Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

“My diary.”

  “Good grief, where do you keep it?”

  “In the floor of the trailer. In my bedroom, the linoleum lifts up. My diary is under there. Six of them.”

  “Six books?”

  She nodded. “I know, how did I fill six books? Well, I started on my tenth birthday. That was my present from my aunt, a diary.”

  “You mean the first time Randy raped you—you wrote that down in there?”

  “I did. And every time after. It’s all in there.”

  “Oh sweet—we’ve got to get those books.”

  “Just go in my bedroom and slide the nightstand over. The linoleum curls up and there they are. But they’re locked.”

  “Not to worry. I promise I’ll get them unlocked.”

  “The keys are in my dresser inside the blue music box. It plays “Claire de Lune.””

  “I’ll need all six of them.”

  “Just don’t show them to anyone.”

  “Let’s talk about that some other time.”

  “Okay.

  “Now the sixty-four-dollar question. The shirt you were wearing when you were arrested. Let’s talk about that.”

  “My Lakers shirt. What about it?”

  “They found gunshot residue on it. You had fired a gun recently, according to the laboratory tests they ran on the shirt.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember whether you fired a gun?”

  “I’m with the sheep every day. I take the gun to scare off coyotes and wild dogs.”

  “What about the day you were arrested? Did you shoot the gun that day?”

  “Maybe. I don’t—I think I did. That might have been the day I scared off a coyote.”

  “Do we have any way to prove that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you write it down in your diary?”

  “I don’t write that kind of stuff down. I scare off animals every day just about.”

  “Okay.”

  She nervously picked at the skin on her thumb. “What about tomorrow? Is he going to let me out?”

  Thaddeus spread his hands. “I honestly don’t know.”

  25

  Because Turquoise was a minor, H. Ivan Trautman ordered the bail hearing be heard in his office. While it should have been a public hearing because Turquoise Begay was being prosecuted as an adult, Judge Trautman had other ideas.

  Ideas that soon became apparent to Thaddeus, as he sat beside his client, who was handcuffed and clothed in the orange of the CCSD inmate garb. She had found a brush and had managed to brush her hair, so it looked a hundred percent better, Thaddeus thought. But she still had that tired, thirty-year-old cocktail waitress look, as if she had suffered too many after-midnights with too much cigarette smoke in the room and too many cocktails. None of which was true, not in Turquoise’s case.

  The judge let it be known at exactly 2:01 p.m. why they were holding the hearing in his office. He was going off the record, he revealed, out of earshot of the general public, and he wanted privacy for what he had to say.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—we’re off the record,” he said to the reporter, “for a minute. This is the time for the hearing on the defendant’s motion for modification of conditions of release. Mr. Murfee, you’re seeking to have Turquoise Begay released to Children and Family Services.”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  H. Ivan Trautman leaned back in his chair, his head bookended by the shelf behind, upon which was perched his Mormon icons. Thaddeus studied him closely. The perverse little bastard almost looks angelic in that black robe, he thought. Or satanic. Take your pick.

  Finished with his inner reflection, the judge took it up again.

  “What I fail to understand”—he was talking directly to Thaddeus—“is why bail is necessary? Why don’t we have a plea here? Wasn’t that the goal?”

  “It was,” agreed Wrasslin. She was dressed in burgundy slacks and gold blazer today, festooned with gold buttons and a white pocket square edged in gold. She looked chic and fresh and ready for war.

  “That was the goal, Your Honor,” said Thaddeus, “from your standpoint. That was never the goal from my standpoint.”

  The judge shot upright. “Counsel! I made it clear to you when I appointed you that this was an open-and-shut case. You’ve got the niece with a motive, according to the IHS medical records. She has the clap and she killed her uncle for giving it to her.”

  “Actually, she recanted the uncle involvement,” Thaddeus replied. “She said it was her boyfriend.”

  “But there’s no other suspect!” the judge cried. “I expected a plea.”

  “And you said if there was no plea, I should be prepared for trial in thirty days. I got my discovery yesterday from the prosecutor and I’m telling the court I can be ready for trial in thirty days.”

  “The court reporter will put that last statement on the record. That counsel has indicated he can be ready for trial in thirty days. Now we’re off the record again.”

  “Please, let’s put everything on the record,” Thaddeus responded. “My client is entitled to a record.”

  “This isn’t about your client, Mr. Murfee. This is about you. Now listen up. You came into my court a year ago and lied to me. I can only wonder if that’s what’s going on right now with this demand for a trial. So here’s what we’re going to do. You can have your trial, your client can have her full day or two or three in court. But I’m telling you—off the record—that if your client is found guilty I will find some way to jerk your license permanently. I will personally take it upon myself to make sure you never practice law again anywhere, if you screw with me. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Perfectly,” said Thaddeus. He felt his skin flush and then the blood leave his face. He knew he looked pale and looked like a common liar to the judge. How would he ever come back from what happened a year ago? Would this man never believe him again about anything? Probably not, he decided, so he might as well plunge ahead.

  “Defense is ready for trial,” he said, and began packing his file.

  “The state will be ready, Your Honor,” Wrasslin was only too happy to offer. She beamed at the judge.

  “On the record now. Counsel, you have filed your motion for modification of the conditions of release. Please tell the court why you believe the conditions of bail should be modified.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “First, Your Honor, you have set bail at one million dollars. This is a minor living in a house trailer on the Navajo reservation: The poorest per capita population of any population in the U.S., including Appalachia and West Virginia and Mississippi. The notion that somehow a child living in reservation squalor should have access to bail in that amount demonstrates that the court would have set such an amount, one, without knowing anything about the defendant’s financial condition, and, two, without knowing anything about the level of proof of guilt and the presumption that could arise, and, three, with a mindset of keeping the minor in jail regardless. The law says that, in a murder case, where the proof is evident and the presumption great, bail shall be denied.”

  Thaddeus went on without taking a breath. “But that’s for capital murder cases, which this case is not. This is an ordinary—if I can be allowed to call such a matter ‘ordinary’—murder case without the heinous implications that would make it rise to the level of a capital murder case. If the shooting as charged in the indictment were proven, it would be clear there was no cruelty in the manner of death, there was no exaggerating circumstance, and there was no concomitant felony underway that would make the case fit inside the felony-murder rule. So we have a plain vanilla murder case and bail should be allowed in those cases. The question thus becomes, how much?”

  The judge took on a stony look. His displeasure registered on his face. “Counsel, are you saying bail in an amount she’s capable of posting should be ordered? Are you telling the court a thousand dollars might be a reasonable amount? Is
that your argument?”

  “Better than that, Judge. I’m telling the court she should be released without any bail at all, that, because she is a minor, she should be released to the Department of Children and Family Services and made a ward during the pendency of the case. Once I prove her innocent, the dependency should be lifted.”

  The judge couldn’t restrain himself. He actually laughed, which caused Wrasslin to join him. Even the matron who had accompanied Turquoise into chambers couldn’t help smiling.

  “I don’t see the humor the court evidently sees,” said Thaddeus levelly. “This is a minor child who really has no business around the adult population she’s exposed to in jail.”

  The judge’s eyes grew wide. He swiped a hand across his forehead and wiped it on a tissue. “She hasn’t been segregated out of the adult population? Am I hearing you right?” His voice had notched down. Jailing a minor with an adult prison population was a violation of federal law. The county was open to a huge federal lawsuit for the oversight. H. Ivan was frightened.

  “That’s why I asked for an expedited hearing, Your Honor. She’s being locked up with adults. I’ve told her we can avoid the necessity of filing a federal civil rights lawsuit by simply obtaining her release from custody. Then there would be no need to sue.” There. The fix was in, game on.

  “Oh my sweet Jehoshaphat,” the judge moaned—in what would be the closest thing to a curse that he would utter. “Miss Begay, you were never supposed to be introduced into to the adult population of our local jail. The court’s sincerest apologies for that.”

  “That’s okay,” said Turquoise. “There’s some nice people.”

  “And counsel,” the judge said to the DA, “you make darn good and sure your sheriff knows this girl is a minor and belongs with other minors.”

  “What about my motion?” Thaddeus asked. “Will she be released to DCFS?”

  “She will,” said the judge. “It is so ordered. Defendant is immediately released to the custody of Children and Family Services. Placement to a proper foster home. Trial in thirty days. The clerk will put an order in your box. Anything else?”

  “No, Your Honor,” both attorneys said in unison.

  “Then we’re adjourned. Please leave my office now.”

  “You’re free, almost,” Thaddeus whispered to Turquoise.

  The judge couldn’t have been any nicer, in the end, Thaddeus thought. And he couldn’t shoo us out of his office fast enough. Such a tempestuous pest I can be.

  So it was done. Turquoise was sprung. Just outside the door she stopped and thanked him. She leaned up and gave him a hug even as the matron was removing handcuffs.

  “Call me when you’re placed,” he told her. “Make an appointment to come in no later than tomorrow. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Walking back downstairs in the courthouse, Thaddeus was fully lost in thought. The judge was convinced Turquoise was guilty, which would make for an unpleasant trial in and of itself. Evidentiary objections would be heavily weighted in favor of the prosecutor. The judge’s demeanor toward the defendant would be noticeably one of distaste. Jury instructions—the statements of law the judge gives the jurors based on submissions by both lawyers—would wherever possible be worded in such a way as to undermine the defense theory of the case. Presumptions of innocence would be announced but downplayed.

  And the evidence wasn’t as clear-cut as Thaddeus had first thought. He had learned the prosecutor obtained the Lakers shirt worn by Turquoise on the day of the shooting and that the shirt contained gunshot residue and had tested positive. At some point that same day, the DA would get to argue to the jury, the defendant had fired a gun. He would get to argue it wasn’t necessarily gunshot residue from that same shooting or even from that day. But that was all argument; it wasn’t definitive. And there was another thing. Possibly they could tie her to the killing rifle itself if DNA testing came back with her profile. Granted these things were arguable both ways, but when they began to be added one on top of the other, as a whole they began to be more and more compelling.

  The IHS medical records would be proof she had claimed her uncle gave her the STD. Which meant some form of sexual abuse, the DA could argue, which gave the young woman motive to kill.

  Thaddeus walked outside the courthouse, shaking his head. He did not like the addition, the mathematics of the case, as item was stacked on top of item. He was even beginning to wonder himself about her guilt—something he seldom allowed himself to ponder when defending criminal cases. The best defense attorneys remained neutral in their minds. That way they avoided personal involvement that would otherwise cloud the thinking. For this case he needed mental acuity and best judgment; he needed distance from his client, which would be difficult once Katy entered the scene and began carrying the Turquoise torch. He would need to be very careful from here on.

  Later that day, when she came to his office, Thaddeus said to her, “Turquoise, I know that when women get sexually abused they might do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Maybe you became so enraged at your uncle for forcing himself on you that you finally just broke down and lost it and took the rifle in your hands for protection while he was sleeping. If that was the case—and I’m only postulating here—then I can make a good case of delayed self-defense or temporary insanity of a sort. Maybe you would like to think about this and ask yourself whether there’s the possibility you shot your uncle and even now are having difficulty admitting to yourself that it happened. I mean I’ve seen cases like that, where people do things and later don’t remember doing them at all. If it happened...I can still help you escape a jury that doesn’t believe your claim of innocence.”

  Turquoise said in her soft voice, “I will get to tell my story at trial?”

  “Yes, I mean maybe. We won’t know for sure about that until we hear the state’s case. Then we’ll decide.”

  “No, I want to tell my story. I want the jury to hear the truth.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “I will tell them that I was angry, very angry. But that I would never kill anyone. I would tell them that I don’t even try to hit the coyotes and dogs when I shoot. I would tell them that I don’t even squash the big desert spiders that live in our trailer. I wouldn’t kill anything. And I didn’t kill my uncle.”

  “Got it.”

  “Maybe you don’t believe me, Thaddeus, but the jury will listen. They will understand what happened to me. And they will know I wouldn’t kill anyone because I will tell them so.”

  “Okay. Then we’ll go with that. But I’m not saying that you’ll testify. That remains to be decided.”

  “But I want to testify. Just so you know.”

  Thaddeus sighed. Criminal Law Rule 2: the defendant doesn’t testify. There’s too much opportunity for the kind of cross-examination by the DA that restates the state’s theory of the case a pebble at a time. Questions like, “Now we know we found gunshot residue on your shirt and yet you’re telling us you didn’t shoot a gun that day? Yes or no?” And so it would go until the state had perfectly and indelibly told the jury its case through the defendant’s own lack of opportunity to say anything other than yes or no to such closed-end questions. He shuddered inside. That day mustn’t ever be allowed to come around. He would have to dissuade her from testifying at all. Which, he could now see, would be a difficult job itself.

  Almost as bad as Turquoise taking the stand was the fact of H. Ivan’s hatred of Thaddeus. Somehow he was now looking at permanent loss of his license to practice law if he lost the Turquoise case at trial. So he had a client with two strikes against her on one side of the equation, and a judge with two strikes against him on the other. It was no longer the defendant’s guilt or non-guilt that was at stake here, it was his own future as well.

  26

  That night, on the drive home, Thaddeus tried to imagine what he would do with himself if he lost his law license. Money wouldn’t be an issue; he had plenty of money. But his self-respe
ct would flush straight down the toilet. He would have an incredibly hard time living with himself if he lost his license, particularly given that he had suffered and been enormously deprived even of sufficient food during his three years in law school. What, it had all come down to one trial? Color me stupid, he thought, I cannot believe what this judge has suckered me into by giving me this case. Son of a—he couldn’t finish the thought. He slammed his fist hard against the dashboard and stomped the gas, angrily passing three cars at twenty over the speed limit. He was at wits’ end with this Trautman guy and didn’t know which way to turn.

  They drove into town that night for dinner at the Red Rainbow. They brought Sarai, who was too big for a booster chair. Sarai chatted all through dinner, spilled her milk, dropped spaghetti noodles in her lap, and devoured two scoops of rich chocolate ice cream. Thaddeus was pleased with the girl’s chattiness.

  The worm had definitely turned there. Whatever Katy was doing with her was definitely working.

  27

  Shep left a cryptic message with Thaddeus’ office. “Tell Thad he’s needed up on Coconino. Murder afoot. Shep.”

  Thaddeus took the pink phone slip into his office, sat at his desk, and loosened his tie. He wondered if Shep had the fifty thousand he had promised. Whatever, it was always exciting to hear from the guy, and the message was compelling. Things were happening in Shep’s world. Always an exciting client to hear about—someone from L.A. or Tucson or Denver. Always some capital murder case moving toward trial where everything was at stake. He decided to waste no time and left on foot for Shep’s office on Coconino Drive, one block north of Aspen Avenue.

  The sidewalks had been bladed by a mini tractor, but the sifting snowfall was quickly covering in the machine’s tracks. Thaddeus buttoned his top button and plunged ahead into the snow and wind.

  Wendell Patterson handed him a reading file as soon as he poked his head in Shep’s waiting room. Wendell—Wendy—was Shep’s “touchstone,” as he referred to her. She made his world make sense, keeping track of appointments, works-in-progress, client bitches and complaints, overdue accounts, judges’ birthdays, anniversaries, and Suns tickets. Everything he needed to have a reasonably functional life/law practice was in her hands, and she was up to the task. “Read before you knock on his door,” she said. “You can use the library. You know the way.”