Conflict of Interest

by Mark Stone

“And Rick,” Justin said. As I turned back to him, I saw him looking at the floor. “Tell the kid I’m sorry for what happened to him. Tell him I wish it could have been different.”

  “Okay,” I said. I wanted to give my friend a pat on the back, to tell him I was here for him and that it was all going to be okay. But there was work to do, and I was more a help for him this way. So, I just turned and headed out the door and toward the jail where I’d find the kid whose birth started all of this.

  Chapter 23

  “Who the hell are you anyway?” Mike Trapp asked as he sat in front of me in the interrogation room of the jail where he was awaiting his bond hearing. This wasn’t my first time in this room, not even close, and though Mike wasn’t officially my client yet, I knew enough people here to have earned a little bit of privacy with the boy.

  “I’m the man who is going to do his damndest to keep you out of jail,” I said quickly, sizing the boy up with one glance and shaking my head. “I’m also a friend of your mother’s.”

  I could see a splash of hurt move across the boy’s eyes as he took my words in. They were Justin’s eyes. They were Daphne’s eyes. They were eyes that had perhaps seen too much and cried too often in the eighteen years the boy had had them.

  “My mother is dead,” he said flatly, not looking at me. “And, if you were her friend, I’d have known about it.”

  “Not that mother,” I answered. “You know who I’m talking about. I’m a friend of Daphne Knight, your biological mother.”

  “You mean the woman who killed my father?” he asked tearing his eyes off the table and glaring at me harshly. “Yeah. I think you’ll understand when I say I don’t want anything to do with her.”

  “That’s your prerogative, son, but just because you heard something doesn’t make it the truth,” I answered. “Case in point, I heard you’re a drug dealer who has almost no chance of walking out of here without a felony conviction that could stand to ruin the rest of your life.”

  Mike blinked hard.

  “I chose to believe there’s more to the story than that,” I continued. “Just like, if you were smart, you’d chose to believe there’s more to the story about your father’s death than what you’re seeing right now.”

  I took a deep breath, watching as a shot of pain settled across Mike’s lips, crumpling them up.

  “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, Mike,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, but compassionate. “Not only to learn that your father has been lying to you for your entire lie, but also to lose him in such a hard and violent manner.” I shook my head. “And then to have the woman responsible for giving you life carted up on charges, it must be horrific, and I wouldn’t tell you how to feel about that, not ever. What I do know however is that your birth mother cares about you a great deal, and she wants to make sure that you’re okay. I’m a good lawyer, son. I’m very good at what I do, and I can do my best to make sure that the mistake you just made doesn’t haunt you for the rest of your life, but you have to let me.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Mike said in an almost whisper. “People think there was money, but there’s not. Dad liked to live the way he wanted, and as it turns out, there’s barely enough money to bury him.”

  “I’m not doing this for the money,” I answered as quickly as Mike could raise his concerns.

  “Really?” he asked, shaking his head. “You might be a good lawyer, but it doesn’t sound like you’re a very smart one.”

  “Let me worry about my financial state, kid,” I answered. “All I need is for you to say you’re hiring me as your representative on this case. I’ll listen to what you have to say, and if we want to go further, we can. If you think you’d be better off with a public defender afterwards, you can do that, too. Everything we say here will still be covered under attorney/client privilege.”

  “And what if you decide you don’t want me afterwards?” Mike asked, blinking again for he looked up at me. Suddenly, it became very clear to me just what kind of person this kid was. It might have been true that he had been caught with drugs on him. It might have even been true that he intended on selling them, but there was more to him than that. There were some deep abandonment issues at play here, and that made a lot of sense. The mother he always knew was gone. His father was gone now, too, and it turned out that the woman who had given birth to him left him as well (even if she didn’t intend to). I didn’t blame him for feeling the way he did, but I wasn’t in a position to heal that for him. I wasn’t his dad. I wasn’t qualified to help with that. What I was qualified to do was to keep his ass out of jail and to make sure Daphne didn’t intentionally step on a landmine trying to make sure her son wasn’t fingered for murder.

  “I know what I’m doing, Mike,” I answered. “I’ve seen the facts of this case, and not just because I was there when the incident happened. If I didn’t want to be here, I would have never come.”

  Mike looked down at the table again. When he finally looked up, he sighed loudly. “Okay,” he answered. “You can be my lawyer, but I’ve got to warn you, things are more complicated than they look.”

  “How?” I asked, shuffling in my seat and placing my hands flat on the table. “How are things complicated, Mike?”

  Tears started to form in the kid’s eyes as he continued. “Because I think it was me,” he said, shaking his head and looking back down at the table. “I think I’m the reason my dad is dead.”

  Chapter 24

  My entire body jerked as I took the boy’s words in. He was obviously in pain. That much was more than evident. Suddenly, what he said to me about not wanting to take on his case after I heard him out took on a new meaning. More than that, the warnings Justin had given me did as well. If Mike was telling the truth, if he really was responsible for what happened to his father, then I wouldn’t be able to take him on as a client. It would be a conflict of interest. What was more, I’d have my work cut out for me with Daphne. That woman would jump on a sword to save her son before the guilty plea even left his mouth.

  Of course, I needed to hear him out first if I was going to actually make an informed decision about all of this.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to stay calm and on top of things. “Tell me why you might think that way. Were you there when he died?”

  “I don’t know,” he said quickly. “Honestly, I have no idea where I was that day. That’s why all of this is so frustrating.”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re going to have to explain that to me a little, I’m afraid,” I answered. “How could you not know where you were?”

  “Because I wasn’t in my right mind,” Mike said. He held his hand up to me, waving it as if to pull whatever judgement I might be forming about him right out. “You don’t get it, though. I’m not a drug addict. At least, I’m not intentionally a drug addict.”

  “I’m not sure anyone is intentionally a drug addict, Mike,” I said. “Just calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  Mike ran hands through his hair, and as he turned away from me, I noticed how much he looked like Justin in this light.

  “I’ve never been like my dad,” he said quietly. “My father was always so smart. Everything also came easy to him. My mom, too. You should have seen her back in the day. before she died, she was a real badass. A genius in every sense of the word. That’s why it never made any sense to me. I was so slow to pick up everything. Did you know I nearly failed the third grade. I would have if not for the sweetest teacher in the world and the fact that my dad was willing to donate money to the private school I went to.” Mike shrugged. “We still had money back then, I guess. The thing was, it never got any better. The further I went in school, the more I seemed to fall behind. Here they were, my dad was a doctor, my mom was an executive at the company she worked for, and I couldn’t get through high school without a tutor and a promise from my dad to make it worth the school’s wild.”

  “What are you trying to say?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
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  “That I was under a lot of pressure,” he said, his voice cracking at the end. “I studied as much as I could, but I needed to sleep. I needed to let my brain rest. And it didn’t matter. No matter what I did, it was never enough. I was never going to be the person my parents expected me to be. Hell, I’d have been surprised if I even got into college without my dad donating a damn wing to their library or something.” He chuckled harshly. “Not that any of that matters anymore, I guess.”

  “You started taking drugs?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I had heard this story enough times to know the direction it was headed.

  “Just so I could focus,” he answered. “Just so that I could stay up at night and do what I needed to. Coffee wasn’t cutting it anymore. I needed something stronger, but none of the doctors I saw would give it to me. They said it was all ADHD meds, and since I didn’t have that, they wouldn’t prescribe it to me.”

  “And I’m guessing you never went to your father about any of this,” I responded.

  “And have him look at me like I was a failure?” Mike asked, his mouth turning downward in pain and hurt. “He already thought I was an embarrassment. If he knew I needed prescription help to get even as far as I did, he’d have disowned me.”

  I wanted to ask the boy what kind of father he had. I wondered what sort of man could be desperate enough to actually steal someone else’s baby and then create an environment where that same baby felt like he couldn’t be honest with the man about his troubles.

  I wasn’t a therapist, though, and it wasn’t my responsibility to make Mike feel better. I needed information to do my job, plain and simple.

  “So, how’d you get the meds?” I asked. Though I already knew the answer, I needed to hear Mike say it himself. I didn’t want to put these particular words into his mouth.

  “With my father’s prescription pad,” the boy answered mournfully. :I knew where he kept it, and I didn’t think it would make any difference. I mean, it couldn’t hurt me. Everyone I know takes the stuff.”

  “That’s not how that works, Mike,” I said, unable to hold my tongue about the idea he’d just voiced. “Prescription drugs are the most abused in the country, and if you’re not being prescribed them specifically by a doctor, there’s no telling what sort of effects they can have on you.”

  “I know that now,” he said, covering his eyes with his hands. “But it’s too late. Someone found out. Someone knew what I was doing and threatened to expose me. They were going to tell my dad everything. He’d throw me out. I’m not even his kid, and I’m a disappointment. He wouldn’t let me stay if he knew, and I couldn’t be on the streets. I had to do what I had to do, and that meant doing what this person told me.”

  “Who was it?” I asked. “Who tried to blackmail you?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I only ever received text messages, and when I had someone look into it, it turned out they were coming from a burner phone that couldn’t be traced. The guy had to be following me, though. I got sent all these pictures of myself picking up the prescriptions.” He coughed. “And I would go everywhere. I would go fifty, sixty miles out of town sometimes just so I wouldn’t raise suspicion with local pharmacists. My dad knew all of them anyway.”

  “What did they tell you?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair. “The person blackmailing you; what did they tell you to do?”

  “To take more prescriptions,” he answered. “To forge my dad’s signature, and fill them out for all different sorts of drugs.” Mike shook his head hard. “I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to just come clean, but I didn’t have a choice. This guy had me over a barrel.”

  “We always have a choice,” I said. “So, what happened next? You started dealing for this guy?”

  “It was slow at first, but he kept asking for more and more. He kept demanding it. Pretty soon, it was taking up almost my entire day.” He blinked hard. “I had to start taking more and more pills just to keep up the pace. I wasn’t sleeping at all, but I had to keep my grades up as much as possible. I couldn’t let my dad down anymore than I already had. But I was going to stop. That’s what I was doing when you saw me. I was telling those guys, guys I had sold to before, that I wasn’t doing this anymore. They didn’t take it well, but what did it matter? After everything that happened, after everything I did, I didn’t care. I think I might be a monster anyway.”

  New tears started pouring from the boy’s eyes. I knew that, whatever came next, would break him.

  “It’s okay, Mike,” I said, resisting the urge to give him a comforting pat on the arm. “Tell me what happened.”

  “The night before my dad died, I took a whole bunch of pills,” Mike said, his voice shaking. “More than I ever had before. The last thing I remember, I was studying for an exam, and then I was in my car on the side of the road. I couldn’t remember any of the day, and when I got back home, they told me my dad was dead.” Mike pounded the table with a fist. “I was so mad at him. I was so damn angry about having to push myself. What if I did something to him during the time I lost? What if I flew into a rage and murdered my own father?”

  I took another deep breath, letting all of this process. While I couldn’t say for sure what happened during the day Mike couldn’t recall, I was a lawyer, and I did know how to work my way to the truth.

  “You don’t remember anything?” I asked, my shoulders tensing.

  “Nothing before coming to in my car,” the boy said.

  “And, when you came to in your car, where were you?” I asked.

  “About an hour south of town,” Mike answered. “I have no idea how I got there.”

  “Do you remember what time it was?” I asked, remembering the time Daphne saw Dr. Trapp as well as the time when the coroner suspected he was murdered.

  “About 2:00 PM,” Mike said.

  Damn. That would have given the kid enough time to have killed his father, drove for about an hour, and pulled over before he came to, assuming he’d be able to in the condition he must have been in.

  “Did you have blood on you?” I asked, hoping he didn’t.

  “No,” he said. “No blood. I was sweating, but it’s Florida. It’s hot.”

  “It is hot,” I said. “Look. I’m not sure what drugs you took, and I have no idea what sort of effect they’d have on you. I’d have to imagine that, if you killed your father in a rage, there would be some evidence in your car. I’ve seen a lot of murder trials. People almost never get everything. I don’t think you killed your dad, son, but I can’t honestly be sure. I’ve got a person who can go through your car. She works for me and your uncle. And, if you say it’s okay, I’ll have her search for evidence of blood and the like in your car. I’ll also talk to a medical professional to see if it would ever be possible for you to drive as far as you did in the condition you were in. You shouldn’t have to live with this hanging over your head, Mike. If you did what you’re afraid you did-and I don’t think you did- at least you’ll know for sure. But, if you didn’t, as I suspect, you can move on with your life. I’m going to need your phone too. The woman who’ll be searching your car knows a thing or two about how to track people. I doubt she’ll have much trouble getting to the bottom of your burner phone issues.”

  “The police have it in custody,” he said through tears.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “You’ll be getting out of here in the morning, right after your bail hearing. You can give it to me then. Until then, I need to know if you saw anything else that sticks out to you, anything strange at all?”

  “No,” he answered. “Well, when I woke up, there was a weird car pulling away from me.” I tried to yell for it to stop so I could find out where I was, but the driver either didn’t hear me or didn’t care.”

  “What kind of car?” I asked.

  “A sporty old blue kind,” he said. “It looked like something my dad would have liked actually, except it had big, weird wheels.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Grappling at the pictu
re in my pocket, I pulled it out and slid it toward Mike. “Is that the car?” I asked as the boy took in the picture of his father standing in front of a car, the same picture Hope had shown me earlier.

  “Yeah,” Mike said, the breath catching in his throat. “What is this?” he asked, looking up at me. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m going to find out.”

  Chapter 25

  “I appreciate you doing this” I said to Hope, walking around Mike’s car and watching as she inspected the interior. I didn’t know much about the woman’s past. Aside from the fact that she was English, naturally curious, and she had worked for Justin for a few years, she was a complete mystery to me. I could tell from the way she was going through this car with a fine toothed comb that she had some sort of official experience, though. You didn’t learn how to do something like this by watching the ID Channel on a constant loop. This was the sort of thing you were taught in a controlled environment by experts. Which, I suppose, made Hope an expert too.

  “It’s my job, Rick,” she said, pulling herself up by her gloved hand and looking me over. “Part of it anyway.”

  “Still, I know I’ve been asking a lot of you lately,” I answered. “Just coming back from Miami, you must be exhausted.”

  “Jet lag is for the weak,” she replied.

  “I thought you drove to Miami,” I muttered.

  “I did,” she replied, a smile gracing her face. “It’s a figure of speech. The point is, even though you pulled me directly off the road to look at this car, I’m not about to start complaining. I know how important this is.”

  “I know you do,” I replied, nodding. “So, about Miami, what did you find out?”

  “Nothing about the car itself, unfortunately,” Hope said. “Or, at least, nothing about who Dr. Trapp might have left it to after buying it. What I did find out is that the people who were allegedly run down by it all fit a pattern.”