MD05 - The Confession

by Sheldon Siegel

  “I drove down Twenty-fifth street on my way home.”

  Which means she was within a block of Concepcion’s apartment.

  Chapter 25

  “My Ex-Wife Had Serious Emotional Problems”

  “Ms. Concepcion was a worthy adversary. It would be inappropriate to comment upon the pending case against the San Francisco archdiocese.”

  — Dennis Peterson. San Francisco Daily Legal Journal.

  “What did you think?” I ask Rosie. We’re waiting for the downtown train on the platform of the Sixteenth Street BART station.

  “Eduardo Lopez is a jerk.”

  No argument from me. “I was referring to his wife.”

  She looks at the TV monitor which notes that our train will arrive in two minutes, then she turns to me and says, “We gave her a chance to accuse her husband of everything from spousal abuse to murder, but she didn’t. It suggests to me that he may be a pathological liar who cheated on his wife, but murder seems out of character.”

  “Maybe she was protecting him.”

  “Why?”

  “To avoid the humiliation to her family–and herself.”

  “I don’t think so,” she decides. “We can’t afford to rule anybody out, but we can’t place him closer than a block away from Concepcion’s apartment.”

  I ask her about the burrito.

  “She could have picked it up two days earlier. We have no evidence he or anybody else from his restaurant delivered it.”

  Still too many holes to make a meaningful accusation. “What about Vicky?” I ask. “She can’t provide an alibi for the night Concepcion died.”

  I hear the distinctive beep of the BART train horn and the musty air starts to swirl. “The jealous wife is such a cliché,” she says. “Besides, we can’t place her in Concepcion’s apartment that night, either.”

  # # #

  Dennis Peterson greets me with a firm handshake, a gracious smile and a polite, “How can I help you, Mr. Daley?”

  The hallowed and virtually silent halls of Shanahan, Gallagher and O’Rourke look as if they were designed by the same guy who picked the furniture for the staid–and all male–Pacific Union Club in the old Flood mansion on Nob Hill. The dark paneling and subdued artwork suggest you need to pass an initiation ritual before they’ll let you in. Virtually every other law firm in San Francisco has gone to business casual, but not SG and O. The lawyers who speak in hushed tones are dressed in the same uniform: European-cut charcoal business suits, starched white shirts and subdued rep ties. It gives me the creeps.

  Concepcion’s ex-husband fits squarely in the mold. He’s in his mid-forties and could pass for Shanahan’s long-lost illegitimate son. He has the same blue eyes, perfect tan, rugged features and erect bearing, along with the modulated tone, impeccable wardrobe and understated mannerisms. The only significant difference is that Peterson’s hair is a chemically-enhanced jet black, whereas Shanahan’s has faded to a dignified gray.

  I lean back in an armchair opposite his mahogany desk. The people who work here place a premium on good manners–even when they’re sticking it to you–so I summon a respectful tone when I say, “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I need to ask you some questions about your ex-wife.”

  The Young Turk adjusts the maroon kerchief in his breast pocket and looks admiringly at his “ego wall,” where diplomas from Dartmouth, Harvard Business School and Yale Law School hang among various certificates from the state and federal courts to which he’s been admitted to practice. Most of us keep these trophies in boxes, but guys like Peterson seem to require constant reassurance that they are, in fact, licensed to practice law. “Mr. Daley,” he says, “I need you to bear with me for a moment. John wants to join us.”

  This is unplanned, but hardly surprising. Shanahan’s name is on the door and he has home field advantage. I have no choice. “Fine with me,” I say.

  He buzzes his secretary and asks her to summon the head honcho. Big John saunters in a moment later with a subdued smile and an outstretched hand. He’s had a shower and a shave since I last saw him, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing a fresh suit, but it’s hard to discern any difference from the one he was sporting yesterday. I wonder if there is a closet next to the mail room where the lawyers get their costumes every morning.

  Shanahan feigns interest in my well-being. “Good to see you again, Michael,” he lies. “Did you get some sleep?”

  “A few hours.”

  So ends the chitchat. Shanahan nods to Peterson and then turns back to me. It’s his firm and he’s going to call the shots. He tries to sound forthcoming. “Michael,” he says, “I was just talking to the archbishop.”

  I can guess what’s coming.

  “He asked me once more to try to impress upon you his great desire to have a member of our firm take the lead in Father Aguirre’s case.”

  “That isn’t going to be possible as long as Father Aguirre wants me to be his lawyer.”

  “We were hoping you might be able to convince him otherwise.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I’m asking you as a professional colleague and a friend–is there anything that I can say to change your mind?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  He sighs melodramatically and throws in the towel. He looks at his partner and says, “I’ve asked Dennis to be as open and candid as he possibly can.”

  Which means he isn’t going to tell me anything.

  Shanahan segues into the inevitable backpedaling. “You’ll have to bear in mind, however, that Dennis is representing the archdiocese. Obviously, if there is any information that may be confidential or sensitive, he will have to make a decision as to whether it is appropriate to reveal it to you.”

  Obviously. “The O’Connell case has no bearing on the charges against Father Aguirre,” I say.

  “The victim was the plaintiff’s attorney.”

  “That has nothing to do with the matters at hand.”

  “We’ll see.” Shanahan turns to his partner and says, “Do what you can to help him, Dennis. We’re all on the same side.”

  Peterson takes his cue. His inflection is almost a perfect imitation of Shanahan’s when he says, “The O’Connell case is on hold until the plaintiff finds another attorney. It will probably take a couple of weeks.” I pepper him with questions about the procedural status of the case and he gives me polite, but guarded answers. He isn’t going to tell me anything more than he absolutely must, and Shanahan is here to make sure he doesn’t overstep his bounds.

  I move in another direction. “How long have you been working here?”

  “Since I got out of Yale.”

  Why do people who attend Ivy League schools always manage to work their alma mater’s name into every conversation?

  His chest juts out two inches when he says, “I made partner after only six years. I was the youngest person ever elected and I sit on our firm’s executive committee.”

  This is far more important to him than it is to me, but I want to make him feel good about himself. “That’s very impressive,” I say. “You must be on the fast track in firm management.”

  His false modesty is transparent when he says, “I suppose.”

  If this place is anything like the law firm where I used to work, Shanahan presides over a puppet regime where he makes the calls on everything from partner compensation to the coffee in the lunchroom.

  Shanahan interjects, “Dennis is too modest to admit it, but he’s the chairman of our litigation department and he has a seat on our compensation committee. We think he has a very bright future in operations, but we don’t want to take him away from trying cases.” He nods to his disciple and adds, “He’s a superb trial lawyer.”

  I’m sure he is. Now that I’ve buttered him up a bit, it’s time to make him squirm. “I understand your ex-wife used to work here.”

  “She did. She left the firm shortly after our divorce. It wa
s her decision.”

  Sure, it was. “Was it for professional or personal reasons?”

  “Both. The specific circumstances surrounding her departure are confidential.”

  That’s all I’m going to get on this subject. I ask, “How long were you married?”

  “Two years.”

  “What happened?”

  “Excuse me?”

  You heard me. “Why did you split up?”

  “It didn’t work out.”

  The fact that you were cheating on her didn’t help. “Why not?”

  Shanahan intercedes. “This has nothing to do with Father Aguirre’s case,” he says.

  Not true. “We’re trying to determine Ms. Concepcion’s state of mind immediately prior to her death and we have reason to believe she never fully recovered from her divorce. If we can prove she committed suicide, Father Aguirre will be released and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Shanahan nods to Peterson. “Go ahead,” he says.

  His tone becomes more emphatic. “It just didn’t work out,” he says.

  I’ll have to do this in baby steps. “Let’s start with the basics. Who filed?”

  “She did.”

  “Why?”

  “She was under the mistaken impression that I had been unfaithful.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  He’s lying. “Did things get acrimonious?”

  “Not really.”

  “I understand you had a dispute over the division of property.”

  “Not true.”

  “That’s not the way I heard it.”

  “Where are you getting your information?”

  “I talked to your ex-mother-in-law this morning.”

  This elicits another awkward glance toward Shanahan. Peterson measures his words carefully when he says, “We signed a valid, binding and enforceable prenuptial agreement.”

  For a guy who is supposed to be cooperating, he’s sounding a lot like a lawyer.

  He adds, “She wasn’t happy about it, but she did it.”

  “I presume she liked it even less after she got nothing in the divorce.”

  “It was an enforceable agreement.”

  I can see why Concepcion’s mother didn’t feel especially warm and fuzzy about this guy. I ask him if his ex-wife was a good lawyer.

  “Yes, she was.”

  “And you were opposing counsel on several cases, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “And she won some of those cases, didn’t she?”

  He shakes his head. “Absolutely false,” he says. “She never beat me in court.”

  It’s good lawyerly parsing, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I sense defensiveness in his tone and I want to try to use it to my advantage. “You settled several of the cases, didn’t you?”

  A grudging nod. “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  His irritation is turning into modulated anger. “A few.”

  “How many is a few?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “It is now.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Temper, temper. “How much money are we talking about?”

  “That’s none of your business, either.”

  “The Chronicle said you were well into eight figures.”

  “The Chronicle exaggerates.”

  “I’ll subpoena the settlement documents.”

  “They’re confidential and covered by a protective order.”

  “I’ll go to a judge.”

  “You won’t get very far.”

  We’ll see.

  “Look,” he says, “a lot of people sue the archdiocese and we have a compelling legal interest in keeping our settlement discussions confidential. We need to make it clear that our client isn’t going to be a sitting duck for shakedowns by every small time plaintiff’s lawyer.”

  “Like your ex-wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  Now we know where we stand. “I understand you were engaged in settlement discussions right before she died.”

  He hesitates for just an instant before he says, “That’s true.”

  “Were you close?”

  “Our settlement discussions are subject to the attorney-client privilege. It’s none of your business.”

  I fire back. “This isn’t a civil case where we have time to shower each other with paper and play games for ten years. Father Aguirre’s life and career are at stake. If we don’t resolve this in the next couple of weeks, he’ll never be able to work again. It isn’t in your best interests or his to be uncooperative.”

  Shanahan has heard enough and answers for him. “The judge ordered us into mediation and we made a bona fide, good faith effort to settle. We were unsuccessful.”

  Was that so hard? I turn back to Peterson and ask, “Do you think there was any chance the case was going to settle?”

  “No. My ex-wife had serious emotional problems that began during our marriage, were compounded by our divorce and were exacerbated by this case. She was on medication and her judgment was impaired. We put forth a generous offer prior to her death and she dismissed it. The plaintiff is a lap dancer and a hooker who has drug problems. Maria was out of touch with reality if she thought she was going to do better in court.”

  I ask him when he last spoke to his ex-wife.

  “Nine-fifteen last Monday night. I’d gotten authority from Father Quinn to increase our settlement offer. Maria rejected it out of hand.”

  I ask him why he upped his offer if he was so sure he was going to win.

  “You can run the numbers. It costs our client more than a thousand dollars an hour for John and me to sit in the same room. It costs more than ten grand a day for us to sit in court. A couple of weeks of trial can result in legal bills that run well into six figures. Maria knew how to work the system and we made a strategic decision to try to settle for purely economic reasons. Bottom line: we thought it would cost more to try the case than to settle it.”

  Bottom line: they didn’t want to risk putting their case in the hands of a group of retirees, courthouse groupies, students, goof-offs, misfits and other hangers-on. In legal terms, we call these people a jury.

  Chapter 26

  “It Wasn’t a Suicide”

  “Dr. Roderick Beckert is the dean of big city medical examiners and a distinguished author and scholar. His textbook on forensic science is the seminal work in this field.”

  — Course Catalogue. UCSF Medical Center.

  Dr. Roderick Beckert strokes his gray beard and strikes a chatty tone. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Daley,” he lies. “It’s been awhile since we’ve had a chance to work together.”

  Are you ever going to retire? “It’s nice to see you, too,” I say.

  The chief medical examiner of the City and County of San Francisco is sitting in an ancient swivel chair in his cluttered office in the basement of the Hall at three o’clock on Thursday afternoon. With his bald dome, aviator-style glasses and cheap paisley tie, his appearance may be unimposing, but you can’t let your guard down. He knows more about forensic science than anybody in the Bay Area–and he’s more than happy to let you know it. The heavy bureaucratic furnishings and mundane assortment of medical texts, charts and scientific instruments are overlaid with nearly forty years of personal memorabilia that ranges from the ego-driven (honorary degrees and photos with local politicians) to the whimsical (a life-sized skeleton sporting a Giants’ cap). A compulsive perfectionist with a photographic memory, his only hobby is teaching pathology at UCSF. An inveterate publicity hound, the forensic guru handles the autopsies and courtroom theatrics for every high-profile case in San Francisco, and he’s frequently called upon to lend his expertise to other jurisdictions. He detests defense attorneys on general principles.

  His tone is always authoritative. “It wasn’t a suicide,” he tells me before I have a chance to ask. “Ms. Concepcion was murdered. She
bled to death.”

  He may be hard-headed, but he usually gets it right. It’s also frustrating to argue with him because he’s unfailingly polite. I summon my most respectful tone and ask, “Would you mind explaining how you came to that conclusion?” I lean forward and prepare to receive his wisdom.

  He slides a photocopy of a meticulously-typed document across his immaculate steel desk. You’d think he’d just handed me the stone tablets when he says, “It’s in my report.”