by Adam Mitzner
Judge Pielmeier took the bait. “Mr. Patterson can wear whatever he wants, so long as he’s got a shirt on.” She paused to allow the gallery time to laugh, which they did, as if on cue. “But I’m going to reserve judgment about security until after I consult with the corrections people. You got anything else on your list, Ms. Harrington?”
I wished she did, but I knew she didn’t. “No, Your Honor,” she said.
“Okay, then. So let’s talk about when we’re going to do this,” Judge Pielmeier said.
How quickly to go to trial is one of those issues on which clients almost always disagree with their lawyers. From the defense lawyer’s perspective, time is almost always an ally. The more time that passes, the more recollections dim, key evidence might be lost, or, if you’re really lucky, a witness or two dies.
Clients, however, are like little kids—they want to jump to the end as quickly as possible to see how it all turns out. They talk about how terrible it is that people think they’re guilty, without much recognition that being found guilty itself is much, much worse.
There’s one caveat to that rule of delay, however. If you know your client is guilty, and a key piece of evidence has not been found by the prosecution—the body, or a witness, or the murder weapon—then you want to get to trial before the prosecution can find it.
Nina favored going to trial as soon as possible. When I asked her why, she said it was because our client was already incarcerated. I couldn’t help but wonder, however, if it was more because she believed that if the bat was found, L.D.’s prints would be all over it.
If Judge Pielmeier had asked me, I would have requested a trial date four months from now, around mid-May, but that would have been a negotiating position. I expected Kaplan to ask for three months before whatever date I picked in order to take advantage of the prosecution’s built-in head start—she’d been engaging in fact finding and evidence gathering well before the indictment. Judge Pielmeier could be expected to split the difference. So asking for mid-May translated into a trial date toward the end of March, which is where I really wanted to end up.
Judge Pielmeier, however, never even broached the subject.
“I’m afraid April is off-limits for me,” she said, looking at a computer screen that I presumed had her trial calendar. “And I have another matter that is already scheduled for much of May. Can we push this out until June?”
I turned to L.D. He was vigorously shaking his head. Completely unacceptable. June meant another six months in jail.
“Your Honor, the defense would object to that,” I said. “Given that the court has denied Mr. Patterson an opportunity at bail, every day he’s incarcerated is a gross miscarriage of justice. Under the speedy-trial rules—”
“Don’t quote basic criminal rules to me, Mr. Sorensen,” Judge Pielmeier snapped. “You gonna play hardball with me? Okay, then, I’m going to play hardball with you. Let’s say January twentieth.”
This time I didn’t even consult with L.D. “Your Honor, while we greatly appreciate the court making time on its schedule so soon, I’m not sure the defense can be ready by the twentieth, which is little more than two weeks away.”
“I know when it is, Mr. Sorensen, but let me remind you why we’re here. You said you wouldn’t waive your right to a speedy trial. You said you wanted to go to trial as soon as possible. You said that every day your client is incarcerated is—I think the term you used was—‘a gross miscarriage of justice.’ How gross a miscarriage of justice is acceptable to you?”
Over the giggles in the gallery, I said, “If Your Honor had time in February or even any time in early March, that would be preferable.”
“My courtroom is not a restaurant that takes reservations, Counselor. If you are invoking your speedy-trial rights, it’s January twenty. And I appear to have misspoken about my availability in June. So your choice, Mr. Sorensen, is to proceed on January twentieth to avoid the gross miscarriage of justice that you are so concerned about, or to waive your speedy-trial rights, which will put this matter in line for sometime during the summer, although now I’m thinking it might be as late as September. Perhaps even October. So, Mr. Sorensen, which one will it be?”
“We’ll be ready to go on January twenty,” I said in utter defeat.
Judge Pielmeier announced that we were adjourned even before I could ask her for the opportunity to speak to Legally Dead. I could have shouted out to her as she left the bench, but I knew she wouldn’t grant the request, and I didn’t want to be told again how court time was her time and that I should speak to L.D. on my time.
“L.D.,” I said as the guards started to cuff him again, “we’re going to try to see you tomorrow about something important.”
“I’ll be home,” L.D. said just as he was being led away.
God, we were so screwed.
25
The Christmas decorations had already been removed when we returned to Rikers the following morning. I doubted they were getting ready to put up the Valentine’s Day stuff.
Legally Dead was brought in to see us by a different guard than last time, but this one also subscribed to the grooming regimen of a big bald head and a black goatee. He followed the standard operating procedure with respect to the restraints, unlocking L.D.’s handcuffs but keeping his legs shackled.
L.D.’s eyes lit up when he saw us. I wondered if that was because of Nina, given that he didn’t see any women other than when she visited. But even if that was the reason, L.D. was always respectful toward her. More so than Brooks or even Marcus Jackson. At least L.D. didn’t stare at her breasts when he was talking to her.
“Tell me you got some good news for me,” he said.
“Let me tell you the news, and then we can talk about whether it’s good or bad,” I said. “I hate to just blurt it out like this, but we have pretty good evidence that Roxanne was involved with another man.” I stopped to check his reaction, but there really wasn’t one, and so I pressed on. “First, one of her neighbors saw her kissing somebody, although that’s a very shaky ID because she doesn’t remember when it was, but she did think that it was an older, white man. The bigger thing we found out was through the autopsy report. You remember I told you we hired some guy who just left the medical examiner’s office to be our expert witness?” L.D. nodded. “Well, he hit us with a bombshell.” I waited a beat. “Apparently, Roxanne didn’t have any pubic hair when she died. She’d waxed it off. So the pubic hairs found in her bed must belong to some other Caucasian.”
He waited a moment, seemingly taking in this information. A good ten seconds later he still hadn’t shown any emotion. His subdued reaction didn’t match up with L.D. beating a woman to death in a jealous rage. Then again, maybe that’s why he was acting subdued.
“I’m assuming you didn’t know that she had . . . a Brazilian,” I said.
He shook his head. “No.”
“Did she ever tell you she’d done that before?” Nina asked.
L.D. shrugged. “Not something we ever talked about, be honest with ya.”
“Did you know the name of the place where she gets her hair done?” Nina followed up. “She might have had the waxing done there.”
This time L.D. laughed. “Nah. She never mentioned shit like that. I doubt she just walked into some place, though. You know what I mean? Somebody probably came to her.”
“And what about this older man?” I asked. “The only ID we got was that he looked old enough to be her father. The witness who told us about him shut us down before we could get a decent description, but I’m assuming he was white and had gray hair or was bald, or just somehow looked twenty or thirty years older than her at a distance. Any idea who it might be?” ”
L.D. laughed. “You?”
I shot him a look of disapproval. “I’m not that old, L.D. But seriously, any idea who the guy might be? It’s important because that could very well be the guy who killed her. And, even if it’s not, he could still be your best shot of getting out of h
ere.”
The smile fell off his face. “No idea, man. I’d be the last guy on earth to know if Roxanne was fucking somebody else, you know?”
That was probably an understatement.
He scrunched up his face. “But if some guy fucked Roxanne like right before she died, wouldn’t he have left behind . . .” He looked at Nina. “Shit with his DNA?”
“Not if the guy used a condom,” Nina said. “There was no semen found as part of the autopsy.”
“And we really don’t know when the hairs were left. We’ll argue that it had to have been after the last time you had sex with her.” He looked at me as if he didn’t follow my logic. “I’m assuming, L.D., that if Roxanne didn’t have pubic hair when you were last with her, you would have told us that,” I explained. “Especially because we were assuming that the hairs found in her bed could be hers.” He still offered me a blank look, and so I said, “So when was that, the last time you were with her?”
“I dunno. A couple of days before she left for South Carolina.”
“So that means that our timeline is something like . . . she leaves for South Carolina on Wednesday, so let’s assume your last time with her was Monday, just for the sake of argument. She could have had the waxing on Tuesday and that’s when the guy was with her. Or she could have gotten the wax while she was in South Carolina, and then the guy was with her when she came home on Sunday night.”
“Yeah, but if some dude was with her Sunday night, don’t that mean he killed her? I mean, she was killed sometime Sunday night, right?”
“Like we told you before, L.D., the fact that there was another lover cuts two ways,” I said. “It’s good because, like you just said, it gives us another possible murderer to parade in front of the jury. And we can make some hay out of the fact that, at least as far as we know, the prosecution didn’t go out of its way to find out who left those hairs. So we can push a rush-to-judgment angle. But there’s a downside, too. The presence of another lover means that it supports a jealousy theory of motive. I mean, even what you just said, that somebody else might have been in her bed on Sunday evening, the prosecution could turn into a story where that guy leaves at eight or nine o’clock, and then you come over, and there’s some evidence of her being with somebody else, and you just lose it. Hell, they could say maybe you caught Roxanne in the act and lost it.”
“And,” Nina added, “we’re still not able to completely disprove they’re not Roxanne’s hairs. I mean, if the sheets weren’t changed for a while, they could be hers from before she waxed.” As if she just had another thought, Nina continued, “This may be a little TMI, Dan, but Kaplan’s a woman, so this is going to occur to her, too. I bet you anything that she argues you do that kind of thing—you know, waxing—when you have a new man in your life. That’s going to play right into their jealous-rage theory. Maybe they’re going to claim that L.D. found out about the waxing and went crazy.”
“I fucking hate it when you talk about me like I’m not here,” L.D. said. “I didn’t know she’d done it. Doesn’t the truth matter at all to you guys?”
“You really want to talk to us about the truth, L.D.?” I said sharply. “We caught up with Mercedes. You weren’t going to see Brianna over Thanksgiving. So when you told us you were, that was a lie. So yeah, the truth does matter. It matters a lot.”
That knocked him off the high ground sufficiently for him to look away, and the anger drained out of his face. I expected him to say something but heard Nina’s voice instead.
“She would have lied for you,” Nina said soothingly, as if the moment required a touch of compassion. “But she couldn’t. She went out of town, so there was no way she could claim she was with you. Too many people saw her in Boston. She told us that you actually spent Thanksgiving with a guy named Morris Milton, who apparently has the catchy nickname of Nuts.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the truth.”
“Nice to know that sometimes you tell us the truth,” I said.
He gave me a disapproving glare, but it was only fleeting. He knew he was the one in the wrong here.
“I was gonna see Brianna,” he finally said, “but then at the last second, Mercedes tells me she’s gonna go see her people. Nuts got no family, so we hung and watched some football, brought in some KFC.”
“There was nobody else for you to spend the holiday with?” Nina asked, sounding sorry for him. I didn’t dare mention that I spent Thanksgiving alone, too.
“Nah. Don’t got no family. I mean, I gots an aunt and uncle who still live in Everett, that’s near Boston, but we ain’t real close, and I didn’t feel much like hiking up there neither.”
“Don’t you have a manager or PR person?”
“You spend Thanksgiving with people who work for you?” L.D. said with a grin. “Besides, not like them dudes are longtime friends or nothin’. They just people Brooks got to look after me. And Nuts . . . Nuts is good people, so why not chill with him, you know.”
“If he’s such good people, why didn’t you tell us that you were with him?” I asked, my tone much sharper than Nina’s had been.
L.D. looked away from me when I said this, further admission that he knew that he’d screwed up. “Yeah, I’m sorry ’bout that. I shoulda told you. I guess . . . I guess I knew he wouldn’t help, and I thought, you know, maybe Mercedes would.”
“Well, you were right about that,” I said. “He didn’t help.”
“You guys actually talked with him? What he say?”
“Besides threatening us, he didn’t say anything,” I said.
He shook his head, deflated. “Figures. You know why he got the name Nuts?”
“No,” I said.
“Because he is nuts. You know, like a psycho.”
Nina glanced over at me. She had a look of confusion and disgust and I felt the same thing in the pit of my stomach.
“We’re back at square one, L.D.,” I said. “We got nothing. No evidence that you weren’t planning on going to South Carolina for Thanksgiving, which means that we can’t rebut the prosecution’s argument that you were disinvited at the last minute, and then flew into a murderous rage when you confronted Roxanne after she returned. To the extent that we have something about Roxanne having an affair with someone else on account of the pubic hairs, we don’t have the first clue as to who that somebody else might be, and as we keep saying, I’m not sure we even want to go that way, because the most logical conclusion to be drawn is that you killed Roxanne in a fit of jealousy.”
We waited for L.D. to respond. He didn’t for a good ten seconds.
In a measured voice, he finally said, “I know it looks bad, but I didn’t kill her.”
“I hear you,” I said.
26
It was a direct flight from LaGuardia to the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport in South Carolina, and so it took less than four hours, door to door, for us to arrive in Stocks. The place where Roxanne was born and raised.
The plan was to see if anyone from Roxanne’s past knew anything about her present. It was a long shot, but, quite frankly, we didn’t know what else to do.
The Old Westerbrook Hotel. The reason we’d picked it was because it was the only lodging within a forty-minute drive of Stocks that didn’t have the term motor inn attached to it.
Upon our arrival, we discerned that the Old Westerbrook was a series of cottages situated around a golf course. The posters in the lobby indicated that the course had hosted the LPGA U.S. Open a few years earlier and was still a regular stop on the women’s tour. Why anyone would put a championship golf course in Stocks, South Carolina, however, was beyond me.
The woman at the front desk was fresh-faced enough that the term girl would have applied. She was wearing a dark red blazer with a white shirt and a large name tag telling the world that her name was Lysette and she was from Charleston, South Carolina.
“That’ll be a nonsmoking room with a king bed,” Lysette said to me after I gave her my name.
Ni
na had actually made the reservations, but I nonetheless turned to her to confirm that sharing a bed was what she had in mind.
“I don’t smoke, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Nina said with a sly grin.
“That’ll be fine,” I told Lysette, and handed her my credit card.
We were given cottage fifteen, which Lysette told us had a nice water view. Not that it mattered. It was pitch-black outside, and so the only things we saw in the windows were our own reflections.
Cottage fifteen was more nicely appointed than I had anticipated. There was a reasonably sized living room, furnished in a Southern wicker motif, and a stone fireplace. The bedroom had a four-poster bed with cream-colored linens.
“It’s pretty nice,” I said, looking around. “I expected . . . I don’t know what I expected, the Bates Motel, maybe.”
Nina chuckled and plopped down on the corner of the bed. “This is the size of fifteen hotel rooms in New York. And at one-third the price.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, “having never stayed in a New York hotel room, on account that I actually live there.”
My comment struck a nerve. She knew that I was referencing the married man of Nina’s past, for why else would she have any experience with the size of New York hotel rooms?
Nina’s expression instantly grew colder, and I was about to apologize, when she spoke first. “What’s going on with us, Dan?”
Of course I knew what she meant. And equally predictably, I said, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I realize that you must have a flood of stuff going on in your head, but that doesn’t excuse you from sharing it with me. What is this for you? Are we just law partners with benefits? If that’s the way you want it, I guess I can deal, but, frankly, I didn’t think that’s where we were heading.”
“No. That’s not what I want.”
“Then what?”
I sat down beside her and took her hand. She leaned in to me slightly, her arm rubbing against mine. When our eyes met, she looked sincerely concerned that she might not like what I was about to say.