Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  I wait in one of the little booths, behind glass. She has not yet arrived. I kill time tapping my fingers on the metal shelf in front of me. Pretrial jitters.

  When I see her, it is on the floor down below, coming this way. A group of women heading for the day room. Laurel’s talking and milling, jousting in the body language of this place with another woman. Laurel seems to lose more weight each time I see her, replaced by muscle mass, hours on the treadmill and weight machine downstairs. She could author a book, Forced Fitness.

  She exudes a lot of sexual energy, but in a package like a female gyrene. As I watch her climb the stairs, I wonder if in this place, Laurel has not in fact found her own element. Like so many locked away here, my sister-in-law is one of the scrappy underdogs of life.

  I am reminded of something that Nikki once told me, when the two were girls in high school. They had attended a party out in one of the rural areas of the county. Nikki had wandered off with some guy, who under the influence of a few too many beers, wanted to force the issue. He’d managed to get her into a small gardening shed on the pretext of a walk in the moonlight, and was intent on having his way. She was struggling, fighting him off, hands all the way to her crotch, sprawled on some sacks of potting soil, when Laurel went looking and found them. Without a word, little sister picked up a lawn rake, a dozen sharp metal teeth, and spiked the kid’s ass in ways that no doubt he is still explaining to this day.

  In a tight situation, most women I have known are talkers. They will, if allowed, rely on their wits to deal. Laurel is the exception. She is merciless in protecting her own, and to Laurel, Nikki was very much one of her own.

  For this reason I was taken back when Nikki asked me to look after her. Through all the years that I have known her, Laurel never seemed like one who needed much looking after, much protection, except perhaps from herself.

  She is one of those people who through force of character you take for granted, that you think you know. Lately I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time wondering just how well I really do know her.

  Through the door, she looks at me and smiles.

  ‘If you ever need any referrals,’ she says, ‘I’ve got a lot of friends with hard-luck stories,’ she tells me.

  No doubt most of these are dealing with the public defender. Laurel is a client of status in this hotel, private counsel, and the subject of more than a few news stories.

  ‘They said you wanted to talk to me. More instructions for tomorrow?’ she says.

  I shake my head. She has weathered Cassidy’s opening statement well. Laurel did not blanch or break contact, but stared Morgan in the eye, going toe-to-toe when Cassidy pointed and called her a killer. No glimmer of guilt, no psychic confessions from this woman.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I tell her.

  Ominous eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

  It is something I do with most clients on the eve of trial, one last shakedown cruise to explore all the available courses and headings before sailing into heavy seas.

  ‘Tomorrow we go toe-to-toe,’ I tell her. ‘Where possible we try to tear up their witnesses, shred their evidence. In a capital case there is no choice but to get nasty.’

  The women who do what I do for a living are uniformly called bitches by the men who try cases against them. This is not only a measure of the double standard in life, it is solid barometer of the air of animus that blows through most criminal courts. In the inferno of a trial, egos get attached to arguments in the same way that patriotism and national pride are fired in warfare. A few angry exchanges, and compromise becomes a four-letter word.

  ‘I need to know if you’re comfortable with our case,’ I tell her.

  This sets her back on her stool. ‘Brother, I don’t know if you mean to, but you’re scaring the hell out of me,’ she says.

  ‘That’s not my objective. But we need to explore the options.’

  ‘The option I’d like to explore is the one where we nail Jack’s ass to the wall.’

  ‘It may not be that easy,’ I tell her.

  ‘Day of reckoning,’ she says.

  I give her a nod. A theory is just that. Proving it is something else.

  ‘What are my chances?’ she says.

  To this point we have never discussed this. We have dealt with the details, the bits and pieces of evidence, the calculations on credibility as to each witness, including Laurel. So far the high point was the coup de grâce delivered to Mrs. Miller in pretrial motions. That evening when I carried the news, Laurel was for an instant, the flicker of an eye, almost giddy. The first time, I think, since she was jailed, that Laurel has entertained seriously the thought that she might actually beat this thing. From the dark pit that is her cell, her kids gone, her life a shambles, it is hard to see any solid ray of hope.

  ‘They’ve got physical evidence that links you, Jack’s testimony, a solid motive in a domestic vendetta, endless circumstances that appear to paint you in the colors of incrimination, your trip to Reno, your visit to the house earlier that night. You want it straight, no sugar?’ I ask.

  She nods.

  ‘Something less than fifty-fifty.

  ‘Right now they’re wounded,’ I say. ‘Smarting a little with the loss of Mrs. Miller. An eyewitness who put you at the scene near the time of the murder. That would have been a lock,’ I tell her. ‘Still, they’re licking their wounds. Not a bad time if we want to talk a deal.’

  ‘Is that what you’re recommending?’

  The lawyer’s toughest call. What you can’t always say with words. A pregnant pause.

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are no guarantees.’ At this moment I am a big sigh.

  ‘And you’re not just any client,’ I tell her. ‘Not to me. Not to Sarah. Not to your kids. I’d have an awfully large audience waiting for explanations if you go down hard,’ I say. ‘Not least of all myself.’

  ‘You’ve done everything you can,’ she says. ‘I got myself into this mess.’

  ‘Circumstances got you into this mess,’ I say. ‘And at this point the only sure way out with your life,’ I tell her, ‘might be a deal with the prosecutors.’

  She mulls this behind the shield of glass. Downcast eyes, for what seems like an eternity. The decision of a lifetime.

  ‘How long would I get?’ she says.

  ‘It depends on what they’re willing to offer. If I can get them down to second degree, it’s fifteen years to life. You might get out in ten.’

  ‘What happens to my kids?’ she says.

  ‘What happens to them if you’re executed?’

  ‘I mean, would Jack take custody?’ she says.

  We’re back to this. My guess is that Jack might end up doing his own stretch in the slammer, once I finish with him here and feds get a glimmer of the way he was trying to play them for sympathy. But I don’t tell Laurel this. There’s no sense lighting up her day.

  ‘He could,’ I say. ‘What difference?’

  ‘I don’t want him to raise my children. Besides, ten years is a long time.’ Suddenly, to Laurel, it’s an eternity.

  ‘Your kids would still be around.’

  ‘They’d be grown.’

  ‘So you’d have grandchildren.’

  ‘You really want me to do this?’ she says. ‘Enter a plea?’

  ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘What I want is for us to make the right decision.’

  What I really want, but I don’t tell her, is for someone else to make the decision, to take this cup from my lips, to lift the trial from my shoulders.

  ‘You sound like you’re afraid to try the case,’ she says. ‘Is it that bad?’

  ‘Not if you were anybody else.’ As the words leave my lips I see this for what it is: the ultimate admission of a wrung-out lawyer. For more than a decade I’ve taken the money of a thousand strangers and thrown the dice, always wondering, always worrying, but never looking back. I have dodged my share of bullets. No client has ever died in th
e little green room. I have known lawyers who have suffered this fate, quivering wrecks, some of whom have spent years seeking absolution in the bottom of a bottle. Harry in a past life.

  ‘It’s not the trial that I’m afraid of,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the result.’

  ‘Then I will make the decision for both of us. I want my life back. I want my children back. I don’t want any deals. I don’t want any plea bargains,’ she says. ‘I want to go to trial. I want to plead my case. My decision,’ she says. ‘I will live or die with the consequences.’

  For the moment we are both silent, not running over each other’s lines. Then Laurel fills the void.

  ‘She put an awful lot on you,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nikki. I know you’re doing this for Nikki.’

  ‘I’m doing it for all of us.’

  She makes a face like it’s nice of me to say this.

  She sits and looks for a long second in silence, then gives me the universal gesture of affection for all those who sit on that side, the flat palm of her hand pressed against the glass that separates us. I match it like we are touching fingers, on my side. And without another word Laurel stands, turns, and is gone.

  Chapter 20

  This morning Harry and I take the courthouse elevator up to four. When the door opens, it’s a mob scene. But the lights and microphones are not in our faces. Today the press is doing double duty.

  Laurel’s trial competes for attention with a circus across the hall, the trial of Louis Cousins, a twenty-seven-year-old wiz-kid, graduate of Stanford and scion of a wealthy family who is accused of sodomizing and slitting the throats of two teenage girls out in one of the suburbs three years ago.

  Cousins has straight blond hair that spends a lot of time covering half of his face, images of Adolf, and eyes that reek of unmitigated evil. His features, while fine, look as if they have been chiseled in arctic ice, so hard is his demeanor; a face that for its expression could carve the heart out of a passing nun and not look back.

  Cousins’ trial has become a farm club for shrinks who want to break into the big time of courtroom testimony. This is all paid for by Louis’s father, who is leading a sort of psychic safari into his son’s past. Each therapist and clinician has a more entertaining notion of Louis’s debased and brutal childhood, all of which of course occurred behind the walls of private estates and the tinted windows of chauffeured limos.

  After hours of examination, and tests that some might equate to the stirring of entrails in a dish, the high priests of the human mind seem no longer to be in doubt to what happened, only who did it. This was quickly resolved after a brief consideration of Old Man Cousins’ net worth, the source of their fees. It has now been determined that it was one of Louis’s nannies who must have debased the boy during his formative years. At least this is what Louis has fished from his repressed memory during hours of psychic handholding and graphic descriptions by his lawyers of death in the gas chamber. His attorneys are now hell-bent for retirement peddling this theory to the jury.

  Harry is deeply moved by the compassion of those who heal the human mind. Lately he has asked more than once why Laurel can’t come up with her own horrific tales of childhood trauma. Like Harry says, ‘she could at least sit on the commode for a while and try.’

  Harry is playing Keenan counsel. In cases involving the death penalty in this state the defendant is entitled to two lawyers: one to handle guilt or innocence – my role – and the other to do what is called the penalty phase, whether if convicted, Laurel should be put to death or be sentenced to life in prison. Harry is therefore on a perpetual search for mitigation, anything that might jerk a tear from the eye of an empaneled juror.

  This morning Laurel is brought in without shackles, followed by a matron and another guard, who melt into the background as soon as she is seated at the table with us. This is done each day of the trial, before the jury is allowed into the box, to avoid any implications of guilt that might attach if jurors were to see her constantly in custody, attended by guards.

  She is wearing a flowing brown skirt, pleated from the waist, and a white double-breasted blouse, cotton broadcloth with long sleeves, all very plain except for the collar, which is nonexistent and a little severe.

  I comment on this.

  ‘A touch from Mary Queen of Scots,’ she tells me.

  Harry, the resident historian, gets into it, that in fact they wore big ruffled collars back then.

  ‘Not when they cut off her head,’ says Laurel.

  Harry considers this for a moment, then concedes the point.

  Laurel, it seems, has a refined and sharpened sense of gallows humor.

  Still, her dress is tasteful. I have known clients who left to their own devices on the first day of trial would show up looking like the heroine in some potboiling bodice-ripper, blouse tattered by a cat-o’-nine-tails, and tied to a stake like Joan of Arc.

  We go over the lineup of probable witnesses for the day.

  ‘First up is Lama,’ I tell her. ‘Unless they changed the order.’

  Cassidy is at work, assembling the bits and pieces of their case.

  Word is that Jimmy is particularly angry with me. My treatment of him during pretrial motions. As if this, being the subject of Lama’s enmity, is a new experience for me.

  I am hearing rumors that Jimmy has stumbled over dirt from the post office bombing, physical evidence involving fingerprints, my own, that federal investigators turned up at the scene. Knowing him as I do, Lama is no doubt puzzled by the fact that the feds are not all over me at this moment like some cheap blanket in a rainstorm. Seeing only a part of the picture, Lama wouldn’t know that they’ve already taken my statement, that in fact they know what I was doing there. I am not anxious to have Jimmy know this, as it would give up a part of our theory surrounding Jack and the Merlows.

  ‘Lieutenant Lama, can you tell the court how the body was discovered?’ Cassidy has him on direct.

  Lama’s on the stand, pursed lips as if the question takes some consideration before responding. I think Jimmy’s disappointed. There’s only a smattering of press in the front rows. We are not likely to get the full contingent until the Cousins trial is over. Woodruff has allowed the spectacle to be piped outside the courtroom to the cable channel that specializes in notorious trials. But it seems that Jimmy has even lost out on this. While it’s true they are taping it, there will be no live broadcast. Without some heavy precedent, some wild advance in the law of severed penises or other legal novelty to boost ratings, Jimmy’s testimony is likely to fill the dead air in the middle of the night.

  ‘The victim was found by her husband,’ he says, ‘lying in the bathtub of the couple’s master bedroom.’

  ‘By the victim’s husband, you’re referring to Mr. Jack Vega?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And about what time was this called in to the police?’

  Jimmy looks at his notes. ‘According to our log sheet at the station, the call was received at exactly zero-forty-three hours.’

  ‘And in civilian time?’

  ‘Twelve forty-three in the morning,’ he says.

  ‘Just before one A.M.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And were you the first officer on the scene?’

  ‘No. A patrol car with two officers was the first to arrive. They were followed by the EMTs–’

  ‘The emergency medical technicians?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s right. I got there about–’ He reviews his notes. ‘One-thirty.’

  ‘A.M.,’ says Cassidy.

  ‘Correct.’

  Cassidy is slow and meticulous, like a mason with bricks, skillful with the mortar, knowing that to build her case everything on these lower courses must be true and level.

  ‘And what did you find when you arrived?’

  ‘The body. The victim was lying on her back in a large bathtub in the master bath. There was some blood in the tub, no evidence of any struggle.
’ He pushes this, a lot of facial ticks and misplaced emphasis. But it’s a big point. The state is trying to shut the door on any last-minute ploy for manslaughter, inferences of a battle for the gun, and an accident. They have been moving in this direction from the inception of their case.

  ‘There appeared to be a single gunshot wound under the chin – here.’ Lama points with a forefinger like a cocked pistol up under the jaw, to one side, a little to the right, close to the throat, showing the path of the bullet up into the head.

  ‘Was the body clothed?’

  ‘No. She was, ahh–’ He motions with his hands, groping like he’s not sure how to say it. In the buff. Bareass. Jimmy, who no doubt clawed his way out of the womb spitting profanities about darkness and water, is now busy doing the sensitive detective.

  ‘She was in the altogether,’ he finally says.

  ‘She was naked?’ Cassidy looking at him.

  Fine. There – a woman has said it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Naked.’

  ‘Like maybe she was getting ready for a bath?’

  ‘Objection. Leading.’ I shoot at it while seated, with the eraser end of a pencil.

  ‘Sustained.’

  Cassidy regroups.

  ‘Did you have any way of determining what the victim was doing just before she was shot?’

  ‘It looked like she was getting ready to take a bath,’ says Lama. Oh, good. He got it.

  ‘There was a folded towel on the floor near the bath, and some bath oils on the side.’

  ‘You indicated earlier that you found no evidence of a struggle. How did you determine this?’

  ‘A number of things,’ he says. ‘It’s true that there was a couple of broken bottles on the floor across the room, but quite a distance from where the body was found,’ he says. ‘There was no obvious tattooing around the bullet wound.’

  Lama’s all over the place, mind starting to wander.

  ‘You mean powder burns from the gun?’ Cassidy clarifies.

  ‘Yeah. Powder burns. There was none of those. So we figured the range of fire was some distance, maybe ten, twelve feet, probably while the victim was lying prone in the tub. We believe the bottles were broken when the killer panicked and brushed into them, knocked them off a shelf after the murder.’