“Advertising, right?”
“No, that must have been some other girl. I’m in magazines.” She smiled to soften her gibe. “Can I get you something from the bar?”
“No, actually, I don’t think I’ll stay. I just wanted to walk you upstairs. I have an appointment in the morning, and you, my sweet, deserve more time than I could give you tonight.”
“And more concentration.” She smiled.
The man felt a quick stab of paranoia. Why was she talking about that? What had she heard about him? “What makes you say that?”
Midge was surprised to hear a note of harshness in his tone. “I was kidding, silly.”
As she walked past him, she stroked his cheek, so lightly he barely felt it. “Come on, one drink, then you’re on your way. You won’t regret it.”
The man felt the numb feeling inside him grow a little denser as the woman walked toward him with passion in her eyes.
This woman was bolder than the others, and the action soon heated up, so he quickly hauled out the secret he had dug up from her past and slammed against her as she lay exposed and vulnerable.
Instead of just pulling back, she took him on at his own game—threatening him about what might happen to a man who had already been accused of date rape. He hadn’t realized that his trial—even with the acquittal—would so fundamentally change his control over the game.
The evening suddenly spun out of control; the game got away from him. He closed his hands around her neck to block out her harangue, and the familiar surge of power masquerading as desire forced him to hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he left the hotel room.
Chapter Thirty-one
CAMBRIDGE—MONDAY, AUGUST 7
The last two months—since the Campbell victory—had been the most productive of Abe Ringel’s life. He had experienced more professional successes and kudos in that period than in the prior twenty years. He had gotten the Ice Puppy indictment dismissed when the complaining witness withdrew her charges.
Even Senator Bergson had received merely a slap on the wrist from the Senate Ethics Committee after Abe threatened to put the entire Senate on trial for tolerating sexual harassment over the years. A terrific new case, with high visibility written all over it, had just come into the office. It involved a wealthy young man named Brian Bulger, who had killed his elderly mother to spare her the agony of learning he was HIV positive and gay. Other well-paying clients were so plentiful that many had to be turned away. A TV movie was being produced of the Campbell case, and Sam Waterston, an Emmy winner, had been signed to play Abe.
“It’s just the beginning,” said Arthur Berg, the public relations consultant Abe had hired following the Campbell victory. Life was good at work.
Even the Nancy Rosen case seemed to be moving in the right direction. The police had learned that Monty Williams had seduced Rodney Owens’s sixteen-year-old niece and made her pregnant. Owens, they believed, had killed Williams in revenge. Without Nancy’s testimony, however, they had only a circumstantial case. So Duncan had offered Nancy a deal: her freedom in exchange for testifying against Owens. They did not ask her to testify as to what Owens had told her concerning the murder itself, since that would constitute a lawyer-client-privileged communication, which would be inadmissible at a trial. Instead they wanted her to testify about the allegedly criminal conversation that had led to his fugitivity. That conversation would be admissible since it dealt with a future crime—becoming a fugitive. The prosecutor believed that this incriminating discussion, which showed consciousness of guilt, coupled with the circumstantial evidence of his involvement in the Williams killing would assure a conviction.
Not unexpectedly, Nancy had turned down the deal. So the prosecutor turned to Justin, offering him the same deal: if he testified as to what Nancy had told him about the conversation, Nancy would be freed. Nancy, of course, urged Justin not to testify.
Despite her plea, Justin decided to help her. He owed nothing to Owens, and Nancy had not told him about the Owens conversation in confidence. So he was free to do the right thing. Although Justin’s testimony would be double hearsay—he would testify as to what Nancy told him Owens had told her—Abe and Justin believed that a judge would probably allow it to be introduced into evidence. Hearsay was generally not allowed as evidence, but there was an exception for certain kinds of hearsay—if they had special qualities of truthfulness. What Nancy had told Justin was an admission of wrongdoing on her part—encouraging her client to become a fugitive—and the law presumed that people didn’t go around admitting crimes unless they were really guilty. Therefore the law allowed this kind of hearsay to be used. The same was true of what Owens had said to Nancy before he flew the coop. It was an admission of intended wrongdoing.
In any event, it didn’t look as if the case would actually come to a trial.
When Owens’s lawyer heard about the proposed deal, he decided to strike one of his own, whereby Owens would plead to manslaughter and get ten years. It was not quite a done deal, but unless there were complications, Nancy could be out in a couple of days. She would be angry at Justin and Abe, but that was okay. Better an angry and free Nancy than a friendly imprisoned Nancy. For Abe, as well as for Justin, this was a liberating prospect.
Life was good, except for the bittersweet reality that Emma was leaving in a week for New York. “Can’t you stay until your birthday?” Abe asked her. “We always spend September 1 together.”
“Not this year, Dad. I’ve got to be in New York on September 1. My roommate and I are going out to celebrate the beginning of college.”
“Can I come?”
“Oh, Daddy. You’ve got to get used to the fact that I’m moving on. There’ll be plenty of time for us together. This is an important time for me. New friends. Even new boyfriends. Jon’s not invited. I want to meet new people. We’ve agreed that we should see other people. I don’t want to be a holiday dater who waits for her man to come east from Stanford on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“I think that’s a good idea, Emma. I like Jon, but you seem to be outgrowing him. I don’t think you should go steady with anyone. Play the field.”
“God, you are a dinosaur. ‘Go steady,’ ‘play the field.’ I didn’t think anyone talked like that since The Brady Bunch.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I love you, Daddy. Let’s go to a Red Sox game this week before I go to New York.”
“Sox are out of town. You know that. Stop patronizing me.” Abe hugged Emma and kissed her good-bye.
Abe took a cab downtown to see his investment adviser. He had hired the company that currently handled the Clintons’ finances. Since the Campbell case his income had skyrocketed. Last year he had earned $250,000, which was pretty good by Boston small law firm standards. This year, over the past three months alone he had earned $400,000, and it looked as though he would soon break into seven figures for the first time in his career.
In the cab he began to leaf through the second section of The New York Times. Abe had always been fascinated by New York. After law school he had given some serious thought to moving there. But Boston had a firm grip on his allegiance. Now that his daughter was moving to New York, he tortured himself by reading the crime stories, especially those that took place on the Upper West Side, where Barnard was located.
Suddenly Abe’s eyes focused on a small headline: MAGAZINE EDITOR KILLED IN MIDTOWN HOTEL. He began to read the all-too-typical story: “The body of Midge Lester was found in the Plaza Hotel room in which she had registered the previous day. Ms. Lester, who was an editor at Chicago magazine, had died of asphyxiation. Detectives confirmed that she had been sexually abused. There was no sign of forced entry, and hotel personnel said that the killer was probably an acquaintance of the dead woman. No one saw anyone with Ms. Lester after she arrived at the hotel, and telephone records showed no phone calls. The police acknowledged that they had no suspects or leads.”
Abe gasped out
loud as he read the story. “What’s wrong?” asked the startled driver.
“Turn around and take me back to Harvard Square!”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just need to get to my office.”
He took his cellular phone out of his briefcase and called the office. “I need Justin now!”
Justin was on the phone in an instant. “What’s up, Abe?”
“Do you have a copy of The New York Times?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn to page B-four, bottom right hand column.”
There was silence on the phone as Justin found and read the story. Then, suddenly, Abe heard him scream, “Oh, my God! It’s Campbell. It’s his MO!”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions. It sounds like dozens of run-of-the-mill rape-murders in New York. There’s nothing that ties it directly to Campbell.”
“Then why did you call me so upset?”
“Because there’s only one way to find out whether it is Campbell.”
“I’m off to the computer room.”
“I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Abe raced up the three flights of steps to his office, bolted past Gayle and into the computer room, locking the door behind him to make certain no one else wandered in. Then, without saying a word, he walked over to the computer and looked directly at the screen, hoping against hope it would show that he and Justin had reacted too hastily to the news story.
Justin was staring at the words that had just materialized on the screen as if they were the text of a death sentence—which is exactly what they may have been, if and when Campbell had punched them up at some point in the not-too-distant past.
Abe’s eyes quickly found the name he was hoping he wouldn’t see. The news story was several years old, from the Los Angeles Times. It told a sordid tale of a beautiful young married woman in Beverly Hills who had become a high-priced prostitute in order to be financially independent of her husband. The details of the news account weren’t important, but the conclusion was as clear as the name Midge Lester on the screen: somehow Campbell had managed to find this account of yet another perfect date rape victim. No woman who had been a prostitute and who had obviously moved to another city and started a new life would be eager to bring charges.
Joe’s violence had apparently gotten out of hand during this rape, and Midge Lester had ended up dead. Maybe this death was accidental, but it was certainly predictable. Campbell’s appetite for sexual violence was obviously getting harder to satisfy.
Abe and Justin both peered at the screen as if hoping the awful telltale letters glowing there would somehow disappear. Neither could speak. It was the criminal defense lawyer’s worst nightmare: they had caused the death of an innocent woman by successfully defending a violent rapist they suspected was guilty. Every decent criminal lawyer obsessed about this possibility. Few ever experienced it.
The silence was broken by Justin bursting out in tears. Abe put his arm around the younger man’s shoulder and tried to console him, yet he could find no words of comfort either for Justin or for himself. Finally Abe spoke.
“There’s nothing anyone can say, Justin. And there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent this. We live under a system of rules, and we had no choice but to play by those rules.”
“I can’t live with rules that produce this. We’re not talking about only rape anymore. Jennifer Dowling will eventually recover. Midge Lester won’t. It’s over for her. And the worst part of it is that we had it within our power to save her life.”
“No, we didn’t,” Abe said, “not without breaking the rules.”
“I don’t give a damn about the rules! Who knows which poor woman will be next? Abe, we’ve got to do something—”
“Take it easy. We can’t just call the cops on our client. We believe he killed Midge Lester only because we have confidential information we obtained from him as his lawyers. I promised him that I would never reveal his computer secret. Just because he’s not our client anymore doesn’t mean we can blow the whistle on him.”
“Well, what can we do?”
“First thing we can do is call Campbell and confront him with our knowledge.”
“Okay, you call him. I’ll listen on the extension.”
Abe dialed Campbell’s home number, hoping to find he was away at preseason training camp and hence could not have been in New York when the killing took place. No such luck.
“Hello?”
“This is Abe Ringel. You know why I’m calling, Joe.”
“Hey, Abe, it’s nice to hear your voice. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Cut the bullshit. We’ve read today’s newspaper, so there’s no use beating around the bush. We know you did it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What part of the newspaper are you referring to?” Campbell asked.
“Don’t bullshit us, Joe,” Justin interjected angrily. “A woman named Midge Lester was killed Saturday night at the Plaza Hotel, and you killed her.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. I was home Saturday night watching TV. Do you want me to tell you what was on?”
“I’m sure you could tell us. You probably taped it. But we’re not buying it,” Abe said. “You were at the Plaza Saturday night, having sex with Midge Lester. Things got out of hand after you got her to say no. You grabbed her around the neck. She choked to death. And you did it.”
“I’m not the only guy who has sex with women in hotels,” Campbell said nonchalantly. “You guys have really been watching too many Perry Mason reruns. Why don’t you leave it to New York’s Finest to solve this one?”
“Because they don’t know what we know,” Justin replied. “They don’t know about your little computer-assisted rape game. But we do—and we’re going to tell them.”
“No, you’re not, damn it,” Campbell said, showing anger for the first time. “If you tell them anything I told you while you were my lawyers, I’ll have you disbarred and I’ll sue you for everything you’re worth.”
“Some things,” Justin said, “are more important than money. Don’t try to threaten us. We’re going to do the right thing, no matter what it costs us.”
“Well, the right thing is to preserve your obligation to me—to shut up. In any event, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t kill that woman in the hotel. If you try to blow the whistle on me, you’ll both end up looking like idiots when they find the real killer.”
“We’ve got you dead to rights on this one, Joe,” Abe said. “Justin searched for the name of the dead woman in our various databases, and he came up with the same kind of background that has characterized your previous victims. We now have three women—all of whom fit the same modus operandi. If Cheryl Puccio ever got her hands on that piece of information, you’d be on trial for murder before you could say ‘guilty as charged.’”
“It’s just a fucking coincidence, Abe. Lots of women have backgrounds, especially those who go to hotel rooms with guys they’ve just met.”
“Somehow you manage to find them all,” Justin said. “It’s a pattern, not a coincidence. And we know how you find them. It’s there in the public record—if Puccio just knew where to look.”
“So now you’re threatening me, right? What are you planning to do? Write an anonymous letter to Puccio telling her to do a Nexis search on the dead woman and Jennifer Dowling?”
“And maybe a few other women we’ve learned about,” Justin added.
“Abe won’t let you do that. It would ruin his career. He’d no longer be known as the lawyer who won the Joe Campbell case, but rather as the lawyer who falsely accused his own client of murder.”
“And maybe also,” Abe added pensively, “as the lawyer who caused the death of Midge Lester.”
“See, Justin,” Campbell said. “I’m right about Abe. Your boss is too much of a realist to blow his hard-earned reputation on your little game of sh
ow-and-tell. In any event, you’re both wrong about this killing. It wasn’t me.”
“Right,” Justin replied. “And you didn’t rape Jennifer Dowling, either.”
“That’s right. And that’s what I like to hear. My lawyers—who were very well paid to defend me—taking my side for a change, not trying to become amateur prosecutors. By the way, you’ll be relieved to know that I’m going to begin seeing a shrink once a week—she’s a psychologist who specializes in athletes with anxiety. If talking to her will relieve your anxiety, you have my permission to call her. Otherwise why don’t you guys find a shrink who specializes in lawyers with anxiety.” Campbell slammed down the phone, leaving them hanging.
Justin cursed. “What did you expect from that manipulative son of a bitch—a full confession? Permission to turn him in?”
“No, but I hoped he might be a bit more frightened. He saw right through your bluff.”
“I’m not sure it is a bluff,” Justin said. “I really am thinking of turning him in.”
“Justin, you know you can’t do that. It would be the end of your career.”
“And yours. That’s why I’m not gonna do anything alone. We’re in this together. And we’ve got to come up with something that stops this guy. There has got to be a way.”
“I’m all for it—if we can find some way to stop him without breaking too many rules. Maybe stretch them a bit, but not break them.”
“Okay,” Justin said with a small smile, his first since getting the call from Abe. “I’ll look at the existing law, and you start thinking; about how to make new law.”
Chapter Thirty-three
“Haskel, I really need your judgment.”
“Do I have any judgment left?” Haskel asked, lifting his head slightly from where it had been resting on his chest.
“How have you been? Have you been taking your medicine?”
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