Lethal Defense

by Michael Stagg

  Lindsey shook her head. “Mr. Braggi, you could be looking at considerably longer than three weeks.”

  “See, that’s the thing,” said Hank. “You offset those long legs of yours with a downright somber disposition. It's unbecoming.”

  “I'm not worried about me being becoming. I'm worried about where you’re going.”

  “It’s always work with you two.” Hank's eyes glittered. “Fine. What’s happening with the defense?”

  “I saw Lizzy last weekend,” I said.

  Hank leaned forward. “Did you go to the concert?”

  “I did.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Loud.”

  “And?”

  “Fantastic.”

  Hank nodded. “She always does. Did she sing any of that new trash?”

  “Off the latest album? Most of it.”

  Hank shook his head.

  “You don't like it?” Lindsey said.

  “Doesn't take advantage of her range. And the lyrics are for shit.”

  I shrugged. “I didn't go to see her sing, Hank.”

  “Then you're a fool, Counselor.”

  “I talked to her about what she saw. After.”

  Hank shook his head. “She didn't see anything.”

  “That's what she told me.”

  “She was unconscious at the time.”

  “That's what she told me too. And they whisked her away before I could ask how she met Dillon Chase that night.”

  Hank looked at me blankly.

  “The man you killed.”

  Hank's eyes lit in recognition and then he shook his head. “I didn't see them meet either but that's not unusual. There's a whole team of people introducing her to folks after a concert.”

  “But how could they have gotten into her suite?”

  “An invite from her, or management, or one of the band.”

  “You?”

  Hank smiled. “I’m just the sound guy.”

  “And the lyricist.”

  He twitched his hands modestly. “Not anymore.”

  “I saw Smoke this weekend too.”

  “Sorry about your luck.”

  “You two get along?”

  “As much as a man and an overaged, talentless shit-bird can get along.”

  “But how do you really feel?” said Lindsey.

  Hank shrugged.

  I nodded. “Smoke said he saw you kill Chase that night.”

  Hank snorted. “That shit-bird had left Lindsey alone with a drug-pushing cowardly motherfucker. He didn’t see anything.”

  “So he wasn't in the room when you came in?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about later?” said Lindsey.

  Hank shrugged again. “He came in at some point.”

  “Do you know what you were doing when Smoke came back?”

  “Beating the piss out of this Chase guy, I imagine.”

  “But do you remember what you were doing?”

  Hank stared at her, blankly.

  “Were you breaking his arms? His ribs?”

  A blank look.

  “Were you fracturing his skull the fourth, fifth, or sixth time?”

  Hank smiled now as he looked at me. “So is that how you two divided the case up? You do the talking and she does the counting? Very efficient.”

  “It does seem like you were enraged, Hank,” I said.

  “I was certainly a good bit pissed.”

  “Furious?”

  Hank gave a flowery gesture with one hand. “I ride on a storm of fury.”

  “Angry?”

  He gestured with the other. “I roll on a tide of anger.”

  “Mad?”

  An interesting thing happened then. Hank lowered his arms and went totally cold and the look he gave me now was calm and present and full of precise calculation. “I know what battle madness is, Counselor. But I’m not some sort of berserker and my mind wasn’t clouded, at all, when I killed that shit-bird.”

  “What were you doing then?” said Lindsey.

  “I was sending a message.”

  “To?”

  “Anyone else who wants to mess with Lizzy.”

  “Don’t you think it was excessive?”

  “Have you seen anyone else try?”

  “No,” said Lindsey. “But she has more security now.”

  Hank smiled. “I'm sure that's the reason.”

  His comment about battle madness clicked for me. “Did you serve in the military, Hank?” I said.

  Hank eyed me skeptically. “I don’t see how that would matter.”

  “This could be helpful,” I said. “When did you serve? What branch of the military were you in? Were you sent to the Middle East? We can use this to create an argument that you had posttraumatic stress or a flashback or you were reacting to some stimulus that goes back to—”

  Hank raised a hand. “ I knew exactly what I was doing and I did it to protect Lizzy.”

  It was hard to think of the cheerful man sitting across the table from me as the same person who’d broken Dillon Chase to bits. But he was. And the prosecutor had dozens of pictures to prove it.

  I leaned forward. “Hank, saying you just wanted to protect her isn’t going to be enough. You’re only allowed to use as much force to protect another person as that person could use to protect themselves. And no one is going to believe that it was necessary to break every bone in Dillon Chase’s body to stop him from ‘messing with Lizzy.’”

  “That's not all, Mr. Braggi,” said Lindsey, tapping her finger on the table with each sentence. “The jury has to believe they would have done the same thing if they had been in your shoes and no one, not a single one, is going to believe that they would've done what you did. They're not going to believe that they’re even capable of doing it. They’re going to be repulsed and sickened, no matter what Chase tried to do to Lizzy, because there are pictures of what you did to Chase and there are only your words to describe what Chase was doing to Lizzy.”

  “So what’re you saying?” Hank said to Lindsey.

  “I'm saying you need to think about taking the prosecutor's plea deal.”

  Hank sat back, his eyes still glittering in amusement. “Well, I'm not.”

  “Then you might die.”

  “I might. And I might win.”

  We all sat there, staring at each other—Hank amused, Lindsey angry, and me trying to figure out how to get Hank out of this.

  Hank drummed his fingers. “Tell you what, how about you two work on winning my case and I'll go back to occupying myself with writing lyrics and cooking chicken. Unless you want to stay and eat?”

  “We need to get back.” I extended a hand and Hank grinned and squeezed. His hand was calloused and rough and surprisingly strong. “We’ll prepare with you this weekend.”

  “Will do, Counselor.”

  We showed ourselves out, waving good-bye to Cade on the way. As we walked down the driveway, I thought, then said, “Those lyrics Danny quoted earlier and Hank’s comments on battle madness…I wonder if we have a PTSD angle? That what he saw with Lizzy set him off.”

  Lindsey cocked her head. “But post-traumatic stress from what?”

  “It seemed like our client was a little hesitant when I asked him about military service. I wonder if there’s something there.”

  Lindsey looked unconvinced. “That sounds like a longshot.”

  “Do you have another angle right now?”

  Lindsey thought. “Tell Olivia I said ‘hi.’”

  I called Olivia on the way back to the office and put her on researching Hank’s background. Then, when we returned, we went straight to the conference room where Cyn was still banging away on the computer. “Will your firm pay for a clinical evaluation?”

  Cyn stopped, folded her long fingers, “For what?”

  “PTSD.”

  The side of Cyn’s mouth twitched. “From what?”

  “I’m working on it. My question is, would your fir
m pay for an evaluation if I think it’s necessary.”

  “It's a little late in the game for that, isn't it?”

  “Will you pay for it?” I said to Cyn.

  “I won't pay for anything,” said Cyn.

  I sighed. “Will your firm pay for it?”

  “No change of strategy without running it past the home office.”

  “We’re the feet on the ground, Cyn.”

  “The feet don't always have the best view, Nathan.”

  “I'm managing the defense.”

  “I understand that. We just want you to take input.”

  I thought and nodded. “I have no problem with input.”

  “Fine. The firm will pay for the exam.”

  “Don't you have to check?”

  “No.” She had the decency not to smirk.

  I left her then and we all went back to our offices. I was starting to work on witness examinations and that afternoon was dedicated to coroner Ray Gerchuck. As I dove into the autopsy findings and outlined my cross-examination, I couldn’t find a way to avoid the brutality of the killing.

  I hoped Olivia could find something to help us explain it.

  21

  The next morning I steeled myself to do something I had been avoiding—it was time to go see Mitch Pearson.

  Mitch Pearson was the Chief Detective of the Serious Crimes Division for the Carrefour, Ohio Police and yes, his card had all of those things capitalized. Carrefour was a good-sized city, but it really wasn't big enough to have a homicide division and a robbery division and a sexual assault division. Instead, it was divided into serious crimes, the general division, and computer crimes. Serious crimes were homicide, rape and sexual assault, and armed robbery. There was enough of those that one man could supervise the investigations and Pearson was that guy.

  Pearson was a contemporary of mine. He'd worked his way up from beat cop to general detective to serious crimes to head of serious crimes in just over ten years. He was a serious cop, seriously talented, and a serious asshole.

  Mitch Pearson had been an all-state quarterback at Carrefour South High School and I had been an all-county outside linebacker at Carrefour North. Our relationship really didn’t require any more of an explanation than that. He enjoyed lighting up our defense and I enjoyed making him loopy from the blindside. Our senior year, he had his team up by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter when I knocked him unconscious and stripped the football away. Zach Stephenson had scooped it up and run it in for a touchdown to put us within seven. Mitch returned to the game—that was in the days before concussion protocols—but he wasn't right and I'm certain he doesn't even remember it. I hit him again, our free safety picked him off, and our offense made the two-point conversion to win the game. He had never forgiven me and I had never much cared.

  Pearson had gone on to attend the University of Michigan and I had gone to Michigan State. That really didn't improve things. In the end, both of us had returned to Carrefour, him to start a career in law enforcement and me to start practicing law. We'd worked together for a time when I was in the prosecutor's office and things had actually settled down for a little while until we’d had a professional disagreement about one of his arrests. Shortly after, I'd gone on to a big firm, we didn't have much more contact with each other.

  Until a year and a half ago. He'd been the chief investigator on an incident involving my family and I hadn’t much cared for the way he had handled it. Fortunately, I guess, he had declined to press charges.

  Since Chase had been killed on the Ohio side, Pearson was in charge of the investigation in Hank’s case. By talking to him today, I didn't expect to learn anything more about the killing itself but I was hopeful that he might have found out more details about Chase or Purcell or Whitsel. He didn't have to talk to me but I thought he would, if only to lord it over me that he had information I wanted. So I drove the twenty-five minutes from Carrefour, Michigan over the imaginary line to the police headquarters of Carrefour, Ohio where I walked in to the office of Chief Detective in Charge of Serious Crimes, Mitch Pearson.

  It had been all of eighteen months since I’d seen him and he really didn’t look much different. He still looked like a quarterback—tall, square-jawed, and a little too pretty to really respect. He was never muscular, but he was still lean as a whip and looked like he could run a marathon and bike a hundred miles, which really wasn’t a coincidence if the Iron Man medal hanging prominently on his wall was to be believed. He smiled when I entered, stood up from his desk, and acted like he was glad to see me. “Shepherd, heard you were on the Braggi case. Wondered if you would be man enough to see me.”

  “No one’s that big a man, Pearson.” He squeezed my hand. It was stupid. “How’ve you been?”

  “Never better,” he said. “Crime’s down and I’ve actually had time to coach my kids’ baseball teams. Actually two baseball teams and one T-ball team. Seems like I’m at a game every damn night, but Julia keeps it all organized for me. We’re running all over every damn place but she lets me know where to go and I just show up and coach. Did you know you actually have to bring treats now every time you have a practice?”

  “I did not.”

  “Juice or oranges or rice crispy treats or some damn thing every damn practice. Don't think I'd even be able to coach if it weren't for Julia. I'd be too busy shopping all the damn time for these kids.”

  “True enough.”

  “How about you? You have kids?”

  He knew the answer but I told him anyway. “No.”

  “You’re lucky, believe me. Never a moment of quiet from six in the morning to eleven at night. Have to come in to the office on Saturday morning sometimes just to hear myself think. If there are no games of course.” He sighed. Loud. “Still, I wouldn't trade it for anything.” He pointed to a picture on the desk which was facing outward so that a visitor could see it as opposed to facing him where he could. “That's them there.”

  I leaned forward a little bit and took a quick glance at one of those overly posed pictures on a beach. You know the type—all of them were in matching shirts, barefoot in the sand with the ocean behind them. Tall, square-jawed police officer, tall blonde wife, and three towheaded kids with their hair neatly combed for maximum beatification. I nodded. “Good looking kids.”

  “All Julia,” he said in a voice that almost meant it. “She has a sister down in the Outer Banks so we try to get down there every summer.” He gave me a stare and a grin. “Usually have a big family reunion there at that beach house, right on the ocean. Kids love it.”

  “I bet.”

  “That's what I say! Gotta get these kids out of the house, away from those videogame consoles and into the outside air! Am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “So,” he said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “How about you? No kids, so what fills your time?”

  “Work mostly,” I said.

  “Work, right, I assume that's why you're here. Still, you have to make sure you make time for family.” He stared at me. “If you don't have that, you don't have anything.”

  I knew how he meant it but that didn't mean it wasn't true. “True. Mind if I ask you a couple of things about the Dillon Chase case?”

  “Sure. I won't necessarily be able to answer but…” He waved one large hand to proceed.

  “Were you with the first responders the night of the killing?”

  Pearson nodded. “Came in with the ambulance.” He shook his head. “We didn’t need an ambulance. We needed a cleanup crew.”

  “Turns out you did need the ambulance though, didn’t you?”

  Pearson gave me a gritted-teeth grin. “Nobody was reviving Chase after the beating your man put on him.”

  “No, not for Chase. For Lizzy Saint.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. For her. Sure.”

  “Was she conscious when you got there?”

  “In and out.” Pearson had a look of distaste on his face. “She was pretty drunk.”
He shook his head. “Such a waste.”

  “How so?”

  “All that talent. Pissing it away on booze and drugs.” He stared at me as he said it.

  I kept my face neutral and said, “Did you find any drugs?”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  “Heroin?”

  Pearson nodded again. “A bag, paraphernalia, the works.”

  “Did you find a needle?”

  “Yep.”

  “Was it full or empty?”

  Pearson thought for a moment. “I don't remember.”

  Liar. I nodded and said, “You did an inventory of the scene contents, though?”

  “Always.”

  I’d find the information I wanted there then. Pearson just wasn't going to gift-wrap it for me. “Did you find my client there?” I asked.

  “Sure did. Covered in Dillon Chase's brains and blood.”

  “How was he acting?”

  “Like a stone-cold killer.”

  “How so?”

  “The woman's boyfriend, Smoke, was sitting on the bed with Ms. Saint. The paramedics were working on her and on the scraps of the victim. And your man was just sitting in a chair, hands on knees, staring at the woman as calm as you please.” Pearson shook his head in disgust that may or may not have been real. “He was covered in blood, you know.”

  “You mentioned that.”

  “Yeah. It was impossible not to be. It was spattered everywhere. His hands, his forearms, his face. Blood on everything. It was as bad a beating death as I've ever seen. Looked like he’d used a couple of sledgehammers. But it was his fists.”

  “Did my client try to flee the scene?”

  “What?” The question looked like it surprised him.

  “Was my client there when you arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any indication that he had tried to leave?”

  “He wasn't leaving once we got there. We cuffed him right away.”

  “I understand. But before you got there—any evidence he tried to leave?”

  Pearson shrugged. “I don't know what he did before I got there. All I know is that the killer was in the room when I arrived.”

  “And he didn't resist?”

  “Not me. I understand he hassled the paramedics until they started treating Ms. Saint first. Didn't want them treating the victim. Although in fairness, he probably knew that Chase was already deader than shit.”