True Intent

by Michael Stagg

  “While the survey was being delayed, the Forest Initiative made two public statements against Doprava’s use of the land. The first statement was made by its national president. The other was made by a local expert with vast knowledge of the Mark Twain National Forest and the impact fracking would have.”

  Shit. “Liselle?”

  “Bing. There's video from a local news conference and three articles that I've been able to find so far.”

  “Any proof that she did anything other than speak?”

  “No.”

  “Any proof that the Forest Initiative was behind the surveying vandalism?”

  “No proof. Only common sense.”

  I sorted it quickly and decided I agreed with Olivia. This was a potential problem but not an actual one, not right now. “Thanks for letting me know. Anything else?”

  “You know there's actually a picture of when Liselle and Phillips met?”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. The society page. Took a picture of the two of them holding the Toller that they rescued.”

  “Toller?”

  “Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. It's a pretty rare dog. It somehow wound up in the shelter there. Phillips hunted with them. That's why he adopted it apparently.”

  “The paper published the picture?”

  “Yeah. The bitch even photographs like a knockout.”

  I decided to assume she meant the dog. “Can you send it to me?”

  “Sure.” A pause, and then Olivia said, “That’s a rare dog, Shep.”

  “You say that like it means something.”

  “Those kind of dogs don’t usually get dumped at shelters. The shelter’s records aren’t online. It might be worth looking into.”

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “Isn't that enough?”

  “Just making sure.”

  “That's it. I'll follow up though.”

  “Keep digging. Thanks.”

  I hung up and a short time later pulled into the office. When I went in, I found Danny working at his computer, scrolling through something on the screen and then making notes on a legal pad. “What are you working on?” I asked.

  “Witness statements.” The young man shook his head and ran a hand through his thick mop of brown hair. “There's over one hundred of them.”

  “Literally?”

  “Literally. Pearson and his boys went overtime on this one.” He waved the notepad. “There’s family, people at their table, people who talked to them or saw them or danced with them. I swear to god there’s a statement from a guy who passed Phillips in the bathroom.”

  “No kidding.”

  “They even took statements from at least half a dozen servers and bartenders. It’s ridiculous!”

  Danny really did look frustrated so I thought for a moment before I said, “Okay, we know that Victoria isn't going to call all of these people. Let's put them in categories. One group is everyone who was sitting at their table. I bet that most of them are going to be called because they were closest to them throughout the night and at least a few of them aren’t well-disposed towards Liselle. Let's put the servers in a category. My guess is that someone might have said something useful in front of them because people forget that the servers are there and can see and hear everything that's going on. After that, separate them between people who actually interacted with Richard and Liselle and those who just observed them.” I eyed the monitor. “Have you been through them yet?”

  “About half of them,” Danny said.

  “What's your impression so far?”

  “Bre and Andrew hate Liselle’s guts. Stephen seemed to be going out of his way to keep it neutral.”

  “And Stephen’s wife Paulette?”

  “Surprisingly kind.”

  “Interesting. What about the other guests?”

  “There was a gap of about four hours between the wedding and reception so that the wedding party could ride a trolley around scenic Carrefour and take pictures.”

  “What a pain in the ass.”

  “You’re InstaOld, Nate. In the meantime, there was a hospitality room set up back at the hotel for family and close friends. A dozen witnesses saw Richard and Liselle eating and drinking there for a couple of hours before they left to freshen up and head back to the reception.”

  Different jurors might make different assumptions about “freshening up.” I let it pass for now.

  Danny continued. “Anyway, after a couple of hours, they were seen leaving the hotel and arriving at the reception. There was a cocktail hour while they waited for the wedding party to arrive and by all accounts the two of them were feeling good but not excessively so.”

  “A variety of witnesses on that part, I take it?”

  “Yep.”

  “They have dinner at the reception, there's all the usual wedding speeches and whatnot, they eat dinner, they drink, they dance, he dies.”

  I nodded. “Just wade through them for now. You never know what’ll be important.”

  Danny didn’t look thrilled at the prospect but he nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  “I'm going to dive into Doprava’s corporate history. This motive thing is driving me crazy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Lunch today?”

  Danny looked down. “Jenny is coming in today.”

  “She bringing the little princess?”

  Danny smiled and just about burst out of his chair. “She's crawling.”

  “That's exciting. Are you sleeping at all?”

  “Here and there.”

  “You holding up?”

  “No worries. Thanks.”

  “All right. I'll check in later.”

  “Will do.”

  I stopped at the door. “Oh, and flag anything you see about Tollers.”

  Danny looked at me and I had the clear impression that I’d just dropped the final straw on his bowed back. “What’s a Toller?”

  “A type of hunting dog. Ever heard of them?”

  “No.”

  “Keep an eye out in the witness statements for any mention of them. Richard apparently adopted one at the gala when he and Liselle met. If there's a witness who knows about it, it could be important.”

  “Got it. Read every statement from every person at the wedding and flag anything that might be vital eight months from now, especially pets.” He shook his head. “I’m glad I took out those student loans.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Danny ignored me and turned back to his screen. I left him to it.

  TRUNK

  22

  Preparing a case is a slog of man-hours spent pouring through files and memos and statements. It’s your job to assimilate all of those facts so you can lead the jury through them and show them how everything fits together. Every trial lawyer would love a short cut and every one of them knows there just isn’t one. So for the next month, that's exactly what Danny and I did. We devoured witness statements and studied pathology reports and combed through corporate filings, while taking care of our other cases too.

  Life moved along during that time. James came home from the hospital but still couldn't go to school since he had to keep his leg elevated during this crucial time for healing. I took to stopping by on Wednesday nights so that Mark and Izzy could go to their bowling league and I could see James. Two things happened because of my regular Wednesdays with James and his brothers Justin and Joe. First, I became much better at Mario Smash Bros., particularly with Yoshi, so much so that I stopped randomly falling off of platforms after the second week. The trolls still destroyed me but at least I was able to stay in the game.

  Second, I introduced them to The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis. We read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe out loud together, at first huddled around James’s bed and later, when the doctors let him take his leg out of the sling, on the family room sectional couch. I thought they were just humoring me but, when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy took their final journey bey
ond the lamppost back to Uncle Digory’s house, they wanted to know what happened next so we started Prince Caspian.

  I’m embarrassed to say I lost track of Liselle in that first month. Not lost track exactly—I knew she was in her townhouse and she visited my office a few times to help explain some of the materials in the prosecution’s discovery file, and I knew that her immediate needs, like getting to the grocery store, were being met. No, I mean I lost track of the upheaval in her life—of being placed under house arrest in a strange town, of being kept from a job you love, of being utterly without friends or family for support.

  You’d think with my track record…well, you’d just think that I would have been more attuned to her distress. But I wasn’t. Not at first.

  I got the first inkling of what was going on when I received a call one morning at my desk, five weeks after Liselle had been arrested.

  “Hi, Liselle,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Can I come over to the office?”

  I looked at the clock. “I’m sorry, I have a deposition this afternoon.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “Today’s not going to work, Liselle. How about tomorrow?”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure.”

  Her tone caught my attention. I’d heard that kind of response before.

  “Tell you what, my depo is out your way, why don’t I stop by after?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s no trouble. I’ll already be over there.”

  “Thanks, Nate.” I heard relief. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”

  “I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”

  Seven hours later, after preparing, deposing, and traveling, I knocked on Liselle’s door, a couple of coffees in hand. She answered and her smile was faint as she invited me in. As we sat down at the kitchen table, she handed me a sheet of paper and said, “Here.”

  I offered her one of the coffees, which she politely refused by lifting a cup of tea, and I read.

  The National Forest Service had suspended her indefinitely from her job. Without pay and effective immediately. She was to remove her things from their office within fourteen days.

  “Did you know this was coming?” I said.

  “I knew they were uncomfortable but I thought they’d wait until after the trial.”

  I shook my head. “Eight months is a long time to be without an employee. They probably had to replace you.”

  “That’s just it. Read the rest.”

  They weren’t going to replace her. I shook my head. “What does it mean that your portion of the program is being suspended? Are they just going to let the ash borers invade?”

  She shook her head. “I was the frontline, investigating and trying cutting edge solutions. They’ll continue with traditional methods—quarantines, clear cutting, monitoring.”

  “All the things that didn’t work up here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her hands were clenched around her mug. “Is there anything you can do?”

  “I’m not going to be able to get your job back, Liselle.”

  “No, no. I know that. I mean to make them keep my program going.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “The federal government?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “But the destruction!”

  I raised a hand. “I understand, Liselle, I do, but you’re talking about a government expenditure here. Sounds like you need a lobbyist, not a lawyer, and someone with feet on the ground in Missouri, not Michigan.”

  “If they don’t keep looking for a solution, half the forest will be wiped out!”

  “What about your forestry organizations? They have to have access to lobbyists.”

  Liselle looked stricken. “I’ve been trying to avoid them because of all…this.”

  “They’re probably your best bet.”

  Through the steam of her tea, I saw Liselle’s eyes begin to well up but it seemed more like frustration than grief. She took a quick sip and ducked her head behind the mug for a moment before she straightened and said, “My contacts with them dried up once I started dating Rich.”

  “This is different. They should still care about your work. Reach out.”

  She nodded. “I will. Thanks.” She wiped an eye, sipped her tea, and shook her head. “I’m sorry to bother you, I just, well, there just isn’t anybody here.”

  I looked around her house. It was fine but it was mostly empty and I was suddenly hit with a sense of oppressive isolation. “Where are you allowed to go?”

  Liselle pushed her hair behind her ear. “The grocery store. Your office. Court.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should’ve realized this before. Hang on.”

  I made calls in quick succession to Cade about the options for expanding where Liselle could travel and Olivia for some recommendations. Liselle watched me and sipped.

  I hung up with Olivia and said, “Cade thinks I can get permission for you to go to the Indoor Botanical Gardens if you’re accompanied. He thinks the Metroparks pose too great a flight risk. He also thinks we’ll be able to pick one gym or fitness studio that’s nearby. Olivia gave me some recommendations.” I listed them off for her.

  “What’s closest?”

  “There’s an Orange Theory two blocks away.”

  The look she gave me was strange. “That would be fine.”

  “Great. I’ll have Cade get to work on it.” I stood, threw away the first coffee cup, and took the second with me as I made to leave. “I’ll let you know. We’ll get it taken care of so you can get out of here once in a while.”

  As I went to the door, she put a hand on my arm and said, “Thanks, Nate.”

  I waved her off. “No problem.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Me too. Talk to you soon.”

  I loaded up and pulled out of the driveway. She shut the door as I pulled away.

  I paid more attention after that and we all fell into a new rhythm over the next few weeks. Danny and I worked on the case during the day, I continued to visit James on Wednesday nights, and I met Liselle at lunch time on Fridays at the Indoor Botanical Gardens where I would update her on the case and she’d share her latest thoughts on her research. Even though she’d been effectively fired by the Forest Service, her mind kept working the problem and I didn’t mind giving her a sounding board for her theories.

  It seemed as if the weekly visits to the Garden, the daily visits to Orange Theory, and her immersing herself in her research lifted Liselle’s spirits. She was invariably cheerful when we met and she seemed to take delight in showing me a new thing in the Garden each week. In retrospect, there were only two incidents that stuck out.

  The first one was when she noticed that two plants from two different continents were being displayed next to each other at the Garden, Honestly, I don’t know what plants and I don’t know what the problem was. All I know is that Liselle was so outraged that she demanded to see the head botanist and lectured her on how that placement could cause a fungus indigenous to one land to spread to a plant from another and if so much as a single spoor ever escaped this facility, say on a shirt or a breeze or an errant hummingbird, some kind of mutated apocalypse would be unleashed on the Midwest. I didn’t follow the conversation, even a little, but judging from the way that the head botanist went pale, gasped, and sprinted for a phone, I judged that Liselle was right.

  The second one was a couple of weeks later when we both were a little busy and decided that, rather than walk the grounds, we’d sit on a bench and do some reading. Even though it was getting cold outside, the sun through the glass ceiling in the environmentally controlled building was pleasant and warm. I’d just finished a packet of research Danny had given me and glanced at Liselle. She was no longer reading the article she’d brought and was instead looking at a broad leaf on a neighboring plant where a silkworm was hanging by a thin, nearly invisible thread, spinning around as
in a non-existent wind. She smiled.

  “What are you thinking of?” I said.

  “Richard,” she said. She kept smiling. “Sometimes we’d talk about a complex problem, like my research or his company getting a new product to market. He had this amazing ability to step back and find solutions. Instead of struggling against the forces at play, he’d look for ways to work with them.” She smiled and pointed as the swinging silkworm landed on a different leaf and began inching upwards. “Like that.” She looked thoughtful. “That perspective really surprised me. It was inspiring.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  Liselle stared at the silkworm. “I feel like there was more potential there, you know?”

  “I do,” I said, and then we were both quiet until it was time to go.

  That’s it really. That’s all that stood during those weeks when I was working and going to see James and going to the Garden. There was nothing interesting or surprising all.

  Until I received a call from Dr. Beckman.

  23

  “Hi, Mr. Shepherd,” Dr. Beckman said. “I finally finished the testing on the herbal tea you asked for.”

  “Great. What did you find out?”

  “I’ll give you the good news first—”

  That's never what you want to hear from your expert.

  “—There's nothing in the tea that shouldn’t be there, nothing that anyone would consider poison.”

  “Okay.” That seemed like a pretty low bar to clear. “What is in it?”

  “All of general herbs and supplements that you would find in any wellness tea on the market, chamomile, mint, ginseng, etc.”

  Still good news so far. “But?” I said.

  “You said this tea was homemade?”

  “Yes.”

  “By your client??”

  “I believe so.”

  Dr. Beckman paused, then said, “I compared the composition of your client’s tea to sixteen other teas on the market. The best sellers mostly. That’s what took the extra time.”

  “And?”

  “Your client’s tea has more St. John's wort in it than any other tea I tested.”