Lethal Defense

by Michael Stagg

  “Understood, Your Honor,” said Christian.

  We all stood up, thanked the judge, and left.

  As we walked out, Jeff extended a hand to Christian and said, “We had an offer of second-degree murder out to the public defender.”

  Christian shook it. “Thank you, Mr. Hanson. The only deal I'm prepared to accept is a total dismissal of charges.”

  Jeff smiled. “I'll see you in thirty days then.” He shook my hand and nodded. “Good to see you again, Nate.” And he ambled off.

  When he was gone, I said, “Thirty days?”

  “Our directive is to get our client out on bond and then dispose of this as quickly as possible. That means no continuances.”

  The name, Hank Braggi, was still niggling at the back of my head from somewhere. And the business Hanson had said about touring with a rock band sounded familiar too but I couldn’t place it. “So what’s the deal here with Braggi?”

  Christian looked at me sharply. “You don’t know?”

  I thought for a few seconds then shook my head. “I’ve had a lot going on.”

  “Braggi was touring with Lizzy Saint. The killing happened after a concert.”

  That rang a bell. “Rock star, right? Had a concert here at the University and her sound man beat a man to death in her hotel room.”

  Christian nodded. “Hank Braggi is the sound man. And our client.”

  “What happened?”

  “According to the reports, Braggi beat the man until he was unrecognizable.”

  I nodded.

  Christian’s face was serious. “That’s not a figure of speech. The victim’s skull and chest were shattered. Pulverized.”

  “What did he use?”

  “His hands.”

  Yikes. “What’s his explanation?”

  Christian pointed at the jail across the street. “Let's go find out.”

  The county jail in Carrefour has a series of interview rooms and by the time Christian Dane and I arrived, Hank Braggi was waiting for us in one.

  Hank Braggi was big, not in a bodybuilder, musclebound sort of way but in a broad, tall, put a steer on his back kind of way. His light brown hair and full beard were longish and wild, except that both were trimmed all around so that they were uniformly wild, if there's such a thing. He wore an orange jumpsuit and his hands were shackled in loops that were strung through embedded rings on the bolted-down table. His bright blue eyes widened as we entered then his shoulders slumped as he turned to the guard who stood in the corner. “I thought you said my lawyer was coming?” he said.

  “We’re your new lawyers,” said Christian.

  “I can’t afford a lawyer who wears a suit like that.”

  Christian put his attaché on the table. “No, Mr. Braggi, you can’t.”

  “So my father’s paying for it?”

  That was enough confidential conversation in front of a guard. “Thank you. officer,” I said. “We'll knock when we're ready.”

  Hank opened his mouth to speak but Christian raised one hand and Hank stopped until the guard had left and the door snicked shut.

  “Cost is not something you need to worry about, Mr. Braggi,” said Christian.

  Hank’s fingers tapped the table between the shackles. “You have to get me out of here.”

  Christian nodded. “That’s what we’ve come to do.”

  “I mean it. I can’t be in here anymore.”

  “You’ll be out tonight.”

  “Really?” Hank’s eyes grew wide. “They said bond was two million dollars. Cash.”

  “It is.”

  “So my father's is paying for it.”

  Christian shrugged. “You can stay here if you like.”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Fancy Pants. When do we leave?”

  “As soon as I finish the paperwork.”

  “And the bail bondsman gets here,” I said.

  “Bondsman?”

  “There are going to be conditions,” I said.

  Hank waved a shackled hand.

  “Whatever. Just get me out of here.”

  “We will.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “It will take a little more time.”

  Hank’s eyes grew dark. “Get. Me. Out of here.”

  Christian looked at me and nodded and I knocked on the door.

  The guard returned.

  “Where can we wait while Mr. Braggi is processed?” said Christian.

  The guard scoffed. “He’s not getting out.”

  “He is—” Christian peered at the name tag, “—Officer Wing and I would appreciate it if you would tell us where we can wait while you process him.”

  Officer Wing muttered a few rights and lefts that should send us back to the main lobby area.

  Hank rattled his shackles. “You better not be messing with me, Fancy Pants.”

  “Just don’t screw up between here and there, Mr. Braggi.” Then Christian nodded and we left.

  As we walked down the hall, Christian said, “Is this bond officer of yours good?”

  I nodded. “He is.”

  Christian stopped and stared at me. “Mr. Braggi demands a high degree of…attention.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Mr. Braggi’s father doesn’t want to see his son back in jail.”

  “Or to lose his two million dollars?”

  “I’m sure that thought occurred to him too.”

  “So find your own bond officer.”

  Christian looked away. “We tried to use one of our own men but the Court insisted on someone certified locally.”

  “You don’t say.” I didn’t offer any other assurance. Eventually, Christian said, “Fine,” and started walking again. Rather than heading for the processing area, Christian walked right out the front door.

  “I thought we were going to interview him?”

  “Hank was in no state to talk to us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see once he’s out. He’s a whole different person. The confinement had him ready to explode.”

  “It didn’t seem that way to me.”

  “It was.”

  “So what now?”

  “If this bondsman is as good as you say, he’ll take care of getting Hank out.”

  “He is.”

  “And we can make better use of our time, like getting set up at your office.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Want to follow me back?”

  Christian gave me a slight smile. “I have the address.”

  I thought about the state of my office and the fact that it was only set up for me and Danny. “I’ll stop on the way back and pick up some supplies.”

  Christian gave me a slight smile. “My legal assistant is already there, Mr. Shepherd. I think you’ll find that we have everything we need.”

  Christian stopped at a black Mercedes (of course) and climbed in. I hopped into my Jeep and followed.

  By the time we left, it was late afternoon. We had twenty-nine and a half days until trial.

  4

  Carrefour is a small city that straddles the border of Ohio and Michigan, the same way Kansas City sits in both Kansas and Missouri. Founded by French trappers in the 1700s, you can get anywhere from there—originally by canoe, riverboat, and trail, and now by car, plane, and rail. Sitting near the airports in Detroit and Toledo, the highways and rails between Chicago and Cleveland, and the ships on Lake Erie, trade constantly passed through Carrefour because it was so easy to go from our city to somewhere else.

  The city was equal parts Michigan and Ohio. Having a city in two states created all sorts of rivalries and jurisdictional issues—Michigan and Ohio police, Michigan and Ohio courts, Michigan and Ohio tax systems. Hank’s crime had occurred on the Ohio side so we were in an Ohio court dealing with Ohio laws which, most importantly, included the death penalty.

  As I drove away from the jail, I shook my head at being involved in a capital case again but pushed it aside b
y remembering that I was only local counsel and that the ultimate responsibility for convincing a jury that Hank Braggi shouldn’t be executed fell to Christian Dane. I was involved to help manage relationships so that’s what I decided to focus on.

  Lindsey Cooper, the public defender who had represented Hank so far, seemed like a good place to start.

  I called her. “Lindsey, it’s Nate Shepherd.”

  “Hi, Nate,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

  “It has.”

  “Heard you’ve left the marble halls and joined the brave ranks of the solo practitioners.”

  “I have. I’m cheating though, I brought an associate.”

  “Good for you. What’s up?”

  “I’m calling to let you know that Hank Braggi is going to ask that you withdraw from his case.”

  “Really? I didn’t think you were still doing this kind of thing.”

  “I’m not. I’m just in as local counsel. Hank brought in a specialist from Minnesota.”

  “That’s a long way from Ohio.”

  “That’s why I’m around. I’m sorry by the way.”

  “For replacing me?” Lindsey laughed. “Don’t be. This was a public appointment, which means it’s not paying me nearly enough to spend a week getting my ass kicked. I owe you a beer.”

  “Still, it’s a high-profile murder case.”

  Lindsey chuckled again. “Sure it is. But I prefer to win those if I go to trial.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Have you seen the file yet?”

  “No.”

  “It’s that bad.”

  “Is there really enough for aggravated murder?”

  “I’ll let you come to your own conclusions, Nate. But yes. Besides killing Dillon Chase, he tried to kill one of his friends too. Murder plus attempted murder gets you the death penalty. That’s why I told him to take the deal. Are they still offering second degree?”

  “As of today.”

  “Take it. Hey, I’m walking into court, Nate. Thanks for the courtesy call. Just send me the paperwork to substitute us and I’ll sign it.”

  “Will do. Thanks, Lindsey.”

  “No problem,” she said, and hung up.

  By then I was coming up on my office so I didn’t have much time to think about what I’d gotten myself into.

  People have romantic ideas about law offices. They imagine the high-rise skyscraper of a large firm, the charming converted house of a small-town practitioner, or the dilapidated office building of a man down on his luck. Mine didn’t have the romance of any of those. It was a generic three-story building of glass and chrome that rented space to small groups of lawyers and doctors and accountants with a shared receptionist on each floor and quick access to chain restaurants for lunch.

  I took the stairs to the second floor and went into the three-room suite with “The Shepherd Firm” written on the door, which is what you call your practice when you don't have a second partner. As soon as I walked in, my young associate, Daniel Reddy, jumped up, sputtering. “She just started moving things around!”

  “Hi, Danny. The pretrial went fine, thanks.”

  Danny looked as if he’d witnessed a sacrilegious act of unspeakable violence. “She unplugged the computers and everything. Do you know how long it took me to get the wireless printer to work?”

  One of the hazards of a small office—the youngest attorney is the IT guy. “A long time?” I said.

  “All weekend! And she just—” He made hand-flapping gestures that I assume was the unplugging of a madman. Or a madwoman, in this case.

  “Do they work?”

  Danny sputtered. “I don’t know! That doesn’t matter!”

  “It does and they do,” said a voice. A woman walked in with hair that was such a deep, blood-red that I couldn’t tell if it was real or dyed. She had a strong jaw and angled cheeks and wore a tailored business suit that didn’t seem like the garb of an IT menace. “Everything is ready to go, Mr. Shepherd,” she said.

  I offered my hand. “You’re the anarchist with no respect for existing networks?”

  “I am. Cyn Bardor.” She shook my hand in an exceedingly precise way and glanced at Danny. “I think you’ll find that your network’s performance has been optimized.”

  “Good. What did you do?”

  She gave me the slightest smile. “Do you really want to know?”

  Point. “I don’t. Can it be put back the way it was when you leave?”

  “If you want. But I don’t know why you would.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. I looked around and surveyed the wreckage of files, papers, and blowups from our last trial that were still strewn about the office. It did look like Danny had pushed the bulk of it out of the way against the walls, but I felt a twinge that Cyn was seeing the office like that. “Sorry about the mess.”

  Cyn waved a hand. “You obviously finished a trial. If it were clean, I'd be worried.”

  From what I’d seen of Cyn so far, I decided that I shouldn’t tell her that the trial had been a month ago. “Well, we’ll clear it out so that you and Christian have space to work.” I peeked in the other office and saw that it was empty. “He's not here yet? He left before me.”

  “He's here,” said Cyn. “He wanted to get to work right away.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In his office.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “We rented the third floor.”

  “For the two of you?”

  “We may have some people in and out, but we needed to rent the whole thing since it was such short notice.”

  Danny's mouth was open. It was a good reminder to me so I kept mine shut.

  Cyn handed me a key. “We’re in 302 and 303. We have 301 cleared out for the two of you and the computers are linked to your network.” She checked the slim gold watch on her wrist. “Christian wanted to get through the indictment and some of the evidence and then touch base before you go home. 4:30 okay?”

  “You're the boss.”

  This time Cyn raised both eyebrows. “Mr. Dane is and we’ll see you then.”

  Cyn left then and it was hard to explain how. Striding sounds too masculine and glide doesn't seem strong enough but she left and it was like a purposeful force went with it.

  When I looked at Danny, his mouth was still open. I smiled. “Wait until you see her boss.”

  When Danny and I went to the third floor an hour later, the space was unrecognizable. Where before it had been an empty shell without furnishings or supplies, it now was set up with four distinct offices, each with a working tablet and printer, and a separate conference room twice the size of mine with pictures and working files already set up. It even had a magnetic nameplate on the door which announced that this was the office of “Friedlander & Skald, Ltd.”

  Christian and Cyn were standing by the conference room table, sorting papers and putting them into piles. Exciting lawyer stuff. Christian’s concession to informality was to take off his suit coat, revealing a cuffed shirt that was somehow barely wrinkled. I introduced him to Danny and, to his credit, Christian treated him like an equal and then asked him a few questions about how he was finding the practice of law. After a few minutes, I said, “So, what's first?”

  Christian glanced at Cyn, who nodded.

  “I'll be wanting your input of course,” said Christian, “but I don't want either of us to start by making any half-baked assumptions. Let's interview Mr. Braggi tomorrow at his place and make sure he’s settled in. Now that he’s out, he’ll be more calm and he’ll be able to tell us what happened. Then we can spend the rest of the weekend reading the file and when we come in Monday, we can put together a strategy.”

  “Sounds good.” I stared at stacks of papers that seemed overly large for the nature of the case. “I’ll help you copy the file so we each have one before we go.”

  “That won’t be necessary. Cyn?”

  Cyn walked into another office and returned with two tablets
, one for me and one for Danny. “Everything's been loaded onto this. You can go through it at home and we can talk about it on Monday.”

  “You got the file in advance?”

  “No.”

  “You scanned it in already?”

  Cyn smiled.

  I looked at Danny. “You need to step it up.”

  Danny looked panicked. “But I…”

  “Don't worry, Mr. Reddy,” said Cyn without a smile. “He can't afford me.”

  “I'm certain of that,” I said. Cyn took a moment and showed us how all the files were organized in a way that made perfect sense.

  “You two should go home,” said Christian.

  “I don't want to just leave you. There's a lot to do.”

  Christian smiled. “This is a big case, Nathan, but until we talk to Hank and get through the materials, we’re just spinning our wheels.”

  I nodded. I gave Christian the address where Cade Brickson would be taking Hank and said, “9:00 a.m. okay?”

  “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  “Goodnight, Cyn.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Shepherd.”

  “Nate, please.”

  She smiled but didn’t say anything else.

  With that, Danny and I went downstairs, gathered our things, and locked up. I waved good-bye to Danny, climbed into my Jeep, and headed home.

  I pulled in next to the Honda without leaving enough room to open its driver-side door. I gathered the tablet Cyn had given me and the groceries I had picked up on the way home and went inside. I set the groceries and tablet on the island and went to our bedroom to change. I threw on a T-shirt and a swimsuit and went to the back patio to fire up the grill. I turned it on, grabbed a beer, and plopped down into one of the two patio chairs, facing the low sun.

  The grill began to heat up and the smell of smoke was delicious. We had an in-ground pool, just your basic sixteen by thirty-two rectangle, and as the sun worked its way down the sky and the filter rippled the water, it was peaceful in a way that we always enjoyed.

  I sat that way for a while, enjoying the evening sun after being forced to be indoors all week. I enjoyed it enough to go get another beer and left the grill to keep smoking. When the sun began to dip behind the trees and the temperatures started to fall, my stomach got the better of me and I put the steak on. If you know grilling, you know those don't take long, not if you like them medium rare anyway, and soon I was sitting on the patio eating a steak and a salad, drinking a beer, and watching a hummingbird dart in and out of the daylilies we had planted next to the pool. The tiny bird was a brilliant blue-green, almost metallic looking, and just hovered right above the yellow flower, its wings beating a million miles an hour while it stayed perfectly still. Then a squirrel made a commotion in one of the trees and the hummingbird flew away. I would’ve been disappointed except I was done with my steak so I grabbed my dish, went inside, and put it in the dishwasher since we didn't like a mess in the sink. I grabbed another beer, went to the island, and opened the tablet Cyn had given me.