Until Proven Innocent

by Gene Grossman

  “Peter, have you ever considered getting married again, or did the District Attorney turn you off of that institution?”

  “Yes, I’ve thought about it, but that was before I had a kid.”

  This takes her aback. “You had a child after your divorce?”

  I can see that she’s curious about this, so seeing as it’s a relaxing dinner and we’re each imbibing a little, I take my and time and tell her the whole story, including my divorce, being thrown out of the house into the old boat in the backyard, The Lahaina Yacht Club, moving to the Marina, working for Mel, the old boat burning up, Melvin dying and leaving Suzi in my care, the Saint Bernard, how the firm works and just about everything else I can think of. After a while, I realize that I’ve been talking non-stop for the better part of the last hour… and through two more drinks.

  “I’m sorry Evelyn, but you asked for it. Now you’ve got it. My entire life story.”

  Not only did she sit there and listen the whole time, she actually looked interested in what I was saying. Of course her next move was to ask to see the boat and meet Suzi, but I don’t think she’s ready for that yet, so I stall.

  “C’mon, Peter. You’ve already met my daughter. I should have the same privilege.”

  “Your right beautiful, but the main difference here is that mine is a little genius princess who needs to be properly prepared, because if I don’t do a good job of getting her ready to meet you, when you leave the boat, she’ll flash a ‘thumbs-down’ sign at me, and then I may not be given permission to ever see you again.”

  “Well, handsome, I can see that you know how to handle a big girl, but you’ve got a lot to learn about handling a little one.”

  She may have a point there, but if she only knew how I screwed up my marriage to Myra, she might not have the same opinion of my ability to handle a big girl either.

  The evening comes to a pleasant end without my being cornered into extending an invitation to the boat. I’ll have to talk to the kid first, because every time she thinks I’m in danger of getting involved with any woman other than Myra, they put their heads together to let me know why it can never work out. First there was Patty, who they accused of being a lesbian. Then there was Beverly Luskin, who tried to get me convicted of murder. The bad thing about Suzi and Myra is that they’re rarely wrong.

  I think I’ll leave them out of the loop this time. I’d rather not give them a crack at Evelyn. I don’t know too much about her, but I feel pretty sure that neither she nor her daughter were involved in any murder plots.

  I walk her to the car, get my kiss goodnight, and stagger back to the boat. I don’t understand it. She drank as much as I did, but I can hardly see where I’m walking and she looks completely unaffected.

  Now back on board, I see some messages waiting for me. Olive wants me to know that she hasn’t heard from Hal recently, so my plans worked. She’s using the money she earned for not appearing in the commercial on her honeymoon with Vinnie.

  Stuart called to thank me for letting him borrow that DVD, but complained that something must be wrong with it, because he couldn’t access the Menu feature by using his player’s remote control.

  Tony called to make sure I wasn’t getting in his way in the murder investigation, and Special Agent Snell wants me to buy some more DVDs off of that website.

  I haven’t heard from April for a while, so I won’t bother her with a phone call. It looks like she’s not being bothered by her apartment manager, and I want to give her some time to grieve over the loss of her boyfriend.

  It’s late in the evening, but I know that the counterfeit DVD website works around the clock, so I go to their website and order two more titles. Snell and his group will no doubt be watching them all the way through, so I make a special effort to select the most boring ‘chick flicks’ in their catalog. I also check with the local video store that’s open all night to verify that these particular titles won’t be available on video or DVD for another couple of months. This lets me know for sure that I’m ordering pirated movies. I then make a note to tell the guy at the private mailbox place to not touch those boxes, because they’re going to be fingerprinted. He looks like he’s been in the system before, so I’m sure he’ll take my advice and keep his hands off of my mail. Before turning in, I leave two plastic evidence bags out for the kid, with a note telling her to bag the DVD’s that come in and then call Snell’s office so a messenger can be sent to pick them up. I’m amazed that I can think of all these things so clearly. It must have been the combination of Evelyn and the Patrón margaritas that increased my brain’s powers. I’ll have to try this experiment again soon.

  *****

  I refuse to have an alarm clock anywhere near my sleeping quarters, and always make sure to turn off the landline and cell phone ringers before turning in. I’m not a doctor on call for emergency surgery, so there’s no situation I can think of that’s important enough to wake me up before I’m good and ready. The kid and dog both know where I am if a need should arise, and everyone else in the world can wait until I wake up the next morning.

  *****

  Hershel Belsky didn’t want to wait. When I turn on my cell phone this morning, I see that he called six times while I was sleeping. There are also a bunch of messages on my machine, so I guess he’s trying every way he can to reach me.

  One of the messages on my voice mail is from Nick at Volcano Productions. He also wanted to let me know that Hershel was desperately trying to reach me.

  I quickly go through all of my messages and erase the ones from Hershel. An email comes in from him. I’m starting to get the idea that he really wants to talk to me, so I might as well call.

  *****

  Beverly Hills is one of the most land-locked areas in the Los Angeles area. There’s no freeway going there, so you have to suffer the traffic and exorbitant parking fees, which are doubled for me, because the parking guys charge my Hummer for two spots. The last time I visited a friend’s office in Beverly Hills, it cost me over fifteen bucks to drive there and have him buy me a fourteen-dollar lunch. In addition to hating traffic, going to Beverly Hills just doesn’t make economical sense to me, so whatever he wants will have to be done on the phone.

  “Oh, Mister Sharp, thanks for calling. The Production Company gave me your telephone number, so I left some messages for you.”

  “About nine, to be exact. What do you want Hershel? If you’re looking for phone sex, you’ve got the wrong number.”

  “Hah, very funny. It so happens that I have a business proposition for you.”

  I don’t respond. Let’s see how he handles the silent treatment.

  “Okay, okay, so you don’t sound too enthusiastic. Here’s what I have in mind. I’d like to sign your client to be my official spokesperson in all my future television commercials. I know she’s a little overweight, but the viewers love her. I’ve been getting more business since that last commercial than I ever thought was possible. Whattaya say? Can we make a deal?”

  I tell Hershel that her boyfriend was the movie producer who got killed. He said that he’d heard about that crime, and understands if she’d like some time to get over it. He makes me promise to get back to him in the next couple of weeks, after I’ve had a chance to discuss it with her.

  *****

  Every time I walk past Tony’s boat, it looks like there’s a police convention going on there. He’s still on suspension, but all of his police friends are on his side and helping investigate the murder he’s charged with. Because the case is an open file with the District Attorney’s office, the officers still on duty can justify spending time on it. From the traffic that also reaches our boat, it looks like his investigative team has been instructed to filter all of its findings through the kid, who is a genius at organizing facts that appear to be unrelated, and then connecting the dots to solve a case.

  Other than A. Conan Doyle, one of my favorite literary detectives is Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, the original armchair detective.
He was fortunate to have a personal assistant named Archie Goodwin, who did all of his legwork and reported all findings back to his boss, who would then process them through his mental computer and come up with a solution to the crime.

  In some ways, Suzi is the modern day Nero Wolfe, but she outdoes him in two ways. First, instead of just one Archie Goodwin, she’s got an entire staff of trained professional detectives doing her legwork. And second, in addition to a mental computer, she’s got every piece of software known to mankind to help her sort the information. I also have a feeling that as a result of our past involvement with the authorities, she’s got copies of all their official law enforcement programs.

  *****

  Tony finished his scenes on the Venice Soundstage, and Ren tells me that everything went smoothly. They’re still shooting some final scenes and post-production should start in another week or so. I’ve been consulted on courtroom procedures several times, and since my work is now done, our office will be invoicing them for my fee.

  Aside from a slight weight loss, you’d never realize that Tony’s been charged with murder. I’m reminded of an old saying that goes something like ‘sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.’ Well, that’s not entirely true. Of all the names I’ve been called in my life so far, there’s one that really hurts when I hear myself being called it: ‘Defendant.’

  The majority of people who’ve never been charged with a crime have difficulty in appreciating the tremendous anxiety and pressure that a defendant feels, but there is one slight example that even the straight and narrow citizens can identify with. It’s the feeling you get when a police car’s red lights go off in back of you while you’re driving down the street at night. The instant you suddenly realize that you’re being pulled over because the police think you’ve done something wrong, the feeling that it’s going to cost you time and money to get out of this mess… that’s a little what it feels like to be charged with a crime.

  In a traffic situation, it’s all over in a few minutes, but when you’re charged with a serious crime and are facing a trial and possible loss of your freedom, it occupies your thoughts every waking minute of the day, and you desperately hope for something to come along to even momentarily take your mind off of it.

  This is why I sympathize with my clients. Civil cases are a little different because the only downside is losing money, but the litigants to those civil cases also feel stressed. Every transaction between human beings carries with it a certain amount of emotion. Some are minor, like a handshake, making a sale, a peck on the cheek or other passing occurrences, but others require more positive or negative emotion. The most stressful are the loss of a loved one, being sued, and being arrested.

  Because each client brings a certain amount of emotion along as baggage, it becomes the lawyer’s responsibility to sort out what is legal, fair, and reasonable conduct within the judicial system, and what is not.

  One prime example is the type of case in which clients may be so emotionally driven that they make unreasonable demands on their attorney are domestic family matters. Separation, Divorce, Property Settlement and Child Custody are the most emotion-ridden matters handled by most lawyers. There have been more cases of in-court assaults and murders in domestic relations matters than in any other type of case going through the judicial system.

  Whenever you hear of a person that goes from one attorney to the other during the course of a legal case, it’s probably because they are so driven by emotion that they make unreasonable demands on their lawyer… demands that are ultimately refused, for lack of propriety.

  This is why I’m so happy that Tony is handling his arrest and charge of murder so well. If there’s anything I don’t need, it’s an emotional client who carries a gun. We both believe that because there’s no way to salvage the bullet that went straight through Joe Caulfield and into a concrete wall, the prosecution might not be able to prove that it came from the empty shell found in Tony’s gun. That sounds good to him, and I believe it myself, but neither of us is a ballistics expert, and the smoking gun is still waving in his direction.

  The phone rings. It’s Myra.

  “What’s up Mizz Prosecutor? Want to have some dinner with me?”

  “No. I’m sorry Peter, but you might want to talk to your client about making a plea on this case.”

  “Oh please, give me a break. All you’ve got is a hero cop who was obviously framed. The jury will love him when he gets on the stand. There’s no way you can prove that the flattened bullet fragment you found was fired from his gun. That empty shell casing was no doubt planted in his weapon, and you can’t even prove that it was fired from his gun. Instead of my considering a plea, you should consider dismissing this entire miscarriage of justice.”

  “I can see that you don’t know much about tool mark identification, Peter.”

  “Say what? Toolmark identification? What does that have to do with this case? There were no tools used in this murder. Are you holding back on some evidence? You know, as defense attorney I’m entitled to be provided with whatever evidence you have on this case, whether it’s exculpatory or not.”

  “Oh Peter. For goodness sake, calm down. We’re not hiding any evidence from you. The purpose of this call is to give you the courtesy of some advance knowledge about what our investigation has turned up. One of our experts has concluded that the spent casing found in your client’s weapon wasn’t planted there. Not only did it have Tony’s fingerprints on it, which establishes the fact that he loaded it, but it also had a matching breech mark to other bullets we test fired from his weapon.

  “The people who examine markings on bullets and casings all belong to an organization called AFTE, which stands for Association of Firearms and Toolmarks Examiners, and they not only compare the striations on recovered bullets with rifling marks of guns, they can also analyze ‘tool-marks,’ the identifying features of fired ammunition.

  “When a bullet is fired, a mark is made by the firing pin. The force of the blast then pushes the bullet backwards, causing a breechmark. The toolmark examiners can use those marks to determine whether a spent shell was fired either from a weapon or planted there. In this case, your guy’s cannon definitely left its ballistic fingerprint on that empty casing. I’m afraid we’ve got him, Pete.”

  “Hold on, genius. All you may have proved is that his gun fired the bullet that left that empty casing. You still haven’t shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the bullet fragment scraped off that concrete wall came from the empty shell casing. There’s still a hole in your case.”

  “For God’s sake Peter, what do you want from us? A narrated videotape of the shooting? This murder case is no different than most of the others. All we have to do is get enough links in the chain to get a jury to believe the bullet that killed the victim was fired from your guy’s gun. And in this case, we’ve got it. They didn’t get along. They had frequent arguments. Your guy has a bad history with people of color. The wound experts will testify that the victim was hit by a .50 caliber bullet. Your guy has a .50 caliber gun that was recently fired. There was a spent shell in his weapon that was definitely fired by that weapon. Case closed. Checkmate. We’ve got him Pete, and the sooner you realize it, the better it’ll be for all of us, including your client.

  “Now, because of his distinguished police record, the fact that he may have been provoked during an argument, the heat of passion, yada yada, I’m willing to consider dropping the charge a little. Maybe we can go down to Man 1. Why not talk it over with him?”

  My conversation with Myra ends without me mentioning to her that if I suggest to Tony he should consider making a plea even to the reduced charge of manslaughter, I might wind up being the victim in a second count of her murder case. If she’s got all the stuff she says she’s got, then I’ve got to invent some new process of ballistic investigation that can show that the empty shell in Tony’s gun had been fired at least two or three hours before the police arrived and took h
is weapon, making it impossible for him to have fired the fatal shot. I admit I’ve got a really limited knowledge of this ballistic science stuff, but common sense tells me that this will be an impossible task. I’m afraid that Myra actually has found the smoking gun for her jury… and it really was in my client’s hand.

  * * * * * *

  Chapter 10

  I arrange to meet with Tony. If he didn’t put that empty shell casing in the cylinder of his gun, then someone else must have planted it there. Forget the ballistics junk. All we have to do is find anyone who might have had access to his gun. The time frame is even nicely narrowed down for us. He claims that he was on the range firing that day, so the casing must have been planted between when he finished firing, and the time he entered the soundstage. That’s only a window of about two hours, so now it’s time for him to relive every minute of that period, and we may find out who our killer is.

  Tony’s preliminary hearing date is rapidly approaching, so we’ve got some work to do. A good thing about Tony being a cop is that he’s testified in hundreds of prelims. He won’t be testifying in this one, but I don’t have to make the same explanation to him that most clients require.

  If the prosecution wants to bring a person to trial on a felony charge In the State of California, they have two choices: Indictment or Information. With an indictment, they go before the Grand Jury. If that group returns a ‘bill of indictment,’ it’s then straight to the Superior Court for arraignment and trial. Like so many others, this case will be going by Information, which means a preliminary hearing first, at which time the prosecution doesn’t have to establish guilt on the part of the defendant. All they have to do is establish that a crime has been committed and that there is reasonable cause to believe that the defendant may have been involved. The defendant is then ‘bound over’ for arraignment and trial in the Superior Court.