Snap Judgment (Samantha Brinkman Book 3)

by Marcia Clark

  See, this is what I love about my job. You just never know what’s going to happen next. We took the deal, and Earl entered his plea on the spot. The judge set the case for sentencing to give the probation department time to investigate and make sure Earl wasn’t a serial killer masquerading as a marijuana dealer / burglar. The judge called the next case, and I walked Earl out to the elevators. “How come you didn’t tell me the guy was buying from you?”

  I half expected him to say it was all bullshit. But I should’ve known better. Earl didn’t have the brainpower to come up with a lie that good on the spot. He shrugged. “Just didn’t want to burn a good customer. But it wasn’t worth prison.” The elevator dinged its arrival, and Earl started to get in, then turned back to me. “Hey, maybe you can send me some business?”

  I looked at him and sighed. “Earl, I’m a lawyer, not a pot broker. Try and stay out of trouble, okay?”

  He grinned at me as the doors closed and gave me a thumbs-up. I was not optimistic. I got a large coffee from the snack bar and called Dale. Luck was with me; he was in the office. I told him we needed to talk—privately. He paused for a moment, then suggested we meet at Badmaash, an Indian gastropub across the street from the PAB. I could tell by his clipped tone that he knew this couldn’t be good.

  I got there before him and was glad to see that we’d beaten the lunch rush. I picked a table in the back corner and took a seat facing the door. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to eat, and I’m not usually a fan of curry, but the smells coming from the kitchen were making my mouth water.

  A few minutes later, the restaurant started to fill up. Dale entered just ahead of a group of women I recognized as prosecutors. They were all checking him out and enjoying the view from behind. One of them even moved past him to get a look at the grill. Her smile said she liked what she saw. He spotted me, and as he headed toward my table, the woman gave him a sparkling grin. He gave her a little nod and kept moving. I wondered if he’d have given her more than that if I wasn’t here—and about to discuss serious business. The thought kind of grossed me out. I never called him “Dad,” but still . . . yuck.

  The moment he sat down across from me, the waiter appeared and asked for our orders. Dale apparently came here a lot because the waiter asked if he wanted “the usual,” a samosa with masala potatoes and peas. Dale said that sounded good. I ordered the hot, spicy Indian sausage but passed on the waiter’s offer of beer. “Just water, please.”

  Dale said he’d have the same, then leaned in. “What’s up?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of the women who’d been ogling Dale take note of our seeming tête-à-tête. “I had a visit from Javier Cabazon.”

  Dale’s expression hardened. The waiter brought a platter of pickles and preserves. Dale waited for him to leave, then leaned in again. “What kind of visit?”

  I described the encounter with Cabazon’s flying monkeys and the medieval castle they took me to. Then I told him what I’d read in the police report. It looked like an early report, and it was fairly sparse. It seemed Jorge Maldonado had gotten into a fight with the victim, Victor Mendes. A neighbor called the police. Just seconds before they arrived on the scene, Maldonado shot him. Tracy Gopeck had been standing there, and she’d seen the whole thing, up close and personal. Maldonado had been arrested on the spot. Clearly, Tracy’s ID of Maldonado was going to be rock solid from a legal standpoint. She definitely was Cabazon’s big problem.

  I told Dale what Cabazon wanted us to do—and how we needed to find a way to save Tracy. “The problem is, I’m not sure why Tracy was there—or whether she’d been with either Maldonado or the victim.”

  Dale nodded, his knee bouncing under the table. “If she was hanging with the victim, she won’t trust us. She’ll want to see Maldonado go down.”

  I didn’t think she’d trust us even if she was just a bystander. We’d have to tell her that her life was in danger. The only way we’d know that was if we were aligned with Cabazon. In which case, why should she believe that we were trying to save her? If I was her, I’d just think we were trying to help Cabazon “disappear” her.

  I continued. “The thing is, I can’t put Alex on this, and I have a feeling he wouldn’t be able to track her down via computer anyway.” Cabazon surely had some pretty talented hackers of his own. Cyberspace was the new criminal frontier. No respectable crime boss would try to do business in today’s world without at least one decent hacker. And, of course, asking for Alex’s help with Cabazon would force me to tell him how I got into this mess to begin with, i.e., by setting up Ricardo Orozco to get killed in prison. I needed to give Alex plausible deniability in case I eventually got caught.

  But more importantly, getting either Alex or Michy involved in this would only put them more squarely in Cabazon’s crosshairs. It was bad enough that they were associated with me; the last thing they needed was for him to find out they were working on this with me. The more Cabazon thought they knew, the more likely he was to see them as a threat. Especially if I failed to deliver on Tracy Gopeck. The only thing I could do to protect them was keep them as far away from his business as possible. I figured—or maybe just hoped—that as long as they weren’t involved in what I was doing, Cabazon wouldn’t have any reason to think they knew about his business or posed any kind of threat to him.

  Dale sat back. “Then we have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

  I nodded. Bribery, shoe leather, and luck. “Unless she is in protective custody, in which case none of that shit’s going to help. Is there any chance you can find out whether the cops have her?”

  He straightened his silverware and spread his napkin on his lap. “Maybe, if she’s in state custody. But if the feds have her, maybe not.”

  Dale couldn’t go around asking questions about a federal case without raising suspicion. This was shaping up to be a nightmare already. “Anyway, I brought you the police report.” I pulled the manila envelope out of my briefcase and handed it to him.

  He opened the flap and looked inside. “Jesus H. Christ. How in the hell did he get this?”

  The waiter arrived with our food, which smelled fantastic. I waited for him to leave before answering. “My guess? Even if the feds have it now, this probably started out as a local case. Either nephew Jorge Maldonado has lawyered up, and Cabazon owns that lawyer, or Cabazon’s got connects in the department. Now it’s your turn to guess who that might be.”

  Dale picked up his fork. “I don’t have a clue.” He took a bite and chewed, but his expression showed his mind wasn’t on the food. “Whoever it is, I’d love to find out. And bust his ass—”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Or her ass. Check your gender bias. But we don’t have that luxury right now. Cabazon gave us two weeks. It’s Wednesday. Assuming you need a couple of days to clear the decks, that means we’ve got about ten days.”

  He ran a finger between his collar and his neck. “This is really bad timing. I’ll squeeze in whatever I can between now and Saturday, but I’ve got meetings and reports that have to go in by Friday. I don’t have an excuse to be in the field.” He stared at his food. “But as of Friday afternoon, I’ll see if there’s a case I can jump on to give me a reason to be out of the office. And I’ll take vacation time if I have to.”

  I was in a bind, too. I had court appearances, motions, and jail visits with clients stacked up. But I had a little more freedom than Dale—the upside of being my own boss. Of course, the downside was that I had no insurance, no retirement, and no steady paycheck. “I can do some of the legwork. We just need to decide what that is.”

  Dale looked down at the envelope and nodded. “I’ll get back to you after I’ve had a chance to read this. But what do you propose we do if we find her?”

  How do we win her trust? How are we going to save her? Good questions, all. I’d been wondering the same things. “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure something out.”

  Dale didn’t look comforted. But there was no reason why h
e should. We finished our meal in silence. I guess I’d expected some finger-pointing. After all, the predicament we were in was pretty much—well, actually totally—my fault. But Dale never even hinted at it. I probably would’ve indulged in at least a small dig. On the other hand, Dale looked like he was still a little bit in shock. When he recovered, I’d probably be in for months of blame gaming.

  After lunch, I headed back to the office. When I got in, the TV in my office was on, and Michy and Alex were watching it, their expressions somber. I dropped my briefcase on the floor next to the sofa. “Who got shot?”

  Michy pressed a button on the remote, and the footage began to rewind. “Your client’s chances . . . with the jury.” She stopped the rewind and hit play.

  And there was Graham and his wife, Sandy, sitting with Dr. Bob—a shrink with questionable credentials but a made-for-daytime-TV earnest expression. A lead weight dropped into the pit of my stomach.

  Dr. Bob reminded the audience of what Audrey Sutton had said about their daughter, Alicia, then asked if they wanted to respond. Boy, oh boy, did they.

  Sandy led off. “Well, it’s very clear that the Suttons raised a controlling misogynist of a son. You can ask any of Alicia’s friends; he was absolutely crazy. Called her day and night, demanded that she call him multiple times a day.”

  Dr. Bob said, “That is indeed very controlling behavior—something I’ve talked about a good deal on this show. Is that why she broke up with Roan?”

  Graham looked straight into the camera. “Yes. And we believe he posted her photos on that website to punish her for it.”

  Dr. Bob nodded, wearing his usual fake-concerned expression. “And, of course, posting that so-called invitation to fulfill Alicia’s rape fantasy along with those photos was a very dangerous thing to do. But what do you say to those who blame your daughter for sending him those photos in the first place?”

  Sandy took over. “That she was a young, naive girl who trusted a very sick, unhinged man who took advantage of her trust. A man who was obviously so deranged, he decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one could.”

  Dr. Bob gave Sandy his “kindly dad” look. “Then would you say Roan Sutton was also the kind of person who’d take his own life?”

  Sandy set her jaw. “I’d like to think he had enough of a conscience to kill himself after what he did. But I can’t speak to his obvious mental illness.” And then, in an obviously scripted moment, she added, “You’re the doctor. What do you think, Dr. Bob?”

  Dr. Bob gave a sagely nod. “I think he’s a prime candidate for suicide.” He turned to the camera. “This case is a hot potato, and I’m sure we’ll be talking about it again in future episodes, so be sure to follow us on DrBob.com for updates. We’ll be back to wrap this up in just a few. Stay tuned, folks.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  SIXTEEN

  Michy clicked the remote to pause the footage and looked at me. “I thought you told him to lay low.”

  I was still staring at the screen, wondering what had gotten into Graham. “I did. He’s just . . . losing it.”

  She turned off the TV and put the remote back on my desk. “Look, I get that he’s in a lot of pain. He just lost his only child, and Roan is Suspect Number One. But he’s going to talk his way into a murder case if he doesn’t pull it together.”

  And Graham knew that. “I have a feeling that’s what he wants—subconsciously speaking. He’s got all kinds of guilt about the way they pressured Alicia to perform all her life.”

  Michy sighed. “It’d be such a shame if he winds up putting his own head in the noose.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, that just slipped out.”

  “I’m sure Roan forgives you.” And I couldn’t have agreed more. “The thing is, I don’t know what I can do, short of locking Graham in his basement.”

  Alex said, “I might be able to help.”

  I sat down on the couch. “Fire away. I’m all ears.”

  He gave me a searching look. “It’s not legal.”

  I stared back at him. “Like I said, I’m all ears.”

  He leaned against my desk and folded his arms. “I can plant spyware on his phone.”

  I asked, “Don’t you need to get ahold of the phone to do that? How do I pry it out of his hot little hands?”

  Alex smiled. “You don’t. Remember I told you and Dale about spyware that can be loaded onto an iPhone?” I nodded. “What I didn’t want to say in front of him is that you can do it remotely. You don’t need to have physical access to the phone.”

  I loved the idea of being able to get to Graham in time to stop him from doing any more damage. But the notion of going all NSA on my own client made me more than a little squeamish. Apart from my ethical discomfort—a rare occurrence for me—if I got caught, I’d lose my bar card and face a whopper of a claim for invasion of privacy, just for starters. But as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and I didn’t know how bad things might get, so I decided not to rule it out just yet. “Let’s keep that in our back pockets for now. In the meantime, I’ll have another talk with him.”

  Alex pushed off my desk. “Suit yourself.” He headed for the door, then stopped and turned back. “By the way, on the sort of good news front, I checked out that private pathologist, Dr. Mortimer.” He passed me his iPad. “Here’s what I got on him. Seems like he does a lot of work for the defense.”

  I scanned his CV. Alex was right. “Matter of fact, he’s never been hired by the prosecution.”

  Michy frowned. “Is that bad?”

  “Kind of. It means his opinion’s for sale. Basically, he’s a whore; he’ll say whatever he’s paid to say.” Of course, if I’d hired him, I’d call him a leading authority with an impeccable reputation—because then he’d be my whore.

  Alex said, “But won’t the cops know that, too? So even if he does claim Roan was murdered, they won’t necessarily go with that, right?”

  I handed his iPad back to him. “That’s the hope.” And I’d start my campaign right now by putting the bug in Dale’s ear. Cops talk—a lot. By tomorrow morning, every cop in RHD would know that Mortimer was a hooker.

  Alex nodded and went back to his office.

  Michy started to follow him out, then stopped. “About keeping Graham off the airwaves, you might want to talk to the wife, too. Maybe if you explain what kind of disaster they’re courting, she can cool his jets.”

  But even though I wasn’t happy that Graham had decided to do Dr. Bob’s show—especially after all my warnings against media appearances—I was irritated by the finger-pointing. “The thing is, they’re grieving parents, too. You’d think the public would remember that.”

  Michy threw up her hands. “You’re right. You would think. But . . .”

  She was right. It was hard to predict how viewers might react, what might cause them to turn on someone. I took my phone out of my briefcase and moved to my desk.

  But we were both wrong, it wasn’t Graham’s idea—as I learned when I called Graham and started to kindly and gently tear him a new one.

  He was breathing hard. It sounded like he was jogging. “They contacted Sandy without my knowing it. I only went along to try and keep a lid on things.”

  To say that his plan hadn’t worked would be like Snow White saying that apple might not have been her best choice of dessert. “Okay, I get it. But no more guest appearances. If you need me to, I’ll explain it to Sandy myself.”

  Graham’s voice was heavy. “She knows. She just . . . reacted in the moment. But I think she . . . we’ll . . . be flying under the radar from here on out. A friend of ours recorded the show. Neither one of us liked what we saw, so . . . don’t worry.”

  But, of course, that was crazy talk. I was going to worry until the coroner came out with a final decision that Roan’s death was a suicide. And probably keep on worrying long after that. Because there is no statute of limitations on murder.

  Alex came back in to give me a report on my lates
t request. I’d asked him to confirm that it was Roan who’d posted Alicia’s photos. “I’ve been trying to break through the proxy server that was used to post the photos to the porn site, but no dice.” His tone was aggravated.

  Damn. “Can you figure out who posted them on her Facebook page?”

  Alex waved a hand. “Not so far. Best I can tell, her Facebook page was hacked, because it looks like she posted the photos herself—”

  I cut him off. “No way she’d do that.”

  He nodded. “I agree. But the hacker could be anyone. Her Facebook address was posted on the porn website. My only other hope is Roan’s hard drive. Dale said I could come by tonight, and he’d get me to a room where I could check it out.”

  The mention of Dale reminded me of Cabazon. My heart jumped into my throat. We had so little time to find this Tracy person. And then we’d need to figure out how to keep her from getting “microwave ovened”—Brazilian slang for killing someone by putting tires around the victim’s neck and setting him on fire.

  Alex’s voice broke into my miserable reverie. “Want to come?”

  I stared at him, unsure what he meant at first. “Oh, to the station. No, that’s okay. You go. I’ll get some work done. Report back when you have something.”

  Alex started to leave, but he stopped at the doorway. “Do you want me to keep digging on Roan’s family?”

  I’d asked Alex to get what he could on Roan’s background. I was primarily looking for evidence of mental instability, and hopefully for some earlier suicidal behavior. “You come up with anything yet?”

  He sighed. “Not as much as I expected. His parents got divorced when he was twelve, so I’ve been trying to get the paperwork on that.”

  A divorce can generate a treasure trove of dirt. It reminded me of the saying that in criminal court, the worst people are on their best behavior, and in civil court, the best people are on their worst behavior. “That should give us something—unless they had their records sealed.”