Susan Tuchman’s corner office was an homage to minimalism. Two large windows met at one corner giving her a wraparound view of Portland. A black leather sofa stood against a third wall under an all-white painting. The senior partner’s desk was a large sheet of glass supported by aluminum tubes and the only items on it were an in-box and out-box made of polished metal and a thick file. The only cluttered space was a wall decorated with awards Tuchman had won from the Inns of Court, the American Bar Association, and other legal groups, and photographs of Tuchman with celebrities from the worlds of politics, business, and entertainment.
Tuchman was five four and rail thin. Her blond hair was free of gray thanks to chemistry, and a Beverly Hills surgeon of national repute could claim credit for her skin being as tight as plastic wrap. The senior partner was wearing a black Armani pants suit with a white silk blouse and a necklace of black pearls. She was forty-nine but she’d been a partner for ten years as a result of a series of victories for a pharmaceutical client and a tobacco company. Tuchman’s first husband had been an associate at another firm but she had divorced him rather than set up a situation where an opponent from her husband’s firm could move to have her taken off a case on the grounds of a conflict of interest. A second, tempestuous marriage to a federal judge had lasted only as long as it took Tuchman to process the difference in the income contributions to their joint bank account.
“Sit,” Tuchman ordered, indicating a client chair made of the same black leather as the couch and supported by aluminum tubing similar to the tubing that held up Tuchman’s desk. Brad lowered himself onto the chair cautiously, expecting it to tip over backward at any second.
“I’ve had some good feedback about you from George Ogilvey,” Tuchman said, mentioning the partner who had just settled the lawsuit on which Brad had been working. “He tells me you’re an ace at research.”
Brad shrugged, not from modesty but out of fear that any support he gave for George Ogilvey’s opinion would encourage Tuchman to add to his workload.
Tuchman smiled. “I’ve been trying to pick an associate for an interesting project, and based on George’s glowing recommendation, I’ve concluded that you’re the man for the job.”
With all the work Brad had already he didn’t need any more projects, interesting or otherwise, but he knew it would be wise to keep that opinion to himself.
“You know that Reed, Briggs prides itself on being more than a money factory. We believe that our attorneys should give back to the community, so we take on pro bono projects. The projects are exciting and give our new associates a chance to work one-on-one with clients and get courtroom experience.”
Brad knew all about these pro bono projects. They were good PR for the firm but they were also time-consuming and brought in no money, so the partners foisted them off on the newest associates.
Tuchman pushed the file that occupied the center of her desk toward Brad.
“You’re not from Oregon, right?”
“ New York. I’d never been on the West Coast before I interviewed for this job.”
Tuchman nodded. “Does the name Clarence Little mean anything to you?”
“I don’t think so.”
Tuchman smiled. “Snap quiz, name the president of the United States.”
Brad returned the smile. “Christopher Farrington.”
“Well done. And you know he was the governor of Oregon before he was selected as President Nolan’s VP?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess I knew that.”
President Nolan had died of a heart attack halfway through his second year in office and Farrington had suddenly found himself president of the United States. Brad turned toward the photographs showing Tuchman schmoozing with important people and suddenly noticed how many contained a smiling Christopher Farrington.
Tuchman noticed where Brad was looking. “The president is a close personal friend. I was his finance chairman during his run for governor.”
“What does President Farrington have to do with my assignment?”
“Mr. Little has filed a writ of habeas corpus, which is now in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is a convicted serial killer and he’s challenging a death sentence he received in Oregon. The murder took place while President Farrington was governor and the victim was the daughter of the governor’s personal secretary. The case created quite a stir here because of the tie-in to the governor but it may not have gotten much space in the New York papers.”
“I think I heard about it,” Brad said so Tuchman wouldn’t think that he was a typical New Yorker, who thought you fell off the edge of the Earth as soon as you left the five boroughs, but the case didn’t really ring any bells.
“The firm has taken on the representation of Mr. Little in federal court. I think you’ll find the assignment very challenging. Look through the file and get back to me if you have any questions.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Brad said as he stood.
“I’ll have the banker’s boxes with the rest of the file delivered to your office.”
Oh, no, Brad thought. Banker’s boxes were big, and Tuchman had just said that there was more than one. He remembered all the new work he’d just found piled up on his desk.
“Remember, Brad, this is literally a matter of life and death, and,” she added in a confidential tone, “it might get you up to the United States Supreme Court. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“I’ll work very hard on Mr. Little’s case, don’t worry,” Brad said with great enthusiasm, which disappeared as soon as he was out the door of the senior partner’s office.
“This is just what I need,” Brad muttered as he descended the stairs. Not only was he loaded with work for other partners but he knew absolutely nothing about criminal law and cared less. He’d taken the required course in criminal law his first year in law school and a refresher course when he was studying for the bar, but he remembered almost nothing he’d learned. Then there was the added pressure of knowing that a person might die if he messed up. Of course, that person was a convicted serial killer, someone he had no interest in saving from the gallows. If the guy really did it, society would be better off if Little was executed.
“Why me, God?” Brad muttered as he shoved open the twenty-seventh floor door. When he received no answer, he concluded that either the Deity wasn’t interested in his problems or the Gods on the thirtieth floor were more powerful than whoever he’d previously considered to be the Big Boss.
Brad spent the rest of the morning and afternoon working on the contract for the Lincoln City condominiums. It was five-forty-five when he finally e-mailed a memo outlining the problems that the construction company faced to the partner who’d given him the assignment. He was exhausted and he toyed with the idea of going home, but he had too much work and the assignments were going to keep coming.
Brad sighed and ordered a pizza. While he waited for the delivery, he went to the men’s room, where he recycled the coffee he’d been guzzling and splashed water on his face. Then he grabbed a Coke for the caffeine from the lunchroom refrigerator and got to work on the banker’s boxes that held the files for Little v. Oregon. One box contained the fifteen-volume transcript of the trial and the nine-volume transcript of Little’s sentencing hearing. Another had files with the pleadings, legal motions, and memos. A third contained correspondence, the police reports, and miscellany like the autopsy report and the photographs of the autopsy and the crime scene.
Two hours later, Brad was still at his desk, casting anxious glances at a manila envelope that lay a few inches from him in the center of his blotter. The only dead body he had ever seen was at his great-grandmother’s funeral, and he didn’t have a clear memory of that because he’d been five when she died. He did know that his great-grandmother had died peacefully in her sleep. She hadn’t been tortured and chopped up like Laurie Erickson, the teenage girl whose autopsy and crime scene photographs were in the envelope.
Brad knew Laurie Erickson had been hacked t
o pieces and tortured because he’d just finished reading the report of Laurie’s autopsy. It was very unnerving and read a little like a graphic review of a slasher movie, which was one type of film Brad avoided like the plague. According to the medical examiner, the cause of Erickson’s death was no mystery. She had almost been decapitated when Clarence Little had hacked away at every inch of her neck with a machete or similar object, tearing the skin to ribbons; there was a subdural hemorrhage over the brainstem for which the examiner could find no source, and not satisfied with simply killing the unfortunate young girl, Little had sliced off several body parts after Erickson was dead.
The temptation to view photographs of the ghastly crime drew Brad to the envelope in the same way a freeway accident drew the eye of every driver who passed by. What argued against opening the envelope were the autopsy’s gory details and the fact that he’d recently ingested three slices of pepperoni pizza. In the end Brad’s morbid curiosity won out. He pulled the envelope to him, opened the flap, and slid the top photo out while averting his eyes so he didn’t have a clear view. Then he turned his head toward the photograph slowly so he wouldn’t have to take it in all at once. The picture showed a young woman with skin the color of wax who was stretched out naked on a stainless steel table with her arms at her side. It took Brad a moment to register the hideous nature of the wounds the poor girl had suffered. When he did he grew light-headed, his stomach rolled, and he wished he’d followed his instincts and left the autopsy photos in the envelope.
“What have we here?” Ginny Striker asked from the doorway. Brad jumped in his seat and dropped the envelope. A torrent of truly horrid pictures spilled onto his blotter.
“Eeek,” Ginny shrieked in mock terror. “Is that a plaintiff in one of our toxic spill cases?”
Brad’s hand flew to his chest. “Geez, Ginny, you almost gave me a heart attack.”
“And a great worker’s comp case. Why are you looking at these disgusting photographs?”
“Susan Tuchman saddled me with a habeas corpus appeal,” Brad said. Then he waved a hand at the files that covered his desk. “As if I don’t have enough to do.”
“An associate’s work is never done. He must toil from sun to sun.”
Brad indicated the open pizza box. “Want a slice? These photos made me lose my appetite.”
Ginny grabbed a piece of cold pizza and a napkin and sat down on one of Brad’s client chairs. She was a few years older than Brad, a tall, slender blonde from the Midwest with large, blue eyes. Ginny was aggressive, funny, and smart and had started at Reed, Briggs a month before Brad arrived in Portland. During his first week on the job, she’d showed him the ropes. Brad thought she was cute but rumors of a boyfriend in medical school back east and his own tragic history with Bridget Malloy had kept their relationship platonic.
“I didn’t know you were so squeamish,” Ginny said.
“I’ve just never seen anything like this before. Have you?”
“Oh, sure. I was a nurse before I went to law school. I’ve seen more than my share of gaping wounds and internal organs.”
Brad blanched and Ginny laughed. Then she took a bite of pizza while Brad gathered up the gory photographs and stuffed them back in the envelope.
“What’s your case about?”
Ginny’s mouth was half full of pizza and it took Brad a moment to figure out what she’d just said.
“Clarence Little, my newest client, is a serial killer whose current address is death row at the Oregon State Pen. He’s there for murdering several women, including an eighteen-year-old girl named Laurie Erickson. I’ve been told that the Erickson case was very high profile out here when it happened because the victim was babysitting for the governor when she disappeared.”
“I heard about that! Wasn’t she snatched from the governor’s mansion?”
“That’s what they think.”
“They did a whole hour on one of the prime-time news shows about it. It was a few years ago, right?”
“Yeah, a year before Nolan picked Farrington as his running mate.”
“This is so cool, and why are you complaining? A murder case is way more interesting than the usual shit we have to work on.”
“I might find it as fascinating as you do if I had nothing else to keep me busy, but I’m swamped, and I’m also not that motivated to save the life of some degenerate who gets his kicks torturing innocent girls.”
“Point taken. So, you’re certain he did it?”
“I haven’t read the transcript-it’s twenty-four volumes-but I read the statement of facts in the brief that was filed in the Oregon supreme court after he got the death sentence. The state didn’t have an open-and-shut case, but it was pretty strong.”
“What happened?” Ginny asked as she grabbed a second slice of pizza.
“Laurie Erickson was the daughter of Marsha Erickson, who was Farrington’s personal secretary when he was governor. I think she worked at his law firm before he was elected. Anyway, Laurie was a senior in high school and she babysat for Patrick, the Farringtons’ kid, on occasion. The Farringtons were going to this fund-raiser at the Salem Public Library. The library isn’t that far from the governor’s mansion.
“Patrick was two at the time and he had a bad cold. He was asleep when Laurie started to watch him. You know the first lady is a doctor?”
Ginny nodded.
“Well, Dr. Farrington had gotten some prescription medicine that Laurie was supposed to give the kid if he was coughing when he woke up. The governor and his aide, Charles Hawkins, went down to the limo while his wife was in Patrick’s room telling Laurie what to do with the medicine. Dr. Farrington testified that she told Laurie good night a little after seven P.M.
“This was in December, so it was already dark when the limo left for the library. The security detail at the mansion didn’t see anyone lurking around the grounds, but the mansion is an historic building that’s surrounded by woods. It was built by a timber baron in the 1800s on several acres and refurbished after a fund-raising campaign in the late 1990s. There are a lot of ways someone can sneak onto the grounds. There’s a guard at the front gate, another guard who patrols the grounds, and some security cameras, but the system isn’t state-of-the-art.”
“So the guards didn’t see anyone come to the mansion after the governor left?”
“Actually, someone did. Charles Hawkins, the governor’s aide, returned around seven-thirty to pick up a sheet with statistics for the governor’s speech that he had forgotten to bring with him. Hawkins parked in the rear of the mansion and entered through a back door that’s used by the staff. He had to pass by Patrick’s room on the way to his office. Mrs. Farrington asked him to check on Patrick. Hawkins testified that Laurie told him that Patrick was still asleep. After that he got the paper and drove back to the library in time to give it to the governor.”
“Did anyone see Laurie alive after Hawkins left?”
“No, he was the last person to see her, other than the killer, of course. When the Farringtons returned that night Patrick was still asleep but Laurie was nowhere to be found. The grounds and the woods were searched, but the police couldn’t find a trace of her. A few days later, hikers found her mutilated body in a state park, miles from the mansion.”
“What do the police think happened?”
“There’s an entrance to the basement in the rear of the mansion. It was open when the police searched the place, and traces of Erickson’s blood were found on a laundry chute that emptied into the basement. According to the medical examiner, Erickson was small and thin enough to fit down it. The cops think Little came through the woods and entered the house through the basement, knocked out Erickson, threw her body down the chute, and took her out the basement door.”
“That seems like a lot of work.”
“The guy’s crazy. He probably thought it was a good plan.”
“How would he know she was babysitting? He’d also have to know about the laundry chute and that i
t was big enough to accommodate someone Erickson’s size. How did he know the layout of the mansion?”
“I don’t know,” Brad answered, annoyed that Ginny was playing detective.
“Why did the police arrest Little for Erickson’s murder if no one saw him go into the mansion or leave with Erickson?”
“The big thing was the pinkie. He’d kidnap the girls, kill them, then cut off their pinkies after they were dead. The police think he kept them as souvenirs but they never found them. Erickson was missing her pinkie, and she’d been cut up the way Little had mutilated the other victims.”
“The case still sounds weak to me.”
“You’re right. I think Little would have had a good chance to beat it if it was his only charge, but Little was arrested for killing thirteen girls, and the state had a very strong case in several of the other murders. They didn’t prosecute Little for Erickson’s murder until he’d been convicted of two other killings. Then the prosecutor introduced evidence from those cases at Little’s trial for Erickson’s death. The MOs were so similar that they pointed to one person committing all of the crimes.”
“What’s going on with his other cases?”
“The Oregon supreme court affirmed so-barring a miracle in federal court-he’s going to be executed.”
Ginny looked confused. “If he’s going to be executed twice why is he appealing this case?”
Brad shrugged. “Beats me.”
“Is there a chance he’s innocent?”
“Who else could have done it?”
“Hawkins was the last person to see her alive,” Ginny said in between bites. “One of the guards could have crept up the stairs when the others weren’t looking. And if Little snuck into the mansion, so could someone else.”
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