Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  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.”

  CHAPTER 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 more 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.”

  George looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean? And how do you know this?”

  “I have a client. His name is Michael Reynolds. He’s being charged with the murder of Judge Sanders.”

  “Yeah, I read about that in the paper. But what does that have to do with Judge Perez?:”

  “Gerald Stone was involved in murdering Judge Sanders. And I have proof that Judge Perez was involved in a blackmail scheme involving Judge Sanders. I don’t have proof that this blackmailing scheme was directly connected to Gerald Stone, but I think that it would be easy enough to find that out.”

  George looked like was skeptical but interested in what I had to say. “I think that I see,” he said. “You’re saying that Gerald Stone murdered Judge Sanders, because Judge Sanders would have awarded my clients millions of dollars and would have ordered hundreds of millions in punitive damages?”

  “Yes. And I also have proof that Judge Perez wasn’t randomly assigned to this case. Somebody hacked into the computer at the Western District of Missouri to make sure that Judge Perez was assigned to this case. That, combined with the murder of Judge Sanders and the fact that Judge Perez was involved with finding a bogus paternity finding that showed that Judge Sanders fathered a child with his own daughter, and I think that it’s pretty easy to show that Judge Perez is dirty. You need to figure out a way to petition for a peremptory challenge to Judge Perez, so that your clients don’t have to face him.”

  “Hold on,” George said. “What do you mean, Judge Perez bogusly found that Judge Sanders fathered a child by his own daughter?”

  At that, I showed him the proof. I had printed out the entire file that Anna found for me. It showed that Judge Perez signed an order finding that Judge Sanders fathered a child with Christina Sanders, despite the fact that the DNA tests showed that Michael Reynolds was actually the father.

  George blinked his eyes, as if he didn’t quite know what he was seeing. “This paternity case was when he was a state court judge,” he said. “Which wasn’t that long ago.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “Remember, he was a state court judge just six months ago. That was about when you were gathering your class and doing your investigations on this case. So, Gerald Stone knew, even then, that this case was coming.”

  “But what would be the point in the blackmail then?”

  “This is my theory. Gerald Stone has Judge Perez in his pocket. Gerald Stone knew that the Dowling Chemical case would be assigned to Judge Sanders, so he had Judge Perez rule on this bogus paternity case so that he, Gerald, could blackmail Judge Sanders into recusing himself from the case when it was assigned to him. When Judge Sanders refused, he was murdered.”

  George shook his head. “This sounds like a bad movie. But I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and try for a peremptory challenge against Judge Perez, but unless I can get some kind of hard evidence that Perez is in the tank for Gerald, I don’t see that happening. But I will do my due diligence on the allegations that you’re making.”

  “Please do. Follow the money. Maybe you can find out if there were any secret payments made between Gerald and Judge Perez. Hopefully you can figure that out.”

  We chatted for several more minutes before I excused myself.

  As I left his office, I knew that there was no guarantee that anything would come of this, but I knew that I did my part. That made me feel good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Eight Weeks Later

  “Your Michael Reynolds trial is today, isn’t it?” Tammy was in my office, talking to me as I gathered together my files for my trial.

  “It is. We picked a jury yesterday, and today’s the day.” I didn’t tell Tammy this, but my jury selection was the worst I ever did. I made sure that I got as many women on the jury as possible. I knew that the prosecutor was going to try to get in the evidence that Michael had raped women in the past, and I wasn’t going to object to any of that, even though this evidence was not allowed, at all, in this context. But if I didn’t object to her putting this evidence in, then it was going to come in. I knew that women were going to want to hang him once this evidence came in, so I loaded the jury up with 9 women. April didn’t object to that, of course, and she admitted to me that she was surprised that I would do that.

  “Method to my madness,” I said. I hoped that she would accept that explanation and not question it.

  I was still determined to bring down Gerald and Judge Perez. I hadn’t yet figured out just how to do that, but I knew that I was going to have to do it after this case was over. Perhaps, at that point, I
could go to the police and tell them my suspicions and ask them to look into it. I could have possibly gotten Kayla to speak with them, but she wasn’t on their radar, so she had been laying low.

  That was so frustrating to me. I couldn’t do anything with the information I had, because implicating Kayla and Gerald would also implicate my client, and I couldn’t do anything to implicate him. At least, I couldn’t do anything to implicate him at the moment. Once his case was over and he either had a guilty verdict or a not guilty verdict, and he was no longer my client, I could go ahead and tell the police what I knew about Gerald and Kayla, and what I suspected about Judge Perez.

  Gerald was going to be relatively easy. Kayla would roll on him in a heartbeat. But Judge Perez was going to be trickier. The evidence against him was circumstantial at best. But I was going to show Chief Judge Haynes the evidence in the Christina Sanders paternity case and hopefully she could piece it together on her own. That was my hope, anyhow.

  I GOT to the courthouse early and sat at my table. I was going to have to make a bit of a show in defending Michael. I had to walk the line between total incompetence, which would get me in hot water, and basic incompetence, where I could tell the Missouri Bar that I simply was having a bad day. That was going to be a tough line to walk.

  Michael soon arrived, along with April and her second chair, Ron Lankford. Michael sat down next to me at the table. “Were you harassed by the press outside?” he asked me.

  He was referring to the fact that the media was outside the courtroom. This was a huge case, so there was media outlets from all over the nation sending their reporters to the courthouse. The cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but that didn’t deter the satellite trucks and the hordes of press agents that were surrounding the perimeter of the Jackson County Courthouse.