

  The next thing he knew—when he fully regained his sense of conscious thought—he had climbed downstairs, out the courthouse doors, and down the stairs again, and was now headed toward the jail. He was on autopilot and he had no choice but to go directly to the jail and tell Ermeline what had just happened. There would be no sugar-coating, no holding out false hope. She would then be left with a decision: Go to trial and risk making her son an orphan, or plead guilty and try to see him once a month until he got old enough and embarrassed enough that he no longer cared. Thaddeus felt as if he might throw up, and would have, if he hadn’t known she was even now standing at the law library window, watching him struggle to the jail, a huge smile on her face. She had put the fear in him, turned him into a believer, and he didn’t have the slightest idea what came next.

  Within minutes he was in the jail, said hello to no one, and found himself in Ermeline’s cell as the jailer shut the door on his way out. He was in s
hock and he knew it. He thumbed the stack of discovery documents the SAAG had just thrown across the desk at him. Ermeline gave him a puzzled look. She had had lunch and was dozing lightly when he came in. He looked at her and shook his head. “It’s not good.” He went on to tell her all about what had just happened. And he dissected it for her, what the elements of First Degree Murder were—willfulness, premeditation, and intent. The State could prove, he explained to her, that she had willfully confronted Victor at his bus. That she had planned out the confrontation because she had obtained a gun and knife and taken them with her. The State could prove that there was intent to commit murder because it could be inferred from the fact of Victor’s death. There was willfulness all over the place, he said, and there was intent not only from the fact of the death but also because she had the motive: she had sued Victor for cutting her up. What about manslaughter, she wanted to know. The jailer had said she might get a plea to manslaughter—was that possible? He explained how manslaughter applied to heat-of-the-moment killings, a sudden flare-up, a mental state that no one could have seen coming due to the immediate nature of the act which prompted the violence. She had taken a gun with her; there was no sudden flare-up, no heat-of-the-moment. He explained the fingerprints and how they were lifted from the gun and compared to her booking prints, how the computers analyzed, matched, and analyzed some more and how the computers were never wrong.

  Tears came to her eyes. “I don’t feel like you’re on my side anymore,” she said, and wept.

  He could stand it no longer. He stood up from the bunk and sat down beside her. He put his arm across her shoulders and gave a hug. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. She leaned into him and put her head on his shoulder. For several minutes they sat this way, nobody moving, barely breathing. Finally he relaxed his grip and stood. He took two steps and sat back down on his side of the cell. “Now,” he said simply, and he suddenly knew what came next. “Now we have to figure out how to kick some ass.”

  Her head popped up. “Kick some ass? That’s the best thing I’ve heard since I got here!”

  He stood and began pacing. “Ermeline, I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but you’re not going down. This is not going to happen to you. We’re going to find a spot, a weakness, and we’re going to attack. We’re going to find some chink in their armor and we’re going to—to—kick some ass!”

  She stood up then, and threw her arms around him. “Save me, Thad,” she pleaded. “Just let me go home to my little boy.”

  “You have my word. You’re walking out of this a free woman.”

  19

  He walked outside and paused on the brick porch. He looked up at the sky and inhaled the clear morning air. Mourning doves cooed and skateboarders could be heard clacking along a block away. The start of another day in the ongoing saga of Ermeline Ransom and her Magic Breasts, he thought, and then hated himself for the thought. Poor kid. She would have her day in court today and maybe—if the heavens smiled down—he could get her released somehow at the bail hearing. He doubted it, but maybe. He flipped the Oakley’s down on his face and took one last look around before beginning his trek uptown.

  Which was just long enough for Johnny Bladanni, parked directly across the street with just the muzzle of the black AR-15 pointed out the top of the window, to draw a bead. He put the crosshairs on Thaddeus Murfee’s head and carefully squeezed the trigger. At the last second the young lawyer took a step and the muzzle involuntarily followed and fired at the same instant.

  Thaddeus heard the blast and that was the last he knew. Everything went black. As he lost consciousness he thought he heard sirens. He thought, but couldn’t be sure.

  20

  Hector Ransom was infatuated and he loved the feeling. He was in love with love, he admitted, and after spending all those dreary, mosquito-crazed months working the Gulf in the wilting heat and the drizzling rain, he was ready for something light, something pleasant, even something romantic in his life. He had come to Chicago in search of the almighty dollar and, while he hadn’t found the perfect scheme yet, he had found the PuzzyKat Klub, just off the Loop on Clark Street. It was a topless, five-dollar-a-dance joint, where the liquor was watered down and the girls were underage runaways. Hector had visited there four consecutive nights and had hit it off with seventeen year old Rosemary Yuerl from Waltham, Maryland. Rosemary was a bright girl who had outscored her classmates on their math SATS, but rather than accept one of the three Ivy League scholarships she had been offered she chose to make her way to Hollywood and become an actress. It was a great time in America, fame was there for the taking, all you had to do, basically—she had imagined—was to suit up, show up, and reach and pluck the golden ring when it came around. Chicago was where she ran out of money, and she did what all runaway girls do, she sold her body. At seventeen there were tons of men willing to pay $5.00 to have that body lap dance, table dance, and private dance for them, and she was knocking down over two grand a week. She had fifteen hundred dollars locked up in a CD at Fifth Third Bank, and she was working on a second.

  The night she met Hector he was just another face, just another admirer. He followed her every move when she worked the pole and when she finished and came out on the floor he raised his hand immediately. He paid for seven lap dances in a row and talked to her while she ground her hips inches above his lap. She turned her back to him, she rotated and turned her front to him, nude from the waist up, and he learned some of her story. He was touched, as she was half his age and innocent beyond anyone he’d met since he was in high school. On the fourth night she accompanied him back to the flophouse where he was logged in and he gave her the card. He gave her the card because he had actually run out of cash—the $6500 was down to $2500 and Ermeline’s tip money had all been tossed away on the dances. He had just enough in reserve to keep off the streets until he found Johnny Bladanni and talked him into a score of some kind. He knew that Johnny had told him to go either east or west and he knew Johnny would be angry as hell that he’d come instead to Chicago. But he had his ace in the hole: he had the goods on Johnny and the guy wouldn’t be able to turn him down when he came snooping around for work. So Rosemary accompanied him home at 1:15 a.m. on a cloudless late December night, wind chill -10 degrees, blowing snow off the Lake, and they crawled into his bed and made fast, unsatisfying love. She asked for money. He told her he had something better than money and laid Ermeline’s American Express between her bare breasts. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Plastic money. All for you. I’ve been saving it for a surprise.”

  “This isn’t your name. Who the hell is Ermeline Ransom?”

  “My Ex. She knows all about it. I’ve got her okay, because she owed me.”

  “So how much is the limit?”

  He smiled and took a pull of a Bud Lite. “That’s the great part. Amex has no limit. You can probably buy up to three-four thousand.”

  “Damnation!”

  “I told you I liked you. Stick with me and I’ll take even better care of you.”

  “C’mere,” she said, and pulled his head under the blankets. “We aren’t done here yet.”

  He did as she said and she carefully reached behind her, to the purse she had left hanging on the bedpost, and dropped the card inside. A great start to an otherwise boring night. Two days later she had run up over $3200 in plastic purchases, all over Chicagoland and as far west as Barrington. Nothing was cheap and her tastes became more expensive as she shopped and learned what treasures were available to a person with Amex green. She had avoided Hector by skipping two nights of work, in case he wanted her to tone down the spending. She planned another attack tomorrow, this time along Michigan Avenue. She needed exquisite tops for her Hollywood head shots and now she had the card to access those items. Just before she had maxed-out the card she would charge a ticket to Hollywood and leave this Midwest hell-hole. Her luck ran out in Macy’s; the store detective nabbed her, called the cops, and she was processed through on two cri
minal charges. They took her name, current address, phone, place of employment (she lied and told them she worked a night shift at Mickey D’s), and notified her parents. She was a minor so the result would be acceptable and wouldn’t make even a dent in her plans. Her parents would ignore the entire matter as they had ignored her all her life. To top it off she got to keep everything else except the Macy’s stuff, which was fine.

  21

  In one way the City of Orbit was blessed. One of the best cutters in southern Illinois headed up the surgical staff at the Hickam County Hospital. The hospital stood set back on the west end of Orbit. It was a four story structure, red brick with white porticoes, and an emergency room entrance around back with an entry way off Madison Street and a large lot, carved from the yards of the two houses that had been razed to make room. This was where the EMT’s brought Thaddeus.

  They had applied a tourniquet and pressure at the scene, had inserted a trachea tube, and had him hooked up to a heart monitor while the ambulance raced to the hospital. It all happened so fast that the kid on the skateboard had barely made the 911 call and the ambulance could be heard in the distance. The two skateboarders had crept closer to the downed man, wondering if they could help and wondering what a dying guy really looked like. They had seen enough by the time the EMTs came racing up the short walk.

  “Scram, guys!” they shouted, and unfolded a transporter and lifted Thaddeus’ limp body onto the table. They quickly rolled it up the walk and back inside the flashing van. Two EMTs jumped in with the shooting victim; the third drove. It was the left leg. They tied it off and managed the loss of blood best they could. They were only blocks from the hospital, and that’s probably what saved the young lawyer’s life.