“Listen, Harper, I can’t believe that you’re getting sucked in by yet another client. After John Robinson, I would think that you would be gun-shy, no pun intended.”
“That’s a low blow.”
“It’s not a low blow. It’s truth. Wake up, Harper. Your client is playing you, just like John Robinson played you. This case is going to explode in your face, just like the John Robinson one did. Your client is a psychopath just like John Robinson. She killed her mother in cold blood. Now, I would be happy to give her LWOP, which would save her from the needle. If you don’t take that, it’s malpractice.”
“You’re acting like you’re doing me this amazing favor, giving me an offer for life without parole. That’s bullshit, and you know that it is. Even if you gave me an offer for a year in prison, I still wouldn’t take it, because my client won’t survive the year.”
“You’re not being reasonable.” Vince shook his head. “I don’t want to try this bitch, and I would be surprised if you do. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you an offer for twenty years without a possibility of parole. If you don’t take that, you’re certifiably insane.”
I crossed my arms in front of me and stared at Vince. Now he was talking, really. LWOP would never be something that I would consider, but twenty years…that was infinitely better than the death penalty. I was suddenly questioning my stance. What if he was right? What if Heather was lying through her teeth? What if I went ahead and tried it, the case fell apart, and the jury gave her the death penalty? I had the chance to possibly see her out of prison before she was forty years old. Would it be malpractice if I didn’t encourage her to take it?
Then I reminded myself that Heather was trans, and she wouldn’t last in prison.
Still, she was a tough one. She could possibly find herself a protector in prison, and maybe she would be okay. She wouldn’t be able to wear her shit-ton of makeup and her high-heeled boots, but she would live. And maybe get her life together when she got out of prison.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, hoping that I sounded more confident than I felt.
“You’d better. That offer is going to expire in 24 hours, so I suggest you start applying pressure on Ms. Morrison.”
I sighed as I exited the courtroom and walked down the stairs.
This case just got that much more complicated. Before, I didn’t have a decent offer, so I was going to try it, come hell or high water.
Now, I didn’t know what to do.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Louisa Garrison was scheduled to meet with the Reverend at 6 PM, and she was nervous, to say the least. She had fallen off the wagon, in a way, because she had cheated on her husband with a woman. Again. She had tried to keep it secret, but the word got around anyhow, and now the Reverend wanted to see her in his office.
She lived in terror that he was going to fire her. Or worse – banish her. Excommunicate her. That would be like death for her. The church was her lifeblood. It was her air, her water, her food, her everything. She imagined that if she was asked to leave the church, she would literally die.
She had tried to stop meeting women behind her husband’s back. Her marriage with her husband was loveless and lifeless, and he beat her often, but she was married to him, ‘til death do they part. She gave God her word that she would forsake all others, and she meant it at the time.
Truth be told, her husband was her first, as far as men went. She was 28 years old when she met Tom, and, before she met him, she was nothing but sinful. She had one relationship after another with women, and she always felt that she was happy when she was in a lesbian relationship. But she also learned, from an early age, that same-sex sexual relationships were sinful in the eyes of God, and she had learned, from an early age, that her same-sex desires would send her straight to Hell.
She still remembered their wedding night. As she looked at him naked that night, she felt sick. Thank god he didn’t last very long. It was pretty much about thirty seconds of his thrusting and then he fell asleep. Since then, she tried to find every excuse she could not to have sex with him, and he thankfully was a man with a low sex drive, so their relations happened annually, if that.
They had been married for five years, and she fought her every desire for women that whole time. Then she met Connie Morrison, and fell madly in love. Connie had a son in school, and had been left a lot of money by her husband, who had died in a car accident years before. Connie didn’t work, and she didn’t want her son to know that she was seeing Louisa, so the two only met during the day when her son Heath was in school. That was best for Louisa, too, for she didn’t want her husband to know what she was doing. Connie occasionally spent the night with Louisa, whenever Louisa’s husband was out of town.
They met like that for years, and then Louisa got her job at the church. Her husband, Harry, made her go to work, saying that he was tired of providing for her and, since they didn’t have any children together, there wasn’t a reason that Louisa didn’t work. Louisa hated that, because she and Connie had spent many blissful days in Louisa’s bed, and occasionally they even dared to venture out. They would go to the River Market on Saturday afternoons when Louisa’s husband was out of town. Connie would tell her son that she was going to do some kind of church function, and the two of them would go and look at the fruits and vegetables and would get lunch at Cascone’s across the street. They would go to the zoo sometimes, and they even dared to go and see live music once in a great while.
Connie was the love of Louisa’s life, so, when Connie was murdered, Louisa was beyond inconsolable. She was different, and had been different, ever since Connie was found.
Louisa was the one who had found her lying in her own blood, a butcher knife in her hand. Louisa immediately knew what had happened. She knew that it was coming. Connie had been urged by the Reverend Scott to take care of her son, one way or another. Heath had been sent through therapy, and that didn’t take, and Connie was desperate. Reverend Scott told Connie that there was only one thing that could be done, and that would be to kill her son. It had to be done, because her son was corrupting Connie. Louisa knew that Heath was a corrupting influence for Connie, and she had expressed her concern to the Reverend about this. Connie sometimes told Louisa that she wanted to leave her son be, and she sometimes said that she was ready to accept that her son had become her daughter.
That couldn’t happen. Louisa was fearful that Connie’s soul would also end up in Hell if she accepted her son. She had the Reverend talk to Connie, to convince her that she needed to do what was necessary to ensure that her son didn’t corrupt her further.
So, when Louisa went to see Connie, and saw her lying in her own blood, a butcher knife in her hand, Louisa did what she had to do. She took that butcher knife and tried to scrub Connie’s computer as much as she could, taking as many emails off the server and deleting them as she possibly could. She didn’t get all the emails, because she heard somebody else coming into the house and she had to hide. She couldn’t be seen tampering with a crime scene. She knew that would be very bad.
She didn’t know who called the cops, but the cops were soon on the scene while Louisa cowered in the closet. They never saw her, even though they searched the house, their guns drawn. She didn’t know why they didn’t find her, but she was lucky in that she was never seen at the house.
The cops had finally left, and Louisa was afraid of being seen, so she had gingerly let herself out through the bedroom window.
She still had the butcher knife. She had it in her closet at home. She was scared to go to the police to tell them what she had done. She didn’t even know why she felt it was so important to take that butcher knife. Connie apparently tried to kill her son with that knife. That was what Louisa discerned from the state of things. There was a huge part of Louisa that wanted to go to the cops and give them the butcher knife. Tell them that the knife was important to the case. Louisa didn’t want Heath to have to serve time in prison, not if he was onl
y defending himself from his mother’s attack. She wanted Heath dead before, but now she felt guilty, like she was an accomplice to all of it. Like she was ultimately responsible for Connie dying and Heath being charged with her murder.
Yet she was frightened of doing so. She had seen an attorney about it, and that attorney told her that she could be charged with a felony for taking the knife. She didn’t even tell him that she also scrubbed the emails clean as much as she could. That attorney told her that she could face up to five years in prison for doing what she did with the butcher knife.
She even went to the Reverend and told him what she did. The Reverend convinced her not to tell anybody about the knife. He told her that Heath belonged in prison. If he was in prison, he couldn’t corrupt the outside world with his perversion. He would have to keep his perversion within the prison walls, and, since the other prisoners were already corrupted and bound for Hell, Heath couldn’t possibly do any damage if he was in prison.
The Reverend even said that Connie was trying to do the right thing when she tried to kill Heath. Louisa didn’t want to hear that. She had heard it before, from the Reverend, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear it about Connie. All Louisa knew was that the only person she had ever loved, Connie Morrison, was dead. She apparently died because she listened to the Reverend, who apparently urged Connie to kill her son.
Louisa secretly hated the Reverend because she ultimately blamed him for the death of Connie. Yet, at the same time, she needed the church all the more. She had nothing else. Her husband was distant and abusive. The one person she loved was dead. She had no children. No pets. There was nothing in her life that made it worth living, except for the church.
But she still wrestled with her desire to do what was right. Even if she had to go to prison for tampering with a crime scene. Then she would chicken out.
She still had the butcher knife.
But nobody would ever know it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
You have 24 hours to get your client to take my offer. Those words rang through my ears as I drove along to my home. I was confused as to what to do. 20 years wasn’t bad, if Heather was good for the case. In fact, it would be a godsend, assuming that Heather could find a way to stay alive behind bars.
I had to first get answers from Heather, though. I needed a firm answer on why Heather read my article before she killed her mother. That looked bad to me. And the issue of the butcher knife…I had to figure that out.
That actually was what was going to sink the case faster than anything. I imagined putting Heather on the stand, and having her tell the jury what happened, and then see the prosecutor read the police report to the jury and point out that no butcher knife was found at the scene. The jury would return a guilty verdict for sure.
If I couldn’t figure that one out…I shook my head. Perhaps one of the cops on the scene took the knife, but I couldn’t imagine why they would do that. My investigator, Fred, had come back with the results of the investigation of the cops, and neither of the cops was associated with the Church of the Living Breath. I couldn’t imagine that the cops would do something like tampering with a crime scene if there wasn’t a reason for it. If they were part of the Church and they somehow were also brainwashed, then maybe they would tamper with the scene because they would be interested in seeing Heather go to prison.
I decided to go ahead and pay a visit to Heather at the halfway house. Perhaps she was in a better mood and wouldn’t be so defensive. Maybe I could talk to her about possibly taking the plea deal.
I got to her halfway house and went in. “Hello,” I said to the receptionist. “I need to see Heather Morrison.”
The receptionist looked on her list and squinted. “This is a man’s halfway house,” she said.
“Sorry, she is listed as Heath Morrison.” I somehow always forgot to clarify that point.
“Heath Morrison,” she said. “Let me call him and let him know that you’re here.”
Heather soon appeared, wearing ripped jeans and a silk blue tank top. She also wore her trademark sparkly red headband and a pair of red leather pumps on her feet. “What do you want?” she asked me when she came out to see me.
“I need to talk to you.”
She bobbed her head back and forth in a gesture of defiance and crossed her arms in front of her. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
I sighed, my hopes that she would be ready to talk to me dashed. She clearly was in a defiant, defensive mood.
“Heather, we need to talk. I got an offer from the prosecutor, and I’m bound to give you any and all offers.”
“An offer? An offer? What the fuck are you talking about? You know I don’t want no offer. You know where you can put your offer.”
“Heather,” I said, trying to sound measured. “The offer is for 20 years in prison. Parole isn’t an option with this offer. You killed your mother, and the previous offer was the death penalty. 20 years is pretty good compared to where it was before.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No way. I did nothing wrong. All I did was defend myself.”
“Okay. Here’s the scenario. We go to trial, you tell your story, the prosecutor points out that there wasn’t a butcher knife recovered from the scene, and it’s game over. I doubt that the judge will give you 20 years for what he’s going to perceive is a cold-blooded murder one. I also doubt that he’ll give you the death penalty. You’ll probably end up with life in prison without parole. LWOP we call it. With the prosecutor’s offer, you’ll be out before you’re forty and you might be able to pick up the pieces.”
“Where is this coming from?” Heather’s body language was closed – her arms were crossed and her posture was ramrod straight. “You were on my side and now you’re not.”
“Tell me about the article,” I said. “About why you read the article. And I also have to figure out what the hell happened to that butcher knife.”
Heather sneered. “Okay, I’ll tell you about the goddamned article.” She rolled her eyes. “And I don’t know about the butcher knife. Somebody must have taken it.”
“Well, we’ll have to figure out who took it, and then we have to figure out how to prove that somebody tampered with the crime scene. That one aspect is going to be the death of this case, though. But, please, tell me about the Law Review article.”
She sighed. “I was scared, alright? When my mom was standing over me with a pillow in her hands, I was freaked out. And I thought that I might end up having to kill her.” She continued to cross her arms and look away. “That’s it. That’s all. After the pillow incident, I went to the law library and looked up everything I could about self-defense. I probably know more about it than you do, by now. And your article caught my eye, because you specifically talked about brainwashing and how you can bring in the issue to show that the murdered person was violent.”
“Is that it? That’s all? Why the big secret?”
“It looks bad, alright? I mean, if I knew that my mom was going to try to kill me, why didn’t I just get out of the house? I should have done something else to stop her cray. I knew she was going to end up trying to kill me, yet I just stayed in the house and let it happen. Alright? You happy? Go ahead, tell me how stupid I was for sticking around when I knew what was going to happen. Go ahead, I’ve heard it all before.”
I shook my head. “No, Heather, I’m not going to tell you that. We probably aren’t going to have to explain that aspect to the jury, not unless the prosecutor gets smart and gets ahold of your computer and finds it. Then all bets are off.”
“Can they do that? Look at my computer?”
“If they subpoena it, they can. They can look at your history and your downloads and everything. I can try to quash the subpoena, but, as long as they can show the judge that they’re not on a fishing expedition, the judge will allow it.”
“Fishing expedition?”
“Yeah. They have to show the judge why the computer will lead them to evidence that’s rel
evant to the case. That’s not a high bar to meet. Is that article on your hard drive?”
“It is. Can you erase it?”
“I can’t. That would be tampering with evidence, and I can’t do that.”
“What the hell? It wouldn’t be hard for you to do at all.”
I sighed. “Okay, I’ll do that. But we have to figure out what’s going on with the butcher knife. I’m most concerned about that.”
“Somebody took it. Figure out who.”
“Thanks for that.” I rolled my eyes. “Finding out who has that butcher knife is going to be worse than finding a needle in a haystack. Anybody who took it isn’t going to tell me that they did. That would be tampering with a crime scene, and that’s a felony. I can ask Louisa Garrison and the Reverend Scott, both of whom seem the most likely suspects who would be cleaning up the crime scene, but unless they come clean, I’m not going to get anywhere. I can’t try to get a search warrant for their apartments and offices, because I don’t have grounds for that.”
“Figure it out,” she said. “I’m not taking that fucking offer.”
“You’re gambling,” I said. “And we’re going to lose. Unless we find that butcher knife, we’re going to lose.”
“So fucking be it.”
I sighed. This case was going south. It was always an uphill climb, but, before, I didn’t have anything to work with. The only offer on the table was the death penalty.
Now I had a 20-year offer, and I suddenly felt the walls closing in on me.
If I lost this case, I would feel like I had lost everything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Two things happened the next day. One was that the investigators about the kitchen fire came back with their findings. “It was definitely arson, ma’am,” the chief investigator said. “But we don’t have a clue on who did it.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 20
