The Third Victim

by Phillip Margolin

  “Mr. Poe alleges a conspiracy that started when he prevented you from beating up a female friend.”

  Prater laughed. “Good luck proving a conspiracy.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “She was one of his whores and she resisted arrest. And about that pool hall, it’s a front for prostitution. Some of his girls hang out there. There are rooms in the back. You can use your imagination to figure out what goes on in those rooms.”

  “So you’re saying that there is no basis for Mr. Poe’s claims?” Regina asked.

  “Absolutely none. Talk to the officers who issued the tickets and arrested the girls. They’ll tell you that I had nothing to do with them.”

  Regina decided to switch gears. “I notice that you have a New York accent. Is that where you’re from originally?”

  “Yeah,” Prater replied after a moment’s hesitation.

  “When did you move to Oregon?”

  “About four years ago.”

  “Were you a policeman in New York?”

  Prater nodded but did not elaborate. Regina suspected that the move and the reasons for it were not something Prater wanted to discuss, but they were something she had to know if she was going to represent him.

  “Why did you decide to come west?” she asked.

  Prater shrugged. “I felt like a change of scenery.”

  Regina was an expert at reading body language and she could tell that her potential client was very tense.

  “Is that what the investigators for Poe’s attorney are going to find when they contact your old precinct? And remember, anything you tell me is confidential. So honesty is the best policy. Believe me, nothing blows a case to pieces like surprises in the middle of a trial.”

  “Okay,” Prater said as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Some gangbangers made a complaint about excessive force. It was bullshit, but there were some police shootings around the country and you couldn’t lay a finger on a person of color without a hundred unemployed African-Americans protesting outside city hall.”

  “And you didn’t use excessive force?”

  “Every ounce of force I employed was reasonable, but the chief was covering his ass and he wanted me gone. You look at my file and you’ll see I left of my own free will. So, will you take the case?”

  “I will, but we need to talk business. I’m going to need a retainer.…”

  “I thought lawyers handled cases like this on a contingency fee.”

  “The lawyers who sue on behalf of the plaintiff receive money only if they win, but the lawyer defending the case doesn’t receive any money if she wins. She just defeats the claim.”

  “Can’t you countersue?”

  “We could, but I’ll need a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer if you want me to represent you. There may be more down the line.”

  “Fifty thousand! I don’t have that kind of dough.”

  “Mr. Poe is also suing the city. Have you talked to the city attorney? Maybe they’ll provide you with a lawyer.”

  “I don’t want a free lawyer. I want someone good.”

  “Why don’t you think about my fee and get back to me.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do that,” Prater said. Then he stood up and left. When he was out of sight, Regina breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Good riddance,” she said. Regina shook her head. “Everything about Mr. Prater screams ‘dirty cop.’”

  “Is that why you asked for a high retainer?”

  Regina smiled. “That is my retainer for a case like this, but I was hoping Prater didn’t have the money. He made my skin crawl and I’m glad we won’t have to see him again.”

  * * *

  Regina’s cell phone rang and she put down the police reports in Alex Mason’s case she’d been reading since she’d gotten rid of Arnold Prater. It was dark outside and she noticed that it was almost eight o’clock.

  “Stanley?” she asked when she saw the caller ID.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “At the office. I just got a new case and I’m going over the discovery.”

  “Did you forget about dinner? We had a seven-fifteen reservation.”

  Regina panicked. She had no memory of a dinner reservation.

  “I’m sorry. I just got wrapped up in my work and lost track of time,” she said, lying.

  “That’s okay. Just come over.”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  Cloud laughed. “Our favorite restaurant. Where we had our first date.”

  There was dead air and no response.

  “The Seville. It’s going to take you at least twenty minutes, so hurry. I’m starving.”

  “Yes, of course,” Regina said. “I’ve been reading police reports nonstop and my brain is mush.”

  “See you soon. I’m at our table in the back.”

  Stanley disconnected and Regina realized that her hand was shaking.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Regina woke up, her room looked strange. She sat up slowly and glanced around. It was her room, but she didn’t remember some of the furniture being where she saw it. Her heartbeat accelerated and she took deep breaths.

  “I’m just groggy,” she told herself. And, in truth, she was after spending most of the night in a motel room halfway between Portland and Salem, where Stanley lived and worked.

  Regina closed her eyes. She tried to convince herself that everything was okay and she distracted herself by reminiscing about sex with the chief justice. After several erotic moments, she got out of bed and walked to her bathroom with her eyes on the floor so she wouldn’t have to look at her bedroom.

  Regina lived in a classic Tudor house on an acre of land in Dunthorpe, Portland’s most exclusive neighborhood. The house was too big for a single person, but Regina entertained a lot and she needed the space. Her breakfast nook looked across a flower bed and a rolling lawn to the river and she watched the boats floating by as she ate a quick breakfast of coffee, yogurt, and toast. While she ate, Regina looked at her schedule for the day. This morning, she was going to visit Alex Mason at the jail. She didn’t remember making the arrangement, but it was in her phone, so she must have. Regina looked in her attaché case. Mason’s file was in it, but she didn’t remember putting it in when she left the office. She told herself that she had the file and plenty of time to get to the jail, so there was nothing to worry about.

  Regina put her plate and cups in the dishwasher and walked into her foyer, where the door to her garage was located. As she walked, she searched in her purse for her car keys. She couldn’t find them. A sick feeling formed in her stomach. She emptied her purse on a table and raked through the contents. She grew more agitated when it became clear that the keys weren’t in her purse.

  Regina took deep breaths to calm down. She’d driven home from the motel. She’d parked in the garage. So she’d had the keys when she parked. And then … Nothing.

  The steps to the second floor were in the entryway. Regina sank down on them and held her head in her hands. Where were the keys? She couldn’t get to the jail to see Alex Mason if she couldn’t find her keys.

  Suddenly, Regina saw something out of the corner of her eye. A Post-it note was stuck to the inside of the door to the garage. She walked to the door and read the note. It was in her handwriting, but she didn’t remember writing it.

  KEYS IN DRAWER OF TABLE NEXT TO GARAGE DOOR.

  Regina pulled out the drawer. They were there! Her keys were in the drawer! She gulped in air and steadied herself. She’d found them. She could go to the jail now. Everything was okay.

  Only it wasn’t. This wasn’t the first time she’d misplaced her keys, and two days ago she’d come home and found the stove on. But everyone had memory lapses, and she was almost sixty. Many of her friends complained about forgetting names and movie titles. Slow memory retrieval was a side effect of aging. It was normal. Only what if her problem wasn’t?

  Regina felt panicky. She shut her eyes and took slow, deep br
eaths. She didn’t want to think about that.

  Regina grew angry. There was nothing wrong with her. She was perfectly normal. Everyone forgot things from time to time. Regina took a deep breath and calmed down. This wasn’t a big deal. Certainly nothing to get upset, she thought, trying to convince herself as she walked into the garage.

  * * *

  Alex Mason was waiting in one of the contact visiting rooms at the jail when the guard opened the thick metal door and ushered Regina inside. Her client looked scared and exhausted. Copies of the discovery in his case were piled high in front of him on a metal table.

  “How are you holding up?” Regina asked.

  “I’m not. This place is a zoo. I haven’t slept more than an hour or so since they locked me up. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

  “I’ve scheduled a bail hearing for next week and I’m lining up witnesses. I didn’t want to go to court until I had a good grasp of the evidence against you and strong testimony about your character.”

  “How does it look?” Mason asked anxiously.

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Alex. It doesn’t look good. Meredith Fenner is definite that she was held at your cabin, and DNA evidence puts her and the other victims there. Then there’s your DNA on the duct tape.”

  “I had absolutely nothing to do with these women. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to leave evidence at my cabin, like those bloodstained sheets, once I learned that Fenner girl had escaped?”

  “The DA will argue that you would have thought the cabin was being watched.”

  Mason put his head in his hands. “This is insane.”

  “We have another problem. Your wife’s statements really hurt your case.”

  Alex looked desperate. “A lot of what Allison said isn’t true.”

  “Let’s talk about that. Why don’t you walk me through her statements and tell me where she got it wrong.”

  “We did meet in New York, but her account of what happened isn’t completely accurate.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was in Manhattan for depositions. I saw her for the first time in the conference room at the law firm that was representing the defendants. She was getting everyone coffee, taking notes. I learned later that she was a temp and she’d only been working at the firm for about a month.”

  “Did you talk during the deposition?”

  “Maybe to thank her for the coffee. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “What was your next contact with Mrs. Mason?”

  “I was staying at a hotel a block from the law office and I went to my room after the meeting broke up. I changed out of my suit and went into the bar to unwind before getting dinner. Allison was with some other women when I came in. I remembered her, but I didn’t pay much attention until she sat down next to me and said hello.”

  “Mrs. Mason says that you initiated the conversation.”

  Mason shook his head. “That’s not how it happened. I read what she told the detectives, but it was the other way around. Right before I flew to New York, I’d wound up the proceedings in my divorce from my second wife and I was gun-shy about getting involved with any woman.”

  Mason paused and looked down at the table. Then he looked back at Regina.

  “I know what everyone will think. Allison is beautiful—stunning—and I definitely noticed her, but Carol had put me through hell and I didn’t know Allison, and I was only going to be in New York a few days.”

  “So what did happen?”

  “It was Allison who took the initiative. She sat on the bar stool next to me and asked me how the deposition was going. I laughed and said I wouldn’t tell her, since she was working for the enemy. She blushed and apologized for asking. She told me she was a temp and had never worked in a law firm before, so she didn’t realize she was out of line. I told her not to worry.

  “I don’t remember everything about the conversation in the bar. I know I asked her if she was from New York and she said she’d just moved about a year ago. I don’t remember where she’d been living. She said she was taking temp work until she could find a full-time job. She asked me where I lived and I told her Portland but said I’d grown up in New York. To make a long story short, she was easy to talk to and I was hungry, so I asked her if she’d like to have dinner with me.”

  “And she accepted?”

  Mason nodded.

  “What did you talk about at dinner?” Regina asked.

  “Lightweight stuff for the most part. You know, how she liked New York. But the subject matter got a little heavy by the end of the meal.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t know how it came up, but I told her about how draining my divorce had been and she said she’d been through a bad relationship, too. Only hers had involved bad physical abuse. Then she told me that her stepfather had tried to rape her. When her mother refused to believe her, she ran away from home and had been supporting herself ever since by waitressing and working as a model and a salesclerk. Basically, any work she could find.”

  “That’s pretty heavy for a first date,” Regina said.

  “Yeah, it was. And I felt … When she opened up like that … I can’t explain it, but what she told me was so intimate. And it made me feel…”

  “Sorry for her?”

  “Yeah. And close to her because we’d both gone through hard times. I mean, not that getting raped and having to run away from home was the equivalent of a bad marriage, but we were both emotionally beat-up.”

  “You don’t think she was playing you?”

  Mason thought before answering. Then he shook his head.

  “I don’t want to believe that. The conversation seemed very natural at the time. But with what she’s saying now … She might have.”

  Regina didn’t press her client, but she did make a note on her legal pad.

  “What happened after dinner?”

  “We went to my room. I’d been drinking and I felt sorry for Allison and what she’d been through, and I was smitten. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was like one of those romances at summer camp or something that would happen on a vacation in a foreign country. You never expect to see the person again and you don’t see any of her flaws, just the good parts. And she was—she is stunningly beautiful.”

  “You slept together?”

  Mason nodded.

  “Just the one time?” Regina asked.

  “No. We were together every night I was in New York and the sex was incredible. Allison made me feel alive again, and after what I’d gone through with Carol … I don’t know how to explain it other than to say it was the best three days of my life.”

  “Allison says that you asked her to move to Portland.”

  “No, that’s absolutely false. The wounds from my divorce were still too raw for me to think about commitment. And I thought Allison understood that we were just two adults having fun. That last morning, she left around four to go to her apartment, and I went to the airport and flew home.”

  “So how did Allison end up in Portland?” Regina asked.

  “I had nothing to do with that. She just showed up about a month and a half after I got back. She came to my office. I had no warning.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She said that she couldn’t stop thinking about me. She told me she knew flying to Portland was crazy but that she felt she had to take a chance that our time in New York wasn’t just a fling, that we’d really made an emotional connection. She told me that she’d fly back if I didn’t want her to stay, no hard feelings.

  “I pointed out the difference in our ages and she said she’d thought about that, too. Then she said that she’d given up on love until she met me and she didn’t want to go through the rest of her life wondering if she’d lost her only chance at happiness because she didn’t have the courage to take a risk.”

  Mason paused and took a deep breath. He looked at Regina, his eyes pleading for understanding.

  “I was blown away. I h
ad replayed our nights together many times in the month after I returned to Portland and what she’d said.… It seemed straight from the heart. I was really moved.”

  “What did you tell Allison?” Regina asked.

  “I told her that I’d been thinking about her, too, and I’d felt a loss when we parted. I told her that I didn’t want to act impulsively, no matter how strongly I felt. I suggested that I find her a job at another firm—not mine, because that would be awkward. I told her I’d pay for an apartment where she could live while we decided if we really wanted to be with each other.

  “She agreed. She said she’d had too many disappointments in her life to make a rash decision. So that’s where we left it. We agreed that we would date for a while before we slept together again, because we had to see if there was more to the relationship than sex. It was all very civilized, very adult.”

  “So what happened?”

  Mason sighed. “We were in bed before the week was up and we were married two months later.”

  “Was it true love?” Regina asked without sarcasm.

  “I thought so. I couldn’t keep my hands off Allison. I thought about her every minute we were apart. And she was good for me. She cooked, she built me up, and she helped me forget my failed marriage.”

  “Did you have Allison sign a prenup?”

  Mason reddened. “No.”

  Regina looked surprised. “You’re a very smart lawyer, and you’d just been through a terrible divorce. Why no prenup?”

  Mason looked down. “I … It was stupid, I know. But no one had ever made me feel like Allison did. I didn’t want to upset her by making her think our marriage was just a business deal.”

  “How long did the good feelings last?”

  “Until she started to disappear.”

  Regina had been writing a note, but she stopped and looked up.

  “When did that start?”

  “We’d been married maybe six, eight months.”

  “What do you mean when you say that she disappeared?”

  “It was never more than a night and it wasn’t often. The first time she stayed away, I was really worried, and I was very upset when she showed up the next morning. She laughed it off. She told me she was sorry she’d worried me but said she’d been out with friends from work and had had too much to drink and didn’t want to drive. I asked her why she hadn’t called. She said she’d passed out at her friend’s house and woke up at four in the morning. She claimed that she didn’t want to wake me up.”