The Good Client

by Dan Decker

  “No problem,” her voice was cold. “How much longer do you need?”

  I looked at my watch. “Give it five more minutes. If he looks like he’s about to walk out, tell him I’m ready, but I want him to wait some more.”

  “You got it.”

  It might have been a little churlish, but he could hardly expect that I would accept him with open arms after a move like this. Regardless, I needed the time to orient my mind and devise a strategy for the situation. Every time I was close to having control, I found myself starting to spiral again, particularly when I thought of how I had just handed them the murder weapon and lip gloss. My past relationship with Stephanie had blinded me. I should have thought through a better disclosure strategy and possibly got the press involved.

  I sat primly at my desk, took a pen in hand, and pulled out a blank pad of paper so I could make notes if necessary.

  Ellie knocked on my door a moment later and ushered Frank Ward into my office.

  I looked at him expectantly after he sat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My hands are tied on this one. It wasn’t my call.”

  I didn’t respond. I just continued to stare, showing a tiny bit of fury.

  “Look, I get it,” Frank said, “I really do. This is not how I would’ve played this, but my superiors overruled me.”

  “You gave me your word that the deal was on the table until today.”

  Frank nodded. “On that, I didn’t let them budge me. The offer still stands, even though they wanted me to push for more.”

  I nodded.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “This case has not gone like anybody expected. Nobody could have predicted the police would mess up the investigation and miss the murder weapon. Without your help, we would not have been able to connect Ron and his floozy to this. We owe you a lot. I wanted to make sure I gave you an opportunity to yell at me.” He paused. “I won’t even mention how you ‘forgot’ about the lip gloss.” The way he said this last bit told me that Stephanie had told him the whole story.

  He had spoken with a straight face, without so much as a hint of insincerity.

  I did believe it was out of his hands, things like that had happened to me at the prosecutor’s office and had been part of my reason for going into private practice.

  “The offer’s the same,” I asked, “without any more strings attached?”

  “Yes, we’re not expecting Timothy to testify at this point, but that is only if he takes the offer as it stands, no more negotiation. If you start pushing for more or he walks away, any future offers will absolutely require he testifies against Ron and Barbara.”

  I nodded, it was better than I expected Frank to do.

  “How long do we have?”

  I’ll give you three days.”

  I blinked but kept my surprise from showing. He really was sincere if he was going to let me take that long.

  “I’ll talk to my client.”

  42

  Jun 12– 2:23 pm

  The arraignment for the new charge against Timothy had gone without any surprise and I had skipped out before Ron and Barbara were brought forward. I had spent the last hour or so reviewing the information Frank Ward had brought over and was relieved that the central evidence in the case was not the lip gloss.

  They had a significant, but not a solid case against Barbara and Ron.

  The couple had made a reservation at Monteverde on the night Gordon was killed, but apparently had never shown.

  The police had turned up text messages and email correspondence between Gordon and Barbara wherein he had threatened to go to her husband and tell her everything. It was not clear how Gordon had learned about the affair, but it was in black and white that he knew.

  At last we have a motive.

  There wasn’t any new information against my client. This was perhaps part of the reason why Frank was still holding out the same offer.

  On the one hand, they had a clear motive for Barbara because they could prove Gordon had threatened to go to her husband. The only evidence they had that put her actually at the crime scene was the lip gloss and fingerprints, but in the email correspondence, there was one time prior to the night of the murder where Barbara had arranged to meet in the apartment.

  The lip gloss and fingerprints could easily be explained by that visit, as much as I was hoping it was going to help exonerate my client, I was glad it was not the center of the prosecution’s case against Barbara. The prosecution might not even enter it into evidence.

  From a professional perspective, that made my mistake even less likely to have ramifications down the road.

  On the other hand, they did not have anything tying Barbara directly to the murder, but they did have the murder weapon found in the apartment with my client.

  Their next strategy would be to put pressure on all three suspects, hoping that somebody would break and give them the other two.

  Throughout my review of all of the evidence I did not find any indication of the prosecution’s theory for why Timothy might have killed his roommate.

  There was also no mention of his bunkmate from camp. That appeared to have gone up in smoke.

  Frank got lucky, I thought. I gave him what he needed to manufacture conspiracy for murder to add the capital charge he threatened without basis.

  I suspected that might have been part of why he had delivered the evidence himself and wanted to make sure I knew the deal was still on the table.

  I checked my watch and saw I still had a couple hours before I was supposed to meet with Timothy.

  If Timothy had anything to do with this, now was the time for him to come forward. Frank had implied that Timothy would get a better deal if he testified against Ron and Barbara.

  Timothy might not like that, but he had been willing to accept fifteen with the possibility of parole in seven, if we got it down to the possibility of parole at three and sentenced to ten, he might just bite.

  The chances of him actually knowing something about the murder case seemed slim because I did not see Ron and Barbara coordinating with Timothy to kill his roommate, but stranger things had happened.

  There was a commotion outside. The front door slammed against the wall.

  “Where is he?”

  Ellie responded in a firm voice but I was not able to make out her words. I was immediately on my feet headed towards the door. When I got there I was surprised to see Ron Cooper. He must have come straight here from the courthouse.

  He was red in the face and pointed a finger at me. “You! You did this to me. You did this to us!”

  When he said “us,” I did not think he was referring to him and Timothy, or even him and his wife.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Ron.”

  “I hired Keith Williams to represent me, I will make sure he buries you.”

  “I don’t know how to respond to that.” I wanted to tell him that anything he did to me, he would actually do to his own son, but he had not shown much in the way of fatherly instincts so I suspected it would have been a point without significance.

  Ron breathed hard and I couldn’t help but see him as an enraged bull that was about to charge if the matador made a move. I stepped out of my office and motioned for Ellie to stay seated.

  “You are going to regret the day you did this to me.”

  “Again, Ron, it is inappropriate for us to meet like this. If you have anything you would like to say, I suggest you send it through Keith Williams. If you don’t leave I will have to call the police. Nobody wants that.”

  “Oh, you will be hearing a lot from him. This is not going to go well for you.”

  “I suggest you go.”

  Ron stared at me, his face quivering and his hands balled into fists. He had an inch or two on me, but I probably had thirty or forty pounds on him. If he did attack I was pretty sure I could take him.

  A glance at Ellie showed she was afraid of a physical altercation as well, she was reaching for
something in her desk, but I could not see what. When our eyes locked onto each other, I gave a shake of my head.

  Whatever she had in there I did not want her pulling it out because she might use it. I didn’t think it would be a gun, more likely it would be pepper spray, but things would get worse the moment she pulled that out.

  I just folded my arms, leaned back against the wall and waited for Ron to cool down, feeling like a parent with an overreacting child waiting out a tantrum.

  One minute passed and then it was two as Ron’s sides heaved. He still looked as ready to charge as ever.

  “You are going to regret the day that you ever got involved with my family.”

  I didn’t respond and just looked at him with an upraised eyebrow, something I had practiced in college, but rarely ever got to use. The last thing I wanted to project was aggression, so perhaps intrigue or curiosity might do the trick to calm him down.

  Ron must have started to come to terms with what he was doing, because he took a step backward and brushed up against the door.

  “I’ll be going now.”

  I didn’t say anything as he left. Once he was gone, I covered the distance in three steps and flipped the deadbolt, just in case he changed his mind and decided to come back to finish what he had begun.

  “Now we know where Timothy gets it,” Ellie said as she closed her drawer.

  I nodded toward her desk. “What do you have in there?”

  She smiled. “Nothing. I just opened it to get him to back off. It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Looks like it did,” I said with a mirthless chuckle.

  “Good thinking. Put yourself down for a five hundred dollar bonus this month.”

  “What for? It was nothing.”

  “Just consider it hazard pay.”

  43

  Jun 12 – 4:39 pm

  Timothy Cooper was late for his appointment, which was surprising, considering how important this was and how agitated he had been on the phone.

  I reviewed my notes that sat on my desk in front of me. I had spent the better part of an hour preparing for this meeting and was anxious to get it over with. I expected it was going to be a confrontation that would make the others seem insignificant so I had all my ducks in a row, going so far as to predict the different avenues Timothy might go down.

  Above all I had planned for him to be angry and accusatory. I had planned for him to have already learned that I had given information to the prosecutor’s office that had resulted in the charges against his father.

  Whether Ron Cooper had an evidentiary basis for that belief or not, I did not know, but it was reasonable to expect that at some point it was going to get out.

  So much for it not coming back on me.

  Depending on how things went, I might even read Timothy in on what I had done in an effort to inoculate him, but if he was too upset it would have to wait until a later date.

  There was a knock at my door and I looked up.

  “Still no word from Timothy?” Ellie asked.

  “Nothing, if he is not here by 4:45, I want you to track him down.” The front door opened as I finished. I recognized it was Timothy walking into the office by his footsteps alone. Ellie gave me a sympathetic look, before motioning to Timothy and stepping out of the way so he could enter. Once he was inside, Ellie pulled the door shut as she left.

  “Did you get a hold of Frank Ward?” Timothy asked before he even sat down.

  I motioned to a chair. “Have a seat.”

  When he saw that I was waiting, he shrugged and sat.

  “Have you talked to your father?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I nodded and decided not to mention that Ron had paid me a visit. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

  “What’s the good news?”

  “Frank’s offer is still on the table.”

  I let that sink in, watching Timothy’s face to judge how interested he was in taking it. I didn’t know what advice to give him any longer on this point, because I no longer trusted what he told me. From what I knew, I did not think he had done it but he had withheld enough information that I would not be surprised to learn otherwise.

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “The case against Barbara is thin and the one against your father is nonexistent.”

  “Is there a requirement I testify against them in order to get a plea?”

  “No, not if you take the offer as it stands. If we go back and negotiate, Frank made it clear that you will be required to provide evidence against your father and Barbara.”

  “They think that I worked with the two of them to kill Gordon?”

  “That’s about the whole of it. They have a great motive for Barbara but don’t have anything concretely placing her in the apartment at the time of the murder. They have you in the apartment with the murder weapon, but they probably haven’t yet figured out a substantive motive for you.”

  “That’s because there is none. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t want to kill him.”

  “Yeah, you see the prosecutor’s dilemma. They have two halves of a solid case on two different people.”

  “Is the case going to be dismissed against my father?”

  “I don’t know. If I were Keith Williams, I would move for that first thing. I expect we will see a motion on that soon enough.” I shook my head. “The judge may dismiss the charges against your father outright, but I expect he will wait until the preliminary hearing before making a judgment.

  Timothy stared at me for several long moments. “One of the news reports said you gave evidence to the prosecution. Is that true?”

  Bingo.

  That’s why Ron was mad. I would have to see if I could find it.

  “Timothy, do you trust that everything I do is in your best interest?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “Who told you not to talk to the police? Who walked you out of there the morning of the murder? Who has stood by you every step of the way, even though you have been a less than ideal client and withheld significant facts from me?”

  “I get it,” he said, “but they said you turned evidence over to prosecutors.”

  “You are aware that as an attorney I have professional responsibilities to truth and justice, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you have been adamant throughout all of this that you have had nothing to do with this. Has that changed?”

  “No.”

  “Then get off my back about how I run the case. I will do whatever I see fit based on the circumstances, the law, rules of professional responsibility, and your best interests.”

  “How is getting my father and his mistress involved in this helping me?”

  “It used to be there was one suspect. Now there are three. In case you didn’t hear what I just said, they don’t have a solid case against you and they don’t have a solid case against her. There’s no way that they’re gonna convict all three of you guys unless they can prove that there was a conspiracy and the evidence seems pretty thin at this point. Have you had any communication with Barbara, written or otherwise?”

  “No. I barely talk to my father. It’s laughable to think he and I would conspire.”

  “Good. Can you prove it?”

  “I suppose I could bring in phone and text message records that show he and I barely communicate. I almost never go home.”

  “Do you think your mom will testify to the fact you’ve rarely had contact with your father?”

  “Sure, I’m sure she will.” He sounded more confident than he looked.

  “We are in a far better position today than we were two days ago. Back then, you were saying you wanted to take a plea and I thought it wasn’t a bad idea. Today, we have more options on the table. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” I held his gaze for several long moments. “Make no mistake, if you say no to Frank’s offer, it’s not gonna come back.”

  “Okay. How long do I have?�
��

  “Three days.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  44

  Jun 14 – 11:30 am

  It had been a quiet couple of days, something for which I was grateful. Timothy had not gotten back to me on the offer, but Keith Williams had been very busy. He had submitted no less than five motions on the case, the primary one being a motion to dismiss all charges against his client. Another requested that all communications between Barbara and Ron be classified as confidential client communications.

  I had only submitted one, a motion to bifurcate so my client would be tried separately. I didn’t want to risk the jury would look at Ron and Barbara and assume they were guilty because they had a motive as old as the bible and then just send my client down the river with them. I had given Frank Ward plenty of warning about what I was going to do so he did not think the motion should be interpreted as a rejection of his offer. Frank Ward had understood and recommitted that he was going to give Timothy the time he had promised.

  The media frenzy around this case had not died down, and I felt bad for Ron Cooper’s law firm. They had not yet made any statements but I suspected that if the media furor did not soon subside, they would cut him loose. It’s what I would have done in a big-time law firm like that.

  There was a knock at my door and Timothy walked in and sat down without so much as an invitation or appointment.

  “You have a moment?”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering why Ellie had not run interference, but then I remembered she had the morning off. You’re lucky I’m not meeting with somebody. In the future, I request you call ahead to make sure I’m available.”

  He shrugged. “I have nothing to do. Classes are over, and my internship was withdrawn when I was charged. I could wait all day if necessary.”

  I nodded. “Things are tough right now. They will get better.”

  He gave me a wry smile. “Is that a promise?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”