Warning Signs

by Stephen White

  I waited for Sam to go on.

  "Anyway, so here's what I'm thinking: I'm thinking about that guy who helped the Ramseys-what's his name, Hal Haddon? Do I got that right? I always get those Ramsey lawyers mixed up. The one I think is Haddon struck me as a sharp guy. Principled, you know. But I keep wondering whether principles are a good thing in these circumstances, and I'm worried that his profile's too high after all the heat he took over the Ramseys. You think? I want some advice."

  I thought for a moment before I replied. I didn't want to get into a political discussion with Sam about legal ethics, and certainly didn't want him to go on yet another vertigo-inducing harangue about the JonBenet case. I said, "That's a realistic concern, Sam. Public opinion could be against someone like Haddon right from the start. That could rub off on Lucy. That wouldn't help."

  "My other thought was either Cozier Maitlin or Casey Sparrow. Lucy might like to have a woman involved. I'm wondering how you two felt about the help they gave Lauren that time when she was, you know…"

  "Arrested?"

  "Whatever. What'd you think?"

  "You ask Lauren for her opinion?"

  "I will. But I thought I'd ask you first. You dealt with them more than she did. So what did you think? Would you go that way again?"

  My thought was, I hope I never have to. "Cozy and Casey were great. An odd team, but professional, and creative, and sharp. But it's a moot question-Casey's not available. She's defending that woman in Wheat Ridge who's accused of killing her husband and his parents. Goes to trial this week."

  "Oh yeah. That case is hers? I didn't know. Can Maitlin handle something like Lucy's situation by himself?"

  "Sure."

  "Should he?"

  "Different question."

  I listened to him breathe. "I want to go talk with him before he hears about Lucy's involvement in all this from somebody else. Will you come with me?"

  I immediately wondered why he wanted me to accompany him to see Cozy Maitlin. "Lauren and I are going to visit Susan Peterson at the hospital at ten o'clock. We have a babysitter coming then."

  "Good," he said, totally missing my point. "If we go now, we'll both be back home by the time she gets there. We had better be-I have to get some sleep soon or I'll be no good to Lucy or Royal or anybody else."

  I stared at the clock by the bed. "You want to go to Maitlin's house at four-twenty in the morning?"

  "Nah, I wouldn't do that. That would be inconsiderate. The way I'm figuring, by the time we get there it will be almost five. You know where he lives?"

  I almost laughed. "Yes. Last year he bought a renovated Victorian on Maxwell, a block or two west of Broadway. Lauren and I were invited there for a housewarming. There were women in tuxedos carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne. That kind of party."

  "Girls in tuxedos? Sounds fun." Sam's sarcasm was way too thick for the predawn darkness. "For some reason I'll never understand, I don't get invited to parties like that. Cross-street?"

  "Near Eighth."

  "You can find the house?"

  "Sure."

  "Then I'll see you at Maxwell and Eighth at ten to five." I thought I heard him chuckle as he hung up the phone.

  I took a quick shower, shaved with an electric razor, threw on some jeans and a cotton sweater, and still I didn't make it downtown until a couple of minutes before five. The air was cool. Sam was standing on the curb leaning against his old Cherokee, three doors down from Cozier Maitlin's house. I found a spot by the curb in front of Cozy's painted-lady Victorian. Sam headed my way carrying a cardboard tray with three cups of 7-Eleven coffee.

  "Thanks for doing this," he said. "How's little Grace?"

  "She's great, Sam. I can't believe I waited this long to become a father. Simon?"

  "Feels like I haven't seen the kid in a week. Actually had to give up our Avs playoff tickets a few days ago, if you can believe it. We did go snowboarding over spring break. Kid's a maniac, I'll tell you. Boards goofy-footed. Perfect for the kid of an Iron Ranger, don't you think?"

  "You boarded, too?"

  He shook his head. "You don't want to know." He gestured toward the coffee he was holding. "This is nice of you-I know you aren't that tight with Lucy. I appreciate you agreeing to help me out."

  I shrugged. I'd lost count of the number of times Sam had sacrificed to assist Lauren and me. "It's what friends do," I said, and pointed at Cozy's pretty house. "Cozy may not think it's so nice of me."

  Sam snorted a short, derisive blast of air through his nose. "Way I look at it, you make over two hundred bucks an hour, you should expect to get rousted out of bed occasionally. A necessary part of staying humble."

  "Criminal defense attorneys shouldn't be humble, Sam. You want the same traits in defense attorneys that you want in surgeons and airline pilots. You want confidence bordering on arrogance."

  Sam grunted. He couldn't comprehend the concept of admirable traits in members of the defense bar.

  I said, "Lucy has family money, right?"

  He shifted his weight before he responded. I knew he wasn't comfortable talking about money. "She seems to. We've never talked about it much. She doesn't live like a cop. Nice apartment. Nice clothes. Nice vacations. I'd say she has money. Once said something about her father's mother leaving her something. I'd suspect she has enough to pay Cozy, if that's where you're going."

  "That's where I was going."

  "Don't worry about money. Maitlin's going to be drooling over this case. A Boulder police detective about to be accused of killing Colorado's best-known and most controversial district attorney? He'd pay me for the chance to take this case, if I put the screws to him." Sam paused for a moment. "Which I'm not planning on doing, by the way."

  We reached Cozy's front door. Sam pounded five times with the flat side of his fist, waited ten seconds, and then did it again. He explained, "First time, the noise wakes you up but you're not really sure what the heck it was, so you're tempted to go back to sleep. Second time is like an instant replay to help overcome the short-term cognitive impairment." Sam pounded five more times. "Third time is to make sure his pulse stays high. That's what I like to see when they answer the door-I want them awake, with a little bit of adrenaline flowing."

  Less than a minute later I watched lights flick on inside the house and then heard the concussion of heavy steps on the stairs. The door flung open and Cozier Maitlin filled the entire entryway.

  I thought that, at that moment, he looked like the apocryphal Rasputin on the Russian's fateful night at the Yusopov Palace.

  Cozy stood six feet eight inches tall in his bare feet. And right then, he was, indeed, barefoot. Not to mention bare-chested. The lower half of his body was adorned with pajamas covered with art deco fire trucks. The drawstring was so loose that the pajama bottoms were in danger of falling to the hardwood floor.

  I prayed that wouldn't happen.

  Cozy's hair looked like a failed do from a punk hair-care training clinic. His mouth hung open like a third eye and the expression in his gaze was as close to homicidal as I hoped it would ever get. A full day's whiskers completed the picture and left me with a graphic representation of what might have driven his ex-wife, first, to divorce him and, second, to become a lesbian.

  If I had been alone, I think Cozy would have killed me right there on his front porch. But the fact that a homicide detective accompanied me caused Cozy to pause. He closed his gaping mouth and raised his chin a couple of centimeters. With one hand he tried to tame his unruly hair, with the other hand he, thankfully, grabbed the waistband of his pajama bottoms.

  He said, "Gentlemen."

  I fought a grin.

  "Good morning, Counselor," Sam replied. "May we come in?"

  Cozy stepped back. "Of course. Where are my manners? I assume you are here at this … hour"-he spoke the word as though the very sound of it caused him significant pain-"because we're about to be dealing with a matter of some gravity and some… urgency. Would it be appropria
te for me to steal a moment or two and pull on a robe? Would that be acceptable under the circumstances?"

  Cozy had a knack of communicating condescension and sarcasm without revealing too much malice. I'd always admired that trait in him.

  Sam nodded. He raised his cardboard tray full of 7-Eleven cups. "I brought coffee. Didn't think you'd have made any yet. Maybe should have got doughnuts, too, but I wasn't thinking clearly."

  "That's quite apparent," Cozy replied. He actually tried to smile before he retreated back up the stairs to his bedroom to find a robe.

  After the defense lawyer disappeared up the stairs, Sam said, "That went better than I expected."

  C ozy was down about five minutes later. He'd taken a quick shower and was wearing sweats.

  "Alan, Sam. I must let you know that the two of you make an odd pair standing at my door in the dark hours before dawn. My initial guess when I saw you, Detective, was that this was about Royal Peterson. But Alan? I don't figure your part. So, please, Detective-is this about Royal Peterson's murder? You've been working that, haven't you? Is that a fair assumption on my part?"

  Sam said, "Yes, Mr. Maitlin. That's a fair assumption." Sam rubbed the back of his hand across the stubble on his chin. The grating sound was audible, and kind of creepy. "Earlier this morning I picked someone up for questioning in Royal's murder. We're here to talk with you about whether or not you'd be interested in representing that person."

  Cozy had been ignoring the 7-Eleven coffee. I doubted that he'd consumed anything so plebeian in quite some time. But after Sam disclosed the nature of our errand, Cozy reached down and lifted his cardboard cup, flicked off the plastic lid, and took a long swallow. When he looked back up he was staring at me. I was wearing my psychotherapist's face, disclosing nothing.

  "This is irregular," Cozy proclaimed.

  "That's an understatement," I said.

  "It's not often that I'm approached by the lead detective of a homicide investigation asking me to represent someone he's just… fingered. Is that a good description of what is occurring here?"

  Sam's shoulders had sunk and he was focusing his attention on the liquid in his cup as though the shimmering surface were the glass of a crystal ball. My impression was that Sam had used all the energy he'd had left just to tell Cozy why we were there.

  At that moment, I suspected that was why Sam had asked me to come along. He needed me to be ready to take over.

  I said, "Sam's not part of the investigation any longer, Cozy. He was removed from the case a few hours ago, right after he picked up his partner for questioning for Royal's murder. On his way out she asked him to help her find a lawyer. He asked Lauren and me for advice. Now, Sam wants to talk with you about representing her. Her name is Lucy Tanner. Sam thought it would be better for you and him to talk before the media is all over this."

  Cozy shifted his eyes from me to Sam and back. It was as though he was waiting for Sam or me to slap a thigh and tag him with a punch line. Finally, Cozy stood up. He had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the light fixture that hung in the center of the room. For a minute or more he stood at the large window that faced Maxwell Street, his back to us.

  Past him, in the distance, I could see the first glimmers of morning light on the eastern horizon.

  Sam was still staring into his cup.

  Cozy turned around. He said, "I'll do it."

  Sam raised his head and his eyes narrowed at Cozy.

  "Where is my client?" Cozy asked.

  "Sam?" I asked. "Lucy would still be at Thirty-third Street, right? She wouldn't have been moved over to the jail?"

  "When I left she was still at the department. They wouldn't take her over to the jail unless they had enough to arrest her." He shifted his gaze to Cozy. "You should be able to find her at Thirty-third Street."

  The lawyer asked the detective a lawyer question. "Do they have enough to charge her?"

  Sam said, "In my opinion, no. It's not my opinion that counts, though, is it?"

  Cozy nodded. "I'd like to ask you a few things. You picked her up this morning? Was that at her home?"

  "Yeah. About two-thirty."

  "Did she say anything to you at that time?"

  Sam buried his lower lip in his mustache and shook his head. "You don't know Lucy Tanner. Let me tell you something about her: Your new client's a very smart lady, Mr. Maitlin. She's not going to be talking to anyone."

  "Then why pick her up? What's the upside? Why not wait until more evidence was developed?"

  "It wasn't my decision. Once things started playing out the way they started playing out, it was decided to bring her in to talk to her. The department has kind of a bad reputation concerning delaying questioning of witnesses in murder investigations. I think that was a major motivator in the decision. They wanted to talk to Lucy before she figured out that she should be talking to you."

  Cozy sat back. "She was there with you on Friday night, right? At the Peterson house?"

  "She was."

  "The whole time?"

  "The whole time. We worked the scene together. She kept the log."

  I could tell Cozy adored the image he was forming in his imagination. He was already cross-examining witnesses in his head.

  "She's had access to the murder book from the start?"

  "From the start."

  Cozy nodded. Sipped again at his coffee. He looked at Sam over the rim of the cardboard cup. "You want to tell me what you have on her?"

  Sam said, "See… this is where it gets dicey, Mr. Maitlin."

  "Call me Cozy."

  "I'm not comfortable with that, yet. I'll try to work through it, though, I promise."

  I wasn't sure Sam's sarcasm even registered on Cozy.

  Sam continued. "Anyway, I'm here to help my partner. I'm not here to betray the Boulder Police Department. Even though it's not my case anymore, you know damn well I can't reveal the fruits of the investigation."

  "But you had cause to pick her up?"

  Sam closed his eyes, grimaced, and added a little headshake. "Bringing her in may not have been my idea, and may not have been a good idea strategically, but it wasn't bogus."

  I said, "Cozy? Think about this. Sam just turned in his partner-his close friend-for questioning in a very, very high profile murder. Even though he didn't agree with the decision, he's telling you that he's convinced that the evidence warranted it."

  Cozy said, "That's the truth, Sam?"

  "Yeah. That's the truth."

  Cozy said, "I should make a quick call to the detectives who are chatting with my client and inform them of my involvement."

  Sam buried his bottom lip in his mustache and nodded his agreement before he stood to leave. I stood, too.

  Cozy said, "I'll do my best for your friend, Sam."

  Sam didn't respond until we got to the front door. "I wasn't honest with you before, Mr. Maitlin. She did say something to me when I went to her place. She reached up and grabbed my head and pulled it real close to hers. She stuck her lips next to my ear and she said, 'I didn't do it, Sam. Keep looking.' That's all she said."

  Cozy said, "You believe her?"

  Sam said, "A thousand percent."

  CHAPTER 5

  I 'd told myself that the media was going to be all over this case, but still I wasn't prepared for the breadth of the invasion that had already occurred. It was all so Ramsey-reminiscent. Microwave trucks were all over town-the Public Safety Building on Thirty-third, the Justice Center on Sixth, and of course, outside the Peterson home-and reporters and producers were tripping over each other trying to discover a virgin angle or finagle a reluctant interview.

  Lauren and I tried to pick a route from our home to Community Hospital that would shield us from the press. As I stopped at a red light at Thirtieth, I said, "Are you thinking much about what Lucy is going through?" As a rule, Lauren and I didn't dwell on the episode that had landed her in even worse circumstances than the ones that Lucy currently faced. Lauren had actually been
arrested and taken to jail, accused of shooting someone.

  At first, Lauren just glanced my way and nodded. Finally, she said, "I'm just praying she doesn't have to go through what comes next-those first few hours at the jail-the body search, the booking-were the worst part of it for me after I was arrested. I have to think it would be even worse for Lucy because she's a cop."

  "If they arrest her, they'd have her isolated from the general population, wouldn't they?"

  "I'm sure they would."

  The light changed and we were quiet until the next red light at Folsom. I asked, "What do you think about Sam's choice of Cozy to defend Lucy?"

  "There's a number of people in town who could do it, Alan, and a whole bunch in Denver, but I think… Cozy's the right one. His profile is high, but not too high. He has a good relationship with our office, but not too chummy. He's experienced with capital cases." She paused. "He's a good choice."

  "Your words are more enthusiastic than your voice."

  "Probably. I think I'd feel better about it if Casey Sparrow was available to help him."

  "Is it too much for Cozy to do by himself?"

  "With all the media? It may be. It all depends whether she's charged. These big cases are so consuming. But I'm thinking more about the perspective Casey would provide. Sometimes Cozy's style requires ballast."

  I eased the car straight into the intersection but took a sharp left with the conversation. "How are your symptoms?"

  "About the same."

  "Not worse?"

  "Not much worse."

  "Is it an exacerbation?"

  "I don't know yet. Could just be a series of reruns. That's what I'm hoping."

  L auren and I walked hand in hand toward Community Hospital, chatting about what it was like to leave Grace with a sitter, what it was going to be like doing it every day now that Lauren's maternity leave was ending. Our guard was down, and neither of us saw the ambush developing as we approached the ER entrance to the hospital. By the time I had started paying attention, a reporter from one of the Denver TV stations had a foam-covered microphone in Lauren's face.