by Dan Decker
“Careful about your assumptions, Officer. I just need some background information, if you would—”
“Yeah, I remember that case. Those little girls were scared.”
I was having a hard time believing Officer Baranski’s story because of his caustic attitude. If I were to ask questions about the Pope, Baranski would probably have bad things to say.
“Which of his daughters called 911?” I asked. “The police report doesn’t identify if it was the older or the younger.”
“I don’t remember. The monster threatened both, so it’s probably irrelevant which one called.”
Monster?
“What other details can you give me?”
“Why do you want to know about this anyway?” Baranski demanded. “Are you going to twist this all around?”
“I’m just doing background research. Anything you could tell me would be helpful.”
The officer didn’t answer right away. The line became so silent that I checked to make sure he had not hung up on me.
The call timer was still ticking away.
“I respond to enough calls like this that I just don’t remember the details. If it is not in the police report, it is probably gone.”
Click.
20
I looked at my phone, wanting to call Officer Baranski back, but there was no sense in pushing the man.
Calling Baranski had probably been the wrong move. I should have pressed Winston for more information about the officer.
I had naïvely assumed Baranski would answer questions, but all I had done was antagonize him.
And I just put the matter back into Baranski’s mind. Should I make a bet with Winston that he will reach out to Cindy to make sure she’s aware of this?
Other than asking Mason directly about this, something I would do at some point, the only other avenues I could pursue were contacting the prosecutor’s office or reaching out to Mason’s daughters. It was best not to tip Cindy off if she was not already aware.
Assuming she doesn’t get a phone call from Baranski.
I would plan for this to come up in court, so I needed a way to mitigate the negative image it would portray to the jury.
That left the daughters and Mason.
I opened up my notes on the case and made a brief description of my encounter with Officer Baranski and documented my meeting with Winston. Just as I was finishing that up, my phone beeped.
“Mitch,” Ellie said when I answered, “I have Cindy on the phone for you.”
Speak of the devil.
“Send her through.”
There was a click before the call connected.
“Mitch,” Cindy said in a pleasant voice, “how you doing?”
“Not bad. How can I help you?”
There was an awkward silence as I recognized that I should have asked how she was doing. As the silence continued, I realized it was too late. She would likely hold this against me.
“I just wanted to see if you had an opportunity to talk with your client about arranging a plea deal?”
Cindy wanted to put this case to bed quick.
Why?
“I don’t know that he’s interested, it’s still early in the case, and we haven’t yet completed our initial investigation or made an analysis on his chances in court. I did, however, pass the information on to him. He’s thinking about it.”
I didn’t think Mason would go for it, but I wanted to throw her a bone to keep the line open in case we decided to go down that path.
“When you say thinking about it, is he thinking about it a lot or a little?”
“I can’t say. I think his initial impression was that the discussion is too soon. If you have an offer you want me to take to him, I’m more than happy to do it; otherwise, we’ll just have to see what he wants. If the moment arrives, I will reach out.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
This was not what Cindy was hoping to hear.
She had hoped to dangle something in front of my client that he would want, but he was not biting.
“If we go to trial, I’m going to put him away for life.”
“I will make sure to pass that on to him,” I said as if it were no big deal, though I recognized it for the threat it was.
“It would go much better for him if he were to make a deal now.”
“I’ll make sure to let him know—”
“We have pictures of his bloody hands, Mitch! This guy’s going away for a long time. I don’t see a way around that unless he makes a deal.”
“Cindy, I appreciate your desire to get the conversation rolling, but I just don’t think my client’s ready to go there quite yet, the facts notwithstanding. We’re not going to rush him on this.” I used the word we, hoping I sounded like I was on her side. “He’s a high-powered executive who is used to making strategic decisions after he has all available information. We’re just gonna have to give him a little bit of time. There are some nuances to this case—”
“What nuances?”
“I’m not getting into it right now, but rest assured—”
“Are you just playing games with me, Mitch?” Cindy demanded. “Because if so, tell me now, so I’ll stop wasting my time trying to have a conversation with you about this.”
“You know I play things straight.”
“Then why are you trying to make this case a bigger deal than it is? It’s open and shut. We have him red-handed. His prints are on the murder weapon. It’s only because of my relationship with you that I’m even trying to talk about a plea deal.”
She wants me to put out a number, I thought. I’m not going to do it.
I needed to convince her to wait.
“Cindy, this is a good discussion, but I’m not in control of the case. The client is.” I was driving him in a specific direction, but ultimately it was his call in how we proceeded. “I feel like we’ve been having an excellent exchange. We’ve established a solid line of communication between you and me on this matter. Can you give me a week or two to continue our investigation? I promise to talk with my client about this issue at length to see what he says after that.”
“This just feels like a delay tactic,” Cindy said.
“It is not, I can assure you.”
I didn’t expect him to have a change of heart, especially not this early in the case, but it was vital I didn’t shut the door on this.
I also needed time to figure out why Cindy was pushing so hard for a plea bargain.
She was doing her bulldog thing, latching on and not letting go. That was one thing I’d always admired about her, even after we’d stopped dating.
One thing is for certain, I thought, if we do come back for a deal, we are not going to throw out a number first.
“Mitch, I’ll give you two weeks.”
The line clicked.
21
My phone call with Cindy left me agitated. I could not help but wonder if our previous relationship would cause problems as I continued forward with this case. When Cindy had initially brought up the idea of a plea bargain, I had not been surprised. I had figured she was feeling me out, not laying the groundwork for the ultimatum I had got today.
I got up and paced.
Was it just my imagination, or was there something in her voice that had not been there the last time I had met with her?
Was she just trying to get me to plea Mason out because she was overworked?
Or was there another reason that was not apparent?
It was tempting to think it was because she was busy, but knowing what little I knew of my ever-evolving theory of the case, I started to assume that there was something else that made her want to plead it out so fast.
I was almost curious enough to suggest meeting her for dinner to see if I could get any other information out of her.
That stopped me cold.
Was that just what she wanted? Could it be that she had still not yet gotten past our previous relationship,
even though it was now years in the past?
I had thought she was flirting with me at lunch, but I had just chalked that up to my imagination.
I walked around my office in circles for almost another twenty minutes, racking my brain for reasons to explain why Cindy was acting the way she was acting.
I came up with everything from a conspiracy that went outside the Meridian Solutions partnership to Cindy, hoping to reengage me in a relationship. It would have been unethical for us to date while opposing each other in court. Maybe that was why she was pushing so hard for a plea bargain. Perhaps she had been able to tell in our last meeting that there was a part of me that wondered if I had made a mistake all those years ago.
In the end, I came up with no logical connections between any of the data points I had to work with.
It was time to move on to something else.
After taking several deep, calming breaths and pushing away my concerns about the personal entanglements coming back to haunt me from my past, I went to my computer and focused on the police report I had been investigating prior to Cindy’s phone call.
The conversation with that cop had been a dead-end. Perhaps I needed to grill Winston about the reason they had a falling out.
I ran several internet searches for Mason’s name and the date of the police report but came up with nothing.
No evidence of prosecutorial action. Nothing in the news. Whatever this was, it was either buried or a non-event.
Did Mason have the power to bury a negative story about him?
That was an interesting question. The man had money. Wealthy people could do a lot of things ordinary folks could not.
At the end of almost another half hour of research, I decided it was time to just confront Mason about this to gauge his response.
Ordinarily, I might have preferred to do this in person, but I’d already run up against several other dead ends. This was more about crossing it off the list unless I got something substantial from him.
I punched his number into my phone.
“This is Mason Harwood,” he said on the other end of the line soon after I dialed, his tone reminding me of our initial discussion before I had convinced him to speak with me. I pushed the speaker button on my phone so that I could set the receiver into the cradle. I found it helped me think better if I had my hands free. I pushed myself back from my desk to get a little breathing room.
“It’s Mitch Turner,” I said in what I hoped was an upbeat tone, “do you have time for a quick question? I had an interesting piece of information pop up, and I need to get your perspective.”
“Go ahead.”
“As a preliminary matter to any case, I always do a background check on my clients.” I paused to give him a moment to interject if he wanted, but he remained silent. I picked my next words carefully, so he didn’t feel like I was accusing him of anything. I also wanted to avoid conveying to him that I thought this was important in some way. “I discovered a police report that included your present residence.”
“I know what that was about,” Mason said abruptly, “my girls were playing a joke on me.”
I waited for him to go on, but he seemed to think the matter was closed.
“That may be the case, but there’s no mention of a joke in the police report. Please understand, I’m not trying to imply anything, but we need to cover our bases to make sure we understand the lay of the land as we proceed on the case.”
“I didn’t expect that the joke would be mentioned,” Mason said.
Was it just my imagination, or was he tenser now?
“The police officer didn’t like me. It was obvious the moment he met me. I’m not sure what I did, but he had a chip on his shoulder. At the time, I did not think much about it. I suppose that I wrote it off because I’m an executive and he’s a cop. Regardless, the conversation didn’t go well.
“He was on the verge of arresting me and hauling me down to the police station. It wasn’t until then my daughters fessed up to what they had done. He seemed to think that I had intimidated them and kept us separated while he questioned them. He finally left without pressing any charges.”
I waited just to give him a chance to go on if he had anything more to say, but he was apparently done.
“Thank you for reading me in on the situation,” I said. “Did you ever get a communication from the prosecutor’s office? Or was there any follow up from a state social worker?”
“I don’t remember anything. You can certainly ask my daughters about it if you like.”
I relaxed.
That was exactly what I wanted to hear. I had hoped he would suggest I talk to his daughters.
“Okay, sounds like it is no big deal. If it pops up in court or the prosecution tries to make use of it somehow, we will have a plan to mitigate it. In the end, we might end up needing to call your daughters to the stand—I will try to keep it in-camera if possible—so the judge can hear their side of the story.
“I just wanted you to know there is a possibility of this coming up in court. While I will do my best to keep it out, there is always a chance that it could get in. At the end of the day, it depends on the whim of a judge. I’ve had a judge rule against me on an issue, only to turn around and rule in my favor on similar issues. If an enterprising prosecutor can make a connection between these arrests and the case at hand, they will try to get it in.”
I paused to give him a chance to think over what I was saying. I made a mental note to send him an email afterward to make sure we were on the same page.
“If there’s anything about the situation you haven’t told me, anything at all, now is the time.” I almost reminded him about attorney-client confidentiality but did not.
Mason’s answer was immediate. “There is nothing. I told you the truth. There’s nothing there. If you want to talk to my daughters about it, feel free. Both of them will say the same thing.”
I found myself nodding, even though he could not see me. It seemed like the anxiety I’d first read in his voice had disappeared. I was starting to think that this was not consequential.
“Great, can I have their contact information?” I put my fingers on my keyboard, expecting him to respond in the affirmative and look up the numbers right away.
Mason hesitated, it was for the briefest instant, but it was quite real.
“Sure,” Mason said, the uncertainty even more pronounced in his voice than it had been in the pause. “Just one second.”
I waited, presumably while Mason looked up the phone numbers for his two daughters.
Despite what he wanted to portray, his relationship with his daughters might not be as good as he represented. I guessed he knew that and wondered what they might say about him.
He gave me their names, Rafael and Marianne. He then rattled off each of their numbers.
“Do you want me to let them know to expect a call from you?” Mason asked, trying to play it cool but failing miserably.
“Don’t bother,” I said, “it’s no big deal, really. I will just reach out to them when I have a spare moment, might not be for a couple of days, who knows?”
“I better go,” Mason said, the relief palpable in his voice. “I think I hear my wife calling.”
After I was off the phone with Mason, the first thing I did was dial Rafael’s number. The phone rang and went to voicemail.
I left a message, explaining who I was and that I wanted to chat with her. I imagined Mason calling her as soon as I got off the phone, which was probably why I didn’t get through.
He can’t talk with both his daughters at once.
I called Marianne next and had the same result.
I drummed on my desk, wondering if there was any other way I could get information about the police report.
It was good Mason had given me the phone numbers, even though he had hesitated. He had obviously suggested it, thinking I wouldn’t take him up on it.
There could have been many reasons for the hesitation.
Part of it could have been that he didn’t want them to be brought into the defense of his case, or perhaps there was some other information he didn’t want coming to light that his daughters might be more than willing to volunteer.
Regardless of what it was, there was not much more I could do unless they called me back.
I could send Winston to track them down.
I shook my head and decided against it.
For now.
I read through the police report one more time but didn’t have any new insights or notice anything that seemed off.
My main impression when I was done was that it seemed that if the girls had been afraid for their lives, the cop would have done something more than he had.
The district attorney would have been involved, or Mason would have been arrested, or there would have been some sort of follow-up to indicate that things were not as Mason had represented.
The fact there was no further paper trail seemed to confirm the truth of Mason’s story.
Perhaps it was time to set this one aside.
22
It had been almost two weeks since the last time I had cracked open Mason Harwood’s case. I’d been busy with another matter, helping a former client surrender to the police. It had been a wild ride and taken most of my attention.
And now that I finally had a free moment, I looked over the disclosures I had received from the prosecution and reviewed my notes on the case, wondering if Winston had turned up any additional evidence since the last time we had spoken. He and I had talked briefly about a week ago, but he hadn’t found anything new.
I had emphasized again that I wanted the partners thoroughly investigated but still had not brought up Vivian, hoping he’d come back with something that might confirm my own theory. Even if he did not have evidence, if he came up with the same theory of the case I was working from, it would bolster my confidence that I was on the right track.
My phone beeped. “Yes, Ellie, what is it?”
“I have a Rafael Jensen here to see you. Would you like to meet her?”
“Does she have an appointment?”