Desperate Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  A moment after the man had been escorted from the courtroom, Marc noticed a definite buzz coming from the gallery. He swiveled his chair around to check out the commotion and saw every head in the crowd turn towards the door. Marc smiled, slightly shook his head and waved at Maddy to come through the gate and join him.

  “Can I sit here?” she whispered to Marc as she sat down in one of the chairs along the rail behind the defense table.

  “Yeah, it’ll be okay. What’s up?” Marc replied.

  “I wanted to check in with you so, I thought I’d come watch for a while. How’s it going? Hello, Judge,” she said to Prentiss as pleasantly as she could.

  Before Marc could answer, he heard Judge Rios say, “Mr. Kadella, would now be a good time for a short break?”

  “Yes, your Honor. It’s okay with me.”

  “Mr. Gondeck?” she asked.

  “That’s fine, Judge,” he replied.

  “Okay, we’ll take a fifteen-minute break.”

  All of the people in the crowd started to head toward the exit. Prentiss left with a deputy to go back to the holding area and Marc said to Maddy, “Wait for me in the hall. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  As she was leaving and after the courtroom had emptied, Gondeck stepped up to Marc and with a hopeful look on his face, said, “Is she going to be hanging out during the trial?”

  “Probably. Would you like me to introduce you to her?” Marc asked with feigned enthusiasm.

  “Would you?”

  “No, dummy. She’s a twelve and you’re a four, and a married one on top of it.”

  “Hey, give him a break,” Jennifer said smiling at the exchange. “If he lost fifteen or twenty pounds and grew some hair back, he could be a six or seven.”

  “You two are cruel,” Gondeck said.

  “I have to go talk to her,” Marc said and started walking toward the hallway door.

  “Can I come with?” Gondeck said to Marc’s back.

  “I’m calling your wife,” Marc answered. Just before he reached the exit, he turned back toward Gondeck, took a couple steps toward him and said, “Give me manslaughter two, three to five years, and I’ll get her to sleep with you.”

  “That’s tempting,” Gondeck replied smiling.

  “You two are disgusting,” Jennifer said as both men laughed.

  Marc located Maddy standing by herself in the hall and the two of them sat down on an unoccupied bench seat.

  “I was able to meet with Catherine’s shrink, Dr. Chase,” she began. “You’re going to have a serious problem with him. He says Catherine was telling him about abuse by Prentiss. In fact, he says she told him a day or two before she was killed that Prentiss caught her looking at his personal S&M sex tape and photos. He’ll testify that Prentiss threw her around, almost smothered her with a pillow and threatened to kill her.”

  “Did he report any of this to the police?”

  “No. He said Catherine begged him not to and insisted she was finally fed up enough and going to tell Gordon she wanted a divorce.”

  “That’s what they’re going to use for motive,” Marc quietly said.

  “Yeah, probably. The doctor let me tape our conversation so you can listen to it. Do you want me to write up a report about it too?”

  “No, the tape is enough. What about Catherine’s friend, Ava Hammond? Why is she on Gondeck’s witness list?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t talk to me. But the doctor told me she was going to have a friend with her when she told Gordon she wanted a divorce. He didn’t know who but…”

  “It’s a good bet that this Ava woman is that friend,” Marc said finishing her thought.

  “Likely. Also, I haven’t been able to find a plausible candidate for the ‘other dude who did it’ theory of our case from the threat letters Prentiss received. There’s a few I can’t rule out but no one looks good for it.”

  “It’s Leo Balkus,” Marc said. “I know damn well it is.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that. Listen, let me and Tony take a shot at his banker and see what we can find out.”

  “I’m not sure I like you sticking your neck out like that.”

  “Relax. We know what we’re doing. Can I stay and watch for a while?”

  “It’s pretty boring but,” Marc shrugged, “stay if you want.”

  As the two of them walked back toward the crowd entering the courtroom, Maddy asked, “How much longer for jury selection?”

  “We’re right on schedule. We’ll wrap it up tomorrow; probably in the morning. She’ll impanel the jury, break for the weekend and start with opening statements on Monday.”

  “Are you going to ask to have the jury sequestered?”

  “I already did. Denied. I’m not sure it matters. What are they going to see on TV that could be any worse than what they see in here?” Marc said as held the door for her.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  While the jury selection was in progress downstairs, a summer intern named Keith Gibbs was working on the case in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office. He was between his second and third years of law school at the University of Minnesota and had already decided, after a month clerking for the county attorney, he knew criminal law was not in his future.

  His job was to go through the boxes of material the police had removed from Prentiss’s house and office. He had to make a thorough list of everything, including a succinct description, mark each item and have it done by Friday afternoon. It would then be the lawyers’ job to decide if any of it was useable at trial. Since the time for discovery was already up, the odds of Keith finding anything they could use was about zero and his enthusiasm for his work wasn’t much higher.

  He was currently sitting at a conference room table going through a small box of movies; DVDs that had been taken from the Prentiss house. Looking them over, every one of them appeared to be legitimate movies that were purchased from stores but he checked them anyway. He opened the case of each one to be sure the disk matched the label on the case. He was holding the case of the movie Casablanca and found himself thinking about the movie. Keith had been forced to watch it in a college film class and had never understood why it was considered a classic. In fact, he had found it to be quite boring. There wasn’t a single car chase, explosion or superhero in the entire movie. Just actors talking to each other and on top of it, the whole thing was in black and white.

  He opened the case, gave it a quick look and saw that the disk was in fact for the movie Casablanca. Just as he started to close the case again, he noticed it. Behind the DVD was a second disk that he had almost missed. The intern removed both disks and saw that the second one had nothing on it to identify what it was.

  There was a TV with a videotape and DVD player set up in a corner of the conference room. Keith turned the TV on and dropped the disk in the player. He sat down and for the next twenty minutes watched as Judge Gordon Prentiss and prominent defense lawyer Bruce Dolan explained what sounded like a blackmail scheme Dolan had perpetrated on the judge.

  After watching the disk one more time, he sat for a minute wondering what to do. He went to the conference room door, opened it and stuck his head out. He saw a woman, a lawyer he recognized, reading a document as she walked toward him.

  “Um, excuse me, Ms. Brennan,” he said to her as she walked up to him.

  “You’re Keith, right?” she asked. “It’s Lois, you don’t have to be so formal,” she smiled.

  “Sure, um, okay Lois,” he replied. “Do you have a few minutes? I found something I really need to show someone.”

  “Ah, yeah, I guess. What is it?”

  “In here. It’s a DVD I found in the stuff we got from Judge Prentiss’ house.”

  He started the DVD again and after about ten minutes, a totally enthralled Lois Brennan quietly said, “Holy shit. You have got to be kidding me. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

  At that moment, the conference room door opened and another prosecutor, John Hutton, came in carrying
two manila files for a case he was working on. When he noticed the other two people he apologized and tried to back out. Seeing Prentiss and Dolan on the screen together he asked, “What are you watching?”

  “Take a look at this, John,” Brennan replied. “It’s Prentiss and Dolan admitting to some kind of theft from Leo Balkus of a DVD and photos of Prentiss Leo had that he was using to blackmail Prentiss. Dolan stole the stuff from Leo and Prentiss paid him for it.”

  “Are you serious?” Hutton said as he took a chair and sat down to watch.

  When it had finished, the three of them watched it once more. After that, Hutton said to the young intern, “This doesn’t leave this room. Do I make myself clear? In fact, you never saw it.”

  “We have to get this to Craig and Steve Gondeck,” Brennan said.

  Being the senior of the two lawyers, Hutton said he would take the disk and be sure to show it to them. He assured Brennan he would see to it as soon as Gondeck got back from court. Plus, he informed her, Slocum was out of the office and would not be back until early evening.

  Hutton took the DVD back to his office and spent a few minutes thinking about how to handle this. He had in his possession the leverage he might be able to use to get Leo’s hooks out of him but how best to do it?

  At 5:15 he went into the AV tech room knowing it would probably be empty. Using the equipment he quickly made a copy of the disk, slipped back out and got back to his office in time to see Gondeck and Jennifer Moore walking past the staff cube farm returning from court.

  He hailed both of them and the three of them went into the same conference room and plugged in the disk. While they were watching the movie, Craig Slocum, the county attorney himself, came in having been alerted by his secretary to join them when he got back. When they had all seen it from start to finish, Slocum politely ordered Hutton and Jennifer Moore to keep quiet about it and asked them to leave.

  “We have to get a copy of this to Prentiss’ lawyer,” Gondeck said.

  “Why? How is this exculpatory evidence that he murdered his wife? No, I think not,” Slocum replied as he removed the disk from the machine.

  “Craig, we have a duty…”

  “To what? We have a duty to turn over any evidence that we will use at trial against his client or that which might cast doubt on his guilt. This disk is neither. No. It’s my decision. We’re going to keep quiet about this and take it to a grand jury, get an indictment against Dolan and send him to jail.”

  “Craig, I’m telling you right now, this is a bad idea. If word of this gets out, and it will, Leo will kill them both.”

  “Nonsense,” Slocum scoffed. “Besides, how will he find out?”

  “I don’t know, but you can never keep this stuff quiet.”

  Slocum thought about it for a moment then said, “Maybe. We’ll sit on it over the weekend. Your trial doesn’t start until Monday, right?”

  Gondeck nodded and Slocum continued. “We’ll take the weekend then decide on Monday. Until then, I’ll keep this.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  The Twins were already down by four runs going into the bottom of the second inning. Nathan Tollman was working on his third vodka tonic while seated at the crowded bar of Simpson’s, a popular sports bar just a few blocks from where Nathan worked.

  At one time, what seemed like a lifetime ago, Nathan had been considered something of a finance whiz kid. A genius level I.Q. of around 160, Nathan had earned an MBA in finance by the age of twenty-three. He had been grabbed up right out of graduate school by one of the largest investment firms in the Midwest. By the time he was thirty, he had a seven figure income and all of the trappings that went with it. Nathan was making a fortune for his company, the partners and their customers. It was just about at that point when the end began to happen.

  Nathan developed a gambling habit. Not for casinos, poker or the usual suspects. What Nathan became hooked on was gambling with the firm’s and its client’s money on an almost incomprehensible product known as derivatives.

  Nathan had always been, at least in his mind, the smartest guy in the room. He knew derivatives were an extremely risky investment for which the firm had strict guidelines concerning who could and could not invest in them. Nathan convinced himself that he knew best and the derivative gambling bug bit him hard.

  At first, he made a lot of money for his customers, the firm and of course, himself. However, as with most gambling junkies, the more he played, the more he bet. When the end came, it came fast and hard. The market took a downturn and in a month, Nathan lost all of his gains and another two hundred million on top of that. The firm, not wanting to publicize a scandal, quietly fired Nathan, paid their clients who had lost money and simply ate the losses.

  For Nathan, gone were the multi-million dollar house, the fast cars and the model-beautiful women. On top of that, the word was out in the investment banking community and Nathan had become radioactive and untouchable. What followed was a year of drinking, drugs and unemployment. Finally, a college friend found him passed out in a bar, took him home, cleaned him up and found a job for him with a mid-sized manufacturing firm as its comptroller.

  Nathan sober was still a finance whiz and within a year had restructured the company’s finances and increased profits by almost twenty percent. A very grateful CFO gave Nathan a raise, a company car and stock options. Instead of thanking his lucky stars to be doing this well, Nathan’s old gambling bug bit him again.

  This time it was the normal type of gambling; casinos and poker. He also redeveloped a taste for cocaine and it wasn’t long before Nathan was embezzling and looking at serious jail time. That is when he came to the attention of Leo Balkus.

  Leo had purchased, through the name of a legitimate businessman who owed Leo a lot, a small bank in Roseville, Minnesota. For Leo, it was perfect; too small to draw much attention but large enough to serve as a laundromat for washing his money. Leo had just one problem. He needed someone to run it for him.

  Shortly after acquiring the bank, Leo noticed a small article on the third page of the business section of the Star Tribune. It was a brief report of a man who had been convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to prison. The article had a thorough bio of the recently convicted Nathan Tollman and having an eye for talent, Leo thought he might have solved his problem. He immediately set Bruce Dolan to work and in about a year, Nathan was owned by Leo Balkus.

  While Nathan watched three Twins hitters all strike out looking in the bottom of the second inning, the empty barstool next to him became occupied. He ignored the new person next to him until he heard a soft, sultry, female voice order a cosmopolitan from the bartender. Nathan turned his head to find a very attractive blonde woman wearing stylish eyeglasses, red lipstick and matching red fingernails. She was dressed in a lime-green silk blouse, designer jeans and half-boots with five-inch spikes.

  Seeing Nathan, a fairly attractive man, with a full head of hair, the woman smiled slightly and set her purse on the bar.

  “Hi,” Nathan politely responded.

  “Hello, yourself,” she said back.

  “You know,” he continued as he made a quarter turn on his chair toward her, “this is the worst line in history, but I have to ask: come here often?”

  The woman laughed and Nathan continued with, “The reason I ask is, I’m kind of a regular here and I would’ve noticed you before this.”

  “Thanks,” she smiled. “No, I’m from out of town. Here on business. I’m staying next door at the Holiday Inn.”

  “I’m Nathan,” he said as he held out a hand to shake.

  “Hello, Nathan, I’m Loni,” she replied shaking Nathan’s hand.

  An hour later the two of them walked across the parking lot of the bar to the next door Holiday Inn. Both had a little too much to drink and were laughing and acting a little foolish. Nathan was doing his best to grope up Loni who had her hands full fending him off and keeping him at bay. He mostly behaved himself anticipating better things to come once inside
her room.

  As soon as they entered her room, he tried to grab her, put his arms around her and give her a passionate kiss. Instead, still holding him off, she spun him around and roughly pushed him down on the bed. Loni tossed her purse on the bed next to his head and aggressively jumped on him, pinned his arms back over his head and while leaning over him, seductively smiled.

  “What do you have in mind?” he eagerly asked her with a leering grin.

  She leaned in close, their noses almost touching and said in her best bedroom voice, “There’s something I love to do and I guarantee you’ll love it too. Are you game?”

  Not having been with a woman this sexy since his best days at the investment firm, Nathan was ready to agree to just about anything. “Sure, whatever,” he agreed.

  Loni reached in her purse and removed two sets of handcuffs. Still more than a little drunk, Nathan started giggling when he saw what she had and compliantly laid back on the bed while she secured his arms to the headboard. Still straddling him, she smiled down at him as she seductively removed his tie. When she finished removing the tie, she squeezed her legs together to hold him still and quickly wrapped the tie over his mouth and around his head to gag him.

  When she was done with the tie, he began to realize this might not be what he had hoped for. He began to thrash about trying to free his hands and talked through the gag saying what sounded like, “Let me go!” and stared up at her with a wide-eyed panicked expression.

  “Relax, Nathan,” she said as she got off of him and walked toward the door. She opened the door and waiting patiently in the hall with a large latte from Starbucks was Tony Carvelli. “I can’t believe how different you look as a blonde,” he said.