Desperate Justice

by Dennis Carstens

Catherine waited patiently as Dr. Chase reviewed his session notes from her file on his computer. Satisfied, he swiveled in his chair, turned on the recording device and said, “How are things?”

  Without any preamble, she blurted out, “He tried to kill me yesterday.”

  “Catherine,” Chase began as he sat up straight, almost coming out of his chair, “you’ve got to report…”

  “It was my fault and he didn’t really try to kill me. He caught me going through come of his personal things, disgusting pictures and a DVD that he has, of himself. S & M sex stuff that I guess he’s been doing.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Catherine spent the next twenty minutes describing in detail the DVD and pictures. She also went over Gordon’s reaction and his attack of her.

  “This is the end. The last straw, Catherine,” the doctor said. “I have a legal, not to mention moral and ethical obligation to report this to police.”

  “Please, no, wait,” she pleaded. “I have a good friend coming over tomorrow evening. I’m going to tell him then. With her there he’ll listen and keep control of himself. I know him. And I can threaten him. If he doesn’t cooperate, I’ll go public and ruin him. Plus, I want him to go to Washington. I want to get him out of here and away from me. If you report him, that won’t happen.”

  “Okay,” Chase reluctantly replied as he sat back in his chair. “But this is it, you have to promise me that you’ll do this. What then? Have you thought it through? What about money and your future?”

  “I’ve thought about all of that and yes, I do have a plan. I know I can get by on a lot less than what I have now. I don’t need Gordon’s lifestyle. I could move into an apartment, get a job and take care of myself. I don’t know how much money he has, but I’m sure there’s plenty to get me set up. In fact, the more I think about it, the better I feel.”

  The two of them spent the rest of the session talking about her future. She finally admitted to him she was still having problems with her drinking and other forms of self-medication. At this point Chase grabbed paper and pen and began taking written notes as well as the recording while they discussed these problems. For the first time since she had become a patient, the psychiatrist was beginning to believe she was being honest and sincerely dealing with her problems and that the therapy might finally help her.

  At the end of the hour, Chase walked her out to the lobby and waited while she made another appointment for the following week.

  The doctor went back to his office and while making his next patient wait, entered long and very positive notes in Catherine’s case file. He was personally feeling quite pleased that she was opening up and confronting her demons.

  As he got out of his chair to greet his next patient, he said out loud to himself, “I think the lady will be all right.”

  Marc Kadella, having checked his watch less than five minutes ago, did so again which elicited a “look” from Margaret Tennant. Sufficiently chastened, he took a sip of his now lukewarm wine and did his best not to grimace.

  Marc was Margaret’s date for the retirement party of Gordon Prentiss being given by his soon-to-be former boss, Harold Jennrich. They were in a banquet room of a mid-level hotel located two blocks south of the government center enjoying a decent buffet, free wine and booze all on the taxpayer’s dime. Marc found himself wondering why it is that the politicians always claim the government is having difficulty scraping by yet there seemed to be no shortage of tax revenue for these type of events?

  Margaret was in a small circle of her friends from the courts, all of whom were women and looked like they were all talking at the same time. As Marc watched Margaret chatting with her colleagues, he found himself realizing, once again, how lucky he had been to find her at this stage of his life.

  “Hey, Marc,” he heard a voice next to him say, “you here with Judge Tennant?”

  At the sound of his name he turned his head to his left to find the smiling face and extended hand of Steve Gondeck, one of the senior prosecutors in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office. The two men had known each other for several years and had tried a few cases against each other. Despite being on opposite sides of what could have been contentious criminal matters, the two of them got along with each other quite well, the way two professionals should. Unlike the movies and TV, just because they were adversaries didn’t mean they were enemies.

  “Hey, Steve,” Marc replied shaking the man’s hand. “Yeah, I’m here with Margaret.”

  “I know what I’ve been meaning to ask you: how does it feel to screw a judge rather than get screwed by one?”

  “That’s not funny,” Marc said unsuccessfully suppressing a smile.

  “Yes, it is,” Gondeck laughed.

  “Yeah, you’re right, it is,” Marc agreed.

  “Nice turn out,” Gondeck said looking around the almost full room. “You’re about the only one here from the defense bar.”

  “Nope, haven’t seen any others. How about your office? Is everybody here?”

  “Yeah, Slocum made it clear he would notice anyone who didn’t show. But for that, I’d be home watching the ballgame and enjoying a cold one.”

  “What do you think? All these people here to honor Prentiss or to get free food and booze and celebrate being rid of him?” Marc asked.

  “The latter, for sure,” Gondeck replied. “Listen, I saw you standing here and I just wanted to stop and say hello. I’ve been here over an hour. That’s enough. I said hello to Prentiss and Slocum saw me so, I’m out of here.”

  “I’m glad you stopped, Steve. Go tell Margaret I’m ready to leave.”

  “Yeah right. Sorry, you’re on your own with that.”

  After Gondeck left, Marc got a fresh glass of whatever unpronounceable wine they were serving. He wandered around the room making a little small talk with court personnel, lawyers that he knew and several judges. He even stopped to congratulate Prentiss who actually returned the greeting cordially. While he was trying to think of a way to courteously get away from Prentiss, Margaret walked up and slipped an arm through his.

  “Gordon,” she said addressing Prentiss. “Work tomorrow so we’ll be leaving now. You’ll be around for another week or so, won’t you?”

  “Yes, Margaret,” he answered as the two of them shook hands. “I’ll be sure to stop by to say goodbye before I leave for Washington.”

  “Good. Well good night Gordon and congratulations, again.”

  As the two of them were walking toward the door to leave, Marc asked her, “You want to stop and wash that hand before we go?”

  “Stop it,” she said as she lightly slapped his arm.

  “You know,” he continued as they walked up the stairs. “I still can’t help wondering what he was doing with Bruce Dolan that day I saw them on the elevator.”

  “Are you sure they were together?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it was pretty obvious. Dolan didn’t care but Prentiss was clearly uncomfortable being seen with him.”

  Gordon Prentiss sat in his car in his driveway directly in front of the open garage door. The engine was still running and his window was down so he could breathe in the cool, head-clearing evening air. He had a little too much to drink and should not have driven himself home. He sat in the car for a short while then drove the Lincoln into its space and walked a bit unsteadily toward the house.

  Gordon noticed a light coming from a window on the second floor. Realizing it was from Catherine’s bedroom he muttered an unintelligible curse because of the excuses he had to make for her absence at his big event. Her attitude toward socializing as his wife had better change drastically. It was one thing to snub an event with people he mostly despised, but a senator’s life and any career he wanted afterward was significantly impacted by these occasions.

  Gordon entered through the kitchen, went directly to his study and poured himself a shot of very good single malt. He settled on the couch sipping his drink and having left the double doors open, suddenly heard
what sounded like a muffled scream and then a loud, unmistakable thud coming from upstairs.

  Gordon sat quietly listening for a brief moment trying to figure out what it could have been. What could possibly be going on in Catherine’s bedroom? The scream, if that was what it was, was hardly audible but the thud was loud enough that it must have been a heavy object, maybe a piece of furniture that had fallen over. Did something fall over and land on Catherine, he wondered?

  Tossing down the rest of the scotch, he got up and placed the empty glass back on the bar. As best as his somewhat wobbly legs could manage, he went up the stairs. Gordon stopped at the door to Catherine’s bedroom and held his breath while he pressed his right ear against the door. Not hearing anything, he lightly knocked several times then stepped back.

  “Catherine,” he said, a little too loudly as he knocked again. Once again, he heard no reply so he turned the door handle, pushed it down, opened the door and stepped inside.

  What he found literally took his breath away. Lying three feet from her bed, flat on her back, was the lifeless body of his wife. Her dead eyes were glassed over and stared straight at the ceiling. A large knife was sticking out of her chest through her blood-soaked nightgown.

  Unable to breathe, he slowly took two steps toward her and stood over her between her body and her bed. “Catherine,” he quietly croaked as he almost involuntarily reached out toward her with his right arm. At that moment, he sensed rather than saw, a shadowy movement come out from behind the bedroom door that he had left open.

  As Prentiss began to turn his head toward the dark apparition, an object crashed into the side of his head and exploded. As shattered glass and the contents of the vodka bottle flew out across the room, Prentiss went down, landing half on top of his dead wife’s body.

  Standing over him to be sure he was out cold, his attacker did three things. First, the assailant took Gordon’s right hand and wrapped it around the handle of the knife. Then stepped around the two bodies and took the neck of the vodka bottle and placed it in Catherine’s left hand. Finally, the intruder picked up a small, blood-stained white cloth and quickly and quietly walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs and went out through the back of the house.

  Sgt. Tim Clark was a fourteen year veteran of the streets of Minneapolis. In those fourteen years he had come across more human suffering, misery and mayhem than most people ever see in several lifetimes. He was currently working the evening shift, patrolling in one of the more upscale neighborhoods of the city breaking in a rookie cop who had two weeks on the job.

  A call came over the car’s radio and the rookie, a solid young black man named Ron King, took the call. The dispatcher from the 911 center had taken a call about a disturbance at one of the homes in their patrol area. The caller would not give a name, just an address then hung up. Clark and King were being sent to check it out.

  Clark turned on the car’s emergency lights and in less than three minutes, wheeled the car into the driveway of the address given. He stopped the car and the two of them got out. Using their flashlights, the two officers quickly checked out the home’s exterior and the garage. One of the garage doors, where a late model Lincoln was parked, had been left open.

  Leaving the younger officer at the back door, Clark went to the front. He rang the doorbell several times then tried the door. Finding it locked, he went to the back door, looked in with his flashlight and turned the door handle. It opened and the two men slowly entered.

  Shouting out to whoever might be home they quickly covered the main floor then moved to the stairs. When they reached the top of the stairs, the two cops saw the light coming through the open door of Catherine’s bedroom. With guns drawn, they walked quickly to the doorway and Clark put his head in to see the bloody mess on the floor.

  “Stay here,” Clark told the younger man indicating the doorway to the room. Doing his best not to disturb anything, he stepped over to Gordon and pressed two fingers to his neck. Feeling a strong pulse, he stepped back to where King was calmly waiting.

  “You okay?” Clark asked.

  “Believe me, I’ve seen a lot worse in Iraq,” King replied.

  “Sorry, you’re right, I forgot. Listen, go downstairs and call it in. Ambulance, medical examiner, the whole nine yards. She’s obviously dead but he’s still alive.”

  “Sure thing, Sarge.”

  While King went to report what they had found, Clark pulled out his phone and used it to take both still pictures and a video of the entire scene. He paid special attention and took several stills of Gordon Prentiss holding the handle of the knife stuck in his wife’s chest.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  “We’re starting to make some progress,” the mediator announced to Marc Kadella and his clients. Marc and the father and son small business owners, Stan and Jim Engel were in a conference room at Chalmers Mediation Services. In another room next door were two lawyers from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office. This was a mandatory mediation session ordered by the court to bring the parties together to try to settle the case.

  The mediator, a retired judge, William Chalmers, had been going back and forth between the two rooms. His job was to present offers and counteroffers of a dollar amount. He was supposed to be neutral but was not really maintaining a neutral posture. He was acting as the messenger for the lawyers from the attorney general’s office and doing his best to get the Engels to agree to what the state wanted.

  “They are willing to come down to fifty thousand dollars and you stop doing business in Minnesota.”

  “Let me see if I understand this,” Stan Engel said. “This comes down to a half a dozen of our former customers who claim they canceled with us before we charged them in accordance with the terms of the contract we had with them.”

  “They called you and cancelled,” Chalmers said. “If I called and told you to cancel me, I would consider it cancelled.”

  “Really? When a customer calls to cancel we remind him it needs to be in writing, again clearly spelled out in the contract. We also send them a form to use. All they have to do is sign it and send it back. But according to you and the A.G.,” Stan continued, his anger and frustration rising, “that doesn’t matter. Why do we bother with written contracts when all people have to do is whine to the A.G. and they will make the taxpayers of Minnesota pay to sue a business on behalf of another business? Does this sound idiotic to anyone else?”

  “Stan,” Marc said as he placed a hand on his client’s arm to calm him. “You’re absolutely right, but now is not the time.”

  “You’re right. Okay,” Stan continued looking at the mediator, “You go back in there and tell them this. Thirty-five grand and we’ll have to make payments. Final offer. If they don’t take it I’ll find the money to go to trial and he can put these people on the witness stand. Most of their complaints are lies and we can prove it. If just one of them lies on the stand I will make it my life’s work to get those two disbarred for suborning perjury. I’ve had enough. If the taxpayers knew what this bunch from the A.G.’s office was up to, there’d be hell to pay.”

  Chalmers left the room looking like a puppy that had just been spanked. Clearly he did not want to go back to the state’s lawyers and say what he had been told.

  “Neutral mediator, my ass,” Stan said when Chalmers closed the door. “How much business do you think he gets from those guys?”

  “More than he gets from me,” Marc replied.

  “Dad, we don’t have eighty grand to fight this.”

  “I know that, I’ve just had enough of this. You watch, he’ll come back with an agreement.”

  Marc’s phone buzzed, the ringer having been shut off, he checked the screen and saw it was from his office. “Do you mind if I take this?” he asked Stan.

  “No, go ahead,” Stan shrugged. Marc stood up from his seat at the conference room table and went to a side credenza that had coffee and water on it. He answered the call and heard Carolyn without preamble, ask him, “Have you w
atched the news or seen a paper today?”

  “You mean about Prentiss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, I was talking to Chalmers about it earlier, why?”

  “Gordon Prentiss just called. He’s asking for you. He says he’s being arraigned at one o’clock and wants you to be there.”

  “What? You’ve got to be kidding me. Gordon Prentiss is asking for me? I’m stunned. I hope they cut off his balls before they hang the sonofabitch,” he said as Carolyn started to laugh. “You’re jerking my chain, aren’t you?”

  “No, not at all,” she answered. “He called looking for you. He was adamant. I told him you were in court. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t want his case. I…”

  “Marc, you’re a lawyer and a professional. You have a moral obligation to at least meet him,” Carolyn said, chastising him as if she were scolding a child.

  “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “Okay then, think about the publicity. It would be good for business.”

  “The last time I took a case for publicity it almost bankrupted all of us.”

  “This is different.”

  He thought it over for a few seconds before saying, “Yeah, you’re right.” At that moment Chalmers came in the room smiling and gave Marc a thumbs up.

  “I have to go. I’ll call the public defender’s office and have them hold his hand. I’ll call back when we’re done here.”

  Marc spent the next hour, until almost noon, working out the details of the settlement. When they were finished he walked out of the small office building with his clients.

  “This really sucks,” Jim Engel said. “Because we have to pay for a lawyer and those lying contractors don’t, we have to cave in and agree to something we didn’t do.”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of litigation against the government,” Marc said as he shook hands with his clients. “At least it’s over and you can move on.”

  Shortly before 1:00, Marc walked through the door of the arraignment courtroom and into the middle of a media circus. He stood in the doorway looking over the scene. The arraignment courtroom was about double the size of most courtrooms due to the volume of cases it normally handled. On a Monday afternoon it was usually very crowded from the guests of the county picked up over the weekend. It was normally occupied by just defendants, their friends and family, lawyers and bail bondsmen, but today there was a mob of media all seated together in one section and all talking at the same time.