Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

by Buffa, D. W.

  "Take these goddamn things off me!" he demanded, lifting himself off the chair far enough to demonstrate what he meant.

  The guard looked at me. I began to tap my pen against the tablet. Quentin's round head followed the guard's eyes.

  "You want to talk to me, mister, you tell him to take these goddamn things off me." His voice was not quite so loud, and his tone not quite so demanding.

  "You've made a mistake," I replied. "I don't want to talk to you, Mr. Quentin. I'm here because you want to talk to me."

  Sitting on the edge of the chair, his neck bulged against the pull of the chains. His right eyelid drooped down. He watched me tapping my pen on the yellow legal pad, trying to figure out what I was doing.

  In a rough, dry voice he insisted, "Without me, you don't have a case."

  The pen tapped like a metronome, measuring the intervals between each time I shook my head back and forth. Abruptly, I stopped and bent my head forward.

  "What case, Mr. Quentin? Those allegations you made to keep yourself out of the gas chamber? Do you think anyone is just going to take your word for it?"

  "The guy hired me to kill his wife," he said.

  He was still struggling against the chain, but his movements were becoming less violent, more like gestures of contempt.

  "Would you like me to ask the guards to do something about those?" I asked, with a slight nod toward the heavy metal links draped around his waist.

  "What the hell do you think?" he snarled.

  Folding my arms across my chest, I sat back and said nothing. We stared at each other for a moment. Finally, he relented. "Yeah, I would."

  I glanced at the guard who was standing an arm's length away from him. "You can take them off."

  When he finished removing the cumbersome chain, the guard looked at me, uncertain what to do next.

  "Take the cuffs off as well," I said.

  His wrists free, Quentin brought his thick hands around in front of his throat, formed them into fists, and pushed them hard against each other, stretching his arms until his elbows were thrust forward. He dropped his arms to his sides, shaking the circulation back into his fingers.

  With the chain draped over his arms, the one guard motioned to the other. "We'll be right outside," he said, as they opened the door.

  "One of you should stay," I said, pointing toward a chair in the corner. My eye moved back to Quentin. "Just in case we have different recollections later on about what is said here."

  "I've already told my story to the state cops that came down to LA. The guy hired me to kill his wife. I killed her. I admitted it. What else do you need to know?" he asked, rubbing his arm.

  "I read the reports. There's nothing there."

  He still did not understand. "What do you mean? How many times do I have to tell you? He hired me to kill her and I killed her."

  Elbows on the edge of the table, I folded my fingers together and rested my chin on my thumbs. I looked straight at him.

  "All right. It goes like this. You killed her. He hired you."

  "Yeah, right."

  "Then he's guilty of conspiracy to commit murder. But no one can be convicted in a conspiracy case on the uncorroborated testimony of a co-conspirator. And that's what I meant when I say there's nothing there. You don't have any evidence that Goodwin was involved. Nothing to back up what you say."

  "Well, if he didn't hire me, how did I know who she was or where she'd be?" he asked with a smug grin. "How did I know any of that?"

  "You could have found out who she was after you killed her. You stole her purse. It had her wallet, her driver's license, a photograph of her husband."

  "Yeah? Then what about the fact he had me in his office alone for more than an hour and the sweet deal he gave me. What the hell's that, just a coincidence?"

  "The DA's office dismisses cases all the time. The search wasn't any good. He had you brought in because he wanted to see if he could use you as witness in a drug case. He made a deal with you."

  Drawing back from the table, I crossed my ankle over my leg and locked my fingers around my knee. "They might even argue that you made the deal— offered to testify in a drug case to save yourself from ten years in prison—and then, when you were free, decided to show him that you had the real power. Now, when you're facing the death penalty, you decide it wasn't enough to kill his wife, you're going to say he paid you to do it."

  Narrowing my eyes, I added, "You have any idea what a good defense attorney can do to a confessed murderer on the stand?" Shaking my head, I got to my feet and walked away. The guard crouched in the corner, his forearms on his thighs, staring at the floor.

  "What did he say to you when you were in his office?" I asked, leaning up against the cinder-block wall.

  "Nothing. He asked me if I'd like to plead guilty to possession and do a month in the county jail. I said something like 'Who do I have to kill?' He said something like 'We'll take that up later.' And I knew right then."

  My hands in my coat pockets, I crossed one foot in front of the other. "What did you know?"

  "He wasn't kidding; it was a deal. He was going to keep me out of prison, and I was going to take care of someone for him. It was the look he had."

  "You were there for at least an hour. What did he talk to you about before you knew he wanted you to kill someone?"

  "About my record, mostly."

  "What about your record?"

  "Everything," he replied, with a caustic laugh that rattled in his throat. "From the first time I was arrested. He went right down the list, asking me what happened. He said he wanted to know everything he could about me."

  His half-closed right eye twitched unconsciously as he thought about what had happened. "I kind of liked the guy. I didn't trust him," he added quickly, and let me know by the way he said it that he never trusted anyone. "But I kind of liked him. He reminded me of one of those defense lawyers who tell you how they're going to win your case and you don't know if they're just lying or they're really so stupid they believe it."

  He paused for a moment, as if he was weighing something in his mind. Then, a blank look on his face, he shrugged his shoulders. "At least they don't treat you like the first thing they're going to do after they talk to you is go wash their hands."

  Coming back to the table, I turned the chair around and, with one leg on each side of it, draped my arms over the top. "Was he particularly interested in the manslaughter convictions?"

  "Yeah. He wanted to know how I felt about it."

  "How you felt about it?"

  "Yeah," he replied, his head turning slightly to the side. "He wanted to know if I ever thought about anyone I'd killed."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "Nothing much." He shrugged as he looked away.

  "What did you tell him?" I asked again.

  Ignoring me, he scratched the side of his pockmarked face and mumbled something inaudible.

  "What did you tell him?" I insisted.

  His head snapped around and he glared at me, his eyes filled with a strange, almost kinetic malice. "I didn't tell him I was sorry, if that's what you're thinking."

  "You're not sorry you dropped that boy ten stories off a roof?" I shot back.

  "I was just a kid," he said, curious that I should even mention it. "It wasn't anything. Nothing like what I did with Goodwin's wife." Most criminals disparage their crimes to make them seem smaller, less significant, less worthy of punishment, than they really are. Travis Quentin had no desire to slander his own accomplishments. There could have been no doubt in Marshall Goodwin's mind that in Travis Quentin he was dealing with a man without a conscience.

  "After you were taken back to jail, you never had any contact with him again?"

  "Never."

  "And the day you were released, someone gave you a package? That was how you knew what you were supposed to do?"

  "Yeah. I walked out of jail and this woman came up to me. Doesn't say anything, just hands me an envelope and walks away.
"

  "What do you remember about her?"

  A stupid, garish grin cut across his face. "She had a body that wouldn't quit."

  "What color hair?"

  "Hell, I don't know."

  "What was she wearing? How was she dressed?"

  "Don't remember, but she was dressed good, in some kind of suit."

  "A professional woman. Good. How old?"

  "Late twenties, early thirties."

  "And she didn't say anything? Didn't ask you if you were Travis Quentin? Didn't tell you she was delivering something from the DA's office, something from Goodwin?"

  "I told you," he said irritably, "she just handed it to me and left."

  "And that's all you can tell me about her?"

  "No, that's not all I can tell you," he snarled. "I can tell you who she is."

  "A moment ago you couldn't even tell me what color her hair is."

  "I don't know what color her hair is. But I know who she is."

  Out of patience, I slapped the table with my open hand. "Then why didn't you say something about it before? Why isn't it in the transcript of the interview you had with the police?"

  "They never asked me, that's why."

  "All right," I said, trying to control myself. "What's her name?"

  "I don't know her name."

  Glowering at him, I shoved myself up from the chair.

  "She was in court the day they arraigned me. I saw her standing at the table just before they brought me in. A real looker, not someone you could forget anytime soon."

  "She's a lawyer, a defense lawyer?" I asked, incredulous.

  "No," he replied, the lines in his forehead deepening. "She isn't a defense lawyer. She's a prosecutor."

  Grabbing the back of the chair with both hands, I stared at him. "You're sure? You're absolutely sure?"

  "Like I said, she wasn't somebody you could forget. Not with that body." In the corner, the guard looked up from the floor.

  "She had dark hair and big dark eyes. Five feet four or five, slender, right?" I did not pay any attention to what he said in response. It didn't matter. I knew who it was. I was sure of it.

  Chapter Five

  Under a lowering sky I left the prison and headed back to Portland. After two hours with Travis Quentin it was no longer a question whether I would do what Horace Woolner had asked. That question had somehow answered itself. I found myself wondering instead about what it was going to be like, starting up for the second time.

  In his will, Leopold Rifkin had left me his house and his extraordinary library because he thought it was never too late to begin the study of serious things. But Horace was right. Leopold had read his books and done his work as well. He would not have expected anything less from me.

  As soon as I got home I went into the library and picked up the phone. Waiting for Horace to answer, my eye fell on the volume of Aristotle that lay on the corner of the desk and I remembered how each time I opened it I was taught again the depths of my ignorance.

  Alma answered. "You made another conquest. Madame Krupskaya keeps asking about you."

  I remembered the Russian woman's bright-colored face, made up like a painted mask. "How old is she, anyway?"

  "

  Well," she replied, "I don't think it's really true that she danced for the Czar... " Her voice faded into the silence of uncertainty.

  "She was very interesting," I remarked, trying to be discreet.

  Soft laughter, like the hushed giggle of a schoolgirl, penetrated her speech. "Are you interested, Joe?"

  "Not yet."

  "Not yet!" she burst out. "What does that mean, not yet?"

  "I'm too young for her," I explained.

  "The age difference—whatever it is—isn't going to change, Joe."

  "No, but when I'm eighty or eighty-five it won't matter so much."

  "That's what you say now," she teased gently.

  "Is Horace around?"

  "You mean you didn't call to talk to me?" She waited just long enough for me to feel awkward. "He's on his way home. He called from court just before you did. Shall I have him call you?"

  I asked if she would and then she invited me to dinner. "Sometime soon," she said. "Perhaps I can find someone a little less—what shall I say?—mature than Madame Krupskaya."

  "I'd love to have dinner, just the three of us."

  "Or maybe the four of us," she insisted. "You really have to get out more often, Joe. We worry about you. You need to have a life, Joe. Everyone deserves that," she said, quietly serious.

  A half hour later, Horace got right to the point. "How did it go with Quentin? What's he like?"

  "He's a fairly powerful argument against the death penalty, that's what he's like."

  Horace read my mind. "Too good for him, huh?"

  My gaze lingered on the library shelves lined with dozens of works of moral philosophy. What good would books like these do someone like Quentin? When you were old enough to begin the study of ethics, it was already too late for it to have any effect on what you were.

  "Right and wrong don't have any meaning for him." I tried to explain. "Imagine someone who does whatever he feels like doing and then, as soon as he's done it, forgets all about it, the way you might toss a candy wrapper out of your car."

  "Did he tell you anything new?"

  "I think I know who delivered the package, the one with the information about Goodwin's wife."

  "Good. Who?"

  "The woman he married, Kristin Maxfield."

  "You sure?" he asked, after he muttered an obscenity under his breath.

  "Quentin recognized her. He saw her in court the day he was arraigned."

  "Doesn't mean she was involved," he remarked.

  "Let me ask you something, Horace. Goodwin was in the middle of a trial when they told him his wife had been killed. It was a murder case. Was she the one who took over for him? Was she co-counsel in that case?"

  He tried to remember. "Might have been. They usually tried cases together."

  I could see it, the two of them sitting across from each other in the conference room, thick three-ring trial manuals lying open on the table between them, the door to the hallway left open. Anyone working late would have seen them there, getting ready for another day in court. I knew what it was like, the constant preparation, the obsession with every detail, the inability to free your mind from it for more than a few moments at a time. On the night Nancy Goodwin died, while they worked, was that what they were thinking about?

  "I have to know," Horace said, "one way or the other. Are you going to do it?"

  I could still get out of it. If I said no, that would be the end of it, and Horace would never hold it against me. If I said yes, I was in for the duration."Yes."