The Last Innocent Man

by Phillip Margolin

  The trick turned the car into the parking lot of the Raleigh Motel. Darlene pressed the side of her purse and was comforted by the feel of the gun’s outline. Ortiz wouldn’t be frightened in a situation like this if he was busting a female prostitute. She looked out the back window. Where was he? She couldn’t see the police car anywhere.

  “I want you to register for the room,” the trick was saying. “I’ll pull around and park.”

  “I don’t…”

  “There’s nothing to it,” he said, smiling and handing her a roll of bills.

  Darlene took the money and slid out of the front seat. The trick drove toward the rear parking lot, away from the motel office. An old man in a plaid shirt was squinting at a used paperback through a pair of thick-lensed, wire-rim glasses. He looked up when Darlene entered.

  “I’d like a room,” she said.

  The old man slid a registration card across the desk without comment. She took a pen from a plastic holder on the desk and filled in the squares for name and address using her own name and the address of the North Precinct. It would be good evidence when the case came to court.

  “Thirty-five bucks in advance,” the clerk said. He was looking at her breasts without the slightest attempt at concealment.

  “How come you didn’t ask me how long I’m staying?” Darlene said as she laid down the money. The old man cocked an eyebrow at her, shook his head slowly, and took the money without answering.

  “Second floor on the street side,” he said, handing her the key. The old man was reading again by the time the office door swung closed.

  The office was separate from the motel rooms. Darlene crossed the parking lot and walked up the stairs past an ice machine. Her heels clanged on each metal stair and stopped when she reached the concrete landing that ran the length of the second floor on the outside of the building. Her trick was nowhere in sight. She paused outside the door of the motel room and looked down the length of the landing. She thought she saw someone standing in the shadows at the other end, but she wasn’t sure. She was starting to feel nervous again. This guy could be a freak. She decided to keep her hand on her gun. She could do it by simply putting her hand in her purse. She’d have to keep some distance between them.

  She opened the door and flipped on the light. The combined odor of cleaning fluids and stale air assailed her. Where was the air-conditioning unit? Motel rooms always depressed her. They were so sterile and so impersonal. She often thought that hell must be a series of motel rooms where people sat, alone and unconnected.

  There was a queen-size bed covered by a faded yellow bedspread. Two pillows were tucked under the spread and two cheap, natural-wood-colored end tables with matching lamps flanked the bed. A dresser with a large mirror faced the bed. A color TV perched on one corner of the dresser; a phone, with instructions for dialing out-of-town and local calls, sat on the other. Two sagging Scandinavian chairs were the only other furniture. Darlene sat in the one facing the door and put her hand in her purse. The door opened.

  “Hi, Darlene,” the trick said. He was of average height, maybe a little under six feet. His slacks were light brown. The flowered shirt looked expensive. So did his polished shoes. She noticed that he locked the door when he closed it, and she tightened her grip on the revolver.

  “Why did you do that?” Darlene asked nervously. The trick grinned.

  “I thought we could use a little privacy,” he said. He had been moving toward her, but he stopped when he reached the bed.

  “Why don’t you take your clothes off?” he asked quietly. “I want to see those breasts we were talking about.”

  Darlene decided everything had gone too far. She had made a mistake and she wanted to get out. Maybe the guy was a freak. Maybe he just wanted her to get nude, then he’d beat off. There’d be no violation of law. Just some sick bastard whose wife didn’t satisfy him. She’d be a laughing-stock. She felt ill. Why hadn’t she followed instructions?

  “Look,” she said, “this isn’t a peep show. If you want to have sex, say so, or I’m leaving.”

  “Don’t go, Darlene,” he said, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  His voice was husky now. She could almost feel his sexual desire. He was moving again. Almost to her. Darlene made her decision. She was going to end this right now. She would say he propositioned her. She had to. She’d make up a story. The trick would cop a plea anyway. He’d be too embarrassed to go into court for a full-blown trial.

  “Forget the money, mister,” she said, standing. “You’ll need it for a lawyer.”

  The trick froze.

  “What?” he said.

  “You heard me. I’m a cop and you’re under arrest.”

  From the corner of the McDonald’s lot Ortiz watched Darlene climb the stairs. She walked to the door near the far end of the landing and looked around before entering one of the rooms. A few seconds later a blond man walked out of the shadows at the other end of the landing and walked quickly to the door. It was too far to get a good look, but the man was slim and athletic looking. He could see the flowered shirt and tan slacks pretty clearly.

  When the door to the motel room closed, Ortiz started to worry. He should be up there, but he didn’t want to ruin her bust. He tried to decide what to do. Ryder had paired them because of his experience. If anything happened to Darlene, it would be his fault. Ortiz made up his mind. He sprinted across to the motel.

  Ortiz heard the scream as he reached the stairs to the second floor. He froze and there was a crash and a second scream. The lights were on and he could see the man’s blurred silhouette through the flimsy motel curtains. It was all happening very fast. He realized that he was not moving.

  The lights went out and he took the stairs two at a time. Someone was moaning in the room. Someone was breathing hard. He crashed the heel of his shoe into the door just above the lock. There was a splintering sound, but the door held. He swung his foot again and the door crashed inward. The globe lamp that hung outside the door turned the room a pale yellow. Darlene was sprawled like a rag doll against the side of a chair in the far corner of the room. Her head hung limply to one side, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. There was a jagged red slash across her neck, and the floor around her was covered with blood.

  Something exploded across Ortiz’s eyes and he dropped his gun. He was propelled into the room and he felt a burst of pain in his neck and upper back. His head crashed into the metal edge of the bed as he twisted and fell. He slumped against the bed. There was a man standing in the doorway, in the light of the globe lamp. Standing for a moment, then bolting like a startled deer. Ortiz felt consciousness slipping away. He tried to concentrate on the face. The blond, curly hair. He would never forget that face. Never.

  4

  “David, come over here. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”

  David looked around and saw Gregory Banks standing near the fireplace with several other people. Gregory was a political ally of Senator Martin Bauer, and he had organized this cocktail party at his spacious riverfront home to help raise funds for the senator’s reelection.

  Gregory was a large man. An ex-boxer and ex-Marine, he had started his adult life as a longshoreman and union organizer, then gone to night law school. Gregory worked as a lawyer for the unions, and the unions had made him a wealthy man.

  The summer before his last year in law school, David had driven cross-country and fallen in love with Portland. One week after graduation, David said good-bye to his family and flew west from New York to take the Oregon bar examination. He had never regretted the move. East Coast law schools tended to push their graduates into corporate practice and left them with a feeling that there was something grubby and demeaning about opening a solo practice and actually going into a courtroom. In Portland the feeling was different. There still existed a spirit of individualism that encouraged a person to try to make it on his own. Within a week of passing the bar, David hung out his shingle on the fourth floo
r of the American Bank Building.

  David was good and soon developed a reputation as the man to see if you were charged with a serious crime. He also volunteered to take ACLU cases, pro bono. While working on a prison-rights appeal, David met Gregory Banks, another volunteer. Despite the difference in their ages, they hit it off immediately. One evening, Banks invited David home for dinner and broached the possibility of David’s joining his firm. David took a week to decide. He disliked the idea of giving up a measure of his independence, but he liked the idea of being associated with Gregory Banks. He accepted, and by the time the firm moved its offices to the First National Bank Tower, he was a name partner.

  “David, this is Leo Betts, a professor at the law school,” Gregory said, introducing a tall, hawk-nosed man with greasy, shoulder-length hair. Professor Betts was standing next to a mousy woman in her early thirties.

  “And Doris, his wife,” Gregory added. David shook hands with the professor.

  “Leo read your brief in the Ashmore case.”

  “An excellent job. I’m having my first-year criminallaw class read it as an example of first-class appellate argument.”

  “I’d look on it as a punishment assignment,” David said. “It was over a hundred pages.”

  Everyone in the group laughed, and Gregory indicated another couple, a short, balding man and his tall, elegantly dressed wife.

  “John and Priscilla Moultrie. John’s with Banker’s Trust and Priscilla teaches at Fairmount Elementary School.”

  Gregory had an annoying habit of introducing a person by telling his line of work. David nodded at the couple, but his attention was on an attractive young woman who had wandered over and was standing on the fringes of the group.

  “What is the Ashmore case, Gregory?” Mrs. Moultrie asked. The young woman was watching him and their eyes met momentarily.

  “Isn’t Ashmore that fellow who raped and murdered those schoolchildren?” her husband asked.

  “Yes,” Professor Betts answered with a smile. “David was able to get the conviction reversed by the state supreme court two weeks ago. A monumental job. He convinced the court to overrule a line of cases going back to eighteen ninety-three.”

  The young woman smiled tentatively, and David nodded. He would make a point, he decided, to talk to her as soon as he could break away from the conversation. The Ashmore case was not one of his favorite subjects.

  “Does that mean he’ll go free?” Mrs. Moultrie asked.

  “No,” David sighed. “It just means that I have to try the whole mess over again. It took a month the last time.”

  “You defended that man?” Mrs. Moultrie asked in a tone that combined amazement and disgust.

  “David is a criminal lawyer,” Gregory said, as if that were an adequate explanation.

  “Maybe I’ll never understand, Mr. Nash”-she seemed to have used his last name intentionally-“but I knew one of those children, and I don’t see how you could have represented someone who did what that man did.”

  “Someone had to represent Ashmore, Priscilla,” Gregory said.

  “I heard he tortured those children before he killed them,” Mrs. Moultrie said.

  David almost instinctively said, “That was never proved,” but he realized in time that, for Mrs. Moultrie, that was not the issue.

  “A lawyer can’t refuse to represent someone because of the nature of his crime,” Professor Betts said.

  “Would you have represented Adolf Hitler, Professor?” Mrs. Moultrie asked without humor.

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Then Professor Betts answered, “Yes. Our judicial system is based on the premise that an individual charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty.”

  “But what if you know your client is guilty, Mr. Nash? Know for a fact that he held three schoolchildren captive for several days, raped them, then murdered them?”

  “Oh, now, Priscilla. That’s unfair,” her husband said. His face was red, and it was clear that he disapproved of the course the conversation had taken.

  David felt uncomfortable. Professor Betts had been defending him, but why did he need a defense for doing something that he was ethically obliged to do? Why should this woman he had never met before feel such obvious hostility toward him?

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the facts of the case, Mrs. Moultrie. I’d be violating my client’s confidence if I discussed his guilt or innocence with you.”

  “Hypothetically, then. I really want to know.”

  “You represent a guilty man as hard as you do an innocent man, Mrs. Moultrie, because the system is more important than any individual case. If you start making exceptions with the guilty, sooner or later you’ll make exceptions with the innocent.”

  “So you represent people that you know are guilty?”

  “Most of my clients are guilty.”

  “And you…get them off…win their trials?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Doesn’t it ever bother you?”

  David watched the scattered lights on the houseboats moored across the river. The sun was down and a cool breeze drifted inland, gently rearranging the lock of thick brown hair that fell across his forehead. It was pleasant standing on the terrace. The shadows and stillness soothed him.

  Somewhere upriver the shrill blast of a tanker’s horn punctuated the darkness. The sound died and the river was at peace again. David wished that he could restore his inner peace as easily. The discussion about the Ashmore case had upset him. It had stirred something inside that had been lurking for too long. Something ugly that was starting to crawl into the light.

  This morning at the juvenile home, interviewing that young girl. What happened? When she was describing her ordeal, he had felt shame and pity for her. He had become emotionally involved. That should never have happened. He was a professional. One of the best. He was not supposed to feel pity for the victim or revulsion for his client.

  Something was definitely wrong. He was getting depressed too much lately, and the feeling was lasting too long. There had been times in recent weeks when his mood would plunge rapidly from a high, floating sensation into deep melancholy for no apparent reason. And that feeling. To live with it too long was to experience a kind of death. It was as if his spirit evaporated, leaving his body a hollow shell. He would feel empty and disoriented. Movement was impossible. Sometimes he would sit immobile, on the verge of tears, and his mind would scream, “Why?” He was in excellent health. At thirty-five, he was at the top of his profession, making more money than he ever had. Everything should have been going so well, but it wasn’t.

  There had been a time when losing any case had been a deep, personal defeat, and winning, a magnificent triumph. David had lost those extreme feelings of involvement somewhere along the way. One day he had won a very difficult case, and it just did not matter. Another time a client received a long prison term, and he felt nothing. His world had shifted from dark black and bright gold to shades of gray.

  If his professional life was empty, his personal life was even more so. He had heard more than once that he was envied by other men for the steady parade of beautiful women he escorted. Few people knew that the routine had grown old a long time ago.

  His one attempt at marriage had been a disaster that lasted officially for two years, but which ended emotionally after eight months. Monica resented the long hours he worked, and in truth, he was rarely home. There had been so many big cases. He was just starting to reach the top then. Everyone wanted David Nash, and there didn’t seem to be enough time for his own wife.

  There had been violent arguments and too many stony silences. Monica had accused him of infidelity. He denied her accusations, but they were true. He was trying cases in other states now, and if some Texas filly wanted to warm his bed…well, he was a star, wasn’t he? In the end the constant bickering exhausted them both, and whatever had motivated them to marry was not strong enough to keep their marriage together.

  Monic
a had gone to law school after the divorce. David thought she had done it to compete with him. It was certainly not coincidence that led her into criminal prosecution. The tension was there whenever they tried a case against each other. David sensed that their legal battles were, for Monica, only an excuse for carrying on a personal battle of which he had never been a part. That, of course, was the problem with their marriage. If David had cared about Monica, it would never have broken up. But he had ignored her, and he felt guilty that she still felt a need to prove something to him.

  David had seen little of Monica between the divorce and her graduation from law school. After she joined the district attorney’s office, their friendship had renewed. They were much better friends than spouses. Sometimes David wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake with Monica, but he knew that if he had, it was too late to rectify it. Their problem was that they had met at the wrong time.

  David took a sip from his glass. The gin tasted too sweet. He carried the drink to a corner of the terrace that was not illuminated by the lights from the house and sat down on a lawn chair. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, letting the chair’s metal rim press into the back of his neck.

  Monica was an attractive woman, and she was a different, stronger person than she had been when they’d met. David was different, too. He had toyed once with the idea of trying to reestablish their relationship, but had given up on the idea. He wondered what she would say if he tried.

  The terrace door opened and a splash of sound interrupted David’s thoughts. He opened his eyes. A woman was standing with her back to him, staring across the river as he had moments before. She was tall and slender, and her long, silken hair looked like pale gold.

  She turned and walked along the terrace with a dancer’s grace. The woman did not see him until she was almost at his chair. He was hidden by the shadows. She stopped, startled. In that frozen moment David saw her set in time, like a statue. Blue eyes wide with surprise. A high, smooth forehead and high cheekbones. It was the woman he had seen earlier on the fringes of the group that had been discussing the Ashmore case.