Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause

by Grif Stockley

  He is trying to appear relaxed, but his arms are folded tensely across his chest.

  “Olivia said she was considering selling her business, and there’d be enough money after we were married from that to do a lot of things.”

  The phone rings again, but I shake my head.

  “Were you really seriously thinking about getting married to this woman?”

  He turns his back on me and picks it up.

  “I’ve got to see if it’s Olivia.”

  I watch as the anxiety on his face changes to irritation. He says brusquely, “I have no comment,” and hangs up. What is going through his mind? If he is not in on this, it won’t take him long to figure out a woman has made a royal fool out of him. But what if they’re both innocent? After all, Olivia hasn’t even been charged. I’d just as soon blow my money at the dog races in West Memphis as bet on that possibility at the moment.

  As if he can make the phone cease to ring by ignoring it, Andy walks back to his chair and sits down.

  “As you know,” he says, answering my question, his voice ironic, “it’s not illegal.”

  No, but murder is, I want to shoot back at him. I struggle to contain my anger at my growing sense that this case is out of control.

  “For God’s sake, Andy,” I say urgently, “if you and Olivia decided to end Pam’s life, now is the time to tell me. I can make a deal for you with the prosecutor that will keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison. Jill Marymount needs your testimony to charge Olivia.”

  Like a child taking a dose of milk of magnesia, Andy squinches his eyes shut in distaste and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork. Lawyers are often no more than messengers; yet there is an art to delivering bad news. Too bad I haven’t mastered it. Is he wincing at the truth and preparing to accept it, or is he offended by the thought that I can believe him to be guilty of plotting to kill a helpless child? Squinting at me, he says in a choked voice, “Neither she nor I wanted Pam to die!”

  I begin to roll up Yettie Lindsey’s statement into a scroll until I realize what I’m doing.

  “How can you be so sure about her?” I ask him as the phone begins to ring again.

  “It wasn’t too long ago when Olivia admitted to both of us in my conference room that Pam’s death was a relief.”

  Andy looks over at the phone and lets it ring.

  “That’s a natural reaction anybody would have,” he says, but I think I detect a note of uncertainty in his voice. For all I know, however, he may be trying to con me.

  “She loved Pam.”

  The damn phone.

  “People are murdered every day,” I say loudly as if I can drown it out, “by family members who love them.”

  Andy is oblivious to the ringing now. He shakes his head. “Not to get their child’s money.”

  Still thirsty, I stand up and walk back into the kitchen for another glass of water, thinking this motive is not all that rare.

  “Maybe it wasn’t for the money,” I call from the sink, not believing myself for a minute.

  “Maybe Olivia simply couldn’t stand Pam’s suffering any longer.”

  I look up. Andy has followed me into the kitchen. He says, “And talked me into electrocuting her. That’s what you want me to admit, isn’t it?”

  “Is that what happened?” I ask.

  “No, it’s not,” Andy says resolutely.

  “It was an accident.

  If you can’t believe that, I don’t want you representing me any further.”

  I turn off the nozzle. The ice cubes have shrunk to the size of aspirin. What the hell? It’s not cold, but it’s still wet. I drink anyway, pleased to receive this ultimatum. I’m not so jaded by the system that it doesn’t matter whether my client professes to care whether I believe in his innocence. Do I believe in his innocence? I don’t know. But now is not the time for a lecture on the lawyer’s role, for I can’t afford to lose him as a client. I set the glass down on the counter, which doesn’t have a crumb on it. Andy may be a murderer, but he’s clean.

  “If you tell me you’re not involved,” I lie, “I believe you, but you can’t expect me to be so certain that Olivia hasn’t set you up. I know you can’t accept that as a real possibility right now, but it’s something I have to keep in mind.”

  I watch in amazement as Andy comes over to the counter and takes my glass and puts it in the dishwater. If my watch had emotions, it wouldn’t be any more compulsive.

  “How could she have set this up?” he asks, either implicitly entertaining the thought or carrying out the role of trying to con me.

  I have been wondering this since Jill Marymount told me she was charging Andy. Looking for a cooler spot, I go sit down over a vent at a small table across from the dishwater.

  “Did she have access to the device” I will not say “cattle prod”

  “that electrocuted Pam?”

  From a cupboard under his sink Andy takes a sponge and wipes the counter.

  “I don’t see how she could have without my knowing about it,” he says, needlessly rinsing out the sponge.

  “I kept it in my office.”

  “Easy,” I say, feeling with my hands the surface of his table. He keeps it as well polished as my own breakfast table.

  “She obviously was out there quite a bit at this time. Getting a key duplicated takes about two minutes. It would have been simple for her to slip in and remove most of the insulation from the handle before you shocked Pam.”

  For good measure, Andy swipes at a spot on the handle of the cabinet above the counter. The guy is a one-man cleaning service. If he runs out of money (which doesn’t seem likely), we can barter our services until he goes to jail. He shakes his head.”

  “What keeps your theory from making sense is that electrocution doesn’t automatically result just because the handle isn’t well insulated. In order for that to occur, Pam has to make contact with the device at two points of her body.”

  Andy’s face is in profile to me as he continues to work on the cabinet. I can’t really see if he understands the implication of what he has said: Olivia needed his help to kill her child. I spell it out for him.

  “And guess who was holding the device when Pam came into contact with it? The prosecutor is going to argue that you and Olivia were in this together

  Finally, Andy puts down the sponge and faces me.

  “But if Leon had held on to Pam the way he was supposed to, she never would have been able to grab the handle.”

  “And Leon testified that he had no idea how hard Pam was going to resist when she was shocked. Jill Marymount will argue you knew how much it was going to hurt Pam, and knew she would fight like an animal to grab the shock stick to keep it away from her. He had no idea how strongly she would react, and you did.”

  Andy’s expression grows sullen.

  “I told Leon it would really hurt her and make her try to pull away. He just let her go.”

  I look down at the table and see the outline of my own glum reflection. I seriously doubt that. Pam was a big kid, and though she couldn’t have been too terribly strong, all that mass when the electricity began to flow through her would be hard to hold down unless you knew what to expect.

  Leon isn’t likely to want to take the rap for a child dying.

  We can’t expect him to admit it was his fault.

  “I doubt if he’s going to say that, Andy, given his testimony at the probable cause hearing.”

  Andy sighs. He knows we have an uphill battle. He bends down and places the sponge underneath the sink. Neatness counts, but I’m afraid it won’t keep him out of prison. I turn the talk to our more immediate problem: the bond hearing tomorrow. As I discuss the likelihood of the judge’s requiring a significantly higher bond, there is a knock at the door.

  Maybe it is one of the blondes in her bikini wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, but somehow I doubt it.

  “You don’t make any comment, okay?”

  He nods, an
d I open the door to face a television camera.

  Ah, the media. My client is innocent! What else do defense attorneys know how to say?

  “you looked shellshocked this afternoon.” Rainey giggles sympathetically into my ear on the telephone.

  “You see these attorneys who smile into the camera as if their clients were announcing to run for President instead of having been charged with murder, but your teeth were clenched so tight I could barely understand you.”

  Standing in the doorway of my kitchen as the ten o’clock news on Channel 4 ends, I hear the bathroom door shut, signaling the beginning of my daughter’s shower.

  “Sarah told me I looked like a ventriloquist whose dummy just died,” I admit. After half a six-pack I can laugh at my performance—a little.

  “Do you think Andy’s guilty?” I ask plaintively.

  There is a short but pregnant pause. On the TV is a commercial for a douche. Damn. The way things are going on TV it won’t be long before they show a woman using it.

  “Are you asking me?” Rainey asks, her voice almost high enough to shatter glass.

  “I have no idea. People will do anything for money.”

  “That’s for sure.” I nod, staring at the model’s face. She is so gorgeous I almost forget what the ad is all about. I wonder what she got paid.

  “Are you watching Channel 4?” “Isn’t she a knockout?” Rainey says. I imagine her feet tucked under her on her couch, the way I have seen her dozens of times.

  “Would you still think so,” I ask, “if she said, “I usually stink like hell, but this stuff works even on my worst days!”?

  I mean, sometimes there are situations when it’s hard to open your mouth. I guess it’s no secret that I wasn’t prepared for Andy to be charged with murder. It’s hard to be objective.”

  Rainey laughs, used to my nonsense.

  “You’re his lawyer.

  You’re not supposed to be.”

  I carry the phone, whose cord could practically extend around the outside of the house, into the living room and bend down to turn off the TV. It’s been a long day.

  “Of course I am,” I protest, ‘but my clients are always duping me.”

  Whimsical as ever, Rainey sings to a tune from my youth, “

  “Dupe! .. . Dupe! .. . Dupe of Earl’…. So you really think he’s been lying to you? He’s such a nice guy.”

  “The “Duke of Earl,”

  ” I say, surprised she’s old enough to remember. What in the hell was that song all about? I like the Dupe of Earl better, too.

  “Obviously, they think the mother is in on it, but they don’t have …” The phone beeps, indicating a call is waiting. I hate being interrupted, but Sarah pleaded and agreed to pay the extra amount from her job. Naturally, I haven’t collected since the first month.

  “Just a second, okay?” I tell Rainey and push the button.

  “Hello?”

  “Gideon,” a female voice gushes, “you were just wonderful on TV tonight!”

  I rack my brain and then realize. God forbid, it is my rat-burner divorce client, Mona Moneyhart. It seems as if she has tried to call me almost every day since she was in the office the first time, but this is the first call at home.

  “Mona,” I say, my teeth on edge, “do you realize how late it is?”

  “You weren’t asleep, were you?” she coos.

  “I just had to tell you how proud I was when I saw you tonight. My son asked if you had false teeth and were ashamed of them, but I told him you talk like that when you’re trying to be firm with me.” She giggles at the very idea.

  I open my mouth as wide as I can and still speak: “I…

  am … on … another… line … I … have … to . hang … up … now….”

  “That’s okay,” she says cheerfully.

  “I’ll talk to you to morrow. ” I click Rainey back in. Why can’t I just tell her that if she calls me again I’ll put out a contract on her? Julia, no easy customer herself, now screens my calls, but Mona has be come a woman of a thousand voices and usually manages to get through.

  “That was a client,” I tell Rainey.

  “At ten-thirty at night?” she says.

  “Sure.”

  I sigh. I wouldn’t believe it either.

  In bed that night I toss and turn and it dawns on me how little I have really thought about what happened in Andy’s case. At the Public Defender’s, we assumed that over 95 percent of our clients were guilty, and invariably they were.

  The job consisted of seeing how much off the maximum sentence we could get for them, usually in a plea bargain.

  From the beginning, I have assumed Andy was guilty of professional negligence but deliberate murder? Not in my wildest dreams. My brain shut down after that. If I’m going to survive in private practice, I won’t be able to afford the luxury of my assumptions. What have I done wrong here? I saw a nice guy in trouble, one who, I thought, reminds me a little of myself, in that he had fallen in love with a woman outside his race. Is that even true, or is that part of the plot, as well? Part of my problem, I realize belatedly, is perhaps my own latent racism in this case. Andy is a nice black man.

  Well dressed, well spoken, he has been especially easy to like. How could a guy (especially a black one this sharp, my racist mind runs) be part of something so evil? I never let myself entertain the thought for five minutes. Yet the possibility has been there all along, and I have ignored it. Actu ally, it is not that I mind defending someone who is guilty (I accepted the game at the PD’s of figuring out what was the lie and what was the truth of my client’s story); what do I mind? (a), being taken for a fool, or (b), acting like a fool?

  Probably (a), but to be charitable to myself, I’ll choose (b).

  Well, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I yawn, finally sleepy, knowing I’ve been sleepwalking through this case. And yet Andy, as I’ve thought all along, may be not guilty of anything more than bad judgment. Tomorrow, I think, my head finally still on the pillow, I’ll get to work.

  “Dad,” calls Sarah, who has been back from Camp Anytown for two weeks, “there’s someone to see you.”

  I put down my coffee and the section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a front-page article about Andy and hurry into the living room. Surely not even a reporter would come to the house this time of day. Woogie’s furious barking at seven-thirty in the morning is particularly obnoxious. “Hush,” I holler at him as I come around the corner and see Mona Moneyhart standing inside the screen.

  “I just brought you and your daughter some fresh blueberry muffins for your breakfast,” she says, handing Sarah a plastic bowl with a paper towel over it.

  “Your dad’s my lawyer in my divorce,” she says smiling sweetly at Sarah, “and after I saw him on TV last night I was so proud of him I just had to get up early and whip these up.”

  My eyes begin to tear as I smell the warm, slightly acidic odor of ripe blueberries hidden in the plastic. I think I’m going to throw up. Mona is dressed in almost nothing. In red running shorts cut high on the sides and a gray threadbare T-shirt labeled, as I feared, “Let Being Be!” she is braless and apparently pantyless as well. My stomach flips as I think of her oven. I feel sweat popping out on my forehead. I expect to see a rat’s tail dangling over the side of the bright blue bowl. When I do nothing except swallow, Sarah, who looks a little stunned herself, says brightly, “How nice of you to do this! They smell delicious.”

  My mouth thick with the saliva that accompanies nausea, I finally manage weakly, “Sarah, this is Mrs. Moneyhart.”

  My client beams as if she has been introduced to a member of the royal family. She offers Sarah her free hand.

  “Do you want to be a famous lawyer like your dad?”

  Sarah, realizing fast that Mona may not be a candidate for the world’s most well-adjusted person, extricates her hand after it has been given a vigorous pump, and says dryly, “One’s enough in the family. Dad, we’ve got to hurry.”

  Turning
to leave at last, Mona gives me a wink.

  “Jealous of her daddy’s time. I don’t blame her one bit.”

  Sarah looks at me as if I have invited a whore over for breakfast, but Mona, either happily oblivious or unconcerned, is bouncing out the door, her small breasts rolling around underneath the skimpy material covering her chest.

  “Gideon, I’ll call you later.”

  After she is gone, Sarah begins to take a muffin.

  “God, she was weird! You’re beginning to drool!”

  Swallowing hard, I snatch the muffins from her, shaking my head.

  “You can’t eat these!”

  Sarah herself is dressed for her second day of her senior year in a well-worn pair of Levi’s and a University of New Mexico T-shirt. (She contends, with logic on her side but little else, that students should be allowed to wear shorts if they are made to start school in August.) She stares at the offending muffins in my hand.

  “Why? They look okay.”

  Holding the bowl at arm’s length as if it were a container of nuclear waste, I carry it into the kitchen and force six muffins down the garbage disposal. I sit at the kitchen table and tell Sarah about the rat roast in my client’s oven. Sarah, who has inherited a low vomit threshold from me, places her hand over her mouth. Her eyes begin to tear, and she pushes away the bowl of Froot Loops she has poured for herself.

  “Poor Daddy,” she says between her fingers.

  “Are all your clients this bad?”

  I look out the window, halfway expecting to see Mona turning cartwheels in the yard.

  “People wouldn’t need lawyers if they didn’t have problems.”

  Sarah carries her bowl to the sink and rinses it out.

  “Please swear to me she’s not a new girlfriend!” she says.

  “Thanks a lot,” I say archly, bending down to scratch Woogie, who also seems in need of reassurance.

  “I don’t date my clients.” That’s crap, of course. I probably would if I liked one enough.