Copyright © 2010 Edythe Wise. All rights reserved. 

Samuel A. Winston, Esq., aka Sammie the Springer, a stocky man with a black mustache and toupee, bit a hangnail and examined his fat thumb. "Connie, if you ever commit murder, make sure the victim’s an unlikable old degenerate."

Like you? I thought. Sammie was my boss, a defense attorney, who’d won many famous cases but squandered his money gambling instead of investing in our workplace. We sat in his office at ten p.m., the end of our average day. Several half-empty cups of heavily creamed coffee remained on his desk beside scattered papers and folders. A cigar smoldered in the ashtray, and the remains of Sammie’s morning Egg McMuffin emitted sulfur fumes from the trashcan. If I closed my eyes, I’d think I was at an oil spill.

Autographed pictures of famous organized crime figures Sammie’d defended adorned the wall. I sat before him and wondered, as I often did, whether I should tell him that the mirror behind his desk, which he’d hung to make his office seem larger, reflected the separation between his toupee and the start of his own hair. "You’re going to arrange a deal," he said. "Murder case. Sympathetic victim—young mother. The clients think I’ll be actively involved, but I’m leaving for California tomorrow." Then for Las Vegas, I said to myself.

"You’ll be lead attorney. I’m juggling too many cases already." He leaned back in his reclining chair. "Here’s your chance to redeem yourself after your ‘pink ribbon killer’ fiasco."

Memories of that trial surged through my mind. I pictured our former client, nineteen-year-old Joey. Saw his ferret face, black hair, trembling lips. Heard again his words, "Mama said don’t confess if I didn’t do it." Unfortunately, he’d already confessed.

Sammie rambled on. "I’d worked out a deal with the D.A. All you had to do was plead him guilty at the arraignment. I should have fired you."

"Come on. They tricked a confession—"

"No excuses. You’re getting a second chance, Don’t blow it." Sammie opened a folder and put on reading glasses. "Our client was in a white supremacist gang in the slammer. The victim was high achieving, young, a mother, African American. The DA has physical evidence linking our boy to the murder." He looked up. "The alibi witness, a well-known racist nut, doesn’t pass the laugh test." He picked up his slobbery cigar and pointed it at me. This time, don’t screw up a plea—only way to go even though he’s paying."

That brought up a sore point with me, Sammie’s practice of pleading out court appointed cases like Joey’s, even if the client seemed innocent, so he could pick up a small fee and act charitable without wasting billable hours on anyone not paying top dollar. I could still see him, slimy as the fried chicken he’d been stuffing into his mouth, refusing to allow our investigator to work with me on Joey’s case and making me defend Joey on my own time. He’d kept me busy with other cases while I was on the clock. I tuned in again to Sammie’s continuing monologue on the new case.

"I’ve told the investigator to work with you this time. No problem with funds. You’ll have enough evidence to make Linda Addison think she could lose."

My blood froze. Not Linda. I hated dealing with her. She’d clobbered me in Joey’s trial. She was everything I wished I were—rich, blond, Episcopalian, undefeated, Ivy League, patrician, voluptuous. I’d always thought my dark looks, wiry build, discount clothes, and hasty grooming were okay—enough men seemed to think so—but around her, I felt like a diseased bag lady.

"You listening to me, Connie?" I snapped out of my reverie. "Our client’s backers are paying top dollar. The creep wrote a book in prison. The artsy fartsy literary community declared him a genius and got him out a year ago on parole even though he’d been convicted of murdering a Black inmate. When he, predictably, got himself arrested this time, his bozo backers took up a fund for the defense. They say he’s reformed. Name’s Daniel Bailey."

I gasped. "This is high profile. I’ve heard of his latest novel. It isn’t popular because it’s hard to follow and almost a thousand pages long, but the literati love it. Critics compare Bailey to Dostoyevsky and Genet for his insight into the criminal mind."

"Big deal. All he had to do is describe his own thought processes."

"The writers who got Bailey out of jail will pressure us to clear his name in a trial," I said, "so they don’t look like a bunch of racist idiots for supporting him."

Sammie shook his head. "He’s already been convicted in the press. Even if he’s innocent, he should plead guilty. I told his backers that the likely death penalty conviction and the increased publicity of a long trial would be worse than a quiet deal."

"But if he doesn’t want a deal—"

"If you go to trial, you’ll lose. Killers like this can’t keep their big yaps shut. He’ll brag to another inmate or write a letter to a newspaper. That’ll come out in court when you least expect it and toss the case’s ashes to the winds while you stand there with your jaw and your pants down."

"He has a right to put the state to its proof."

"If he doesn’t mind losing. Face it; you’re not going to win. Good lawyers can win cases they should win. Only great lawyers can win ones they shouldn’t."

I prayed the guy would want to plead guilty. I couldn’t go through a trial like Joey’s again. It haunted me—denial of my motion to suppress Joey’s confession—inability to impeach the eyewitnesses because I didn’t have time or an investigator to find their weaknesses—failure to show that the photographic equipment at the crime scene couldn’t have been Joey’s.

I tore my thoughts away from Joey and tuned in to Sammie. "Bailey’ll be in the holding cell at the courthouse on Second Avenue tomorrow morning," he said. "The arraignment’s at nine a.m. Ask the judge for more time to work out a plea agreement. This is simple. Don’t get creative on me."

***

The next morning, I came out of the subway to familiar fumes gushing from factory chimneys—fumes neighborhood kids like Joey sniffed straight from industrial waste. I walked through the dirty air cursing the reminder of Joey. I’d had no expert to argue chemical brain damage. The state’s expert at the sentencing hearing had said Joey’s I.Q. of seventy-one was too high, and he was too high functioning—supported himself and his mother with a dishwashing job—to fall under the intellectual disability exemption from capital punishment. The sentence was death. His mother sobbed. Sammie’s plea bargain would have given Joey life with the possibility of parole. Other prisoners beat Joey to death his second day in prison. The guard said publicity about the trial had inflamed the inmates. My decision to go to trial had killed him."

***

The majestic courthouse came into view among the factories and rundown dwellings. Its golden dome, marble pillars, carved stone, and arched windows glowed through the smog. The first drops of an October rain fell. I hurried up the steps, entered the rotunda, and passed the mural of settlers shaking the hands of American Indians they couldn’t wait to break treaties with.

My watch said quarter to nine. I rushed through the arched doors and downstairs to the netherworld of the holding cell, a cage of woven steel.

My client, Daniel Bailey, was young—maybe twenty-eight, twenty-nine—light brown hair, cleft chin. His large blue eyes appeared hurt and vulnerable in contrast with his confident manner. He welcomed me into the holding cell as though he were a tuxedoed maitre d’ rather than a jump-suited defendant in a smelly jail.

His voice was deep and smooth. "I don’t know how I got into this mess." He looked at the floor. "Yes, I do. With my past, I’m a likely suspect, but I just hung out with the white supremacists because, in the joint, you had to be in a gang to survive, and that’s the only one that would have me. They dragged me into a fight with another gang, somebody got killed, and I got blamed. The court appointed lawyer told me to plead guilty because I’d never convince a jury I wasn’t." That sounded familiar.

He paced, looking at the floor. "I made all the wrong decisions."

"You knew the victim?"

"Slightly. We belong to the same photography club."

Why did that make me draw a quick breath? It came to me. Photographic material—the evidence in Joey’s case. God, now I had the two cases mixed up. "Did Mr. Winston discuss a plea agreement with you?"

Daniel’s face reddened. "He tried, but I’m not going to make the mistake of pleading guilty again when I’m not. I have an airtight alibi."

That unbelievable witness Sammie warned me about. "Before we go any further, let’s get something straight. You have to be honest with me. Ethically, anything you tell me is confidential." I didn’t explain the exceptions. Too complicated. "Mr. Winston said you claimed to be five miles away at the time, but your alibi witness wasn’t convincing. Would your witness be telling the truth?"

Daniel paced. "Yes, I was at the witness’s place trying to persuade him to come to a meeting to end gang violence in the neighborhood."

"Your witness didn’t impress Mr. Winston."

"That’s because the guy’s an ex-con, white supremacist on probation. But let’s put the truth before the jury, give them a chance to do the right thing. If you won’t cooperate, I’ll go pro se. I’ve made a study of the criminal mind. If I read the police and medical reports, see the photographs, I feel certain I’ll find evidence that leads away from the prosecution’s theory of the case.

My body went limp. This guy was probably guilty. But ethically I should represent him at trial if that’s what he wanted. "No, I’ll represent you, but you have to realize that you’re risking the death penalty."

He clasped my hand. "Thank God for you. Together we can beat this." I resigned myself to another hopeless murder trial.

On the first day in court, sheets of rain slammed against the darkened windows, and the faint smell of industrial fumes seemed to leak through the courtroom’s walls. The overhead lights didn’t compensate for the gray sky outside. The room was chilly and damp, but would warm soon from body heat. The spectators’ seats were full.

I felt ready, having worked with Daniel on every detail of the case, and I was encouraged that the graphic pictures disturbed him. His hands would shake so hard he’d have to put the pictures down.

Now, Daniel sat next to me in the blue suit I’d gotten from his mother. It perfectly matched his blue eyes. His face showed a hurt interest as though trying to understand why anybody would think he committed this dastardly crime. So different from the furtive expression Joey’d had.

The judge told the prosecution to proceed. In a perfectly tailored gray suit, Linda strode toward the lectern and smoothly launched into her opening statement. The jurors looked impressed. I felt like a freshman in white socks from the public high school debate team about to go up against the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Linda told of the victim’s brilliance, her graduation from Columbia, her plan to write and take photographs for a book to inspire African American youth with pride in their background, and her delight when the famous defendant expressed interest in working with her. Linda said that she would present extensive evidence, including an eyewitness, that Daniel Bailey stole a knife and a gun, persuaded Phyllis to accept a ride with him, took her to the woods, and killed her.

I scribbled a note to Danny. "Know who the eye witness could be?" Danny’s face

was red. He frowned and shrugged. My palms got wet. We were about to be blindsided. This was like Joey’s trial. Daniel must have killed, thinking nobody saw him.

Now, knees threatening collapse, I managed to rise as though I couldn’t wait to tell my incontrovertible story and headed for the lectern trying not to remember Joey, trying not to suspect Daniel—I’d call him Danny from now on, to make him seem innocuous.

The look on the jurors’ faces alarmed me. Several had tears in their eyes. In my opening statement, I acknowledged that all of us wanted the perpetrator of this tragedy brought to justice, but the police had arrested the wrong man. I concluded by promising that we would provide eyewitness evidence that Danny was miles away in a meeting on how to lessen violence in the city when someone else murdered Phyllis Martin.

Linda presented her first witness, Detective O’Brien, who looked like Santa Claus, the kind of man who makes you want to hug him. I felt sick. O’Brien told of finding the body in a deer pit in a wooded area where two hunters had reported seeing a corpse. He said he also discovered a knife, a gun, and fibers consistent with those in Daniel Bailey’s apartment.

When it was my turn to cross-examine, I got O’Brian to admit that the gun he found was not registered to Danny, and the police could have carried the fibers to the crime scene when they investigated it after searching his apartment.

When I heard Linda call Charley Schmidt, our alibi witness, I grasped the table and struggled to keep panic off my face. Without Charley, we had no alibi. I blurted out, "Your honor, I object. This witness did not appear on the prosecution’s witness list. It’s unfair surprise, especially if he’s here to refute an alibi."

The judge looked annoyed that he might have to adjourn the trial for a day or two. "’Do you need more time?"

I realized I could earn points with him by forging ahead. "No, your honor, I’m ready to proceed." I already knew Charley’s weaknesses from my attempts to prepare him as our alibi witness. The investigator had turned up a weapons stockpiling guilty plea and a guilty plea involving drugs. My worry had been how to rehabilitate him after Linda got through with him. I could use many of the avenues I’d expected Linda to use.

"Did you see Daniel on July third or fourth?" Linda asked.

"He come over to my house on the third," Charley said. "He asked could he borrow my truck. I give him the keys and said I needed it back by three-thirty tomorrow to go to a barbeque. He didn’t get the truck back to me in time, so I took the bus. Going past the woods, I seen Dan drive my truck up the road toward the deer pit. When I get home, I can’t find my best kitchen knife.

"Next day, Dan shows up with the truck and says, if anybody asks, he was here all day and night of the Fourth. I say okay. When he leaves, I turn on the TV and hear about a woman’s body in the deer pit. I check the glove compartment of my truck for my gun. It’s gone."

Linda had Charley identify the weapons. She entered them into evidence and said she had no further questions. Not only had this creep ruined my plans for the defense, he had made the prosecutor’s case. Fortunately, Charley was so unlikable, I could be ruthless without arousing sympathy for him. I charged out of my seat to the lectern for the cross exam.

I established that Charley had been part of a paramilitary group that had stolen weapons out of state and brought them back to stockpile for a race war. Charley had entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge and got probation because he cooperated. He admitted that when the police confiscated the guns, one was missing.

"You lied to the police at first, didn’t you?" No answer. "You told them you didn’t know where the gun that had been missing from the shipment was." This was a deduction, not something I knew for sure, so it was risky.

"Yes." Relief swept over me.

"So it’s fair to say that when you’re trying to avoid jail, you are willing to lie, isn’t it?"

"No."

I got him to admit that he’d avoided serving time for crack possession by making a deal and followed up by saying, "You’re trying to avoid serving time by testifying here, aren’t you?"

"No. I thought it was the right thing to do."

"It’s your duty as a citizen, is that it?"

"Yes."

"The truth is, Mr. Schmidt, when the police confronted you with your lies and your parole violations, you made a deal, didn’t you?"

No answer. "The murder weapon had been traced to you. The only way to save yourself was to implicate someone else and offer to testify against him, so you wouldn’t be indicted in this case.

"No."

"In return for testifying, you will not be charged in this case, right?"

"Do I have to answer that?" The judge said that he did.

"Yes."

"No further questions."

***

Normally I wouldn’t have put the Danny on the stand, but in the absence of Charley, I needed Danny to tell his side of the story. He was contrite in explaining his white supremacist membership, charming in my direct examination, and non-defensive in Linda’s cross-examination. I was confident the jurors would trust him over Charley.

When we heard the blessed words, "Not guilty," Danny embraced me. The feel of his wool jacket, the faint smell of his shaving lotion, the tender strength of his embrace made me realize how much I’d miss him.

When I sank into the chair and put my papers into my briefcase, relief coursed through my veins and muscles, smoothing the knots of anxiety like a cool stream smoothing the rocks in its bed. I’d won a case that Sammie knew he couldn’t win.

Danny put his hand on my arm and looked at me with those eyes of his. "I hope we can see each other again."

A thrill ran through me, but something about his intensity also made me uncomfortable. I smiled and nodded.

***

Saturday afternoon, about a week later, a signed copy of Danny’s book and a volume of Poe’s short stories arrived in the mail with a note from Danny. "Read ‘The Purloined Letter,’" it said, "and pages 820 to 900 of my book to learn that your brilliance as a lawyer is exceeded only by the illiteracy of the police and the density of my backers. Under their noses, but over their heads."

I remembered that "The Purloined Letter" was about a criminal who successfully hid crucial evidence by disguising it and leaving it in plain view. A slight foreboding crept up my spine. I opened Danny’s book to page 820. It was about a killer who’d left a purple barrette in the hair of each victim. The killer wanted to emasculate non-white men by killing their women, a task made palatable because he found "bitches" infuriating. He’d had a female accomplice once, but she was a loose cannon, and he had to kill her. "She was a yapper. They all yap," the character said. He longed to meet a killer bitch sophisticated enough to keep her mouth shut.

The writing was mesmerizing but disturbing. I read with a growing awareness that the plot described crimes like Joey’s, but the killer left a purple barrette instead of a pink ribbon. I held my breath when I read that when the "idiot police" arrested the wrong man for the crimes, the killer kept killing, but stole new weapons and changed his signature, no longer leaving the purple barrette, for example. The police didn’t connect subsequent murders with the preceding ones. The crimes continued to the murder of a writer-photographer and several after that.

My entire body tingled with dread that writing fantasies wasn’t enough for Danny. Maybe he had to act them out. And Sammie’d said he’d have to tell someone, had to have an audience. Danny might think I was safe—like a priest in a confessional, like the sophisticated bitch he’d longed for.

Was Danny’s agitation at the violence in the evidence we went over together revulsion? No. It was more like the ecstasy of reliving his crime, enhanced by my presence. The crimes described in the novel looked like descriptions of murders by Danny, not Joey, some already committed and others carefully planned for the future along with tactics to use when the police arrested the wrong man. In this book, he was bragging, thinking the stupidity of others kept him safe. No wonder I’d been a little uncomfortable with him, not for his genius, but for the evil I’d sensed seeping out of him. Could evil have been part of the attraction?

I threw the book to the floor, certain now I’d freed a killer to kill again. I called Sammie’s cell phone—slot machines clanked in the background when he answered—to tell him the problem. He was silent for a moment. "You’re better than I thought," he said. "You won a case you shouldn’t have won. You demolished the credibility of a witness who was telling the truth. Gotta hand it to you. You’re a pro."

"He’ll kill again. Double jeopardy will protect him from prosecution on the case I won, but the police should know to keep an eye on him. I’m going to phone an anonymous tip to law enforcement referring them to the relevant section of the book."

"Are you crazy? Keep your yap shut," he said.

"Ethically, I’m permitted to reveal planned crimes."

"You’re permitted—not required. Besides, the book would alert the police to past crimes, too. That’s unethical. You’re always shooting off your mouth about ethics."

"Serial killing is a continuing crime."

"Ethics cases are unclear about continuing crimes. You don’t have to do anything. It was Linda’s responsibility to read the book."

After I hung up, I mulled over Sammie’s advice. It had its usual effect on me. The trials I’d seen and the ones that would come if Danny wasn’t stopped ran like a slideshow through my mind—trial photos of the knife and bullet wounds; grieving families in the courtroom; innocents like Joey, wrongly convicted, shuffling to execution. My memory of Danny’s face changed. His feverishly hurt eyes no longer looked like those of a brilliant man suffering injustice. They looked like those of a murderer suffering fear that he might not have the thrill of slaughtering more victims.

I picked up the phone again and dialed the police, imagining Danny’s disappointment when the police caught him during his next attempt. He’d realize I must be the yapper, but he should understand. He couldn’t keep his big yap shut either.