Insider Justice

by Dennis Carstens

  Semple stayed on watch until midnight. Maddy watched television, made or received three phone calls and fiddled around on a laptop until 10:00. She watched the ten o’clock local newscast then made a call when it was over. Whoever it was she called, she spoke to for about fifteen minutes, then went to bed.

  While his surveillance target was on the phone after the news was over, Semple’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID, did not recognize it, but decided to take the call anyway.

  “Did you get a new phone?” Semple asked when the caller identified himself.

  “Yeah,” Aidan replied. “Checking in. Anything?”

  “No, sir,” Semple answered. “The lass is on the phone and likely heading to bed.”

  “Do you need relief?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  On Thursday morning Marc was the first to arrive at their offices. It was a few minutes after 7:00 and he was getting ready for a full day. He had three appointments with prospective clients and from all of them he was expecting to receive a nice retainer. The business of a lawyer goes on regardless of what else he was doing.

  The day before, Wednesday, the day after the in-court revelation about Aidan Walsh nee’ O’Keefe, there had been a mild media storm of speculation concerning who and what he was. It was becoming generally conceded, at least in the news, that Brooke Hartley appeared to have been set up. But who was this man and more importantly, where was he?

  The object of this attention was holed up in the home of Calvin Simpson. While Cal and Samantha continued their money laundering scheme—turning large deposits into smaller deposits and then back into larger deposits in untouchable banks—Aidan cooled his heels.

  On the other hand, Carolyn Lucas and Sandy Compton, the office legal assistants, were ready to quit their jobs. Thanks to Marc’s courtroom surprise, the phone rang constantly from various media outlets. At first, Marc refused to take the calls. By lunchtime, Carolyn and Sandy were threatening to turn him into a soprano if he didn’t.

  Marc had spent most of Wednesday afternoon answering the phones himself so the assistants could get some work done. While doing so, he decided to have a little fun jerking around the reporters and adding fuel to the media speculation fire.

  “Are we going to go through another day like yesterday?” Marc heard Carolyn ask from his office doorway. He looked up at her as she asked, “Want some?” indicating the coffee pot she was holding.

  “Sure,” Marc replied. “I don’t know. Probably not, but tomorrow we should shut off the phones.”

  Carolyn re-filled his cup and said, “You’re going to do this? Go on with Gabriella this afternoon?”

  “Yes, I am,” Marc answered.

  The office phone rang and Marc said, “I’ll get it.” He answered the call, looked at Carolyn and said, “Speak of the devil. Yes, darling, what can I do for you?” Marc said into the phone as Carolyn turned to leave.

  “Are we still on?” Gabriella said.

  “It’s not even eight o’clock and you’re already worried.”

  “The station wants to run promos all day. After the shitstorm you created the past two days, we could get quite an audience,” Gabriella said.

  “Great, my mother will probably watch.”

  “I thought she watched every day?”

  “Today, if her little darling son is going to be on, she’ll have half the geezers in town tuned in,” Marc said.

  Gabriella laughed. She had a laugh that could actually make men weak and said, “We’ll be sure to be extra careful when we comb your hair. We want mom to be proud. Try not to spill too much lunch on your tie.

  “Have you heard from the judge? Has he made a decision?” Gabriella asked.

  “Not yet,” Marc answered. “Probably this morning, maybe.”

  “What does that mean, probably maybe?”

  “It means we’ll see. I’ll see you at one,” Marc said.

  “Call me if you get a decision so I can scoop it,” Gabriella said. “Please,” she added.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Marc…”

  “Bye, bye, nosey. I’ll see you at one,” he said and hung up.

  At 10:30 Carolyn answered a phone call. “He’s with a client, but he’s been in there long enough. I’ll interrupt him. Hang on.”

  Carolyn lightly tapped on Marc’s door and opened it. “Carla, Judge Williams’s clerk, is on the phone.”

  Marc looked at the young man, his new client, and his father, the source of attorney fees, and asked, “Do you have any questions?”

  “No,” the father said. “If you need to talk to a judge…”

  “I really do. You could wait if you need to talk some more. I don’t mean to hustle you out,” Marc said.

  “No, we’re good,” the father said again. “Do you want me to give you the check or…”

  “Carolyn can take care of that. I really should take this call,” Marc said as he stood up. He handed the signed retainer agreement to Carolyn. He shook hands with both and waited until his door was closed to answer the phone.

  Twenty minutes later, the conference call between Judge Williams, Marc and Gerald Krain ended.

  “YES!” Marc yelled after hanging up the phone.

  Immediately his door opened and the entire office was standing there. They had been waiting, listening for a reaction.

  “He dismissed it,” Marc said. “Krain’s pretty mad. Making noises about an appeal but I doubt they’ll do it.”

  “They don’t have the evidence to win at trial,” Barry Cline, Marc’s friend and colleague said. “Cooler heads than the Nazi will prevail at the county attorney’s office,” he continued using Krain’s defense lawyer nickname. Barry had his share of run-ins with Krain also.

  “Now what?” Carolyn asked.

  “Now I call Brooke and let her know. Judge Williams said he would email an order out yet this morning. That reminds me,” Marc said. He turned to his computer screen and opened his email. He found the one he wanted, opened it and printed the attachment. The printer on his credenza spit out a document and Marc held it up.

  “The test results from the lab at the BCA,” he said. “Their test was virtually identical to ours, finding the drugs in Brooke’s coffee. Obviously, she was drugged and Williams tossed out the case.”

  “Good afternoon and welcome to the Court Reporter. My name is Gabriella Shriqui and I’m your host.

  “We’re fortunate today to have with us in the studio, prominent local criminal defense attorney, Marc Kadella. Marc has been a frequent guest and always has something very interesting to discuss with us,” Gabriella read off of the teleprompter.

  She continued with, “In the cause of full disclosure, I must admit that Marc has become a good friend of mine. We’ve never dated or anything like that but I do consider him a friend.”

  Finished with the introduction, the camera moved back to get a shot of both of them as Gabriella turned to Marc. They were using an anchor desk and seated right next to each other.

  “Hello, Marc, it’s good to see you again,” Gabriella said flashing a big smile.

  Marc returned the greeting, then Gabriella spent a couple of minutes asking him about Brooke Hartley’s case. The news had leaked out even before Judge Williams wrote his formal order. When Marc finished explaining his side of that case, Gabriella asked, “I understand you’re here to discuss something very serious that you believe is related to the murder of Brody Knutson. Would you care to share that?”

  “I sure do,” Marc said. “As you probably remember Gabriella, since you were there and filmed it, a client of mine was deliberately run over during a hit and run and died. I was also a victim of that hit and run….”

  “Would you mind if we showed it to our audience?”

  “No, go ahead,” Marc said.

  Of course, this was set up before they began taping earlier in the day. For the next minute, the death of Zach Evans was shown twice. Once at normal speed, once in s
low motion.

  “Ever since then, myself and some others have been trying to solve this; find out who is responsible for it. There were two men involved, two brothers. Ryan and Michael Tierney. Michael was the driver and positively identified. They are well known to the Boston police as vicious gangsters. They have also disappeared. The Boston police believe they were murdered. Probably because of an unrelated matter.

  “During the course of our investigation, we have uncovered a massive criminal conspiracy. It involves stock fraud, insider trading, money laundering and murder. We have a videotaped confession from one of the conspirators, a congressman from Minnesota.”

  “Good god,” Gabriella said sincerely shocked. Up to this moment, she had not been told any of this. “That’s quite an accusation. Do you have any proof of this?”

  “As I said, we have a videotaped confession from one of the conspirators,” Marc said again. “One of the politicians involved with it. He’s a congressman from Minnesota. That’s all I can say about him at this time.

  “Legally, uncorroborated co-conspirator testimony is not sufficient to establish guilt,” Marc told her. “We have been trying to get further corroboration of what he gave us. Brody Knutson was on the verge of giving us that when he was murdered.”

  “Do you think Knutson was killed to shut him up?” Gabriella asked.

  “I can’t say that for sure so I won’t,” Marc replied. “This conspiracy used inside information on at least two companies to enrich themselves. Doing this, they drove the price of the stock up and cashed in. Then they manipulated information about the stock and through short selling drove the stock price down and made another fortune. Because of this they are responsible for the bankruptcy of Cannon Brothers Toys and almost put Morton Aviation out of business. Between these two companies, the conspirators’ stock manipulation, fraud and insider trading made themselves a fabulous amount of money and put over a thousand people out of work.

  “And based on what we have on our video, I don’t believe the death of Senator Roger Manion was a natural heart attack. His doctor was on TV and said he was surprised because the senator’s heart was fine. They need to take a closer look at the toxicology and check for heart attack inducing drugs.”

  “Are you saying he was murdered by the people involved in this conspiracy to keep him quiet? That he was a part of it and could corroborate what you have filmed from the congressman?”

  “I’ll say this: first of all, I know Brooke Hartley did not murder Brody Knutson. As to who did, I cannot make that accusation. Knutson was talking to us. We almost filmed him once. Then he got scared and a couple of days later, he was murdered.”

  Marc was looking at Gabriella when he said this. He turned to look directly into the camera and said, “Soon, either the Justice Department or the media is going to get that video. Even if it isn’t enough to convict, it will bring out the truth about what we have found.”

  With a couple of breaks in the taping for commercials, Marc took up almost twenty of the twenty-four minutes of airtime laying it all out. The only thing he did not do was use the names he had.

  Marc was leaning against Carolyn’s desk watching the show on the office TV. Everyone in the office, including Maddy and Carvelli, were watching as well.

  When it was over, Carvelli looked at Marc and said, “You need protection, my friend. Cal Simpson is not going to take that lightly.”

  “He’s right,” Connie agreed.

  “I disagree,” Marc said. “I don’t think he’d dare, now that we’ve gone public. But at least for a few days, I’ll hide out at home.”

  While this was being discussed, Sandy, Carolyn and Jeff Modell were answering the constantly ringing phones. Every reporter in the Twin Cities was trying to get through to Marc. Every call was given a terse “no comment” and a hang-up.

  “You, young lady,” Carvelli said looking at Maddy, “are done with Cal Simpson.”

  “I can get in there and find out some things. Is he running? What’s he up to? He doesn’t know I’m involved,” Maddy protested.

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” Marc said. “He’s going to figure out this whole thing started about the time you showed up. Tony’s right, you’re done with him. We’re not taking any chances.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said fighting back.

  “Aidan is an animal with friends. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill you,” Carvelli vehemently told her.

  “They’re right,” Connie quietly said. “The guys are right about this. If anything happened to you, think about how that would make us all feel.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Lay the guilt on me,” Maddy told her. “But, okay. You’re right, I’ll be a good girl,” she sullenly added.

  “That’s it,” Cal said to Aidan. The two of them were in Cal’s office watching the Channel 8 newscast. It is the same station Gabriella works for and they made good use of the interview. “We’re out of here this weekend,” Cal continued.

  “They haven’t mentioned our names,” Aidan said.

  “What do you think is on that video he has?” Cal asked.

  “If he has it. It could be a bluff to get us to overreact,” Aidan said.

  Cal thought about this for a moment, then said, “True, but it did look like Knutson was going to talk to someone. And this thing is going to unravel in the next few days. No, I’m gone Saturday. The little woman can have the house and the mortgage along with the lake place. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, I can go anytime. I’ve got a cold car in a garage, a bag packed and enough cash to get me where we’re going. I’m just sorry I won’t be able to get my hands on Maddy. She’s the cause of this, I can feel it in my bones.”

  Congressman Del Peterson was at his home in Minnesota watching the 10:00 P.M. local newscast. His wife Rita, was with him in the living room. When the news was over and they went to commercial, she looked at Del and said, “Boy, that’s really something. Do you have any idea who he’s talking about?”

  “Uh, no,” Del said to the clueless woman. “Not a clue.”

  “Well,” she stood and said, “I’m off to bed. Don’t be up too late and don’t drink anymore. Goodnight,” she added then headed toward the stairs and her separate bedroom.

  Peterson finished his third scotch and went to the bar. He dropped another ice cube in the glass, re-filled it, took the bottle and returned to his chair.

  The reality of what he was involved with and the confession he had made was finally sinking in. By the time he shakily stood up and headed for the detached garage, he was drinking straight out of the bottle.

  The next day Rita was up and about at her usual time, 7:00. It was almost 8:30 before she realized Del was not moving about upstairs. Believing she should check on him, she went up to his room, opened the door and found his bed unused.

  It took her another half-hour to get around to checking the garage for his car. When she did, she almost gagged from the fumes. It was there she found him. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, the car still running and Del in the driver’s seat, an odd-looking shade of blue with an empty bottle of scotch between his legs.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Harry Semple, the SAS urban tracker, was back in the apartment on LaSalle. It was Friday evening, the sun was down and he had a clear view of Maddy Rivers. He had watched her return to her apartment and put groceries away about a half-hour ago. She stood over the sink eating what looked to be a chicken breast she brought home with her groceries.

  Semple smiled while watching her eat, and thought, some supper. By now he had been watching her for several days and was developing feelings about her that he could not explain. There was something about her that stirred him from within. Yes, she was a beautiful woman, but he had watched beautiful women before. There was a feline sensuousness about her. It was like watching a predatory big cat. A leopard or jaguar. Semple, being a predator himself, could sense it about this long, cool woman, even if he could not articulate it. If he could explain it to ano
ther person, he would be told he was falling in love. Or at least as much as he was capable of falling in love.

  Maddy finished her ‘meal’ and tossed the remnants in the garbage. After washing her hands and face she took her phone, dialed a number and walked into the living room.

  “Hey, Dan,” she said to Dan Sorensen. “I’m in for the night, you can take off if you want to.”

  “Are you sure? It’s still early. I can stay for a while,” Sorenson replied. He was in his car, parked a half-block away from Maddy’s building.

  “Dan, I’m in,” she repeated. “I literally have a double-barreled shotgun on my coffee table that Tony let me have. I’ll be okay. Go home and spend some time with your wife.”

  “Do I have to? I don’t want to interrupt her or catch her doing something I don’t want to know about.”

  “Why are all men disgusting?” Maddy laughed.

  “We have meetings to come up with stuff,” Sorenson said.

  “I believe it. Good night, Dan.”

  “Good night, sweetheart. Stay home,” Sorensen replied.

  “I will.”

  Semple kept up his vigil as he normally did. He would wait for her to go to bed then give it another hour. He saw her finish the call to Sorenson then turn on the TV.

  While he continued to watch, he thought about the call from Aidan earlier in the day. Aidan’s boss—using his own sources Semple found out it was Cal Simpson—wanted Maddy snatched up. There was a ten-grand bonus in it if he could pull it off. Of course, this set off mixed feelings in Semple. He did not want her hurt, but money is money.

  A few minutes before 9:30 he saw her shut off the television. Maddy went to the closet and put on a leather coat. She picked up her purse and keys and went out the door.

  While Maddy was preparing to leave, Semple was making a phone call. Aidan’s man, Richie, had bribed the security guard at Maddy’s building. Richie told the young man he was looking for his cheating wife and her lover lived in this building. He wanted to park in the building’s private lot and look for her. Richie was in the parking lot fifty feet from the underground garage exit.