by Dan Decker
“I get it. I’m just a little raw, that’s all. My whole life has been turned upside down and I don’t know what to do. I can be your office in ten minutes. Does that work?
“Sure.”
Once he was off the phone, I reviewed my legal pad and edited the questions I wanted to ask him. I had intentionally reached out with no notice because I wanted to catch him off guard. I had difficult questions and the best way to get the answers was to surprise him.
I needed to see his raw, unfiltered reactions.
This was something I would not have typically done with any other client, but I had believed Timothy’s claim that he had not done this, so I was going with that, which meant that I was running the risk of having to face the cold hard truth that he had lied to me.
Perhaps I am a little too involved.
I let out a slow breath as the thought washed over me. I needed to step away from this case after today. I was getting wound up.
Most of the time when I reached point like this where the evidence was starting to turn against my client, I would convince them to take a plea bargain—something I still might do with Timothy—but I was not yet ready to throw in the towel.
That was what this meeting was about. I was being a zealous representative of my client by getting at the truth, even the stuff he wanted to hold back.
Or so I tried to tell myself.
True to his word, Timothy walked into my office ten minutes later. I looked at my phone, Ellie hadn’t buzzed, so perhaps she had been away from her desk. Or she was offended I had once again made an appointment and had not thought to tell her.
I need to be better about that.
Timothy pushed the door shut before sitting down across from my desk.
“How have you been?”
“Okay.”
“How did your finals go?”
“I have passing grades so far on the ones I know about, if that’s what you want to know. No A’s yet, so you won’t be able to use that in your closing statement at trial.” He said this with a note of sarcasm I chose to ignore.
“Too bad.” I favored him with a smile. “We’ll see what we can do without that. How are your parents holding up?”
“They’re okay. My mom is taking it the hardest, but she knows I’m innocent. I can’t say that about dad. He probably thinks I did it. He still wants me to retain Keith Williams.” Timothy’s tone made me think he was considering it.
“If you think that’s best,” I said as if it did not matter to me. “I can guarantee you that Keith Williams won’t let you work for him either.”
I gave him a hard look.
He glanced away. “I get it. I do, it’s just hard. I don’t have anything to do. I want to help with my own defense.”
“Yeah, it is hard, but you’re just gonna have to hang out. Get yourself a Nintendo Switch or something to keep busy. Nobody ever thinks that they’re going to be here and when they are, it ain’t easy.”
I took a deep breath and looked Timothy square in the eye.
“There have been a few developments in your case and I need you to answer some questions.”
I had considered taking a video so I could review his responses later, but I didn’t want to make a recording that could potentially find its way into the public. It would not be admissible in court because of attorney-client confidentiality, but if something like that went public, it was nearly impossible for any potential juror to forget, regardless of the strongest jury instructions. It was much better to never create something like that in the first place. I had wanted the video so I could hire my former-FBI buddy to give his take on whether Timothy was lying, but I’d do the best I could on my own.
“Why was there tension between you and Gordon? And don’t try to tell me it was the dishes or an unruly apartment. I want the real reason.” I leaned forward. “The anger you had when talking about him was far greater than that caused by just a few dirty dishes.”
Timothy grimaced and looked away. Several long seconds passed before he finally answered. “It was over a girl. I actually had a date several months back, I foolishly brought her to the apartment, thinking things had been going well, but that was when she met Gordon. She was done with me after that. I might as well have not been in the room.”
“Why did you stay roommates with him?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t have much of an option. I had a year contract on the place and told myself it was for the best. She definitely wasn’t my type, I don’t know why she paid attention to me in the first place. She did not seem like the kind of girl who was into nerds that spent all night studying at the law library.”
I made a note, but this was primarily for show. I looked up at him, trying to gauge his face. He looked like he was telling the truth. Good liars often watch facial expressions to see if you are buying their story, so I worked at keeping my face neutral but I need not have bothered, Timothy was studying the corner of my desk.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this the day you were arrested?”
“I was embarrassed, okay? I don’t have much luck with girls. I finally had some and the next thing I knew it had evaporated because my roommate was much cooler than me.”
“Okay.”
“This is not going to help my case, is it? The prosecution is gonna say I had motive for murder.”
“It’s hardly the most damaging thing you have going for you right now,” I said thinking of the pistol. “This was just a first date, it’s not like you guys were a thing, is that correct?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not as bad as it could be. If it had been a committed girlfriend or a fiancé, it could be much worse.” I looked up from my notepad. “Unless you were infatuated and could not get past her.”
Timothy ignored my prompt. “You said this is hardly the worst thing. What else have they found?”
“We’ll get to that. Do you know how to shoot a pistol?”
“No, at a summer camp I did some rifle shooting.”
“Do you own a gun?”
He shook his head. “No.” His face was blank and I had a hard time reading if there was anything else there.
“Tell me what you knew of Gordon’s past.”
“Not much. He had some difficulties right out of high school, but he didn’t talk about it much. I just heard about his history from some of his friends who liked to remind him of their glory days.”
“Do you remember the names of these friends?”
“No. It was when he first moved in. I have not seen them in months, so it’s probably not relevant.”
“I decide what’s relevant. You find those friends. Are you connected to Gordon on social media?”
“I was. I disconnected a couple days ago.”
“Why?” It probably wouldn’t be introduced as evidence, but Frank might try to get it in because it could be portrayed as a guilty mind.
“His friends and family were tracking me down and harassing me. It seemed better to not give them an avenue.”
“Did you keep copies of these conversations?”
He shook his head. “I’ll see if I can find them but it’s probably gone.”
“This is the digital age. It is never gone. Find those conversations. If it comes up in court, I want to show why you did it.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Tell me more about Gordon’s past.”
“He did drugs, in the past I mean, nothing recent that I was aware of. I think he had some trouble with the law, but he never went to jail. Isn’t all this stuff you can find out?”
“I’m interested in knowing what you know. Back to the girl for a moment, did you confront Gordon after he stole her?”
“No. It wasn’t worth it. I just let it go.”
I stared. “That’s not how most people respond. Are you sure that’s what you did? Are you sure you didn’t say anything? You didn’t even say, ‘stop creeping on my girl?’”
“Yeah, she wasn’t my type anyway
.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Lizzie something. I could probably find her last name or social media profile, but she and Gordon were not even together for a couple days. I never saw her again after that week.”
“Okay, so you never talked to him.” I doubted this but let it go for the moment. “Did tensions increase after that?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“How were things before?”
“Not nearly as bad. I spent more time at the apartment. After that I tended to stay every last waking minute outside, usually at the law school.”
“Were you passive-aggressive towards him?”
“Do we really have to go through all this? Is this really important? I mean, come on, it was just about a girl that I barely knew. It was nothing.”
“I have not yet made the decision whether you’ll testify and I won’t until right before trial, but the questions I’m asking now are nothing compared to what a prosecutor is going to ask if we get there. You need get prepared for all sorts of hard questions. Got it? What we are doing right now is child’s play. As we get closer I will prepare you for the hard stuff. Consider this practice.”
He nodded.
“Okay, were you passive-aggressive towards Gordon?”
“Sure, I mean who wouldn’t be, right?”
“How?”
“Well, when we were first roommates, I would sometimes do his dishes. After the episode with Lizzie, I never did.” Timothy laughed. “There was one time I threw some dirty dishes in the trash rather than clean them. I just threw them away even though some were my own. After that I boxed up my stuff and only used paper plates.”
“Okay, dishes and cleanliness of the apartment. What else?”
“I think you’re kind of ignoring that there was a lot of tension about the apartment and dishes. Lizzie was one thing, the apartment was another. The guy was a mess. He would stay up late and was always leaving crumbs all over the place, I didn’t do his dishes any longer, but I was always still cleaning up after him.”
“Is the TV yours?”
“No, it was his. I never turned it on. I was barely there. I sometimes just slept on the law library floor. A lot of times I would go home to shower and then leave right after.”
“Why didn’t you get a new roommate?”
“Well in retrospect I really should have, but I didn’t, okay? I was more focused on school, I was bruised by a girl, and I just wanted to get over it. I didn’t want to rearrange my life during the middle of a semester. I just wanted to put it in the past.”
“Did Gordon have a girlfriend when he died?”
“No, not that I knew about, but I wouldn’t have known if he did because I was never around. A couple of weeks back I came in to find him entertaining a group of people, two guys and a girl, they were watching a movie with the volume turned all the way up. Some of his friends looked high, but he seemed normal. The place didn’t smell of drugs or anything. I didn’t stay longer than a couple minutes. I went to my room and put on a new shirt before returning to law library.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“Sure, I think they’d all been there before.”
“And you don’t know their names?”
“No.” He was getting a little exasperated, which I liked to see. I wanted some raw emotion. If he was hiding something it was now that he was most likely to slip up and let me know.
“Look for those people too. Look for anybody who might have ever come to the apartment. I need a list of every single person.”
“You almost seem desperate.”
“I’m trying to emphasize that we need this information. The real suspect is out there. We just need a way to find them. You’re the only one who’s going to recognize these people. The police have fingered you and have stopped looking at anybody else. If we don’t find other suspects you’re gonna be the only one on the day of trial and we do not want that. We need some credible people who could’ve done this to him.”
“You don’t think I did this, do you?”
“Does it matter what I think?” I waited until he was looking at me. “No, it doesn’t. We have to look at this from an objective perspective. If we don’t see the other side, we won’t be able to adequately defend you. Get that into your head. Write that down. Tattoo it on your arm if you must because if you ever do make it as an attorney, you’re going to want to keep that at the front of your mind at all times. You must see things from their perspective. You were found in his apartment. His body was there. He had been shot in the head.”
“Doesn’t it count for something that I called the police?”
“It should, but it is not going to because they are going to say you called to cover up what you had done. It’s not gonna be even relevant by the time they are done with you and they’re going to point to it as evidence of guilt. Everything they look at is through the lens that you are guilty. They are going to paint it that way the day of trial. We will put forth an argument, but do you want to risk your life solely on a few flimsy words, particularly when there’s circumstantial evidence to show you might have done what you’re accused of doing?” I shook my head. “Your best bet is to figure out who actually did this.”
“Okay, I’ll go through my social media.”
“You mentioned he went to school, correct?”
“Yeah, it was just an online school, I never saw him doing it. I honestly think it was just a lie he told people.” That lined up with what Winston knew of the situation but I’d have Winston do some poking around to see if he could find an online school enrollment. It was never a good idea to paint the victim in a negative light, but I needed to have every arrow in my quiver that I could find.
“Okay. Did he have a job?”
“I don’t think so. If he did he never mentioned it. I got the idea his parents paid for everything. And I do mean everything. I always believed his parents were well off.”
“Have you met them?”
“Once. They seem to not be involved in their children’s lives.”
“Did he have brothers or sisters?”
“He mentioned them, but I never met them. Are things really so bad? You don’t have anybody else you can pin this on?”
“We don’t have anybody yet.”
I opened a folder on the desk in front of me. I had positioned it so he could not see what was inside.
I slid out a photo of Gordon’s dead body that was face down. I looked up at Timothy before flipping it over.
“Achh, why are you showing me that?” His terror seemed genuine, but I stared into his face for several long seconds trying to see if there was anything else there, trying to determine if it was an act or it there was some sign of contrition for what he might have done.
“Is there anything missing from his bedroom?” I asked quietly. “Study the picture carefully, just ignore the body.”
“Easier said than done.” Timothy leaned forward and held up his hand to obscure the view of the body so he could focus on the surroundings. It was not an unusual response, but was he doing this because I expected it?
I did not blink, wanting to burn everything he did into my memory. It appeared genuine and real. Either he did not do this or he was a real psychopath.
“I see nothing missing.” Timothy looked up. “Can we put the picture away?”
“Sure.” I shuffled it back into the folder and pulled out another. I went through the same routine I had before, staring at him as I revealed the picture.
“Is that the murder weapon?” Timothy asked.
“Don’t know yet. I don’t have the ballistics report yet.” He looked curious, but I did not see recognition.
“Do you recognize the background?”
He studied the picture. “Is that our sofa?”
I nodded. “Have you ever seen this before?”
His response was immediate. “Never. You really sound like you think I did this. I need somebody who thinks I’m innocent so they
fight all the way, to the Supreme Court if necessary.”
“What I think is hardly relevant, but I don’t think you did this.”
“Why are you looking at me as if I did? Why the horror show?”
“You have to get used to this, kid. Trial is not going to be easy. When pictures of the dead body are trotted out, every juror is going to check your reaction. I’m helping you. If you were working with Keith Williams, I guarantee he would do this too.”
21
Jun 7 – 3:56 PM
Timothy was haggard after we had gone through the rest of the photos and he could probably tell I had questions about his involvement with the murder, despite my repeated assurance I did not.
“So what does it mean that the gun was found in the apartment?” Timothy asked after I slipped the file folder back into my desk.
“If this was the weapon that killed him—and we still don’t know that it is—it’s much more difficult for us to prove your innocence. You were the only one with access to the apartment. The door does not look forced. And now they have the murder weapon.” I had neglected to mention that I had found it. I also did not bring up the empty brass, but I had already pushed as far as I was going to on that topic for now. “This does not look good for you. I have my investigator working hard, but so far we haven’t turned up anything that points to anybody but you.”
I paused. “They also found your fingerprints in his bathroom, why?”
“Mine stopped working. It was a few days before the super could get out to fix it.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve been framed. That’s what this is.”
“Let’s talk about that. Who would do that to you?”
“My father.”
“Do you really think he did this?” I asked with more than a note of skepticism, just to make him think critically about his statement.
Timothy shook his head and sighed. “No, I don’t.”
I gave him a hard stare. “Do you want me to investigate him? Before you answer, remember that he does not have a right to see any of the files even though he is paying your legal fees.”