Presumption of Innocence (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 1)

by Stephen Penner

  "The No-Bloods," Chen answered.

  "Cute," Yamata said. She was standing by the door, arms crossed. "Are their rivals the 'Not-Crips'?"

  "Naw," Chen shrugged. "They're not part of the real gang scene. They're just some kids who like to play dress up."

  "Is that why you didn't mention them before?" Brunelle asked.

  "Yeah," replied Chen. "That, and they hadn't beaten your ass before."

  "You think it's connected?" Yamata asked.

  "No," Chen laughed. "I think Davey was in the wrong part of town chasing the wrong piece of tail."

  Brunelle was surprised until Yamata explained, "I told him about the 'wrong girl' thing you said."

  Brunelle nodded and put his head in his hand.

  "Well, it's worth pursuing, don't you think?" he asked. "A pseudo-vampire gang that hangs out near the bar where Karpati met Holly?"

  Chen frowned and nodded. "Sure. Why not?" Then he stood up and stepped toward the door. "I'm gonna run down to my office. I'll be right back."

  When he returned he had a thin manila folder with some mug shots. "These are the ones we think are in the gang. Think you might recognize them?"

  Brunelle shrugged. "Maybe. But shouldn't we do this the right way? With a photomontage and an admonition form first?"

  Chen started to agree but Yamata cut him off. "No. Go ahead and ID them, but if this is related in any way to Karpati, you can't prosecute the assault."

  "Why not?" Brunelle asked just before Chen did.

  "Because then you'd be a witness," Yamata explained. "And you'd get taken off the case. No way I'm trying this without you."

  Brunelle frowned and pushed back in his chair again. It made his back twinge where they'd kidney-punched him. "Good point."

  "Well, you can still ID them," Chen suggested. "Then I'll go harass them. I'm sure they've committed some crime I can arrest them for."

  "If not, plant something on them," Brunelle joked.

  "Shh!" Chen pointed at Yamata. "Not in front of the newbie."

  ***

  When they got back to the courthouse, Yamata went straight to her office to do some research Brunelle had insisted—over her objections—that she do, and that she keep quiet about. His mind was pulling together the pieces of the murder, the assault on him, and Welles' brief. His thoughts were immersed in the solution he was considering, so he was genuinely startled when he walked into his office to find Kat Anderson leaning against his desk.

  "Kat!" He shook the thoughts from his head. "What are you doing here?"

  Then he realized, and tried avoiding the coming storm. "Done already with your autopsies for the day?"

  Kat offered a large and cold smile. "Slow day at the morgue, Mr. Brunelle," she said. "But that's okay, because I'm about to kill you."

  Chapter 23

  "I can explain," Brunelle started. He used his calm voice, which was probably a mistake, and held his hands out, which ended up being a good move when Kat picked up his coffee mug and threw it at him.

  "Don't pull that lawyer-crap on me, David! I know exactly what happened."

  Brunelle nodded and frowned. He'd just expected Lizzy to keep quiet, so he didn't explicitly ask her to. Mistake, apparently. "What did she tell you?"

  Kat picked up his stapler and threw that at him too. "I said no lawyer bullshit, David. Don't pull this 'what did she tell you' crap, trying to figure out what I know. You tell me. You tell me what happened, what you did to put my only child's life in danger."

  Brunelle grimaced. He hadn't really thought of it that way.

  "She wanted to do it," he protested. "In fact, she called me."

  Kat eyed the tape dispenser next, but instead set her jaw and met Brunelle's gaze with force. "Of course she did, you jack-ass. You showed her attention. Her own fucking father doesn't call except on Christmas, and even then it's at the end of the day. He sends a belated birthday card every year too, but that's it. Then some handsome adult male father-figure comes into her life and she's already planning our wedding. By the time she picked up the phone, you were practically her step-father in her mind."

  Brunelle grinned. "Handsome?"

  The tape-dispenser flew past his head.

  "Don't joke about this, David. Not this."

  Before he could reply, there was a light knock on his office door. "Is everything okay in there?"

  It was his secretary. "Yes, Danielle," Brunelle answered through the door. "Everything's fine."

  The lack of response suggested the legal assistant had accepted his assurance.

  "Sorry." Brunelle turned his attention back to Kat. "Where were we?"

  She crossed her arms and glowered at him. "You were about to explain how you've endangered the life of my baby."

  Brunelle nodded. "Right. Well, see, this is what we did..."

  He explained it all. From his initial idea, to his phone call with Lizzy, through working out the logistics with the jail, and making sure word didn't get out to Welles or Edwards. And he made sure to emphasize what a good job Lizzy did.

  Kat shook her head. "That damn girl is such a performer."

  "She's got a future as a detective too," Brunelle added. "She's got great instincts."

  Kat smiled. "She's got tight lips too. Never breathed a word of it to me."

  Brunelle's jaw dropped. "What? But you said—"

  "I said nothing, dear lawyer," Kat grinned. "I told you to tell me what happen and you did." Then she couldn't suppress a laugh. "You big dummy."

  Brunelle wanted to be angry at being tricked, but that thick black hair and those twinkling eyes wouldn't let him. "Well done, counselor," he said instead. "So how did you even know?"

  "All over the news," Kat replied. "Welles filed a motion to dismiss the case because you used an unidentified teenage girl to trick his client into making inculpatory statements."

  "They weren't that inculpatory," Brunelle shook his head.

  "Focus, lawyer boy," Kat responded. "You used a teenage girl to trick him three days after you learn about Odette and Odile from my daughter. Didn't take a brain surgeon to figure that one out."

  "Just a medical examiner," Brunelle joked.

  "We're smarter than brain surgeons anyway," Kat replied. "I've cut up plenty of brains in my day."

  "I'm sure you have," Brunelle answered. "Although making sure they still worked wasn't really a concern."

  "Details," Kat waved away Brunelle's comment. She sat on the edge of his desk and picked up his letter opener, testing its weight in her hand. Brunelle felt the urge to duck.

  "But you know what really bothers me?" she asked. She didn't wait for a reply. "You lied to me, David. You promised me you wouldn't do it, and you did it anyway. You lied to me."

  Brunelle waited for the letter opener to fly at him, but it remained distant, but ready, in Kat's steady hand. He decided to choose his words carefully.

  "I didn't lie to you, Kat. I meant it. I wasn't going to do it at all until Lizzy called me. Then I thought back on our conversation. What I promised was to not put a wire on her. And we didn't. We used the jail's surveillance equipment."

  Kat looked him square in the eye. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to split hairs like that? I basically have a knife in my hand. It's dull, but that's just gonna make it hurt more."

  She started to stand up.

  "It's not an insignificant difference," Brunelle insisted. "If we'd done a wire, we would have needed a warrant and I would have had to identify Lizzy in the warrant application. But as it is, I can keep her identity secret."

  Kat paused, letter opener still at the ready. "Her identity is secret?"

  Brunelle sighed. "Well, yes. Of course. I'm not that stupid. She's identified in the reports as confidential informant #7. And that just means she was the seventh C.I. Chen used so far this year."

  Kat narrowed her eyes. "But you can't keep it secret forever. She's going to have to testify, right?"

  Brunelle shook his head. "No. This was never abo
ut getting a confession for trial. I can't send a C.I. in to talk to someone who's invoked his right to an attorney. Not and use the information for his trial anyway. No, this is about shoring up a weak case so the judge doesn't dismiss it."

  Kat's narrowed eyes were joined by a doubtful frown. She pointed the letter opener at Brunelle. "Explain."

  "Welles was going to file a motion to dismiss anyway," Brunelle answered. "Our case is paper thin. It's just and righteous, but paper thin. We can't call Holly and we don't have any other witnesses. But now Karpati has admitted to the murder—or at least to telling Holly to knock on the door. That's not going to convict him at trial, but it should keep the judge from throwing it out, now that she has confirmation, even through inadmissible evidence, that Karpati did it. Hopefully she'll let the jury acquit instead of tossing it out pre-trial. She doesn't want to be the judge who let the kid-killer out. Not in an election year."

  "But if the evidence is inadmissible, how does the judge even know about it?"

  Brunelle smiled broadly. "Because Welles put it in his brief."

  Chapter 24

  "Welles' brief is mostly bullshit," Yamata opined from a cross-legged slouch across from Brunelle's desk. He tried not to look up her skirt. "We don't have to reveal the C.I.'s identity if we're not going to use her."

  "And we're not," Brunelle confirmed, being sure to address his co-counsel's face.

  "We can't," Yamata corrected. "Not in this trial anyway. If you charge him with attempted witness tampering, then you'll have to, but not as it stands now."

  Brunelle nodded. He'd pretty much figured that out already. "You said 'mostly' bullshit. What's not bullshit?"

  Yamata leaned forward. She didn't uncross her shapely legs, but now her chest was competing for Brunelle's attention. He almost wished Duncan had assigned that irritating guy Peters to co-chair. But not quite.

  "The motion to dismiss the aggravators is strong. He has affidavits from three doctors that the method of killing in this case doesn't rise to the level of torture. And he's calling bullshit on your burglary based on the homicide aggravator."

  "You don't like that, huh?" Brunelle asked.

  "No. It's weak. Weaker than weak. And the judge is going to dump it."

  Brunelle chewed his cheek for a moment. "You're right, she is. What about the torture one?"

  Yamata shrugged. "It's fifty-fifty, I'd say. Now you're talking about a factual determination: how much did she suffer? Not a legal question about whether a murder can be aggravated by itself. The judge is going to be more open to keeping that one alive, but it may be hard if he's got three docs who will all say she didn't really suffer, not more than any other murder victim anyway."

  Brunelle nodded.

  "Do we have any docs who could testify she did?" Yamata asked.

  "No," answered Brunelle.

  "Why not?"

  "Because," Brunelle frowned, "she didn't."

  ***

  Brunelle pushed back in his chair. His reply brief was done. He wasn't going to make Yamata write this one. She was good, too good to write what needed to be written in that brief. The set up for the other pleading he drafted.

  He knew he was going to lose the aggravators. If he just let that happen, Karpati's sentence would drop from death or life without parole to twenty years. Still a lot, but not enough. The bastard was young. He'd be out of prison before he reached Brunelle's age. That wasn't acceptable.

  It was well past the end of the day. Everyone else had gone home hours ago, including the legal assistants who sat near the printer where his documents usually printed. He pulled open his reply brief and his other document. He'd file the reply in the morning. The other one would stay inside the file until the hearing. He hoped he wouldn't have to file it. He really hoped that.

  Chapter 25

  "Are the parties ready on the matter of State versus Karpati?" Judge Quinn didn't look at the lawyers as she took the bench and called the case.

  "Ready and eager to argue our cause, Your Honor," announced William Harrington Welles.

  Brunelle expected the usual disapproving glance from the judge, maybe even a 'save it for the jury' comment. But there was nothing of the kind. That worried Brunelle a little.

  He reminded himself that although there was no jury there, there was media. Several television cameras were filming the proceeding through the glass partition that separated the gallery from the secure courtroom.

  "The State is ready," Brunelle stood to answer the judge.

  "Will you be arguing for the State this time?" she asked.

  "Yes, Your Honor."

  "I noticed you wrote the brief, Mr. Brunelle."

  "Yes, Your Honor."

  "Ms. Yamata writes excellent briefs," the judge observed.

  Brunelle managed a smile and sat down.

  "Ouch," whispered Yamata.

  "Bet it doesn't hurt half as much as her ruling," Brunelle whispered back.

  "It's your motion, Mr. Welles," the judge announced, "so why don't you go first."

  "I would be delighted," Welles puffed. "Shall I argue all my motions at once, or would Your Honor prefer to rule on them in turn?"

  Quinn frowned. She didn't consult Brunelle. "What is your preference, Mr. Welles?"

  "I would ask the court to rule on them in turn. I believe the court's decision on one may help the court in ruling on the next."

  "All right then, Mr. Welles. Proceed with your first motion."

  Welles grinned at Brunelle, clearly relishing the smack-down he intended to inflict upon his opponent.

  "Then let us begin with our motion to reveal the identity of the state agent sent into the jail to illegally interrogate my client."

  Judge Quinn finally looked to the prosecution table. "Is that all right with you, Mr. Brunelle?"

  "Yes, Your Honor, although I disagree with the characterization."

  "I just asked if you were prepared to argue that motion, Mr. Brunelle. Yes or no. You can argue the merits when Mr. Welles is finished."

  Brunelle forced a smile and offered a compliant nod. "Yes, Your Honor. I am prepared for this motion. Thank you."

  The judge looked back at Welles. "Please proceed, counsel."

  "Thank you, Your Honor. As the court knows, my client, Mr. Karpati, is being held—over my strenuous and righteous objection, I might add—without the opportunity to post bail. He is in custody because, and only because, the State has filed these meritless aggravating factors, turning the outlandish accusation of murder against my client into the reprehensible charade of capital murder."

  "I'm sorry, Your Honor," Brunelle interjected. "I thought we were arguing the C.I. motion, not the aggravators?"

  "Don't interrupt," the judge snapped at Brunelle. He sat down again.

  "We are so screwed," Yamata whispered. Brunelle just nodded as he pretended to take notes.

  Judge Quinn turned back to Welles. "Thank you counsel, I am aware of your client's custody status and the role both the prosecutor and I have played in that. Could you explain to me why that's relevant to your motion to reveal the identity of the police agent Mr. Brunelle sent in to question your client?"

  "Of course, Your Honor," Welles replied with a slight bow of his head. "Thank you for allowing me to make a full record. As the court is aware, any questioning of a citizen while that citizen is detained must be preceded by an advisement of Constitutional rights—the so-called Miranda warnings, although we all know there have been literally hundreds of cases since Miranda versus Arizona which have recognized, reaffirmed, expanded, and confirmed the right of someone whose liberty has been stolen from him to know, before an inherently coercive interrogation is begun, that not only does he have the right not to answer any questions, but he has the right to have an attorney at that very moment to help him decide whether to answer such questions."

  Welles paused to take a sip of water. Then he laid a fatherly hand on Karpati's back and continued. "Your Honor, my client did both of these things when
initially arrested. He requested an attorney and he declined to answer questions until he had an opportunity to discuss the case with someone trained in the criminal laws. And I can assure you," Welles went on, "that he made sure the detectives were paying close attention when he made that request."

  Brunelle couldn't quite suppress a smile at the memory of Karpati yanking Chen's chain.

  "And so not only do we have a situation where my client was in custody due to the unethical charging decisions of Mr. Brunelle, but even knowing from prior conduct of this particular man"—again a heartfelt pat on Karpati's shoulder—"that he wished to have an attorney present, his own attorney whom he had taken the trouble and expense to retain, nevertheless Mr. Brunelle sent in an undercover officer—there really is no other way to describe this person—an undercover police officer to question my client."

  Another sip of water. Then a step behind his client and both hands on his shoulders. "That is beyond the pale, Your Honor, and we simply must be given the identity of this police officer so that I might properly prepare to defend my client's very life against the unlimited resources and power of the state. Thank you."

  "Thank you, Mr. Welles," Judge Quinn nodded warmly. Then a cold expression as she turned to Brunelle. "Response?"

  Brunelle stood up and cleared his throat. "It's very simple, Your Honor. The State does not intend to use this witness or any of the information gathered through this witness at trial. Therefore the informant's identity is not discoverable."

  Brunelle waited for the judge to respond. She did. "That's it?"

  "That's enough. Not a witness, not discoverable. That's the end of the inquiry."

  "Then why send her in, Mr. Brunelle?" Judge Quinn asked. "Surely you intended to use her as a witness. Should the fact that she failed to gather useful information relieve you of the obligation of divulging her identity?"

  "She did gather useful information," Brunelle countered. "Mr. Karpati admitted to instructing Holly Sandholm to knock on the victim's door so they could gain access to the home and commit the murder."