Fox is Framed

by Lachlan Smith

  “We didn’t leak it.” I was as shocked as he was. “We wouldn’t have.”

  I clicked on the story that accompanied the picture. The text stated that the paper had obtained, from an anonymous source, the photo and the e-mail it had been attached to, sent to Eric Gainer’s official account. It was the same one he’d showed me: You’ve been a very bad boy, Eric, and I know all about it. Now will you follow my instructions? Keep ignoring me, and you’ll get what Russell got.

  The source evidently hadn’t given the reporter any information to go with them. The article could only point out the obvious: that someone appeared to have been blackmailing Eric Gainer after Bell’s death. The identities of the girls in the photograph were unknown, as were their whereabouts.

  “Crowder leaked it?” Lawrence asked when I’d finished reading.

  “Maybe. Then tomorrow she can come into court, pretend to be shocked.” But I had a better guess about who’d done the leaking. It’d been the same person who’d put the picture online, no doubt. The girl who’d taken me to the house on the coast—Lucy’s friend.

  If the DA could show that the person who’d sent the e-mail was my father, we were in trouble. In the absence of such proof, however, the leak of these documents only muddied the water, and possibly worked to our benefit, since it gave us the opportunity to portray Eric Gainer as a man with a hidden motive for employing Russell Bell. If the e-mail was genuine, it strongly suggested that the person who’d sent it had been the one who’d killed Bell.

  I went across the hall to Nina’s office. “I just saw it,” she said, scrolling down the website on her desktop. She was furious, convinced Crowder had been the one to leak the photo. “It won’t get them anywhere,” she assured me. “They can’t lay a foundation to introduce the e-mail or the photo into evidence. They can’t show that it has anything to do with your father. Still, we need to be prepared to deal with it, in the unlikely event Judge Liu lets it in.”

  My father had followed me and stood in the doorway. With a glance at him, I reminded her I’d put copies of that picture all over town with my name and number on them. “We’ve got to be careful,” I told Nina. “Because where would I get the picture other than from him?”

  “Where did you get it?” Lawrence asked.

  I told them about Eric Gainer’s showing me the e-mail and blaming it on my father, then about the search I’d conducted for the file name, turning up the picture on a popular photo-sharing site. The silence as I spoke grew deadly. As I was talking, Nina called up the website again. “It’s not there now,” she told me. Whoever’d put it up had taken it down.

  “You’d better get home,” I told my father. “If Dot’s seen this, she’ll be worrying.”

  He nodded and went out, strangely silent, as if his fears had grown too weighty for words.

  “Be ready to testify if you have to,” Nina said to me when he was gone, her voice cold.

  When I walked out to the sidewalk ten minutes later my father was still there, straddling his bike, his helmet crooked over one elbow. He seemed to be waiting for me, but there was a settled heaviness in his limbs, as if he lacked the energy to move.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I have to try to do something about this,” I told him.

  “I was thinking I’d head over to Teddy’s. I can crash on the couch there, meet you in court tomorrow. Could be the kid’ll wake up screaming in the middle of the night, need someone to rock her.”

  “Dad,” I said. “Dot’s going to read that story tonight. She’s going to wonder what it means. Shouldn’t you be with her?”

  “I know I should, son. But some nights I just can’t bear it.”

  “You’ve got to try to bear it,” I told him. “She needs you. And you need her.”

  “That’s the part neither of us can stand. Because what we’ve figured out, see, is that needing and having are two different things, and having’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He pulled on his helmet, kicked the engine to life, and rode away, leaving me to ponder what he meant. Tomorrow he would testify, taking his fate into his own hands.

  I rode the BART back to Oakland, then drove to my office. Once there, I called Tanya. “I was wondering if you’d heard anything about that picture I asked you to show around.”

  “You mean the one that’s all over the news tonight. I’m not the one who gave it to them. I haven’t said a word.”

  “I didn’t think you had. I was just wondering if you’d had any results.”

  “No one’s called you?”

  “Just some crank calls,” I lied. If I ended up testifying, I’d have to make up my mind what to say about my visit to Mendocino. If asked a direct question, I wouldn’t lie, but it didn’t mean I’d volunteer facts. That I wouldn’t lie under oath didn’t mean I’d tell the truth to Tanya, however.

  “Someone I talked to, one of my girls, recognized one of those girls from the picture. I’m not saying who, ’cause if my girl doesn’t want to talk to you, she doesn’t have to. But she gave me a name. Sherrie. No last name, just Sherrie. She pointed me to an ad on Craigslist. I got a phone number.”

  “I want to talk to her,” I said.

  “So call her. I’ll give you the number.”

  I couldn’t do that. Sherrie, if that was really her name, had told me not to try to find her. “I’ll only get one chance at this. I don’t want to blow it.”

  “Is there anything in it for her? Anything she’d want, I mean?”

  “I’m not trying to get her in trouble, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You need my help again, you’re telling me.”

  I wasn’t going to beg. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I can set it up like a trick. I’ll tell her your regular girl left town, and someone recommended her. You can use one of my places. This way, Leo, if she doesn’t want to talk to you, at least you can get laid and she can make a buck.”

  “Getting laid is the last thing on my mind.”

  “You’ll have to pay her anyway. And me for the room. Let’s say an even six hundred.”

  I’d figured she’d only be helping me because she’d seen an opportunity to turn a small profit, so I wasn’t surprised. “You don’t even know who she is, what she charges.”

  “I’m in business, Leo. Think of this as a professional courtesy on my part. Or would you rather owe me a favor?”

  She was right. Best to keep the books clear. “Set it up. Six hundred.”

  “No promises,” she said and ended the call.

  ~ ~ ~

  I thought of calling Eric before I drove over there, then decided against it. After that article in the paper, I doubted he’d be anywhere but home, nursing his wounded reputation.

  I drove into the city to his neighborhood and parked half a block from his house. Lights shone in the upstairs windows. I sat watching the house for a few minutes, still unsure how to play my approach. As I waited, the garage door swung up and a black Porsche 911 backed out. Jackson was at the wheel.

  The garage door remained open; I waited until the car turned the corner, then pulled into the spot. Eric stood with his arms crossed in the entrance. “I can’t talk to you,” he said as I got out.

  “Why, just because you’re listed as a witness for the prosecution?”

  “You know the rules. You have to contact me through my lawyer. And you know what he’ll tell you. You might as well just turn around and go.”

  “I’m not here to talk about the case.”

  He stood for a moment, visibly torn, then punched the button to lower the garage door. “Fine. Want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Wordlessly he took two Stellas from the fridge. Evidently I didn’t merit the top-shelf stuff anymore. “You must have seen the papers today.”

  “Ah. So you’re here to apologiz
e, to tell me that it’s all part of the adversarial system, smearing my character, meaning I’m not supposed to take it personally. Well, don’t worry. I don’t. That’s my lawyer’s job. In any case, this will pass, and in a few years, when I’m in Sacramento, or maybe even Washington, no one will remember a thing.”

  “I didn’t leak the picture.”

  “That’s not what Jackson thinks. Anyway, you told me you weren’t going to talk about your father’s case, and now we are. You know as well as I do that your father sent me that picture, that he’s been the one who was blackmailing me.”

  “I know what happened at George Chen’s house.” I’d checked the property records and put a name to the owner of the Mendocino house. Chen was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’d contributed the maximum each election cycle to Eric Gainer’s campaigns. He’d also underwritten a number of Gainer’s pet causes, including a highly successful program to keep at-risk kids in school. “George’s in China. He’s opening his firm’s Beijing office, but he left you a key and the use of his house. I’ve been there. I’ve been inside. It’s a great place to bring girls without the risk of someone snapping a photo. Except that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what your father thinks. Ask him.”

  “He couldn’t be the blackmailer, because he doesn’t know anything about your having pushed Lucy Rivera off the railing when you were drunk. He also doesn’t know what happened to the other girl in the picture. Sherrie. The witness.”

  Eric sank into a chair. I saw by the look on his face that as far as he believed, both girls were dead, and that he hadn’t thought it possible that anyone still living could know about his crimes. “Russell told his lies to your father,” he said. “That’s where you got this.”

  “There’s no question in my mind that Bell deserved what he got,” I continued, ignoring him. “If he’d lived, he’d own you.”

  Eric tilted his head back, gazing at me with shock and understanding. “I won’t testify. I’ll tell them I changed my mind, like I did when they wanted to retry Russell.”

  “You can delay things by not taking the stand tomorrow, but eventually it’s all going to come out. The question is who’s going to tell it?”

  “Or rather, will the person telling it be believed?”

  “Oh, I think so. This photo’s just the tip of the iceberg. They haven’t found Lucy’s body yet. I took a look over the railing while I was at Chen’s. There’s a shelf of rock about a hundred yards down. Russell wouldn’t have left her there, but he knew better than to get rid of the body like he promised you and Jackson. Nobody would have believed him unless he could show a corpse.”

  Eric looked me in the eye. “Okay. If that’s how you want to play it, she’s in the freezer at Chen’s. At least, that’s what Russell told me, when he revealed who she was, how he’d corrupted her. Made her into the perfect victim. He bragged to me that he could give her a knife and tell her to cut herself, and she’d do it. I haven’t looked in the freezer for myself. I haven’t been out there since that night, and I don’t intend to go back. Is that what you wanted to know? I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t know who she was. That part, at least, wasn’t my fault.”

  His guilt was devastatingly simple, and his surrender far too easy. He was calling my bluff, the only thing he could do. “Bell was blackmailing you.”

  “You could say the mask came off. He had a hold on me and he wasn’t going to let go. It wasn’t about money. It was hatred. Revenge. Gary Coles was dead but I was still alive. He set out, step by step, to tear away the foundation of my life, of my success, by re-creating his crime and then completing it as he hadn’t managed to do the first time. He found a way to get his hooks into Lucy again, and then he used her to have his revenge on me. She was an addict, and I think mentally ill. By the time he brought her to me, Russell had her completely under his control.”

  It was almost like he was trying to persuade himself that she was better off dead. “You went to Jackson with your problem.”

  “I didn’t have to. Your father took care of it for me.”

  “I can see how you’d prefer believing that to accepting that Jackson had Russell murdered. But don’t you see, someone’s been playing us both?”

  “Call the police. Tell them where to find the body, if you really think it’s there. Because I’m not going to be blackmailed again. Not by your father, not by you. If you think you’re going to turn the focus of this trial on me and my brother, blame us for your father’s situation, it’s going to backfire. You have to understand, Leo, that I’ll do anything to protect my family, and my brother will do the same. You of all people ought to know where I’m coming from on that.”

  “My concern’s defending my father, not causing more problems for you.”

  “That’s what I thought. So far I’ve been keeping out of the way. But if I have to, I’ll testify that your father was blackmailing me. He’d gotten hold of that photograph and was accusing me of murder. Maybe he and Russell were working together. You know these criminal partnerships often end badly, especially when one of the partners decides to testify against the other. And I’ll also testify that your father threatened Russell, according to what he told me.”

  “So it’s Gary Coles all over again.”

  Eric picked up the beer I’d left on the counter and poured it in the sink. “You want a shot at me, then take it in court. Or call the police tonight. We can even call them now, together. I’ve spent enough sleepless nights wondering whether there’s really a body in George’s freezer. I’m ready to bet that the whole thing was a lie, cooked up by Lucy and Russell to shake me down, then picked up on by your father. She wasn’t Lucy anymore, you know, not when I met her. To her, that person had ceased to exist.” Again, he seemed on the verge of rationalizing her death. “You’ll have egg on your face, and I’ll be safe on the road to the state assembly or the governor’s mansion, and I’ll be done with people like you and your father forever.”

  He stared me down, his uncertainty betrayed by a twitch of the eyelid.

  “I’ll see you in court tomorrow,” I told him. “Thanks for the beer.”

  Chapter 18

  My phone rang an hour or so later, as I was gazing at my reflection in my office window, trying to summon my mind back from the brink of exhaustion. In an effort to focus my thoughts, I was going over my notes and composing an e-mail to Nina with bullet points, as I’d done every evening during the trial.

  I hadn’t called the cops about Eric. I’d never intended to, and I could only hope that my visit to him tonight wouldn’t backfire. If the DA learned of my visit, it might be portrayed as an improper attempt to influence his testimony, particularly if he called my bluff and there was no body.

  I’d begun to question all my assumptions about the case. Despite all that I’d learned, I felt that we were no closer to pinning down Russell Bell’s killer. Instead of answers, I’d only succeeded in broadening the field of questions. For a defense attorney, that typically was good enough, but I wasn’t looking at the situation as a defense lawyer might. I needed to know who killed Bell. The ringing phone jarred me back to the moment.

  “Hey,” Jeanie said when I answered. “I’m at your brother’s.”

  Because neither my father nor Teddy could be there, Jeanie had been playing the role of surrogate nanny during the trial, checking in on Tamara to see if she needed anything. Debra had planned to be there with her, but a chronic foot problem had flared up two days ago and she hadn’t been able to leave home.

  “I only meant to stop by for a few minutes. I’m sitting outside in my car.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Carly and Tamara are both sick, and Tam hasn’t been keeping up her baby log. The baby’s been having diarrhea. Tam says she nursed earlier, but it’s not in the log. You know how she is, Leo. She’ll never admit she can’t remember. Your dad
’s here, and he’s freaking out. He thinks Carly needs to be in the ER.”

  “What do you think?”

  “If your father hadn’t been here, I’d have just thought she was sick. Do I think she needs to go to the ER tonight, as opposed to waiting until the pediatrician’s office opens tomorrow? I don’t know.”

  “Great. How am I supposed to know if you don’t?”

  “Leo, I don’t want to be in the middle of this. Teddy’s no help. I know you’re in trial, but you really need to be here.”

  “Fine,” I told her, realizing there was no other choice. “I’m on my way.”

  I sent an e-mail to Nina letting her know I’d be out of pocket for a while. Half an hour later I pulled up in front of Teddy’s house. I heard the baby crying from outside. Jeanie and Tamara were in the front room. Tamara was trying to nurse the baby, but Carly wasn’t having any of it. Her skin looked yellowish. As I entered, Tamara thrust Carly at Jeanie and hurried to the bathroom.

  “Some intestinal thing,” Jeanie said. “Carly seems to have it worse than Tam does.”

  In the kitchen Teddy sat propped on a stool. Our father was pacing. “Leo,” he said, turning to me as I came in. “God knows I’m not trying to step on Tam’s toes. I’m just concerned about the child.”

  Teddy wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “She was having diarrhea earlier, judging by the state of the diaper pail, but now she’s stopped,” Lawrence continued. “That’s a very bad sign.”

  I turned to Teddy. “Do you agree?”

  He nodded. I could see how hard it was for him to admit that something had gone wrong. “Tam and the baby started feeling sick last night. Debra was supposed to be here but she couldn’t come. We put a call into the doctor’s after-hours line. They say take her in.”