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

by Dennis Carstens

  “Where was your dad during all of this?” Marc asked.

  Mackenzie hesitated to answer then simply said, “We never really got along. Mostly because of his drinking. I told him what happened and he said I probably asked for it. That was the last time I have talked to him.”

  Mackenzie continued to explain what happened. Her assailants were picked up and she positively identified all four of them. They were arrested on multiple counts each of criminal sexual conduct, assault and attempted murder. Bail was set at half a million dollars each. It was a huge story for several days but quickly died down after bail was paid. Their families had retained multiple, high-priced lawyers for each of them.

  “To make a long story a little shorter, they all got together, the lawyers and my attackers and shut things down. They denied everything and alibied each other. Because there was no evidence, no DNA or witnesses and the cops couldn’t get one of them to flip, the prosecutor wouldn’t pursue the case. She told me quote, ‘I’m not going to take a case to trial I’m not absolutely certain I can win.’ Later a woman cop told me this prosecutor was a politically ambitious bitch who liked to brag about her won-lost record. Would only go to trial if the case was an absolutely certain conviction and she wouldn’t take a chance and fight if she couldn’t be positive she would win. Plus, the quality of the defense lawyers scared her off.”

  “So, they declined to prosecute,” Marc said.

  “That’s right,” Mackenzie said. “I felt like an absolute idiot. Like trash that had just been tossed aside. They dismissed the case and these four spoiled assholes were laughing and having a grand old time when they left court.”

  “And these four were, David Bauer, Kenneth Hayes Jr., Phillip Cartwright and Adam Sutherland,” Maddy quietly said, knowing all of the names from her research.

  “That’s right,” Mackenzie agreed.

  FIFTY-SIX

  “I was devastated, absolutely crushed. These four spoiled, psycho, coddled rich kids had treated me like garbage. They took away everything from me; my life, my humanity, my dignity, the very essence that made me who I am. They just ripped it out of me, threw it away and sent me the message that I was nobody, that I was nothing. That my life was not mine and they could do whatever they want to me then walk away laughing. That’s what rape does to you, Marc,” Mackenzie said looking at her lawyer. “It leaves you empty. Your life is not yours. You are totally at the mercy of someone who can take you and do unspeakable things to you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  “I spent the next year in therapy,” Mackenzie continued. “Rape counseling, that kind of thing. It wasn’t helping me in the least but I went a couple times a month for ten or eleven months. It finally occurred to me why it wasn’t helping. It was victim therapy. How to cope with being a victim. I know it helps a lot of women deal with it but I didn’t feel like a victim. I felt white hot anger at these little bastards doing this to me and getting away with it. I didn’t want to be a victim, I didn’t want to cope with being a victim and I refused to accept it. I wanted my life back. I wanted to be whole again. I wanted to be me again. I wanted justice and I knew if I wanted it I’d have to get it myself.

  “I was twenty-three years old. I had ambitions, desires. I wanted marriage and children, a family. And these little bastards took that away from me for their amusement.”

  “So you decided to go after them,” Marc said.

  “I quit victimhood therapy and started researching them. I found out everything I could about each of them including their families. One of the things I found during all of this is that wealthy, successful people are not necessarily something you want to become.

  “You would think that having money would at least free you from the worry of not having money. It doesn’t. If anything it makes it worse. They’re obsessed with it, terrified at the thought of losing it, of not having it. They live in their privileged world but they’re certainly not happy. And they’re all a bunch of useless, pretentious assholes.

  “So, I went after them. I decided to get them where I knew it would really hurt: their money.”

  Mackenzie explained her strategy and how she went about it. First was Joseph Bauer. She found out everything about him which wasn’t much. Bauer was a married workaholic with virtually no social life. No real friends and a wife that was practically an arranged marriage who spent more time at the local synagogue than she did with her family. Joseph Bauer was going to be seduced, probably for the first time in his life.

  An affair that his wife, the Jewish Princess, quickly found out about, a divorce and the rest was easy. Joseph also accommodated Mackenzie by having a bad heart from years of overeating, no exercise, and too much work. The only thing she could not prevent was a healthy cash payoff to the original Mrs. Bauer. A cash payoff to the Princess that worthless David, one of her rapists, would fritter away. Mommy simply could not say no to him until the money was gone. Now both the Jewish Princess and David were currently facing poverty and a long drug-related prison sentence for him.

  Joseph Bauer made his death easy. He already had a bad heart and needed to use nitroglycerin pills to control it. One day he misplaced the nitro pills, or so Mackenzie told the police. Mackenzie started a fight with him at work and before she knew it he was slumped over at his desk. She told the cops she did everything she could to find his pills but he must have left them at home as he did sometimes. Of course, she didn’t mention anything about the fight she deliberately started to bring on the stress to his heart.

  During her marriage to Bauer, she became acquainted with husband number two, Kenneth Hayes, Sr. Already conveniently widowed, Mackenzie knew Hayes and Bauer were friends from college before she targeted Bauer.

  Hayes met her at the Bauer home a few months before Bauer’s death and Mackenzie had little trouble reeling him in. She moved to Milwaukee, a quick courtship and wedding and Mackenzie easily turned the smitten Mr. Hayes against his three children to change his Will and leave it all to her.

  “Now there’s a worthless life,” she said. “An investment banker for a small successful firm with his name on it. You work your ass off twenty-hours a day. You socialize with the same set of dull, boring dipshits who know nothing except money and never relax and simply enjoy life. It helps to have one screwed up personality to get involved in it.

  “After Milwaukee and Ken Hayes’ untimely heart attack while driving home one day, a quick cash out and I was onto Chicago. You pretty much know that story.

  “I’ll say this for Wendell Cartwright. He was a useless waste of breathable air but he did know how to party. I came home early once and found him in the hot tub with four naked women, all in their twenties. I just shook my head and went to bed. It wasn’t long after that when Wendell was cremated.”

  Madeline was sitting back in her chair uncertain if she should be proud of Mackenzie or appalled. Probably a little of both.

  “Then you moved back to St. Paul to get William Sutherland. Four men murdered…”

  “I didn’t admit to murdering anyone,” Mackenzie corrected him. “Everyone of them died of natural causes. A heart attack.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Marc quietly said.

  “I wasn’t attacked, beaten, horribly raped and almost killed by just the sons. Their parents, especially the men who created these little monsters did it to me, too. They are just as responsible for it by instilling in their kids the sense of entitlement that they have.”

  “And then bailing them out of trouble their entire lives and never making them accept responsibility for anything,” Maddy interjected.

  “Yes,” Mackenzie agreed nodding at Maddy. “That’s truer than you know. The things I found out, the family dynamics these people have are unbelievable. They bailed these little brats out their entire lives. Schools, jail and not just the four boys. Hailey Sutherland is a perfect example. All of their kids are useless. They have no sense of right and wrong. No sense of responsibility or accountability. They took my life
and thought no more of it than stepping on a bug. So I took the one thing they care about more than anything else. I took their money and their entitled lives. The same money they used to get away with taking my life, I used to take theirs.”

  The three of them sat silently for a full two minutes, uncertain what to say, Marc and Maddy each having the same problem of how to sort out their feelings about this. They both knew, or at least had been taught, that what Mackenzie did was wrong but having a great deal of difficulty believing it.

  “What about Bob Sutherland?” Marc asked.

  “What about him?” Mackenzie replied. “He threatened me, I shot him. Period.

  “Marc,” Mackenzie said after another moment of silence, “I found three other girls that they did this to. One more here in St. Paul. I tried to convince her to go to the police but she wouldn’t. Another one near Milwaukee and one by Chicago. There are likely others. I sent, anonymously, two million tax-free dollars to each of them. They should be compensated, at least somewhat.”

  “You could’ve gone to prison for the rest of your life,” Marc said.

  “I was never worried about prison. What they did to me put me in a worse prison than the state could put me in. No, prison never worried me. I was always ready to take any punishment the courts tried to give me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before your trial?” Marc asked.

  “Why? So you could plead me not guilty by reason of insanity? No thanks. Plus, it’s not true. I knew exactly what I was doing. I would have told you and let you use it at sentencing if we lost.”

  “Why didn’t they recognize you?”

  “I never saw them after the attack. The closest I came to them was in the hallway at court after their case was dismissed. After the attack I was a bloody, beaten mess. Plus, I changed my appearance just enough. Just because they have money doesn’t mean they’re the smartest people.”

  Mackenzie turned to Marc then said, “My biggest regret is you,” she smiled her sad smile. “I thought maybe I could have something with you, something resembling a normal life. I know now that’s not possible, is it?” she asked him.

  “No, it’s not. I’m sorry but I don’t see how,” Marc replied.

  Mackenzie took one of Marc’s hands and said, “I’m glad I told you. I’m glad I got it out. I feel a lot of relief. I’ve been carrying this around for twenty years and…”

  “What will you do now?” Marc asked. “You have plenty of money.”

  “Not as much as you think. I took over ninety-nine million from them. They’re all dead broke now. I gave six million to those three other girls I found. I’m keeping four million and the rest I have already given away, mostly in large donations to rape counseling centers and battered women shelters around the country. I’ve put most of their money to some good use.”

  “You deserve more than four million for what they did,” Maddy said.

  Mackenzie looked down the length of the dining room table past Marc and Maddy. Her eyes teared up, her mouth curled down and she looked immensely sad about the whole thing.

  She wiped the tears from each eye and said to Marc, “I’ll be leaving in a couple weeks. I just want to go live quietly somewhere.

  “When I think back on it, it’s all so tragic. So many lives destroyed, so many dead. And all because the police and prosecutors wouldn’t do their job. I did what I was supposed to do, what so many women who are raped are afraid to do. Go to the authorities and let them find justice for you. But they refused because the prosecutor didn’t want to risk her precious won-lost record.” Mackenzie looked at Maddy, smiled and said, “Well, I got her ass, too. Guess who the prosecutor was?”

  “Heather Anderson?” Maddy asked.

  “No,” Marc said realizing who it was. “Heather was in high school when this happened. So, it was you who leaked the news to the St. Paul paper.”

  Mackenzie merely nodded her head and smiled.

  “Who?” Maddy asked.

  Marc said to Mackenzie, “Go ahead, tell her.”

  Maddy suddenly realized who it was and said, “Shayla Parker.”

  “Yep,” Mackenzie said. “And I found out her boss at the time who backed up her decision was the Chief Deputy County Attorney now Judge Otis Carr.”

  Marc was sitting in his office, his shoes kicked off, his feet in a drawer pulled out from the desk. The window behind him above Charles Avenue was open letting the fresh, warm, mid-May air come in. Marc was taking a break, the papers from the case he was working on were scattered across his desktop. He sipped a Diet Pepsi while he read, for the fourth or fifth time, the handwritten letter he received the day before from Mackenzie, now back to her original name, Mackenzie Lange.

  It was two months since she left and until yesterday, not a word from her. She was doing fine living somewhere she wouldn’t say. Once again she apologized for the way things turned out between them but not for the things she had done. All she would say is she was doing much better, in no small part because of Marc’s help. Mackenzie had started seeing a psychiatrist and even began attending a non-denominational Christian Church. She ended the letter with the thought that perhaps someday they would meet again. Marc knew that was unlikely even though in his heart of hearts, he could not condemn her for what she had done. The ‘system’ had chewed her up and spit her out. How would any of us have acted given the same circumstances?

  Marc folded the letter and put it back in his center desk drawer. He thought back at the fallout of the Mackenzie Lange tornado.

  After Shayla Parker resigned, she was investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility. Her license was still suspended indefinitely while the investigation continued. Her political career and marriage were finished. In connection with that, over thirty appeals of trial convictions over which Otis Carr presided had been filed. There were not likely to be many more since most criminal cases, close to ninety percent, are resolved by plea agreements. Those would not be appealable.

  Judge Otis Carr, seeing the clear and convincing proverbial handwriting on the wall, voluntarily resigned and retired his license. His Honor was going to be quite busy for a while trying to stave off bankruptcy and preserve enough of his pension to live on. Marc was intimately aware of his problems. The documents scattered on his desktop concerned a divorce he was handling. His client was Claudia Carr and she wanted to drain the blood from Otis, one drop at a time. Hell hath no fury…

  As for Mackenzie’s rapists, they had received more, long overdue punishment. Kenneth Hayes, Jr., the son from Milwaukee, drove his car off the road during a snowstorm a month or so ago. He wrapped it around a tree and was pronounced D.O.A. at the scene.

  David Bauer’s drug case in Florida was resolved with a plea agreement in federal court. David had been the weakest of the four of them, the ones who had committed the rapes and assaults. He was more of a “go along to be accepted” type. Surprisingly, he had enough sense not to flip on his Cuban cocaine conspirators. He took his deal and was now in a mean, maximum security prison in Atlanta doing twelve years for possession with intent to sell.

  Hailey Sutherland had disappeared. Maddy had checked on her out of curiosity and could find no trace of her. She would eventually end up, about a year later, a Jane Doe in the Los Angeles’ County Morgue. Just another street-hooker-heroin overdose tossed into a pauper’s grave.

  Paige Sutherland, Robert’s widow, was doing fine. With her family’s money she was still quite comfortable and Simon Kane’s Mercedes was back in her driveway three or four nights a week. Simon managed to get back into good graces with his firm after a thirty-day suspension of his attorney license. His wife was divorcing him while Simon was trying to find a polite way to get away from the clutches of Paige Sutherland. Wanting and having are often two very different things.

  Shortly after the trial of Mackenzie Sutherland ended, Adam Sutherland was arrested with a pound of crystal meth in his car. He spent two weeks in jail before he convinced Paige to put up bail f
or him. Back on the street he found he had no friends and very few people who even acknowledged knowing him.

  Adam’s money, along with the nice apartment and the flashy Corvette were all long gone. He was living in a one room weekly rental flea-trap in East St. Paul. One day a neighbor detected a strong smell coming from his room. The cops were called and found him hanging from a ceiling rafter. He had apparently ripped the ceiling apart and looped a length of rope through the stud, stood on a chair and kicked it over. Without Daddy there to bail him out, apparently he couldn’t face his fate.

  Marc leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling. After twenty or thirty seconds, he said out loud, “I ought to write a book, but who’d believe it?”

  His personal phone rang and when he looked at the ID he said, “Well this is interesting.”

  Marc answered the call and after ten minutes of catching up, made a lunch date for later that same day with Margaret Tennant.

  Delayed Justice

  A Marc Kadella Legal Mystery

  by

  Dennis L. Carstens

  Previous Marc Kadella Legal Mysteries

  The Key to Justice

  Desperate Justice

  Media Justice

  Certain Justice

  Personal Justice

  Copyright © 2016 by Dennis L Carstens

  www.denniscarstens.com

  email me at: dcarstens514@gmail.com

  JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED

  British Prime Minister William Gladstone 1868