Finally, Carver said, “But here’s where it gets messy.” He grinned, “No pun intended. First, the cops never find the murder weapon. The prosecutor argued that the injuries were consistent with a normal kitchen knife, which Steele had, but none of the knives in Steele’s kitchen had any trace of blood on them, and none were missing. And the time of death was such that Steele wouldn’t have had time to go anywhere to dispose of a knife. She was still warm and had blood running out of her when the cops got there. Of course, Steele says the killer took the knife with him. But the prosecution argued that Steele washed off one of his own kitchen knives and just put it away when he was through. They were apparently solid steel knives that would have been easy to clean. That’s problem one.”
“Second, there were no signs of forced entry. But an EMT looked at Steele’s head and found signs of a minor injury. Steele said it was from being pushed down, but the doctor testified that it was also consistent with a blow from a struggle, much as he presumably would have had with his wife while he stabbed her.”
“There’s another odd fact,” Reilly added, putting a crust of bread in his mouth and speaking as he chewed. “Steele had a wound on his hand that he claims he got when the intruder slashed at him. But again, there was testimony that the wound would have been consistent with Steele cutting himself when his hand slipped on the bloody knife.”
Carver interrupted. “So anyway, they interview Steele, he tells this bullshit story, and they arrest him the same night. Now, he offered his story at trial, but he had no evidence to support it, other than his interpretation of these facts. I mean, he just took the stand and told a story that, and this is how the prosecutor referred to it in his closing argument, a story that sounds too much like The Fugitive to be taken seriously.”
I agreed, the story had always sounded ludicrous to me, even as a kid, only vaguely following the drama on T.V. “What’s the motive?” I asked. “Money?”
“No, that’s just it,” Reilly responded. “There’s no motive. She had money, her family was wealthy, but he didn’t get anything. The kids are taken care of by a family trust, but he got nothing and never stood to get anything. There was no insurance. The two had split up briefly about eighteen months before, but they reconciled quickly and everyone said they were completely happy.”
Carver leaned back in his chair and waited for a few seconds after Reilly finished. Then he said, “So anyway, this case has been floating around the courts for years. Direct appeals in state courts, state habeas petitions. It’s finally time for Steele to file a federal habeas petition, and the court asked us to do it. Pro bono, of course.” Carver sneered a little on pro bono and then asked, “Have you studied habeas in school?”
I said I hadn’t. Carver glanced at Reilly in a way that suggested it was Reilly’s job to fill the new guy in, and then Carver said, “Well, look. It’s like an appeal, but it’s not. It’s a challenge to the process that convicted you.”
I was lost, and looked it. Carver leaned forward and said, “We’re not going to argue that Steele is innocent — you can never win on that — we’re arguing that he didn’t have a fair trial. Generally you argue ineffective assistance of counsel. That’s probably what we’re going to do here.”
Then Carver wiped his mouth with the thick cloth napkin, checked his huge, gleaming watch, and pushed his chair back. “I gotta go guys. But look, we need to push this ball forward as fast as we can. The two of you need to go see Steele and flesh this thing out. He’s going to try to convince you he’s innocent, but that doesn’t have a chance in hell. We’ve got to go with ineffective assistance.” Carver stood and looked at me. “Of course, that defense has a little problem too, but Reilly can fill you in on that. I had the file sent to your office. Have a look at it.”
Carver left us sitting there, staring at his back as he walked out of the restaurant, disappearing through the doorway and into a rectangle of brilliant sunlight. The waiter brought the bill and Reilly paid it. I sat there and waited for him to say something, but there wasn’t much to say. Carver was gone and Reilly and I were strangers.
On the way back to the office I finally spoke up. “So what’s the problem with the ineffective assistance of counsel claim?”
Reilly gave me a grim smile and shook his head. “His lawyer was a guy named Garrett Andersen. He’s one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the state. Maybe the country.”
“Do you really think a guy like that made a mistake?”
“Unlikely. That’s why this case was dead on arrival.”
I was confused. “So why are we doing it if it’s hopeless?”
Reilly laughed and shook his head. The new guy, he seemed to be thinking. “Well, hey, truth be told, no one thinks this thing can win. I mean, we’re not saying we can win. It sounds trite, but everyone’s entitled to representation, to a defense. Blah, blah, blah . . . I know it’s a cliché, but it’s the truth. And this is a complicated story Steele tells. There are a lot of places mistakes can be made. The devil’s in the details, y’know, so we might find something if we look hard enough.”
“But if he killed his wife—” I started to say.
Reilly cut me off with a grin. “We don’t know that. All we know is that he was convicted of killing his wife.”
I’d heard it before, and I usually believed it. The system had problems. There were dirty cops out there in the world. People got railroaded. But there were a lot of guilty people too, and this guy sounded guilty. I was about to make a joke about the difference between truth and confiction, but I stopped myself at the last second. Bad puns seemed dangerous. Instead, I shook my head. “Still, it seems pointless. Why bother? Doesn’t he see that?”
“The guy’s in jail, whether he sees it or not, all he’s got is time, y’know?”
“Sure, but why are we doing this? I mean, I guess that’s what doesn’t make sense to me.” We were stopped at the light. I could see that Reilly had no satisfying answer and I knew what he was going to say. I could feel it coming.
“Look,” Reilly began, “this guy was a senator. He was a powerful man and, on the outside chance that the firm can get him off, I mean, what a publicity boon for the firm. Look at it from their perspective. You’ve got this case, it’s a loser, maybe one in a hundred chance of winning — I doubt even that good, but a chance, you know. They’ve got summer associates coming in, tons of them, don’t know what to do with them all there are so many. What are you guys getting paid these days?”
“Three thousand a week.”
“No offense, but they don’t pay you guys that because you’re worth it. I mean, you’re a smart guy, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. The best and brightest or whatever they say. But you have no experience. I mean the firm tries to bill some of your time, but clients generally don’t want to pay for it. And in this economy, clients get what they want. So the firm just writes your time off as a recruiting expense.”
The light changed and we crossed toward the building. I watched him walk. Reilly looked like a guy who had finally let himself go after years of resistance, as though he’d realized that the trim, frat-boy body he’d had all through college and law school was gone for good. He was still young, fit enough, but he was beginning to show the creeping weight gain at his middle that would someday transform him into a pudgy, forty year old attorney.
“So they have this case. There’s a long shot that it might pay off. Who better to give it to than a summer associate, right? I mean, if you get lucky the firm gets all the glory, and if there’s nothing to it then the firm only loses your time, which it would have lost anyway.” Reilly looked at me and smiled as he went through the revolving door into the cavernous lobby of the K&C building. “Look man, this is a business. I mean you hope you can do some good along the way, but mostly it’s about money. Think of how big a payoff it would be to get this guy off. Why not take that gamble?”
“But meanwhile,” I said, “this guy — who may have a good case, who knows? — is s
itting in jail and his future is tied to a law student who doesn’t know anything. I mean, I don’t even know where to start.”
When we stepped on the elevator, Reilly pushed our floors and leaned against the mirrored wall. “First of all, this guy doesn’t have a good case. He doesn’t have any case.” The elevator door opened at my floor and there was an awkward silence. I hesitated. Reilly filled it with, “Well, like Carver said, have a look through the file.”
When I got back to my office there were eight cardboard boxes piled along the side of my desk with the word “Steele” written across the side. I had no idea the “file” would consist of so much paper. I spread the boxes out across the floor so I could see into each of them. Some were just loose piles of paper. Others contained smaller files inside the boxes. There was no organization to them. Nothing was marked “beginning” or “start here,” so I just started rifling through them.
After a minute or two I came to a folder full of newspaper clippings and I sat at the desk and leafed through them. Steele had called 911 at 8:52 in the evening. The police arrived at 9:04. No signs of forced entry and the police dogs picked up no trails indicating any suspects had crossed the property. They arrested Steele at three that morning.
When I was finished, I leaned back in my chair, remembering it clearly. Although I was only ten when it happened, it was such a major story that you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing some reference to it. The murder had been grisly and shocking. The senator swore that someone else had committed the crime but offered no proof at trial other than his own testimony. The jury convicted based on what they viewed as overwhelming evidence.
Now it was my job to help get him out. But not because he was innocent, only because his high-priced lawyer didn’t do a good enough job. So much for good causes, I thought. I exhaled and turned to stare out the window, enjoying my sixty-eighth floor view of the white and green sprawl of Los Angeles. My first law job was to spring a convicted murderer on a technicality.
Wonderful.
2
Tom Reilly drove a black Porsche 911 convertible. He was twenty-nine years old and spent ninety thousand dollars on a car without worrying about hurting his retirement or breaking the bank. I sat beside him watching the scenery breeze by at a smooth and luxurious ninety miles per hour. It was nothing like my fifteen year old Ford Escort, and Reilly was nothing like me.
I was in the middle of law school during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Unlike many of my classmates, who were the children of lawyers or doctors, my father was a mason — and I don’t mean the secret society. He specialized in tile work, but when times were bad he did anything. Brick patios, cinderblock walls, any work he could get his hands on. When times were worse, he did nothing at all. And times were the worst ever. No one was building anything. He said it was like someone just flipped a switch and turned the construction industry off.
It might seem like being parked in school was a great place to be. Free to wait out the downturn without creating a massive gap on the resume. But the truth of the matter was that law firms hired almost two years in advance, so when the economy tanks, it’s the people in school who get screwed first and hardest. Most of us were racking up student loans at $40,000 per year — essentially mortgaging our futures — and there were almost no jobs. Even many of the best students couldn’t find anything. With the debt meter constantly running, many had little or no prospect of ever being able to repay what they owed. Most would be starting their careers in their mid-twenties from the bottom of a deep, deep hole.
And it wasn’t like all would be fixed when the economy rebounded. Sure, law firms would start hiring again, but they would return to their old model, interviewing and hiring students almost two years before they graduated. Those classes that had missed that window would be lost forever. I was one of the lucky ones. Terrified of failure, I studied relentlessly. Jockeying with a few other students for the top position in our class.
At the beginning of my second year of law school I got the nod. I had been summoned to the offices of K&C for a day of interviews with people who laughed and joked and didn’t seem the least bit interested in the law, or what I thought I might do with my career. The only thing they seemed to care about was whether they liked me. I was convinced I’d failed the test, that they could all tell I did not belong there. But almost by magic, a couple of partners took me out to dinner at the end of that long day and offered me a job. I was stunned. These people were considering letting me into their club. I was speechless, but managed to say yes before they could change their mind.
Unlike me, Tom Reilly was the quintessential Kohlberg and Crowley associate. Like most of K&C’s 900 lawyers in its fifteen offices around the world, Reilly graduated from an Ivy League college, where he excelled, and then went on to an Ivy League law school, where he was on law review and finished in the top ten percent of his class. Because of his wealthy family, he finished law school at twenty-five with no student loans or debt of any kind. The first job he ever had was making six figures at K&C.
He exhibited the same casual behavior around wealth and power that I’d noticed in most of the other summer associates. It was a quality gained by attending private schools one’s entire life and growing up in the privileged neighborhoods of America where everyone’s father was a surgeon, lawyer, CEO, investment banker, or, in Los Angeles, a studio executive. Everyone Tom Reilly had ever been around was exactly like him. It was no wonder he felt comfortable at K&C. And merely because he was born five or six year before me, he had graduated from law school when the economy was great. For him, there was no economic downturn. He was completely unaffected by any of it. He was on an elevator headed nowhere but up, and at every floor along the way he would be handed more and more money. Seemingly endless money.
Although I bore little resemblance to Tom, every elite law firm had a few people like me walking the halls. I was a candidate picked for my grit and life experience, picked precisely because I was not like the others. I was blue collar, working class, and had fought to get where I was. That made me hungry and they knew it. I resented Tom Reilly and his Porsche as much as I coveted it.
After two hours of driving, we pulled off the freeway and followed the signs. A few minutes later we dropped over a rise and the prison loomed up out of the desert. It was a collection of gray concrete buildings surrounded by layer after layer of high chain link topped with spiraling razor wire. Beyond the impenetrable rings of fence, there was nothing but wide open space — an expanse of hot desert and low brush — no place for an escapee to hide from searchlights, dogs, or bullets.
I followed Reilly into a front office. We were led down a corridor to a waiting room where we sat for what seemed like an hour. We carried on the kind of stilted and disinterested conversation people engage in when they’re trying to kill time and nothing more. Those were probably the only kinds of conversations that took place inside prisons.
Finally, a guard leaned in the door and said, “Steele’s comin’ out.” We looked up at him. “You guys here for Steele?”
“Yeah.” We answered in unison, like goslings imprinting on the first authority figure we saw.
“Well, he’s comin’ out.” We continued to stare. “You guys gonna come in, or what?” He looked at us like we were both idiots. We followed him through a door that locked behind us before the next door on the opposite wall opened. Then we went into the visiting room.
That room was cold and everything in it was gray. The only natural light came from thin windows high up on the twelve foot walls. There were three rows of four metal tables that had been painted years before but now were just drab metal flecked with traces of worn white paint. I took several steps and felt the gloom sink into me. I could only imagine the dreariness that lay beyond the door on the furthest wall. Then there was the sound of a heavy lock turning, a metal echo filled the room, and the door swung back.
A small man in plain blue coveralls entered the room. He was i
n his late fifties but looked older. He stood there, hesitant, his eyes darting around as if there were others present besides Reilly and me. He looked nothing like a man who once sat in the oval office and shook the president’s hand. But I didn’t know what a guy like that was supposed to look like anyway. All I knew was that Steele looked nothing like I thought he would — certainly nothing like I remembered. Finally, Reilly spoke.
“Mr. Steele, I’m Tom Reilly.” He walked toward Steele with his hand out. They shook. “And this is Oliver Olson.” Steele smiled and his eyes lit up.
“Mr. Reilly, Mr. Olson, it’s a pleasure to meet both of you. And please, call me Jim.” He shook my hand like a man who had once shaken hands for a living, and then he nodded his head at me. “I thank you for coming to see me. Please, let’s sit down.”
He motioned toward one of the old tables with a slow, regal gesture, as if asking us to join him in the study for cognac. As I sat, I wondered how long it had been since Steele had a visitor. The cadence of his speech was refined, gentlemanly, and filled with education and experience that I imagined only alienated him from his surroundings.
Reilly led the conversation. What would I have had to say? After a few more niceties, we started at the beginning.
Steele took a deep breath and thought for a second, and then said, “It was a Saturday night. The re-election was heating up and Sharon and I were going to attend a fundraiser that night. Our daughter, Becky, had gone to a church event, so when we learned that the fundraiser had been canceled, we planned on a quiet evening at home. I put our son Shawn to bed at about eight, and Sharon decided to take a bath. You know, just relax.”
“Why didn’t she take a bath in the master bedroom?” Reilly’s questions came out stiff. I wondered how many times he’d interviewed an actual client before.
“The master bath just had this glass block shower, but no tub. She liked to use the bathroom down the hall with the Jacuzzi tub in it. But just before she got in the tub that damned Matt Bishop called. Sharon hated that kid. I could hear her yelling at him from across the house.”
The Flaming Motel Page 29
