Blind Justice

by James Scott Bell

  “You could if you really wanted to.”

  “This was a shocking crime, Mr. Dennis—”

  “Denney.”

  “—and it just isn’t going to go any lower.”

  I didn’t know Sylvia Plotzske well enough yet to know whether this was a bluff or not. My guess was that it wasn’t. She didn’t seem the type, and she was probably just following the dictates of her boss on this one.

  “I’m going to need some time to think about it,” I said.

  “You can have until the prelim,” she answered.

  There was nothing more to say. I took a chair and waited for the judge.

  At 8:55, three jail inmates were marched in by deputy sheriffs and seated in the jury box. One of them was Howie. He looked pale and scared, or maybe just horribly confused. I walked over to the box and waited for the sheriff to remove the shackles.

  “How you doing?” I asked.

  “What’s going on, Jake?”

  “You’re going to enter a plea this morning. That gets us on track for the preliminary hearing.”

  “Do I plead guilty?”

  “Not yet. You plead not guilty.”

  “But—”

  “Buy us some time.”

  “But—”

  “Okay?”

  Howie looked at his hands. “I’ll do what you tell me, Jake, but I want to confess. I want to get this over with. I want to clear my soul.”

  He was starting to move down the path toward hysteria, so I put my hands up to calm him down. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I been having dreams every night, Jake. The devil is in them. He’s going to take me if I don’t confess!”

  “Howie, you trust me, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s do it my way.”

  “But—”

  Judge Oswald Mellor entered the courtroom. The bailiff called everyone to order as I motioned to Howie to sit down.

  “Morning, ya’ll,” Mellor said. He was graying and in his sixties, with short hair that was a bit unruly. It was almost like the look was studied and intended to portray an air of informality.

  He called the first case. One of the other jail inmates stood at the jury box rail as his lawyer joined him. It was a felony battery. Judge Mellor read a litany of rights and asked the defendant if he understood them. He said he did, then entered a plea of not guilty. A prelim was set, and the defendant disappeared back into the bowels of the courthouse lockup.

  Then Mellor called our case.

  I stood and said, “Good morning, Your Honor. Jake Denney on behalf, Howard Patino.”

  “Morning, Mr. Denney. Nice to have you here.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “Hope it stays that way.” The judge winked at his bailiff who smiled. “We don’t usually get city folks up here.”

  “Well, that works out,” I said. “We don’t usually get the rubes down there.”

  Mellor didn’t smile, and I immediately realized my blunder. You don’t joke with a judge who wants to be the head comedian. And you especially don’t fling humorous insults back at him as if he were a drinking buddy. I felt the other lawyers looking at me like they couldn’t believe I could be so dumb.

  Quickly, I said, “We’ll waive a reading of the complaint and statement of rights, and my client is ready to enter a plea.” I joined Howie at the jury box.

  “Son,” the judge said, “do you understand the charges against you?”

  Howie looked at me, and I nodded at him. Howie said, “Yes.”

  “How do you plead?”

  Again Howie looked at me. I whispered, “Not guilty,” but Howie shook his head.

  “Not guilty,” I whispered, a little louder this time.

  Howie just looked at me like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

  “Mr. Denney?” the judge said. “Is your client ready to enter a plea?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Turning again to Howie, I whispered, “Do it!”

  Howie looked down and mumbled, “Not guilty.”

  “How’s that?” the judge said.

  I glared at Howie. He raised his voice a little. “Not guilty.”

  “All right,” Judge Mellor said. “Preliminary hearing is set for a week from Monday in Judge Abovian’s court. You have any thoughts on bail, Ms. Plotzske?”

  Sylvia Plotzske stood. “Yes, Your Honor. We request that the defendant be held without bail. This was an act of extreme violence, shocking to this community. The victim sustained at least twenty-five stab wounds. In addition, it’s clear that this defendant has no ties to the community. He’s been living in Alaska for the last several months. He’s a flight risk as well as a danger.”

  The judge looked at me with a frown.

  “Your Honor,” I said, “it is not true that my client has no ties to this community. He has his son, Brian. He’s not going to abandon him. The boy’s staying with Mr. Patino’s parents now, and he wants to see him, to be a father to him. He is not going to flee.”

  The judge kept his frown intact.

  “And my client has no prior record of violence. There is nothing in his past to indicate he is a threat to anyone. I don’t think the prosecutor has shown by clear and convincing evidence that he is.”

  “Twenty-five stab wounds is pretty convincing,” the judge said.

  “Again, look to my client’s past.”

  Judge Mellor said, “Bail set at five hundred thousand. Let’s go to the next case.”

  “Your Honor?” I said.

  Mellor looked at me like I’d interrupted his lunch. “What is it?”

  “I’d like to request the appointment of a confidential psychiatrist.”

  “You want him evaluated for mental competency?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Denied.”

  “I think this is a necessary step.”

  “I don’t. If you want him evaluated on your dime, go ahead. But I don’t see any evidence of incapacity here.”

  “That’s what the evaluation is for, Your Honor, to—”

  “Denied. Next case.”

  And with that, I was dismissed. I told Howie to hang in there a little longer and reminded him not to talk to anyone. He was just about to be taken back into the lockup when he said, “You only said one wrong thing, Jake.”

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t want Brian back. I want him to forget about me. I’m no good for him.” He turned around and went with the sheriff.

  I didn’t say anything to Sylvia Plotzske before I left. There was no need to. We could both read the handwriting on the wall of the Hinton County Courthouse.

  Howie was going to do some serious time in prison.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I HAD TO let Lindsay Patino know the reality of her brother’s situation.

  I also wanted to see her again.

  As soon as I got on the freeway I called the work number she had given me that day at the hospital. A young lady answered, “Agoura Academy.”

  I asked for Lindsay. The young lady said she was in class.

  “This is kind of an emergency,” I said, which was only about one-third true, even though it was an emergency of my own making—I had decided I needed to talk to her now.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Tell her it’s her brother’s lawyer.”

  “Oh, I’ll get her right away.”

  A few minutes later Lindsay came on the line. Her tone was frosty. “Yes?”

  “Hi, we just finished the arraignment.”

  “And?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  A pause. “When?”

  “How about in the next hour?”

  “I’m teaching.”

  “You have to eat lunch.”

  “It’s in a brown bag.”

  “It’s very important that I talk to you. I have a lot of things to explain.” I added, “And I thought, why not make it a pleasant -experience?”

 
“All right. I’ll meet you in front of the school at 11:45 A.M.” She gave me directions and hung up.

  For the next forty-five minutes, as I drove south, I was in a very good mood. I found that curious. I hadn’t been in a good mood in a year.

  The Agoura Academy, a private K-12 school according to the sign, was on a nice piece of property about half a mile south of the freeway. Architecturally it looked Ivy League. Lindsay was standing in front of the entrance of the main building, talking to another woman. When she saw my car, she gave the other woman a pat on the shoulder and walked over.

  “Hop in,” I said.

  She did.

  “Is there a place around here you like?” I asked.

  “There’s an Italian place about a mile from here.”

  “Italian it is.”

  Three minutes later we pulled into a mall parking lot near Amato’s Italian Kitchen. Lindsay didn’t speak a word until we were seated at a table with a black-and-white checkerboard tablecloth.

  As soon as we sat down, Lindsay said, “I’m sorry I got so upset with you in your office.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It isn’t. I was very upset, but that’s no excuse. I’ve got a bit of a temper.”

  “I’ve been known to lash out myself.”

  “But that doesn’t mean I’m any less concerned about how you handle Howie’s case.”

  “Understood.”

  A waiter arrived, and I ordered a beer. Lindsay ordered a Coke. As she did, I swiped a long look at her. She was ravishing, and while it’s not the most romantic of memories, I think I fell in love with her the moment she said, “With a slice of lemon, please.”

  “So you’re little Lindsay,” I said.

  That finally got a smile out of her. “You remember?”

  “Sure. You had buckteeth and freckles.”

  “Major buckteeth.”

  “You used to follow us around, Howie and me. You had this squeaky little voice.”

  “Was I obnoxious?”

  “Yes.” I was relieved when she blushed and smiled. “But it’s obviously worn off. And no more buckteeth.”

  “Orthodontia,” she said.

  “Now you’re a teacher?”

  “Fourth grade.”

  “How long?”

  “This is my third year.”

  “Why not public school?”

  “Because public schools in California restrict teachers too much.”

  “How did you come to this career choice?” I asked.

  “I felt called to it.”

  “Well, why not? It’s an honorable profession.”

  “Why did you go into law?” she asked.

  “Money,” I said.

  “I don’t believe that.” She was looking at me the same way she did at my office—like she could see into corners I was trying to keep hidden.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I can certainly think of several hundred other things that probably would have been better to go into.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dog catcher, for instance.”

  She smiled. “You’re a cynic.”

  “Maybe. But that’s the kind of world we live in. At one time I thought the law was a great and glorious thing, able to hold society together and bring justice to people. You get disabused of that notion real quick.”

  She thought about that for a moment, then said, “Is that why you’re so ready to make Howie plead guilty?”

  Now it was time for my lecture. “I really want you to understand the way it works, Lindsay. Remember, Howie’s my friend from way back. I only want what’s best for him. And that means getting him through this with the least possible pain.”

  She listened, looking skeptical.

  “Howie is facing a lot of pain in terms of jail time. Possible life sentence. What I’m trying to do is reach an agreement with the prosecutors that will lessen that significantly. The hard reality is, he’ll have to do time. The crime is just too heinous to avoid it.”

  Lindsay flinched a little. I said, “I don’t know why Howie would be driven to do something like that. I mean, who really understands the human mind? But it happened, and we just have to deal with it.”

  “What about the possibility that he didn’t do it?” Lindsay said forcefully. “Has anyone looked into that?”

  “Howie confessed, Lindsay. He’s admitted it.”

  “You must know that people have been known to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, for a variety of reasons.”

  “Where did you pick that up?”

  “I read, Jake. There was something in the paper not too long ago about this. A study by a couple of psychologists showed that false confessions are a big reason for innocent people being locked up.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “And one reason was what they called ‘internalized confessions,’ where an innocent person comes to believe he actually did something he didn’t do because of police coercion or guilt or something else.”

  “I think I—”

  “And the most susceptible to this type of confession are people who are of lower intelligence, subject to suggestion, and highly trusting of people. All of which Howie is.”

  Finally, she paused for a breath. “That may all be true,” I said, “but there is no evidence of it in Howie’s case.”

  “Have you looked for the evidence?”

  I shook my head.

  “All I’m saying is I know Howie. I know him better than anyone. He was always innocent and trusting and never violent. Never. He cried once when he accidentally killed a butterfly. He was twenty years old.”

  That seemed like the Howie I had known.

  “There’s no way he would kill his wife.”

  I said, “You mentioned in my office that she might have deserved it.”

  “I was angry when I said it.”

  “But it had some truth?”

  “She was a terrible person.”

  “That’s important to know. Even a sweet, good-natured dog can bite if provoked.”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Not Howie.”

  “Tell me about his wife.”

  “Oh, boy.” She leaned back in her chair as if to gather strength. “I don’t know where to start. No one wanted him to marry her, but he fell hard. I mean, Howie never had girlfriends growing up. So when Rae came along and actually made out like she liked him, it was all over.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what was in it for her?”

  “I don’t mind. I’ve asked myself that over and over. I wish I knew more about Rae’s background, where she came from, her family and all that. But she never talked about it. It was like some deep, dark secret. I just got the impression she was pretty messed up.”

  “Was she good looking?”

  “Not particularly, but she made every effort to make herself look . . .”

  “How?”

  “Sexy, provocative.”

  “I still don’t know how Howie gets involved.”

  Lindsay shook her head as she looked at the table. “It may be a wild thought, but I think Howie was an experiment for her.”

  “Experiment?”

  “Yeah, like her guinea pig. She wanted to see just how much she could control a man, and Howie was the one she picked.”

  “She had a child with him.”

  “That’s another thing, the way she was with Brian. It was like she had him, then didn’t want him around. She proved she could have a baby, but she didn’t want him to get in her way.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Whatever she wanted to do. Howie was working like crazy in construction, trying to give her everything she wanted. But she’d gotten all she wanted out of him. She started talking about divorce. Howie got desperate. Then he got this crazy idea that if he went to Alaska and got a job up there, it would make everything all right.”

  “Why Alaska?”

  “Probably because it represented a fresh start, a totally different world.”

 
“Did Howie ever talk to you about any of this?”

  Lindsay nodded. “I was the only one he could talk to. And never once did he say he wanted to kill Rae or wished she would go away or any of that. She was all he lived for.”

  The waiter arrived with our drinks. As I picked up my beer, I said, “I’ll look into this, Lindsay. But I can’t promise you anything. You’ve got to believe that I’ve got Howie’s best interest in mind.”

  She looked at me, this time with a softer expression than ever before. “I know,” she said. “Thanks for listening.”

  And at that moment I fell even deeper for her, desperate about it, wanting her like I’ve never wanted anything or anyone else before. Disturbed, I tried to shake it off with a long sip of beer. I didn’t want her to see anything of this in me, so I switched gears and started talking about other things, trivial matters.

  Finally, toward the end of lunch, I took my shot. “I wonder if we might do this again sometime,” I said.

  “Lunch?”

  “Or dinner. How about dinner next time?”

  She blushed just a little and smiled. “Thank you for asking, -but . . . I don’t think so.”

  I wasn’t about to shrug this off. “And why’s that?”

  “I . . . it’s difficult to explain.”

  Now I was more intrigued than ever. “Try me.”

  She looked at me half apologetically, which gave me reason to hope. “I’m just not ready.”

  “Wait a second. Did you just give me the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ routine?”

  “You think it’s a routine?”

  “I––”

  “Objection,” she said, with a slight smile. “Sustained.”

  “I’ll have you know you can’t sustain your own objection.”

  “I’ll have you know this is an Italian restaurant,” she said. “If you don’t like the rules I can call Mr. Amato’s two-hundred-and-fifty pound brother to come talk it over with you.”

  “Maybe I should get the check.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE FIREWORKS STARTED popping early Monday morning.

  I arrived at the Hinton County Courthouse for the preliminary hearing, which was being held in the realm of Judge Armen Abovian. I knew nothing about him and didn’t intend to find out. My goal was to settle the case on the best possible terms I could get for Howie and then get out of town and out of the lives of the Patino family once and for all.