Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  Warily, I sat down, holding my briefcase in my lap.

  "I'm sorry, Joe," he said softly.

  "I saw what you did in there," I said. "What's going on, Horace?"

  "He deserved what he got. Guys like him have never done anything in their lives. They go to college, they go to law school, they join some downtown firm so they can lease their new cars and buy their new houses. They live their little lives and never think twice about anything except how they can make more money this year than they did last. The hell with them," he whispered. "The hell with them all."

  Abruptly, he pushed himself up and walked in purposeful strides across the room to the coat rack. He bent down, picked up the crumpled black robe, shook it out with one hand, and draped it over one of the brass hooks. From another hook, he retrieved his suit coat and struggled into it.

  "You want to walk out with me?" he asked. "I've got a meeting." We walked in silence through the corridor and rode the crowded elevator down to the ground floor without exchanging a word. Outside the courthouse we said a brief good-bye. Horace had followed every detail of the murder trial of Marshall Goodwin. He knew the case was going to the jury this morning, and he had not asked a single question about it.

  What Horace had not asked, Helen could not wait to answer. "Jury will be back before three," she said, as soon as I shut the office door behind me. She said it the way she said most things, with absolute assurance, as if she had inside knowledge.

  She fluttered all around me while I got a cola from the small refrigerator and walked through the open doorway to my desk. As I pulled one arm out of my suit coat, I felt her take it by the shoulder and then help me out of the other sleeve. I fell into the chair and looked up at her. Carefully folding the jacket down the middle, she laid it over the arm of one of the two wingback chairs in front of the desk and sat down in the other.

  "I haven't said this before," she began, looking at me from under long pointed lashes, each one of them coated black. "But this was a lot of trouble to go to if you're going to be a one-case lawyer." With a wave of her hand she encompassed the things she had done to transform a vacant suite into a functioning office.

  "What's the matter? Don't you think they'll give you your old job back at the firm?" I asked.

  She cocked her head. "Thanks, but if I want to be dead, I'll do it myself."

  "Did you really think I'd ask you to leave your job if I wasn't sure I was going to do this for good?"

  She lowered her eyes, slightly embarrassed. "I knew you wouldn't do that," she replied, fidgeting. "I just wanted to be sure." She looked up. "So where are all the clients?"

  "What kind do you think we should have? I've been thinking maybe we should do something more exciting than criminal law. What do you think about divorce cases?" I tried to look serious.

  "Why don't you do both? Defend the people who shoot divorce lawyers." She made it sound like a form of justifiable homicide. A few minutes before three, the telephone rang. "I told you so," Helen said, without looking up, as I passed her desk on my way out the door.

  There was a verdict. Before the hour was out I would know whether the jury had decided that Marshall Goodwin was guilty or whether I had failed to make a strong enough case and he would walk out, a free man.

  The stifling heat had passed. Everyone outside on the sidewalks walked easily now, under the clean light of the sun, breathing in the first nostalgic hint of autumn.

  I took my chair at the counsel table and waited. There was not a single place left to sit anywhere in the courtroom. The door behind the bench swung open, and Judge Holloway appeared. Lowering herself into the tall leather chair, she rested her arms on the bench and folded her hands together. "Bring in the jury," she said firmly, looking straight ahead.

  As if he could have an effect on them even now, Richard Lee Jones sat straight up and stared at each juror as they filed into the box. The motorcycle mechanic had been chosen foreman. He held the verdict in his hand.

  Following the time-honored practice, Judge Holloway inquired, "Has the jury reached a verdict?"

  "Yes, we have, your Honor."

  The clerk moved across the front of the courtroom. "Would you hand the verdict to the clerk, please?"

  The paper was brought back to the judge, who read it with as little expression as she might have perused an article in the newspaper. She handed it back to the clerk.

  "The clerk will please read the verdict."

  Out of the corner of my eye, I studied the reaction of Marshall Goodwin as he waited a last few agonizing seconds while the clerk cleared her throat and began to read. He had a lost look in his eyes, the look someone gets when they abandon hope. It was close to what I imagined Nancy Goodwin must have felt when she waited for the knife. I turned away and watched the mouth of the clerk pronounce the last few words of the verdict.

  Evenly and without emotion, her eyes moving left to right and back again, she read the word guilty and then took a half step back. Beating her gavel, Irma Holloway quieted the crowd. "Sentencing will be in thirty days," she announced.

  It was over. There was nothing more to do except gather up my belongings and run the gauntlet of reporters waiting outside. When I turned to go, there were only a few stragglers left in the courtroom.

  "Mr. Antonelli," said a distinguished-looking man in his early sixties. He was standing next to the gate at the railing, waiting for me.

  "Yes?"

  He extended his hand. "I just wanted to thank you. I'm Thomas Redfield, Nancy's father."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Redfield. I wish it could have been under different circumstances."

  His handshake was strong and firm. He placed his other hand on my shoulder. "If it hadn't been for you, he would have gotten away with it. If there is ever anything I can do for you... " His hand slipped off my shoulder and he let go of my grasp. Without another word he turned away.

  Somewhere in one of the Platonic dialogues Leopold Rifkin first told me about is the argument that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. Watching Nancy Goodwin's father walk out of the courtroom, I had a hard time believing it was a choice anyone should ever have to make.

  In the corridor I stood under the television lights, surrounded by a mob of reporters."How does it feel to beat Richard Lee Jones?" someone shouted from the back.

  "No one who has the good fortune of having Mr. Jones as his attorney can ever complain they did not receive a fair trial. He's one of the best defense attorneys I've ever seen."

  Harper Bryce was waiting for me on the courthouse steps. "That was pretty damn shrewd, Antonelli," he remarked.

  I kept on walking.

  "The case is over, Harper. There isn't anything more I can tell you, on or off the record."

  On cool days, he had no trouble keeping up. "Two sentences, and you put Jones in the position of having to explain how his client didn't get a fair trial when he had him as his lawyer and then you give him that backhanded compliment about being 'one of the best.' That'll just kill him when he hears it."

  "You don't think he's one of the best?"

  "That's not the point."

  "What is the point, Harper?" I asked, walking briskly.

  "You know damn well what the point is. Jones doesn't think he's one of the best. He thinks he is the best."

  "Maybe he is, Harper. He's damn good."

  "He lost."

  I stopped still and looked at him. "That's the mistake everybody makes. The verdict doesn't decide how well you've done your job. If we had changed sides—if I'd defended and he'd prosecuted—do you think the verdict would have been different?"

  For a moment, he said nothing, the loose folds around his eyes wrinkling up as he studied me. Nodding slowly, he said quietly, "Yes, actually, I do."

  I started walking again, Bryce right alongside."There is something I wanted to ask you about. Could we talk for a few minutes?"

  Helen leaped up as soon as she saw the columnist behind me. "Hello, Mr. Bryce,"
she said, flashing an almost girlish smile.

  "Aren't you going to ask what the verdict was?" I inquired when, of her own volition, she brought two cups of coffee into my office.

  "Guilty," she said nonchalantly as she left, shutting the door behind her.

  Cradling the cup in his soft, pudgy hands, Bryce asked, "How did she know that?"

  "Who knows?" I shrugged. "She can always tell as soon as she sees me... There was a question you wanted to ask?" I reminded him.

  "Kristin Maxfield. What is going to be done about her?"

  I smiled back. "Do you think something needs to be done?"

  "You may have forgotten, but the first time we talked— our first off-the-record conversation—I distinctly remember you said that Marshall Goodwin had not acted alone. In fact, I remember putting something like that in the paper." He bent closer. "I hope you weren't just using me."

  "How could you possibly think a thing like that?"

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Nothing."

  He put down his cup. "Nothing? You don't think she was in on it from the beginning? That she knew what was inside when she took that envelope to Quentin?"

  "I'm going to tell you something—off the record," I said seriously. "I don't know if she knew what was inside that envelope or not, and I certainly don't know if she played any part in planning the murder. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she didn't know anything about it. All I know is that without her testimony Goodwin could never have been convicted, and I'm going to give him the chance to get even. I'm going to give him the same offer they gave Quentin. He tells us everything he knows about Kristin, and he gets life instead of the death penalty."

  Slowly, Bryce got to his feet. "Whatever happens, it's another great day for journalism. One murder solved, and someone else is murdered."

  He seemed surprised I had not heard. "Not your usual murder, either. One of the most prominent people in town. You must have heard of him. It was the headline in this morning's paper. Russell Gray."

  A vague premonition had come over me, which lingered long after Harper Bryce had left. It was still nagging at me that evening when I sat at the desk in the library and opened the volume of Aristotle to the place where I had quit the night before. Only after the third attempt to get through the first paragraph was I able to clear my mind.

  I went into the kitchen and turned on the small television on the counter while I made a cup of tea. The weather report was for intermittent showers the rest of the week. The kettle had just started to whistle when the telephone rang. Harper Bryce apologized for calling so late.

  "I just wanted to be sure about this story. I'm assuming you'll be representing her, right?"

  Cradling the phone, I turned off the burner and poured water over the tea bag in the cup.

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Harper. I'm not representing anybody."

  There was an awkward silence at the other end.

  "Who am I supposed to be representing?"

  Harper cleared his throat. "Alma Woolner. She's been charged with the murder of Russell Gray."

  Chapter Eighteen

  The blinds were closed, the window a silhouette of thin striped light."Why didn't you call me?" Horace stared at me and said nothing.

  "I tried to reach you for more than an hour last night, until sometime after midnight, but you never answered." Still nothing.

  "I came here first thing this morning. I waited outside for more than an hour, until you got here." I bent closer, until my hand was touching the edge of the desk. "I know how awful this must be for you, but you have to talk to me."

  "There's nothing you can do," he said finally.

  "Of course there is," I said impatiently. "Alma needs a lawyer."

  He nodded his head. "I'll find her a lawyer."

  "You don't want me to help?"

  "I can take care of Alma," he said, resolute.

  "You can't defend her," I retorted, glaring back at him. "And unless you want to find someone who can do it better, I can."

  He looked down at the wrinkled black skin on his oversize knuckles. "I have to take care of this myself," he muttered. "I can't ask you to get involved. You're too close."

  "I can treat Alma the same way as someone who just walked in the door." It was a serviceable lie, and we both knew it. His shoulders hunched forward, Horace drew his eyebrows together and studied me.

  "I've always thought one of the reasons we became friends is that you never ask me about myself unless it's something I bring up myself," he said. "How much do you really know about Alma and me? You may find out things aren't all what you thought they were."

  Horace was right. Neither one of us talked much about the things we had done or the things we had felt. That was another generation, a younger one, which wanted to share everything and did not yet have any secrets they needed to hide. But nothing in any of the contingent details of Horace's past history or his everyday life could change the two most important things worth knowing about anyone: I knew I could trust him, and I knew that neither he nor Alma could do anything wrong. In that respect, I was more certain of him than I was of myself.

  "Unless you can look me in the eye and tell me you believe Alma would be better off with another attorney," I said, as I stood, "I'm taking the case." I looked at Horace, sitting on the other side of the shaft of light given off by the reading lamp, and the longer I looked at him, the farther away he seemed to be. I wondered what was waiting for us, Horace and Alma and me, on the other side of the nightmare that was already changing the way we thought about one another.

  From Horace Woolner's chambers, I went directly to the DA's office. Advising the receptionist that I was representing Alma Woolner, I asked to see whoever was in charge of the case. A few minutes later, Gilliland-O'Rourke appeared. "I thought I'd be hearing from you today," she said. Dressed in a black pinstripe suit and a white blouse, every inch the professional woman, she held open the door to her office and waited for me to go in.

  "You're going to prosecute this yourself?"

  "Don't look so surprised."

  "I'm not surprised," I replied. "Just disappointed."

  She swept past me and settled into the cushioned high backed chair behind her writing desk. "Who are you to be disappointed in me?" she demanded.

  "It's the second time, Gwendolyn. First Leopold, now Horace."

  "Horace isn't charged with anything. It's his wife." She fixed me with a steady gaze. "You're out of line saying something like that to me. I know you're friends, so I'm going to let it go, but I'm warning you, I've just about had it."

  I forced myself to be civil. "You know Alma. You've met her. If there's anybody who isn't capable of murder, it's Alma."

  "I didn't think Marshall was capable of murder," she interjected.

  "No, you didn't think he'd run the risk," I reminded her. "Alma couldn't hurt anyone."

  "Would you like to know why she was arrested?" she asked, with aggravating indifference. "Or would you rather just assume that I made the whole thing up?" She dragged a polished nail back and forth across the hard shiny surface of the table.

  "You should never have agreed to prosecute the case against Marshall."

  "You don't think he was guilty?" I shot back.