Contempt: A Legal Thriller

by Michael Cordell

  “Well, you know I’ve never claimed to be in my right mind.”

  Thane also smiled for the first time during this meeting and nodded his head in good-hearted agreement. “And now I’m going to try to be a good friend in return.”

  Thane extended his hand to Joseph, who happily accepted it.

  “I quit.”

  Thane walked toward Hannah’s bookstore, having just cleaned out his office despite Joseph’s protestations. It was the first time he had ventured to see Hannah during business hours since his release. He had spent numerous evenings there after hours, stocking books and installing new shelves against an empty wall, but so far he had avoided visiting when customers might be there.

  Though she never spoke of it, he assumed her business suffered with the press rehashing their story, especially after she took him back. He figured the bookstore survived his initial arrest because people felt sorry for her, the poor woman who had no idea her husband was evil incarnate; but welcoming him back probably scared off more customers than she could afford. He didn’t want to compound this hardship by making guest appearances during daylight hours, but today he had no choice.

  Nearing the store, he noticed a man in his late thirties slouched in a pick-up truck just across and down the street. A broad-shouldered man, he sat starting at the store’s front window as if it were a big screen TV. When the man saw Thane, he revved his truck engine and took off, glaring at Thane as he drove by. Thane was used to harsh stares, but this one seemed different—like the animosity was personal.

  Thane had waited until after lunch, hoping most customers would be back at work. Entering, he saw two women grazing their way leisurely down the aisles. He also saw Caitlin stationed behind the cash register, her smile quickly shifting from one of welcome to a frown of disdain. He hadn’t met her yet, but Hannah spoke warmly of her. Caitlin obviously didn’t feel the same about him.

  Thane walked to the counter, extending his hand. “Hi, I’m Thane. Hannah’s husband.”

  She considered his hand as though he had just blown his nose on it, then gave it a limp shake before quickly letting go, her frown deepening.

  “Is she around?” he asked.

  Caitlin huffed, then cocked her head toward the closed door in the rear of the store. “Back there.”

  Thane considered trying a smile, but instead he simply nodded and headed toward the back office.

  As he neared the door, Caitlin called out to him. “You know, it hasn’t been easy for her, keeping this store open.”

  One of the women standing next to the table of half-price books glanced up, suddenly having an interesting story to share at dinner. Thane took a few steps back toward Caitlin, not wanting to have this conversation across the room.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I would have thought you did, but after today—”

  Thane cut her off. “I don’t usually waste my breath saying this, but I was innocent.”

  Caitlin shrugged. “I believe you. Or, rather, I believe Hannah. I think what happened to you really sucks. But what I think doesn’t matter to our customers.”

  Thane noticed the second customer inching her way toward the cash register, maneuvering toward a better view of the main event. Not wanting to cause a scene––and not feeling the need to defend himself any more than he had already––Thane broke eye contact with Caitlin and went into the back office, shutting the door behind him.

  Hannah sat hunched over her desk, marking an invoice with a yellow highlighter. The office was small, barely able to accommodate her desk, a tall file cabinet, and an extra chair positioned across from the desk. She spoke without looking up.

  “Did you really order ten copies of Wuthering Heights? It’s not exactly a big seller.”

  “Nope. Wasn’t me.”

  She jerked her head up, looked at him for a moment, then shifted her attention back to the invoice without saying a word, leaving him to jumpstart the conversation.

  “Based on the reception I got out there, not to mention the cold shoulder in here, I’m guessing I’ve already made the news.”

  She continued staring past the invoice for a moment, then finally put down the marker and looked up slowly, her eyes half-closed, as if she barely had the energy to lift her head.

  “Just tell me it’s not true.”

  Thane didn’t answer, although he knew what she meant.

  “A Times reporter called to ask how I felt about you taking on a capital murder case just to get back at Bradford Stone. Imagine my surprise. I’m back here now because I got tired of everyone staring at me like I was in a zoo. So please, tell me it’s not true.”

  As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t look away. All he could offer was a slight nod.

  “Thane, you can’t do this.”

  He turned the wooden chair in front of her desk around and straddled it, leaning forward against the back of the chair, using it as a shield. “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “I am. It’s been five months, and things are just now starting to feel like they used to. The last thing you need is to get involved with Stone again. Or with a murderer.”

  “People still call me a murderer, but that doesn’t mean I am one.”

  “Maybe he’s innocent. All the more reason why he needs a criminal lawyer. Don’t you see? This case will drag you backwards. You need to move as far away from the past as you can.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Then don’t make it harder.”

  She lifted herself from her chair and walked around the desk, leaning on the edge of it in front of him. She started to speak, but her voice broke. She wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “There’s no reason for you to deal with Stone again. None. No reason to put yourself back in the spotlight.”

  “I knew this guy in prison. There’s no way he could have killed anybody. I can’t let Stone put him through what I went through.”

  “If he’s innocent, then someone else can prove it. And you know what, to be honest, right now I don’t give a damn if he’s innocent.” With visible effort, she looked him in the eye. “Please, Thane, I haven’t asked anything from you since you’ve gotten back. Nothing. But I’m begging you, please don’t do this.”

  She leaned over, taking his hands in hers and squeezing them, tears starting to make their move. Thane stood and put his arms around her waist: her halting breath betrayed how close she was to sobbing. He stroked her hair, not wanting to let go. She deserved better than this. For a fleeting moment he wanted to tell her why he had to do it, but she would never understand.

  “I can’t even imagine Joseph letting you do this,” she said.

  He continued holding her, unable to answer. Hannah lifted her face toward his, then pushed away from him hard when he didn’t speak. He finally shook his head and averted his eyes. “I quit this morning.”

  She stared at him as if he were suddenly speaking in tongues, the words coming from his lips some sort of nonsensical gibberish. “You quit,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “It wouldn’t have been fair to Joseph or the firm.”

  “To Joseph,” she whispered to herself. “It wouldn’t have been fair to Joseph.” She dropped back onto the edge of the desk like her legs couldn’t hold her. “But you felt it would be fair to me? Fair to us?”

  “It’s not fair at all,” Thane said. “And I wish I could say something that would help you understand, but I have to do this, Hannah. If I can keep an innocent man from going to prison on a false murder charge, then how can I say no? How can I, of all people, turn away?”

  Thane stepped closer, putting his hands on her shoulders. “You stood by me during the trial, when everybody said I was a monster,” he said. “You trusted me, and at no time did I ever feel you waver. I know it’s asking a lot. I do. But I’m asking that you trust me again. P
lease have faith that I would not be doing this to us if I didn’t absolutely believe I had to. Please, trust me.”

  She looked at him and didn’t speak for a long moment. Then she rose and turned away from him.

  “It was easier for me to trust you back then,” she said. “I knew who you were.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Five years ago, Thane tackled the biggest undertaking of his career. A prime piece of real estate in South Central L.A. came on the market when its octogenarian owner died. For years he had refused to sell his twenty-six undeveloped acres, despite multiple multi-million-dollar offers, and left the land to heirs who couldn’t wait to sell it off. The expansive property, located just a few blocks from the USC campus, would easily accommodate the type of construction not feasible in the city. In newspapers, interested parties had lobbied for a new performing arts center, a shopping mall, or a development that would combine office buildings with shops and condos. Given the potential scope of the project, the city of Los Angeles inserted itself into the process, instating complex bidding guidelines to determine who would get the rights to develop the land. One significant requirement was that the development firm had to be local in order to help bring more revenue into the city coffers.

  Although scores of development companies expressed vociferous interest, the reality was that only two local firms—Hexagon Partners and Wilson-Scott Development—had the resources and clout to actually build something that would match the scope of the property. Thane had previously done work for Carlin Wilson, one of Wilson-Scott’s founding partners, and was asked to serve as legal counsel on the proposal, which represented the potential for tens of millions of dollars for the firm if Wilson-Scott nabbed the contract. Joseph started referring to Thane as ‘Typhoon Banning’, saying the term ‘rainmaker’ simply didn’t do his powers justice.

  Maneuvering all of the nuances of such a project––the political palms that needed greasing, the special interest groups jockeying for influence, the environmental groups analyzing every inch of the blueprints, and the crazies who came out of the woodwork from every direction––pushed Thane to his limits, but he kept the project on track through sheer force of personality. Near the conclusion of a brutal string of fifteen-hour workdays, some unknown bureaucrat leaked word that Thane’s client was going to win the rights to develop the property.

  Two weeks before the official decision was handed down, however, Thane heard through the unreliable grapevine that the competing firm, Hexagon, was planning to charge Thane’s client with rigging the bidding process, a crime that would not only disqualify Wilson-Scott from the process, but also represent serious long-term legal risks to the development firm if proven to be true.

  It was because of that rumor that Thane first made contact with the woman whose death would destroy his world.

  Lauren McCoy was the thirty-three-year-old Assistant District Attorney assigned to oversee cases dealing with alleged corruption in projects involving the city. Thane reached out to her and asked if there was anything he needed to know regarding his client and the project as a whole. He felt he must have caught her at the end of an exhausting day because she was unusually forthcoming, as if simply too tired to play games.

  “I don’t think there’s anything you need to worry about,” she said. “I’ve been looking into some accusations of wrongdoing and my impression is that everything has been done by the book. But it’s my job to be thorough, so I need to look a little further—because there are a couple of things that just aren’t adding up, but I don’t think there will be any charges brought against your client.”

  “Do you feel the accusations are simply a face-saving effort by Hexagon because they expect to lose their bid?” Thane asked.

  “I’m not sure yet. It’s just that I’ve come across a small irregularity that I need to understand better. I want to feel confident there wasn’t any internal malfeasance.”

  “Do you mean internal to Hexagon, or perhaps another sub-contractor associated with that developer?”

  Lauren began backpedaling, as if suddenly realizing she was saying too much. She stammered that she shouldn’t have said what she did and had overstepped her bounds, so Thane stopped pressing. Lauren asked him to promise not to mention to anyone what she had just said, and Thane gave his word, since it didn’t appear to jeopardize his client’s chances of being awarded the project.

  He was somewhat surprised to receive a voicemail message two days later from Lauren’s assistant, asking if Thane could meet Lauren at a neighborhood restaurant near the proposed development site at 9:00 p.m. that evening. The message gave no other details.

  As he drove to the meeting site, he received a text from Lauren saying she might be running a couple of minutes late and to wait for her if he got there before she did. She also said she had some disturbing news for him and begged him not to be too angry with her. His pulse quickened at the thought of a potential problem with the deal.

  Thane arrived at the proposed meeting place—a local, family-owned Italian restaurant—a few minutes before nine o’clock, but it was closed. The entrance was just off a dimly lit dead-end alley and across the street from a liquor store. He glanced down the alley and saw what appeared to be a vagrant sleeping on the ground, not too far from a couple of trash dumpsters. A bus stop bench was in front of the alley, so Thane sat there and waited for Lauren.

  When she still hadn’t arrived by 9:30, Thane used the number from Lauren’s text and called her. He heard the sound of a cell phone ringing in the alley. He rose and once again looked down the alley toward the direction of the noise, now studying the shadowy form on the ground with heightened interest.

  Thane hung up the phone, and when the ringing from the darkness also stopped, he jogged down the alley and came upon the body of Lauren McCoy, sprawled in the middle of the alley. He slipped on the pool of blood already forming its own outline of her body and fell to the ground. He cautiously crawled a couple of feet over to her, but even without the blood he knew she wasn’t just unconscious. The angle of her head, her eyes—everything told him she was dead.

  She was dressed in the standard black pantsuit commonly worn by female lawyers in the DA’s office. A large knife was next to her body, the kind one might use to carve a turkey, except it had been used on her. He was struck by the amount of blood: he wouldn’t have thought so much could come out of one person’s body.

  He looked around, his heartbeat racing, ashamed at suddenly being so afraid for his own safety, but his self-preservation instincts were firing. He reached for his cell phone to call the police when he heard a sound from behind one of the nearby dumpsters. It sounded too loud to be any sort of small animal. He froze for a moment, unwilling, or unable, to even take a breath. His darting eyes were the only part of him that moved. He heard the noise again and picked up the knife, ready for anybody who might come charging his way. He hoped the person hiding didn’t have a gun.

  He maintained his part of the stalemate, refusing to even turn his head away from the dumpsters, when Detective Ted Gruber, who had just wrapped up his shift a couple of hours earlier, walked past the entrance of the alleyway, glancing down the dark corridor as law enforcement instinctively does even when off-duty, practicing a constant vigilance for potential trouble. The detective walked another couple of steps before stopping, as though his mind had just finished processing the bloody image.

  Detective Gruber whipped out a gun from his ankle holster and strode down the alleyway toward Thane. “Drop the knife and lie flat on the ground!”

  Thane started crawling away from the body so as not to lie down in the pool of blood, but another command from Gruber had him prone immediately.

  “I said lie on the ground! Now!”

  Even though Gruber had his gun pointed at him, Thane had never been so happy to see a cop before in his life. He told Gruber there was somebody else in the alley: Grub
er kept the barrel of the gun aimed at Thane’s head.

  “I didn’t kill her. I found her like this.”

  All the cop could see, however, was some blood-soaked guy kneeling over this dead body in a dark alley, holding a knife the size of a hatchet.

  Thane slowly raised one hand and pointed toward the dumpster.

  “I just found her, but I think someone is hiding behind the dumpster. Please, you need to check behind the dumpster.” Thane then lay on his stomach, his hands outstretched and legs spread as far as he could to show he wasn’t going to make any fast move. “Look, I’m not moving. Please, check the dumpster. I swear I heard a sound.”

  Gruber didn’t take his focus off Thane. When he shined his flashlight on the body, the cop looked like he wanted to shoot Thane. But then a young couple on a date passed by the alley and saw what was going on. Even though they were fifty feet away, the woman saw enough that first she screamed, then she brought out her cellphone and started filming. Gruber yelled at them to get out of the way, which seemed to refocus his adrenaline. Thane knew this was a hell of a lot more than either of them had bargained for that night.

  “I’ll check it out, but I swear to God if you so much as twitch, I’ll put a bullet in you.”

  Gruber approached the dumpster, keeping the pistol’s attention mostly on Thane. He quickly checked behind it, and even inside of it, but returned his attention to Thane, informing him that there was nothing there. From then on, Thane remained the gun barrel’s sole focus of attention. But Thane wasn’t worried about that, because he knew it’d get straightened out: he just wanted to get the hell out of there.

  But he continued to be the prime suspect, in part because of Lauren’s text message telling him she hoped he wasn’t going to be angry at her, and in part because of Detective Gruber’s testimony. And the knife only had Thane’s fingerprints on it, which didn’t help him any, although of course his lawyer reasonably argued the real murderer could have worn gloves. Despite how it may have looked, Thane was confident he would be cleared. And then Lenny entered the picture.