“Help me out here. If there’s a motive, I need to know what it is.”
She looked me directly in the eye. “I don’t know what it is. All that I know is that he did it. You’re going to have to find out why.”
I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. I knew it and she knew it.
“Okay. This deposition is done here.”
The court reporter folded up her equipment and John Ryan packed up his briefcase. Christina, for her part, remained at the table. It looked like she wanted to speak with me, but I didn’t want to talk to her anymore about the case. If she wasn’t under oath then whatever she told me would be something that she could deny on the stand. If she wanted to speak with me, she was going to have to do it under oath.
She finally stood up. “It’s been real,” she said. Then she winked. “You’ll find your motive. I have faith in you. And once you do, you make sure that the prosecutor knows what it is, too. They’re floundering over there and they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. They’re under a lot of pressure, too, because of who my father was. Find the motive. Everybody wins in that case.”
As she left, I sat at the conference table, feeling stunned. What just happened? Did Christina really come in here and tell me that she was behind my hiring because she wanted her husband to go down? She did it. I was sure of it. She did it and she was framing Michael.
Or maybe not. Maybe Michael did have motive. So far, however, it seemed that the only people who had motive was Christina and Ava Sanders.
Ordinarily, in a case like this, where it was so obvious that other people were most likely the murderers, I would call the police and tell them to look in a different direction, away from my client. They might do it if I called, and they might not. But I usually tried to at least get them looking in that direction.
In this case, however, I didn’t do that. I was going to follow the evidence where it led, and I had no desire to cut things off prematurely.
Christina wanted me to sink Michael.
So did I.
Eighteen
I got home and found something most unpleasant on my lawn. Well, not on my lawn, but on the street in front of my lawn. A group of reporters were standing there, apparently waiting for me.
I sighed. “Hello guys,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re here, because you know I can’t speak to any of you.”
They started to shout questions at me. “Is it true that the judge was poisoned? Did your client kill that judge? Is it true that the judge had a different family while he was married to Ava Sanders?” These were all questions that were shouted at me as I made my way up to my door. I wasn’t going to talk to them. I couldn’t talk to them. If they were court reporters, which they probably were, then they had to know that I couldn’t speak with them.
But one question, shouted above all the others, made me pause. Made me pause and actually made me want to turn around and answer the question. “Is it true that your client is a serial rapist?”
My heart pounded and I wondered where that information came from. Where it leaked from. I immediately thought about Christina and how she somehow knew about what happened to me in that dorm room. I wondered if she also knew about the other women that Michael raped. He told me that there were five other women. I wondered if there were more. Maybe they came forward after Michael was charged with murder? I had no knowledge that they had made anything public.
I shook my head and rushed into the house before I could say anything that would sink me. I wanted to stay on this case now. I needed to. Christina indicated that the prosecutor’s office was dropping the ball, and they were going to possibly need my assistance in making sure Michael got what was coming to him. I couldn’t afford being forced off the case by the judge because I went to the press and told them anything about this pending case. I wanted to confirm that reporter’s question about Michael being a serial rapist, but that would have disastrous consequences for the case.
I wondered if there was information “out there” about my being one of Michael’s victims. I thought that Christina was probably the one who tipped off the reporters about Michael being a rapist. I doubted that she would have tipped them off about me being one of the victims. If that was known, I doubted that I could maneuver the way that I wanted to on this case.
Rina and Abby were there with Sophia. Rina was watching television and didn’t make a move towards me when I walked through the door. Abby came up and hugged me. “Aunt Harper, it’s almost tomorrow. I can’t wait to get that flute! I just can’t wait!”
I laughed. “I never thought that you would be so excited to play a musical instrument, but I’m very proud of you.”
Rina snorted. “Abby’s just excited because James finally spoke a word to her. He bumped into her in the hallway and he said ‘watch yourself.’ As if Abby bumped into him. He’s a jerk, Aunt Harper. You shouldn’t be encouraging this.”
Abby’s face got red and she looked embarrassed. “He’s not a jerk,” she said. “I think that I did bump into him. I don’t know. The hallways are so crowded in between classes.”
I sighed. I was with these girls. I was 11 years old once, and madly in love with different boys in my classes, none of whom knew I was alive. They never did know I was alive, either. One crush after another, and I watched all kinds of girls in my class “go steady” with different boys. I never was asked to “go steady” with anyone. I was never the girl who got all the boys. Nobody ever asked me to dance at the school dances, and nobody ever asked me to go to the movies or hang out at the mall. It was a painful, invisible existence for me in middle school and high school, and I hoped that Abby and Rina would have a better time of it.
It sounded like this James guy was a jerk, but I didn’t want to make a judgment on it. I certainly didn’t want to discourage Abby’s interest in playing the flute because of it. Maybe she did genuinely want to learn how to play the instrument and James was just a side concern. I didn’t know. I did know that I was in the band and I had great fun. We took a trip to Florida and that was one of the best trips of my life.
I was also crushing on somebody in band. A tuba player by the name of Bryce McNeil. He was dark-headed and blue-eyed and he played on the football team. I remembered coming to band practice early in the morning – I was in marching band, which Abby probably wouldn’t be for awhile – and I looked forward to these practices just because I wanted to see Bryce. He was way out of my league, but I didn’t care. I imagined that he liked me as much as I liked him.
He didn’t, of course. He was in some of my other classes, even though he was a grade ahead of me, and I day-dreamed about him constantly. He was even on my same bus on that trip, which was a good 22-hour ride, and I watched him the entire time.
“Well, okay, come on girls. It’s Friday night, let’s do something fun. What do you say we go and get some spaghetti at Cascone’s and go and see a movie. I’ll even invite Axel. He’s coming over tonight, anyhow, I’ll just drag him along. What do you say?”
Abby jumped up and down with joy and Rina managed to drag herself off the floor, where she was perched in front of the television. I looked at her face and saw that she was happy to be going out, too, even though she was trying to hide it. Her arms were crossed in front of her and her face was turned down, but I could see a slight smile.
Things were going to be okay. It might take some time for Rina to truly get over it, but I knew that things were going to be okay.
That night, Axel and I curled up on the love seat under a blanket. We each had a cup of hot tea and a fire was burning in the fireplace. He had his arm around me and my head was on his shoulder. “I had fun tonight,” Axel said. “That restaurant was amazing, mate.”
“It is,” I said. “I’ve always loved their food.” I loved that the restaurant also had a little band playing, with a clarinet player and a drummer and a guitar player. They played standards, which bored the girls but got me going. I told Abby that she should pay attention to
the band, because they were playing the kinds of music that she was going to be playing, so she did try to really attend to what they were doing.
Axel kissed me on the forehead and then kissed me on the lips. I sighed, feeling a tingle go through my body, but still feeling terrified.
He smiled. “So, how are things going with that murder case?”
I shrugged. “I can’t talk about that too much, but I think that I’m going in the right direction.”
“What’s the right direction in this case?”
“The direction towards showing that my client did it.” I was lying about that. Actually, with the deposition of Christina and the talk I had with Anita, I was further away from proving to myself that Michael did it. I was being increasingly led in the direction that either Christina or Ava Sanders did it. I didn’t want that to be the case, but it was certainly looking that way.
“What are you going to do if you decide that he did it?”
“I don’t know yet.” I did kinda know. If I figured out what really happened, if the evidence started to point towards Michael, I would give what I had to the prosecutor, even if they didn’t ask for it formally. I would do that anonymously. That was what I decided to do.
But I could only do that if I got the evidence I needed to sabotage him. Thus far, I wasn’t getting that at all.
He stroked my hair and pulled me closer to him. “This fire is nice,” he said.
“It is.” I felt my heart pounding as I put my hand on his firm abdomen. He might have been forty, but he was in amazing shape. I guess it came with the territory of him being a detective. I bowed my head, still feeling frustrated that I was so afraid of going too far with him. Maybe my therapist was right – maybe the reason why I took Michael’s case was that I was going to get some closure from it. If I could have a hand in making sure that he fried, I could finally bury what happened to me in that dorm room and I could move on.
But, at the moment, I wasn’t anywhere near moving on.
“Harper,” he said, taking my hand, his fingers interlacing with mine. “Maybe I better leave. I don’t want to, but, I have to say that just being near you is driving me wild. Don’t worry, though, lass, I’ll be back as often as you need me to come back.”
He smiled and I nodded. I knew that he was going to be back as often I wanted him to come back. I knew that.
We were falling in love. I hoped that I could get over my issues and allow myself to truly love him the way that he deserved.
Nineteen
“So, my wife came in here and spoke with you, didn’t she?” Michael asked me. We were meeting in my office to go over Christina’s testimony as well as Anita’s answers to my questions. I wanted to go over everything with him because I didn’t want him to suspect what I was really doing. As far as he was concerned, I was working on his case in a legitimate way.
“She did.”
“And? What did she say? I need to see those deposition transcripts.”
I leaned back in my chair as I watched him. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted him to know about what Christina said to me. “The deposition transcripts are with the court reporter,” I said.
He got up and paced around. “She tried to throw me under the bus, didn’t she? Didn’t she? That little bitch.”
“No,” I said, knowing that he was going to find out the truth if he got the transcripts and saw that she did just that – throw him under the bus. “But I would like to know about something that she told me. She told me that you were the one who was in the best position to poison your father-in-law because you were the person who refilled his pills. Is that true?”
His face showed a great deal of anger when I said that, and he shook his head. “So, that’s why she wanted me to refill those pills every week. I wondered why.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Christina. When her father had to go on medications for his blood pressure and his diabetes, about a year ago, my wife told me that she wanted me to be in charge of making sure his pills were in those pill boxes. She nagged me about it. Now I see why.” He shook his head. “She wanted me to do that so that she could frame me when she poisoned dad. She wanted to say that only I had the access to my dad’s drink and food because I was the only one who went into dad’s kitchen on a regular basis. I fell for that, too. I fell for that. Goddamn her. Goddamn her.”
I sighed. “Are you saying now that Christina was the one who killed your father?”
“I wouldn’t have thought that before, but now that I know that he was poisoned and my wife is pointing her finger at me, I do. I think that she did it. She poisoned him and then she hired somebody to shoot him. Guess he wasn’t dying fast enough for her.”
“Why do you think that she did it?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Dad was abusing her, he had a different family, and her mother was wanting to divorce him but that would mean giving her half her fortune. And she hates me, too. She hates me, so she did all this and then framed me.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about your father’s different family? About your wife’s sexual abuse? Why did I have to hear all of this from Anita?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think that it was relevant. I thought that some random intruder killed dad, so I didn’t think that you needed to know that. I didn’t want to drag dad’s name through the mud like that. I really loved that man.”
I leaned forward. Bastard is lying to me again. There was something else up his sleeve. I didn’t believe, for one second, that he neglected to tell me about the other family because he cared about his father and didn’t want to drag his good name through the mud. He probably never did anything altruistically in his life – why start now?
“You have to start telling me the truth,” I said. I wanted to threaten him with withdrawing from his case. That was my usual method of dealing with lying clients. That made them straighten up and fly right. But I wasn’t going to dangle that particular stick over this guy – I was too afraid that he would just say “okay” to me and I would have to withdraw. I had to see this through.
“Why would I lie about something like that?”
“I don’t know. I just think that you’re lying.”
He looked pained. “All right, yes, I’m lying. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t know about all that. I didn’t know about it until I read about it in the paper. My wife never told me that. I didn’t want you to know just how bad our marriage has been. I mean, this was a huge thing, and I was completely out of the loop about it.”
“Why did you care what I think about your marriage?”
He shrugged. “I guess I thought that you might have suspected me more if you knew that my wife and I barely spoke to one another and we haven’t spoken to one another for several years. We’ve gone to the weekly dinners with her parents and…”
“You insulted her right in front of her father. I’ve been told that by two different people. I was also told that Judge Sanders had you followed and found evidence that you were sleeping with Ariel Winthrop. I know that you were sleeping with Kayla Stone. I’m sure that there were others you were sleeping with, too. I was told that Judge Sanders and you had words about that – that he was going to tell Christina about it.”
I didn’t quite tell him that Christina knew all about the affairs, anyhow. She knew everything about him. I guessed that he didn’t know how much she knew.
He furrowed his brow. “Yes, that was true. He did threaten me. But so what? I wasn’t going to kill him for that.”
“Maybe you did want to kill him. If Christina divorced you, you were going to lose everything. I’m subpoenaing your bank accounts and all your other accounts, and I think that I’m going to see a pattern – she’s worth a lot, and you’re not worth squat. She told me that she had an air-tight prenuptial agreement. I’m going to get a copy of that, too. I think that you had motive to kill your father-in-law, if you thought that he was going to tell Christina about your affairs and yo
u didn’t want that to happen.”
He stood up. “Go ahead. Get the prenuptial agreement and our records. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“You don’t? Are you telling that I’m wrong? That she doesn’t hold the purse strings? Where will you be if she decides to divorce you?”
“I don’t have to put up with this,” he said. “You work for me, lady. Let’s get this straight.”
Oh no he didn’t. He didn’t just disrespect me like that. “You do have to put up with this, and listen, the prosecutor is going to ask you that question. She’s going to ask you about your relationship with your father-in-law and she’s going to ask you about whether or not your father-in-law was threatening you with telling your wife about your affairs. That gives you motive to kill him.”
He rolled his eyes. “If I killed him, why would I call the police when I found my father? I mean, really. Think about that.”
“Reverse psychology. That’s simple enough to explain away.”
“You think I did it. You’re my attorney and you think that I’m guilty.”
Actually, that wasn’t true. I still had it in my head that either Christina or Ava did it. Maybe they were in cahoots and they did it together. But it was still in the back of my mind that Michael might have done it.
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe that you did it. But you have to realize one thing – the prosecutor is going to present arguments that show that you’re guilty. You need to know what those arguments are going to be. That’s why I need to prepare you and I need to get straight answers.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I think that the way that we should go with this, to put doubt in the jury’s mind, is show that Christina did it. Or mom did it. I think that they did it, anyhow, especially since I guess Christina threw me under the bus. That makes me suspicious, to say the very least. Show that she had motive to kill dad, and mom really had motive to kill dad, and that will put doubt into the jury’s mind that I did it.”
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 15