The Wind Is Rising 1

by Daniel Steele

  “Tried to kill himself? Think it was a ploy? I hear he’s a very smart guy. Trying to kill yourself could be a great way to get public sympathy.”

  “It was the real thing. No details, but he came uncomfortably close to bleeding out. Used his money to buy a scalpel and pay to distract the nurses and the cops watching him. He almost made it.”

  “Hmmmm. Trying to cheat the Magnificent System of Justice out of our pound of flesh.”

  Then:

  “All of which leaves us with the question, what do I have to do with all this?”

  “Probably quite a lot. You know the trial can never be held here, right?”

  “I’d guessed.”

  “It’s going to make OJ Simpson look like a two day assault case in Podunk. You know the details, right?”

  “Who doesn’t? Bobby Malone, The Money Man, the magic man with other people’s money in the media capitol of the world, the darling of the rich and famous and influential, but not so good with his wife. She found somebody else to make magic with and Malone found out. Not being content with divorcing her ass and reducing her to respectable poverty, he takes it personal and hires some Mafia dudes to kill her AND her lover.”

  “Right,” Murphy interrupted. “Which so far is following the playbook for jilted husbands. But then the stupid sonofabitch changes his mind at the last minute, calls off the hit on his wife but can’t reach the hitman going for the lover and the Magic Man THROWS HIMSELF like an absolute idiot in front of the bullet that was going to take out the lover.

  “Which isn’t to say,” Murphy continued in a voice in which the Irish brogue grew stronger the longer he talked, “that we’re not happy that he saved the lives of two innocent – not to say cheating scumbag human beings – but he’s caused us one hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “How? If there was ever an open-and-shut, slam-dunk case, this is it. A first year law student could prosecute it and walk away with a win.”

  “You think so?”

  “How in the hell could you lose?”

  “Have you been following any of the publicity about this?”

  “Some.”

  “There have been polls showing that The Magic Man is one of the most admired men in the country, and his wife April is one of the most hated. She abandoned her husband and five-year-old son to sleep with some good-looking slick Eurotrash. And that’s one of the kinder descriptions.”

  “So the public is behind a guy trying to kill the mother of his five-year-old son, a guy who hired two hit men to kill two people for doing something that millions of his fellow citizens are doing every day.”

  “Look at it the way it’s been portrayed in the media. You have a hard working, successful guy with a wife he loves and a five-year-old son. While he’s hard at work making money to allow her to enjoy the high life, she’s sneaking around with a good-looking guy whose main claim to fame is being distantly related to the current Queen of England. So he finds out and goes crazy, hires people to kill his wife and her lover.

  “And then, at the last minute for a reason he’s never talked about but most people think it’s because of his son, he changes his mind. Manages to call off one killer, but no one can call the second guy back. Malone tracks down the lover and is trying to warn him to get off the street when he catches a glimpse of the shooter and does the only thing he can do – throws himself in front of the target. And runs into a high-powered rifle shell two inches below his heart. In and out.

  “The guy nearly dies trying to save the man who destroyed his marriage. He saves the woman who was cheating on him. He is the father of a five-year-old. Talk about a sympathetic defendant. You and I and the jury will KNOW he’s guilty as sin. In the eyes of the law. But every man on the jury will be putting themselves in his shoes, wondering what it would be like to lose a wife and be willing to die to save her anyway. Every woman on the jury will be wondering what it would be like to be loved like that, to be loved so much you’d be willing to give up your life to save your wife’s lover.”

  He waited on the line for a moment.

  “Tell me how you’d convict the son of a bitch.”

  “Remind the jurors that murder is illegal, no matter how sorry you feel for the murderer. We’ve all dealt with sympathetic defendants before.”

  “Just that simple?”

  “It’s like making love. The mechanics are always the same. It’s the way you do it.”

  He laughed.

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Well, Ryan, this has been fun and while I don’t have a wife and kids to get home to, I do have a lady with the biggest and best breasts in Northeast Florida who’s waiting to do things that are illegal in some countries to me as soon as I show up, so please don’t be offended if I ask again. Why did you call me?”

  “There is a chance the case will be headed in your direction, sometime next year. Actually better than an even chance. You have the death penalty, your juries have a reputation of being among the toughest around, you’re far enough away from New York that there’s a chance of pulling a decent jury, and – of course – there’s the attraction of having the case tried by The Angel of Death.”

  “Okay, that I understand. If it comes our way, we’ll do our best. But it’s still a long way from there to here.”

  “Yeah. There were two specific reasons I called. I wanted to get a sense if we want the trial coming to you.”

  “What were the reasons?”

  “The first is that Mrs. Malone has already made a decision on who she wants to represent her husband and we hear the attorney has already been hired. You know him. Lew Walters. He comes from your neck of the woods.”

  “I know him. And the second?”

  “You’ve gotten more than your fair share – actually you’ve gotten about 1000 hours of your 15 minutes of fame – as the Angel of Death, so there’s a lot public about your work and your life. But when it started looking like the case might go in your direction, we took a closer look. And-“

  “You looked into my personal life.”

  “Had to. I found out about your wife and Doug Baker, about their affair, and about the fight you had with him at the University of North Florida that led directly to your divorce. The fight that could have gotten you fired or disbarred.”

  “And?”

  “We need a win on this. There is going to be intense public sympathy for Malone, and an acquittal or a light sentence will be broadcast around the world. No matter where it’s tried, if he walks it will make my office look like shit, like losers. Because no matter where it’s held, we started it. It’s ours, for good or bad. And politically, a loss won’t be good. Plus, it’s never a good idea when people get the idea that you can get away with murder – or attempted murder – if your PR is good enough.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So the first question is: Can you come out firing and kick Lew Walters’ ass? Even if he is a friend, and apparently your best friend, and the man you trusted to handle your divorce. I’ve checked his record. He’s too good to play with. And he will pull any kind of shit to win. He’s done it before.”

  “To answer your question, Lew is my best friend. And I will kick his ass. We’re friends outside the courtroom. Inside, he’s the enemy. I beat him in the Granny Killer case when nobody expected me to win. I can do it again.”

  “And the second question, Mr. Maitland. Actually the more important. You’re going to be asking a jury to destroy a man whose life was ruined by a wife cheating on him. The best he’s looking at is spending the rest of his life, or a good chunk of it, behind bars for felony murder in the death of the second hitman and attempted first degree murder of his wife and her lover. He had it all, and he’s going to lose it all. Odds are he’ll never see his son in the fresh air again in his life.

  “Can you do that?”

  “Because I lost my wife the same way? Because I lost my temper and struck out with my fists and who knows what I’d have done if I’d had a gun? You th
ink I’m going to identify with The Money Man and pull my punches?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “No. I’ll empathize with him and I’ll talk to the jury about my personal sympathies. And then I’ll remind them that sympathy has no place in the courtroom and exactly BECAUSE I’ve been where he is, they’ll listen to me more closely. You don’t need to worry about my having conflicting loyalties. I’m the Prosecutor.”

  After a bit:

  “You know, I actually believe you, Maitland. I think you will nail him if he gets down there. So, I will talk to my superiors and as things go, if they go that way, we’ll be in touch with your boss and you.”

  “I look forward to it. Now, if I was you I’d get out of the office and go back to that wife of yours and those two kids. And kiss them all – hard.”

  “I will, Maitland. And – I understand there might be a Patrick Leary working in the Public Defender’s Office down there. Is that right?”

  “Yes. He’s a royal pain in my ass, but a great lawyer. You know him?”

  “We know each other. Knew each other. One day, after a long day or if you can catch him drinking and in a mellow mood, tell him that Ryan Murphy said hello. And be ready to duck.”

  “It’s that way?”

  “You give your lady a good hard kiss too. Good to know there’s life after divorce. Goodbye.”

  I sat there after I’d put the phone back.

  And thought about the Money Man/Magic Man Traveling Circus that would be descending on Jacksonville next year. If he didn’t kill himself first. Or take a plea. Or if the Mexicans didn’t kill me first.

  There was a part of me that dreaded the coming trial. Murphy had been right about one thing. It would be hard to go full bore against a poor bastard who was striking out in pain and humiliation and anger against the two people who’d destroyed his life.

  But on the other hand, as Carl Cameron had said, it’s the hard cases that make the law an almost irresistible mistress. Even though it was a slam dunk, it would also be a challenge to convince jurors to turn their hearts off and use on their intellect to follow the law. And God Help Me, there was something in me like a boxer down on the canvas and fighting to hold onto consciousness when the referee’s count brought me up swinging at the thought of that trial. If only to myself, I might as well admit that I wanted it, even though it would hurt like hell.

  I went back to the emails. Ninety percent were office crap and could be ignored or passed on to Cheryl. But then there were the ones like:

  “Date: 11-12-2005”

  “To: W. Maitland”

  “From: Assistant SA Roger Hopper, Felony Division 1

  “Subject: Thoughts on Diversion of Kevin Butler”

  “Just wanted your thoughts when you have a moment. Don’t know if you are up on this case. Kind of a sad one. Kevin Butler is a 28-year-old advertising exec with Channel 12 WTLV in Jacksonville. His wife – to all appearances – went missing back in the Spring. No signs of foul play. No indications the husband was involved, although he could have been. But the husband’s reaction isn’t that of a killer. He’s basically let his life turn to shit since his wife disappeared without any clues.

  “Over the next six months Butler has been arrested twice for drunk and disorderly, an assault stemming from a bar fight over in Five Points, one DUI, and in this latest one is almost like a skit from Saturday Night Live. He came out of O’Brien’s on the Westside, pulled onto 17, and a mile down the road he ran a red light and I swear to God he came within six inches of creaming a station wagon FULL OF NUNS visiting from the St. Augustine Diocese.

  “He managed to avoid them but wound up in the hospital after nearly taking down a light at the corner of San Juan Avenue and 17 while the nuns wound up in the parking lot of the Solid Gold All Ladies Revue with pole dancers and bikers taking care of them. No real injuries, just shook up and some bumps and bruises.

  “He was sitting in jail after getting out of Shands University and by every criteria he ought to be looking at some time and never getting his license back in this lifetime. But one of the civilian counselors, guy named Lyle you’ve probably seen around the courthouse, got interested in him and called in Doc Teller as a personal favor to talk to the guy. Teller talked to him and he and Lyle wound up talking to me.

  “They both say Butler’s a decent guy. His wife dropping off the edge of the earth just rattled him and he’s been losing it as the time goes by and it looks like she’s never coming back and there’s no sign whether she’s living or dead. And they both recommend diversion. Lyle recommended Guardian Ad Litem. Thinks that worrying about kids might get his mind off worrying about his wife.

  “We ought to give him some time, but he’s got a clean record until his wife vanished and, honestly, I think having your wife drop into a hole in the ground and never knowing if she’s off with some other guy or rotting in a swamp somewhere would be enough to screw up most people’s heads. I’m running this by you in case someone in the media finds out about the nuns and his priors and gives us hell. I figure if somebody has to get grief, it ought to be The Angel of Death.

  “And, you ought to know, the nuns are asking us to go light on him. Big Surprise.”

  I knew what my gut told me. Okay, it hit a sore spot for me. Missing wives, cheating wives, dead wives…they all made me look twice. We did pre-trial diversion in some cases. We tried to keep it clear of politics, but every time you treat someone differently, there’s always the potential down the road to have them go up in a building and kill 20 people with a high powered rifle and the media will come in a howling mob to get the scalp of the insane prosecutors that let these monsters out early with a slap on the wrist.

  Maybe he’d killed her himself. The husband or wife of a missing or dead spouse is always the first and best suspect. Nobody else has as much reason to murder. And more often than you’d think, your first suspicion is the correct one. But..

  Evidently Hopper and the cops didn’t’ think he’d done it. And when you’ve done this work you develop a pretty good sixth sense for these things. The shit he’d gotten himself into since she’d gone missing could have been from guilt. Sometimes people think they’ve gotten away with bad things. But you have to be a certain kind of person to live with that knowledge.

  If you’re not a monster, you can’t run away from the knowledge of what you’ve done. You can’t drink enough to anesthetize yourself against the guilt, although a lot try. A lot of times, if garden variety murderers don’t wind up confessing, they wind up committing suicide. That kind of guilt is a heavy thing to carry around 24-7.

  But the kind of behavior he’d been exhibiting can come from unresolved grief as easily as guilt. When a wife dies in an accident or suicide, you bury them, mourn, sometimes screw around and sometimes drink yourself into oblivion, but you get over it. The same way I had. When they run off with a lover, you heal with time.

  But sometimes people just vanish. More than you’d think, actually. Nationally there are a lot of unsolved disappearances. Even in Jacksonville they occur. No warning. No history of serious continuing fights. No serious money problems. No evidence of violence or foul play or kidnapping. A husband or wife goes to work or goes on a trip or simply isn’t home when they’re supposed to be.

  And they never come back. Those are more rare than the ones where you eventually find a body somewhere or 10 years later you find them living with a second family on the opposite coast. Those, people can live with. The human heart is a lot more resilient than you’d think.

  But Butler, this poor bastard, was living in Limbo. You can’t mourn if you don’t know whether your wife died loving you or is currently being serviced by a new lover. You can’t be angry, you can’t be sad, you can’t emotionally bury them in the ground and find a new lover. Although people do all of those things. You’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  If he didn’t kill her, he was entitled to be a screwed-up emotional wreck. And maybe he was entitled to a break. Particularly
if Teller thought he deserved one. And Lyle.

  I’d run into this Lyle guy a few times. A college professor – but even with Doug Baker always in my thoughts and even though Lyle was another guy that probably set female students’ hearts fluttering – he seemed like a nice guy.

  And he wasn’t just another bleeding heart upper crust liberal assuaging his guilt at being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I’d talked with him a couple times to get a sense if his recommendations could be tough minded as well as tender hearted. Although he was a Harvard grad with a degree in Lit, he had come from the other Boston, the hard scrabble poor Irish neighborhood of small houses in tight little closed neighborhoods and his education was in street gangs rather than elite private schools. He had a heart, but he also had a brain.

  So if he thought Kevin Butler deserved a second chance, I’d be inclined to look favorably on it.

  I emailed Hopper back that he could draw up the papers and we’d talk on Monday or Tuesday, but that Butler would probably get diverted if it looked like Lyle and Teller were on the mark.

  The phone rang again. It was now past five and the deluge should begin to taper off. In my mind’s eye I painted a portrait of Myra standing naked in front of me, the heavy white globes of her enormous breasts hanging like round fruit. It was not a good thing to do when I still had to get out the door.

  “Mr. Maitland.”

  The voice was unmistakable.

  “Sheriff Bludwurth.”

  “I’m glad I was able to reach you. Most courthouse people would be out the door at 5 p.m. exactly. You’re obviously not a clock watcher.”

  I didn’t answer. Part was surprise. I hadn’t expected to hear from him. And part of it was to put the onus on him to start the conversation.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. Everything I’ve read about you makes it clear that you’re a dedicated man.”

  “And why would you be reading about me, Sheriff?”

  “After the – situation – earlier today, and my conversation by cell with Tommy Deacon, I became very curious about you. I googled you. It’s amazing how much press you’ve received since that Angel of Death story, but there are citations prior to that as well.”