She thought of his fingers—graceful, long fingers— and his large hands, which spread so far across the keys. He played the fugues of Bach, those complex point and counterpoint melodies in which one series of notes fled from another... fugue, from the Latin word that meant "to flee."...
If she believed him, she would have to try to help him. At least she was clear about that.
She slipped her trembling hand inside her blouse, touched the smooth scar. She wasn’t sure she had the strength.
If she believed him, she would have to fight Riesner before she could even begin to help Kurt, and he would make sure she got hurt. Matt had reacted badly to the thought. He might even ask her to move. Paul ... she might lose Paul. Her legal practice would suffer. She would look foolish. Woman defends love-child’s father! What would it do to Bobby, who had reached such a vulnerable place in his development?
The tourists climbed back up the rocks, moved on. She was alone for the moment, facing the great body of water. The lake looked like a cauldron of blue energy, its emanations blurring the air above it, the mountains its protecting walls.
Could she even see the case clearly? If Kurt didn’t kill Terry, then someone else had, someone who might be connected with the film.... Funny, she’d never thought about the film this way, but Terry had essentially said in the film that a mass murderer haunted Tahoe. The notion had seemed half-baked-until now.
There might be danger. She wasn’t an Amazon, dagger in her belt, striding through the forest in search of a man-eating tiger. She was a mother.
What about her resolution to stay away from criminal cases?
And... what if she believed him, and lost the case? How could she live with that?
Could he be lying, his story a clever and self-serving appeal to her sympathy? What if she won, and he had lied? What about Bobby? Would he be safe? Was he safe now only because Kurt didn’t know about him, and was imprisoned? If Kurt learned about his son, what would happen then?
If he was lying, and had killed Terry, and Nina found out later... she would be destroyed emotionally. He still had the power to do that to her.
The reasons against taking over the defense were so strong—how could anything outweigh them?
The reasons to help him were so small, lost in the din of warnings in her mind. Maybe—just maybe—he was innocent and she could save Bobby’s father. Then, one day, they could meet, Bobby and his father, Bobby complete at last, Kurt given an amazing gift that would make up for so much....
Really, the reasons for fighting for Kurt came down to a boy saying, please, Mom, you have to help him ...small reasons. A tiny chance for the three of them to be ... happy? Could they go back twelve years and start over, even if Kurt was free? Did she really dare to think that thought?
Strange how that thought of the three of them together spread like cool water across her mind, filled the gaps of doubt, moistened and soothed the dust of her dread. It tugged gently in the corners where her strengths lurked, the intelligence, the courage, the obstinate will to find the truth. It drew these strengths out, cleared the muddiness from her mind.
This was the challenge, affecting her life so intimately, that she had been preparing for all these years, without even knowing it. She couldn’t walk away from this.
Over an hour had gone by. She was stiff. Her foot had gone to sleep. She moved it gingerly, enduring the prickles, eyes still fastened on the lake.
She had come clear. She would fight.
First, Jeffrey Riesner.
Several of Riesner’s clients had switched to her, probably because she was cheaper, hopefully because she was better. Riesner charged two hundred dollars an hour plus costs, very stiff for the working community here in the mountains. Nina often agreed to a flat fee for her services, which made the clients happy, as they could call her with questions without having to worry about the clock ticking. Of course, after office and other expenses, she sometimes found herself working for a few bucks an hour.
Nevertheless, Riesner had lost several clients to her and that was only adding fuel to his antagonism.
And now she had decided to give Riesner a doozy to complain about. She couldn’t help Kurt unless she took control of his defense.
Wasn’t it unethical to blatantly steal a client? And who’d ever heard of a lawyer taking a case in which she was likely to be a witness?
This lawyer needed a lawyer, one who specialized in that jumble of ambiguous rules and regulations known as legal ethics.
Back at the office, she talked to a potential new client and turned him down. She had remembered that there was a hotline to the California State Bar, where a lawyer could call anonymously and receive advice on legal ethics.
Ordinarily, Nina stayed away from the California State Bar. Its official function was to support the legal community in California. But it seemed to her, as to many other lawyers, that ninety percent of its activities involved punishing lawyers, and the other ten percent involved reporting the public reprovals, suspensions, disciplines, and disbarments in the State Bar newspaper. Each month she read the details of the downfalls of dozens of her colleagues, hoping she wouldn’t recognize any of the names. The State Bar was like the tax man: capricious, confiscatory, and unavoidable.
Yet there was this one service from which she could receive the help of anonymous, free advice from the people who ought to know. And she faithfully paid the State Bar four hundred seventy-five dollars a year in dues. Now was a good time to see if her professional organization would put its mouth where its money was.
Closing the door, she looked up the number in San Francisco. The phone rang a long time, and then she was put on hold. Finally, a cordial male voice said, "Hi, State Bar."
"I’d like to be transferred to your professional responsibility hotline." It ought to be called the deep-shit hotline, the place lawyers called when they were sued by disgruntled clients, arrested for drunken driving, or under investigation for dipping into the client trust fund.
"Are you an attorney with us?"
"Yes."
"Certainly, counselor." She deeply distrusted the cheer in the operator’s voice.
A new voice came on, this one exactly what she had expected: impatient, world-weary, suspicious. A woman.
"Hotline."
"I’d, uh, like to ask a couple of questions regarding professional ethics. If that’s possible."
"You’ll have to leave your name and number, and someone will call you back."
Leave her name and number? What about anonymity? But such was the authority in the telephone voice, that Nina meekly stated her identity, then said, "When, uh, may I expect a return call?"
"Today," the voice said, and hung up. She hung up, too, wishing she had never called.
She stood at her lakeside window, looking out at Mount Tallac, some granite showing through the melting snow at its lower elevations. A few miles farther around the lake, in the northwesterly direction she was looking, was Emerald Bay, out of sight around a curve, and behind it, Fallen Leaf Lake. She hadn’t been out to the summer rental cabin where she had been staying when she met Kurt since she moved to Tahoe.
Sandy came in with a pile of papers. "For you to proof and get back to me by four-thirty, so I can make copies and send them out."
Sandy rescheduled her late-afternoon appointment in Carson City. Nina imagined troubled lawyers all across California, waiting all afternoon for their special phone call, missing court appearances, house closings, settlement meetings. She thought about the State Bar calling everyone back long distance. She thought about her bar dues.
But when Sandy’s buzz came at four forty-five she had a moment of panic. She had voluntarily brought her otherwise obscure self to the attention of the regulator of 150,000 California lawyers, the mysterious powerful presence that meted out justice and punishment to those who feared nothing else, That Which Disbars. "Thank you for returning my call," she said in a humble tone.
"My pleasure, Ms. Reilly. How can
I help you?" said a confident young female voice, serene and unsettling. Why was it so placid? What calamitous news did it regularly report in that soothing tone?
"I have a couple of minor little, er, hypothetical questions for you," Nina said.
"Certainly."
"Okay, let’s assume I want to represent somebody in a criminal case, but it’s possible I may be a witness in the case. I don’t really think I should be called, I have no direct knowledge, but the prosecutor might think I know something relating to motive or, uh, the res gestae. You know, the stuff that happened the day before, the defendant’s movements and so forth. Am I making myself clear? You could maybe look up for me—"
"Lawyer as witness," the inhumanly confident voice said. "Ms. Reilly, I would refer you to Rule 5-210 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Generally, a lawyer may not represent a client if it is likely that the lawyer would be called as a witness in the same matter."
"Oh." Shot down already...
"However, the third exception to the Rule may be of interest to you, Ms. Reilly. A lawyer may represent a client and also serve as a witness, so long as the client has given informed prior written consent."
"Oh!"
"Your second question?"
"Uh, yes, this is all hypothetical, you understand, of course—"
"Of course, Ms. Reilly. Your second question?" Nina felt the sense of a tremendous time pressure, as if the voice was so superbly valuable, not a moment nor a syllable could be wasted. Perhaps her clients felt a little of that sometimes, dealing with her.
"Well, let’s say I want to represent this same client, but he’s already represented by counsel. The client wants to switch. I know there’s some kind of rule about soliciting the other guy’s client—"
"Indeed. Rule 5-2100. You are prohibited from communicating with a person already represented by counsel upon the subject of representation."
Nina waited. She was learning. Bad news, then good news.
"However, you might wish to consult the exception at paragraph C, subparagraph 2. Communications initiated by a represented party seeking advice regarding representation from another independent attorney are not prohibited."
"So long as the client initiates the discussion about changing lawyers," Nina said. "I understand."
"You should be aware that the State Bar does not give legal advice, it merely provides information as to the content of the Rules referred to," the voice said. "Would you like me to cite some cases on the points mentioned?"
"No, thank you," Nina said. "You’ve been most helpful."
"The State Bar is here to serve you," said the State Bar. Nina guiltily enjoyed for a moment the feeling of power that all those dues multiplied by all those lawyers brought. With so much money, the lawyers could all move to their own litigious little island and leave the rest of the world alone.
She made a note or two beside the doodle she had drawn of a nervous little man stretching out his hands toward a fat, complacent, dangerous gorilla. Her stomach was growling. She was wondering if the State Bar had taped the phone call. She was in some computer data file now. Her questions had been duly noted and could be recalled.
The flip side of the coin was that she could prove she’d called the State Bar before she did what she was going to do. She had covered her rear, and the State Bar’s attempt to cover its own rear there at the end of the call, with its disclaimer that it was providing legal information only, was patently absurd. Or so she would argue if it ever came up.
Of such paranoid reflections are the thoughts of lawyers made.
18
SHE CALLED THE JAIL. THEY HAD EVENING VISITING hours.
After dinner she went to see Kurt again. Time to set the wheel in motion. "Nina Reilly to see Kurt Scott," she said to the intercom.
A pause. "It says here that Jeff Riesner’s his lawyer."
"I’m just visiting again."
"If you say so, Ms. Reilly." He buzzed her in. She wondered if Jeff Riesner knew she had been to see Kurt.
A few minutes later, in the visitors’ cubicle once again, she looked through the glass at Kurt Scott. He looked as apprehensive as she felt.
"How are you?" he said.
"Thinking hard."
"I didn’t expect you back, matter of fact."
"I had to decide if I believed you or not."
"My lawyer doesn’t, so why should you?"
"Your lawyer doesn’t know you."
His whole body relaxed slightly, and she could see how tightly he controlled himself, and how little slack he allowed.
"I tried to find you before, you know, a few years after I left Tahoe, during a time when I felt relatively safe. Those were years Terry was traveling in her work and didn’t have much time to devote to her hobby of hunting me and harassing everyone I knew. You were living in San Francisco, and I learned you were married."
"That’s nice, that you tried to keep track of me."
"But now I’m an interference in your life, one you’d just as soon had never arrived. Isn’t that true?"
"Absolutely," she said. "But here you are."
"Like mud on your shoe."
"Like a thunderstorm. If lightning doesn’t burn my house down, I’ll have an interesting garden."
So much remained unspoken between them. He knew her better than anyone, though their time together had been so short. Seeing that curvy-lipped smile again and his eyes lit up as they now were, she remembered acutely what he had been to her.
"How are they treating you?" Nina asked as casually as she could.
"I asked if I could bring in an electronic keyboard with headphones so I could practice. They’re afraid I’d make the keys into weapons."
"Oh, no."
"My hands miss the exercise. But I probably couldn’t make music here even if I tried."
"What about your life in Germany?"
"My job is gone. My landlord rented my apartment and put everything in storage. My other responsibilities are taken care of for the moment. I had only come out of hiding two years ago to play music again. Terry was fading from my mind. I thought she might have finally forgotten me, too, but I used another name, just in case."
"What’s the trial date?"
"July fifteenth. Mr. Riesner doesn’t think it’ll last more than two weeks."
"That’s only a couple of months away. Will you have enough time to get ready?"
"He says it’s a simple case. We haven’t really talked about it much. Is it a simple case, Nina?"
It was the opening she had been waiting for, an unsolicited expression that Kurt didn’t have full confidence in Riesner. "I can’t communicate with you on the subject of your representation, since you’re represented by Mr. Riesner," she said deliberately.
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"If you were to initiate a conversation with me about the subject of your representation, I could talk with you about it, but I can’t initiate such a discussion."
"You’re hinting at something," Kurt said, "but I’m damned if I can figure out what."
"Sure you can."
He was thinking. "Okay, I’m initiating a discussion," he said, "about what you said."
"And if you are thinking Riesner might not be a good lawyer for you, if you would like to seek other representation, and if you say so, we can discuss it."
"I don’t want him. I don’t trust him. But it seems like I’m stuck with him." Nina analyzed the words for legal content and decided they would have to do.
"Now that you bring it up," she said, "no, you’re not stuck with him."
"He’s got all my money."
"He’d be obligated to return the unused portion."
"Do you know this guy?"
"Regrettably," she wanted to say, but she couldn’t criticize Riesner without influencing Kurt unfairly, so she said, "Yes."
"Then you know he’s not going to let me replace him."
"Eventually, he’d have to. As for the money, I would represent you wi
thout a large advance retainer," Nina said, and then hurried to add, "Of course, you could pay me as soon as the balance of Riesner’s retainer is repaid to you." Over a waterfall in a barrel was how that statement made her feel.
Kurt’s face flickered through many emotions.
"I have to tell you there are some possible drawbacks to changing counsel now. There might be some ups and downs coordinating with Mr. Riesner to get your case file and your retainer. In fact, there might be hand-to-hand combat. You’d have to file a motion to substitute me in as your attorney. I might be a witness in your case. You’d have to give me written acknowledgment that you understand that, and still want me as your lawyer."
"I don’t know if I do."
Something in her said, okay, I did my best. "I understand. He’s had a lot more experience. I’m sure he’ll do a great job for you. Forget I mentioned it," she said at once, her pride shooting sparks.
"You think it’s because I don’t think you’d be any good, Nina?"
"Well ..."
"I’ve talked about you with some of the other prisoners. You’re respected in Tahoe as a result of your last case, at least with some of these guys. I know you’re good enough. But don’t you see? I’ve done enough to you."
"Don’t worry about me. I can handle it."
"Don’t get involved with me. I’m—"
"Doomed? Not with me on your side, buddy."
He shook his head, but she saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
"You believe I’m innocent?"
Nina couldn’t look him in the eye on that one. "I want to believe you. I can say it seems to me you might be telling the truth and you deserve a good defense."
As she spoke, Terry’s bloody corpse on the floor of the studio rose like a specter on the glass in front of her, superimposed over his face like the grisly red mask of a warrior. He could be lying. He could be maligning Terry’s memory. A hard place in her mind still said, if you did it, Kurt, I’ll—
"You’ve changed, too, Nina. I have to ask myself why you’re offering to do this."
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