Death Penalty

by William J. Coughlin

  “I arranged that you could travel to other states, but you can’t go overseas. That’s the only restriction. If you do leave the state, you must notify the court of where you can be reached. Why?”

  “I have an invitation to spend a week up north.”

  “It might do you some good to get away for a while. Do a little fishing, something like that.”

  “Fishing is for idiots,” he replied. “This is just social. Mrs. Cynthia Wilcox has invited me. She has a place up on Lake Huron. Rustic, but quite elegant inside, I’m told. She will send a car for me.”

  “Wilcox, as in the widow of Poindexter Wilcox?”

  He paused, then spoke. “A family friend.”

  “A rich friend,” I said. “A very rich friend.”

  “Yes, she is that, isn’t she?”

  I thought of why he was called Doctor Death.

  “Have you ever been up there before?”

  “No.”

  “Is Mrs. Wilcox sick, by any chance?”

  I was answered by a soft chuckle. “Not that I know of.”

  “Look, I’m going to be frank. If she happens to have a terminal condition and passes away in her sleep while you’re up there, no appeal on earth is going to help you. You will have effectively proven everything the prosecutor alleged. Understand?”

  That chuckle was becoming like fingernails on a blackboard. “You told the jury I was innocent.”

  “I told the jury the prosecutor hadn’t proved his case. There’s a big difference. If there is a repeat of the other times, Doctor, no one is going to be able to help you.”

  The chuckle faded and his voice became more businesslike. “This appeals process, what again are we talking about, in terms of time?”

  “Depends on a lot of variables. Weeks, sometimes. Mostly several months.”

  “So, we’re talking what? A year? Two years?”

  “Doctor, there are no guarantees, but right now I’d estimate that from start to finish we’re talking about something less than a year. Maybe even six months.”

  At first I thought he hadn’t heard me, then he spoke. “Lawyers wouldn’t last five minutes in an operating room. Six months? You people lack precision. What a way to run a business.”

  I didn’t want to argue with him. He liked it too much. “If you decide to spend more than a week with Mrs. Wilcox, let me know. It’s understood that you will let the court know where you are.”

  I suddenly realized I was talking to myself.

  Doctor Death had hung up.

  2

  Marylou lay on the pillow, her blond hair spread about her like fine netting. She smoked her cigarette as if it were a required part of some religious ceremony. Her eyes were fixed upon the ceiling of my bedroom.

  She had modestly pulled the sheet up to just below her chin.

  The bedside lamp bathed her in soft light. She was beautiful, the kind of beauty seen on the screen or television. Full lips, high cheekbones, firm chin, and eyes so darkly blue they seemed unreal. And with body to match, a thirty-year-old body, but one that a teenager would envy.

  She had been the queen of morning television in Dallas, and then Cleveland, and then a number of places, but never quite queen again. All the jobs had been on a descending scale. Now she was doing radio work on a small jazz station in Detroit. A fondness for vodka had greased the downward slide.

  We were typical, a standard relationship called the AA romance. Recovering alcoholics tend to feel comfortable with their own. All human needs remain with us, they are there, but they’re tinted by the never-ending fight against the inner demon. It saves a lot of explaining if your companion has the same set of problems. It promotes a kind of romance that is, at best, only temporary.

  “Do you love me, Charley?”

  “Of course.”

  She smiled, still staring at the ceiling. “A hard question, an easy answer.”

  “Oh, not all that easy. I can think of a dozen women I wouldn’t say that to.”

  She turned, put out the cigarette, then snuggled down even deeper into the sheet.

  “Do you remember that audition I did last month in Tampa?”

  “Sure. You came back tanned.”

  “I didn’t think they liked me.”

  “So?”

  “They called.”

  “So?”

  She looked at me with those penetrating eyes. “What about us, Charley? You and me? Is this just another shipboard romance, or do we have a future?”

  She had never asked before, but I knew she had thought about it. So had I, although we had only been together for a few months.

  “It’s a little early to tell, don’t you think?” I asked. “Why the question? Is it about Tampa?”

  “Tampa has something to do with it, yes. But I don’t think it’s the real issue.”

  “And what’s the real issue?”

  “Commitment.”

  “In time, maybe . . .”

  She laughed softly. I thought the laugh sounded sad.

  “You’ve already answered,” she said. “You’re not ready, Charley, and you probably never will be. At least, not with me.”

  “I’m a three-time loser, Marylou. I don’t have exactly a great track record as a family man. Three wives, three divorces, one kid. Every one of us an alcoholic, even my daughter, Lisa. Marrying me would be like getting a last-minute ticket on the Titanic.”

  She sighed. “I’m not worried about that, Charley, not at all. That’s not the big problem.”

  “What is?”

  She paused a moment, then answered. “You’re a romantic.”

  “So?”

  “Have you noticed? Most alcoholics seem to be.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  She rolled over and took another cigarette from the pack on the bedstand. She lit it and watched the smoke curl toward the ceiling.

  “It’s true, Charley. At least it is in your case. You see the world through romantic eyes. You want things to be the way you think they should be. You try to make things come out that way, although they usually don’t. That’s the problem, Charley.”

  “I’m a lawyer, Marylou. We have to look at things realistically.”

  She smiled. “Facts maybe, but not anything else. You’re the kind of guy who used to ride out with a shield and lance, Charley, looking for dragons.”

  “Or windmills?”

  “Romantics can’t tell the difference. That’s the problem.”

  “So what’s this business about Tampa? To be realistic for a moment.”

  “They’ve offered me a new morning show. The station is an affiliate of a network, and they say I might have a shot at something national eventually. It’s my big chance, Charley. Maybe my last chance.”

  “What are they talking about in terms of money and a contract?”

  “They’re offering a two-year contract. The money’s good, about triple what I’m making. If I succeed, that’s only the beginning.”

  “Do you want me to look at the contract?”

  She paused again. “I’ve already agreed.”

  I felt a sinking sensation. “When do you leave?”

  This pause seemed longer.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “My roommate will arrange for my stuff to be sent down when I find a permanent place.”

  “Jesus!”

  “This was a nice interlude for both of us, but we both knew it wouldn’t last, Charley.”

  “Maybe you did.”

  She inhaled deeply, then expelled the smoke slowly. “We both knew,” she said, not looking at me.

  I watched as she got up and dressed.

  She was so beautiful, I felt close to tears. She came to the bed and kissed me softly on the cheek.

  “Suppose I said I wanted to get married? Would that have changed things?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t have said it.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are just too many goddamned wi
ndmills around. That’s why.”

  And then she was gone.

  THERE IS AN ARMED guard at the law school now, a stern-eyed black woman, squat and heavy, who scrutinized me and then my law alumni card as if she were a border agent and I were a spy. She insisted on additional proof, my driver’s license, complete with awful photo, and my bar association card. Even then, I thought she was going to refuse admittance.

  Finally, as if against her better judgment, she reluctantly allowed me to pass. I walked in with a group of serious-looking students who were hotly debating some obscure point of probate law among themselves. Some of them glanced at me, as if assessing whether I might possibly be someone of importance. Apparently I wasn’t, since I was given no more than a perfunctory up-and-down.

  They continued on as I stopped in the vaulted room they now called the Atrium, an artfully high enclosure of glass and rising beams.

  It occupied the space that had once held the dental clinic. The law school and the dental school had shared the building when I had been a student. In my mind, I seemed to hear the echo of long-ago screams from poor patients providing the young students with live practice. In the old days, we had to pass by the clinic to get to class. It had seemed more Dickens than dental.

  The dental school, now part of the rival University of Detroit, had been moved years before to much more elaborate quarters. I wondered if they still offered the free work.

  St. Benedict University had been founded at the turn of the century by the Benedictine Order as a challenge to the academic supremacy of the Jesuits and their University of Detroit. But the Jesuits had won out, slowly but surely, eventually gobbling up, one by one, all the Benedictine colleges, everything except the law school, and that too would be gone soon, given economic reality. Merger talks were already under way, with plans to unite the two Catholic law schools located only half a mile apart in the decaying dangerous downtown section of Detroit.

  But until that time, it was still St. Benedict, a kind of mother ship for thousands of its graduates. It had once been the law school for working students, Catholic mostly, the sons and daughters of immigrants, living their parents’ dream. St. Benedict’s was the first step up on the ladder to something better. If the University of Michigan was Tiffany’s, then St. Benedict would be a kind of working-class, academic K Mart.

  Still, the boys and girls of St. Benedict, those who got through, did all right. Half the judges in the state were St. Benedict products.

  So was Jacques Mease, the famous graduate who had gone on to become a bank financier and who had amassed a billion-dollar fortune. He had paid for the new Atrium and it had borne his name until his indictment and conviction. The brass plate had been removed after that. Mease had done his time, only a year, and had paid an enormous fine, a fine that left him with only a hundred million on which to skimp by. According to the magazines, Mease, poor devil, now lived a quiet life on his estate on the Caribbean island he owned, consumed, no doubt, with remorse. In any event, he was no longer interested in making big donations to his former law school.

  But before it stopped, his money had helped fund in part St. Benedict’s excellent law library, which was why I had driven in from Pickeral Point. Doctor Death’s appeal had to be prepared, which meant hours of searching law books to build a foundation for the arguments I would toss at the court in written form first, and later verbally.

  Most lawyers at some time in their lives have near-death experiences with court-imposed deadlines. Everybody tends to put things off, but lawyers make a religion of it. At least they do until they come too close one day. From then on, stark terror inspires convertlike diligence.

  I had had that happen. More than once. Those past experiences had been so close that now I watch the calendar like a heart monitor. Doctor Death and I would both be finished if I missed getting the appeal in on time. I had to do the research now.

  Plus, this time, I also needed to do some serious reading on the product liability case. Mickey Monk had written the brief surprisingly well, but I had to know every facet of that subject when it came time to argue that case before the three-judge panel. Being an appellate judge is boring work. So it’s like therapy for them when they get the opportunity to tear some poor underprepared lawyer to shreds. They then attack, like lions ripping apart a limping antelope. Which is all right, if you aren’t the antelope.

  University law libraries are pretty standard. Entrance is gained by passing muster at a long counter presided over by working students, who use their time there both to study and earn minimum-wage money. The law books are contained in endless stacks, like soldiers on parade. The stacks are marked so you can search for what you are interested in by state, or court, or even journal.

  Rows of long desks serve as book platforms for the students. It never changes. The students peer earnestly at the pages of opened law books, puzzlement and confusion gluing their eyebrows into perpetually frustrated frowns.

  No one talks, and everyone moves quietly. Like a church.

  I flashed my alumni card, which was my ticket to browse. The privilege was part of the yearly alumni dues and worth every penny.

  No one glanced at me as I staked out the end of a long table as my temporary headquarters, placing my worn briefcase like a claiming flag.

  I was about to search the stacks for product liability cases when I noticed a young woman looking, staring would be a better word, directly at me.

  Most of the students were dressed casually, most coming from or going to the jobs that supported their studies, but my watcher was attired in a well-tailored, expensive business suit, the feminine equivalent of a power suit. She was pretty enough naturally so she didn’t need much makeup. Her hair, a soft brown, had been cut by someone who knew what he was doing and probably charged enormously for that skill. Her eyes were blue, I could see that even at a distance.

  I smiled. She didn’t.

  She hesitated and then walked over. She probably played a lot of tennis, or something equally healthy. She possessed an easy grace, the kind that athletes seem to have.

  The closer she got, the better she looked.

  “Mr. Sloan,” she asked. “Charles Sloan?”

  “Yes.”

  Two students looked up in irritation. But when they saw her they quickly dived back into their books.

  “Would you step out in the hall for a moment?”

  I nodded, and followed her past the long desk and out through the library doors.

  “You don’t remember me,” she said. “Of course, there’s no reason why you should. I’m Caitlin Palmer.”

  When I failed to indicate recognition, she added, “Judge Palmer’s daughter.”

  I suppose I showed my real surprise. She allowed a small smile. “The last time you saw me was at least twenty years ago. I was about ten years old then. Father had you and your wife over for dinner.”

  “They called you Cat.” I remembered a proper little girl who showed a quick intelligence, but a little girl with bad skin and a weight problem. Things had certainly changed.

  “Are you a student here?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. I’m the assistant dean.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “This is my first year. It’s like coming home. I used to come here often with my father.”

  “I remember. How is your dad? I haven’t seen him in a long time, probably a year or two.”

  “He never changes. He lives for the court and that damn boat of his.” She studied me. “You’ve changed, Mr. Sloan. Older, but more distinguished, I think.”

  “Please call me Charley, everyone does.” I wondered what she meant by distinguished. The fancy tailor-made suits and the gold Rolexes were long gone. I wore off-the-rack now. I hadn’t grown or shrunk, I was still average height. Average weight, average everything. I thought myself a little more rugged-looking now, especially around my blue eyes. I wondered if she was referring to the little bits of gray sneaking into my average brown hair just above my
average ears. Her eyes gave no clue.

  “What brings you here, Charley?”

  “A little research for a case on appeal.”

  “Doctor Death?”

  I smiled. “Among others.”

  “I’ve more or less followed your career. I’m glad things are going well for you again.”

  “Thanks. What about you? Do they still call you Cat?”

  The small smile dimmed a bit. “Yes, but never here.”

  “Okay, Dean Palmer, tell me about yourself.”

  The smile came back, but was still tentative. “Nothing much to tell, really. I’m Daddy’s girl, the only child, as you know. I had to go into the law, whether I liked it or not. Luckily, I like it. I came out of Yale, did some clerking for the federal court and then spent a year with a New York law firm. I decided practice wasn’t for me, so I followed the teaching track. I worked my way up to a full professorship in Chicago and then came here when this job opened. That’s my history in a nutshell.”

  “Married? Children?”

  “No. What about you? You have children, as I recall.”

  “One, a daughter. She’s a student at the University of Pennsylvania.”

  “I remember your wife,” she said. “I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. You brought her to dinner one night.”

  “That was my first wife. Two followed after that.”

  She smiled a bit more. “Are you a Mormon?”

  “Nope. I made it a practice to get a divorce each time.”

  “And now?”

  “Single once more.”

  She paused for a moment and then proceeded on a new tack. “Do you think you’ll have a chance with Doctor Death on appeal?”

  “Ordinarily, I take a wary view, but this time I’m willing to bet serious money that it’ll be reversed.”

  “Oh?” An inquiring eyebrow raised slowly. “Why?”

  “Judge Gallagher was personally appalled by the good doctor. He let in everything except the allegation that my client shot Lincoln. He would have let that in too, if the prosecutor had asked. For instance, he let a woman testify that she heard that my client engaged in mercy killing. Just a rumor, nothing more, but he let it in.”