Chilling Effect (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 2)

by Melissa F. Miller

  Lane’s tone suggested that his request was the most logical, reasonable way to handle a man who was suspected of embezzlement, murder, attempted murder, and theft of military weapons and who also had access to almost limitless cash, to release him on his own recognizance to minimize the disruption to his life. She tilted her head and regarded the criminal defense attorney. He either had the drollest sense of humor or was devoid of shame.

  Unable to determine which was the case, she said simply, “No.”

  Lane shrugged. “You don’t ask, you don’t get.”

  Oh, shameless. Got it.

  “I do need to determine what capacity the tribal police have for housing Mr. Buckmount, though. I don’t know what the facilities—”

  “There are no ‘facilities,’ girl. Atlas Johnson and his team are the equivalent of a rural police force. This isn’t going to be like your federal government with all its crime labs and bottomless budgets. As CFO of the reservation, I can tell you the police have a budget of ninety-six thousand dollars a year. That covers everything—salaries and benefits, vehicles, equipment, training. Do you know how much it costs to house and feed prisoners awaiting trial, Ms. Higgins?”

  Buckmount’s tone see-sawed between a rant and a lecture. It gave her an unpleasant flashback to first-year law school and her Torts professor.

  She ignored the question. Only a rank amateur would let her advisory frame the argument.

  “A five-figure police budget?” She raised an eyebrow. “That hardly seems sufficient for a population this size. Not to mention all the crime the casino undoubtedly brings to the reservation. It almost makes a person wonder if the CFO might have deliberately underfunded law enforcement for reasons of his own. I’d be curious to know the value of the various contracts the tribe entered into with Buckmount Security Services.”

  The veins in Buckmount’s neck bulged, and his face turned a purple-red color, darker than the blood that stained the large bandage on his head. He began to sputter. But one sharp look from Gordon Lane and he fell silent.

  “Perhaps we can cut through some of the positioning. My client is prepared to accept responsibility for his actions.”

  “He’ll plead?” Aroostine struggled to hide her surprise, but her terrible poker face was working against her.

  Buckmount’s rage simmered. Aggression rolled off him like waves. But Lane’s tone was congenial and even.

  “For an attractive deal, Mr. Buckmount would be willing to enter a plea of guilty in regard to charges stemming from Mr. Palmer’s accidental shooting death.”

  “He accidentally nailed Isaac Palmer in the middle of the forehead?”

  Lane spread his hands wide and raised his shoulders.

  “Did he accidentally embezzle funds from the casino, accidentally steal at least two weapons of mass destruction from the United States military, accidentally break into Ruby Smith’s home and threaten her daughter, accidentally plant a car bomb on my vehicle, and accidentally abduct Ruby and take her to a remote location where he accidentally battered her and threatened her life at gunpoint?” She didn’t even bother to pretend she wasn’t outraged. She shook with anger.

  “Now, you listen here—” Buckmount shot to his feet and yelled.

  “Lee. Sit down.” Lane spoke to him as if he were an errant child.

  “I will not. I will not sit down and listen to this web of fantastic lies.” He banged his handcuffed wrists against the table with a metallic thunk.

  “Sit. Down.”

  Buckmount glared at his lawyer but lowered himself into the chair. Lane turned to Aroostine.

  “It seems my word choice was counterproductive. We can work out the details of a plea after everyone’s had a good night’s sleep. But the general idea I was aiming at is that Mr. Buckmount would be willing to plead to a homicide charge that didn’t include any sort of enhancements. There’s no real mystery here. After the ballistics reports come back, the gun the police seized today will prove to be a match for the one that killed Isaac Palmer. My client’s a pragmatic man, Ms. Higgins. He’s under no delusions. But he does have his own version of the events that precipitated both Mr. Palmer’s death and the altercation with Ms. Smith. He also has a talented and experienced attorney, if I do say so myself. You should consider what you will be able to prove in court and at what cost before you decide whether a plea is in order and what the appropriate charges might be.”

  He was right. She knew it. He knew it. As Sid was fond of reminding his AUSAs in one of his famously mixed metaphors, a half a loaf was better than a tick in the loss column.

  “Hypothetically, am I to understand that Mr. Buckmount is willing to enter a guilty plea for the acts related to Mr. Palmer’s death and Ms. Smith’s kidnapping, but none of the other criminal acts?”

  “I’m not copping to something I didn’t do,” Buckmount exploded from the table.

  “Lee,” his lawyer warned him before addressing Aroostine. “He maintains he had nothing to do with any other events.”

  “Gordon—may I call you Gordon?”

  “Please.”

  “Thanks. With all due respect, come on. Isaac Palmer was killed to keep him from talking to us about the alleged embezzlement. I personally heard your client demanding to know who Ruby told about that same alleged embezzlement. Maybe you should take the night to consider whether you want to go to court with a client who can’t control his temper and claim that, what, he killed Palmer for kicks?”

  He raised a hand like a school crossing guard to forestall Buckmount’s brewing outburst and nodded his agreement. “It seems we each have some thinking to do tonight. On that note, it’s getting late.”

  She glanced at the metal wall clock. It was nearly eight o’clock. And Ruby’s chicken was waiting for her. She examined Buckmount’s face. He wasn’t a young man. And he looked drained, spent. An idea was forming, but she hesitated. Sid would never go for it. Sid doesn’t get a vote, she reminded herself.

  “I’d be willing to place Mr. Buckmount under house arrest with the following conditions: he surrenders his passport; he turns over day-to-day control of the casino and the security force to the Tribal Board; and he pays the wages for a tribal police officer to be stationed outside his home.”

  Gordon was already nodding halfway through the proposition.

  “That sounds eminently fair and workable. Lee, what do you say?”

  “I say go to hell. I’ll sleep in this chair before I agree to that.”

  “Suit yourself, Mr. Buckmount. I’ll let the officer on duty know. May I walk you out, Gordon?”

  The lawyer started to make an appeal to his client to be reasonable, but then stopped himself, shaking his head sadly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lee.” He clasped the man’s shoulder for a moment and then turned to leave.

  “Good night, Mr. Buckmount.” Aroostine pulled the door shut and gestured for Officer Hunt, who’d been posted just outside the door. She filled him in on the plan for the evening and then stepped out in the cool night air beside Gordon Lane.

  “That was a decent gesture,” he said as he blinked up at the night sky.

  “The offer stands if you can get him to change his mind. Think you can?”

  He sighed deeply and then lifted his shoulders. “Who knows? The practice of law is . . . one problem after another. And then it gets dark.” He stared out into the black fields ahead for a long, unblinking moment before turning to her. “Good night, Ms. Higgins.”

  He trudged away, heading toward the gleaming BMW she’d pegged as his. Joe sat behind it in Isaac’s car, the engine idling.

  She stood there for a moment, perfectly still, and the lawyer’s words echoed in the quiet:

  One problem after another. And then it gets dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “What are you doing today?” Aroostine asked Joe as he pulled into a spot near the tribal police station, killed the engine, and pocketed the keys.

  Apparently, Cathy Palmer had offered them the use o
f her dead son’s car for the duration of their time in Oregon. Aroostine wanted to meet her—both to convey her condolences and to get a better sense of the kind of loss Isaac’s death had caused before she went to trial. It was her practice to get the clearest, most fully formed picture of the victim. But in this case, she was going to be scrambling to ready a basic case.

  Her morning wake-up call had been from Boom telling her that the Tribal Board wanted to put the “Buckmount incident” behind them by the end of the week if at all possible because the tribe was participating in some cultural powwow over the weekend and didn’t want to have a cloud over their name. That news had woken her up more effectively than an ice-cold shower. She’d gone into great detail with Boom about why a rushed criminal trial was a terrible idea, but she got the distinct impression he hadn’t been listening. In fact, she had a niggling suspicion he might have put the phone down and walked away while she yammered to no one.

  “I’m meeting Boom here, actually. He needs my help with some top secret woodworking project.” Joe shoved his hands in his jean’s pockets and winced.

  “Who has top secret woodworking projects?”

  He shrugged and dug the keys out of his pocket. “Boom, I guess. Hey, can you throw these in your purse until I get back? This is the world’s worst keychain. It weighs a ton and it’s so bulky.”

  She tossed them into her bag. They landed with a thud.

  “Sure. You don’t need the car?”

  “Whatever we’re doing, Boom said it’s just down the street.”

  She swiveled her neck and looked both directions. The street where the police station was located wasn’t exactly densely populated. To the left, there was nothing at all. To the right, about two football fields away, there was a small ramshackle building that may have been a double-wide trailer up on blocks—it wasn’t clear from that distance. It was, however, clear that the street followed the general aesthetic rule she’d noticed on the reservation: the closer something was to the casino and resort, the more likely it was to be presentable.

  The grounds and buildings that made up the sprawling casino complex, for instance, were as well manicured and ostentatious as anything she’d seen in Las Vegas; areas in the immediate vicinity of the casino were also impeccable and well cared for. But as they’d ventured farther and farther away from the casino, it seemed almost as though the casino’s gravitational pull weakened. The standards slipped little by little until, within a mile and a half of the casino’s gold-leaf etchings and indoor tropical garden, the men and women who worked there lived in relative squalor. Beyond their creaky, run-down homes, their neighbors who weren’t lucky enough to have a guaranteed paycheck and benefits lived in abject poverty. Dirt floors, trash bags over broken windows, cracked sidewalks sprouting weeds taller than Aroostine littered the portions of the reservation where white tourists would never wander.

  It was the way of a capitalist society, no different than any other resort destination that catered to those who had income to dispose of. She remembered when she was in college and her adoptive parents took a thirtieth anniversary trip to Maui. They’d returned from Hawaii struck by both the expansive beauty of the island and the harsh economic inequity. They’d explained that the islanders who worked at the oceanside resorts lining the white-sand beaches couldn’t afford to live in paradise, so they commuted two, three, four hours from the rainy mountains, where they lived in shacks and huts hidden from sight on the road to Hana. But the isolated poverty of the Chinook who called White Springs home struck her as starker and crueler, somehow. The giant money-making machine at the heart of their home was run by their own blood, ostensibly for their benefit.

  Lost in her musing, she didn’t notice that Boom had materialized on the sidewalk next to them until he spoke.

  “Good morning. Did you both sleep well?”

  The question jarred her back to everyday life.

  “Fine, thanks. I hear you’re borrowing my husband this morning?”

  “Yes, he’s graciously agreed to help me with a project over at the cultural board’s offices.” Boom pointed toward the dilapidated house off to the right.

  “Those are your offices?”

  His face clouded for a moment, but the shadow passed quickly. “For now, but not for long. Before he broke ground on construction, Lee had promised us space in the administrative wing of the casino, but somehow he never got around to dedicating a spot for us. I’ve already begun making arrangements to move the office up there after the powwow. It’s a much more fitting space, in any event. I don’t know if you happened to see the permanent exhibit of Chinook artifacts and historical documents on display in the main hall when you had dinner?”

  “I’m afraid we missed it.”

  “Well, we curate that. And we could do so much more—educational programs, tours, performances—if we were located up there. This will be a good step for us.”

  It sounded like a positive development, but his mention of the powwow reminded her about their earlier conversation.

  “On a tangential note, Boom, I want to make sure you understood what I was saying this morning. There’s really no way to try Lee Buckmount before the weekend. It’s just not doable.”

  “Oh but it is doable, as you say. I spoke today to the chief judge, Carole Orr. She said she will hear your case on Friday.”

  “On Friday? As in tomorrow? That Friday; I mean this Friday?” Aroostine was sure she looked like a fish gasping for air.

  Boom smiled. “Of course.”

  “Where is this Judge Orr? I need to talk to her.”

  Another implacable smile. “Indeed. She’s inside. Gordon Lane is on his way. She’ll see you both when he arrives. Come with me, Joe.” Boom beckoned for Joe to follow him and began walking toward the cultural board’s office.

  Joe stopped long enough to shoot her a sympathetic, if bewildered, look. “You’re a rockstar, Roo, you can handle this,” he assured. He kissed the top of her head and traipsed after Boom.

  She stood and watched them walk away, gasping as though someone had punched her in the gut. After several deep inhalations, she exhaled slowly, satisfied that she wasn’t actually going to vomit. Then she mounted the rickety stairs to the police station and tried to ignore the sound of her blood pounding in her ears.

  It was simply unreasonable to expect her to put together a case in one day. No, not unreasonable—impossible. This Judge Orr, whoever she was, couldn’t be serious. Could she?

  “Aroostine,” a voice called from behind her.

  She turned. Gordon Lane was trotting toward her. He aimed his key fob at his sedan without turning back and locked the doors. She stopped and waited for him.

  Gordon would understand. Her breathing regulated. Of course. She wasn’t going to have to convince Judge Orr of anything. Gordon would do it. He had the better argument—his client’s constitutional right to a fair trial would be grossly impaired if he only had a single day to mount his defense.

  “Good morning, Gordon. Does the practice of law look sunnier to you this morning?” she asked, remembering his morose words the night before.

  He craned his neck and turned his face upward as though he were just noticing the sun for the first time. Then he met her eyes. “Not really. Shall we?” He pulled open the streaked glass door and ushered her inside ahead of him.

  She waved a hello to the officer on desk duty.

  “How’d your guest sleep last night?”

  The young man rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Mr. Buckmount was cold during the night. And he needed to use the facilities. He found the chair to be uncomfortable, so he moved to the floor. But the carpet was scratchy. He woke up crankier than my three-year-old and called my coffee ‘swill.’”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “Ms. Higgins, whatever you do, please get him out of here before bedtime. I’m doing another split shift, and I don’t think I can make it through another overnight with that prisoner.”

&nb
sp; She turned to Gordon. “The offer still stands. Do you think you can sell him on house arrest now?”

  “Sounds like if I can’t, I might want to give up this whole oral advocacy gig.” He straightened his muted silk tie and squared his shoulders. “Let’s go see him.”

  They followed the officer along the hallway. He unlocked the door to the conference room that had served as Buckmount’s sleeping acommodation, and then scurried back to the front desk before his ill-tempered prisoner could accost him. She followed Gordon into the room.

  Buckmount looked like a man who’d started the night sleeping in a chair and ended it sleeping on the floor. His hair was wild, his eyes were bloodshot, and his clothes were rumpled. He was a far cry from the polished, gun-toting businessman who’d been dragging Ruby around at the side of the highway.

  “Lee,” his lawyer said, imbuing the single syllable with empathy, concern, and just a hint of parental disapproval.

  Buckmount glared up at him and then focused on Aroostine, who was hanging back to let Gordon take the lead with his client.

  “I’ll take it—house arrest. Get me out of this hellhole.”

  “All the conditions I outlined yesterday are still in play, Mr. Buckmount. An officer posted on your dime, surrendering your passport, the—”

  “I remember the conditions. Just make it happen.”

  She arched a brow at Gordon as if to say, “rein in your client.”

  “Lee, Ms. Higgins is going to want to get this agreement papered. You can’t just waltz out of here on a handshake. I understand you’re in need of a decent cup of coffee. If you can just hang in there for another hour or two, I’ll get you home and have my assistant meet us with Peet’s.”

  She turned away. Gordon was doing what any good lawyer would do—making his client receptive to his advice, but the way he was coddling and indulging a killer turned her stomach. If she thought too long about Buckmount sipping a dark roast in the comfort of his home while Cathy Palmer was mourning the loss of her only child, her anger would bubble over.