“Oh, I see. Gerald blackmailed Michael into going along.”
“Yes. He bribed me and blackmailed him. Michael didn’t want to do it, because obviously murder is worse than rape, but he rolled the dice. He figured that Gerald could prove the rape beyond a shadow of a doubt, but if he murdered somebody, perhaps he could get out of it by showing it wasn’t him. In other words, if Michael didn’t go along with murdering the judge, he would for sure serve time in prison for the rape. If he did go along with it, then he had the chance to go free.”
“But why involve you? Why didn’t Gerald just deal with Michael and cut out the middle-man?”
“He needed both us working hand in hand. I was Gerald’s eyes and ears and Michael was the one who actually did the poisoning. I basically was the one who made sure that Michael was doing what he was supposed to be doing.” She looked down. “I was the one who made sure that Michael was poisoning poor Robert Sanders.”
“I need to back up a bit. How did Gerald know that Michael was a serial rapist?”
She cleared her throat. “The PI knew that Michael was a serial rapist. The PI that Gerald hired knew two different women who recognized Michael as being the man who raped them. So, Gerald knew that Michael had that in him, so he knew that he could blackmail him if he could get him on video raping Gerald’s sister. Gerald’s own sister was used as bait. That’s how sick Gerald is.”
“I see. Go on with your story.”
She shrugged. “Michael poisoned Judge Sanders, but Gerald was getting impatient. The judge was getting sicker and sicker, and Gerald started to freak because he thought that sooner or later a doctor was going to find out what was going on, and possibly would have been able to treat the judge and bring him back to health. So, Gerald told Michael that he needed to end it completely. He told Michael that he had to go ahead and shoot Judge Sanders.”
I started to feel excited. It was all coming together. The only problem was, how was I going to prove it? I could tell the prosecutor about Kayla, tell them what I found out from her, and suggest to the prosecutor that she should give Kayla immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, but how could I do that ethically? Michael was my client. I couldn’t just tell the prosecutor about this without violating my ethical duty to represent Michael zealously. I was going to have to figure something out.
“What did you understand happened with Michael when he shot the judge? I mean, why did he do things the way that he did them? Why did he go to the scene and call the police? When he did that, he became the prime suspect.”
“We talked about that, Michael and me. We agreed that if he did that, he wouldn’t look guilty. If he was the one who shot the judge, why would he call the police? Wouldn’t he do a better job of covering it up? That was our thought. We knew that if the judge was just found dead by Ava Sanders that the spotlight would probably shine on Michael anyhow, because the prosecutor was bound to find out that Michael was running around on Christina, and that the judge had threatened him with turning him into his daughter. Michael stood to lose a lot in a divorce. He was like me, in that, individually, he’s broke. Michael knew that this was the motive that an investigator would give to him, and he knew that he would become the prime suspect. So, we decided that if he was the one who called the police, it would make him look innocent. That backfired, of course, because the police settled on him immediately, just because he was the one on the scene. We didn’t know that it would have backfired, though. We thought that we were being clever.”
“Well, 20/20 hindsight,” I said. “Well, okay, then. I thank you for this. I needed this information.”
Kayla had a Kleenex in her hand, and she was wringing it over and over as she looked down at my desk. “What’s going to happen now? I mean, I’m very sorry for my role, but I really didn’t do anything. I was just the go-between in the middle of Michael and Gerald. I know that I’m not innocent, but I’m the least guilty. You can get me a deal, can’t you? I mean, you can encourage the prosecutor to give me a deal, right?”
I didn’t want to tell her the truth, and that was that I didn’t have power to do much of anything. I had the satisfaction of her telling me her story, but her testimony was incriminating for my client, so I had to pretty much sit on this information if I wanted to keep my bar license. The only way that I could divulge what Kayla just told me would be if it was in a deposition and the prosecutor specifically asked for the information in a discovery request. I didn’t depose Kayla and, thus far, the prosecutor hadn’t asked for witness testimony in a discovery request, so I couldn’t just volunteer it.
I sighed. I had to figure something out. Some way to point the prosecutor in the right direction, without the prosecutor knowing that it was me who was doing that.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
She nodded. “Thank you. I’ll testify at court, but only if I get immunity.”
Again, that wasn’t my call. That would be the prosecutor’s call. How was I going to get this information to April?
“Thank you for coming in,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She hesitated. “You don’t sound very sure about that.”
“I’ll see what I can do. That’s all that I can promise.”
She stood up, realizing that she had been played. “That’s really a dirty trick you played,” she said. “A really dirty trick.”
I sighed. “No, really, you’ve been helpful, much more than you know. I just have to figure out how to put these puzzle pieces together so that they fit. I mean, I need to figure out how to get information to the prosecutor’s office about what you’ve told me.”
She looked unconvinced. “I want you to get me a deal.”
“I can’t possibly. Michael’s my client. You’re the co-conspirator. I obviously can’t represent both of you. You’re going to have to lawyer up, but not with me.” I was breaking every ethical rule just having her in my office, rolling on my client, asking to cut a deal in exchange for her testimony against my client. Every ethical rule was being broken.
“You lied to me.”
I nodded. “I did. I’ll admit it. But you need to lawyer up. I can give you some referrals.”
“The Missouri Bar will be hearing about this.” She turned and dramatically left my office and I shook my head. She could easily have my bar license for this dirty trick I played on her. Easily. I was going to get a complaint from her, no doubt about it. And, after I did what I needed to do with respect to Michael, he, too, was going to have reason to make a complaint against me. If the two of them teamed up, I could be doing dishes for a living.
Even so, I felt good. I felt good because I finally had the whole story.
The only problem was, I had no idea what to do with it.
That night, I had a dream. Again, my subconscious was trying to tell me how it was that I was going to successfully bring my client down. There was a way of doing it, a way that wouldn’t necessarily be traced back to me.
I sat up straight in bed. I suddenly knew what I was going to do.
I tiptoed into Rina’s room and saw her sleeping. I went into Abby's room and saw her sleeping, too. I sighed, feeling antsy and anxious. I wanted to get on with my plan, and I wanted to do it right away. I couldn’t do anything, however, until it was morning and I got the girls off to school. Before the girls came to live with me, I was able to go ahead and go to the office in the middle of the night. I often got wild hairs in the witching hour, and I would go on down to the office and work, even though it was 4 AM. But I couldn’t do that here. I had to stay in the house.
I could do one thing, though. I could take a better look at my discovery requests from the prosecutor and see if I could find the request that would suit the piece of evidence that I was going to send April.
I looked at the request for documents and saw what I was looking for. I nodded my head, knowing that I was going to possibly find a way to ethically give the prosecutor what she needed to nail Michael. Granted, I didn�
�t get this particular item above-board. I didn’t even know if it was something that was going to bear fruit. But I had to try.
“Girls, come on,” I said right at 6:30. I went into both Rina and Abby’s rooms. “Rise and shine.” I took the blanket off of Rina, who was lying in her bed, curled up with a stuffed animal. She rubbed her eyes and looked out the window.
“It’s the middle of the night,” she complained.
“No it’s not. The time changed, so it’s darker out than before. It’s time for you to get your pretty little butt out of this bed and into your shower.”
“Why are you so full of unicorn farts this morning?” She reluctantly got out of bed and trudged into her bathroom.
“No reason. I have to get your sister up now, too.”
I went into Abby’s room and did the same ritual. She, too, complained that it was the middle of the night, and I had to remind her that the time had changed.
I ran down the stairs and got breakfast ready for them. They appeared in a matter of minutes, and we all ate breakfast and then they got their backpacks. We all went to my car, and I found myself singing to the radio.
“Man, you’re being weird this morning,” Rina said. “What’s up with that?”
“No reason. I’m just dying to get to the office this morning. There’s something there that is going to crack my case wide open. Wide open.”
“The murder case?” Abby asked. “Did you find the thing that is going to prove that your client is innocent?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I felt that I needed to. She wouldn’t understand my desire to sink my own client. “Something like that.”
I got to their school and let them off. They waved at me and joined the other kids at the front door of the school.
I then sped off to my office.
I got to my office and opened up my desk drawer. I put on a pair of plastic gloves and picked up the leather gloves that Pearl had found on the floor after Michael was here. I then called the laboratory where I sent items for forensic analysis. “I need for you to do some glove analysis,” I said. “On a gun.”
Thirty-Two
When I got the forensic analysis back on the gun, and found that the glove prints on the gun were matched with Michael’s gloves, I was pleased but not surprised. I knew that these gloves were going to be the smoking gun. I knew it. Now, how was I going to get this information over to the prosecutor?
I decided that I would go ahead and put the forensic analysis documents into the document dump that I was giving to April. Then, when Michael inevitably brought his bar complaint against me for sinking this case, I could give some kind of plausible deniability about how that document got to the prosecutor. I could simply say that I gave that information to the prosecutor accidentally. April hadn’t asked for the information, specifically, and she apparently wasn’t doing her own analysis, nor was she asking for any and all gloves owned by my client. Therefore, I not only wasn’t obligated to give her this information, I would possibly be in trouble for giving it to her. I was giving her incriminating evidence that wasn’t demanded. That was a no-no.
More complicated was what I was going to do with the information that Kayla had given me about Gerald. I wanted to bring down Gerald. I wanted to bring down Judge Perez. I didn’t care if I brought down Kayla, because she was more or less a patsy in the this entire sick scenario.
The problem with using Michael to bring down Gerald was that there would be the chance, a very slight chance, but still a chance, that the prosecutor would offer him complete immunity in exchange for his testimony against Gerald. The more I thought about that angle, the more I realized that I didn’t want Michael to even know that I knew that whole truth about what had happened. I didn’t want Michael to walk. I needed him to go down. He was guilty of this murder, but, more importantly even than that, was the fact that he was guilty of raping multiple women. He told me five women, but I had a feeling that it was more. Much more. After all, Michael raped Gerald’s sister, and that was just recently.
No doubt about it, Michael needed to fry. He needed to go down hard. The prosecutor’s offer was life in prison without possibility of parole, so I knew that I was going to be trying this case, come Hell or high water.
I was risking a lot in this strategy. For one, there was not a guarantee that Kayla wouldn’t go right to Michael and tell her that she told me everything. That would lead to the two of them plotting, maybe behind my back. But if Kayla told Michael that the jig was up, then Michael would probably tell me that he wanted to testify against Gerald in exchange for immunity. Rats will always turn on each other when the chips are down, and I knew that this situation was no different.
For another, if Michael ever figured out that I had this information up my sleeve at the time that I tried this case, and I didn’t tell him that I knew, then he could have my license for not telling him about it. My thought was that I would go ahead and try Michael’s case, make sure that he got what was coming to him, and then give an anonymous tip to the police to look at Kayla and Gerald. Kayla would roll on Gerald faster than her head could swim, and that would be that for Gerald. Hopefully. He would lawyer up, but hopefully Kayla had the goods on him and she could sink him.
If I did things that way, though, and it ever came back on me…That would not be pretty. And it very well could come back on me, because Kayla knew that I would be the most likely source of the “anonymous tip.”
No matter. Gerald was going to get his, too. I had to make sure of that. But I wasn’t going to touch that information about Gerald and Kayla until I made sure that Michael was in prison. I couldn’t have Michael rolling on Gerald in exchange for him getting off scot-free.
The way that I was going about this left me open to tremendous liability, but I didn’t care. The only thing that I cared about was that Michael got his. I also really wanted to see Gerald get his, as well. And Judge Perez, too.
I sighed as I realized that I didn’t quite know how to bring Judge Perez down. I knew that he was dirty. That much was obvious. But how I was going to prove that? What could I do about it? I didn’t really know. That was beyond my capabilities at the moment.
I would figure that one out, and soon. But the first thing that I needed to do, along those lines, was to talk to the plaintiff’s attorney for the Dowling case and see if there was any way that I could give him a heads-up on what was going on. Maybe the two of us could put our heads together and figure out how to get rid of that judge. At the very least, I could maybe get him to ask for a change of venue or a change of judge.
I called up the plaintiff’s attorney for Judge Perez. His name was George Peale, and he was one of the most prominent personal injury attorneys in the Kansas City area. I knew that he was going to do well, but I needed him to know just how biased Judge Perez was going to be against his client.
“Hello,” George said when I called his cell phone. I had his cell phone number because he and I had a case together several years back. “This is George Peale.”
“George, this is Harper Ross,” I said. “I need to see you.”
“What’s this about, Harper?”
“It’s about your Dowling Chemical case,” I said. “I have some information for you that’s pretty important.”
“Can you meet me in my office at 4?” He asked. “I’ve got depositions today, but I should be back by then.”
“See you then.”
I hung up the phone, seeing that everything was carefully falling into place. Granted, I was taking on a great deal of risk by doing things the way that I chose to do them. That was fine with me, however. If the whole thing ended up that Michael served time in prison, hopefully life in prison, than my purpose would have been served.
I went to George’s office right at 4. His office was close to my own. In fact, it was in the same building, which was convenient. His suite was much nicer than mine, because he was a partner in a mid-size firm of 20 attorneys, all of whom were mor
e or less experts on personal injury cases.
The receptionist let George know that I was there, and, within minutes, I found myself following her back to George’s office, which was an enormous corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows and a little golf hole in the middle. When I walked in, George had his putter out and he was practicing sinking golf balls. He looked up at me and smiled.
“Harper Ross,” he said, shaking my hand. “You’re looking well. How the Hell are you?”
“I’m doing great,” I said. “I see you’re practicing your putting here.”
“I am. It relaxes me.” George was a handsome older guy, around 65 years old, and he was an absolute expert in his field. He knew his way around expert witnesses and doctors and he had an absolute arsenal of hired guns who were willing to testify on his behalf about anything and everything. He usually got the job done, and he typically won most of his cases.
“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a chair which was next to a large couch.
I sat down and he sat on the couch and leaned back. “So, Harper, tell me what’s going on. What information do you have for me about my Dowling case?”
“Well,” I said, knowing that I was going to sound like a paranoid loon. “I think that Judge Perez is dirty.”
“No doubt,” he said. “I mean, everyone knows that Judge Perez is a tight-ass who hates plaintiffs and will excuse all manner of corporation malfeasance. Tell me what else is new.”
“You don’t understand.” I cleared my throat. “Can I become your client? I need to make sure that what I tell you stays in this room.”
“Sure,” he said. “Give me a dollar, and you’re my client.”
I gave him a dollar and he shook my hand.
“You’re my lawyer now,” I said. “And I might really need your services in the future on this case for real. I’ll let you know. But here’s what I know about Judge Perez. He’s dirty as the day is long, and I don’t mean that he’s a hard-ass. I mean that he’s corrupt.”
Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 26