Defending Turquoise (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 5)

by John Ellsworth

“You took pity on me.”

  “Hell, son, I was in court the day you got disbarred. Your mistake was telling H. Ivan that it was your own money you made the bail with. Next time type up a receipt and have your secretary’s husband sign it with his left hand. Then you’ve got the receipt and you don’t have to take a year off in North Dakota.”

  “So our defense is completely perjured.”

  “Almost. Seems like our honorable but deceased district attorney actually was raping his daughter. Way I see it, he had it coming. He was responsible for her death but the grand jury couldn’t find anyone to charge. Mom was only taking him to trial and carrying out the execution. In the grand scheme of things, that’s called Justice. Can you live with it?”

  “I—I—”

  “That’s all right, Thad. You can take your time with this one. We present the defense and walk her out of there, justice is done.”

  “It’s unethical to knowingly present perjured testimony.”

  “It’s unethical to execute women who murder the husbands who murdered their offspring, too. Which is worse? You take your pick. I say we walk her the hell out of there and let justice have her way. It’s sweet.”

  “Am I really hearing this?”

  “Welcome aboard, Counsel.”

  “What’s my role going to be?”

  “You will be responsible for cross-examining the state’s witnesses. I will put on our direct case and do closing argument. That way you’re not putting on perjured testimony, as you so sanctimoniously put it. You will do opening statement. We’ll share the motion practice: you write ’em, I’ll argue ’em.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So are you in or out?”

  Thaddeus felt the last remnants of his naive mental constructs about justice and “doing justice” melting away. This, it seemed, was the reality of justice: you looked at the big picture, figured where your client fit into that, and carved out the facts and law to fit your best story. That was the tale of the tape: did it fit? Did it slip on easily? Did it wear well?

  One thing was for sure, this was going to be one hell of a ride with Shep. He relaxed. Might as well accept that you’re going to be part of this and go along far enough to see how it feels. You can always opt out on down the road if you start wetting the bed from guilt. He chastised himself about the last glowing vestiges of lawyering ethics and morality he harbored. Soon the chastisement was enough; those embers were doused and he was, at long last, free to be a professional gun for hire. He had killed bad guys in the real world. Maybe now it was time to do the same thing in the world of courtrooms and lesser crimes. He smiled at Shep and thumped the desk with his fist.

  “I’m in.”

  “Put the fifty grand in your account and take Katy out on the rez for fry bread and mutton stew.”

  With that, they were done.

  Thaddeus slipped on topcoat and gloves. He tucked the file under his arm and plunged out the door, into the snowfall and gloom of the afternoon. “As they say,” he muttered as he tromped along, “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

  28

  At home that night he cooked steaks on the Jenn-Air for Katy and himself, a chicken leg for Sarai. Sarai had fallen in love with the Colonel’s drumsticks and squealed with delight when the red-and-white bucket came home. Tonight, Thaddeus’ own special drumstick would have to do. All in all she was pleased and carried the bone around, gnawing at it until bedtime.

  Katy said goodnight at ten o’clock and disappeared upstairs, where she ran a hot bath and luxuriated under soap bubbles. Thaddeus wandered aimlessly around the downstairs for the next hour, then watched Jimmy Fallon’s TiVo’d monologue before heading upstairs to his office. Sure enough, Katy had left her notes from the day’s activities on his desk, as agreed. Evidently she had gone to Children and Family Services and asked that they certify her to visit Turquoise as a representative of her attorney. Her notes recited how she had met with the DCFS office manager, learned the hoops she had to jump through, and had filled out two hours worth of paperwork. She was expected to be certified in the next twenty-four hours, pending an investigation of her home and an interview with the caseworker. If that all went well, she should be able to visit Turquoise in the next couple of days. Her Action Plan was to visit with the girl’s father with Turquoise present, and see what he knew about his brother’s abuse of Turquoise. While there they would also retrieve the six diaries. Thaddeus inserted the pink sheet of notes into the Turquoise Begay file and undressed for bed.

  He awoke at dawn to find her close by. During the night she had used the bathroom then crept into bed and pushed up beside him. Katy was asleep facing him, her lips slightly parted, black hair across her forehead, sweetly dreaming when he came awake. He stared at her for five minutes and wished they could talk about the Chicago stuff, the painful stuff. Evidently it wasn’t time for that yet, and he knew better than to force it.

  He quietly slid away and let himself down out of the bed, climbed to his feet, and shrugged into his ski pants and Patagonia shell, T-shirt beneath. There was a new icing of snow and he meant to put it to good use. He went into the kitchen and put the coffee on, then stepped out on the back porch and laid his back-country skis flat in the snow. Max accompanied him as he began kicking and gliding toward the national forest, where he entered the huge stand of trees and began laying down a trail. All around him he saw a majesty that was not of man’s making in the drifts and ice sculptures emplaced during the long, cold night. He was thrilled to be alone and the first one to ever lay eyes on that particular scene on that particular day. Max ran ahead and sniffed after rabbit prints from tree to tree, happily chasing down the trail.

  Five minutes later Thaddeus had worked up a sweat; the polypropylene tee was wicking it away, and he remained comfortably warm and dry as he covered ground. Up the hills he would kick and herringbone, then down the other side he would race, one mile, two, then three. Finally when he could no longer see any man-made thing he came to rest, leaning on the stout back-country poles. Max came to a rest at his feet and sat in the snow, first scratching an ear then looking up at Thaddeus as in, “What’s up?”

  Thaddeus decided he was going to have to make some changes in his life. Working with Shep on the Steinmar murder case was huge and it would pay off handsomely in new work, headlines, and new notoriety not just in Arizona but around the Southwest, among other lawyers where criminal referrals might result. But on the other hand he also had the Turquoise Begay case, where a nasty, hypercritical religious zealot of a martinet judge was after his license and after his client. She probably deserved better than what he could offer her, especially in the sense of representation by an attorney who wasn’t perpetually in her judge’s sights and waiting for the shot to ring out that would fell him. Definitely she deserved better than that.

  So he made a decision. A preliminary decision, maybe, but he was seriously thinking of doing it. He was going to ask H. Ivan Trautman to withdraw his appointment and find another, more appropriate lawyer to defend the young girl. It wasn’t fair to Turquoise and in a way it wasn’t fair to Thaddeus either. Besides, with gunshot residue on her shirt and probably her DNA yet to be turned up on the gun, she was looking guiltier by the day. Maybe H. Ivan knew something or saw something that Thaddeus didn’t know or see after all. Maybe it was a case where she should plea-bargain and serve her time in the Department of Corrections penal system. He kicked at the snow with his ski and Max stood up. The dog asked with his eyes, “Why are we stopped? Are we leaving yet?”

  “C’mon, buddy,” Thaddeus muttered to his companion. “We’ve got a rough trail ahead of us. Let’s get to it.”

  Thirty minutes later he was back home and pouring the first coffee of the day. Max was happily crunching his pellets laced with Parmesan powder.

  Max had his tastes, Thaddeus was finding his own.

  Getting disbarred was not among them.

  29

  The next day, Thaddeus crossed Aspen to the cour
thouse and headed upstairs to see DA Wrasslin Russell. It was time to either resolve the Turquoise Begay case or withdraw and he had decided to begin with the DA herself.

  From his favorite chair in the DA’s waiting room he could again look straight into her office. Again with the nails while talking on the phone. Hold up the hand, inspect the nails, talk into the phone, switch hands, check the other nails. Something had to be noted on a pad, which stole away precious nail-gazing time, Thaddeus saw. Finally he was allowed to pass into the DA’s sanctum.

  “Push has come to shove,” he told the DA even before he sat down. “What will you give me if Turquoise Begay pleads? Best deal?”

  Wrasslin sat way back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head. She appeared thoughtful for several moments, as if the idea had never occurred to her before. Which, Thaddeus knew, was a ruse and all for show; she’d known from the first time she read the police report exactly what she wanted out of the case. Now she was just appearing to do her job as the ruminative, serious-minded prosecutor.

  At last she leaned forward. “She’s ready to plead?”

  “I’m just saying. What if she pled?”

  “At one time I suggested second-degree murder. Fifteen to twenty-five max. But you said no.”

  “Is it still on the table? I’m just asking here.”

  “Hardly. We have gunshot residue and probably DNA.”

  “Which is pure argument. Tell me what you really want, best offer, right now.”

  “Fifty years, plea to first degree. She’d be out in forty, maybe thirty-five.”

  “What? Get serious, Wrasslin. We’re talking plea here, not worst-case scenario.”

  “It is best-case. Tell the truth, Mr. Murfee, I’m unwilling to trade cows. If you want less than fifty then take her to trial and prove second degree. Or manslaughter. But you asked me, so I told you.”

  She thinks she has me, Thaddeus realized, and she thinks I’m afraid of the case, that’s why I’m here. Maybe she even sees me down on my knees, begging.

  “She had gunshot residue on her shirt because she shot at a predator that day,” he said.

  “I’m sure she’d say that.”

  “And you don’t know for certain she had Randy Begay’s DNA.”

  “I’m betting otherwise. At the very least, I’ve got her in a huge lie.”

  He looked down at the desk. He had to admit, she had him there. It definitely wasn’t going to look good for Turquoise to now change her story and make the case of her life being one long sexual exploitation by Uncle Randy. Who was going to believe she had lied? Worse yet, the prosecutor would get to say, Hey, she lied then, what makes you think she isn’t lying now? In asking the question rhetorically, the answer came to Thaddeus: the diaries. Wrasslin knew nothing about the diaries.

  “Katy Murfee is picking up a half-dozen diaries today that will prove Randy Begay began raping this girl on her tenth birthday and kept committing the same crime against her every day until he was killed.”

  “Diaries? Where are these diaries?”

  “Never mind. They’re being retrieved.”

  “I demand the right to inspect.”

  “And inspect you shall.”

  “In fact, I want complete copies, now that you’ve put sexual abuse into the case.”

  “And complete copies you shall get. Subject to the court sealing the file.”

  “By Friday.”

  “Done. Consider this, please. Assume she was being raped by this monster and assume I can prove it with the diaries. What would you say to voluntary manslaughter and ten years?”

  Wrasslin let out a sharp—but forced—laugh. “I’d say fifty years. Rape is no excuse. There is no claim she shot him in self-defense or she was fearful of it happening imminently. She gunned him down in cold blood, near as we can tell.”

  “She hasn’t confessed to the shooting.”

  “True. We don’t have her admitting it. But we don’t need her confession, either.”

  “Fifteen years and five years probation.”

  “Get lost, Murfee. Fifty years, bottom-line. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I actually have a real job to do.”

  “I’m going to put her on the stand. Believe me, the jury will fall in love with this little angel.”

  She shrugged. “They just might. But they’re still going to convict her anyway. Some of the most deadly serial killers in history were attractive, kindly men. Look at Ted Bundy. His charm swept women off their feet. Until he got them alone and then took them off their feet forever. Your girl can be attractive, which she is. And her story can be compelling, which it probably is, growing up on the reservation in all that poverty and squalor. And she may even have been the victim of serial sexual assaults by Randy Begay. That still didn’t give her the right to execute him. Sorry, buddy, no dice.”

  “Get real, Wrasslin, give me something to take her.”

  “Forty years. Final offer. Take it or leave it by Friday or the deal goes away forever. We have trial in three weeks. Excuse me now, but I have to get ready and can’t spend any more time with you today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Or—you get the picture, Mr. Murfee.”

  “Thad.”

  “Mr. Murfee. Goodbye.”

  Thaddeus stood in front of the DA’s cluttered desk. He shrugged helplessly.

  “Then you leave me no choice but to take her to trial and win her freedom. Never say I didn’t give you the chance to do something reasonable here, Wrasslin.”

  “Roslin.”

  “Thad.”

  “Mr. Murfee.”

  “Wrasslin.”

  “Get the hell out!”

  30

  Two days later, early in the afternoon, Thaddeus met with Shep in his office. Shep was negotiating a Winston cigarette down to ash and waving his arms wildly as he told about his latest conquest, a tax fraud case out of San Francisco. Thaddeus listened politely, said “Ooh” and “Ahh” on cue, and waited for his employer to get down to why he had called him over.

  Without breaking stride, Shep abruptly asked, “So what about our DA’s widow? Was it self-defense?”

  Thaddeus stiffened in his chair. He hadn’t been expecting to deliver a colloquy on Arizona’s self-defense laws. Still, he knew the law forward and backward.

  “Self-defense flies if there’s an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death. The question is, does our dearly departed DA have the chops?”

  “Funny, funny, Thad boy. But seriously?”

  “Savage biting and chasing from upstairs to downstairs, tripping and throwing down—does that equal self-defense? Put it this way, the judge has to give you a jury instruction on self-defense. Whether you can sell it to a jury is another matter.”

  “Oh, I can sell it to a jury. I can sell candles to General Electric.”

  “Then you can sell self-defense, I’m fairly confident.”

  “Why don’t we do this? Let’s task you with a brief on self-defense, something to hand to the judge when we’re arguing jury instructions.”

  Thaddeus nodded. “Done.”

  “By the way, was my check good?”

  He was referring to the $50,000 retainer check handed to Thaddeus last time they met.

  “Good as gold. And much appreciated. I can put the cans back in the cabinet and start eating out of the refrigerator again.”

  “Good enough. Any other burning issues?”

  Thaddeus’ eyes narrowed. “One thing bothers me. If Angelina knew John was sexually abusing their daughter, why was she still with him? Why hadn’t she kicked his sorry ass out in the street?”

  Shep nodded in agreement. “That has been plaguing me too. Any sane woman would have immediately sued his ass for divorce and ejected him. Why did she let him hang around?”

  “Unless she was planning his death all along. Maybe she set this whole thing up.”

  Shep smiled and stretched his arms luxuriously. “Now you’re rounding third and heading for home. She was setting him up. I spotted that
immediately. That’s why I helped make up the cock and bull story about being chased downstairs and thrown to the floor.”

  “So why won’t a jury pick up on that too?”

  “Simple. We convince them he had her terrified. Battered-wife syndrome. Plus you can’t forget the bite marks. Brutal attack, and all that.”

  “You’re telling me she lured him downstairs and shot him?”

  “I didn’t write down the details as she told them to me—never do. I wrote down the details as I told them to her.”

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  “Thaddeus, I told you before. This is how it’s done. If you can’t live with it, you shouldn’t be doing criminal law.”

  Thaddeus knew his face was white. He felt the blood draining away as he considered what Shep was telling him—rather, what Shep was demanding of him, that he go along with the game. Except it wasn’t a game, it was making stuff up and presenting made-up stuff to a jury. The state bar would disbar someone it caught doing that. Of course, it was Shep who would be presenting the perjury, not him. He gulped a deep breath and once again decided to close his eyes and go along for the ride—if nothing else, to see where it went. He would play along and if it ever came down to a decision about him personally, he would decide then.

  “I can live with it all right. If you can.”

  Shep sighed. “Look. The cops make shit up, I make shit up. The cops fudge, I fudge. The cops say they found her all cleaned up and tidy, I say she was in shock and acting reflexively. And on it goes until somebody wins. That’s called justice.”

  “What about preclusion? She had a duty to shoot only as a last resort.”

  “Hey, he had her prone on the floor, overpowering her, biting her viciously enough to break the skin—how in the world is she supposed to retreat from that?”

  “If the jury believes her story in the first place.”

  “They’ll believe her. This is a woman who actually attends church. Twenty years taking care of other people’s kids in her job at Children and Family Services. Mother of one, sadly departed.”