by Louise Ure
That final word told me how desperate the office finances must be. Jessica never said please. But she still didn’t sound like she meant it.
“Jessica, I don’t do criminal-defense work. I don’t like this kind of case,” I repeated. She hovered over my desk, and I scooted my chair back two feet to maintain a perimeter of privacy.
“What is it with you?” She looked around my office for the answer and fingered her hair back into a casual arc. “Is there some reason you can’t represent Mr. Cates?”
“Rape and murder? I won’t do it.” I straightened a nonexistent mess on my desk. “I don’t even like to be around criminal defendants, and that means I probably wouldn’t do a good job for him.” I couldn’t meet her eyes.
I hadn’t ever told Jessica why I wouldn’t defend someone in a criminal trial, especially one like this. Perhaps she thought it was squeamishness on my part. Perhaps she was right. Squeamishness combined with terror.
It was all because of Amaryllis—Amy, as my childhood pronunciation had abbreviated it. It had been seven years since my sister was attacked and left for dead, but seven years wasn’t long enough to push it out of my nightmares.
“Well, get over it,” Jessica said, slamming the office door back against the wall. “Business hasn’t been so good that we can afford to be choosy about our clients. If there’s no genuine conflict of interest here, then this is part of the job description, Calla. And if you can’t do this job, I can always find someone who can.” It seemed that our agreement had evaporated into thin air. The sound of typing started up again from the lobby.
She hadn’t attached a “please” this time. The real Jessica had returned.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I said as she crossed the lobby. “What about our deal?”
“What deal?” she tossed over her shoulder. As usual, Jessica was looking out for Number One. And Number Two was so far behind you couldn’t even see if I was raising any dust.
Damn it. I needed the money from this job. When I left the advertising industry six years ago, it was mostly because I could earn more doing trial consulting. In advertising, the folks making the real money are in the creative department. The lowly researchers don’t get much, and I needed the extra income for Amy’s care. It also didn’t hurt that trial consulting felt more real—more necessary—than anything I’d done in advertising.
If Jessica had just honored her promise to keep me away from criminal litigation, I would have been fine. Sure, I’d still be scraping for every nickel to take care of Amy, but I would have been okay.
“Get over it,” Jessica had said. Easier said than done. I let out a long breath. Well, if I had to attend one meeting with a criminal-defense attorney, then so be it. For all I knew, this guy, Cates, could be cherubic, soft-spoken, and innocent.
I took another deep breath and turned to the recommendations for the Rondo case, hoping to push the upcoming meeting with Mr. Cates’s attorney out of my mind. I didn’t think it would stay gone for long.
2
It was late afternoon when I arrived at the offices of Whitcomb, Merchant & Dryer.
“Hello, I’m Calla Gentry,” I said to the movie star-cum-receptionist. She gave me a megawatt smile through lacquered lips. The offices were plush and quiet, the lobby floor tiled with three-foot squares of leather. Oversized paintings of wild horses looked down from two walls. The third wall was glass, overlooking the mosaic tile dome of the old Pima County Courthouse. The receptionist continued the Western theme with her squash-blossom necklace and tight suede blouse.
I asked for Kevin McCullough, the attorney who would be handling the day-to-day work on the case with the master himself, Gideon Merchant.
“Please take a seat. I’ll tell Mr. McCullough you’re here.” She used the eraser tip of a pencil to push the phone buttons, her heavy silver bracelets clanking in a contrapuntal rhythm.
I sank into a soft, dark gray couch, hoping I could find my feet again when I needed to get up. I had just managed to find a balance between prone and perched when his footsteps squeaked across the leather tiles.
He had dark, curly hair and a lean face with a strong jaw: a Clark Kent face but stretched longer. His eyes were attentive behind steel-rimmed frames. I thought he looked smart, confident, and kind. I was probably right about two of those.
“Thank you for coming over on such short notice. We’re going to have to hurry,” McCullough said.
I lurched off the couch, my purse strap slipping off my shoulder and my overstuffed briefcase pulling me to the right. “I’m happy to help, but I’m just going to be doing the preliminary work with you. Jessica Marley will be the trial consultant.”
He gave me a quizzical look, then marched down the hall to the conference room. “But Jessica said you were the best,” he said over his shoulder.
I silently cursed Jessica for the misleading and inappropriate buildup of my skills, especially regarding a criminal defense. “She’s actually our specialist in criminal litigation. I’ll just be covering for her until she’s freed up from an earlier case.”
We found seats across from each other at the lozenge-shaped conference table, and I kept my back to the window. I opened my notebook and clicked a ballpoint pen into position. I was willing to handle this first meeting for Jessica, but I had no interest in small talk or in finding out anything else about the law firm or McCullough or Cates, the man accused of murder. I was going to get the facts and get out.
“That may be a problem,” McCullough replied, as if he were reading my mind. “I have the whole team waiting for us at the county jail for a strategy session today. I’ve got a few minutes to fill you in on the basics of the case before we have to leave to join them.” He gestured to two tall stacks of files in front of him.
Damn. If I got introduced to the entire team as the Marley and Partners representative it was going to make my disappearance more difficult. Jessica probably knew this was more than just a meet-and-greet appointment and thought that hiding it from me was the only way to ensure my attendance.
I’d have to go through with the trip to the jail and try not to get stuck with any commitments that would keep me on the case.
“Give me the broad outlines and how you think we might be able to help you. If Jessica winds up taking over as point person, I’ll make sure she gets all the facts.”
“Sure.” He shifted a stack of files on the table closer to him. “Sign this Letter of Confidentiality first. That way we can say you’re part of Cates’s legal team, and any conversation we have about the case remains privileged.” He slid a one-page form across the table, and I scrawled a signature along the bottom.
He picked up the top file, opened it, and began reading from the first page. “Raymond Cates, thirty-eight, a Tucson resident, is accused of the sexual assault and murder of Lydia Chavez, twenty-two years old, also from Tucson, at Gates Pass on April first of this year. According to the sheriff’s report Mr. Cates was seen talking to Ms. Chavez in the Blue Moon bar on the night in question. They reportedly left at about the same time, but no one actually saw them leave together.”
He paused and looked up. “All the evidence against my client is circumstantial. Tire tracks found at the scene are consistent with his tires, similar cat hair was found on both their clothing, and the gun used is the same caliber as a gun Raymond purchased several years ago.”
“She died from a gunshot wound?” I continued to take notes.
McCullough stopped reading, took off his glasses, and began cleaning them with a handkerchief. “Yes, he—someone—raped her with a gun, then pulled the trigger. Not our client, of course. Mr. Cates is innocent.”
“Of course.” I swallowed an unexpected lump in my throat. My God, what terror that poor woman must have felt. April Fool’s Day. But it was no joke.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t even have an objective conversation about the crime without panicking at the scenes of horror appearing in my mind. It reminded me too much of Amy.
&nbs
p; “But he really is innocent,” McCullough protested. “He can prove he wasn’t even in Tucson when she was killed.”
Hoping to find a graceful way out of the case, I said, “It’s not that I’m trying to turn down business, but you may not need as much of our help as you expect. The evidence sounds pretty thin. With that and an alibi, I’m surprised that the State was able to make an arrest stick.” I clicked the ballpoint pen to the retracted position as if our business was concluded.
“Well, there is the parking ticket.”
“What parking ticket?”
“A sheriff’s deputy gave Ray’s car a parking ticket at Gates Pass within an hour of the time the coroner fixed as the time of death. That’s why they focused on Ray so quickly when the body was discovered.”
That certainly made his circumstantial case more substantial. Wasn’t that how they finally caught the Son of Sam killer?
“It’s not all bad news,” McCullough continued. “He has no priors, and we’ve got a strong alibi and his family’s reputation going for us. But even circumstantial evidence can look bad if you add it all together. We’ve got a lot of preparation to do. Cates demanded an early trial date, and we’ll need lots of help to get ready.”
I shrugged my halfhearted agreement and clicked the pen back into writing position.
McCullough did triage on the files in front of him and stuffed only the most critical folders into the slim briefcase at his feet. “C’mon, they’ll be waiting for us at the jail. We’d better take two cars.”
I had to trot to keep up with him on the way to the garage. Two basketball-center-sized parking lot attendants brought the cars around, and McCullough gunned the engine on his Porsche as I repositioned the seat on the Jeep. An all-time record—the Jeep started right up twice in one day. I ran two red lights between the garage and the freeway just to keep McCullough in sight. He turned what should have been a fifteen-minute trip into a seven-minute demonstration of virility.
I had never been inside the county jail before; all of my previous clients had been defendants in civil trials. The multistory white building sat apart from its fellows in a wide circle of landscaped desert two miles west of I-10. It looked more like an airport hotel than it did a detention center, with fewer bars and less security glass than I expected.
We showed our ID and submitted to a pat-down and search of our briefcases, then were shown into a medium-sized conference room with a high horizontal window on the west wall. A rectangular metal table was bolted to the floor, and all but two hard-back chairs around the table were taken.
We hadn’t interrupted any conversation. Everyone was busy with notes or a search through documents while they waited for us. McCullough apologized for our tardiness and greeted several of the attendees, but I didn’t catch all the names.
He began the introductions. “This is Calla Gentry, from Marley and Partners Trial Consultants. Calla, the rest of the group is as follows. First, we have Gideon Merchant, the senior partner who will oversee our efforts here… .”
I nodded at the florid cheeks of the founder of Whitcomb, Merchant & Dryer. He was thirty pounds overweight and wore a conservative suit with thin white pinstripes and a bright red power tie. Tufts of white hair peeked from behind and below his ears, curling in the oppressive jailhouse heat. He was already scowling when the introduction began, so I didn’t take it personally when he frowned at me. “Ms. Gentry,” he said, stirring then tasting the coffee before him.
“Steffie is the paralegal working with me,” McCullough continued. A strawberry blonde with a constellation of freckles across her nose smiled and waved from the end of the table.
“On your left is Anthony Strike, the firm’s private investigator.” Strike was tall and lanky, with black hair, a Zapata-style mustache, and a quick, lopsided grin. He slouched in the straight-backed seat as if it were a rocking chair in front of an Old West sheriff’s office. His cowboy boots were worn down at their angled heels, and his pearl-snap shirt was rolled up at the sleeves. Definitely a Tucson character: the Wild West was still alive in him.
“Next to him is Dr. Marjorie Ballast. She’ll be reviewing all the forensic evidence for us. And she’ll either be our expert witness in those areas or she’ll tell us who to get for specific forensic rebuttal.” Dr. Ballast looked a little like George Washington and wore a severely cut olive green pantsuit. I double-checked to see if I’d missed an Adam’s apple. She didn’t even look up at the introduction, continuing to take notes in a black, fabric-covered day planner. She probably thought it was a waste of her time to come to a meeting this early in the game, before all the evidence was available for her to review. She was probably right.
“And right beside you, of course, is our client, Raymond Cates.” Cates was on the short side of average and looked like a tennis player: trim build, long limbs, and an even tan. He wore orange scrubs with “Pima County Jail” stenciled on the back. Somehow he managed to make the jail uniform look pressed and tailored. It made Anthony Strike seem underdressed for the meeting.
Cates’s sandy brown hair drooped over his forehead, and he threw his head back to get it out of his eyes, like a horse trying to rid himself of a bit and bridle. Not exactly the cherubic image I’d been hoping for, but I’d settle for soft-spoken and innocent.
He surveyed me from my forehead to my lap, then turned abruptly and faced Kevin McCullough across the table. I couldn’t tell if I’d met with his approval or not.
McCullough ticked off one agenda item on the sheet in front of him. “Okay, this is June fourteenth, and since we have not waived the right to a speedy trial, we’re scheduled to start with jury selection on August twenty-first. That leaves us less than nine weeks to get ready.”
I counted back on my fingers. Cates had been arraigned at the end of May, and since capital murder is not a bailable offense, he’d already spent almost three weeks in jail. An August twenty-first date for jury selection meant that the State was barely inside their ninety-day window for a “speedy trial.”
No one spoke up at the mention of the early trial date. Finally Cates threw up his hands in exasperation. “I know that wasn’t your recommendation, Kevin, but I want to get this over with and get out of here.”
What a fool. Preparation for any felony trial would be difficult in that short amount of time, and I couldn’t imagine getting ready for a death-qualified jury in only nine weeks. On the other hand, it wouldn’t give the prosecution time to fully develop its case either.
McCullough nodded as if he agreed with my mental argument and continued going around the table discussing each person’s area of responsibility, asking questions about timing, and setting priorities. Dr. Ballast was already working on retesting the cat hair and tire patterns. She wanted to do a ballistics comparison on Cates’s gun, but he’d told the police that he’d lost it years ago.
“A .41 Magnum, that’s an unusual caliber, isn’t it?” Merchant asked.
“Sort of,” Cates replied. “There’s less recoil than a .44 Magnum, and you have a better chance of hitting what you’re aiming at. I left the gun at my father’s ranch years ago when I moved to Tucson.” It was the first time he seemed to take a real interest in the discussion around him. For the rest of the time he was doodling on the pad in front of him. It looked like a landscape with high-flying birds above the mountaintops. He must have been thinking about his freedom.
“It seems to me that finding the gun and proving it wasn’t the murder weapon is in your best interest,” Merchant said. “Have your father keep looking for it.”
Cates nodded.
McCullough and Strike were going to spend time with the alibi witness, Hector Salsipuedes, who worked at the Cates ranch. He had told the sheriff’s deputies that he and Cates were sharing a beer at the ranch near Patagonia, more than an hour away from Tucson, when the attack occurred. Strike was also going to investigate the character and life of the victim, Lydia Chavez, to see if other potential suspects could be suggested to the jury.
Merchant raised the issue of the parking ticket. “Can we suggest that someone else drove Ray’s car that night? Or that the officer is mistaken? What do we know about this Deputy Niles? Is there any bad blood between him and the Cates family?” McCullough and Strike nodded to each other and jotted notes.
When my turn came, McCullough asked when we’d start doing research on jury recommendations. I tried to hedge my answer.
“I suppose that we could begin almost immediately, but it would only give us preliminary guidance. We should really base our selection on their response to our strategy and the witnesses and evidence we want to present. I can line up focus group respondents for the next several weeks, and then, as we finalize our strategy and presentation, we can conduct a mock trial with them.”
“Why wait for a final strategy?” Cates asked. “They certainly aren’t going to change how they feel about murder, are they?”
I waited for McCullough to answer his client’s question, but he gestured for me to proceed. “No, but they may change how they feel about this murder. For example, if you said ‘I didn’t do it, you have the wrong man,’ a juror may feel differently than if you said, ‘I did it, but voices told me to.’”
“I didn’t do it.” Cates snorted once and gestured to the rest of the table. “I already told these guys. That’s our strategy because that’s the truth.”
McCullough jumped in with a reply to put his client at ease. “I know, Ray. And of course, you’re right. But we want to make sure that we’re presenting our defense in the strongest possible light and that we’ve found the most receptive people we can for the jury.” He paused and checked the tabbed markers in the notebook in front of him, then shut the book with a muffled bang.
“All right. That’s all for today, folks. We’ll plan to meet the middle of next week for updates.”
We shuffled chairs, gathered papers, and stood to leave. I said good-bye to Dr. Ballast, who looked through me as if I were a dirty window with a dull view on the other side. Cates stopped me with a hand on my arm.