Line of Vision

by David Ellis

21

  “BACK UP AND PUT YOUR HANDS BETWEEN THE bars.”

  I obligingly take two steps back. The police officer, my escort to my new home, grabs the chain between my handcuffs. I hear his keys at work as he slips the cuffs off each hand.

  Highland Woods keeps its prisoners beneath the police station, four identical holding cells of concrete, in each a cement slab with a thin cushion passing for a mattress, a shiny white toilet in the corner, a single lightbulb hanging nakedly from the center of the ceiling. I consider asking this cop, a heavy guy with a thick mustache and a nasty cough, if he decorated the place himself, if I can have a room with a view. But I’m not feeling too flippant at the moment, and these guys have decided that a murder suspect is not to be treated too tenderly. Through the booking, the fingerprinting, and now the escort to the cell, they have been gruff, a little aggressive in their handling of me. I don’t know if this is sincere or practiced, something they’ve heard about in the big city. Above the nasty attitude I’ve sensed almost a reverence toward me, an eagerness to be a part, any part, of my arrest. I’m the biggest thing these guys have seen here, a murderer in this little upscale town, and all of them want to have some story about me when their friends ask. Yeah, I printed him. He got a little wise, but I set him straight.

  The cop tells me, the sole occupant down here, to behave myself before he leaves. My cell is spotless and smells of disinfectant. Say this for them, these guys know how to run a sanitary jail. I expected dingy, graffiti-laden walls and the occasional insect. With absolutely nothing else to do, I settle on the flimsy cushion and stare at the walls, bring my feet up on the bed and sit against the wall. I check my watch and the date in the corner. Today’s Saturday, right?

  And with that, with that one innocuous thought, it staggers me, a chokehold on my throat, the breath whisked from my lungs, the first realization of the irreversible process I have set in motion. Which day of the week it is will no longer hold much meaning to me. There will be no weekdays and weekends. Just days. Just one day after another. Say good-bye to job, friends, life. Say good-bye to choices. Say good-bye to Rachel. Just like that, five minutes in the Reinardts’ den, an hour in a room with a couple of cops, and my life has been rewritten.

  This much I know about myself: I am a coward. I can put up the brash front, soothe myself with rationalizations, but when the shadows chase the light, when the truth visits me in the still of night, it is this simple fact alone that remains. And it visits me now. Not worrying about my sister, or Tommy, not worrying about Rachel, who is far from in the clear at this point. I am worrying about myself. Me, myself, and I, no room on the boat for anyone else. The question has always been out there: When push comes to shove, can Marty stand down the bad guys? Can Marty do the right thing?

  I think the jury’s still out. Was I brave on November 18? I’ve told myself yes, over and over, the dashing prince rescuing the girl. But the truth is, I was reacting, working on impulse, and if I was motivated by anything else, it was selfish. Get rid of the doctor. Have Rachel to myself. Was I brave with the cops just now? Hell no, I just couldn’t keep ahead of them, and they had their sights on me anyhow. My confession, as it were, didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. And as far as I can tell, I didn’t necessarily help out Rachel, either—for the time being maybe, and hopefully for good, but I’m not exactly in control of what the cops will do.

  I just hope she knows I tried. I hope she realizes that I was just trying to help, that I don’t want her to get mixed up with this. That I don’t want her to try to help me now.

  The key jangles in the door by the entrance. Jerry Lazarus steps through cautiously. Christ, he must’ve broken thirty traffic laws getting up here from the city so fast. He’s decked out in weekend wear, a forest-green sweatshirt and baggy gray sweatpants. He has his game face on, calm and reassuring, but the color drains from his already pale mug as our eyes meet. His curly hair is matted and unkempt; he hasn’t showered, was spending a lazy afternoon watching college football on the tube.

  The same cop follows Jerry in. He steps past him with a beat-up wooden chair, which he places by my cell.

  “Can I sit inside with him?” Jerry asks the cop.

  “No.”

  Jerry waits until the officer has left the corridor before he speaks. His facial expression softens. He sits down in the chair and puts his hands together like he’s praying. “Tell me you didn’t confess to killing him.”

  I say nothing, just watch him. He doesn’t look up, just sits frozen with his head falling forward, gently touching the bars. His expression quickly changes to despair, despair for the loss of a good friend. I smile sadly at him. I wouldn’t blame him if he wanted nothing to do with me right now. But he is there for me, and not just as my attorney. I appreciate this more than I could possibly express.

  “I’m under arrest.”

  He looks up at me. “Yeah.” His eyes run over the little cage I’m in now. He is pale, beads of sweat on his brow. With nothing better to say, he asks, “Are you okay?”

  “Better than I’ve been the last few weeks.”

  Laz ponders that for a moment; I have already admitted something. “How did—did you turn yourself in?”

  I shake my head and give him the Reader’s Digest. Cops at my door, wanted a little visit downtown, called my bluff.

  Laz nods, much longer than necessary. He is visibly shaken, the typically unflappable expression replaced with genuine horror. We sit in silence for several minutes, staring at the floor. I imagine the conflict is raging inside my friend the lawyer right now, wondering whether I’m capable of murder, wondering whether our friendship is thicker than that.

  “Thanks for coming, Jerry,” I whisper, still with my head down. My voice is hoarse, almost gone. I see Laz lift his head. The tears drop off my cheeks to the floor.

  “Did they hurt you? Rough you up or—”

  I shake my head no.

  “Did they read you your rights?”

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Did you tell them you wanted an attor—”

  “Jerry, what’s the point? I mean, really.”

  “We have to consider every angle, Marty. If they coerced a confession—”

  “Please, Jerry, okay?” The Constitution seems about as distant as Mars right now. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  How to answer that one, Laz wonders. Finally, he says, “Let’s just wait for Paul.”

  Another long stretch of silence. Jerry is wearing leather moccasins and no socks. He must have jumped right in the car after I called.

  “Did you sign anything?”

  “No. I didn’t put anything in writing.”

  He nods again. “Anything recorded?”

  Cummings slid the tape recorder in front of me. “You and I are going to have a conversation, and you are going to repeat, in a calm voice, what you just told me.” Then he turned it on and started talking, reciting the date, time, and parties present.

  I stared at the tape recorder. There was something about making a permanent record. Everything was clearer now, after I had finally told Cummings what he wanted to hear. And something told me not to confess on tape.

  “No. Nothing tape-recorded.”

  “Good.” He says this without conviction. Then he sighs, gives a curt shake of his head. “Good.”

  “So you called that attorney?”

  “Yeah,” Jerry says with the first trace of enthusiasm since he walked in. “You’re getting the best, Marty. Paul Riley’s the best.”

  22

  PAUL RILEY LOOKS LIKE A LAWYER EVEN WITHOUT a suit: tall, lean, and well manicured. He’s got about an inch on me—makes him about six-two—with wavy brown hair that hasn’t receded yet. He has pronounced cheekbones, and a boyish face that battles the cracks along his eyes. Mid-forties, I’m thinking.

  It’s just me and Paul Riley. Jerry left when he heard Paul was here, and one of them has decided that it’s better just the two of us.

&
nbsp; Riley, in his navy turtleneck and khakis, offers his hand through the cell bars. How many times, under more desirable circumstances, have I taken the hand of a colleague, client, friend. This is my first one through bars. Visible ones, at least.

  “Jerry has a lot of nice things to say about you,” I say.

  Riley smiles graciously. “Jerry’s well regarded at our firm.” The firm is Shaker, Riley and Flemming, a high-powered litigation firm in the city. Most of their work, Jerry has told me, is on the commercial side, representing Fortune 500 companies in employment cases, regulatory fights with Uncle Sam, and insurance disputes. But there are a few ex-prosecutors at the firm who take on criminal work when it comes and when it fits their criteria, namely, clients who can afford their rates.

  “Tell me about yourself,” I say, like I’m interviewing him for a job.

  “May I call you Marty?”

  “Everyone else here does.”

  He smiles. “Okay, Marty, I practiced as a public defender for five years, worked the felony call a good three and a half years, then I was an assistant U.S. attorney for six years. I prosecuted primarily white-collar crime. Tax evasion, insider trading, the like. Then I served as the first Assistant County Attorney for seven years under Edward Mullaney.”

  “You prosecuted Terry Burgos.” I knew I’d seen him before. He was lead prosecutor in the Burgos case. Terry Burgos had killed something like eight students at a private college on the west side of the county over the course of six weeks. The school practically came to a standstill during the murder spree. Burgos was a high school dropout who lived in town, had a dad who didn’t treat him so good. It was a sensational case that got big headlines. For Burgos and for Riley, who got convictions on all counts for first-degree murder. That was about nine years ago. The whole thing was rehashed last year, when Burgos died in the electric chair.

  “Yes, I prosecuted Terry Burgos.”

  “Do you believe in the death penalty?”

  “Yes, I do,” he says without a trace of apology. “Except for my clients.”

  The joke is not funny, at least not to me, but I find relief in the fact that Paul Riley feels comfortable enough in these intimidating surroundings to say something humorous.

  “Are you going to be my lawyer?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Jerry says you’re the guy. So that’s what I want. Under one condition.” Riley sits patiently, ready to hear me, the desperate felon, lay down the law to him. “Rachel Reinardt is off-limits. She had absolutely nothing to do with this, and I won’t allow you to conjure up some sexy argument to the jury that she did. I’d rather get the chair.” I startle myself with that last comment.

  Riley sits stoically, almost amused by this.

  “That’s the only condition. I’m not interested in being a hero and spending my life in prison, or taking a couple thousand volts like your pal Burgos. If you can get me off, I want off. But not at Rachel’s expense.”

  Paul waits a moment, to be sure I’m finished. He chews on his lower lip and leans forward. “Marty, if I take this case, I will be interested in one thing. That is clearing you of any charges. You are far too intelligent a person to think the criminal justice system is about truth. It is certainly not. It’s about what the prosecution can or cannot prove in a court of law.”

  Paul Riley crosses a leg. He has been here before, giving the lay of the land to the unwashed, the nonlawyers who need his help, and he enjoys the upper hand.

  “Now,” he says, “I have no interest in getting another person in trouble with the law or exposing her personal life. But I have every interest in seeing you acquitted. It is my duty to do everything within the law to accomplish that. Everything. I will not start my representation of you by agreeing that I will be deprived of what could be—I have no idea at this point, mind you—a very critical weapon. If suggesting that Mrs. Reinardt was somehow responsible for the death of her husband will win you a ‘not guilty,’ then that is precisely what I intend to do.”

  I ponder this, actually smile at this guy’s conviction. Under no circumstances can I tolerate my lawyer pointing the finger at Rachel. But I like this guy; maybe a little too Ivy-League prissy for my taste, but a guy who doesn’t answer to anyone. Here’s the chance to get a case that will be all over the papers and a client who can afford to pay, a case most defense attorneys would jump at, and Riley is telling me to stick my “condition” up my ass.

  And in the end, Riley will never try to implicate Rachel anyway. The jury will have to look at her sympathetically for my defense to have any chance.

  I ask him if he has any conditions of his own. Just that I always tell him the complete truth, he says without hesitation.

  23

  RACHEL WATCHED ME EXPECTANTLY, HER EYEBROWS arched, her eyes dancing.

  I took the first bite. Brownies with cherries inside. I didn’t think it could be done. I’m not sure it should have been.

  “You said you like cherry, right?”

  I smiled with the mouthful. “They’re delicious,” I said, bringing her close to me. They weren’t, but the thought was beyond sweet.

  “I’m not much of a cook,” she apologized.

  “I love them,” I said. “And I love you.”

  I shake my head, blink out of the trance. Back to reality. And what a reality. I am famous now, or infamous. I know this, not because the jailhouse sergeant who dropped my breakfast tray on the floor of my cell Sunday morning told me so with a grunt (“Yer a regular celebrity”), but because my face was splashed on the Sunday edition of the Watch. Lazarus showed me the paper, at my insistence, when he visited Sunday. “Confession in Reinardt Murder,” the headline announced, right there on page one, bottom fold, beneath which they ran a picture of me taken, of all places, at a downtown hotel at a foundation function. Wearing a tux and a stupid grin.

  I saw my celebrity firsthand the following week at my preliminary hearing. The courtroom was full and electric, I could tell even from the waiting room while the court came to order. From there into the standing-room-only courtroom I walked, Martin Kalish, MBA-educated, respectable, philanthropic downtown businessman, hands in shackles with an escort from a county deputy.

  As Paul predicted, the judge found probable cause to hold me over for trial on charges of first-degree homicide. I pleaded not guilty at my arraignment two days later. I was lucky to get bail, although it was set at one million dollars. That meant that I had to come up with a hundred thousand dollars. Being a well-paid bachelor with a modest mortgage and a handsome 401(k) had paid off. I liquidated nearly every investment I had and tapped my grandfather’s inheritance, which I had planned to use to subsidize the later years of my life lying on a beach in the Caribbean.

  Now I’m standing in a conference room at the law offices of Shaker, Riley and Flemming, waiting for my lawyers to join me. From the window I look out east, the remainder of downtown and the lake. It strikes me that the city is gorgeous from this view, grand, dynamic, buzzing, yet something I had never considered as anything more than a nice decoration for my office. Now there is newfound appreciation for the shiny silver and black buildings, the sharp geometry of the newer ones, the fountain in the downtown square.

  I get up close to the window and look down forty-two floors at the people walking on the street. A lunch appointment. A business meeting. That was me only weeks ago.

  Last week, I put my house on the market. I will need the proceeds to pay off my lawyers. Frank Tiller called me from McHenry Stern to offer his best wishes. And to tell me that I was being suspended with pay from the firm. I already knew that my future at McHenry Stern was over; Frank must have twisted more than a few arms to keep me on paid leave for a while. The presumption of innocence has its financial rewards.

  I have moved to a hotel in a suburb a few miles west of the city. The police ransacked my house looking for evidence. Technically, I could stay there, but I have no interest in returning. Paul told me to lay low until he could ga
in a better understanding of the state’s case. So I do just that. I go for walks during the day. I’m catching up on the countless books I’ve promised myself I would read. I found a decent Mexican restaurant near the hotel and eat almost every meal there, an enchilada special for $3.99.

  And I wait. I wait for the paper every day, to see what they’ll say about me. I wait for the calls from my attorneys, with news that they’ve found more evidence against me. I wait for the trial. And now I’m waiting for my lawyers.

  The first one to arrive is Mandy Tanner, a junior partner at the firm who’s working with Paul on this case. Like Paul, she’s a former prosecutor, only she just recently left the office. Mandy’s an interesting contrast. On the one hand, she has a very tomboyish quality, one of those women who looks like she could take me in a bar fight, plays shortstop on the softball team. She’s slim but hard, on the tall side, more athletic than feminine in her walk. But she’s pretty cute, too, in her own way. She has shoulder-length light brown hair, very thick and wavy. Her face is tiny and oval, with prominent brown eyes and a flat nose. She has a healthy laugh, too (I base this on the one time I heard her laugh, while she was talking with the prosecutor, her former coworker; our time together thus far has been anything but a laugh-riot).

  I like Mandy, even though I’ve met her only in my two court appearances. She has a comfortable manner, much like Paul Riley’s, but not polished like his. And comfort is one thing that I could use right about now. As we sit here doing small talk, I feel a measure of relief. Maybe this is the same feeling that overcomes any criminal defendant when he is with his lawyer. It’s funny, Paul and Mandy, two people whom I had never met two weeks ago, are now my most trusted friends, my saviors, the guides through a process that is fairly unknown to me.

  The prosecution has turned over all of its evidence to my lawyers; this is why I’m here. Paul and Mandy have spent the last few days reviewing the material, which is now compiled neatly in two banker’s boxes in the corner of this conference room, with colored tabs sticking out everywhere.