Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill

by Joel Goldman

  “When do you think it happened?”

  “Could have been before or after the card game. The reaction can be fast or take up to a few days.”

  “What now?”

  “I’m going to have a chat with Cara Trent. She was the last person seen with Sullivan.”

  “Why haven’t you talked with her already?”

  “I wanted to wait for the lab tests so I’d know what to ask her and so I’d know when she was lying.”

  “What makes you think she’ll lie?”

  “Everyone does at first. Or they leave things out, like you did.”

  Mason didn’t argue since she was right about him.

  “Mind if I sit in?”

  He couldn’t let one of the firm’s employees be questioned about her involvement in a murder without a lawyer present.

  “I’d have been disappointed if you didn’t insist.”

  “Do you think she did it?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on what their relationship was really like. Murder is a strange business. It attracts the most unlikely people—friends, lovers, spouses—all kinds of partners.”

  They walked down the hall to Cara’s office. She sat behind a wooden desk in her windowless office, twirling a pen between her fingers. She jumped when they knocked, as if they’d awakened her. Her face was slack, her eyes puffy. Mason guessed she wasn’t sleeping and probably hadn’t for the last couple of days.

  Case files were stacked on both sides of her chair. The walls were bare. Her small office got smaller when Kelly showed Cara her badge and wasted no time with small talk.

  “Were you with Richard Sullivan when he died?”

  Cara pulled her chair up hard against her desk, a slight tremor passing along her jawline. “No.”

  “Mr. Sullivan was murdered, Cara. You were seen leaving the poker game with him on Saturday night, which makes you the last person seen with him. I’m certain you want to help us find out who killed him.”

  Cara looked at Mason for confirmation. She was struggling to keep her control as she wadded the edge of her legal pad.

  “It’s true,” Mason said. “But you don’t have to answer any questions. I’m sure you know that.”

  “No, Cara, you don’t have to answer my questions. But I’d have to wonder why you’d refuse to assist in a murder investigation,” Kelly said, holding Cara with her stare.

  “You haven’t given me a Miranda warning.”

  “You don’t get a Miranda warning until you become a suspect. Are you a suspect?”

  Cara crossed her arms over her chest. “I know my rights. You’re not even in your jurisdiction.”

  “I’ll make it easy on you, Cara. A neighbor puts you at the condo that night twice; the first time with Sullivan and the second time by yourself. And your fingerprints are all over Sullivan’s ski boat. Now, be a good girl and tell me the truth.”

  “If you’ve got my fingerprints, you got them illegally. What’s the matter, haven’t they heard of the Fourth Amendment in the Ozarks?”

  Cara turned ugly with her last shot, playing lawyer one too many times. Kelly counterpunched.

  “Here, read this.” She pulled Sullivan’s autopsy report from her briefcase and tossed it onto Cara’s desk. “Your boyfriend had a little secret he forgot to tell you about. He was HIV positive.”

  Cara turned chalky and started to shake. “You’re lying, you goddamn bitch, you’re lying!”

  “I don’t have to lie, Cara. The truth is a lot scarier than any lie I could tell you. Pick it up and read it.”

  Kelly’s quiet insistence frightened Cara, who shrank from the report as if it were contagious.

  “Pick it up and read it,” Kelly continued, hammering her with a velvet glove. “You probably don’t have AIDS yet since it can take ten years to show up. Now, read it and tell me what happened.”

  Cara picked up the report, quivering, tears streaming down her face. “Oh God, oh my God … ,” she cried, and then reached for her trash can and vomited.

  Kelly put her arm around her, now a soothing big sister helping Cara wipe her face with tissues from a box on the desk.

  “Cara, you don’t have to say anything else,” Mason said.

  He’d been transfixed by Kelly’s performance and almost forgot why he was there. Kelly ignored him and handed Cara her coffee cup.

  “It’s okay,” Cara said between gulps. “I know what I’m doing.” Her voice was soft, childlike. “I wanted him to use protection, but he said I was the first one since his wife and I fucking believed him.”

  “Tell me what happened Saturday night,” Kelly said.

  “He said he was stuck playing poker with the partners. I was supposed to show up around eleven so he’d have an excuse to leave.”

  “When did you make your plans?”

  “Saturday morning.”

  “Were you with him earlier in the evening?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where he was before the card game?”

  “I just figured he was having dinner with his wife.”

  Kelly nodded at her to continue.

  “He took me to a condo on the other side of the lake.” She laughed dryly. “He said he felt lousy. He blamed it on his wife. As if that was supposed to make me feel better. Can you believe it?”

  Kelly answered, sister to sister. “Yeah, men will really fool you. What happened at the condo?”

  “Nothing. He couldn’t even get it up.”

  “Did he have anything to drink?”

  “Ice water. He kept saying he was dying of thirst.”

  “Did he take any medication?”

  She took a moment to answer. “No. Not while I was watching.”

  “Were you in the same room the entire time?”

  “Almost. He went to the john just before we left.”

  “Did you see any syringes anywhere in the condo?”

  Cara gave Kelly a quizzical look. “What is that—a trick question?”

  “Depends. Did you see any?”

  “No. I don’t do drugs.”

  “Are you on any medications?”

  “Just the pill.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Long enough to know there was no helping his limp dick. On the way back, we stopped in a cove. He must have been feeling better because he asked me to take my top off. He was a real boob man. Then he started shivering and stood up.” Her voice rose an octave, and her eyes glazed with the telling of the rest. “He had this funny look, like he was somewhere else, and he was breathing so fast it was freaky.”

  “Tell me the rest of it,” Kelly said.

  “We were standing in the middle of the boat. I reached for him but he fell away from me, backward almost. He hit his head on something. I helped him up.” She stopped.

  “And then?”

  “He took a couple of steps, like he was drunk, and fell in the lake.” She shrugged as her voice dropped.

  “Did you try to help him?”

  “I can’t swim,” she whined, as if that too were someone else’s fault. “The water was black—he never came back up.”

  “Why did you go back to the condo?”

  “To look for an earring I’d lost. I was afraid what would happen if people found out about us, especially his wife. The firm would never give me a job when I graduated.”

  Cara looked at them, her eyes pleading for a way out. Kelly didn’t open any doors.

  “I found the earring, Cara. You left it on the boat. I’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mason stayed with Cara after Kelly left. He suggested she hire a lawyer and didn’t argue with her when she quit. He caught up with Kelly at the elevator.

  “Cara resigned. Are you going to charge her?”

  “I don’t know. Poisoning takes a strong and patient personality. Those don’t appear to be her strengths. And she didn’t know Sullivan was HIV positive, so she doesn’t seem to have a motive.”

  “W
ho did?”

  “Look for the person who had the most to gain. Who loved him or hated him too much? Who envied him too much?”

  “So many choices and so little time.”

  “Maybe not,” she said.

  “You’ve already got a short list of suspects?”

  “I’ll start with anyone who had access to insulin. You know more of the candidates than I do. Let’s kick it around over dinner. How about six thirty at Brentano’s on the Plaza?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  And she was gone. Mason started missing her as soon as the elevator doors closed. Maybe it was because he’d been overly celibate lately. Maybe it was because her badge turned him on. He wasn’t certain, but he liked missing her.

  He went back to his office. Scott Daniels walked in just as Mason answered his phone. When he hung up, Mason didn’t know where or how to start, so he just plunged in.

  “That was Pamela. She’s been arrested for Sullivan’s murder and, if that’s not bad enough, Harlan was murdered last night.”

  They stared at each other, neither speaking, until Mason’s secretary came in to tell him that Victor O’Malley was holding.

  “Tell him something’s come up and I’ll have to reschedule.”

  “Pamela couldn’t have killed Sullivan. That’s crazy,” Scott said.

  “So far she’s only been charged with conspiracy to murder Sullivan. They’ve taken her to the Johnson County Sheriff’s office in Olathe and she wants me to represent her.”

  Claire would’ve flown to her side. Mason knew he had to go, but he wasn’t in as big of a hurry as his aunt would have liked. He had no qualms about defending O’Malley in a white-collar crime case, but he was the wrong lawyer to save Pamela from the death penalty.

  Scott lost interest in Pamela’s problems. “Tell me about Harlan,” he said, his gaze on the floor while he shrunk into his chair, trying to crawl inside his three-button suit.

  “I got home late last night. Harlan had left a message on my machine asking me to come out to his farmhouse and help him prepare for his meeting this morning with the IRS agent. I called him back but his phone was dead. When I got out there, he was dead too.”

  “What do the police think happened?” Scott asked without looking up.

  “They didn’t confide in me. They just asked a lot of questions, nodded when I answered, and then asked the same questions again.” Mason changed the subject. “Let’s send the staff home for the day. We better have another partners’ meeting in the morning and figure out how we keep this operation afloat.”

  Scott agreed, and they gathered the staff in the thirty-second-floor lobby and broke the news of Harlan’s death. He was a man no one could dislike. The lawyers and staff were dazed, many weeping openly, as they staggered from the office. Angela volunteered to stay and man the phones.

  Mason waited until everyone except Angela and Scott were gone before leaving. Victor O’Malley Jr. nearly ran over him as the elevator door opened. Mason was in no mood for O’Malley-lite.

  “Sorry, Victor, I wasn’t expecting you. My secretary told your father that we had to reschedule. We’ve got a couple of real emergencies.”

  “We never needed an appointment with Sullivan. He understood how to treat important clients.”

  Weasels were lousy at intimidation, Mason thought. And he was fresh out of client suck-up.

  “I’ll remember that when you’re the client. Maybe your father will let you sit in on our next meeting so you can practice.”

  Scott rounded the corner in time to hear their exchange. He was redefining pale but managed to welcome Junior with a conciliatory smile.

  “Vic, we’re all in shock around here,” he said while taking him by the arm. “Somebody broke into Harlan’s house last night and killed him. The police think it was a burglary that went sour. On top of that, Pamela has been charged with Sullivan’s murder. Lou is on his way to the courthouse to see her. I just talked to your father and he understands about the appointment.”

  “We’ve all got problems, Scott, but we need to talk about the fixtures deals.”

  Scott cast a quick glance at Mason as he stepped onto the elevator, then took Vic Jr. by the arm and led him to his office.

  The Johnson County Courthouse was in Olathe, Kansas, another once sleepy small town that had grown into a virtual suburb of Kansas City, even if it was twenty-five miles southwest of downtown and on the other side of the state line. On his way there, Mason left a message for B.J. Moore, a good friend and a better criminal defense lawyer.

  He first met B.J. when they shared a client who had been charged with embezzling three million dollars from his employer at the same time he was making a workers’ compensation claim against the company. The client pled guilty to the embezzlement charge and the DA agreed not to prosecute him for what turned out to be a fraudulent injury claim.

  B.J. returned his call as Mason crossed the state line into Kansas. He was already at the courthouse on another case and would wait for Mason. Thirty minutes later, they were ushered into an interrogation room in the county jail across the street from the courthouse.

  The room was a bleak display of tax dollars at work, off-white walls, white ceiling tiles, and green linoleum, wooden table, four chairs, and no windows. They excused the deputy sheriff who was there to protect them from Pamela and then listened as she declared her innocence and screamed at them to get her out of the goddamn jail.

  “If I’d have wanted to kill that no-good bastard, I’d have shot him with my own goddamn gun!”

  Jail was a true class equalizer. Dressed in an orange prisoner jumpsuit, her hair tangled, her makeup smeared, and reeking of bad breath, body odor, and stale booze, Pamela had morphed from an upscale Mission Hills widow into a drunken bag lady charged with murder.

  “We’ll try to get you out of here as soon as we can,” Mason said, “but I can’t represent you.”

  “Why not?” she snapped as she threw herself into one of the metal folding chairs.

  “Because I could be a witness. You need the best lawyer you can get, and that’s why I asked my friend B.J. Moore to be here.”

  B.J. was pear-shaped and shaggy haired, and his suit looked as if he had picked it up where he’d dropped it the night before. Women liked him because he was cuddly. Men liked him because he was without pretense. He had a knack for making people comfortable with him.

  “Please don’t take offense, Mr. Moore,” Pamela said, “but I don’t know you, and I’d rather have someone I know.”

  “Mrs. Sullivan, I’m more interested in how you feel after your case is over. Let me figure out if I can get you home for dinner. If you’re still here at breakfast, you can hire somebody else.”

  B.J. looked into Pamela’s eyes as he spoke, holding the gaze until she softened, fussed with her hair, and dipped her chin.

  “Okay,” she said.

  B.J. took her hand. “Good. Let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Kelly was waiting in the hall.

  “What’s she doing in a Kansas jail for a murder she supposedly committed in Missouri? And why was she only charged with conspiracy?”

  “She was arrested in Kansas. The DA went for the conspiracy charge because he wanted to grab her and the headlines. It’s easier to back off of that than a murder charge if he can’t make the case.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bright to me.”

  “That’s never been an obstacle to elected office.”

  They walked across the street and sat in the shade of the gazebo in the center of the Courthouse Square. Mason nodded at the few familiar faces passing by. A groundskeeper rambled away, leaving them alone except for the yellow jackets feasting on the flowers planted nearby.

  “The sheriff’s detective on Harlan’s case says it looks like a burglary that went bad,” Kelly said. “They’re trying to find out if anything’s missing. Where’s his family?”

  “Two kids, one on each coast. His wife died a coup
le of years ago. Do you really think Pamela murdered Sullivan?”

  “I didn’t arrest her. The Johnson County DA is up for reelection, and he’s grandstanding. That doesn’t mean she didn’t kill him, but I wouldn’t have gone for the arrest until I had better evidence.”

  “I thought it was your case. What happened?”

  “I needed a search warrant for Pamela’s house. The DA had to get it for me because I’m out of my jurisdiction. We may have found something, and he decided to charge her with conspiracy to commit murder so he could hang on to the case.”

  “Based on what?”

  “We found a syringe and a vial of an unidentified substance. If it turns out to be insulin, he’ll claim she planned the murder in Johnson County, which gives him his conspiracy count.”

  “What happens to the murder charge?”

  “The crime was committed at the lake. We’ll charge her there and Kansas will extradite her so we can try her on the murder charge first. The DA still looks good when he ships her down to us.”

  “Which gets me back to my first question. Do you think she did it?”

  “He was cheating on her and she knew he had exposed her to HIV—not bad for a motive.”

  “How did she find out that Sullivan was HIV positive?”

  “Sullivan’s doctor, Charlie Morgenstern. Sullivan tested positive for HIV last year during his annual physical. He told me that he threatened to tell Pamela if Sullivan didn’t.”

  “So she had a motive. What about the means?” Mason swatted away a bee that threatened to land on her sleeve. “Let’s walk.”

  They brushed shoulders as they stood, letting the contact linger for an extra moment, smiling and admitting that they’d taken a small step.

  “She’s been volunteering at a hospital, which means she could have had access to insulin. We’re checking it out. And she fed him his last supper, so she had the opportunity.”

  “That doesn’t explain how she could have given him the insulin. I doubt if she sneaked up on him and stabbed him with the needle or talked him into letting her inject him with a fatal dose. Did you question her?”