Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales

by Randy Singer

  After the tow truck and car left, the police officers talked among themselves for a few minutes and then headed toward their squad cars. One of the officers lingered behind and approached Elias.

  “I’m sorry it has to be like this,” he said.

  “You’re just doing your job,” Elias responded.

  After all the officers left, Harry and Landon talked with Elias and his wife in the driveway. Mrs. King’s face was taut, the corners of her mouth pulled down. She closed her eyes for a beat, as if that might somehow wash away the memories. Elias still had on his white shirt from work, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  “I don’t trust the cops,” Harry said. “They may have installed some listening devices in your home. Don’t talk out loud about anything having to do with Erica Jensen inside.”

  Mrs. King nodded. She looked shell-shocked.

  “Elias, I’d like to meet for a few minutes. What about the IHOP on Battlefield Boulevard?”

  Elias turned to his wife. “You going to be okay?”

  Even though she had thrown on a winter jacket, she was hugging herself and shivering. Landon noticed that she kept her distance from Elias. “I’m fine.”

  She thanked Harry and Landon for coming. Her son, who looked to be about fifteen, was standing in the garage doorway watching.

  “Jake and I can start cleaning up,” Mrs. King said, her voice emotionless and resigned. “You can take my car.”

  Harry and Landon headed to their cars in the cul-de-sac. A few curious neighbors were on their porches.

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” Harry said loud enough to be heard by everyone. “The party’s over. You can all go to bed now.”

  14

  LANDON ARRIVED AT THE IHOP first and waited in his truck until he saw Harry pull up. He grabbed his iPad and walked over to meet Harry in the parking lot. Landon was hoping to get a few minutes to mention the less-than-enthusiastic reception he had received at the firm that morning.

  “How’s that for an exciting first day at the office?” Harry asked as Landon approached his vehicle.

  “Beats research,” Landon said.

  Harry was holding two legal pads and handed one to Landon. “People say I’m a little paranoid,” Harry said. “You will be too after you see what the government does to convict some of our clients. Lose that iPad and use this. Every digital keystroke leaves a fingerprint someplace in cyberspace. In our line of work, we don’t like fingerprints.”

  Landon took the legal pad and wondered if all high-profile criminal-defense lawyers were this paranoid. He hadn’t heard anything about these kinds of precautions in law school.

  Regardless, Landon dutifully put his iPad back in his truck and went into the restaurant with Harry. “I’d like that booth in the corner,” Harry said to the young woman seating them. He motioned to a booth that had nobody on either side. Before they sat, Landon had to brush some crumbs off the bench on his side of the booth and a waitress had to come and bus the table, but the spot seemed to suit Harry just fine. The two men ordered coffee, and Landon took off his sweatshirt, bunching it in the corner of the bench. Landon mentioned the run-in he’d had with Brent Benedict that morning.

  “Show up tomorrow at eight thirty,” Harry said. “Instead of going to the main doors, go in the door on the far right, which is a separate entrance that leads upstairs. If I’m not there yet, Janaya can let you in that outside door. The only rooms up there are my office, a conference room, and a couple of war rooms. Pick one of those war rooms as your office and start cleaning it up. When I get there, I’ll deal with Benedict.”

  Landon should have felt a rush of adrenaline knowing that he would have a place to work in the morning. But the prospect of joining a firm that seemed so dysfunctional took the edge off his euphoria.

  He took a few notes on the case while they waited for Elias. When Elias appeared, Landon slid over and Elias sat next to him, placing his briefcase under the table.

  When he had first seen Elias, Landon knew that the man reminded him of someone. Now it struck him—a younger version of Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York. They had the same pointed face and prominent nose. The same receding hairline and large ears. And the same rock-solid jaw and penetrating blue eyes. Elias was still wearing his white shirt, though he had taken off his tie. He hung his overcoat on a hook at the booth.

  Harry introduced Landon, leaving out the part about Landon’s checkered football career. Elias stared as if trying to place the young lawyer.

  “Did you play football for Southeastern?” Elias asked.

  Landon felt his face redden a little. The question always had deeper meaning. Are you the quarterback who betrayed his teammates? Are you the one who put money ahead of winning football games?

  “Guilty,” Landon said. “Hope you weren’t a fan.”

  “I don’t watch football,” Elias said with what sounded to Landon like a fair amount of disdain. “But I watch trials.”

  “I sat on the Character and Fitness Committee that reviewed Landon’s bar application,” Harry interjected. “He tried one heckuva case for himself. I know you’re not a big believer in redemption, Elias, but this young man has changed.”

  Landon felt a wave of gratefulness wash over him. There weren’t many people willing to stick their necks out for a former felon, rushing to his defense. Perhaps it came from Harry’s job, always looking for the best in his clients.

  Their waitress returned and the men stopped talking. Elias ordered water. When the waitress left, Elias turned to Landon. “You’re lucky to be working with this man,” he said. “Harry McNaughten is a legend in the prosecutor’s office. He was a pain in the rear to have on the other side of a case, but a legend nonetheless. That’s why I hired him. And he’s a pretty good judge of character.”

  Harry seemed uncomfortable with the accolades and ready to get down to business. He leaned forward a little, his raspy voice barely above a whisper. “How did you know they were coming?”

  “One of the secretaries in the Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office used to work in the U.S. Attorney’s office when I was there,” Elias said. “She gave me a heads-up.”

  Landon couldn’t decide whether he should take notes on this or not. Given Harry’s paranoia, he decided against it.

  “What else did she say?” Harry asked.

  Elias took a quick look around. Must be everybody on the defense side was paranoid, Landon decided. “She was pretty nervous, so it was hard prying much out of her. Erica Jensen didn’t show up for a meeting with the Feds this morning, and nobody could find her. They started calling the locals to see if anybody knew anything. They found out that the Chesapeake cops received an anonymous tip about somebody dumping a body into the Intracoastal Waterway last night. The car description apparently fit mine. They put two and two together, and the Commonwealth’s Attorney got a search warrant for my house and car.” Elias shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

  “Is your source going to keep you in the loop?” Harry asked.

  To Landon, it seemed like the wrong question. He wanted to start with Did you do it? But that was probably just his law student naiveté. He would watch Harry’s more sophisticated choreography and try to learn from it.

  “I doubt it.” Elias took a sip of water. Neither Elias nor Harry seemed the least bit bothered about the ethics of having a source inside the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. To Landon, it made the insider trading allegations against Elias seem more credible. “She said she couldn’t talk to me about the case after this. Said she knew I didn’t do anything wrong and wished me the best.”

  Harry grunted. It was not the answer he wanted. “Do you have an alibi for last night?” he asked.

  “I was sleeping.”

  “With your wife?”

  Elias shook his head and frowned. “Separate rooms.”

  This elicited a grimace and a second grunt of disapproval from Harry. “And that will be her testimony?
”

  Elias stared Harry down. “I’m not going to ask her to lie.”

  “Okay. But why are you sleeping in separate rooms?”

  There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as Elias played with his water glass, thinking. He looked up at Harry when he delivered the news. “She found out about Erica.”

  “Found out that you were fooling around?” Harry asked.

  “Yeah. Julia found some text messages two nights ago, on Super Bowl Sunday.”

  Harry scowled and made another note. “You sent text messages?”

  “I know,” Elias said, cutting Harry off. “I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.”

  Harry shook his head and took a sip of coffee. He fished around for his reading glasses, found them, and made a couple of notes, torturing everyone with the silence. “Did you go to Ms. Jensen’s apartment last night?”

  “No.”

  “Talk to her on the phone?”

  “I called her a couple of times. She didn’t answer.”

  Harry took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and thought about the next question. “You have any idea where she is?” he eventually asked. “Is there a chance she could just show up someplace tomorrow?”

  “I’ve been calling her all day,” Elias said. “I told her yesterday that Julia found out about us. I told Erica we had to break it off for the sake of my family. I wanted a shot at restoring my marriage. She said she understood.”

  “And then she called the Feds and said she wanted to meet with them,” Harry said.

  “Apparently.”

  “And you knew nothing about this meeting?”

  “No. Just found out about it today.”

  “Your source didn’t tell you about it earlier?”

  This time Elias waited a moment to answer, setting his jaw. Landon could tell the man wasn’t used to being questioned like this.

  “No.”

  Harry spent the next fifteen minutes quizzing Elias about his affair. How long had it lasted? Who else knew about it? How did it start? What did Erica say when Elias told her it was over?

  When Harry asked how many times Elias and Erica had sex, Elias bristled. “How is that relevant?”

  Harry put down his pen and took off his glasses, setting them on the table. “Do you really need a road map?”

  Elias sighed. “No.”

  “Then how many times?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe six or eight over a four-week period.”

  “Where?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “I’m trying to figure out who else might have seen you.”

  “Nobody.”

  And so it went, Harry probing and Elias reluctantly answering. Landon wasn’t sure, but it seemed like Harry was trying to subtly demonstrate the weaknesses of their case, and how the prosecution would attempt to cross-examine Elias. No questions were off-limits; no aspects of the affair could remain private.

  Finally, mercifully, Harry changed the subject. “Let’s start with a list of what we saw the cops take,” he suggested.

  For the next twenty minutes, the men compared notes on the items the cops had bagged. Conspicuously absent was any mention of computers, cell phones, or tablet devices.

  Harry noticed it too. “No computers?” he asked.

  “They took my work laptop a few weeks ago,” Elias replied. “But they didn’t get my replacement laptop or my other devices.” He patted his briefcase under the table.

  “What’s the inventory?” Harry asked.

  “My laptop. An iPad. An iPhone.”

  Harry leaned back and thought about this for a moment. Landon knew that there would be a gold mine of digital information on those devices. Phone calls. Internet searches. E-mails and texts.

  “What about Julia’s computer?”

  “She hid it. The cops don’t have it, but she wouldn’t give it to me, either.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “Same.”

  “What’s she hiding?” Harry asked.

  “Nothing,” Elias said. “It’s just that right now she doesn’t have the greatest amount of trust in me.”

  I wonder why, Landon wanted to say, though he kept his mouth shut.

  Harry finished his cold coffee. “All right. Landon, you’ll be the new custodian of Elias’s computers and cell phone. Don’t let them out of your sight. You sleep with them under your pillow. You take them with you to the bathroom. They never leave your side. Tomorrow I’ll give you the name of a guy who can download everything from the hard drives and memory cards. You stand there looking over his shoulder and watch him do it. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Landon said, though he didn’t like it. He vaguely remembered that one of his law school classes had addressed this type of situation. He didn’t know if it was ethical to withhold evidence from the prosecutors.

  “You sure you don’t want to hold on to it?” Elias asked Harry.

  “Landon’s more than capable,” Harry said.

  Using his leg, Elias slid the briefcase toward Landon. Landon reached down and secured it against the booth. He would go home and research the issue. But in the meantime, he would do what Harry said. The man trusted Landon, and Landon would return the favor. At least for now.

  A few minutes later, Harry picked up the bill, and the three men went their separate ways, with Landon carrying the briefcase. To him, it felt radioactive.

  Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a defense lawyer after all.

  15

  KERRI WAS WIDE AWAKE and ready to talk when Landon arrived home. He had called her a couple of times to update her on his little adventure, but he hadn’t wanted to say too much over the phone.

  Now he outlined the basics of the case, being careful not to tell her anything Elias King had said. Attorney-client confidences could be lost if you shared that information with a spouse.

  When he got to the part about holding King’s computer, iPad, and iPhone, Kerri furrowed her brow. “Is that legal?” she asked.

  “I’m going to research it tonight,” Landon said. “But Harry’s on the Character and Fitness Committee, and he’s been doing this for forty years.”

  Landon could tell from his wife’s facial expression that she wasn’t buying it. “Then why didn’t he keep the items himself?”

  Landon didn’t have an answer for that one. To be honest, he felt a little sleazy carrying around items that might be incriminating evidence in a murder investigation. But he hadn’t wanted to question Harry in front of a client.

  “Who knows?”

  “You don’t even have your bar license yet,” Kerri said, as if Landon might have somehow forgotten that minor detail. “You can’t afford to have any missteps.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Landon promised. But he might as well have been talking to a wall.

  Kerri had a million other questions about the case and the job offer. Landon didn’t know much about the job offer, and he had to be careful not to disclose too much about the case. He fired up his computer on the kitchen table, a subtle hint that he needed to get to work. Kerri finished putting up the dishes and took a seat at the opposite end of the table.

  “Do you think he did it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s why we have trials,” he said.

  Landon kept his eyes glued to his screen, but he knew Kerri wasn’t satisfied.

  “I’m not sure if this is the right firm for you. Maybe God is trying to tell us something. You show up for the first day of work and nobody knows who you are. Now you get this evidence from some client who probably killed a young paralegal in his firm and the partner wants you to keep it secret. The whole thing doesn’t seem right.”

  Landon knew he probably shouldn’t argue with her. She wasn’t really trying to debate the issue; she was just trying to work through her feelings out loud. She had been overly protective of him since the day he got out of prison—her main goal in life was to make sure he never went back.

  He typed in a few keystrokes to b
egin his research and then stopped. “What are my other options?” he asked, looking up.

  She had her hands on the table and studied them for a moment. “I don’t know. We can keep doing what we’re doing. I’d rather have you not working at all than working someplace where you might get in trouble.”

  “You think it was just coincidence that Harry McNaughten took our case in General District Court? You think that whole bar fight thing was just a random act that just happened to lead to my first job offer?”

  Kerri frowned. Landon, the astute lawyer-to-be, was turning her own arguments back on her. She was the one who had claimed to see God’s hand in all these seemingly random circumstances.

  “Let’s take it one day at a time,” Landon suggested. “We’ll both pray about it and see how we feel at the end of the week. How much trouble can I get in between now and then?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  Landon stayed up until two in the morning researching the issue of a lawyer taking possession of incriminating evidence. The law in Virginia appeared unsettled. Lawyers had an ethical duty not to divulge confidences of a client. But when a client brought them incriminating evidence, some courts had ruled that lawyers also had a duty to turn that evidence over to the police.

  He would have a heart-to-heart with Harry McNaughten first thing in the morning. He slept that night with the briefcase under his bed. He woke up twice to take Simba outside, his mind racing with the implications of what he was about to do. In law school, criminal-defense law had seemed noble and even heroic. But in real life, the waters were murky and the game was played on the fringes of morality. Landon didn’t know if he could live in this kind of world.

  Finally, after the second walk with Simba and after staring at Kerri for a full ten minutes while wondering what to do, he started praying and quickly fell asleep.

  16

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, the chaos that would become Landon’s new life exploded in earnest. Because Kerri had stayed up waiting for Landon the night before, she got a late start for work. She dashed out the door at four thirty, juggling her car keys, coffee, and makeup. “Don’t forget to feed Simba and take him out,” she said over her shoulder.