Bicknell looked at him to see if he was joking, then said, “What do you mean, no? I sent you a copy of the recording. It was loud and clear. He offered an undercover policewoman fifty bucks for a blow job. Your guy’s seventy-five years old. What the hell….”
“I know,” Marc sighed looking up at the ceiling. “He says he wants a trial. Won’t plead.”
Bicknell stared at Marc for several seconds then said, “What the hell are you doing? Talk some sense into him.”
“I’ve tried Earl. Believe me it’s just, well….” Marc answered.
“Well?” Earl said wondering what was coming.
Marc grimaced then confessed, “He’s my uncle and…”
“Seriously?” the prosecutor said with a laugh.
“Yeah, I’m afraid so. He wants a trial so he can look like a stud at the retirement home where he lives. He wants me to get the media at the trial so it will be on TV and impress the geezer chicks.”
With that, Bicknell could barely contain himself from laughing out loud. Marc started to speak but the lawyer held up his hand to stop him. After a good thirty seconds, Bicknell was able to calmly breathe again. He looked at Marc and said, “Let me guess. He gets the pro bono family discount?”
“No,” Marc quietly said. “In fact, I quoted him a fee that I thought would make him come to his senses. Instead, he wrote me a check, which is still in my desk drawer.”
“Tell you what, two hundred and we skip the costs and fees. Tell him, if we go to trial, I’ll ask for jail time.”
“Ah, that’s an empty threat and we both know it. No judge will waste jail space on a lonely, seventy-five-year old widower for this. But I’ll tell him.”
Marc went back to where he had left Larry and told him about the offer. He barely got the words out before Larry vehemently turned him down.
Marc went back to his chair at the table and said to Bicknell, “Sorry, no deal. He wants a Rasmussen hearing. Go ahead and schedule it and I’ll see you then.”
“Okay, see you then.”
Marc turned to leave and Bicknell reached out and grabbed the sleeve of his suit coat. Marc turned to look back and Bicknell quietly said, “The two hundred bucks is on the table until the Rasmussen hearing.”
“I’ll keep it in mind and see what I can do. Hell, I’ll pay the fine for him myself if I have to.”
Marc and Uncle Larry parted company on the north side of the government center across Fifth Street from the Old City Hall. Larry walked toward the train platform on Fifth Street to catch a train and Marc started across the government center plaza to his car. A few feet from the fountain his phone began to vibrate in his coat pocket. He checked the caller ID and answered it by saying, “Hey, paisan, what’s up?”
“I’m just leaving the police department downtown, I want to talk to you. Can we meet for lunch?” Tony Carvelli said as he walked across Fifth at the corner of Fourth Avenue. “Where are you?”
Marc was looking east across the plaza on the north side of the government center. “I’m about a hundred feet away looking right at you. Look to your right.”
Carvelli stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looked toward the fountain in the plaza and saw his friend wave at him. While Tony waited on the sidewalk, Marc walked over to him.
The two men shook hands as Marc said, “Let’s walk over to Peterson’s,” indicating the restaurant across the street a block away on Sixth.
The waitress walked away after taking their order and Marc asked Tony, “So, what is it you want to talk about?”
Carvelli gave him a quick summary of the surveillance of Howie Traynor and what Howie was up to.
“During his trial, you got to know him at least a bit. What do you think? You buying his ‘I found Jesus’ act?” Tony asked Marc.
Marc thought it over while the waitress placed their meals in front of them. He waited until she finished then said, “I don’t know. I remember back then being scared of him. Thinking this guy had no empathy, no feelings for anybody, probably including himself.”
“A pure sociopath,” Carvelli said while chewing a bite of his burger.
“Yeah,” Marc nodded, “pretty much. He just didn’t seem to give a damn about anything or anyone. I know his prison record says he changed but…”
“Can someone like that ever change? Or is it genetic or some organic quirk, some physical attribute that makes somebody that way?” Carvelli said.
“I remember back then talking to his parents. They wanted nothing to do with him. Both said he was a bad seed and always had been. His sister wasn’t much help because she was several years younger and didn’t know him very well. But his older brother believed it was something he was born with. People can change,” Marc said with a shrug. “You going to keep an eye on him?”
“Yeah,” Tony nodded while swallowing. “At least another week, probably two.”
“I remember when he was found guilty, or maybe at his sentencing, I can’t remember which, he said something threatening to me. Something like, ‘I won’t forget this’. It sent a shiver down my spine. I’ve had unhappy clients but none scared me like this guy.”
SEVENTEEN
Rhea Watson waited until her date turned the corner of the short hallway leading to the restaurant’s restrooms. As soon as he disappeared, she tossed a twenty on the table and wrote a short note. The gist of the note was Rhea didn’t think it would work out between them. She put the note on the twenty-dollar bill, grabbed her purse and almost ran for the exit.
Hurrying to her car, a new Mercedes C-Class, Rhea muttered to herself, “Why do I keep doing this to myself?” She was referring to the first date she was fleeing from that she had set up through an online dating service, the most popular one on the net.
This was now at least the tenth first and only date she had set up through that service and she was getting discouraged. Were there no honest men out there? This one was at least three inches shorter, thirty pounds heavier and a lot less hair than was on his profile or indicated by his picture. The picture was at least ten years old and on top of it, he actually admitted he was still living with his wife, although he tried to claim they were separated in spirit and preparing for a divorce. Rhea decided she wasn’t going to stick around for any more bad news.
She drove out of the small parking lot of the trendy, little restaurant on Lyndale and headed south toward home. The four thousand square foot Tudor style house in the upscale Minneapolis neighborhood of Kenwood was her prize from the divorce. Rhea had just turned forty-seven, although her dating profile had her age at forty-two, and it was time to move on. After more than twenty years of marriage, she had forgotten how hideous dating could be.
After graduating cum laude from the University of Minnesota law school, Rhea had spent ten years in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office. It was a great place to hone trial skills and putting criminals in prison was richly rewarding. Eight years ago, the third largest law firm in Minnesota dangled a great job offer in front of her and she jumped.
Rhea was initially hired to work in the firm’s white collar crime department. Firms of this size did not handle run of the mill “criminals”. Their clients didn’t steal hundreds of dollars with a gun. Theirs was a much better class of crooks who stole millions with computers and bogus contracts.
Rhea had been promised the chance to move into the high end world of corporate litigation. It became obvious to her several years ago, just before she was made partner, that promise was not going to be kept. Still, the money was more than she had dreamed of and she was driving one of the perks. And now that her son, an only child, was attending Northwestern she was relishing her independence.
Rhea waited for the garage door to finish rising then drove her car in and parked it on the double door side of the attached three car garage. She pressed the button of the remote in the Benz to put the door down. She entered the house through the kitchen, shut off the alarm, and dropped her purse and keys on the countertop.
W
hile walking through the dining room she glanced at a wall clock and noticed it was barely past 9:00. Rhea stopped at the open stairway leading up to the bedrooms, leaned on the railing and took off her shoes. A few seconds later she reached her destination, the liquor cabinet in the living room.
At the liquor cabinet, she half filled a large brandy snifter with an expensive Courvoisier she was a little too fond of and swallowed a large gulp. Rhea would not admit it but over the last three years or so she had developed a bit of a drinking problem. In her mind it was her cheating husband that caused the divorce and not her drinking and indifference to him that contributed to the cheating. She took another large swallow of the smooth cognac, refilled the glass and headed upstairs.
Rhea took a quick shower and with a large bath towel wrapped around her torso, strolled back into her bedroom. She picked up her glass from the vanity, took another swallow then went to her large, walk-in closet. She opened the door to expose a full length mirror, loosened the towel and allowed it to drop to the floor.
Rhea took another swallow from the goblet and finished off the drink. Standing naked in front of the mirror she gave herself a reasonably objective review. She was certainly not bad for a forty-seven-year old woman. Her breasts were still fairly firm but like most women her age, her butt and hips were spreading just a bit. All in all, not bad, she thought.
She bent down to pick up the towel off the thick carpeting. Facing to her left, away from the mirror she began to wrap the towel around herself to go back downstairs to the liquor cabinet. Out of the corner of her eye something in the mirror caught her attention. She turned her head to look at the mirror again and that’s when she saw him, a strange man standing in her bedroom doorway.
Rhea turned and bolstered by the courage supplied by the alcohol, angrily said, “Who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing in my house?”
The man merely smiled a sinister smile then said, “I’m hurt that you don’t remember me, counselor.”
When he said that, the light of recognition came on in Rhea’s mind and she immediately realized she was in serious trouble.
The intruder started slowly walking toward her, still wryly smiling at her. He was dressed totally in black including a tight Spandex skull cap and a slick, nylon windbreaker. His right hand was in the pocket of the light jacket, obviously concealing something.
Rhea took a step back to get away from him and backed into the mirror. She turned to her right and started to run but he was too quick. He jumped toward her, grabbed her left arm with his left hand and spun her around to face him. She started to scream but was abruptly cut off when he jammed the Taser into her left side and floored her with fifty thousand volts.
When Rhea came to, she was tied to a wooden armchair in her unfinished basement. Naked, her wrists were tied to the chair’s arms and her ankles to the chair’s legs. Still a little foggy, it took her a moment to realize where she was and remember what had happened. Seated on a similar chair, barely three feet in front of her was her obviously psychotic antagonist.
“I was only doing my job,” she shakily said when she again realized who he was. “Please don’t hurt me,” she sobbed.
He stood up and as he looked down at her she said, “Please, take anything you want, I promise I won’t report it. You don’t have to rape me, I’ll help you…”
“Sssshhhh,” he softly said as he leaned forward and covered her mouth with a strip of duct tape. Still leaning down, his nose barely three inches from hers, he quietly said, “I’m not going to rape you. That’s not my thing. But before I’m done, you’ll wish that was all I wanted.”
He sat down in his chair, leaned forward again, his forearms on his thighs, he continued by saying, “You see Rhea, you don’t mind if I call you Rhea do you?” he said to the horror-stricken woman. “You claim you were just doing your job, but that’s not really true,” he calmly continued. “If you had really done your job I wouldn’t have spent all those years rotting in prison. Your job should not have included using doctored DNA evidence.”
By now Rhea was sitting up as stiff as a board. She was trying to yell or scream, make at least some noise through the tape covering her mouth. Nothing but weak, muffled sounds could be heard as her wide-open, terror filled eyes darted about the cold room.
Her tormentor pulled his chair closer to her so that their knees almost touched. She watched as he removed a metal object from his back pocket and held it in front of her face. This was when she first noticed he was wearing surgical gloves and recognizing the metal object she tried to scream “no” several times. As she did he grabbed the index finger of her left hand and clamped the pliers on it and squeezed it, breaking the skin and crushing the bone. He smiled at the crunching sound the bone made as the pliers shattered it like an egg shell. Rhea tried to scream but it was muffled by the tape.
He waited for her to calm down then looked directly into her eyes and said, “That’s just the first one. Soon you’ll start passing out from the pain but don’t worry, I’ll wake you. I don’t want you to miss a second of this.”
Tricia Dunlop knocked softly on the door of the seventeenth floor corner office of Frawley, Markowitz and Kent. As she turned the door’s handle to enter a voice from within politely said, “Come in.”
Tricia walked into the well appointed senior partner’s office and said to the woman behind the glass-topped desk, “Jackie, I’m getting worried. Rhea hasn’t come in or called yet and she’s scheduled for a settlement conference in court now. I just got a call from Judge Halladay’s clerk that she hasn’t shown up yet.”
Jacqueline Neeley, Rhea Watson’s friend and immediate superior, took off her glasses and let them hang from the chain around her neck. A seriously worried expression came over her face and she said, “Have you called her?” Neeley immediately realized what a foolish question that was knowing how responsible and efficient Tricia was.
“Of course, several times. I have a key to her house and the code for her alarm. Do you think I should go check for her?”
“Yes, but wait a minute.” Neeley picked up her office phone and dialed 411. She asked for the non-emergency number for the MPD and had the call connected to them. A woman answered and Neeley took a minute to explain who she was and why she was calling.
“I don’t know that it’s an emergency but we have a key to her house and myself and Ms. Watson’s assistant are going to check. Could we have a patrol car meet us there?”
She listened for a moment then said, “Fifteen minutes. That would be great. Just a moment…”
She held the phone handle out toward Tricia and said, “Address.”
Tricia took the phone and told the woman Watson’s address.
Twenty minutes later the two women pulled up to Watson’s house. Neeley parked her Mercedes in the driveway and they both got out as a middle-aged patrol officer with the three stripes of a sergeant on his uniform sleeve, Norm Anderson, walked toward them. His patrol car was parked in the street and he was ringing the front door bell when the women arrived.
He introduced himself to them and said, “I walked around the outside and looked through the windows. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. You have a key and permission to enter?”
“Yes,” Tricia said handing the officer the front door key. “There’s an alarm system too. I have the code,” she continued holding up a small slip of paper.
They went through the front door and Tricia checked the alarm box and said, “It’s not on. Maybe she forgot.”
Anderson gently took both women by an arm and as he guided them back to the front door politely said, “I want you both to wait outside. I’ll do a walk through and check the place out.”
“But…” Tricia started to say.
“There may be something in here you don’t want to see.”
“Oh, God,” Tricia said biting a knuckle.
“And if there is,” Neeley continued the thought, “this could be a crime scene.”
&nbs
p; “Let’s hope not,” Anderson said reassuringly. “Let me check first.”
He closed the front door and walked into the large foyer. When they had first entered the house, the veteran cop had noticed a very slight, coppery odor in the air. Understanding immediately what it came from was why he had hustled the two women out.
Anderson pulled his pistol from his holster, pointed it at the ceiling and started up the staircase. He quickly went through the four bedrooms and three baths. The only thing out of the ordinary he found was a damp bath towel on the floor of the master bedroom. Anderson also noticed the odor he detected was now gone. Back downstairs he moved methodically through the rooms. As he got closer to the kitchen the smell became a little stronger. Finally, he stood in the open doorway leading to the basement and knew for sure where it was coming from and what he was likely to find.
Owen Jefferson glanced at the crowd gathering across the street as he got out of his car. He then walked quickly across the large well kept front yard of Rhea Watson’s home. He looked to his right and saw an ambulance from the medical examiner’s office parked in the driveway where Jackie Neeley’s Mercedes was before she moved it. He noticed the two women being interviewed by a female homicide detective and saw Norm Anderson standing near them. The detective, a young woman recently assigned to homicide, introduced the women to Jefferson.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jefferson said to the women. “Marcie,” he said to the detective, “when you’re done here you can let them go.” He turned back to the obviously distraught women and said, “We’ll be in touch. If you think of anything give Detective Sterling a call.”
“If there’s anything we can do, please let us know,” the older woman said.
Jefferson slightly nodded his head then turned to Anderson. “Hey, Norm, tell me what’s up,” Jefferson said as the two men stepped away from the women.
Anderson went over everything for the lead detective. When he finished he said, “Owen, it’s Rhea Watson. Remember her?”
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