Elena didn’t say anything. She continued to stare at Phil, who felt compelled to fill the silence with words. “They want you to leave right away but I’m going to give you a week’s severance pay along with my letter of recommendation.” He handed her an envelope and made a move toward her to hug her goodbye. Elena stiffened, took a step back and glared at him. Phil got the message. He headed for the door but stopped before leaving.
“We’re sending someone over tomorrow as a temporary replacement. Her name’s Alice Stevenson. Please give her the keys and show her around.” He didn’t wait for an answer.
Twelve
When Clay Evans received the Notice of Appearance from Tracey James, he almost shit his pants on the spot. He’d never tried a case against her, nor had any of his staff, but he’d seen her billboards all over the state. There was no doubt she was big time. He’d been wheeling and dealing to make this case a slam dunk for himself on the assumption that good old Charley Peterson would be defending the kid. Having Charley as your attorney was like being represented by a dead man, which seemed most appropriate in a murder case: the dead representing the about-to-be-dead. Clay really got a chuckle out of that line the first time he thought of it. Now it didn’t seem so funny. He’d hidden evidence. He’d had a knock-down-drag-out fight with the coroner, Harry Tuthill, to convince him to alter his report—all based on the assumption that he could pull the wool over Charley Peterson’s lazy old dead eyes. And now he had Tracey James on the case. There’s still time. I could go back and fix things. I could drop the charges. Or . . . Tracey James is big time—lots of publicity. If I really want to get out of here, I’ve got to take certain risks. . . .
His session with Harry Tuthill hadn’t gone as smoothly as he would have liked, either. Harry was like him, an old blue blood in a dead-end job. They often had a few drinks on Friday afternoon and bemoaned their present status in the world, which usually meant slamming Bass Creek and most of the sorry souls who resided there. Clay thought he could count on Harry but Harry balked. He was in his sixties, on the verge of retirement. Harry’s window of opportunity had closed a long time ago.
“You want me to leave information out of my report? That’s illegal.”
“Look, Harry, you know what they’re going to do with that information once they get it. This kid is going to sail out of here.” This time, however, Clay wasn’t preaching to the choir.
“I don’t care, Clay, I’m just the medical examiner. I report the findings and let the chips fall where they may. The fact is this woman had semen in her body—I can’t leave that out of my report.”
“You do agree, don’t you, that there were no signs of rape?”
“Yes.”
“And you know that the blood type on the floor and the blood type in the semen were different.”
“Yes.”
“What do you conclude from that?” Clay was practicing his direct examination.
“Either she had sex with someone she knew before she was killed or her lover killed her right after sex.”
“What about the other blood? How do you account for that?”
“I don’t. That’s not my job.”
“Think about it for a minute, Harry. Have you ever seen or read about a lover killing another lover right after sex without some evidence of a battle: the room’s a mess, bite marks, scratch marks?”
“Of course I have, Clay. You’re reaching for straws now. Besides, we haven’t seen the lover. He might have bite marks or scratch marks on him.”
“But there’s no evidence of an argument in that bedroom.”
“Look, she was killed in the bedroom. She had sex that night. She could have had sex with somebody who left the scene and then Rudy could have come over and killed her, or Rudy could have come and left and someone else could have arrived and had sex with her and killed her. Those are the two possibilities, one equally as plausible as the other. In either scenario, she didn’t fight with the person who killed her and there is no evidence of a break-in.”
“You’re wrong, Harry. We’ve got the broken glass in the garbage, blood on the carpet—different type from the semen. We do have evidence of a struggle with a different person than her lover.” It was an accurate analysis and Harry mulled it over.
“I guess you’re right. We have evidence that she might have struggled with Rudy, which would make him the more likely suspect—assuming that a struggle occurred.”
“You know as well as I do that it was Rudy, Harry. As the evidence stands now, we both know I won’t even be able to get an indictment. This kid is going to walk unless you help me, Harry.” Harry hesitated for a minute before declining Clay’s invitation to become a co-conspirator for the second time.
“No. No. I can’t do it, Clay.”
“Wait a minute, Harry. You were thinking about something. You were thinking about a way to do it, weren’t you?” Harry didn’t answer right away. He was still thinking. Finally, he started thinking out loud.
“Are you certain Charley Peterson is going to handle this case?”
“Yes, I am,” Clay lied. It was a reasonable lie. He was pretty sure the mother couldn’t afford a private attorney, which only left Charley. He knew where Harry was going. If Charley Peterson was on the case maybe he could fudge things a little.
“The report isn’t complete yet. Toxicology tests are still being performed. We could issue a preliminary report. I could inadvertently not mention the presence of semen in the original preliminary report but include it in the supplemental report. There’s no problem in doing that. I could delay the supplemental report for a couple of months, but after that you’re on your own. Anyone who asks for the supplement gets it. And if Charley Peterson is not the lawyer on this case, all bets are off.”
Clay was ecstatic. Harry had given him more than he had asked for, a legitimate way to hide the evidence. Charley Peterson in his normal state of inebriation couldn’t even spell supplement. He’d never ask for it in a million years, especially since the toxicology tests had nothing to do with the cause of death.
Clay’s initial ecstasy at Harry Tuthill’s compromise was all in the past now. Everything had changed dramatically with the appearance of the famous—more like infamous as far as he was concerned—Tracey James. There was no way he could hide the supplement from her.
Thirteen
Harold Victor Fischer had purchased an old two-story Victorian house on the outskirts of Vero Beach to serve as his professional office. Vero was for the most part a typical example of modern urban sprawl, Florida style, littered with high-rises, mobile home parks, and characterless, vanilla homes, block after block, one after the other like a monopoly board gone haywire. U.S. 1, which ran through the middle of town, was bordered on both sides by every restaurant chain in existence, their multicolored signs poking up at different heights like wild, psychedelic weeds on an ill-kept lawn. H.V.’s place stood out like a cultured, well-heeled thumb, which is exactly the way he wanted it—to stick out, that is. Culture wasn’t really his game, although H.V. was a most pretentious son of a bitch.
He’d originally set up his practice in Miami but the competition had been fierce. All his money had gone into advertising. He wasn’t bilingual and besides, everything in Miami was turned upside down. The vast majority of the people were absolutely certifiable, so H.V. typically found himself helping the marginally sane cope with the wholesale insanity of the world around them. It was a unique perspective, one that he never forgot, but as a daily diet he found it terribly unsatisfying—and it was beginning to tear at the borders of his own psyche. So he moved up the road to Vero, which was like taking a trip from Mars back to Earth.
H.V.’s reasons for choosing Vero were similar to Tracey’s. He wouldn’t have the competition of Miami but he’d be in an area large enough to attract a lucrative clientele. With H.V., the emphasis was on lucrative. He was definitely in it for the money.
He became a forensic psychiatrist, which meant that he didn’t treat peopl
e or “cure” them anymore—he sold his services to the highest bidder as an expert witness on cause and effect and everything else in between. He found Tracey, or she found him, soon after his move to Vero. It was a marriage made in heaven. Tracey moved clients through her office like logs through a paper mill, and a good percentage of them saw H.V. during the trip. Tracey and H.V. shared the opinion that everyone who was injured through the negligence of another had a psychiatric problem as a result.
Because Tracey usually settled cases at an early stage, H.V. was rarely deposed, so the public record of his opinions on behalf of her clients was scant. If the entire record were available, it would have revealed hundreds of opinions suggesting Tracey’s clients had psychiatric conditions ranging from mere depression to the more exotic, like post traumatic stress disorder, all caused by whatever trauma had befallen them. Those opinions translated into hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements for the James gang and some tidy fees for H.V. as well—not that he didn’t deserve them. On the rare occasions when he did have to testify, H.V. was always well prepared, well spoken, concise and impossible to cross-examine. His credentials were more than solid: He had received his undergraduate degree from Cornell and his medical degree from Penn. When asked about having worked with Ms. James in the past, the doctor’s pat answer was: “I seem to recall that I have but I’m not sure of the name of the client, or clients, or the date. I am called by a great number of attorneys.”
In the modern world of relativism it was known as selective recall.
Rudy was a little different from H.V.’s run-of-the-mill clients. H.V.’s testimony in criminal cases had usually related to insanity or competency to stand trial. But in Rudy’s case Tracey wanted to test a unique legal theory: that because of his limited intelligence Rudy was unable to comprehend and waive his Miranda rights. It was about more than competency, an argument Tracey knew she might lose. It was about competency combined with naïveté. Tracey wanted to be able to argue to the judge that, because of his diminished mental capacity, Rudy simply could not refuse to talk to Wesley Brume when Wesley asked him a question, regardless of the fact that Wesley had advised him of his right to remain silent. Because it was a tricky point, H.V. had been given carte blanche in the spending department, an opportunity he did not fail to exploit. The first order of business was a trip to Bass Creek to visit his patient.
Rudy had been in the Cobb County jail for about three weeks when H.V. showed up. Like everyone, Rudy had heard horror stories about jail and was expecting the worst. But it was all quite calm—boring, actually. There were very few prisoners in the county jail and Rudy settled into a routine early on: breakfast in the morning at seven, karate exercises after that, then pushups and situps. The guard had told him he’d literally have to fight for his ass when he hit the state prison system and Rudy wanted to be ready. In the afternoon he did some cardiovascular work, playing basketball or running around the exercise area.
Elena came in the afternoon. She was allowed to come every day because it was county jail, but her visits were hard on Rudy. He was used to hugging and kissing his mother. Seeing her every day but not being able to touch her was like torture. It might have been better if her visits had been less frequent, but nobody could convince either of them of that fact. Elena had never been overprotective of Rudy. She knew it was going to take longer for her son than most young men, but she had always wanted him to stand on his own two feet. Now he was in prison and it was, at least in part, her fault. This was new territory. She didn’t know if Rudy was strong enough to handle such an ordeal. She just wanted him to know she was there for him—every day.
At night, he had books and magazines to read that Elena had brought. Sometimes, though, in the middle of the night he’d dream about state prison and being attacked by gangs of men. They’d call him “stupid” and “dummy” as they held him down for the final act of humiliation. Rudy always woke up before it happened. Shaking and sweaty, he’d lie there for hours, afraid to close his eyes.
I’ll never let it happen, he told himself. They’ll have to kill me first. Then he’d think of the osprey. Flying above it all, swooping down at the perfect moment for the kill. Or the gator, biding his time, always staying cool. I’ll be like them. Fearless, ready to kill. Only then could he fall back to sleep.
His first visitor, besides his mother, was Tracey James herself. Tracey came the second week. She really didn’t need to see Rudy, didn’t need to hear his story at this point. She just wanted to eyeball him, get a feel for the extent of his intellectual deficit, so she could provide a firsthand observation to the judge when the time came. Unlike regular visitors who talked to the prisoners through a screen, Tracey actually met Rudy in a room where they could face each other and talk.
“I’m your lawyer,” she told him after she introduced herself. Rudy smiled.
“I know. My mother told me all about you. She said you’re the best.” It was Tracey’s turn to smile, even blush a little.
“I don’t know about that, but we are going to do our best to get you out of here.”
“I know.” Rudy repeated the words with such confidence that even Tracey was taken aback. Most of her clients were a little less confident and a little more demanding and colorful in their choice of words. Tracey felt the need to file a disclaimer.
“I can’t guarantee anything. There’s a possibility we’ll lose.”
“I know,” he repeated again, still smiling at her. “But you’ll do your best.”
Tracey didn’t know how to respond to such a pleasant, reasonable observation. “Yes, well, I have a few questions to ask you and I want you to respond to just those questions and nothing more. We’ll talk more after I get a copy of your statement to the police, but for now let’s stick to the questions I ask. Okay?”
“Sure,” Rudy replied, the same smile on his face. Doesn’t he know where he is? Tracey wondered.
Later that day, Tracey filed her motion to have bond set. Rudy was now being held without bond and she debated whether to file the motion at all. Elena could barely raise the reduced retainer and she had no property that could serve as collateral. Bond in a capital case was going to be over a hundred thousand dollars, at the very least. Elena could neither post bond nor convince a bondsman to post it on her behalf. As a practical matter, the motion was a waste of time. However, it was a billable waste of time and Tracey’s specialty was churning hours.
When they first met, H.V. had not been surprised by Rudy’s upbeat nature even though he was in jail. H.V. had worked with retarded children in Connecticut for a year during his residency and had noticed that they were consistently cheerful. He remembered one of his colleague’s remarks as they were observing a classroom of children laughing and having fun:
“And they’re the retarded ones. I don’t think so.”
H.V. recalled those words the moment Tracey told him about Rudy and his inability to say no to Detective Brume. None of those kids he remembered would have or could have refused. The hard part would be explaining this to a judge.
H.V. tried to be as upbeat as Rudy during that first meeting, pasting a smile on his face and extending his hand.
“Hi Rudy, I’m Harry Fischer.” He never, ever referred to himself as Harry. It had taken him years to cultivate the moniker H.V. among colleagues and patients and the few friends that he had. But this was a rare event—fieldwork—and a unique assignment that called for a different, more flexible approach. He needed Rudy to feel totally relaxed in his presence.
“Hi, Harry,” Rudy replied, shaking Harry’s hand. Harry seemed like a nice guy but he looked a little out of sorts dressed in blue jeans, tee shirt and running shoes. “Can I get you something, Harry? Coffee? Tea?”
H.V. looked around somewhat bewildered. They were in a small room with a table, the same room where Rudy met Tracey James the week before. H.V. wondered how the kid could order up drinks. Rudy watched him looking around but didn’t say anything.
“They let
you do that?” H.V. finally asked. He saw the smile start to form on Rudy’s face and he knew he’d been had. Nothing left to do but laugh at himself.
They laughed a lot that day. Harry really enjoyed himself. It brought him back to a time in his career when he was working with kids and having fun, even making a difference. He came away from the meeting convinced that Rudy was a lot smarter than his IQ suggested, but he did have that simple, wonderful naïveté of the retarded. He had convinced himself. Now he had to convince the court that Rudy could no more have refused to talk to Wesley Brume than a dog could refuse to chase a cat that ran across its path.
Before that day in court, however, H.V. had a lot of work to do: gathering school and medical records and poring over them for hours; a few more visits to Rudy; psychological tests; intelligence tests. Most of it was fluff, window dressing for his underlying opinion. But it would serve its purpose in one important regard—as justification for his exorbitant fee.
Fourteen
1966
It had been a sweltering summer in the city and this night in late August was no different. Johnny was in the back room of his parents’ four-room railroad flat, his room, lying in his bed by the open window trying to drift off to sleep.
“You’re not sleeping, are you?” He recognized Mikey’s voice coming from the fire escape.
“No. But not tonight, Mikey. I can’t. I’m too tired.” All summer long the boys had been saying goodnight to their parents, going to bed, and then sneaking out the back window, down the fire escape, and up the alley to the street and freedom. They didn’t do it every night, usually just Friday and Saturday, but this week had been unusual and Johnny was exhausted.
“I don’t want to go out either. Just wanted you to know I lined up a job for us when school starts.” It was the “us” that caused Johnny to sit up and take notice. Mikey was always lining up jobs for “us”—like the job at Jimmy the Shoemaker’s. Johnny loved the job but Mikey made most of the money.
The Mayor of Lexington Avenue Page 8