Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “You must have been before my time,” she said, with a wry smile.

  “By several years.”

  “Why is the beachbum lawyer coming out of retirement to take a loser of a case like this?”

  “Beachbum?”

  “We have mutual friends.”

  “Oh?”

  “The girls.”

  “Ah.”

  “They speak highly of you.”

  “I live on the bay. I hardly ever go to the beach.”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “For now,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m representing him for now. He has no money, and I’m afraid a public defender would not give his defense the time it deserves.”

  “I thought he came from money.”

  “Apparently not. I understand from his brother that he’s broke. He can’t get a lawyer without money, and he’s afraid that the public defender wouldn’t get too serious about defending him. He’s in kind of a bad situation.”

  “Bad situation? Matt, may I call you Matt?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Matt, he’s been indicted for first degree murder. That’s more than a bad situation.”

  “He didn’t do it, and I don’t think you’ll be able to prove a case.”

  “He’s not helping himself by remaining a fugitive. Are you going to bring him in?” The mood had shifted in a hurry. We were down to business.

  “I don’t have that kind of control.”

  “Have you actually been retained to represent Logan?”

  “Yes.”

  “If he’s broke, how has he paid you?”

  “He bought me a pizza.”

  “A pizza? For a capital murder case? That’s not much.”

  “It was a supreme. Had everything on it.”

  “How can we get this thing moving, Matt? I want him in custody.”

  “Let me see your evidence.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “You’ll have to give it to me sooner or later.”

  “I don’t have to do anything until he’s arraigned, and we can’t arraign him until we arrest him.”

  “Look, Elizabeth. You’ve had more than a month to investigate this thing. You’re not likely to get any more evidence than you have now. Why not give me what you’ve got, and let’s see if I can talk you into dropping the case.”

  She looked at me with incredulity. She started to say something, thought better of it, and closed her mouth. Then, “No can do, Matt. Bring him in, and I’ll show you my cards.”

  The Sarasota Memorial Hospital takes up a lot of space on the Tamiami Trail south of town. It has grown over the years and has developed a reputation as a first class institution. Tucked away on the back side of the campus is a small two story office building that seems out of place among the gleaming white buildings of the hospital. The building houses some of the junior executives of the hospital and Bert Hawkins, the Chief Medical Examiner for the Twelfth Judicial Circuit.

  I had met Dr. Hawkins on several occasions. He was a golfing buddy of Tom Bishop, the former Longboat Key police chief. and had once joined us on a fishing trip on a large boat owned by one of the winter visitors who had more money that God. I hoped that he would remember me.

  I went into the office and told the receptionist that I didn’t have an appointment, but that I had been in the neighborhood and thought I would take the chance that Dr. Hawkins was free for lunch. She took my name, asked me to wait a minute and disappeared behind a closed door. Within a couple of minutes Bert Hawkins came striding through the same door.

  “Matt, good to see you. I was asking Tom Bishop about you just the other day.” He was a large man, about my height but built like a linebacker. He probably weighed 250 pounds, but there was no fat. He had a full head of iron gray hair that he wore over his ears. You got the impression that he was not being fashionable, but just didn’t get to a barber shop regularly.

  “Hi, Bert. Glad to see you. I just dropped in to see if you had time for lunch.”

  “Sure do. I’m buried under paper work back there and was looking for an excuse for a break.”

  “How’s Marina Jack suit you?”

  “Great. I like their grouper fritters.”

  We took my Explorer and headed back north on Tamiami Trail, making small talk about fishing and the doctor’s golf game. We pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant overlooking the municipal marina and the bay. The sun was high and hot, and by the time we parked and walked to the restaurant we were both sweating.

  We were taken to a small table overlooking the bay. There was a little wind and the bay rippled slightly as the breeze crossed its face. A small schooner, sails furled, motored under the Ringling Causeway bridge. A couple of jet skies cut across its bow, and I could see the captain give the finger to the drivers.

  We both ordered iced tea and grouper fritters. When the tea came, Bert looked at me and smiled. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “About what?” I asked, all genuine surprise.

  “Deductive reasoning, Matt,” he laughed. “You’re Logan’s buddy, you’re a lawyer, and I’m the state’s witness to the rape of a dead girl.”

  “Well, I’ve been meaning to call you for lunch anyway. I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Are you representing Logan?”

  “Yes.” There. It was done. I was now back in harness. I would have to see this thing through. Logan was my client, like it or not.

  “Have you talked to the SA’s office?”

  “Yes. I met with Elizabeth Ferguson this morning. She won’t give me anything.”

  “I can’t tell you a lot, Matt, and it’ll probably piss Elizabeth off if I tell you anything. But you’ll have a right to know what I know sooner or later, so why not sooner.”

  “I won’t be telling anyone we talked Bert, if that bothers you.”

  “Hell, no. I’m going to tell you everything I know, and then I’m going to call Elizabeth and tell her what I told you. You lawyers play too many games for me. Let’s throw up the evidence and let the chips fall where they may, is what I say in mixed metaphors.”

  “Was strangulation the cause of death?”

  “Yes, without question.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “I don’t know. There was bruising around the opening of the vagina, but there was no tearing of the tissue inside. Usually in rapes we see both. The woman is scared out of her mind and is certainly not secreting the fluids that lubricate the vagina for intercourse. When she is penetrated there is tearing of the fragile tissue just inside the opening. I didn’t find that in this case, but I did find semen in the vagina, and DNA tells us that it belonged to Logan.”

  “What led you to conclude that she had been raped?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t conclude that. I gave my report to Banion, and he took it from there.”

  “Do you think the bruising is enough evidence to make a rape charge stick?”

  “If I were asked to assume that a woman of Connie Sanborne’s age had said she had been raped, and the examination findings were what I found here, I would have to say that in all likelihood a rape did occur. But here, we have a dead woman. She can’t tell us what happened. I would testify to the facts as I found them without reaching any conclusions.”

  “Would rough sex cause the kind of bruising you saw?”

  “I guess it could, but it would have to be pretty rough.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Nothing of any real significance. She had had a lot of broken bones at some time in her life, but that was years ago.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “When I opened her up I noticed that several of her ribs on either side had been broken and healed back together. There was also a thin scar behind her right ear, as if a plastic surgeon had done a face lift. Only, when a face lift is done, the scars are on both sides. I decided
to x-ray the face and found that her right cheek bone had been shattered. It looked as if a pretty good plastic man went in and put her back together. I also found a bruise on her brain, indicating that she had had a bad concussion at some point in her life. All this was years old though, and really of no consequence in terms of her murder. It just piqued my scientific curiosity.”

  “She was married to a guy who used to beat the hell out of her on a regular basis.”

  “That would explain the fractures.”

  “Were you able to determine a time of death?”

  “Not exactly. But based on the temperature of the body when my tech got to the scene and the amount of rigor, I’d estimate that she was killed between eleven p.m. and one a.m. We wouldn’t be off more than an hour either way.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, that was about it. I can get you a copy of the report when we get back to the office.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  We ate our meal and chatted about mutual friends and the plight of the Buccaneers, deciding that they would probably end the season at the bottom of the heap again. I drove the ME back to his office, got a copy of his report, and went home to Longboat.

  Chapter 7

  After graduating from law school at the top of my class, I joined an old and very established law firm in Orlando, going to work in its litigation section. I did all the expected things. I joined the Jaycees, the Young Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis Club, and worked for the firm like a son of a bitch. I tried a lot of cases and won more than I lost. I rose in the ranks of the various organizations I had joined and became well known in the community. I was active in politics and counted among my closest friends two Congressmen, a United States Senator, the Governor of Florida, and many lesser local office holders. I was representing large corporations and making a lot of money. I had the obligatory foreign car, the large house and a thirty-six foot boat that I kept on Longboat Key and spent as much time on as possible.

  While in law school I had made the best investment in my life. I married Laura. She was beautiful and warm and loving. She didn’t really care about all the material things I provided, but simply wanted children and more of me. I kept putting off the children, and not giving her enough of my very valuable time, and finally blew the investment.

  Four years before, I had come home late one night after a political meeting and several drinks with the boys. She told me to sit down as she had something important to tell me. She told me that her biological clock was ticking, and that she did not have much more time to have the family she had always wanted. She said that she did not really know me anymore, and although she loved me, she had to do what was right for her. While visiting her brother in Atlanta the year before, she had met a widower, a doctor, who was raising his three year old child alone. They had seen a lot of each other since then, and he had asked her to marry him. He wanted more children, and she had decided to take him up on his offer. She was in love, and thought she could make a better life in Atlanta with him. She was leaving. She wanted no alimony, and nothing of our property other than her automobile. She would appreciate it if I would quietly get us divorced as soon as possible.

  My world fell apart. I guess I had been self destructing for quite some time, but Laura’s decision was the terminal event. Laura had been the only real anchor in my life, and as I thought about it, the only person who really mattered. Or at least, without her nothing else mattered much at all.

  I was depressed, feeling sorry for my rotten self, and drinking too much. I dropped out of the organizations that had been such a part of my life. I spent less and less time in the office and more and more time on my boat, wondering what had gone so very wrong in my carefully constructed and successful life.

  My partners at the law firm were understanding and tried to help. I was unresponsive, and finally the executive committee of the firm decided that it would be in the best interest of all of us if I left. They bought out my share, and I sold the house. With the money in hand, I moved aboard the boat. For six months I hung around the marina and did nothing but drink beer and feel sorry for myself.

  By that time I was beginning to run out of money, and I was not too concerned about what I would do when that happened. One day I was sitting on the bridge of the boat drinking my fifth or sixth beer of the morning, wondering what to do about a job, when I heard a man call, “Ahoy, the Miss Laura.” An archaic greeting, more fitted for a fine yacht than my relatively small craft. I turned to see a well dressed man of about fifty coming down the dock. He was wearing a pair of white duck pants, a solid blue polo shirt, and blue Sperry topsiders without socks. He had a gold President Rolex watch on his left wrist and a large class ring from the University of Georgia on his left ring finger. His hair was solid white, cut fairly short, and combed back from a razor part.

  “Are you Matt Royal?” he asked.

  “Sure am. Come aboard.”

  He climbed into the cockpit and up the ladder to the bridge. “I’m Jason Clark. I’m a friend of Laura and Jeff Simmons. I believe she’s your former wife.”

  “Yes, she is. How about a beer?”

  “A little early for me, thanks.”

  I opened the cooler and took out my last Miller Lite. “How is Laura?” I asked, opening the beer can.

  “She’s worried about you. She told me that you’ve had a bad time since the divorce, that you’re wasting your life, and that you’re probably the best lawyer in the state of Florida, if not the entire country.”

  “Well, I’m not a lawyer anymore. I’m what is known as a boat bum, and very happy about it. Besides, Laura is prejudiced.”

  “There are several other people whose judgment I respect, who back up Laura’s assessment. I want you to handle a case for me.”

  “Wonderful. I don’t have an office or secretary, and I’m probably not even current with the Florida Bar. Go see my old partners in Orlando.”

  “Did you ever hear of Jasonics Corporation?”

  “Sure, the medical equipment manufacturer. The biggest in the country. You want them sued?”

  “I own Jasonics. I’m a physician and a tinkerer. More tinkerer than physician, I guess. Twenty years ago I invented an artificial heart valve and got rich on it. Since then I’ve patented twenty-seven medical devices that are the heart of Jasonics. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever spend, and I’ve earned every dime of it by hard work and honest dealings.”

  The rest of his story was similar to many I’d heard over the years. Five years before, at the age of 46, he got out of the day to day business end of Jasonics. “Then I got sick. My wife was killed in an automobile accident, and I wasn’t too much good for anything. Two years ago, while recuperating, at the suggestion of a friend, I began tinkering again. I came up with an idea for a new laser tool for microsurgery. I fabricated the equipment and took it to a friend of mine, a surgeon, to see what he thought. He tried it out, and told me that it was inadequate for the purpose intended. I gave up on the idea and didn’t think too much more about it.”

  Then, two months before, he had discovered that the identical piece of equipment was being manufactured and marketed by Jasonics biggest competitor, and his friend, the surgeon, was on their board of directors.

  “Did you confront the surgeon?” I asked.

  “Yes. He just laughed and told me to go to hell. He said there was no way to prove he hadn’t invented the tool, and he had gotten the patent on it.”

  “Why didn’t you take the idea to Jasonics in the first place?”

  “I’m not sure. Although I own the whole company, it was being run by a very competent staff, and I had been sick and out of it for three years at the time. I guess I wanted a proven item to take to the company. Maybe I just wanted to show them that I was still a worthwhile individual.”

  “Sounds to me as if you need a good lawyer. How much money is involved in something like this?”

  “I don’t know. The money isn’t really
important to me. I’ll probably give it all to charity. It’s just that this snake of a surgeon should not be able to get away with this. If there’s any justice in the world he should not profit from his theft.”

  “Look, Doc,” I said, “I learned a long time ago that there is a lot of justice in this world, but it usually has absolutely nothing to do with right and wrong. The system screws people every day and calls it justice. The big devour the small, the powerful the weak, and its all called justice. I was a trial lawyer for a long time, and I took advantage of a lot of people. It was a big game. See if you can out-think and out-talk the opposing lawyer. Never stop to think about abstract things, like right and wrong. The system works and will ensure a just outcome. That’s what we used to tell the civilians. Bullshit! The guys with the most money and the best lawyers win. Justice? Crap. It’s all crap. In all those years of trying lawsuits I never tried one that advanced mankind in any way. I won cases that I should not have, and I lost cases I should have won. Right and wrong had nothing to do with it. It was money, and power, and sleight of hand. You would spend thousands and thousands of dollars getting a case to trial. You would have the very best lawyers money could buy on both sides of the case. You would pay five hundred dollars an hour for expert witnesses on a given subject, and of course they would come to exactly opposite conclusions. Interestingly enough, their conclusions would always fit the theory of the case of the lawyer who had hired them. Did you ever notice in criminal cases where insanity is a defense that there are psychiatrists on both sides who examine the same poor son of a bitch of a defendant, and come to diametrically opposite conclusions? The prosecution’s shrink always says the guy was sane at the time of the crime, and the shrink hired by the defense always says he was insane. And they get all this high powered expensive talent into the courtroom where the judge presiding is some low paid clown who has worked his whole life for one state agency or another, who can’t or won’t make it in private practice, and for whom the law is a great mystery. And then the lawyers strive mightily to pick the dumbest people on the drivers’ license rolls to serve on the jury. Christ, the average juror is dumber that the average judge, and that takes some doing. Justice? Bullshit! It’s a term used in the legal business to buffalo the civilians. It’s all bullshit, and I’m glad I’m out of it.” I was running out of breath.