Move to Strike

by Sydney Bauer

  ‘Doctor,’ said David at last, after two minutes of absolute silence. Logan had said he needed to think. He was confused, distraught, angry even when David and Sara entered the living room. He recognised them from their previous high-profile trials and immediately protested that they had been asked to represent him.

  David had been honest from the outset – he had told him that he and his wife were once friends, and that while they had not been in contact for many years, he had been pleased to see her at the Law Society ball some three months ago.

  ‘I asked for a public defender,’ the doctor had responded after a pause, surprising David somewhat by making no reference whatsoever to David’s past association with his wife.

  ‘You asked for a criminal defence attorney, Doctor, and that’s exactly what we are. If you have an issue with my knowing your wife then . . .’

  ‘This was an accident, Mr Cavanaugh.’ Logan had stood then, and started to pace the room. ‘Why would I have an issue?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ David had answered. ‘So if it’s a matter of payment then I am sure we can work something out.’ But David had been sure that Logan’s objections had nothing to do with the money. ‘The thing is,’ David had continued, ‘it is now late Friday night and your arraignment will be set for Monday. You have the weekend to get us up to speed so that you have adequate representation in court. Now, if after that time you want to go with someone from the public defender’s office then that’s fine. But under the circumstances, I suggest you allow us to get you through this all-important first stage. For your sake, and for that of your children.’

  And that was when Jeffrey Logan had gone silent, lifting a single finger as if indicating he needed a moment to think.

  So here they sat, David staring at the man who seemed all too capable of helping others make decisions, without any inkling of how to make one for himself.

  ‘All right,’ said the doctor at last, moving back to his plush single sofa chair to take a sip of water from a plastic cup one of the paramedics had supplied for him about a half an hour ago. ‘I’ll repeat to you what I told the police and you may represent me at the arraignment. But beyond that I . . .’

  ‘We understand,’ said David as the doctor left his statement hanging. ‘We can take this one step at a time. The police are waiting to take you into custody so I am afraid there is little we can do tonight bar hear the original statement you gave to the detectives, and then, tomorrow, we’ll have some fresh questions, discuss things in greater detail, build a strategy for Monday.’

  Truth be told, David was more than keen to learn exactly what had gone down in this house mere hours before – but he knew better than to press, at least for now.

  ‘All right,’ said Logan, now taking a breath. ‘But you are not going to like it – the statement, I mean. I shot your old college friend, Mr Cavanaugh, in an accident that shall haunt me forever – and you too I would suggest, given the scene we were all just exposed to.’

  In that moment, as Logan met David’s eye, a look of probing curiosity on his face, David sensed the famous psychologist was looking for a reaction from him – some sort of emotional response to having just seen his former friend blitzed by a bullet powerful enough to take out the biggest animals on the planet.

  ‘Accidents happen,’ said David, the only thing he could think of to say.

  ‘Not as often as you would think,’ said Logan. ‘But, yes, in this case . . .’ He paused. ‘Bottom line, Mr Cavanaugh, Miss Davis,’ he continued after a beat, ‘and I cannot stress this enough – your role in this matter is an easy one. For I killed my wife, and when it comes down to it, there is nothing for you to defend.’

  ‘Why don’t you let us be the judge of that, Doctor,’ said Sara, perhaps reading David’s discomfort, instinctively stepping in. ‘No matter what, we’re here to help.’

  With a half smile that suggested gratitude, or in the very least some sort of satisfaction at having established his point, Logan replied, ‘I know you are,’ while shaking his head in disagreement at the very same time.

  Just as Stephanie did, thought David, when he’d suggested they catch up a mere three months ago. Mixed signals, they were more common than you think.

  Half an hour later, David and Sara watched as their client was handcuffed and led from the building – the ever-present press finally getting a return on their five-hour investment. David and Sara walked behind the doctor as he was led to a waiting police car – as much to provide ‘support’ as to make sure their client did not decide to repeat his ‘I did it’ mantra to every local and national media outlet in the country.

  The voyeurs – hundreds of people who, for some reason, had nothing better to do on a Friday night than roll up to play ‘extras’ in the real-life drama starring the most popular shrink on TV – went crazy. It was a circus, backlit by floodlights, filmed by the cameras as hundreds of flashbulbs popped like fireworks on the fourth of July.

  And that was when they saw her, bounding up the road. Amanda Carmichael was already making comments to the press, providing sound bites she knew would headline the morning shows. She hadn’t even been properly briefed and already she was taking command of what she knew would be the highest profile case of the year. David looked around for Joe, hoping his detective friend could rein her in. But it was too late. With Logan ensconced in the now departing police car, Carmichael had everyone’s attention.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Sara, eyeing the ADA with distaste. ‘First Katz and now . . . this.’ She gestured at the stunning-looking prosecutor before them.

  David looked at the ADA, as she cleared her throat and called for quiet so that she might make the first official statement in the Stephanie Tyler murder case. In that second, as David’s head still reeled from the death of his friend, the scene of her family and the somewhat unnerving behaviour of her husband, Carmichael met David’s eye and gave him the slightest of smiles. And then, on top of everything else, he remembered the last time they spoke . . . and the proposition she had made.

  5

  Katherine de Castro was exhausted. She had been up for most of the night. The police had finally allowed her to take the two Logan children back to her apartment at midnight (given they had no other immediate family and there was nowhere else for them to go) and she spent the rest of the night wondering what the hell to do with them.

  J.T. had said nothing since the ‘accident’ but he obviously felt the need to stick as close to his older sister as possible, for when de Castro had gone to check on him, around 2am, she’d found he had left the living room couch to set up camp on the floor next to Chelsea’s bed in de Castro’s rarely used spare room – his body taut, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide, staring at the ceiling.

  And wanting desperately to help, but having no real maternal instinct to draw upon, she’d gotten a blanket and put it over him before slipping quietly out of the room, and back into her own king-sized bed down the hall.

  How had it come to this? she asked herself now, as she tightened the blue silk robe around her and poured another strong black coffee from her Italian percolator. She was perched on the edge of one of her designer stools, the early morning sun making its way into her stylish brownstone kitchen, wondering how in the hell she, Katherine de Castro, the forty-year-old, over-achieving, Stanford business grad, ‘Premiere Magazine Female Media Executive of the Year’, had ended up trying to ‘comfort’ two grieving teenagers who had just seen their mother blown to bits.

  She could not focus. Any moment now they would be calling and she did not know what to say. The personal assistant to the network’s powerful CEO had rung at 7.15am – just over an hour ago – to tell her that CBC’s head honcho, one Allen Greenburg, had requested a transcontinental conference call at 8.30am Eastern Standard Time – a communication that would involve Greenburg, the President of CBC News, Bob Prescott, the President of Network Entertainment, Nancy Schaffer, and the network’s Vice President and General Counsel, a smarmy little weasel by the
name of Walter Goth.

  She had had no time to prepare. She had smoked ten cigarettes in the past sixty minutes and still wasn’t sure how the hell she should handle this. She thought they would give her the morning at least, considering they were in LA and she was three hours ahead. But then again, she also knew that when Allen Greenburg requested a 5.30am conference call, his loyal staff jumped. And if she was to survive, if she were to have any hope of saving what she and Jeffrey had built from scratch, she would have to jump with the best of them – higher, faster and without the slightest hint of hesitation.

  The timing could not have been worse. First of all, they were in the middle of the all-important May sweeps. November, February and May were the three months when the networks pulled out their big guns – when they and their affiliates ran seasonal campaigns aimed at huge ratings in order to maximise advertising revenue. The May sweeps represented their last chance in the viewing calendar to impress existing and potential advertisers so that they might set ridiculous fifteen- and thirty-second spot rates and those all-important program sponsorships for the following season, before the industry lumbered into the long, slow summer where re-runs were ripe and audiences were at their lowest.

  Secondly, Katherine and Doctor Jeff were just about to sign a new three-year contract with CBC – a deal which would see The Doctor Jeff Show through to its seventeenth season and earn Jeffrey, and herself, somewhere in the ball park of $25 million per year.

  The deal included tie-ins for specials and other promotional opportunities used to showcase the Doctor’s website, books and DVDs, and coincided with another major agreement with Imperial Productions for the syndication of three earlier series of the show – assuring affiliate and cable stations across the country would be running and re-running episodes of the high-rating show at one time or another twenty-four hours a day.

  These agreements alone, topped with international distribution deals with over thirty-five countries worldwide, would earn Katherine and her famous psychologist partner thousands of dollars every time the muted tones of their familiar opening credits rolled up on the screen. They would be making money while they slept, and lining their bank accounts in twenty different currencies as Jeff consolidated his role as international counsellor extraordinaire, and their program became the most watched relationship talk show on the whole Goddamned planet.

  And so what to do?

  She had to decide.

  She was not stupid. She knew exactly what had gone down in that painstakingly neat mansion in Beacon Hill less than twenty-four hours ago. She saw J.T. before the crime people took his clothes into evidence and there was no doubt in her mind – nor, she garnered, anyone else’s at the scene – exactly who had murdered Stephanie Tyler, accident or not.

  Now running out of time, she tried to think logically. She decided there were three major points to consider in her now urgent deliberations.

  First up, as much as she hated to admit it, the survival of the show – and their careers, their future – was her number one priority. She felt for the boy and knew that he needed help, but that might have to wait until she and Jeffrey could set things straight. Once his father was freed, they could deal with J.T.’s ‘issues’ and hopefully help the boy sort out whatever was going on in that psychotic little mind of his.

  Secondly, she needed Jeffrey out of prison ASAP. She was no lawyer but she was sure that if he somehow managed to pull off his ‘it was a tragic accident’ theory in order to protect his son, he was most likely looking at a charge of involuntary manslaughter which more often than not carried a jail time of anything from three to ten years (she had Googled it at 4am). There had to be a way to limit, if not eradicate, the prison time, and she intended to explore this with Jeffrey’s lawyers as soon as she had the chance.

  Finally, she knew that, above all else, she had to protect Jeffrey’s reputation. If Jeffrey was freed, absolved, exonerated, that would be one thing – but unless the real truth behind J.T.’s actions was revealed, the damage could be more damaging than ever. Jeffrey was a relationship expert for God’s sake. He counselled people on how to bring up their kids – nurture them, protect them, give them as solid a fucking grounding as possible so that they might lead fruitful, productive and independent lives. He spoke of parent/child relationships, he advised how important it was to swap aggression for understanding, he won the fucking ‘Father of the Year Award’ two years ago – and now his son had popped his own mom without so much as a peep.

  So while Jeffrey had told her not to speak of it, while he had stressed it was a private family matter never to be shared – she could not help but think that it was not only in her best interests to tell, but it was her responsibility. For Stephanie was gone after all, the problem solved . . . at least from one perspective.

  And so, as the phone rang, its shrill tone cutting a swathe across the silence in her stylish Back Bay apartment, she took a breath and ran her hands through her long dark hair. She closed her eyes and exhaled with force as she decided, then and there, that the ‘truth’ was the only way to go. She would request to speak to Greenburg privately, and allude to him that circumstances were not as dire as they first appeared, and he needed to trust her until she had an opportunity to speak with Jeffrey’s lawyers.

  And then she would speak to Cavanaugh, and then he would understand, and then they would carve out a course of action so that the world would know the truth, and all would be forgiven.

  6

  ‘I told you,’ said Jeffrey Logan, his athletic frame now swimming in the too big, red prison jumpsuit. ‘I was cleaning it. It was new. I’d never cleaned a gun before. I wasn’t sure what I was doing.’

  It was now almost noon. David and Sara had arrived at Boston’s Nashua Street Suffolk County Jail – a huge modern construction on the Charles River across from Bunker Bridge which housed close to seven hundred temporary detainees awaiting trial – at eight. And they had been sitting in the close confines of a whitewashed interview room on the building’s sixth, or ‘homicide’, floor and grilling their client ever since.

  David was trying desperately to put the image of his good friend Stephanie behind him, as he knew, above all else, that his immediate responsibility was, ironically, to the man who had confessed to her murder. But it was clear from the outset that Logan’s story was full of inconsistencies, and so David and Sara had decided that their priority was showing Logan that just because he said he was responsible for the crime, it ‘did not make it so’.

  ‘Look, Doctor,’ said David.

  ‘Please call me Jeffrey,’ said Logan, who despite appearing tired, David had to admit, still had that familiar TV sparkle in his eyes.

  ‘Jeffrey,’ David began again. ‘We hear what you are saying, but establishing the facts is the only way we can help you. Our problem is that your story doesn’t quite fit together. The details are there, but right now they are hanging like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know what else I can tell you,’ Logan replied, shaking his head.

  David took a breath. ‘All I am saying is that this whole gun thing doesn’t ring true – and the problem is, Jeffrey, if we can’t see it, chances are a judge, or a jury, won’t see it either.’

  ‘But surely I am making it easy for them,’ protested Logan. ‘And for you and your co-counsel too.’ Logan gestured at Sara. ‘I would imagine you spend most of your time trying to convince your clients not to exaggerate circumstances to assure their freedom, and now you have me, who simply asks that you corroborate my guilt.’

  David had to admit he was right.

  ‘I understand your reasoning, Jeffrey but, with all due respect, just because you say something happened, it doesn’t mean others will believe you.’

  ‘But that’s where you’re wrong, David,’ said Logan. ‘In case you haven’t noticed I have built an entire career on being believed. People live by my every word. They make decisions based solely on my advice. It’s like . . . I am Doctor J
eff!’ he said then – an exclamation, not a statement. ‘And with risk of sounding completely supercilious, if I say something happened – then that alone makes it so.’

  There was silence as David swallowed the knot in his throat. In all honesty he had never met anyone like Jeffrey Logan before; the man was arrogant, superior – but in a strangely appealing way. And the fact that he was, at least on the face of it, making one of the most selfless acts a human being could make, certainly counted for something.

  ‘Look,’ said Sara, trying to fill the increasingly awkward silence. ‘We are not trying to make this difficult for you, Jeffrey, but David is right when he says the facts are all skewiff. For example, why would you be cleaning a brand new rifle that had never been used before? And why, given you had never hunted before, was it loaded? And why did you decide to clean it at a time when, you admit, you had no plans to go on a hunting trip at any time in the near or distant future? And why did you . . . ?’

  ‘Maybe I wanted to clean the gun so my wife knew that I appreciated her gift,’ Logan interrupted again. ‘The whole idea of hunting may not be something I have ever embraced, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want my wife to see how much I valued her generosity. Perhaps I figured, if I took it to the kitchen, if she saw I was taking care of what must have cost her a small fortune, then she would know how much I . . .’ And then he hesitated, as his brain perhaps tracked ahead to how his supposed expression of gratitude had eventually played out.

  ‘You said you wanted some fresh rags from the kitchen,’ said David, taking Sara’s lead, getting them back on track. ‘But a police search confirmed your garage was stocked with fresh rags and there were no similar cloths in the kitchen.’

  ‘I mustn’t have seen the ones in the garage,’ said Logan, taking a breath now, shifting in his worn plastic chair which scratched in protest across the dirty concrete floor.