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

by Dennis Carstens

  “He could probably get something. The City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County would write him a big check just for the asking. You know what they’re like,” Margaret said.

  “I’m a little worried about him suing me or filing a complaint with the Office of Professional Responsibility for my representation,” Marc said.

  “Why?”

  “For not having the DNA sample independently tested.”

  “Did the technician who rigged the tests say that he ran the tests and they all came back negative and he doctored the results?” Margaret asked.

  “No,” Marc said after he thought for a moment. “In fact, he said he never tested the material at all. Just phonied up the results and if anyone asked to get the sample for an independent test he claimed there wasn’t enough left or it had been destroyed. He covered it up.”

  “So, even if you had requested a test, who’s to say it would have been done. Why didn’t you?”

  “It was a public defender appointment. Mickey O’Herlihy, my boss at the time, got it. He loved these long shot cases. I was going to second chair the case and then Mickey has a heart attack screwing a hooker client. I asked to be allowed to withdraw and the judge, Ross Peterson, refused. Then when I asked for funds to do an independent DNA test, he turned me down. He said it was a waste of the taxpayer’s money. I didn’t have the money to pay for it myself, so...”

  “What did the court of appeals have to say?”

  “They ruled two to one, that it was not judicial error to turn me down. The dissent wrote I should have paid for it myself under the doctrine of zealous representation.”

  “That’s a crock,” Margaret said as she handed her empty salad bowl to the waitress. “No one says a lawyer has an obligation to bankrupt himself.”

  Marc’s phone went off, he pulled it from his coat pocket, looked at the ID and answered it.

  “Hey, paisan, we were just talking about you.”

  Marc listened for a moment then said, “I’m with Margaret at Peterson’s, the place across Fourth from the government center,” he said in answer to the caller’s question.

  “Tony says hello,” Marc said to Margaret. “What?” he said into the phone. “Sorry”, he said to Margaret. “Tony says hello, beautiful.” He went back to the phone and said, “Sucking up to her won’t help. The next time you get arrested there’s no guarantee she’ll be your judge.”

  Margaret reached across the table, pulled Marc’s hand that was holding the phone toward herself then loudly said, “Yes, I will. I’ll see to it.”

  Marc listened again then said to Margaret, “He says you should dump me.”

  Margaret took the phone from him, then speaking into it said, “I would but he’s got such a cute butt. I can’t let it go,” and started laughing.

  Marc took the phone back, shook his head and said to Carvelli, “So, what’s up?”

  He listened for a moment then said, “No, she has to go back to work but I can stay for a while.”

  He listened again then said, “Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  ELEVEN

  Ten minutes later, Carvelli entered the restaurant through the skyway entrance. Marc saw him first and waved him over to their booth. Walking through the restaurant, he looked to be half cop, half Italian Wiseguy. He was just under six feet, broad shoulders and in his early fifties. He still had a full head of mostly black hair and wore his standard, thin, brown leather jacket and white silk shirt, two buttons undone.

  When he reached the table, Margaret slid out and said, “I have to go. I’ll let you two boys talk,” and offered her cheek for Tony to kiss.

  Carvelli gestured to their waitress to bring him a cup of coffee. He then slid onto the bench seat opposite Marc and placed a manila envelope he was carrying onto the table.

  After the waitress delivered Tony’s coffee, Marc asked, “What’s this?” referring to the contents of the envelope.

  While pouring some cream into his coffee, Tony said “For starters, our boy Howie’s prison record.”

  “How did you get that so quickly?” Marc asked as he removed the documents from the envelope. “I thought I’d have to get Madeline to use her charms on somebody to get this.” He leafed through the papers and said, “What’s it say?”

  “He was a pretty bad boy the first two years or so. They suspected him of several assaults. My cop pals talked to a couple of ex-cons who knew him and did time with him. They claim he got his ass kicked by gang bangers a couple of times. Then one-by-one, he caught up with the guys who did it. He put several of them in the hospital. After a while even the badasses left him alone.

  “About that time he started acting as an enforcer for a white Aryan gang suspected of smuggling drugs in. Two or three years ago he started getting counseling from that priest, what’s-his-name?”

  “Brinkley?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. According to his psyche evaluation, the prison officials were a little skeptical at first. But now they think he may have found Jesus and straightened out.”

  “Interesting,” Marc said. “What do you think?”

  “I’ve been around a while and I know I’m a bit cynical…” Tony began.

  “Cops and lawyers,” Marc interjected.

  “Right,” Tony agreed. “It will take more than a report from a priest and a shrink to convince me. It’s not like they can’t be fooled.

  “This guy Traynor was a first-class psycho asshole back in the day. He killed Vivian’s aunt that night and we believe he did at least two others and probably a third one in prison. There are reports in there,” Tony continued tapping the documents on the table in front of Marc, “about the other five guys whose DNA tests were faked. Three of them are out or getting out and the other two are dead. Both died in prison. One died from cancer and the other one from an accident. At least that was the official finding. The corrections officers and my pals with the MPD I talked to suspect it was Traynor’s Aryan buddies and likely Traynor himself who caused the guy to ‘accidentally’ fall from the top tier and break his neck and crush his skull.”

  “What about the other three?” Marc asked.

  From memory, Tony told Marc who the other three were. The first was a now thirty-six-year-old, Hispanic-American, Angelo Suarez, convicted in Ramsey County of rape. He was suspected of at least six others and many more. Originally from the Dallas area, he had moved several times throughout the Midwest leaving a trail of unsolved sexual assaults in his wake. Considered extremely intelligent he had left no DNA at the others before the one he was convicted of in St. Paul. He was released several days ago.

  “Great,” Marc said. “We’ve got a serial rapist on the loose.”

  The second was a thirty-nine-year-old member of a biker gang by the name of Eugene Parlow, convicted of second degree murder and drug dealing. He was also suspected of being in the Aryan prison gang with Traynor.

  “Wait a minute,” Marc said. “The prison authorities believe Howie was in an Aryan prison gang then quit when he found Jesus? Do these gangs allow something like that?”

  “I wondered if you would catch that,” Tony said with a sly smile. “Good question. The answer is normally, no. Once you’re in, you’re in for good. That’s a question the cops will be asking this douche bag Parlow once they catch up with him.”

  “The cops have already lost track of him?”

  “He’s around. They’ll find him but until he does something he’s not a high priority. All of these guys need to have an eye kept on them but they can’t be harassed either.

  “The last one is a man named Aaron Forsberg, now age forty-seven. He was convicted in Hennepin County of murdering his wife. He always insisted he was innocent. He was a very well off investment banker.”

  “I remember that case,” Marc said. “Rumor was his defense cost a couple million bucks. He had a team of lawyers headed up by Julian Segal, now Judge Segal over in Ramsey County.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Tony said snapping his fi
ngers. “I knew I heard that name before.”

  “It was really high profile and all over the news for months,” Marc said. “Why wouldn’t Segal do a second DNA test?” Marc wondered.

  “In the report,” Tony said referring again to documents in front of Marc, “the test material was not enough to do a second test and the judge let it in anyway.”

  “Who was the judge?” Marc rhetorically asked as he leafed through the papers to find the one he wanted. “Ross Peterson,” he quietly said when he found it. “The same judge I had with Howie and he ruled the same way. Interesting.” He looked at Tony and said, “I’ll read these over when I get home tonight. How did Vivian take the news about Howie getting kicked loose?” Marc asked.

  “She wasn’t pleased,” Tony said. “More disappointed than angry.”

  Tony slid out of the booth as did Marc and handed Marc his check for the coffee. He took two dollars from his pocket and dropped them on the table.

  “I’ll talk to you later. I’m working today. See ya,” Tony said.

  TWELVE

  Carvelli was walking through the skyway over Sixth Street back to the ramp where he parked his car when his phone went off. He removed it from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and checked the screen. The call was coming from a phone at the Minneapolis Police Department. Hopefully it was the call he was expecting.

  “Carvelli,” he said as he stepped to the window of the skyway and looked east up Sixth.

  “It’s Owen, Tony,” he heard a man say. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Owen, thanks for calling back. You in the office?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be here for a while.”

  “Mind if I stop by for a few minutes? I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure, no problem. When?”

  “I’m only a block away,” Tony said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Carvelli continued across the skyway to the parking ramp, hurried down a flight of stairs and exited the building on Sixth. He walked the short distance to Fourth Avenue, then turned north to go to the Old City Hall.

  A half a block away he jaywalked across Fourth and waved at a cop he knew who was cruising by. The cop stopped his squad car next to Tony and pushed the button to open the passenger window. The cop leaned across the seat and yelled, “Hey, numbnuts, you want a ticket for jaywalking?”

  Tony leaned into the window and with a big grin said, “Yeah, Belton. Give me a ticket for jaywalking. It would be the most work you’ve done for a month. And I’ll take you to court just to be a pain-in-the-ass.”

  “You don’t have to take me to court to be a pain in the ass you dago troublemaker. How you doing Tony? What are you up to?”

  “I’m heading to see Owen Jefferson about something, Paul. Good to see you again.”

  “Stay out of trouble,” the cop said as he pulled away.

  Carvelli continued his journey toward the Old City Hall. He looked up at the ugly granite structure with the Big Ben style clock in the tower. Opened in 1909, the building was an anachronistic reminder of a time gone by. These days, it looked totally out of place but Tony still liked the old building a lot. To him, it had been home for over two decades while he worked as a cop and it had twice as much character as any of the glass, chrome and concrete sterile monstrosities being built now.

  He strolled across Fifth Street against a red light crossing the light rail tracks barely twenty feet ahead of an oncoming train. Tony entered through the back entry on Fifth and walked to the detective’s squad room where Jefferson had a desk. On the way he said hello to almost a dozen policemen and women he knew.

  Carvelli was supposed to check in with security and receive a visitor’s badge. Ignoring this rule gave Tony an almost school boy mischievous sense of satisfaction. Besides, virtually everyone in the department knew who he was anyway.

  “What’s up?” Jefferson asked him as Tony approached the detective’s desk. Owen Jefferson was a lean, bald, six foot four inch black man with a tiny gold stud in his left ear. He had been a homicide detective for over four years and his case closure rate was the best in the department. It was rumored that his boss was about to be promoted to captain and kicked upstairs and every detective in the department expected and wanted Jefferson to succeed her.

  Carvelli nodded and waved a greeting at several of the detectives who looked up from their desks. He dropped into the uncomfortable, padded gray government issued chair next to Jefferson’s desk and looked around the room while the detective patiently waited for him to speak.

  “You know,” Carvelli began while still looking around the room. “I don’t think this place has changed a bit; probably not since the turn of the last century.”

  “So, that’s why you wanted to stop by, to critique the décor? You going into the interior decorating business?”

  “You’d have to redecorate this place with a flamethrower.”

  “Please stop. You’re offending my sensitive side,” Jefferson sarcastically said.

  “Howie Traynor,” Carvelli said turning his head to look directly at the detective.

  “Yeah, isn’t that interesting?”

  “Have you seen his prison record and psych eval?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah, read it yesterday.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s bullshit,” Jefferson answered. “You remember this guy. He was ice cold back in the day. You think he’s found Jesus and all of a sudden he’s touchy feely friendly?”

  “No, but you and I are cynical cops.”

  “So,” Jefferson continued, “what do you have in mind? He hasn’t done anything and I can’t watch him.”

  “After the trial, he made a shitload of threats when he was taken away. I heard from jail guards he said he’d get even with everyone.”

  “A lot of these assholes say that,” Jefferson shrugged as he opened a desk drawer and put his feet on the drawer and his hands locked together behind his head. “Again, Tony, there’s not much I can do until he does something.”

  Carvelli thought for a moment then leaned in across the desk and quietly said, “I’m just giving you a heads up. I don’t believe this guy’s bullshit for a minute and I’ll quietly keep an eye on him.”

  The tall detective shrugged his shoulders, dropped his feet to the floor, placed his forearms on the desk and in a whisper said, “Do it. Just be careful and keep me informed of anything you find.”

  “Will do,” Tony said as he patted his friend on the arm and stood to leave.

  Carvelli went out the same door he came in, went down the building’s concrete stairs and onto the light rail platform. He looked across Fifth at the fountain on the plaza in front of the government center and took in all of the people around it. It was a beautiful late August day and seeing the young women strolling about made him a touch nostalgic for his youth.

  Coming back to reality he removed his phone and pressed a very familiar number. Barely a second before the call went to voice mail a woman answered.

  “Hello, Anthony,” Vivian Donahue said.

  Vivian Corwin Donahue was the matriarch of a very well-known family that was one of the most socially prominent, politically connected and old-money wealthy in Minnesota. In her mid-sixties, she was still a very attractive woman and she could proudly boast, with the only exception being her hair color, it was all natural.

  The Corwin lineage could be traced back to the 1840’s when the family patriarch, Edward Corwin, immigrated to the mostly empty prairie that was Minnesota at the time. Edward started farming and began building an agricultural empire that was worth billions today. The family itself was no longer involved in Corwin Agricultural but Vivian, as the current head of the family, could still move political mountains and when she called a governor, senator, congressman or mayor, that person had better sit up and pay attention.

  “Are you home right now?” Tony asked his sometime lover.

  “Yes, come right over,” she replied.

&nb
sp; Twenty minutes later Carvelli parked his shiny, black Camaro next to a candy-apple red Bentley. He was in the circular driveway of the Corwin family mansion on fifteen acres of very expensive lakeshore property. The sixteen room mini-palace had been in the family since the early twentieth century. Even though Vivian often referred to it as a mausoleum, she would never part with it. It was the one place the entire Corwin clan, over one hundred of them, could gather.

  Tony reached for the doorbell but before he could press it, the door swung open and a very pretty young woman smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

  “Hello, you gorgeous stud,” Vivian’s barely twenty-year-old granddaughter, Adrienne greeted him.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Tony replied.

  “Grandma’s out by the pool,” she said as she put her arm through his.

  “How are you?” Tony asked the young girl as the two of them walked through the big house toward the patio door. “Ready to go back to school?”

  “Oh, yes and no,” she said. “I like it here but I’m finding out you can’t stay a young dilettante forever. Especially with the Dragon Lady around,” Adrienne giggled.

  Tony looked at her and said, “I’ll tell her you mentioned her.”

  “Don’t you dare! Besides, you know how much I love her.”

  They reached the double French patio doors leading to the pool and patio. Adrienne opened the door for him, patted him on the back and let him go through the door alone.

  Vivian was sitting in a padded patio chair next to a round table with a large umbrella in its middle. Tony walked over to her, bent down and kissed her cheek.

  “Hello, Anthony,” she said with a genuine smile. Vivian was the only person, other than his mother when she was mad at him, who called him Anthony. For some reason that he could not quite explain, it seemed right coming from her.

  Tony removed a copy of the prison record of Howie Traynor from his coat pocket and placed it on the table before her. He took off his jacket, hung it on the back of the chair next to her and sat down.