Missing Justice sk-2

by Alafair Burke

  office.

  "Judge Loutrell, it's Samantha Kincaid from the District Attorney's

  Office."

  "Oh, sure, from the other day. Yes, well, would you mind calling

  tomorrow morning? My secretary left for the day. I picked up because

  I was expecting my wife."

  "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid it can't wait."

  "Unless it's a real emergency, I'm afraid it's going to have to. I was

  just about to head home for the evening. Promised to help at the house

  with some things. You know."

  Actually, I didn't, since I did just about everything myself. But

  Loutrell didn't need to hear about my domestic issues.

  "That's fine. I'll call tomorrow," I said. Too bad for him, he didn't

  know I'd already checked with security. After five, all employees had

  to exit through the Fourth Avenue doors. I planted myself on a bench

  across the street in the park, hoping he meant it when he said he was

  leaving soon.

  As it turned out, he must have walked out right after we hung up. I

  jaywalked across traffic to catch up with him at the corner, pulling

  out a copy of Clarissa's memo from my briefcase while I walked. He

  didn't hide his dismay when he saw me.

  "I'm sorry, but I really do need to speak to you. I'll talk as you

  walk to the car if I have to." I handed him the copy of the memo.

  "Apparently Clarissa had a discussion with Dennis Coakley about an

  appeal filed by Gunderson Development. She cared about it enough to

  lock a copy of the file and this memo in a safe deposit box. I need to

  know why she took such a special interest in the case, and I thought,

  as chief administrative judge, you might have some idea."

  I left out the fact that Nelly overheard him with Coakley arguing over

  whether to tell me about it. Nelly said that Loutrell sounded like he

  wanted to talk to me, so I hoped I could get what I needed without

  diming Nelly up.

  "I'm sorry, but if Clarissa had such a discussion with Dennis and I'm

  neither confirming nor denying that she did the conversation would

  clearly be privileged." He was walking so quickly I had to alter my

  stride to a slow jog.

  "And, I'm sorry, Judge Loutrell, but now Clarissa's dead."

  "Attorney/client privilege survives the client's death." I got the

  impression he was parroting back the words he'd heard from Coakley.

  "It does, but unlike the City Attorney, you never represented Clarissa

  Easterbrook. You're just her coworker. Even if her conversations with

  Coakley were privileged, what you know is fair game if she came to you

  about her concerns first."

  He knew I was right about the law. On the other hand, he was still

  thinking through what Coakley might say in response. One more push

  would do it.

  "If it makes a difference, I already know, but I need confirmation."

  That one always worked on my junkie drug informants, and it was enough

  at least to get him to stop walking. "Clarissa was biased on the

  appeal. She ruled for Gunderson as a favor of some kind. That's why

  she recused herself from a case filed by Grice Constuction. Grice was

  complaining about unfairness in the urban rehabilitation project, and

  Clarissa knew from personal experience that at least one company was

  getting preferential treatment."

  Still nothing. If the push didn't do it, maybe a shove would.

  "I can have a grand jury subpoena at your house this evening, but I

  really don't think that's going to be necessary."

  I pictured him imagining the scene at home tonight if I followed

  through on my threat and his wife were to learn that it was

  preventable.

  "All you need is confirmation?"

  "Yep." I couldn't believe I was actually going to get it.

  And, sure enough, I didn't. "Well, too bad," he said. "I can't

  confirm something so completely ridiculous. She may have talked to

  Coakley about the case, but you are entirely off base. My God, what

  you're suggesting is offensive."

  See how that works? In the course of denying the part of my theory

  that surprised him, he had confirmed the rest of it.

  "But she did talk to Coakley about the Gunderson case. Why?"

  He looked at his watch, looked at me, then rolled his eyes. "Coakley

  can be nuts about privilege for reasons I don't always understand. But

  you're right. She came to me first. She said she had something she

  needed to talk to me about. She'd ruled on a case a few months earlier

  without realizing that the claimant had donated money to her husband's

  hospital wing. If she'd known about the potential conflict at the time

  the case was assigned to her, she should've recused herself. I told

  her to talk to Coakley to see if he wanted to reopen the case. I won't

  tell you that part of the conversation, since he thinks it's

  privileged, but, let's just say that the Gunderson case wasn't

  reopened, and Clarissa recused herself from the Grice matter because of

  the potential appearance of a conflict."

  "I get the impression that you don't share Coakley's concerns about

  privilege."

  Loutrell shrugged. "Dennis is Dennis. He sees potential city

  liability around every corner, but he's well-intentioned. I actually

  considered calling you last week about this. The media were

  insinuating that something was going on between Clarissa and T. J.

  Caffrey which I know nothing about, by the way and for some reason the

  conversation with Clarissa stuck in my mind."

  "I'm missing the connection," I said.

  He shook his head quickly as if to shake the suggestion away. "Not a

  connection, really. It was just that Clarissa seemed so serious about

  the matter when she raised it with us, particularly when she was

  talking about how important the hospital wing was to her husband. She

  seemed unreasonably upset by the situation, considering how innocuous

  it was. I think my imagination got the best of me, and I started

  wondering if maybe the entire situation had something to do with the

  state of her marriage. By the time Coakley spelled out his bogus

  privilege concerns, it just didn't seem like anything worth bothering

  you about."

  People don't realize that a criminal case is rarely built on a single

  piece of evidence, relying instead on tens and hundreds of clues in

  context, each by itself insignificant. Too many helpful witnesses show

  up late in the game, because they didn't want to bother the police with

  insignificant information. In the meantime, the wackos flood the phone

  lines with visions and premonitions.

  Clarissa may not have given Coakley and Loutrell a full blown

  admission, but at least I was on the right track.

  From City Hall, I made a stealth pop into my office to grab copies of

  the Gunderson case file, the information Jessica Walters had copied for

  me detailing Max Grice's complaints, and the financial records for the

  hospital wing. Within thirty minutes, I had gathered everything I

  needed for my research and was nestled back in my home office and ready

  to start filling in the missing pieces.

  Based on Jessica's notes about Max Grice, he wasn't a
happy camper. At

  the heart of his discontent was a woman named Jane Wessler, city

  licensing official for the Office of Landmarks Preservation at City

  Hall. Three years ago, as a nod to preservationists, the office had

  designated an area surrounding the train station an historic district,

  seeking to protect the small neighborhood from the

  warehouse-to-luxury-loft conversions that marked the nearby and rapidly

  expanding Pearl District. As a result of the designation, the Railroad

  District, located at the eastern edge of trendy northwest Portland,

  still remains an enclave for starving artists, aging hippies, and other

  eccentrics who are happier in the neighborhood's traditionally

  industrial atmosphere than with high-end yuppified retail, restaurant,

  and residential development.

  One year after the designation, however, the preservation office

  created a licensing provision that permitted developers to obtain

  special-use licenses for approved "urban renewal" projects that were

  consistent with the architectural history of the Railroad District. For

  the first sixteen months of that program,

  Jane Wessler was in charge of deciding which projects qualified as

  special uses. Grice's three proposals, in her view, did not.

  Grice, however, was persistent. After seeing several similar projects

  in the neighborhood approved, Grice filed a request under the Oregon

  Public Information Act for the names of all companies who applied for

  special-use licenses and for Wessler s determination on each

  application. Using the data, Grice had tried to make the case to

  Jessica Walters that Wessler was on the take. I looked at the list he

  had compiled. Maybe there was a trend; a few companies were three for

  three while Grice had no luck at all. But I could see why Jessica had

  decided there was nothing criminal; with so few examples, it was

  impossible to tell if it was just coincidence.

  According to Jessica's notes, Grice had resubmitted his applications

  after Wessler left for a yearlong maternity leave, but the city had

  refused to reconsider the original decisions. That must have been the

  appeal from which Clarissa had recused herself.

  I took another look at Grice's list. No mention of Gunderson.

  Next, I turned to Clarissa's copy of Gunderson's case file. I'd read

  through it when Slip had first shown it to me in his office, but I

  wanted to see how it fit together with Grice's complaint. Gunderson's

  Railroad District project had also been rejected by the city, but by a

  different licensing official, a month after Wessler went on leave.

  Unlike Grice, however, Gunderson had appealed, and Clarissa had

  reversed the decision.

  Then I spread out the pages of financial information Slip's

  investigator had printed from Clarissa's password-protected disc. The

  text at the top of each page identified the spreadsheet as the budget

  for the Lucy Hilton Pediatric Center. Lots of money coming in, but no

  substantial expenditures yet. That made sense, given that the center

  was still in the planning process. From what I knew, the project had

  been dropped at one point because of the bad economy, but Townsend had

  resurrected it as his baby.

  Whatever he was doing, it seemed to be working. There were pages of

  entries for donations, large and small, from individuals, corporations,

  and the major local foundations. But no money from Larry Gunderson or

  Gunderson Development.

  I took a break and grabbed a Diet Coke from the kitchen. This time

  Vinnie followed me upstairs, sprawling himself beneath the desk near my

  feet. When I stopped scratching him behind his ears and returned to my

  documents, he looked up at me and snorted. It was as close as he could

  come to saying, "Snoozapalooza."

  "Tell me about it, little man," I said, rubbing my eyes with the palms

  of my hands. For some reason, Clarissa had kept a copy of the

  Gunderson file, Townsend's financial records, and the videotape of her

  and Caffrey together under lock and key. If there was a connection,

  where was it?

  I studied the list of the hospital donors again and finally saw it: a

  name. The MTK Group had made a donation of $100,000 to Townsend's pet

  cause. I reopened Jessica's file on Grice. There, on Grice's list of

  companies affected by the decisions of Jane Wessler, was the MTK Group:

  three renewal projects in the Railroad District, and every one of them

  approved. So what the hell was the MTK Group?

  I called the corporate filing division of the Secretary of State's

  office, hoping to get the company's basic registration information, but

  their business hours were long over. Then I called information, but

  there were no listings under MTK. I even tried an Internet search.

  Bupkes.

  I cross-referenced Grice's list of development companies with

  Townsend's list of donors but didn't find any additional overlap.

  More than ever, I missed the resources of the U.S. Attorney's

  Office. What I needed was access to LEXIS/NEXIS. From what I could

  remember, NEXIS's public records database included corporate filing

  information from all fifty states. Unfortunately, Duncan never saw fit

  to include the service in the office's budget. If we needed legal

  research, we did it the old-fashioned way.

  Out of desperation, I pulled up the LEXIS/NEXIS Web site on my computer

  and tried my old federal password. Part of me was relieved when it

  didn't work. Getting busted by the feds wouldn't exactly help my

  current professional standing.

  Then I remembered that the computer research sites all give free

  passwords to law students and judicial clerks. It's the legal

  profession's equivalent to a dealer handing out drugs on the

  playground. Once the kids are hooked on an easy fix, they'll pay

  anything for more.

  I found Nelly Giacoma's home number where I'd jotted it in the file.

  "Nelly, hi, it's Samantha Kincaid from the District Attorney's

  Office."

  "Oh, hey there. Congratulations on your PC determination. I heard

  about it on the news."

  "Thanks. It was pretty much what we expected, though."

  "Right," she said. "So did you ever figure out what the key was that I

  gave you?"

  "We did, actually, and that's sort of why I'm calling. Clarissa had

  some documents in a safe deposit box. I'm trying to make sense of

  them, but I need to do some NEXIS research."

  "Urn, sure, I don't see why not. I'm not doing anything tonight

  anyway."

  What a trooper. "No," I said, laughing. "I don't expect you to do it

  for me. I just need to get onto the system. Believe it or not, you

  lose all that fancy stuff if you join a prosecutor's office."

  "You're kidding. How do you get anything done?"

  "I usually manage, but I need to look at some public records that are

  hard to get after business hours. Do you think it would be OK if I

  used your password?"

  She didn't need to think about it long. "What the hell? It's not like

  it costs the city anything, and I hardly use it anyway."

  I jotted down the s
eries of letters and numbers she gave me, thanking

  her profusely before I hung up.

  First, I perused the Public Records library. This was perfect. I had

  access not only to the corporate registry information of all fifty

  states but to records of all civil court judgments and property liens

  filed.

  I looked up the information that MTK had filed with the Oregon

  Secretary of State. According to the filings, the president of the

  corporation was Carl Matthews. The name didn't ring a bell. I

  searched next for Gunderson Development. Larry Gunderson was listed as

  both the president and secretary of the corporation, which usually

  signaled a one-man operation. The Gunderson listing also included an

  entry for a former corporate name of Gunderson Construction, Inc." as

  well as for Gunderson Construction's bankruptcy dissolution years

  earlier.

  I switched to the database of recorded judgments. That's when my

  search got more interesting. Typing in gunderson development had

  yielded nothing, but my search for the former gunderson construction

  turned up twenty-seven civil judgments, each one representing a

  judgment against the company. No wonder the guy had filed for

  bankruptcy. On the fourteenth hit I had a connection, a judgment of

  $126,000 against Gunderson Construction in favor of the MTK Group.

  So ten years ago, Gunderson and MTK had enough business together that

  it led to a judgment against Gunderson. Now they were both doing

  business in the Railroad District. MTK had obtained Railroad District