“That’s a very neutral term. I was thinking more along the lines of whoever the son of bitch is who killed Gary Varne and is trying to make it look like you did it.”
They exchanged anxious glances, then Peyton asked, “What do you think we should we do now?”
“You want my advice as a husband or a lawyer?”
“Both.”
“Hire a lawyer. A good one.”
“Got any suggestions?”
“Just one,” he said in a serious tone, then walked to the kitchen and picked up the telephone.
Thirty minutes later they were downtown in the law offices of Falcone & Associates. Tony Falcone was a savvy trial lawyer who’d done only criminal defense his entire twenty-year career, the first five years at the public defender’s office in Boston and the balance in private practice. Peyton had seen his name in the newspaper a few times on some high-profile cases but had never met him. It had been Kevin’s idea to call him, though the recommendation came with a small caveat: Tony was immensely talented but full of surprises.
His secretary brought them coffee and told them that Tony would be with them just as soon as he got off the phone. They waited in silence in the reception area outside his personal office, seated side by side on the silk-covered couch. Kevin kept glancing sideways every few seconds, as if checking to see if Peyton had any questions. She didn’t feel like talking.
The waiting area was decorated tastefully, an eclectic mix of modern furniture with some antiques for accent. The oil paintings and watercolors were all originals and lit perfectly, which suggested they were admired by their owner and probably of some value. It felt more like a cozy gallery than a law office. No plaques, diplomas, or other badges of honor cluttered the cherry-paneled walls. Peyton took that as a good sign. In her experience, the true leaders in any profession didn’t substitute résumés for wallpaper.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Tony, emerging from his office.
The introductions were quick. As Peyton rose to shake his hand, she realized that she had seen him interviewed a few months ago on the evening news, where he’d come across as hard and serious. In person he exuded more of a relaxed confidence, casual but stylish, dressed in an Armani jacket, dark blue shirt, and slightly darker blue tie, very unlike the pinstripes, white shirts, and berry ties that seemed to be the required uniform at Kevin’s firm. He was taller than expected and more handsome than she remembered from television. Peyton would have guessed he’d just returned from vacation, the way his perfect white teeth played off the suntan. She returned his smile, though under the circumstances hers was forced.
“How’s the novel coming?” asked Tony.
“That’s a whole ’nother story,” said Kevin.
He glanced at Peyton and said, “Kevin was good enough to buy me a few lunches in exchange for some insights into criminal lawyering while he was writing his book.”
“I know. He told me what a great help you were.”
“All I did was tell war stories.”
“So I guess that means Kevin knows all your tricks.”
Tony was still smiling, but the ego was showing. “Not by a long shot.”
He stepped aside to let them enter first. Peyton noticed an old brass plaque posted on the office door that read CONFESSIONS DAILY 7–9.
“Cute,” said Peyton.
“Oh, that. I took my little niece down to St. Anthony’s for confession a few months ago and saw it in the vestibule. I had to have it.”
“You stole from a church?”
He shrugged impishly, as if that were a gray area. “I said two Hail Marys and dropped a hundred bucks in the poor box. It all comes out in the wash.”
“Not where I do my laundry,” she said, only half kidding.
“Peyton,” said Kevin, groaning.
“It’s okay. Your wife’s not a wallflower. I like that. Especially in such an attractive woman.”
The remark seemed innocent but still was out of place. She and Kevin seated themselves in two chrome and leather director’s chairs that faced the lawyer’s desk with an impressive view of Boston harbor in the distance. The desk was an unusual piece, an ultramodern design that consisted only of a kidney-shaped sheet of beveled glass resting on three narrow columns of polished granite. It looked as though it might fall over at the slightest touch, so Peyton didn’t dare get too close or even breathe too heavily.
His secretary appeared in the open doorway. “Excuse me, Mr. Falcone. There’s a reporter on line two.”
All three of them shot a look, as if to ask, Already?
“It’s about the police kickback case,” she clarified.
Tony reached for the phone on his desk, then apparently thought better of talking to the press about a client in front of new ones. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said, then stepped out.
As they waited, Peyton watched a ship pass in the harbor, a tiny toy boat from this high up. Kevin was fiddling with a creepy little thing he’d found on Tony’s desk. It looked like a dried apple with a long wisp of hair, then Peyton realized it was a shrunken head—phony, she hoped. Probably a memento from some exotic vacation. Or his last jury trial.
“Do you really think this guy’s the best?” she asked quietly.
“No.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Because he’s the best we can afford.”
“What are you saying, he’s the trial lawyer equivalent of an HMO?”
“Only if your HMO charges a hundred grand up front, satisfaction not guaranteed.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Welcome to the real world, Doctor. Criminal law is as real as it gets.”
Tony returned and closed the door. “Okay, let’s get started,” he said as he took his place behind the desk. “I want you two to tell me everything. Start at the beginning of the world if you have to.”
“It’s interesting you say that,” said Peyton. “After watching all those courtroom dramas on television, I was under the impression that criminal defense lawyers didn’t want to know everything.”
“Depends on the lawyer. Some do, some don’t.”
Kevin said, “I think there’s a larger, legitimate concern that Peyton is trying to articulate.”
“I understand,” said Tony, speaking more to Peyton now. “Too much knowledge about the facts might make some lawyers feel constrained as to the type of defense they can present at trial. For example, if the client says she was home alone sleeping in her own bed the night of the crime, the lawyer might be nervous about calling an alibi witness to the stand who wants to testify that the defendant was out all night dancing with her at the clubs.”
“Exactly,” said Kevin. “It creates an ethical dilemma.”
“Yes, but only for the lawyer who actually remembers everything his client tells him.”
There was silence, then Tony cracked a smile. “I’m kidding. Lighten up, you two.”
Peyton forced a nervous smile.
“Look,” said Tony. “I’m a straight shooter, totally. It’s my job to put the best spin on the facts if and when we present them to a jury. It’s not your job to filter the information that flows between us in the privacy of my office. So tell me exactly what happened. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Peyton, why don’t you start?”
“I think I’ll let Kevin tell it. I’ll fill in what he leaves out.”
“Fine with me,” said Tony.
“It really all began last winter,” she heard Kevin say, though she wasn’t fully listening. Tony was taking notes on his legal pad, seeming to get every word. She hoped he had spoken the truth about being a straight shooter, but that earlier crack about his convenient memory was gnawing at her. Maybe it was humorous between lawyers, but for her it was less than reassuring. And what kind of guy steals from a church?
She forced herself to stay focused on Kevin’s narrative, not quite sure what to make of the esteemed Tony Falcone.
40
KEVIN WAS JUST MI
NUTES INTO THE STORY, AND ALREADY PEYTON had filled more holes than a road-repair crew. Her first thought was that he was awfully forgetful of the important details, followed by her rising suspicions that he was intentionally holding things back from their lawyer, culminating in her unsettling realization that there were plenty of things that for one reason or another she simply hadn’t told her husband. Likewise, there were things he had never told her, including the single red rose he’d found outside their doorstep after her car accident, the heckler at the bookstore, and the dedication page in his manuscript on which someone had scrawled the threatening message, She’s spoken for, asshole.
After about the tenth time one of them looked at the other and said, “You never told me that,” Tony laid his notepad on the desktop and offered an assessing look.
“Do you two know each other?” he asked facetiously. “Kevin, meet Peyton Shields. Peyton, Kevin Stokes.”
It took a solid hour to get through the entire history, followed by another fifteen minutes of follow-up questions by their lawyer. At the end of it all, Tony leaned back in his chair, thinking for a solid minute in silence. Finally, he said, “You know what I think?”
“We’re crazy?” said Peyton.
He shrugged, as if that went without saying. “Let’s cogitate like the district attorney for a minute. Let’s assume he has both of you in his crosshairs. A pretty safe assumption, given the fact that the body was found in the trunk of your car and the police showed up today at your apartment with a warrant for your gun. Here’s one possible theory. First, Peyton cheated on Kevin and slept with Gary Varne. Agreed?”
“Not agreed,” said Peyton. “I didn’t sleep with the guy.”
“I’m not talking about reality,” said Tony. “I’m trying to figure out how the prosecutor will shape the facts at hand into a story with real jury appeal.”
“Maybe he won’t be quite as focused on adultery as you think,” said Kevin.
“Are you kidding me? I’m being gentle here, using all the nice euphemisms like affair and cheating. Wait till the prosecutor gets into the act and, even worse, the press. It’ll be reduced to its basest element. A hot, young stud thrusting himself into the loins of another man’s wife, a stranger ejaculating into the very canal through which the children of this once happy union should have entered the world. I’m not trying to be crude, I just want you to be ready.”
“We’ll be ready,” said Peyton. “So long as our own lawyer is careful to distinguish between perception and reality.”
“For some prosecutors perception is reality. So point one of the government’s case is this: Peyton and Gary do the deed. After that, pretty much everything is a matter of conjecture, but if I’m a prosecutor I see it this way. Peyton tries to break off the relationship. Varne starts harassing her. He pesters her at work, steals her computer from the library. When it’s finally clear that Peyton is done with him, he threatens to tell Kevin about the affair and blackmails her. Faced with the blackmail, Peyton confesses all to her husband. Are you with me so far?”
They nodded. Tony continued, “The blackmail backfires on Varne. After the confession, Kevin wants him dead. Peyton wants her husband back, so she goes along with the plan. The end result is that either Peyton or Kevin shoots Varne with Peyton’s gun. One or both of you put the body in the trunk for disposal. Peyton is driving to the wharf to dump it when she’s finally overcome with guilt over what she’s done. She parks the car and swallows sleeping pills to kill herself. Fortunately for her, the police find her in time and take her to the hospital.”
“What about the kidnapping?” asked Peyton.
“Never happened,” said Tony. “Later, with the help of their attorney, the defendants concoct a sensational story that Gary Varne was kidnapped and that some mysterious man in a ski mask abducted Peyton and framed her for Gary’s murder.”
“He’ll say we just made it up?” asked Peyton.
“Plagiarized yourselves is an even better way to put it. The blackmail, the kidnapping, the whole implausible defense mirrors the plot in Kevin’s novel, a work of fiction. It is a curious coincidence, don’t you think?”
Kevin asked, “Are you playing devil’s advocate, or does Tony Falcone think it’s a curious coincidence too?”
“Too early to pass judgment.”
“What about the guy in the ski mask who was hiding in Peyton’s car? That’s not in my novel. Doesn’t that sway you?”
“Did you tell the police about that?”
“No. Peyton told me about it when she regained consciousness in the emergency room. Two seconds later the cops were telling us about a body in the trunk of her car. My instincts told me we should see a lawyer before we start talking.”
“Good instincts.”
“Shouldn’t we tell them now?” asked Peyton.
“I’ll help you with that. You shouldn’t be talking directly to the police at this point. They’ll eat you for lunch.”
“Are you going to tell them about the kidnapping—Gary Varne’s kidnapping, I mean.”
“Problem is, if we tell them about that kidnapping, we also have to tell them you were being blackmailed. That’s dicey.”
“It’s a frame-up. Why not scream it at the top of our lungs?”
“Because in my opinion the prosecutor will believe only half of what you say. He won’t accept that Gary Varne was kidnapped. It’s too much like Kevin’s book. But he will believe that you were being blackmailed, and then he’ll twist your words into a theory that Gary Varne was the blackmailer. Once Varne is cast as a blackmailer, that gives you a serious motive to kill him in a planned and deliberate fashion. Without that element, the case has more of an aura of jealous rage than premeditation, more suitable for the lesser charge of manslaughter than first-degree murder.”
“So you want us to keep our defense to ourselves?”
“For now. Let’s wait and see if the prosecutor knows anything about blackmail before we tell him.”
Kevin shook his head, grimacing. “I respect your judgment, but I don’t see how putting the prosecutor to the test benefits us.”
“It doesn’t,” said Peyton, her eyes narrowing. “I think the test is for our lawyer’s benefit. He wants to know if we’re lying to him.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” said Tony.
“I’m not sure I follow it,” said Kevin.
“If I was being blackmailed by an old boyfriend, only three people on the planet knew anything about it. Two of them are in this room. The other one is now dead.”
“That’s a certainty.”
“But if Gary Varne really was kidnapped, there was obviously a fourth person involved—the kidnapper. So if Kevin and I keep our mouths shut and still the prosecutor starts talking about blackmail, we know he must have a source. It’s probably anonymous, and by process of elimination it has to be the kidnapper. That would satisfy our lawyer that there was a kidnapping and that we’re being framed.”
Tony was silent, then smiled thinly. “You’re a very suspicious person, Doctor.”
“And you’re more transparent than you think,” she replied.
Her tone wasn’t hostile, but Kevin was visibly uncomfortable with the way she was challenging Tony. “I don’t know if Peyton is right or not,” he said. “But how soon till we find out if the prosecutor has any information about blackmail?”
“If he isn’t explicit about it from the get-go, he’ll tip his hand soon enough. For example, he could subpoena your bank records to check for large cash withdrawals in the few days before the murder. I assume that would turn up nothing, since you two agreed not to pay the ransom.”
“That’s right,” said Peyton.
Kevin coughed. “Well, uh, that’s not exactly right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I—” he paused, struggling. “I withdrew money from our brokerage account.”
“What?”
He was speaking to Peyton but looking at the floor. “I refused to pay
because I thought Varne was blackmailing us. By the second day, part of me started to worry that maybe he really was kidnapped and maybe the kidnapper would turn violent against us if we stonewalled him. So just in case, I withdrew the money.”
Peyton glared. “For two days you let me agonize over the possible consequences of refusing to pay the ransom. And now you’re telling me that you had the money in hand and were ready to pay it.”
“Only if I thought you were in danger.”
“Damn it, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. Not until I knew…”
He stopped, but she finished it for him. “Knew that I was willing to let Gary die?”
He didn’t answer.
Peyton said, “Is that how you intended to satisfy yourself that I didn’t sleep with Gary Varne, that I didn’t have feelings for him?”
He lowered his head and said, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Peyton looked away, not quite believing him. It was suddenly quiet enough to hear the breeze from the air-conditioning vents.
Tony broke the silence. “Well, that was enlightening. Why don’t we all take a break. Get some coffee, get some air, maybe one of us get a new lawyer.”
“What?” the clients said in unison.
“I’ve seen enough to know I can’t represent you both, not even at this preliminary stage. Eventually you would need separate counsel, so you might as well do it now. Kevin, you’ve seen it enough in civil practice. We’ll mount a joint defense, cooperate at every stage of the case. But each of you needs your own lawyer looking out for your own interest. Before you kill each other.”
She glanced at Kevin, then at Tony. “Who do you recommend I retain?”
“Me,” said Tony.
“What?” said Kevin.
“You’re a perfect match for my wife. She’s a tough former prosecutor who can handle a lawyer as a client. You’ll love her.”
Kevin seemed deflated, like the kid not picked in a round of playground basketball. “Well, if that’s your recommendation.”
“It is.”
“When can I meet her?”
Lying with Strangers Page 20