Marc Kadella Legal Mysteries Vol 1-6 (Marc Kadella Series)

by Dennis Carstens

  The foreman passed the verdict form to Prentiss who opened it, looked it over and gave it back to the deputy who returned it to the foreman. Dolan and Ike stood up, the foreman began to read off each charge, beginning with the most serious offense, second-degree murder and after each charge was stated, the foreman followed it with a not guilty verdict. Prentiss twice gaveled the crowd for silence, then the last charge, fifth-degree misdemeanor assault was read and to this one the foreman proclaimed Ike to be guilty.

  Boyce and Lundgren did an excellent job of not showing their almost crushing disappointment. Marc calmly, almost indifferently, took it in and did not, at first, understand the fifth degree-assault verdict until he remembered Ike had lightly slapped Corwin on the cheek in the bar in front of witnesses.

  “Very well,” Prentiss said to the jury. “I thank you for your service and you are discharged and free to go.” He then turned his gaze to Ike and Dolan and as the jury filed back into the deliberation room to leave, he asked, “Are you ready for sentencing?”

  Ike had a confused look on his face and did not respond. Instead Dolan said, “Yes, your Honor, we are.”

  “Objection, your Honor,” Boyce said rising from her feet. “We want a…”

  “Overruled,” Prentiss said. “You got a misdemeanor conviction and you should be happy you got that. I’m not inclined to waste any more time on this matter.” He turned his attention back to Ike and said, “Ninety days in jail and one year of unsupervised probation. I’ll suspend the jail time until the end of the probation period. Remain law-abiding during that time. Understood?”

  “Yes, your Honor,” Ike answered.

  “All right, you’re free to go,” Prentiss said.

  Before anyone else had arisen from their seat to leave, a well-dressed man in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit and stylish matching tie was up and out the door. He walked briskly toward the elevators while removing his cell phone and speed-dialed a number. It was answered on the first ring and without speaking her name the man informed Vivian Corwin Donahue what the trial’s outcome had been.

  NINE

  Three days later, Marc and Butch Koll patiently sat waiting at the defense table in the same courtroom. Mike Lundgren sat at the prosecution’s table and he and Marc had made a little small talk while waiting for Prentiss to come out for the formality of Butch’s sentencing. The two lawyers casually chatted about the fallout from the not guilty verdict in Ike’s trial. Not surprisingly, it had been all over the local media for about two days, mostly making Slocum’s office look like incompetent buffoons. Fortunately for Slocum, the story had quickly died down when news of a Hollywood celebrity marriage had failed after a full three months. Once again, the media and the public turned its attention toward something truly significant.

  Marc had an odd, nagging feeling in the back of his mind. Something he could not quite put his finger on, but it wouldn’t go away either. A feeling that told him something was not quite right. He brushed it off as his usual qualms about dealing with Prentiss, a judge with whom there was no love lost between the two men. All the while Butch had sat next to Marc silently, patiently waiting for Prentiss, not at all suspicious that something was bothering his lawyer.

  Prentiss took his seat on the bench and waited until the court reporter indicated she was ready. When she did, he began by reading into the record the court case number, the names of the parties and the names of the attorneys who were present and whom they represented.

  “Now, Mr. Koll,” he began. “You made an agreement with the county attorney to plead to a lesser included offense, first-degree assault, in exchange for testifying in the trial just completed. The county attorney’s office recommended a jail term to be served at the Hennepin County facility and you would be allowed work release if eligible. Is that correct, Mr. Lundgren?” he asked turning toward the prosecutor.

  “That is correct, your Honor.”

  “As part of that agreement, you were to be cooperative and honest in your testimony as I recall. I must tell you Mr. Koll, after listening to you testify, it is my firm belief,” Prentiss continued while the alarm bell in Marc’s head began ringing louder, “I found your testimony not the least bit credible…”

  “Your honor,” Lundgren said as he rose from his chair, “our office is completely satisfied that…”

  “Sit down and be quiet…” Prentiss said sternly, looking at Lundgren.

  “The defense moves to withdraw the plea based on…” Marc said as he began to get out of his seat.

  “Denied and sit down. I won’t tolerate another word out of either of you. I warned your client that he would not be able to withdraw his plea and I meant it.”

  Marc took his seat and glared back at Prentiss, silently seething at what he knew was about to happen to Butch. He glanced at Lundgren who was clearly having the same reaction.

  “What’s going on?” Butch whispered to Marc.

  “Keep quiet, Mr. Koll,” Prentiss said.

  “You’re about to get bent over,” Marc loudly replied to Butch.

  “One more word, Mr. Kadella and you go to jail,” Prentiss warned him. “That goes for you too, Mr. Lundgren.”

  “Mr. Koll, I have made written findings that I do not believe you were honest in your testimony. And I further find aggravating circumstances for sentencing in that you cruelly and deliberately left your victim lying in an alley to die and took no steps whatever to get help for him after you savagely beat him and crushed his windpipe. Therefore, for those reasons and your criminal history score, I am easily within my discretion to deviate upward in your sentence and hereby sentence you to 120 months in a facility to be determined by the Department of Corrections.” With that, Prentiss rapped his gavel and said, “We’re adjourned.”

  Butch shot out of his chair and in one of those rare moments of losing his cool, yelled, “You sonofabitch! You asshole…”

  “Watch yourself,” Prentiss said as he stood to leave. At the same time Marc reached up and gently grabbed Butch’s arm to try to get him to sit back down. Butch shook him off and when Marc stood to again try to settle him down, Butch almost threw him toward the prosecution table.

  Butch then did something that court watchers would talk about for years. He squatted down, reached under the table with both hands, picked it up, lifted it over his head, took several running steps toward Prentiss and threw the table at him.

  As he did this, the court deputy began running toward Butch and the court reporter scrambled out of the way. Marc was still sitting on the floor and Lundgren at his table both sat frozen in place, not fully comprehending the chaos occurring before them.

  The table hit the chest high-wall in front of Prentiss and as Prentiss dove to the floor, the table exploded into dozens of large and small pieces. At the same time the, two clips shot from the deputy’s stun gun stuck in Butch’s chest and the 50,000 volt electrical jolt dropped him to the floor as if he’d been shot with an elephant gun.

  Fifteen seconds after his client went down, Marc, still sitting on the floor, surveyed the chaotic scene, quickly assessed the damage which, fortunately, except for the table turned out to be minimal, and said, “Well, I guess court is really adjourned.”

  Prentiss closed the door to his chambers and took a half hour to calm down. When his nerve finally came back, while still hiding in his chambers, he used his personal cell phone to avoid a record of the call, dialed a private number known to very few people. It was answered on the first ring and Prentiss said, “It’s done. I did what he wanted. Now you tell him I’m out. We’re square.”

  “That’s not the way it works, Judge,” Bruce Dolan said with a short, sharp laugh. “Once you’re in, you’re in until he says so and right now, he owns your ass.”

  “Listen, goddamnit, you tell…”

  “Shut up! Are you on a cell?”

  “Yes,” Prentiss meekly replied.

  “Then don’t use his name, ever, on a cell. They’re radios for God’s sake.”

&n
bsp; “Okay,” Prentiss replied. “But you tell him this is it.”

  “I’ll pass it along, Judge. Thanks for doing him this little favor,” he concluded then ended the call. Dolan immediately punched the speed dial on his phone and waited for Leo Balkus to answer so he could relay the news.

  Later that night, well past midnight, two men silently broke into the office Marc shared with his friends and colleagues. One was a professional burglar occasionally employed by Leo and the other was a surveillance expert. The two of them were in the office less than five minutes and removed the listening and transmitting devices Leo’s surveillance expert had installed in Marc’s office to allow Leo and Dolan to keep tabs on Butch’s case.

  TEN

  The morning after the verdict that cleared Ike Pitts from the most serious charges stemming from the death of Robert Corwin, Steve Fallon drove his late model Cadillac CTS around the concrete, circular driveway and up to the main entrance of the Corwin estate on Lake Minnetonka. It was Fallon who had made the call to Vivian Donahue from the government center hallway to notify her of the jury’s verdict regarding the death of her nephew. Although the woman never lost her poise, Fallon could plainly tell from her voice inflection she was quite displeased and immediately summoned him to this morning’s meeting.

  He parked his car in the driveway and checked his watch to be sure he was at least fifteen minutes early. Fallon then tightened the knot on his tie and buttoned his suit coat as he walked up the granite steps to the front door of the beautiful early twentieth-century mansion.

  Steven Fallon was retired FBI and current head of security for all of the Corwin family interests, personal as well as business. Although the family was no longer in control of Corwin Agricultural, several family members, there were almost forty scattered around the Twin Cities metro area, were on the Corwin Ag Board or were company executives. Also, there were a dozen other businesses, small, medium and large, that the Corwin family was involved with to varying degrees. At the top of the family pyramid, the jewel that gave the family its respectability and was Vivian’s personal pet project was the Corwin Foundation. This was the family philanthropic endeavor which Vivian personally ran.

  Through the Corwin Foundation she collected, and gave away, over one hundred million dollars each year, almost none of it from the Corwin family members. It was through this foundation that Vivian was able to wash the family name of its historical taint.

  Great, Great Grandfather Edward, the founder of the family fortune, had been an agricultural robber baron. As ruthless, if not as well known as Rockefeller, Carnegie, and JP Morgan et al. Edward’s story would still crop up from time-to-time in the local media. There was also Vivian’s grandfather, Robert Sr, who, bored with running a legitimate business, made another fortune running booze from Canada through Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas to the gangsters in Chicago and points east of there. It was even rumored, though never charged let alone proven, that Grandpa Robert was not above personally pulling the trigger to rid him of pesky competitors.

  Robert, Junior, Vivian’s father, had spent his entire life cleaning up the business and starting the Foundation to rid the family of his father’s reputation. He had literally worked himself to death by the age of sixty. Junior did manage to accomplish two significant tasks. One was to divest the family from Corwin Agricultural and diversify into more lucrative fields. The other was to forego turning the business over to his son, Robert III and instead saw in his oldest child, Vivian, the necessary brains, decisiveness and leadership and he made sure the reins were passed to her. This suited Robert III just fine since his interest was more in tune with the types of endeavors that would eventually get his son killed than running a multi-billion dollar business. The apple really didn’t fall far from the tree.

  Fallon knocked once on the large oak door which opened almost immediately. “Good morning, Carmen,” he said to the housekeeper when she pulled the door aside and he stepped in. “It’s nice to see you again. Mrs. Donahue is expecting me…”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Fallon. She told me to tell you she’s in the library down the hall to your right. You’re to go right in.”

  As he closed the library door behind him, Vivian Donahue rose from the sofa in front of the cold fireplace. As always he marveled at how beautiful she still was. She still had her hair colored and highlighted and the few wrinkles around the eyes gave her a mature, almost regal beauty. It was also rumored, and Fallon tended to believe it, that the widowed Vivian Donahue kept several younger lovers around town to take care of her physical needs.

  “Steven,” she said as she approached him with a pleasant smile and outstretched hand. “It’s good of you to come on such short notice.”

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Donahue,” he replied as they shook hands. “It’s always nice to see you and get a chance to visit your beautiful home.”

  “Please have a seat,” she said, taking him by the arm and lightly guiding him to the sofa opposite the one she had been seated on.

  “Actually, I must confess, as I get older, this place seems more and more like a mausoleum or a museum. It is home, though. Anyway, tell me what happened with this dreadful trial.”

  Which he proceeded to do for the next twenty minutes while she sat patiently, hands folded in her lap on what must have been a two thousand dollar dress. At the end of his narrative, he sat back on the couch and waited for her to respond.

  About a minute of silence passed between them when she finally spoke by saying, “Craig Slocum. I knew that man was a fool the first time I met him. A self-righteous ass too. The man couldn’t convict Hitler.”

  “I certainly won’t argue on Craig Slocum’s behalf ma’am. But this was a tougher case than what he thought. I sat through much of it myself and the evidence was pretty thin. They were relying on the jury to connect the dots for them and Dolan did a great job of representing his client.”

  “Bruce Dolan,” she said with ill-disguised contempt. “Quite possibly the most corrupt lawyer ever born and that’s saying something. Plus, his real client was not on trial. That disgusting vermin Leonid Balkus was behind this entire sordid affair.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I think you’re right. What would you like to do next?” he replied knowing Vivian Donahue was not going to let the death of a Corwin go unpunished.

  “I want you to find an investigator, someone good, honest and totally dependable. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll check with my contacts at the local FBI office and the police department and…”

  “No, not you personally. I don’t want your name and position involved. Can you do that? Find someone, very discreetly, who can get to the bottom of my nephew’s death and find out exactly what happened?”

  “Yes ma’am, I’ll take care of it and get back to you in two or three days.”

  “Splendid. Thank you, Steven.”

  ELEVEN

  Two days later, on a cool and rainy June afternoon, Tony Carvelli parked his car next to Steve Fallon’s black Cadillac in the circular driveway of the Corwin mansion. Carvelli was a local private investigator, retired from the Minneapolis Police Department after putting in his twenty years. Like most ex-cops, his police pension was just enough to keep him out of poverty. But Carvelli was a smart guy who made most of his money, more than double what he had made as a police detective, doing corporate security and industrial espionage investigation. The latter was what brought him to Fallon’s attention. Plus he had a well-known and well-deserved reputation among local police departments as someone who was competent, trustworthy and discreet.

  Tony closed the door of his two-year-old midnight blue Camaro, ducked his head and hunched his shoulders together against the rain as he jogged up the steps leading to the main door. Before he had a chance to ring the bell the door opened and Steve Fallon greeted him and ushered him into the huge foyer.

  “Thanks for coming,” Fallon said as the two men shook hands.

  “No prob
lem,” Carvelli replied as he brushed the rainwater off of his suit coat.

  “Follow me,” Fallon said as he led the investigator toward his meeting with Vivian Donahue.

  Fallon lightly knocked on the library door and without waiting for a response, opened it and stepped aside so Carvelli could go in first. As a cop and private investigator with almost thirty years experience, Carvelli had been around the block a few times. He had dealt with wealthy people and seen beautiful homes but nothing like this. And no one quite like Vivian Donahue.

  She rose from the sofa, walked toward him and said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Carvelli. According to Mr. Fallon, you come highly recommended.”

  “Thank, you ma’am…” the normally smooth talking Carvelli managed to say. “You have a beautiful home.”

  “Well, thank you,” she answered. “Please, have a seat,” she continued as she gently took his arm and led him to the same couch Fallon had used. “Steven, you’ll join us, of course, unless Mr. Carvelli has an objection to that?”

  “Not at all, Mrs. Donahue,” Tony said as Fallon joined him on the couch opposite the Corwin matriarch. “And please call me Tony. When you say Mr. Carvelli, I get flashbacks of Catholic nuns cracking a ruler across my knuckles in grade school.”

  “I’m sure quite undeserved,” she said with a friendly laugh.

  “Absolutely deserved,” Tony replied. “Now, Mrs. Donahue, what can I do for you?” Even though he knew, or least believed it would have something to do with the great lady’s recently departed nephew. “I assume it’s about your nephew.”

  “Yes, Tony, that’s quite astute of you,” she said. “While I did not attend the trial myself, Mr. Fallon did and had others also sit in and keep tabs on it. To say the outcome was disappointing is putting it mildly. To be frank, I was assured by our county attorney himself, Craig Slocum, do you know him?”