Life Everlasting

by Robert Whitlow

  Alexia stared at the top of Rena’s blonde head and wished she could cut it open and sort the truth from the lies. The veracity of everything Rena had told her in the past was open to debate. Baxter. Jeffrey.

  “We’ll talk later,” Alexia said.

  19

  ’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

  LORD BYRON

  Pruitt turned the dead bolt and held the door open for Alexia. She stepped onto a landing above a very nice courtyard that featured a fountain surrounded by carefully manicured bushes and an array of late fall flowers. When they reached the fountain, Pruitt stopped and faced her. The sound of water from the mouths of three marble birds perched on top of the fountain tinkled in the background.

  “Do you really think I had an obligation to tell you that a tape exonerating my client existed?” he asked.

  “No,” Alexia admitted. “And I can’t—”

  “Tell me what your client has told you,” Pruitt completed Alexia’s thought. “But it’s obvious she’s been spinning tales, and now you don’t know what to believe.”

  Alexia didn’t respond.

  “Would you like my opinion?” Pruitt asked.

  Alexia raised her eyebrows. “Maybe.”

  Pruitt put his hands in his pockets. “I believe her mea culpa is the truth. Your client is not the type of person who would kill a police officer over a speeding ticket. The autopsy showed no evidence of assault, the deputy was grossly overweight, and the drop-off to the shoulder of the road was sufficient to cause someone to lose balance and fall.”

  “Okay, that’s one man’s opinion. But why would someone be filming my client’s activities in the first place?”

  Pruitt picked a leaf from the water at the edge of the fountain. “I’ll let you ask Quinton that question, and he’ll be free to answer.”

  Alexia shrugged. “I doubt your client will be as spontaneous as mine.”

  “I can assure you that I have not sandbagged your interview. You’ll have a fair chance to find out everything you can.”

  “That’s all I can ask.”

  Pruitt dropped the leaf on the brick walkway. “My car is in a garage behind the garden.”

  Pruitt led the way past a wrought-iron chair, covered with a cushion, nestled between two large potted plants.

  “That’s where I like to sit in the evenings and read until it gets dark,” he said.

  Alexia didn’t respond. Pruitt’s recreational habits were of no interest to her. They walked underneath an arbor and came to the back door of a small wooden garage. Inside was an unusual silver sports car with the silhouette of a horse on the back. Pruitt pressed a button that caused the opposite wall to flip up, revealing a back alley.

  Alexia eyed the car. “What is that?”

  “My car. I have to drive something to the grocery store.”

  Pruitt followed Alexia to the passenger side and opened the door for her. She sat mere inches above the ground. Pruitt slid behind the wheel and started the engine. It came to life with a muted roar. He pulled straight out of the garage into the alley.

  “It’s a Ferrari,” he said. “I bought it used.”

  Alexia was not a college sorority girl impressed by a red Corvette, but riding in the Italian sports car was a different experience. It was impossible not to notice the heads that turned in their direction as they pulled onto the street.

  “How do you handle the curiosity?” Alexia asked. “Everyone stares at you.”

  “By pretending that I’m someone famous.”

  “Who are you today?”

  Pruitt downshifted smoothly, and the car slowed to stop at an intersection. “I’ll let you choose.”

  Alexia glanced at the lawyer’s silhouette. He was a handsome man but didn’t remind her of anyone.

  “Uh, how about Evgeny Kissin?”

  Pruitt burst out laughing.

  “Do you know who he is?” Alexia asked.

  Pruitt turned a corner. Three young men standing on the sidewalk stopped talking and watched the car drive past.

  “He’s a Russian pianist with hair like a lion’s mane, but I don’t think those guys on the sidewalk would consider him famous.”

  “He is to me.”

  “I recently bought Kissin’s new recording” Pruitt said. “It’s an all-Brahms CD.”

  Alexia remembered reading a review of the performance on the Internet. She’d ordered it, but it hadn’t arrived.

  “How is it?” she asked.

  “Excellent. He knows how to communicate emotion.”

  They passed the Francis Marion Hotel.

  “Did you attend the benefit concert at the Francis Marion the other night?” Alexia asked.

  “No, I was invited but couldn’t make it. Were you there?”

  “Yes.”

  Pruitt downshifted again. “I read in the paper about the substitute pianist from Santee. Do you know him?”

  Alexia nodded. “Yes, uh, he’s a friend. He did a great job.”

  Pruitt accelerated through two stoplights before the third one caught him.

  “Quinton’s alibi seems tight,” Pruitt said while they waited for the light to turn green. “But I didn’t know the truth until I saw your client’s response to the mention of the videotape. That settled it for me, even before she told what really happened. Your client reminds me of a young woman I represented last year who was charged with manslaughter in the death of her husband. She changed her story so many times that I wondered if they shouldn’t have charged her with murder. When the truth finally came out, she had a legitimate defense.”

  “What was it?”

  “Her husband had been cheating on her with her best friend and punching my client in his spare time. One night he took the abuse to a new level and threatened her with a gun. He tripped and fell, and the gun went off, sending a bullet into the ceiling. She tried to grab the gun out of his hand. They fought, and it discharged again. The bullet went straight up through her husband’s mouth and out the top of his head.”

  Alexia winced.

  “At first, my client told the police it was a suicide, but when her prints showed up on the weapon, she changed her story and claimed she’d cleaned the gun for him earlier in the day. When tests showed gunpowder on her clothes, she hired me.”

  “Did she tell you the truth?”

  “Not at first. She denied any problems in her marriage and concocted a conspiracy theory that the assistant solicitor, a fraternity brother of her late husband, had decided to frame her. It was nuts. The more I learned about the dynamics of her marriage, the more I suspected the killing was either in self-defense or an accident. One day, I walked through my accident theory with her. She broke down and cried. It was similar to what just happened with your client.”

  Pruitt turned a corner into the parking lot for the Charleston Correctional Center.

  “Did you have to try the case?” Alexia asked.

  “Yes, it was one of the few criminal cases in which my client didn’t enter a plea. Each one of her conflicting confessions was read into evidence by the detective who interrogated her. On paper, she looked like a pathological liar, and I think it surprised the prosecutor when I called her to the witness stand to tell what really happened. The solicitor couldn’t wait to begin his cross-examination. He tried to tear her apart with her prior inconsistent statements, but the more he harangued her, the more it looked like she had finally decided to tell the truth. The jury acquitted her after deliberating three or four hours. Jurors can usually smell the truth.”

  Alexia had also found jurors to be good judges of common-sense facts. Lawyers, caught in the niceties of legal maneuvering, often trusted in their own ability to thread the legal needle with a thin strand of evidence that jurors rarely accepted as strong enough to support a verdict.

  The modern Charleston County Correctional Center dwarfed the ten cells and detoxification tank on the outskirts of Santee. The guard on duty at the initial ch
eckpoint examined their identification and pressed an electrical switch that allowed Pruitt to push open a heavy, solid steel door. Alexia stepped into the hallway and waited for Pruitt to lead the way. They went through another steel door and arrived at a desk where a female officer radioed a guard in the cell block and informed him of Pruitt’s request to see Quinton. She told them to wait in interview room number two. They passed through yet another steel door into a short hallway lined with interview rooms. Interview room two was a windowless space containing a small table and three plain metal chairs.

  “Will you be here while I talk to him?” Alexia asked. “I’d like the same chance that you had to find out the truth.”

  Pruitt smiled slightly. “Mrs. Richardson didn’t appear to be restricted by your presence, but I promise not to needlessly interfere.”

  The door opened and Quinton, wearing leg-irons, handcuffs, and an orange jumpsuit, was ushered in by a burly correctional officer.

  “With a woman present, I’m going to leave on the restraints,” the officer said.

  “It’s alright. She’s an attorney,” Pruitt responded.

  The officer inspected Alexia. “Is she also representing him?”

  “No.”

  “Then the restraints stay on.”

  The door banged shut. Quinton sat and put his manacled hands on the table in front of him.

  “They don’t give accused cop-killers much slack in here,” he said in a nasal New Jersey accent.

  Alexia glanced down at the prisoner’s hands. She noted his neatly trimmed fingernails, clean-shaven face, and tidy hair. He certainly didn’t have the look of a deranged murderer.

  “Before Ms. Lindale asks you any questions,” Pruitt began. “Let me tell you what her client, Mrs. Richardson, just told me.”

  Alexia listened again to Rena’s admission of fault. It brought back a taste of the frustration she’d felt at Pruitt’s office. When his lawyer finished, Quinton turned to Alexia.

  “Do you have copy of this tape? It’s not right for me to be locked up for something I didn’t do.”

  Pruitt responded before Alexia spoke. “I’ll subpoena the tape if we need it. My first step is to present your alibi evidence to the solicitor’s office. If that works, we won’t need the tape. However, even if the theft and murder charges are dropped, you’ll still be facing assault charges because of the incident involving the detective at the Beachcomber Club.”

  Quinton responded with a shrug. “One of the other guys knocked him on the head. He was snooping around my van. It looked like he was trying to steal it.”

  “Are those charges pending in Charleston County?” Alexia asked.

  Pruitt nodded. “Yes, we waived jurisdiction and venue in Santee so everything could be handled here.” He spoke to Quinton. “I told Ms. Lindale that she could ask you some questions.”

  Quinton looked at Alexia with a slight smirk. “Go ahead. I don’t have any plans for Saturday night.”

  Alexia ignored the innuendo. “Would you recognize Rena Richardson if she walked into this room?” she asked.

  “Yeah. All the guys hired to watch her had her picture. Cute blonde in her midtwenties, a little bit taller than you. We were her guardian angels.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, but we were there at the request of Jeffrey Richardson.”

  “He hired you?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Who told you what to do?”

  Quinton’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if he thinks you’re interested in him, he might become interested in you. You don’t want that kind of attention.”

  Alexia kept her voice level. “Then why mention Jeffrey Richardson?”

  “He’s a money guy but nothing else. Besides, if you didn’t already know about his involvement, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  Quinton spoke with the confidence of a man who had everything figured out. Alexia decided to test him.

  “What else do I know?” Alexia asked.

  “Oh, I’m no psychic, but I’m sure Jeffrey Richardson is trying to scare your client with the videotape. I’m not sure what he wants to do and don’t really care, but that tape is my ticket out of here. I didn’t steal that car or kill the deputy.”

  “Why were your fingerprints on the door of Rena Richardson’s convertible?”

  “Check the police report. They were on the passenger door. I delivered a package to her one night and left it in the seat of the car.”

  “What was in the package?”

  Quinton shrugged. “Drugs, diamonds, money, I don’t know. It wasn’t addressed to me. If I’d worn gloves I wouldn’t be sitting here. It was a stupid mistake.”

  “Who told you to deliver a package?”

  “A person who had the right to tell me what to do.”

  “Why were you watching Rena?”

  “I told you. It was my job.”

  “Did you shoot the video?”

  “No, it was my day off, and I went to Savannah.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  “One of the other fellows mentioned it to me after the deputy turned up dead, and Mrs. Rich claimed her car had been stolen.”

  “It’s Richardson.”

  “We called her Rich. It seemed to fit.”

  “Were you watching anyone else?”

  “Not when I was protecting her.”

  “It sounds like you were spying on her. Did she ask for protection?”

  “I’ve never met her, but my instructions were to make sure that nobody bothered her.”

  “Why did she need protection?”

  “There are people who might try to hurt her. We were supposed to keep that from happening.”

  “Who would want to hurt her?”

  Quinton looked directly into Alexia’s eyes. “Counselor, there are bad people in this world. Some of them are in the cell block where I’m locked up; a lot more are out on the street. As long as I was on the job, your client was safer than if a police cruiser slowed down in front of her house every five minutes.”

  “Can you tell me the names of any of these bad people?”

  “I could, but I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “For the same reason you don’t need to know the name of my boss.”

  Alexia remembered the man who accompanied Jeffrey to the benefit concert. “Is Nicholas Valese your boss?”

  “No, and we’re not going to play any guessing games.”

  Without a judge to force answers, Alexia retreated and regrouped.

  “Have you seen me before?” she asked.

  “You look familiar, but I can’t place you. Santee is a small town. We could have been in the same store or passed by on the street. Where do you buy your liquor?”

  Alexia bought an occasional bottle of wine in Charleston but couldn’t remember the last time she went into a liquor store in Santee. She refused to let Quinton take over direction of the questions.

  “Do you know where I live?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you own a gray van?”

  “It’s mostly gray. It used to be totally gray, but it’s lost a lot of paint.”

  “Recently, someone driving an older-model, gray van near my house ran me off the road into the sand. Was that you?”

  Quinton shook his head. “No. Where do you live?”

  Alexia ignored the question. “Do people borrow your van?”

  “Sure, all the time. I’m a generous guy.”

  “Can you describe any of the people who have borrowed your van in the past couple of weeks?”

  Quinton raised both his hands to scratch the side of his nose. “I’m not too good at that type of thing.” Before Alexia could ask another question, he added, “And I’m not going to tell you any names either.”

  “Are they still in the area?”

  “I’m not really
sure. I’ve been out of touch with everyone lately.”

  “Was anyone watching me?”

  Quinton grinned, but it didn’t make him look friendly. “I’m sure a lot of people are watching you. My lawyer hasn’t taken his eyes off you the whole time we’ve been talking.”

  Pruitt spoke up. “Ms. Lindale, I asked Mr. Quinton to cooperate to the extent he wants to do so and so long as I don’t think it’s detrimental to my representation. From your questions, I assume you believe a coworker of my client may have been in the area near your house.”

  “‘Coworker’ is an interesting way to describe someone who tried to run me off the road. I’m not claiming anyone violated the law, but it made me wonder if an accomplice was in the neighborhood, and why.”

  Pruitt looked at Quinton and then spoke to Alexia. “Step outside for a minute and let me talk to my client.”

  Alexia opened the heavy, metal door and stood in the hallway. Unlike Rena, Henry L. Quinton didn’t seem interested in disgorging any helpful information. Alexia wasn’t particularly surprised; however, the fact that Rena had bared her soul to Sean Pruitt made Alexia’s inability to pry anything from Quinton more frustrating.

  Except for the heavy, metal doors, the hallway could have been a hospital ward. An inmate operating a large buffing machine and wearing a white jumpsuit with the words “Correctional Center Trustee” stenciled in large black letters across his chest approached her. Alexia stepped to the other side of the hall as the man sprayed the floor with a pink substance from a bottle attached to the machine. As he passed by, the floor glistened. The door opened and Pruitt motioned to her. She reentered the room.

  “Have a seat,” Pruitt said.

  Alexia glanced at Quinton, but he was looking down at the table. She resumed her place.

  Pruitt spoke. “Ms. Lindale, you’ve probably been the subject of surveillance because of your representation of Rena Richardson. Lawyers often play a big role in what people do, and it’s not unusual for their activities to be monitored. In fact, there is a strong possibility that we were followed from my office to the jail. Mr. Quinton’s life would be at risk if his superiors suspect that he is discussing anything other than the charges against him with either one of us.”