Murder Made Legal: A Casey Alton Mystery

by Richard Wren

  Josie had put the phone on speaker mode and Casey had heard everything. “Tell him we’re on our way,” he ordered.

  “Got it, Dad, we’re coming.”

  Casey was used to being solely in command as a captain, and he assumed that mantel immediately as he started issuing orders.

  “Start buttoning the boat up and pack your bags; we’re going to leave her here. I’m calling to get a chopper flight to Long Beach ASAP.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “The flight’s only fifteen minutes, but they may have to fly over here first. Even so, we should be in Long Beach in a couple of hours either way. Then we’ll catch the first flight available to Oakland. We should get there by midafternoon.”

  It only took a few minutes to throw a few clothes together, secure the boat, and make arrangements with the harbor master for an extended emergency stay. When they arrived at the small airport, they were advised that the chopper was on its way from Long Beach, ETA about thirty minutes. While they were waiting, he called Jet Blue and made reservations for a one hour and twenty-minute flight to Oakland leaving shortly before 4 pm.

  “I’ll call Dad and tell him we should be there by six thirty.” Josie said. She talked to him for a few minutes.

  “What did he say?” Casey asked.

  “He said it was something about a murder a long time ago.”

  With her experience in the D.A.’s office, Josie jumped to a conclusion. “From what he said, I think it has to be about re-examining an old case where there was evidence of something before DNA was accepted. That means, before nineteen eighty-six; that’s when DNA was first successfully used in a court case.”

  “Can’t you call your office and find out what’s going on?” queried Casey.

  “Maybe. The problem is the D.A. knows Smitty is my father and that Gus is his oldest friend and that I call him Uncle Gus. He heard about what Dad did last year, and he’s already warned me about getting involved in anything like that. I think he’s got a mindset against gangs of any sort. He sure won’t let me be on the case, and they may even preclude me from getting any information about it. I don’t know.”

  “I think you should try. Besides it seems normal to me that you’d want to know what’s going on about Gus. I think you should call your boss.”

  Josie snapped back at him. “You don’t know Gordon. There’s nothing normal about him,” she paused and thought for a second. “I’ll do it my way. I’ll call Marilyn. She probably knows everything going on.

  “Your secretary?”

  “Don’t you know? There are no secrets from secretaries.”

  “Josie?” was the immediate answer after only one ring. “I was sure glad to see your name pop up on the phone. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “You mean about Gus? Yeah, Dad called me. Can you talk?”

  “Not here. The boss said you’re off the case and we’re not supposed to talk to you about it.”

  “But?”

  “I just decided I need a coffee break. I think I’ll run down to Peets for a latte. I’ll probably take my cell phone with me just in case I get any private calls while I’m out. That okay with you?”

  “Sounds good. Ten minutes?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Ten minutes later, Marilyn answered the phone again on the first ring. “It isn’t good, Josie. They have what they think is indisputable evidence that places Gus at a murder site on an unsolved old murder case.”

  “I thought it had to be something like that. Do you know what the so-called evidence is?”

  “I sure do, but here’s where it gets scary for me. They’re sitting on what it is real tight. If it gets out you know what it is, they’ll be sure I was the source.”

  Josie thought for a moment. “I’m surprised they even let you in on it.”

  “They didn’t, at least not on purpose. When they first got the lab report and matched the DNA, it was all over the office. It wasn’t until Gus was arrested and the reporters started asking questions that they clamped down. That was when your boss called me in and warned me.”

  “Marilyn, I really appreciate what you’re doing, and I promise that no one will ever know how I found out. I’ll just say I called in before he warned you.”

  “Poor Gus. I heard he’s miserable in jail.”

  “Marilyn, I’m waiting for a helicopter to get us to the mainland and home ASAP, can’t you tell me what the evidence is?”

  Marilyn paused, carefully lowered her voice and whispered. “It’s a shirt with his blood on it. It’s been in an evidence bag for years. There were two shirts in the bag. One was the victims and only had the victim’s blood on it. The second shirt was found in the bathroom wadded up and abandoned and had someone else’s blood on it. They had no idea whose blood it was until a DNA test. They say the DNA matches his and proves he was there, and therefore he’s the murderer.”

  “All circumstantial.” Josie commentated. “Wait a moment. Was Gus’s blood the only blood on the shirt?”

  “Evidently. When they ID’d Gus, the boss was ecstatic, said he’d been trying to nail someone in that gang for years. I guess it wasn’t long before he thought about your possible relationship with Gus and told me to keep a lid on any info to you. I gotta go.”

  “Okay Marilyn. This conversation never happened, right? I’ll report in tomorrow when I’m back in Oakland. Bless you, Marilyn.

  She turned to Casey. “Not good news. My boss thinks he has an airtight case against Gus, and that’s scary. He doesn’t make many mistakes.

  Josie, for the first time, thought through the consequences of the charges against Gus. In spite of his bravado, he was a sensitive and thoughtful person. Being locked up would be a terrible hardship for him. To Casey, she said, “These damn DNA cases are hard to fight, and Uncle Gus wants me to be his attorney? I don’t think so. Good God, Casey, I really love that man. If I lost the case, Gus could end up in jail for life. I don’t think I could stand that. I’m really, really scared.” She shook her head in frustration.

  Casey, whose relationship with Smitty, Josie, and the whole gang only went back a year or two asked, “How old is Gus?”

  Josie dried her eyes. “I think he’s in his mid-seventies,” she replied. “But he won’t admit to it.”

  Casey continued, “But murder? I thought Gus had never been mixed up in any of the bad things the gang did. Somebody said he’d only been a con artist.”

  Half crying, half laughing, Josie replied. “First thing, Gus would sure object to your using the word only. Everybody says he’s the best, or at least he used to be. But you’re right, he never took part in the shootings or drug dealing the rest of the gang did.”

  “What about years ago, like before 1986? You weren’t even born yet.”

  “He told us once that he’d been an accountant for a short time, remember? But actually, I have no idea about his early life. He’s just always been there. Where Dad was, Gus was, except in jail. Dad’s kinda burly and rough around the edges, and Gus’s the complete opposite. Tall, impeccably dressed with a vest and a bow tie, extremely well spoken and gentle. The gang called them the odd couple.”

  They were interrupted in their mystery solving by the arrival of the helicopter pilot.

  “You the couple in a hurry to get to Oakland?”

  “That’s us.”

  “Trying to make a Jet Blue connection?”

  “Can we do it?”

  “Plenty of time if we get going now. You ready?” he asked, eyeing their light luggage.

  An hour later, they boarded the Jet Blue flight, and two hours after that, they rented a car and were on their way to Smitty’s home in the Oakland Hills.

  At the door, Smitty was just as Josie had expected, covering his anxiety about his oldest friend with blustering anger. “What the hell took you so long?” Josie asserted her experience as an assistant district attorney and took over. She went directly to the point as she pushed by him.

  “How come Uncle Gu
s is still in jail?”

  Smitty sagged and dejectedly shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t know for sure except for what the DA said to the reporters.” Josie noticed how tired he looked.

  “The reporters?”

  “Yeah. Just what I told you on the phone, something about solving an old murder.”

  Josie looked closely at her dad. His normally long, well-groomed hair was going in all directions, and his face was set in a grim expression. When he looked up at her, she was relieved that his normally frosty blue eyes were clear and focused. Josie grabbed his elbow and steered him to the breakfast table. “And that’s all you know?”

  “The only other thing we’ve heard came from a cop buddy of mine. Said he couldn’t talk about it but told me the DA told him they had an open and shut case against Gus; that’s all he said.”

  “Have you talked to Gus?”

  “He called right after he was arrested and said he wanted you to represent him.”

  “That’s all he said?”

  Smitty raised his head and glared at her. ‘Course not. He said he had no idea what they were talking about and that he was innocent. So what do we do?”

  Josie sat silent for a few moments as all eyes were on her. She couldn’t divulge what she had found out from Marilyn. Finally, she stood up and leaned forward with her knuckles on the table.

  “Okay. First, we don’t do anything. By that, I mean just what I say. You guys stay completely out of the way. The D.A.’s office already takes a dim view of the motorcycle gang. Any interference on your part would just muddy up the waters.”

  “But Josie, we know damn well Gus isn’t guilty of anything; he said he wasn’t,” Smitty forcefully interjected.

  “That’s enough, Dad,” Josey sharply retorted. “With all due respect, you don’t know a damn thing. We’ll assume that he’s innocent, and I’ll talk to him, not you. I can probably pull some strings at the office and find out what this’s all about. The problem is that the D.A. knows about Gus’s relationship with the gang, and he also knows about you being my father. He might not give me any info, and he certainly would keep me off the case, so you keep a low profile, got it?”

  Rebuffed by his daughter, Smitty threw his hands up in the air and sat down.

  Nobody said anything as Josie paused again for a long minute and was obviously thinking.

  “He really said he wanted me to be his attorney?”

  Defiantly, Smitty replied, “you know Gus. He thinks things through before he says them. He said he’d thought about it ever since they arrested him and he wanted you. Yes, he said he wanted you to be his attorney!”

  She paused again. “Okay. I need some time to think. You guys clear out. I’m going to use the kitchen as an office right now. I need to talk with my husband, and then I’ll call the jail to get a few things cleared up.”

  One by one, the guys left until only she, Smitty, and Casey were left.

  “What’s goin on?” Smitty demanded.

  With no hesitation, Josie snapped back at him. “What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on. Uncle Gus’s in trouble. He wants me to be his attorney. Nobody knows exactly why he’s being charged with murder and what the supposedly unassailable evidence is. I’m an assistant district attorney whose ass is already on the line because of you and your gang, and you guys expect me to pull a rabbit out of the hat. That’s what the problem is. I’ve got a lot of decisions to make, and I want to talk them over with my husband, is that okay with you?”

  Smitty wasn’t fazed. “What about me? Am I chicken soup or something? How about talking them over with me, too?”

  “Out, Dad. Leave. Vamoose. Go. Casey and I have to make a couple of life-changing decisions, and I don’t want you here trying to influence us.”

  Reluctantly, Smitty agreed, but couldn’t resist getting the last word in. “Okay. If you insist, but make it snappy; Gus needs you like yesterday, and we need to go see him.”

  Left alone, Casey put his hands on both of Josie’s shoulders and forcefully pushed her to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs. “Okay counselor, what’s going on? What’re the life-changing decisions we gotta make?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Josie answered with asperity, “You know it as well as I do. This whole thing puts me in an untenable position. It boils down to the fact that even if I wanted to, I can’t defend Gus and at the same time, keep my job at the District Attorney’s office. It has to be one or the other. On top of that, if I phone the D.A.’s office and use my position to officially find out about the supposed evidence, I’d be crossing a line.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “I, that is we, need to make a decision. Something I’ve been mulling around for a while anyway.”

  Casey was pretty sure where this was going, but he prodded her anyway. “And that is?”

  “Whether I stay with the District Attorney’s office or not? I didn’t expect to have to make a decision this quickly, but here it is. Do I defend Gus or stay with the D.A.’s office?”

  “And you want my opinion?”

  “More than that; I want this to be a joint decision. There’s a lot to consider. How about my income? How’ll we live without a steady paycheck? What about an office? Or a secretary? Or equipment and investigators? Or a librarian? I’d be up against the District Attorney and unlimited funds. If they have any type of case like they’ve insinuated they have, we’d have a huge problem. Like I said before, it’s real tough to defend against a DNA case. It might be that the only way to defend Gus is through some technicality, and it costs money to hire experts.”

  Casey didn’t hesitate. “Forget the money problems. We can make out somehow. What’s your gut say?”

  Josie stood up and paced. “My gut? My gut says Uncle Gus never murdered anyone and that somebody good should defend him.”

  “Like you?”

  “I don’t know. Can I be a good defense attorney? I’ve never prosecuted a murder case entirely on my own. The general practice is that at takes five years of courtroom experience to be qualified for that kind of a case. Am I good enough for Gus? For him it might be a life or death decision.”

  Casey cast his mind back to the few times he’d watched her in action in court.

  “You’ve won every case they gave you, and the defense attorneys you were up against weren’t slouches, right?”

  Slowly Josie answered, “Yes, but they weren’t murder cases. Against a top trial attorney like our D.A…?” She was silent for a moment while Casey gathered his thoughts.

  “Hang on a minute. Didn’t you assist in a couple of murder cases last year?” Without waiting for an answer he continued. “And didn’t you discuss the cases with me including the D.A.’s strategies?”

  “So what’s the point?”

  “You don’t remember being highly critical of his handling of the case and saying you thought you could do better?”

  Josie reluctantly nodded her head in agreement. “There was a lot of second guessing going on in the office.”

  “And he’s the best in the office?”

  “No question.”

  “So that’s the point. He’s the best they have, and you could pick out mistakes in his presentation. I think that your three years of experience outweighs the norm. You’re more than ready to take on murder cases. How about your secretary, what does she say about your ability to handle bigger cases?”

  Josie looked at Casey as if he was omnipotent. Then slowly, “She’s been with the D.A.’s office for over fifteen years, and she keeps telling me I’m the best she’s ever worked for. She’s more impatient for me than I am.”

  “So there you are. It’s your time! Right?” Casey stood up, took Josie’s hands in his, and waited in silence.

  Josie thought about that for a few seconds, then hugged Casey and said, “Alright, I’m for defending Gus!”

  “I second the motion, no argument. Now what?”

  Josie knew exactly what steps to take as she had m
entally rehearsed this scenario many times in her mind.

  “First I send an e-mail to Gordon tendering my resignation effective immediately.”

  “You call the District Attorney by his first name?” Casey was honestly shocked.

  “Sure. In the office, we’re really casual. Outside and for the public, we’re much more formal. It’s about the only human thing he’s done since he came on board. He said we had to work together as a team and first names in the office would help.”

  She stood up and started pacing while thinking out loud.

  “Actually, I think I respect him more than I like him. So for this purpose, I’ll address him by his formal title. Then, first thing in the morning, I’ll get in to see Gus and start sorting this thing out.”

  “So you’re going to be his attorney? No questions, no second thoughts?”

  “Honey, like Uncle Gus always told me ‘in for a dime, in for a dollar!’ We’re gonna get him outta that damn jail.”

  “What about the murder charge and no bail quotes?”

  “That has to be a big bluff. No way did Gus ever commit murder. You’ll see!”

  “That’s sure a big first, then what?”

  Josie had been percolating the idea for some time and was more than ready for his question.

  “Second, I see if Marilyn will join me as my secretary and office manager, and then I hire a really good investigator.”

  Casey had met Marilyn before and totally agreed with Josie about her. He wasn’t sure about an investigator.

  “Aren’t private investigators usually retired police and kind of expensive?”

  “I don’t want a retired policeman. The person I’m thinking of is uniquely qualified and should be pretty cheap.” Josie said, giving Casey a meaningful look.

  A double take later Casey laughed. “I should have known. Are you sure about that? The only experience I’ve had was last year against that bastard in El Cerrito.”