An Innocent Client jd-1

by Scott Pratt

  “We’ve all got problems, Mr. Dillard,” he said. “And right now my biggest problem is dealing with this piece of garbage. You’re already appointed on the first two, a few more won’t hurt you. Make a package deal. Get it over with.”

  “You’re not hearing me, judge.”

  “The case law says I can appoint you to a case if I so choose. If you refuse, I can hold you in contempt. Now you’ll either deal with this like a professional or I’ll cite you for contempt and throw you in jail.”

  “Where are they holding him?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “My understanding is they’ve moved him up to Northeast, to the max block. We need to get him arraigned as soon as possible, unless you can get him to waive the rule. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I have no idea. I’ll have to ask him.”

  “Get up there by Friday.”

  “I’ll go after the funerals.”

  The sturdy young guard, along with two of his sturdy young buddies, returned with Maynard Bush in tow. He was smirking. There were bruises on his face and arms, I assumed from the police. The guards sat him in a chair across the room from me. There was no way to secure him to the floor, so the guards ran chains through his shackles and around the legs of the chair. That way, if he decided to make a run at me, he’d have to drag the chair with him.

  “Do you want us to stay in the room?” one of the guards said.

  “No thanks. I’ve talked to Mr. Bush many times before.”

  “If you have any problems at all, just holler,” he said. “We’ll be right outside the door.”

  I looked over at Maynard sitting there in his striped jumpsuit with MAXIMUM SECURITY emblazoned on the front and the back. He was staring at nothing in particular with that disgusting smirk on his face.

  “You’ve been a busy boy,” I said.

  “Appreciate the help,” he said.

  “You son of a bitch. You used me.”

  “You’re right about both things, counselor. My mama was a bitch, and I played you. Don’t worry about it, though. I played everybody. Why do you think I wanted that change of venue so bad? I knew them crackers in Mountain City wouldn’t have good security.”

  “Why, Maynard?” I said. “Why did you have to go and do something so stupid?”

  “Been wanting to plug that worthless old hag for twenty years. I shoulda done it when I was a kid. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t have more time with her. I was looking forward to seeing her suffer.”

  “Is that the only reason you broke out? So you could kill your mother?”

  He smiled.

  “And the Tate woman? Why?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “She got the drop on them deputies, handed me the gun, and then drove me out of there, just like I told her. She was as responsible as me for them getting killed. I didn’t figure she’d like it in jail, so I did her a favor. Besides, I didn’t need her no more.”

  “So now you’ve got four more counts of murder,” I said. “The two deputies, Bonnie Tate, and your mother.”

  “I know how many was killed. I can count.”

  “The judge wants to try you for the teenagers first, then the police officers, then Bonnie, and then your mother, but they have a little problem. The law says they have to arraign you on these charges as soon as possible. Normally they do it within seventy-two hours of your arrest, but with your security situation, they have some leeway. I have a waiver here I need you to sign. It gives them up to thirty days to arraign you on the new charges, but they’ll probably do it in the next week or two. You don’t have to sign it, but you might as well. You’re eventually going to end up on death row anyway.”

  I pulled the document from my briefcase and stood to approach him. He was trussed up like a chicken, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t apprehensive. I set my briefcase on his thighs and put the pen in his right hand. He scrawled his signature on the line.

  “They can’t kill me but once, you know,” he said.

  “Are you finished now, Maynard? You’ve killed your mother. Is that enough? Or are you going to kill anybody you can kill between now and the time they stick a needle in your arm?”

  “You ain’t gonna have to worry about me much longer.”

  “Why? You contemplating suicide?”

  “Nah, I like myself too much for that. But they’ll get me in here, Dillard. You mark my words.”

  “Who?”

  “I killed two cops in this county. You think they’re gonna to let me live?”

  “You’re in a max block, in case you haven’t noticed. Nobody can get to you in here.”

  “The guards can. I won’t make it another week. But that’s all right. I’ve lived my life, and now I got my revenge.”

  I walked to the door and opened it, and the three sturdy young guards stepped in. They took Maynard back and I ran the gauntlet of catcalls again on my way out. Once I was clear of the max unit, I thought about what Maynard had said. The chances that Darren and David Bowers had friends and relatives working at the prison were good. For a moment, I thought I should do something, maybe file a motion and have Maynard transferred out of Johnson County for his own protection. Then I thought about the argument I’d have to assert — that it was likely the guards at Northeast would conspire to murder him. I imagined myself making that argument in front of Judge Glass. He’d throw me under the jail.

  Maynard, I decided, was on his own.

  July 10

  9:45 a.m.

  Agent Landers looked down at his ringing cell phone, then over at the naked blonde lying next to him. His head was throbbing again. The woman wasn’t nearly as young as she looked last night. Must have been the bad lighting in the bar. Or the whiskey.

  He was supposed to have rest of the week off. He and Bull Deakins were planning to drive down to Hotlanta for a couple of days. They were going to catch a Braves game and visit the Golden Pony, maybe round up a couple of fillies and ride them for a night or two.

  The phone number on the caller ID was the district attorney’s. Wonderful. Landers pulled a sheet up over the woman’s head so he didn’t have to look at her and answered the call.

  “Landers.”

  “Phil, it’s Frankie Martin. We have a serious problem. Our only witness against Angel Christian is dead.”

  Deacon Baker had assigned the Angel Christian case to Martin, who was only four years out of law school and had never tried a murder case. Martin didn’t know it, but Deacon was setting him up to be a scapegoat. If the case went south, Martin might as well pack the suntan lotion, because he’d end up going south with it.

  “Julie Hayes?” Landers said. “How?”

  “They found her at her place yesterday afternoon. She didn’t show up for work, so Erlene Barlowe sent one of her gofers over to check on her. She was dead on the kitchen floor. The Washington County investigator who worked the scene said it looked like she might have been poisoned, so I asked the medical examiner to rush the preliminary autopsy. M.E. says she was full of cocaine and strychnine.”

  Landers had heard of lacing cocaine with strychnine at a DEA seminar. It was a relatively simple process that produced an agonizing death.

  “Any ideas on who might have done it?” Landers said.

  “I certainly have a candidate in mind.”

  “You think it was Erlene Barlowe?”

  “Who else would kill her?”

  “You think she killed her to keep her from testifying against Angel? I think you’re reaching, Frankie. Why would she risk murdering somebody to help Angel out? The kid had only been around a couple of months when we arrested her. Barlowe barely knows her.”

  “At this point, I think Barlowe probably murdered the preacher, too.”

  “Then why would she kill a witness who was about to help us convict someone else? Doesn’t make any sense. And in case you haven’t looked close, we have less on Barlowe than we do on Angel.” Landers hated working with kid lawyers. They were too dumb to live.<
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  “Deacon told me this morning about the witness who saw Barlowe on the bridge,” Martin said.

  “Do you know what Deacon told me about that witness? He said the guy was unreliable. He said there was no way he could have made an ID like that in the dark. He said for me to ignore him.”

  “What are we going to do, Phil? This case was weak enough with Hayes. Without her, I might as well dismiss it.”

  “I wasn’t hot to take it to the grand jury in the first place. You can thank your boss for that. He said he wanted to shake the tree.”

  “Him and his tree. Dillard’s going to kick my butt in court. I’m going to be a laughing-stock. Every newspaper and television station within fifty miles is covering this case, and everybody around is going to be watching while I go down. There’s an election coming up, and in case you guys over there at the TBI don’t pay attention to stuff like that, losing a high-profile murder case a week before an election is not good politics. Baker will fire me over this.”

  “It’s not going to help my career either, Frankie.”

  “Why didn’t we have her tucked away as a material witness?”

  “Because she never gave me any indication she was going anywhere.”

  “Did you know she was a coke head?”

  “I had my suspicions.” Landers felt a hand running up his leg and pushed it away. It returned, and he pushed it away again. He was thinking about how much he hated lawyers, prosecutors included. Every time something went wrong with a case, they blamed it on the police. He also hated aging bleached blondes like the one next to him. He wished she would just get up and leave.

  “We need to try to make the best of this,” Frankie said. “I talked to Deacon a little while ago, and we’ve come up with a plan. We’re going to make Dillard an offer he can’t refuse on the Christian case, but if it doesn’t work, we’re going to need your help.”

  “I have the rest of the week off, Frankie. Call me on Monday.”

  Landers hung up and turned to the woman, who was peeking out over the sheet. Her left eyelash was twice as long as her right one, which must have come off during the sexcapades last night. No doubt he’d find it in the bed later. Ugh. The roots of her blond hair were dark, and so was the mole just above her left nostril. Landers had absolutely no clue what her name might be.

  “Get up,” he said. “Time to go.”

  “Don’t you want to play some more?”

  “Get up and get out.”

  The woman began to collect her clothing, which was spread out across the floor between the bed and the door. She was naked, and as Landers watched her, he wished she’d cover herself. The backs of her thighs were layered with cellulite, and her butt sagged and jiggled. When she straightened to look at Landers, he decided she had to be well into her forties. Landers liked younger women, much younger women. How much did he drink? He pulled the sheet over his head and leaned back.

  “You can dress downstairs, on your way out,” Landers said. He was beginning to feel sick.

  He heard her walking toward the bedroom door and pulled the sheet back down so he could take one last look at her and remind himself why he shouldn’t drink so much. As she opened the door, she turned to face him.

  “You’re a lousy lay,” she said, and then she was gone.

  “Like you even remember it,” Landers said.

  He needed to take a shower. He threw back the sheet, and there it was. The false eyelash, about an inch from his thigh. It looked like a dead centipede. Landers felt his stomach heave. He made it to the bathroom just in time.

  July 11

  7:00 a.m.

  We’d brought furniture up from Ma’s house when we moved her into the nursing home: a dresser, a couple of small tables, a lamp and a chair, thinking it might help ease the transition and make her more comfortable. I spent an entire afternoon hanging and arranging photographs. One of my dad in his high school football uniform was hanging just to the right of the television. She’d asked me to place it there so she could look at it from the bed. Now she didn’t even know who he was.

  I arrived at 7:00 a.m. to find her lying on her back staring at nothing. She hadn’t spoken in weeks, and she’d wet herself and was drooling. The saliva had run out the corner of her mouth and soaked her pillow case. I dug a fresh one out of the closet, then went and found a nurse’s aide. I waited in the hallway while she changed Ma’s diaper. I couldn’t bear to do it myself.

  When she was finished, I walked back into the room and sat down. Ever since the day I told her about Raymond, I’d gotten into the habit of talking to her, even though she was oblivious to everything I said. I’d turned my visits into mini-therapy sessions without the shrink. Mostly, I talked about my cases and the constant state of conflict in which I found myself.

  “Just my luck, huh Ma?” I said. “I get a case with a client who’s innocent, and the victim’s son turns out to be a psychopath. Everybody in the family is scared to death. We check to make sure the doors and windows are locked every night, I’ve got guns spread out all over the house, we all spend half our time looking in rear-view mirrors and over our shoulders. It’s crazy.

  “But you know what? The whole system is crazy. For over ten years, I’ve been traveling every day to this bizarre world of lies and deceit. There’s no honor in it anywhere. It’s all just a sick game, and the people who win the most are the ones who lie the best. They call it the criminal justice system. What a crock. Defendants lie and cheat, police officers lie and cheat, prosecutors lie and cheat, defense lawyers lie and cheat, and judges — don’t even get me started. The American legal system would do itself a great service if it could somehow execute half the sitting judges in this country and start all over again-”

  My cell phone rang. It was Caroline.

  “Deacon Baker just called. They found Julie Hayes dead at her house yesterday. He wants you to come down there. He wants to talk about a deal.”

  I leaned over and kissed my mother on the forehead, something I never did when she was conscious.

  “Love you, Ma. I have to go, but I’m glad we had this little talk. Next time, remind me to tell you about Maynard Bush.”

  July 11

  9:00 a.m.

  Deacon Baker and Frankie Martin were waiting for me in the conference room. There were a couple of plastic plants sitting on small tables in two of the corners, and the walls were lined with bookshelves stuffed with outdated law books and police magazines. The ceilings were low, and I noticed that mildew had formed in the corners. The lighting was almost as bad as the lighting at the jail.

  “Mr. Dillard,” Baker said as I walked in, “I trust you know my assistant, Frankie Martin?”

  “I do.” I shook hands with each of them and took a seat at the long table with my back to the wall. Baker and Martin sat across from me. Baker looked like an oompa-loompa from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He was short, plump and bald, and he always wore suspenders. He was also smoking a fat cigar, despite the fact that smoking wasn’t allowed in the building. The smell and the smoke were sickening.

  “Ready for trial?” I said. “Sorry about your witness.” I couldn’t resist.

  “Of course we are,” Baker said. “We have plenty of evidence without her.”

  “I understand you gentlemen would like to talk about a plea bargain.”

  “That’s right,” Baker said. “Let’s try to be honest with each other. Perhaps we can put the posturing aside.”

  Plea bargaining was entirely about posturing. There was no way anyone was going to “put it aside.”

  “We have a strong case,” Baker said, “but I’ve given this a great deal of thought and I don’t think the case is appropriate for the death penalty. We might be willing to take it off the table in exchange for a plea.”

  So much for honesty. Their case was anything but strong, especially now that Julie Hayes was dead.

  “What do you have in mind?” I said.

  “Twenty years, second degree murder.�
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  “Not a chance. Not on the evidence I’ve seen. Surely you didn’t bring me all the way down here for that.”

  “Make a counter-offer,” Baker said.

  “I’ve given it some thought too,” I said. “The way I see it, you had a weak circumstantial case before your most important witness died, and you’ve got an unappealing victim. You’re going to have to spend a great deal of time at trial proving that your preacher went to a strip club. Then I assume you’re going to try to prove he solicited a prostitute, since you’re going to introduce evidence about the money he withdrew from his bank account right before he left. I don’t think the jury will have much sympathy for him, and I’ll do everything I can make sure they don’t.”

  “Let’s assume he was, as you say, there to solicit a prostitute,” Martin said. “That doesn’t mean he deserved to be brutally murdered and mutilated. The jury is going to want to see someone pay for that.”

  “I’m sure they will,” I said. “But not Angel. I don’t think she did it, and you can’t prove she did. Barlowe could have killed him, any of the other girls at the club could have killed him, he could have gone somewhere else and picked up someone else, or someone could have been waiting for him when he got back to the room. It could have been anybody, and you know it.”

  “Nobody else’s hair was found in that room,” Baker said. “Only your client’s.”

  “If they’d found the hair in the bathroom or on the headboard or even on the floor it would be different. But they found it on his clothing. It’s entirely possible that her hair passed to him when she was serving him booze at the club and he was rubbing up against her. And the only way you could possibly make the jury even suspect Angel was at the motel was through Julie Hayes, and she’s gone.”

  “We have plenty of other evidence,” Baker said.

  “I know what other evidence you have, Deacon. And I know what I have. I was planning to surprise you with this, but since we’re not posturing, I have a witness who says he saw a woman fitting Erlene Barlowe’s description on Picken’s Bridge around midnight the night of the murder. His name is Virgil Watterson. I believe you’ve heard of him.”