“This is a big deal,” I said, reading the story. “A federal judge is murdered and this Michael guy is the lead suspect. The reporters are going to be crawling on this one.” I questioned my motivation for taking this case. I spun around in my chair, realizing that I was going to have to be above-board with this one after all. Since the media was going to be all over this case, I wasn’t going to be able maneuver the way that I wanted to.
I wondered if I should just call him back and tell him not to bother. I couldn’t quite understand why he called me, anyhow. Why me, out of all the attorneys he could hire?
“So, tell me about Michael. You were saying something about him.”
I felt the anxiety, the cold tendrils that I always felt when I thought about this guy, and shook my head. “Nothing, nothing. I knew him in college, that’s all.”
“That’s not all,” Tammy said. “There’s something on your mind about this guy. I can sense it. I can see it on your face. You’re as white as a sheet.”
“I need to see my therapist.” I took a deep breath. “I haven’t seen her in awhile. I think that I need to see her again tonight. Or sometime soon.” I needed to get to the bottom on why I would accept a case from Michael. I originally thought that I needed revenge on him, so I would try to throw it. Now I wasn’t so sure. I needed to get to the bottom of my emotions on this one. All that I knew was that taking Michael on as a client was bringing up things that I hadn’t thought about in years. Things, buried deep within my psyche, were coming to the surface.
“I think that seeing your therapist is an excellent idea in general. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. Your job is probably one of the most stressful there is. I couldn’t imagine always having people’s lives in my hands all the time, the way that people place their lives in your hands. But why are you bringing that up now? I just think that it’s…a non-sequitur. I ask you about Michael Reynolds and you come back with needing to see a therapist. What’s going on?”
I couldn’t talk to her about it. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. I could barely talk to my therapist about it. I almost felt that if I spoke up about what had happened to me at that fraternity house that it would be true. That if I never said the word “rape” that it didn’t really happen.
I raised my eyebrow and looked down at the newspaper article. It was a long article, filled with details of Judge Sanders’ life. He was a judge who was appointed by President Clinton in 1994, rising through the ranks to become one of the most respected District Court judges in the country. He was 76 years old. His daughter, Christina Sanders, married Michael Reynolds some ten years ago. The newspaper article didn’t go into the relationship between Michael and Judge Sanders - it simply indicated that Michael was arrested for the murder. I had no idea why.
Tammy finally sighed. “You’re hiding. You’re always hiding. I guess that you’re just never going to let me in. Or anybody else for that matter.”
I looked at her. “Don’t you have a will to draw up? Or an estate plan?”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It’s just my way of telling you to back off. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you ask? Are you assuming that I asked that question for some other reason?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I think that you assume that my job is easy. I assure you, it’s not easy. It might not be as acutely stressful as what you do, but, trust me, it’s not easy. I deal with millions of dollars and all the tax implications that go with everything I do. It’s not exciting or sexy as trying murder cases, but there’s still pretty high stakes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Stop it. Stop trying to put words and thoughts in my head. I wasn’t thinking that you were beneath me. I’ve never thought that you and I were anything but equals.”
Tammy’s face softened. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I sometimes jump to conclusions.” She paused. “The truth of the matter is, I’m kinda jealous of you. Of what you get to do. I have to admit, drawing up estates all day gets pretty boring. I actually look forward to the few times I get to go to court for a will contest or something like that.”
“Oh, God, don’t be jealous of me. Trust me, you wouldn’t want my job. I love it, I thrive on it, but it’s certainly not for everyone. And look at what happened with John Robinson. Look at how much turmoil that whole thing caused for me. Be happy you never have to deal with that.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” I looked at my watch. “I gotta move. I have a death case that the State of Missouri has assigned to me.” Death cases were occasionally assigned to private attorneys, even though the vast majority of them were assigned to the special division of the Public Defender’s Office. The attorneys who did those death cases were the most dedicated I had ever seen. I hated getting death cases myself, at least I didn’t like being assigned to them, because I rarely got paid enough for my time. A decent stripper at a high-dollar strip joint would make more hourly than I did for these cases. Hopefully this was one that I could just plead out and I wouldn’t have to deal with it too much.
Another reason why I hated being assigned cases like these was simple – I didn’t have the chance to vet the person. I liked being able to choose who I represented. That was one of the perks of being a private attorney. When you’re assigned to somebody, you never know who you’re going to get. The guy could be be crazy.
I had no idea how crazy this one was really going to be.
CHAPTER TWO
I headed down to the jail, parking right in front. I went through the rigamarole of finding out where this guy was. His name was Elmer Harris, and I imagined what he looked like. I always pictured an Elmer as a guy who was a very slight build, maybe wearing glasses, probably sporting a bald head, probably with a stooped posture. I didn’t know if my stereotype was accurate or not. More often than not, the person I met was opposite of the person I imagined.
The guard showed me where the guy was located, and I headed up there. I first had to go through a set of doors. The first door opened, and then you were in the middle, and you had to wait for somebody to open the second door. There were times when I got stuck in between the doors, and, for the first time in my life, I experienced claustrophobia. Five minutes would go by, and I was still stuck between the two doors.
This time, however, things went smoothly. One door opened, and the next door opened right away. I went down the corridor, found the elevator, and took it to the third floor. I walked past the metal doors that housed the inmates and got to another set of two doors. I pushed the button and one door opened, and then the next.
“Who are you here to see?” the guard asked from behind the bullet-proof glass.
“Elmer Harris,” I said.
“Just a minute.”
I took a seat at the small metal table and waited for Elmer to come out. I actually had read the statement of information and some of the discovery on this case, and the guy seemed like a real piece of work. He was a drug dealer and he had a female partner. Apparently, the female partner was on the phone, allegedly talking to the authorities about Elmer, and he took the phone and beat her to death with it.
After looking through the police reports and interviews with witnesses, I had the feeling that this guy was good for the crime. I already had it in my head that I was going to plead him on that basis. Pleading him out in exchange for life in prison, as opposed to the death penalty, was going to be the most efficient thing to do.
Efficient doesn’t necessarily mean doable, however. I knew my clients well enough to know that getting them to take a decent deal wasn’t always easy, no matter how good the deal might be.
I looked up and saw Elmer coming out, and he wasn’t anything like I had imagined. He was a good 350 pounds, with a head full of white hair and a full beard and mustache. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit that seemed to strain because of his enormous girth, and I could see grey hair on his chest peeking through the
top of his jumpsuit.
Both his wrists were shackled and so were his ankles. He shuffled along slowly towards me and he smiled when he saw me.
“Hello, Darlin’” he said. “How you doin’?”
I furrowed my brows at him. “Just fine. I wanted to meet with you before you’re arraigned tomorrow.”
He sat down. “Let me just tell you one thing about my case before all this bullshit happens,” he said. “I’m good for this case. All day long. But I have an excuse for what I did. It’s a good one, too.”
I got out a pen and paper and looked at him. “Please, go on. What is your excuse?” I was humoring him, but that was my way. I usually wanted my clients to get out what they wanted to get out, and then I would bring the hammer down on them. In this case, the hammer was a big one – he was going to get the death penalty unless he was willing to deal.
“Maria was my partner. My drug dealing partner. And the bitch-“ He stopped himself abruptly. “I mean the young lady was turning me into the authorities. I beat her to death with the phone, but darlin’, you have to know that I had to do it.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Okay. Elmer, you don’t really think that what you just told me is a legally acceptable excuse, do you?” I didn’t know this man from Adam. What I did know was that he was some kind of a sociopath. Either that, or he was flying high on drugs at the time. Either way, he seemed to sincerely think that “I had to do it because she was going to turn me in” would be a legal justification for what he did.
He shook his head. “Darlin’, it was self-defense. Pure and simple.”
“Self-defense. How do you figure that it was self-defense?”
“It was either my life or hers. If she turned me in, then I would be put away for fifteen to life. Isn’t that what self-defense is all about? When it comes down to your life or the life of somebody else, you choose yourself.”
I had to admit, this guy was, if nothing else, a bit of a creative thinker. But I had to disabuse him of what he thought that self-defense was. “It doesn’t work like that. Self-defense is when your life is in danger right at that moment. Somebody has a knife, and they’re lunging at you, you can kill that person. Somebody has a gun and they’re pointing it at you, you can kill him. You can even kill somebody who broke into your home, even if they don’t have a weapon and they’re not really threatening you. But in this case.” I shook my head. “Sorry, Elmer, no dice. Now, we need to talk about possibly getting a plea bargain out of this.”
He shook his head. “No. No plea bargain. I want you to try this mother-fucker.”
I groaned. I somehow knew that he was going to say this. I calculated in my head how many hours this case was going to take, and how little compensation I was going to get from the state for trying it. I didn’t like what I was calculating. I also didn’t like that I was getting on a case with somebody who apparently wasn’t so good at listening or reasoning. That was the hardest part of my job – dealing with people who simply weren’t rational. They all somehow thought that they could beat the charge if only the jury could hear their story.
I swallowed hard and tried to find the angle that would dissuade this guy out of wanting a trial. With every client, it was different. Some could be reasoned with if they were facing the death penalty and the plea was for anything that was less than that. Others could be bullied into accepting something. Sometimes it was best to flatter the client and let them know that they were much more intelligent and worldly than the prosecutor and me.
Others just refused to listen to me and wanted to bulldoze ahead, no matter what I said or did. In those cases, it was best for me to withdraw from the case, but, since this case was something that was assigned to me by the State, I didn’t really have the choice to get off. I could only hope that I could find his angle, the words to make him realize the folly of taking the case to trial, and he would agree to a plea.
I saw no other way. I could do everything that I needed to do – discovery, depositions, investigations, the whole nine – but the fact was, he killed her. He admitted to it. There was no SODDI here, no justification. He needed to take any plea that I could get, and take it with a smile.
He was still staring at me. Only now, he didn’t have the same jovial expression that he had on his face the first time he saw me. His blue eyes were trained on me, and they now looked dead. As if there was not a soul behind them. I shuddered, my blood running cold. I had seen that look too many times. The last time I saw it was with a gang-banger who had burned a guy alive in the car – Randall Thompson. Like Elmer, he told me that he did it. Like Elmer, he wanted a trial. No plea bargain. When I informed him that he needed to either plea his case or I would withdraw, he lunged at me and almost strangled me. His hands were around my neck, and he was squeezing hard. Thank God I was in the jail, so the guard came out and got him off of me in just the nick of time. Otherwise, I probably would have been killed.
I took a deep breath. “Elmer, you admitted that you killed her. And, no, you don’t have a legal justification for doing it. I think that I need to see the prosecutor and see what we can get for you. Bear in mind, that-“
He stood up, and he looked as large as a bear to me. I’m a slight woman – 5’9” and 130 pounds on a good day. I worked out as often as I could, lifting weights and running, but still…this man was easily 6’5” and 300 lbs, and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by me or anyone else. “No plea,” he said. “You get that persecutor, and you tell him that we’re going to trial. I’ll just get up and tell the jury that I don’t know what the Hell the persecutor is talking about, that I didn’t kill that woman and I don’t know who did.”
I sighed. I was going to have to explain one more thing to him, and that was that I couldn’t put him on the stand, since I knew for a fact that he killed the woman. “We can’t win. I can’t put you on the stand. Not when I know that you did it. Now-“
All at once, he was enraged. I stood up and backed up, but he came at me. The gang-banger incident flashed through my mind as I put my hands up defensively, and he charged me so that I was up against the wall. I looked up at his face, and his eyes were now wild. They were no longer dead, and they certainly weren’t friendly. It occurred to me that I saw all of his faces in this one visit – he was friendly at first, then he looked like a sociopath, and now he looked like a demon who was determined that I was going to bend to his will.
I desperately looked over at the guard’s station, and realized, to my horror, that nobody was paying attention to what was happening to me. They all looked pre-occupied with something else. Maybe there was a riot or perhaps there was just a lot of activity. I relied on them paying attention. When I was dealing with dangerous criminals, such as this Elmer, it was always imperative that somebody was diligent and looking out for me. Right now, I saw that nobody could see what was happening, because nobody was looking in my direction.
He didn’t attempt to strangle me, but, rather, he decided that he was going to rain body blows. White-hot pain shot through me as he smacked my body with his shackled wrist. The hard metal made contact with the bones of my chest and stomach, and I tried to fight back tears. “You’re going to try this goddamn case, and I won’t take a goddamn plea bargain. Do you hear me, you little bitch?”
Finally, there was a guard who was coming through the door. He had a stun gun in his holster and he immediately tased the enormous man. Unfortunately, because of his size and girth, Elmer seemed not to feel the taser. He probably also had adrenaline coursing through his veins, which also meant that he wasn’t going to go down right away.
The guard tased him three more times before he finally slumped down on the ground.
“I’m very sorry, Harper,” the guard, Scott, said to me. “We were dealing with a rising insurrection in one of the pods, and we should have been paying more attention to you.”
I simply shook my head. “I have to go,” I said, feeling shaken.
“Please, stop by the nurse’s station and get yours
elf checked out.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Fine. I appreciate your concern, but I really have to get home.”
“Harper,” Scott said. “Do you need an escort to your car at least?”
“No. I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine.”
I staggered out to my car, hoping that this whole thing didn’t give me PTSD. After the incident with the gang-banger, I had nightmares for months. In my nightmares, I would always be cornered by an enormous man. I would be unable to breathe. I would be dead.
With shaking hands, I got into my car.
And promptly burst into tears.
CHAPTER THREE
I got back into the office, feeling shaken but calmer than I was in the jail. This wasn’t the first time my life had been threatened. I doubted that it would be the last. The only bad thing was that I was going to have to face Michael Reynolds, and I wasn’t quite in the mental shape to do it.
My heart pounded as the clock got closer to 1 PM, which was when Michael was scheduled to come in that door. I looked at my hand and it was shaking. Why was I doing this? Why? Was I really nothing but a masochist? I never thought of myself as that – a masochist. All that I knew was that there was some reason why I had to bring Michael back into my life. To face my demons. My therapist had told me, over and over, that I needed to bring my demons out into the open and try to vanquish them. I never really vanquished this particular demon, and that was the reason for my depression, anxiety and bouts with alcoholism. Or so she said. I personally thought of my depression as being something that had always been with me, off and on. A beast that I couldn’t seem to get rid of, no matter how well my life was going. No doubt my depression got worse after the incident in the fraternity house, but the depression had always been with me in some form or another.
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 34
