Rough Justice

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Got it.” In fact, Marta had counted on it. She picked up the receiver from the telephone on the entertainment center. “Hello?”

  “Mary DiNunzio,” the associate said when she picked up.

  “Are you finished that motion in limine?” Marta asked, staccato.

  “Uh, no. I mean, it’s started, but it’s not finished. I was doing the computer search. I found out that—”

  “I didn’t mean you should stop work on the motion!” Marta checked the thug’s expression, and he seemed to be listening. In front of him on the coffee table lay the discarded dog magazine. It bore a battered subscription label, and Marta squinted discreetly to read the name. BOGOSIAN. “What happened to the motion? We have to file it tomorrow!”

  “We do? We are?” Mary stammered. “Well, uh, I have the research, but I didn’t write—”

  “The research? Am I supposed to hand your research to the judge? Get started on it right now. I want it done by the time I get there.” From the other end of the line came the sound of an associate sucking wind. Good. All according to plan. Marta hung up the phone, crossed her arms, and frowned at Bogosian. “Houston, we have a problem,” she said.

  “Huh?” He let his receiver clatter onto the hook.

  Marta decided against explaining popular culture to a primate, especially one with felonies on the brain. “I have to go in. You heard her. She fucked up. I have to write that brief.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “It’s an important brief,” Marta lied. “It has to be filed. I have to get to the office.”

  “You’re not goin’ nowhere.”

  “If I don’t file a response, Steere’s fingerprints will go to the jury. That evidence shows the placement of his fingerprints. It could put him in jail forever, maybe get him the death penalty. You want to tell him that or shall I?”

  “You playin’ games with me?” Bogosian’s eyes flickered with malice, sending an undeniable tremor down Marta’s spine.

  “No. I’m just trying to do what your boss pays me to do.”

  “I don’t have a boss, I’m self-employed.”

  “Fine. Steere, then. Whatever. This is no game.”

  “Oh yeah? Should I call Steere and find out if you’re bluffin’?”

  Marta laughed. “Steere’s in a holding cell. You can’t call him.”

  Bogosian smirked as he lifted the receiver, his pinky finger extended absurdly. “Oh yeah? Why do you think they call it a cell phone?”

  Elliot Steere was dozing in his cell when the flip phone in his breast pocket began to vibrate. His eyes flew open in alarm and he snapped his head to the corner of the cell, deftly slipping the phone from his pocket. “Don’t call me,” he whispered into the phone.

  “Sorry, but I’m at the hotel babysittin’ your lawyer. She wants to go to the office. Says she has to work on some motion. What do you want me to do?”

  Steere glanced over his shoulder, where a black guard sat reading a paperback at his desk near the door. He was one of the night crew and never said two words to Steere. Steere’s guard, Frank Devine, was on the day shift, and Steere hadn’t gotten to any of the other guards. It was risky to deal with too many, and Steere hadn’t anticipated the snowstorm, so he didn’t know he’d need somebody at night. Another mistake. How annoying. “What motion?”

  “Something about fingerprints. It’s ‘in somethin’.’ Sounded like a foreign language.”

  Steere realized Bobby meant the motion in limine. The defendant’s response had to be filed, they’d talked about it. But why did Marta want to work on it now? Why wouldn’t she let it pass and fuck him up? It wasn’t that important, was it? Steere paused, wary. “A motion, you’re sure?”

  “Sounds like the real deal. She talked to the other lawyer, a girl. On the telephone.”

  Steere thought a minute. What was Marta up to? He wanted to find out. “Let her go, Bobby, but go with her. Don’t let her out of your sight. Do it.” He hit the END button and returned the phone to his pocket just as the guard peeked in, his attention drawn by the movement in the cell. His scowling face loomed close to the bulletproof window.

  “You say something?” the guard asked, rapping the window with a thick knuckle.

  “Just talking to myself,” Steere said. The guard turned his back, and Steere closed his eyes and rested his head against the unforgiving cinderblock. The wall was hard and scratchy, but in time Steere didn’t feel it; he was weightless. The fluorescent lights were harsh and bright, but soon Steere didn’t see them; it was pitch black. Steere sat very still, relaxed. Slipped back inside.

  What could Marta be up to? It didn’t matter. Even if she wasn’t going to the office to prepare his motion, she wouldn’t get away with anything. Bogosian would have her in control. She was way out of her depth with him; the man was a killer. Steere felt confident he’d made the right decision to let her go. Sun-Tzu would have said, Make the enemy take a chance; Elliot Steere would have said, Give Marta the rope to hang herself.

  Steere considered the jury. He wondered if they were still deliberating and was satisfied that everything was in order there, too. He had specified that they not take long to acquit, and Steere’s juror would obey him. After all, he had paid a substantial sum for a verdict of innocence. Justice didn’t come cheap. Freedom can’t be bought without foresight. It was a matter of taking the ceiling off your thinking, a vision thing, and all great leaders had it. As Sun-Tzu had said:

  The victor first achieves victory, then conducts battle.

  13

  “AARRGHHH!” Mary DiNunzio had finally lost it. “AAARGH!” She buried her fingers in her hair and considered ripping it all out. She would perish from the endless work, and when they found her body, dirty-blond strands would be scattered around her like hay in a manger. The coroner wouldn’t be able to explain the phenomenon, but any associate could. “WHY CANT PARTNERS EVER MAKE UP THEIR MINDS?” Mary shouted.

  “Maybe she was kidding,” Judy said, mystified. She sat in one of the chairs facing Mary’s desk, bundled in a drippy yellow parka. Judy was still too cold to take it off, and snow from her boots melted onto the rug. The tip of her nose had thawed but she had a bad case of hat head.

  “Kidding? Kidding?! Have you ever known Marta Richter to kid about anything?”

  “It is odd,” Judy said. She was thinking, something was fishy. Something didn’t square. She couldn’t put her finger on it. The blizzard was blowing outside and snow blasted past the window of Mary’s office. The temperature had dipped, and the police had warned everybody off the street. Why would Marta come out on a night like this to check a motion she knew wasn’t written? Especially after she had put it on the back burner. “It really is odd.”

  “Odd? You think it’s odd?” Mary began to laugh, a little crazily. “First she tells me to write the motion. Then she tells me to stop writing the motion. Then she screams at me for not writing the motion. You think that’s odd?”

  Judy nodded.

  “Odd is not a word I’d use. Odd is a cakewalk compared to this. Odd is chump change.”

  “Well, it is—”

  “SCHIZOPHRENIC! Schizophrenic is the word I’d use! Schizophrenic is what comes immediately to mind.”

  “Mary—”

  “She’s splitting, I’m telling you.”

  “Mare—”

  “We got a bona fide multiple here, billing time.”

  “Wait. Relax. Chill. You sure Marta just said to do the motion?”

  “I have ears, don’t I? I heard her! Right on the phone, that’s what she said!” Mary couldn’t stop shouting even though she was giving herself a headache. “Look at my neck. Look at these blotches!” She opened her blouse at the neckline so Judy could see. “My head is going to explode! Warning, warning! Step away from the associate! Step away from the associate!”

  “Maybe it’s menopause,” Judy said thoughtfully.

  “I’m too young for menopause!”

  “Not you, doof.” Jud
y rolled her eyes. “Erect. Maybe Erect is going through the change.”

  “Not possible. Erect has no estrogen. Nobody with estrogen could do this to another human being.” Mary deflated into her chair. Her head fell into her hands and she raked her hair back again and again. “Oh, God, why am I a lawyer? Why couldn’t I have been a cowboy?”

  Judy watched her with a twinge of regret. She’d gotten Mary into this mess. Made her leave Stalling & Webb to start their own firm, which never got off the ground. Still, something very odd was going on, and Mary wasn’t getting it. “Listen, Mare. Marta Richter is a world-class trial lawyer. She’s not stupid. And she may be compulsive, but she’s not crazy. There must be a reason for what she’s doing.”

  “No, there isn’t. She’s still a partner and they’re all alike. I don’t care if she’s a woman and I’m supposed to like her. She should burn in hell. I should find another job.”

  “Think about it. Maybe Marta is seeing something we can’t. Something we don’t. It’s like Van Gogh, seeing the colors we don’t.”

  Mary kept shaking her head. “I have other skills, don’t I? What color is my parachute?”

  “Yellow.”

  Mary blinked, pained. “Yellow?”

  “The yellows of Van Gogh. He can see them, but we can’t.” Judy shifted forward in her parka. “This is the same thing. Marta can see something we can’t. We have to figure out what she’s seeing, what she’s doing. She’s like Napoleon.”

  “Napoleon?” Mary was getting dizzy. Sometimes she thought Judy was just too smart for them to be friends. She needed a dumber friend. “I thought we were talking about Van Gogh.”

  “You know that story about Napoleon? That famous battle he was in?”

  “No idea.”

  “You know it.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I know you know it, Mare.”

  “I don’t know it!” Mary wondered if Judy, Marta, everyone around her was going crackers. Maybe it was the snowstorm. Cabin fever, early onset. “Judy, what are you talking about?”

  “Napoleon was in a battle, I forget which, and there was so much smoke and dust he couldn’t see what was going on.” Judy unzipped her parka. “Nobody could see what was going on because of the smoke. The sides who were fighting couldn’t even see each other to shoot.”

  “Okay.” Crackers. Losing it. Too much coffee. Not enough coffee.

  “Napoleon told his lieutenants where to move his men anyway, in response to what he knew the other side would be doing. No one understood what he was doing, but he could direct the battle without seeing anything. All his soldiers thought he was nuts. But when the dust settled, who do you think won?”

  “The lawyers?”

  Judy laughed. “That’s not funny.”

  “Yes, it is. You laughed.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “No, you are. I have a motion to write and Napoleon will be here any minute.”

  “Is that all you’re worried about?”

  “No, but we’ll talk about it on the way.” Mary stood up and headed for the conference room, with Judy dripping behind.

  Fueled by a pot of blistering Hawaiian Kona, Judy and Mary started to draft the motion, but they kept getting distracted talking about whether Heb Darnton was Eb Darning and Steere’s color blindness. The more Judy thought about it, the fishier it got, and her suspicions solidified into theory. “Is it really possible that Steere intended to kill Darning?” Judy asked.

  “Why? What’s his motive?” Mary couldn’t ignore the draft of the motion on her laptop and wondered how much time they had before Marta got back. “Where do you think Marta called from?”

  “I don’t know, you talked to her.”

  “I think she was at the hotel.” Mary hit a key on the laptop and read the beginning of the last paragraph: Traul courts aroudn the country have long held such evidence inadmisssable. Goddamn Mavis Beacon. Betty Crocker wannabe. Mary rolled the trackball to the icon for Spellcheck. “So how long until Marta gets here and starts screaming?”

  “A half hour if she takes a cab.”

  “Think that’s enough time to finish the brief?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so what’s his motive?” It was intriguing, but it wasn’t work. Mary hit the SAVE key on the computer, to save her job. Maybe that’s why they called it SAVE.

  “I’m not exactly sure about motive, but think what we know about Steere. He’s an egotist. Arrogant. Ruthless. A heartless asshole.”

  “Don’t mince words now. And plenty of people are assholes. They don’t commit murder because of it. It’s not enough for motive.” Mary noticed her laptop screen turn blank and her brief drift into power-saving sleep.

  “Yes it is, in a way. It’s a power thing. When some poor black guy tries to carjack Steere, he knows he can kill him and get away with it.”

  “That’s quite a stretch, isn’t it?” Mary reached into the center of the table and picked up the printout of Darnton/Darning’s photo from the computer archives.

  “It’s consistent with Steere’s personality.”

  “True, but it’s not enough. If Steere killed intentionally, it has something to do with Darnton, if he is Darnton. Because he’s Darnton, not because he’s homeless.” Mary scrutinized the photo for the umpteenth time and mentally compared it with the gruesome autopsy photos. “I bet Heb Darnton is the same man as Eb Darning. He’d be the right age, about fifty-one, fifty-two. Does it look like the same man to you, only older?” She slid the photo across the table to Judy, who caught it midway.

  “He didn’t age well, did he?” Judy asked, studying the photo. “You got a theory? Go with it.”

  “Let’s say Darnton — Darning — is the man in the photo,” Mary said tentatively. “He used to be a guy with a job, but now he’s homeless. It happens every day. We know he was alcoholic, the neighbors told us that. Let’s say he started drinking after he left the bank teller job and went downhill from there. Lost his job, his girl. Grew a beard.”

  Judy set down the photo, thinking aloud. “So you think this has to do with Darning?”

  “Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t a chance meeting between Darning and Steere. Maybe they knew each other.”

  “That’s even dopier than what I said.” Judy screwed up her large features, and Mary raised her hand like the Pope.

  “Hear me out. Put together what we learned. Let’s say Steere didn’t know the traffic light was red. If he didn’t, his actions don’t make any sense, right?”

  “Right. Unless he was really blitzed, which he wasn’t, according to his blood tests.”

  “Besides, Steere’s a big guy. He can absorb a lot of booze.” Mary sipped coffee from her mug, more for courage than caffeine. “Steere’s stopping under the bridge doesn’t make sense unless you assume he wanted to meet Darning. They could have arranged to meet under the bridge. Assume Steere was stopping regardless of the light, to kill Darning. Then he made up the whole carjacking story.”

  “The carjacking was a lie?”

  Mary shook her head. “Not a lie, a setup. Work with me. Remember, it’s not a chance meeting.” Although Mary was only thinking aloud, she felt her pulse quicken. “Steere was driving a new Mercedes. Two weeks old, right?”

  “Let me double-check.” Judy rose and went to the third accordion file. She flipped through the manila folders until she found the right one, yanked it out, and opened it up. “Here we go. The bill of sale for Steere’s new car. It was three weeks old. $120,000! Wow!”

  “What did he trade in? Bet it didn’t look like the Snotmobile.” By that Mary meant her ancient BMW 2002, the only chartreuse car ever sold.

  “Look at all this stuff.” Judy was agog. “ ‘Air-bags, leather-covered steering wheel and gear lever, speaker blanking plates integrated on the left and right side of the dashboard — ’”

  “Jude, what did he trade in?”

  “I wonder what a blanking plate is. How could I graduate from law school an
d not know what a blanking plate is?”

  “Judy! The trade-in.”

  Judy flipped to a series of long white documents and screwed up her face in triplicate. “Oh, here. Jeez. He traded in a Mercedes sedan. An S500. V-8. It says ‘Five-Sitzer, four Turen.’”

  “How old was the trade-in?” Mary craned her neck to read the document. “How many miles on it?”

  “Half a year old. It had fifteen hundred miles on it.” Judy looked up and the two associates locked eyes.

  “It’s not as if Steere needed a new car, is it?” Mary felt an ominous churning in the pit of her stomach and it wasn’t the coffee. Suddenly the brief didn’t matter and neither did her job. “What if Steere planned this whole thing? What if he bought the car to make the carjacking more plausible? What if Steere arranged to meet Darnton — Darning — to kill him? That’s murder. Premeditated murder.”

  Judy cocked her head, skeptical now that Mary’s expression was turning so grave. “You mean Steere used the new Mercedes as bait?”

  “No. I mean Steere intended to kill Darning for some reason and bought the car in advance of that — to make the carjacking more plausible.”

  “Wait, wait, slow up. You’re serious about this?”

  Mary nodded. “It fits, doesn’t it? It’s consistent with what we found. Maybe Steere is a murderer.” It made Mary sick to say it. “And we defended him. We probably got him off.”

  “Mary, wait.” Judy shook her head. “Just because Steere bought a new car doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. Rich people do stuff like that all the time. An impulse purchase.”

  “A convertible? A white Mercedes that cost as much as a house?”

  “So he’s a show-off, and it was almost summer.”

  “Judy, he bought the most conspicuous car in history and drove it through the worst neighborhood in history. In the middle of the night. Isn’t that suspicious? I mean, if you wanted people to believe you’d been carjacked, you’d go out and buy a car that was flashy enough to steal. Steere was making it look like random street crime when it was really murder.”