The Law Partners (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by John Ellsworth

  I began reading. It was my guess that Michael would be charged as an accessory to the murder of Darrell Harrow since nobody would be claiming he was actually present at the shooting. Criminal accessory law is very interesting. In criminal law, contributing to or aiding in the commission of a crime can get you charged as an accessory. Accessory is one who, without being present at the commission of an offense, becomes guilty of such offense, not as a chief actor, but as a participant, as by command, advice, instigation, or concealment; either before or after the fact or commission.

  Concealment. That's Michael's problem right there. Or so I was thinking.

  At four-thirty sharp, Angelina showed him into my office. I called him over to my conference area, which was really nothing more than four Eames chairs arranged around a glass coffee table. Angelina took our drink orders and scurried out. (Don't feel sorry she has to fill drink orders. She would be back to briefing cases for night law school on my dime in five minutes, and probably already had been since lunch. Not a bad gig.)

  "So, Michael," I start it off. "Sorry to hear about your problem. But that's the trouble with practicing criminal law. Sit in the barber's chair long enough and sooner or later someone's going to get a haircut."

  He crossed his legs and settled his coffee cup and saucer on his knee.

  "It's a sham; they planted the gun in my car. That's all," he said.

  "But aren't they all innocent? I've never had anyone walk in here who was anything but innocent. Not counting the little old lady who was a serial shoplifter of flashlight batteries. It was just her thing and she couldn't restrain herself. The judge committed her to community service and weekly OCD counseling. It must have worked; she hasn't returned to see me. But now, Michael, here you are, telling me you're innocent too."

  He shrugged. "That's because I am innocent."

  "Why would they plant a gun on you, Michael?"

  He looked off in the distance. Michael--I had found from dinner dates and the like--was a contemplative sort, a man who preferred to actually think before he spoke. Kind of a refreshing trait for a criminal lawyer, most of whom have a line of bullshit a mile long. Then he looked back at me.

  "Actually, I believe I have been targeted. Set up, for some reason I can't understand."

  "Have you rubbed someone the wrong way over at the District Attorney's office? Pissed off some heavyweight in the detective bureau?"

  He set his coffee cup and saucer down on the coffee table. It was only then that I noticed his hands were shaking. He rubbed his hands together like Lady Macbeth.

  "I think someone is making a case against Mira Morales and they needed a tie-in."

  "What's that mean?"

  "It means they want everyone to believe that Mira asked me to remove the murder weapon from the scene of the crime. That way they can indirectly prove guilty mind. Like fleeing from the police."

  I had to think about that. If Michael was right, if he was part of a scheme that clever, then he was in for the fight of his life because the mastermind behind something like that would be a genius freak.

  But I didn't want to just jump to such a working thesis, and I told him so.

  "Let's start with the basics," I told him. "Who had access to your car?"

  He again looked away. "Anyone and everyone, I guess. Marcel drives me into work almost every day and it gets parked in the basement of my building. The entire world has access to it down there."

  "When was the last time you had the trunk open?"

  "Danny and I took a trip to Saint Louis to watch the Cards last spring. We took two suitcases in the trunk."

  "Was there some part of the trunk you couldn't see simply by opening it up?"

  "I asked myself the same thing. So I popped the trunk when we go it back a half hour ago. There's a space behind the spare tire. I would never look there unless I was changing the tire."

  "So the gun might have been in your trunk for quite some time and you just didn't know?"

  "Possible, I guess. But why?"

  I lean back in the Eames chair and begin tapping my pen on the leather arm. "Unknown. We're just talking here. Let's try not to ascribe motive to possible scenarios at this point. Motives are always ambiguous."

  "Okay. One possible scenario: someone put the gun in there the night of the shooting. Another scenario: they planted it the next day. Another scenario: they planted it on me at the time of the execution of the search warrant."

  "You're saying the search team might have placed it in there?"

  "Hell, I don't know that it was ever even in there, for that matter. They might just be saying it was in there, for all I know. For all I really know they found it in Mira's condo, put it into evidence, tagged it, and then said they found it in my trunk. The scenarios are endless."

  "True enough. I'm thinking too that maybe you put it there. Let's rule that out by logic. If you put it there, that would be the dumbest thing you've ever done, right?"

  He looked at me crossly, then his demeanor relaxed. "All right, I'll play that game. Let's say I was helping Mira cover up the crime. Let's say I did remove the gun from her condo. The trunk of my own car would be the last place I would have put that gun."

  "The first place being?"

  "I don't know. Maybe outside the building, maybe on the sidewalk, a trash bin, or a Dumpster down the first alley."

  "No, the nearby trash bins and Dumpsters would have been searched by the cops when they couldn't find her gun in her condo. You would have had second thoughts and wouldn't have put it anywhere near her building."

  "Maybe I would drive home by the lake and throw it in. That wouldn't be so hard to imagine."

  "Agreed. Do they have metal detectors that work under water?"

  "Damned if I know. Why?"

  "I don't know. Dumb question, I guess. So. We are expecting an indictment probably for being an accessory after the fact. Or maybe even conspiracy. You conspiring with Mira to complete the crime."

  "The accessory angle is my guess. I'm guessing they'll be wanting to make a case against me for being an accessory to murder."

  "Or maybe as an accomplice. An accessory may or may not have been at the crime scene. An accomplice was at the crime scene and aided in the commission of the crime somehow."

  "Like helping hide the murder weapon."

  "Exactly. And we both know these crimes are often charged as obstruction of justice nowadays."

  "So there's two counts: accessory and obstruction of justice."

  "Three. Don't forget conspiracy."

  "Four, hell, they might even charge me with being present when the fatal shot was fired."

  "Five, as long as we're speculating, they might even charge you with being the killer, the one who fired the shot."

  He shook his head and clamped his hands on both knees. "This starts to run out of control with just a few minutes of plotting."

  "It sure as hell does, Michael."

  "So I need to retain you. How much do I need to pay you to get you onboard?"

  "One-fifty. That'll get my attention."

  "A hundred-fifty-thousand dollars. I'll have Marcel swing by with a check in the morning."

  I looked at him and we both knew what I was going to say next. We both had said the exact same thing hundreds of times to hundreds of clients.

  "Don't talk to anyone about this. Not even Danny. All right?"

  "A page right out of my own playbook. All right, counselor. My lips are sealed."

  "I'm counting on that."

  We finished our coffees, talking about the few times we went out together and wondering why that never did go anywhere. Michael quickly became uncomfortable with that topic--he was now married and virtuous--and he set aside his cup and saucer and stood to go.

  "Hugs?" I said to him.

  We hugged and I could sense him smelling my hair, my Chanel.

  We had had our moments. Our times together had twice been rip-roaring successes. That I could recall.

  We stepped
back from the hug. Chanel can always be counted on to flood a victim with old memories of sweet times.

  Exactly why I reapplied it after he first called. He had gotten away. But I'm a sore loser. I don't quit and I never give up. Which is not to say I'll be pursuing him; I won't. But if he ever came snooping back around, I certainly wouldn't turn and run away.

  Who could, with Michael Gresham? Even now, with his face all burned and scarred. The Michael I knew was much more than some skin deep hunk.

  He was Michael Gresham.

  21

  Michael called me three days later. He had been arrested and they were taking him to jail. So I dropped everything and headed for the Cook County Jail on California Avenue. CCJ is the last place anyone with a pulse would ever want to spend the night. Full of piss, vomit, shit, and other unmentionable bodily discharges too unpleasant to even think about. I jumped in my Jag and headed out.

  My offices are located on Michigan Avenue, so I headed out and hit Wacker, connected up with the 90 South, and then west on Garfield to 2600 California Avenue. It was normally about a thirty-minute drive in my Jag. Today, the traffic was fairly light, and I made it in just over twenty minutes flying low. No cops, no tickets, the Eagles blaring over my Bose, while I was thinking about Michael Gresham and trying to understand why anyone would want to implicate him in the murder of a District Attorney. It just didn't make sense. Except it made it look like Mira was complicit in having the gun removed from her condo by her lawyer. More fuel for the fire.

  I parked next door to the jail and headed up the sidewalk. This was a complex that housed a small city of men and women while they awaited trial in the main courthouse, next door to the jail. While the courthouse was old and dim, the jail itself was modern but choked with humanity. Too damn many bodies crammed too closely together.

  My bar card got me to the head of the line and I stepped through the scanner without a peep. Then it happened. A male deputy maybe fifteen years younger than me pulled me aside.

  "You're a lawyer?" he asked. "Are you Tonya Sturgis?"

  "That's what my mother calls me. I'm Harley to everyone else. How can I help you?'

  "Your client Michael Gresham is in the infirmary. He started a fight with four cops and got the worst end of the bargain. Please follow me."

  We passed back through security, back outside, and headed into the infirmary next door.

  We hurried back up the block to 2800 California Avenue. The address belonged to the Cermak Health Services, the jail’s medical clinic, where we bypassed security and headed back to the ICU. Sure enough, the deputy brought me alongside Michael, who was lying flat on his back, his right arm elevated in traction and his face badly bruised, one eye swollen shut and the other puffy, a mere slit yet visible.

  "Get me out of here, Harley," he whispered. "They attacked me."

  "Who attacked you?"

  "The two cops bringing me in. They stopped a block away. Worked me over. I'm pissing blood."

  "All right. Can you give me their names?"

  "I never got them. They came into my office. Walked right in and cuffed me. I was talking to a client. They didn't give a damn. Handcuffs, threw me up against the wall and searched me. Threatened me on the way over. Then one of them turned around. Pointed his gun at my face. Then laughed."

  "We need names, Michael. I'll have a Civil Rights action filed against them before the end of the day."

  "I wish you. Would."

  He was wheezing, trying to catch his breath.

  "Ow-ow-ow. Ribs broken in two places. Kicked in chest and face. Mean fuckers, those cops."

  He then lapsed into disconnected words and phrases, crazy talk, delirious, coming and going and having great difficulty putting words together. Some of what he said made no sense.

  "Has anyone called Danny?"

  I told him I didn't know. So he tried to recite her number but couldn't remember it. There was memory loss because his brain had been injured. I called his main office number and got connected to Danny. With me holding my phone to his ear, he was able to mumble at her for several seconds. Then he broke down and cried, muted moaning wails that sounded like an injured animal. Tears came to my eyes as I saw how much pain my friend and client was in. And rage settled over me. I immediately was flooded with a drive for revenge against the cops and the CPD in general. Not to mention the assholes that planted a gun on him. Because I knew Michael would never remove a gun from a crime scene. That's just not something Michael Gresham would ever do.

  "It's time to hit back, Michael," I told him. I gripped his free hand and gave it a small squeeze. "I'm going to let you sleep--"

  But it was too late. The painkillers had taken him away and he had fallen unconscious. Morphine does that.

  I sat down at his bedside and began drafting a Civil Rights lawsuit. Ten minutes, thirty minutes, and the complaint was shaping up. I was just about to text it to my office for filing with the federal court when a nurse appeared. She checked Michael's vitals. She flicked the morphine pump and watched it deliver another dose.

  "Who did this?" I asked her.

  "They never tell me that kind of stuff, Miss. I'm just a shift nurse. I've got nothing to do with who did what. Friend of yours?"

  "Client. I'm his lawyer." I handed her my card. "Do me a favor. If any cops come in here and try to talk to him, would you show them this card? I don't want him talking to anyone."

  "Sure, Miss."

  Just then, Danny Gresham came rushing through security and joined us in Michael's ICU cell. An orderly led the way and stopped, pointing out Danny's husband. I introduced myself and she immediately realized that I was the lawyer who Michael had hired to retain him on the search and seizure gun case.

  "Oh my God!" she cried upon getting her first look at her husband. "Who did this!"

  "He was awake when I first arrived. He managed to tell me it was the cops who arrested him. Evidently they stopped about a block away and worked him over."

  "Just like that? Just beat the hell out of him? Is this America or what?"

  I was struck at her naiveté. Police beat-em-ups happen every hour in America. Police-citizen shootings happen every day. This was anything but unusual. Especially with Chicago cops, who are known to be Neanderthals when it comes to making arrests.

  “Heads are going to roll!” she cried. “I’m suing everyone involved in this!”

  "Relax," I told her. "I'm on it."

  "Really? What do you have in mind?"

  "The first thing I'm going to do is find a federal judge. I want him moved to a neuro hospital. He has head injuries."

  She stopped and looked up at me. "Really?"

  "He couldn't remember your phone number, Danny. Anytime the cops get someone down they go for the head. It's an unwritten rule. More often than not it causes memory loss and the victim can't recall what happened. Which allows the cops to make up all kinds of shit. That's what they had in mind for your husband, Danny. Unfortunately for them, they didn't give him the Full Monty. He remembers bits and pieces of what happened."

  She straightened up from looking at her husband. Tears spilled out of her eyes.

  "Well, I'm going with you. We're doing this together."

  "Fair enough. Your car here?"

  "No. I caught a cab over from court when they texted me. I continued my hearing and came over without stopping at the office."

  "I've got my car in the lot. Come on if you're coming. I'm leaving right now. This cannot wait."

  "I'm right behind you."

  Michael was still unconscious when we left. Danny kissed him tenderly and turned away. Her shoulders squared up and she said, "Let's go get these bastards."

  She took the words right out of my mouth.

  Twenty minutes later we were back in my office, Danny and I. I called in Angelina. She had typed up my Civil Rights complaint against John Doe I and John Doe II and against the Chicago Police Department and against other entities and individuals to be named later. Danny and I bot
h proofed it, her reading over my shoulder.

  Thirty minutes later, Danny and I walked the complaint over to U.S. District Court. We also brought along a motion for TRO ex parte, which asked the court to order the Cook County Sheriff to immediately deliver Michael to University of Chicago Medicine.

  The judge we found in chambers was Manfred J. Maxwell, a twenty-year jurist who had directed the Chicago ACLU before being appointed to the federal bench by President Clinton. He was a black man with a wide, sloping nose and startlingly white teeth and an inquiring manner that left no questions unaddressed before he would rule. Plaintiffs prayed for his assignment to their cases, which were done by rotation in the federal courts, but that day he was the emergency judge. We had filed our case with the clerk and been directed to his office.

  His chambers secretary said he would see us immediately after reading our motion.

  Ten minutes later we were shown in.

  "Come right in, Ms. Sturgis, and who is this?"

  Danny said, "Dania Gresham, Your Honor. I'm the plaintiff's wife and one of his lawyers as well."

  "Well, I've read the complaint and read the motion for temporary restraining order. The gist of the motion seems to be that the plaintiff, Michael Gresham, was arrested and while being transported to California Avenue he was violently assault by the transporting officers and he is now in Cermak ICU. That about it?"

  "That's about it, Your Honor," I spoke up. "Michael complained to me of being kicked repeatedly in the head by the cops. He was rendered unconscious and came to when they started working his body over with their saps. His wife--my co-counsel--and I wish to see him receive expert neurological care in the Neuro-ICU at UC. He has been previously injured and warned that another head injury would be extremely serious. We would like him transported there immediately."

  Judge Maxwell nodded violently. "Totally agree. Here, let me sign this and get you on your way."

  With that he signed his name to the TRO with a huge flourish and sent us packing for Cermak Health. Traffic was heavier this time; we burned an hour getting back. I led Danny into the Sheriff's Office and plopped the order down on the receptionist's desk.