The Last Innocent Man

by Phillip Margolin

  “Did you get a license number or…?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s all so hazy.”

  Crosby stood up.

  “I’m gonna go and let you get some rest. I don’t want to push you.”

  “It’s okay, Ron. I…” Ortiz stopped. Something was troubling him.

  “What does Ryder think?” he asked after a while. “I mean, does he think I…?”

  “He doesn’t think anything. No one does, Bert. We don’t even know what happened.”

  Ortiz put his hands to his head and ran them across the short stubble that covered his cheeks. He felt drained.

  “What if it was my fault? I mean, they put me with Darlene because she was new, and what if…?”

  He didn’t finish.

  “You’ve got enough to worry about without taking a strong dose of self-pity. You’re a good cop and everybody knows that. You worry about getting better and getting your memory back.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I just…”

  “I know. See you, huh?”

  “See you. Thanks again for coming.”

  The door closed and Ortiz stared at it. The drugs they had given him were making him sleepy, but they didn’t get rid of all the pain. They just made it bearable. He closed his eyes and saw Darlene. She had been an annoyance. Really juvenile. Had he screwed up because he had got mad at her? He wished that he could remember what had happened. He wanted to help get the killer, but, most of all, he wanted to know if it was his fault that a young policewoman was dead.

  6

  The first half of July was cool and comfortable. There was a subdued sun, light breezes, a mad array of flowers, and underdressed girls in eye-catching getups. Then, overnight, the breeze disappeared, the sun went mad, and a thick, unmoving mass of hot air descended on Portland, wilting the flowers and making the girls look tired and worn. To David the oppressive heat was merely a meteorological expression of his mood. The torpid air had a dehydrating effect that wore away the energy of the city, and, in a similar way, David could feel his mental and spiritual energy draining away, like wax slowly dripping down the sides of a candle.

  All his attempts to locate Valerie Dodge had failed, and she had not called him. Perhaps David desired her because he could not find her, but her absence gnawed at him, confronting him with the void that was his personal life.

  Work provided no escape. It only deepened his depression. The Gault case had brought him many new clients, all guilty and all hoping that he could perform a miracle that would wash away their guilt. His work on their behalf disheartened him. More and more he felt that he was doing something he should not.

  The originality that had characterized David’s early legal career was giving way to a highly polished routine that let him move through his cases without thinking about them. His success as a lawyer was due to his brilliance and his dedication. Others might not notice, but David knew he was no longer giving his best effort. So far that had made no difference in the results he had achieved. But someday it would. On that day he would know, even if no one else did, that he was no different from the ambulance chasers and incompetents who practiced at the gutter levels of criminal law.

  The trial of Tony Seals was scheduled for late July, and David was working on his final preparations when the receptionist told him that Thomas Gault was in the reception room. David had seen little of the writer since the trial, except for a half-day interview for background on the book. David had not felt much like talking about Gault’s case, but he was sharing in the proceeds of the book and was obligated by contract to cooperate. The interview had taken place the day after the trial, and a week after that Gault had taken a vacation in the Caribbean, then gone into seclusion to finish the book.

  David did a double take when his office door opened. Gault laughed. He loved to shock people, and his appearance provided a low-grade jolt. Below the neck Gault looked the same. It was his head that had changed. His long brown hair had been shorn off, leaving a gleaming skull, and his upper lip sported a Fu Manchu mustache.

  “Jesus!” David said, to Gault’s delight. “Have you taken up professional wrestling?”

  “I’m changing my image,” Gault answered with a grin.

  “Sit down,” David said, shaking his head. “What brings you to town?”

  “The book. My editor wants me to beef up the final chapters, so he suggested that I get a little more of your thinking about the trial.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know. It was his idea. What you ate the morning of the main event. Who does your clothes. Think of something. After all, I’m doing the work, but you’re getting part of the profits. Take an interest.”

  “Tom, I have no idea what would interest your readers. Give me a hint.”

  “You ever play any sports in high school or college?”

  David shrugged.

  “I ran a little track in college and wrestled some.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you tell me how trying a case compares to the feeling you get just before a sporting event. How’s that?”

  David thought for a few minutes before answering.

  “I don’t think they’re that similar,” David said. “Winning or losing at sports depends on your performance during the sporting event, but a lawyer can’t win a case at trial. Or, anyway, not usually.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the facts of each case are determined by the time the case gets to you. All the facts might not be revealed, but they’re there. So a lawyer wins his case before trial by finding out, through investigation, what the facts are. A lawyer can’t change the facts, but once he knows what the facts are, he can deal with them. Try to get the jury to look at them in a certain way. And there is usually more than one way to look at the facts.

  “A few years back I represented a man who tried to hold up a minimart. He walked in with a shotgun and told the manager to give him the money or he would kill him. The manager was a feisty little guy, and he whipped out a handgun and shot my client through the neck. When the police arrived, my man was lying in a pool of blood holding the gun, and there were five eyewitnesses who swore that he tried to rob the place. The DA charged my client with armed robbery. Those were the facts I started with. Want to guess the verdict?”

  Gault smiled.

  “It has to be not guilty, but how did you do it?”

  “There were other facts we didn’t know about when we started. When they took the defendant to the hospital for surgery, they took a blood sample. One of the routine checks the hospital makes before performing surgery is to find out how much alcohol a person has in his system. My man was loaded. He had consumed so much alcohol that I was able to get two prominent psychiatrists to testify that a person in his condition would not be able to form the intent to commit the crime, and the district attorney must prove intent as one of the elements of the crime of armed robbery.

  “The next step was to find out why my client drank like that. It turned out that his wife had died and he had gone to pieces. When I got him, he was already an alcoholic.

  “Finally, we had to figure out why he had been at the minimart in the first place. My investigator asked around, and it turned out that our boy had been blotto that day. Two of his buddies had planned the robbery and sent him inside. He was so drunk, he didn’t know what he was doing. In fact, he doesn’t remember what happened to this day.

  “When we presented all the facts to the jury, they acquitted. It wasn’t what we did at trial, but the investigation before trial, that mattered. Getting the facts, then presenting them in a favorable light at trial.”

  “And is that what you did in the case of State versus Thomas Ira Gault? Manipulate the facts?” Gault asked with an impish grin.

  David looked straight at Gault without smiling. The question had caught him off guard.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “You know, David,” Gault said, “there is something I’ve always wanted to ask you. All th
e time you were defending me, and doing such a bang-up job, what did you think? Guilty or innocent? Tell me.”

  “Guilty,” David said without a moment’s hesitation. Gault threw back his head and laughed loudly.

  “Terrific. And you still worked your ass off. David, old buddy, you are a pro. Now, do you want to know something?” Gault asked in a conspiratorial tone.

  “What?”

  “Is that attorney-client thing-the privilege-is that still in effect?”

  David nodded, very tense.

  “Anything I tell you is secret, right? No police, nobody else finds out, right?”

  David nodded again. Gault leaned back in his seat and grinned.

  “Well, I did it, old buddy. Beat the shit out of her. Ah, she deserved it. She was a real bitch. I mean the original bitch. Anyway, I was tanked. Really polluted. But randy. Very hot to trot. And do you know what? She turned me down. The bitch would not spread. I couldn’t let her get away with that, could I, Dave? I mean, I was really ready for some exotic stuff. Not your missionary position. No, sir. I was going to dick her good. But she said no dice, so I decked her. It felt great.”

  Gault paused for effect. David didn’t move.

  “Have you ever hit a woman? No? It feels terrific. They’re soft. They can’t take the pain.”

  Gault closed his eyes for a moment, and a beatific expression possessed his features.

  “Julie was very soft, Dave. Soft in all the right places. And she adored pain. Loved it. So I gave her the ultimate in pain. I gave her death.”

  Gault paused and looked directly at David.

  “What do you think of that, Dave?”

  David didn’t know what to say. He felt sick. Gault’s face had hardened into a sadistic mask as he talked, and the handsome features looked twisted and grotesque. Then the face split open and Gault began to shake with laughter.

  “Oh, you should see your face. God!” he roared between breaths. David was confused by the sudden change.

  “It’s not true. I made it all up,” the writer gasped. “What terrific dialogue. You should see your face.”

  “I don’t…” David started.

  “It’s a joke, son. Get it? A joke. I didn’t kill Julie. She was a bitch, all right, and I’m not broken up about her death. But, shit, she was a human being and I’d hate to see anyone go the way she did.”

  Gault stopped and David tried to speak. He didn’t know whether he wanted to hit Gault or get a drink.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said finally.

  “Really had you going, didn’t I?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Serves you right for thinking I did it in the first place.”

  But David didn’t know what to think. There had been something about the expression on Gault’s face when he was making his confession…

  “Aren’t you going to say anything, old buddy?” Gault asked, his grin spread across his face.

  “I don’t know what to say,” David answered, his tone betraying some of the anger that had replaced his initial shock and confusion.

  “Aw, come on, Dave. You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Dammit, Tom,” David said, his face flushed, “that’s not something to kid about.”

  “Now, that’s where you’re wrong, boy-o,” Gault answered. “The first thing you learn when you are soldiering is that Death is a joke. The ultimate prank, old buddy.”

  Gault leaned across the desk. He was talking toward David, but David sensed that Gault was speaking to himself.

  “Death is everywhere, and never forget that. The more civilized the surroundings, the harder it is to spot the little devil, but he’s there, hiding in the laundromat, peeping out from your microwave oven. He’s got more camouflage here in Portland, but he’s always present.

  “Now, there’s two ways of dealing with Death, old buddy: you can fear him or you can laugh at him. But I’ll tell you the truth: it don’t make no difference how you treat him, because he treats us all the same. So when you’re in the jungle, where you see Death every day standing buck naked right out in the open, you get to know the little devil real well and you learn that he is a prankster and not a serious dude at all. And you learn that it’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”

  Gault stopped abruptly and sat back in his chair.

  “I hope I remember that,” he said. “Be great in my next book, don’t you think? Real profound.”

  “Very, Tom,” David said, still unsure of what to make of Gault’s confession and disconcerted because of his uncertainty. “Look, do you mind if we work on the book some other time?”

  “Hey, I didn’t upset you, did I?”

  “No, Tom,” David lied, “I just didn’t expect you and I’ve got some things to do. Why don’t we get together sometime next week?”

  “Sounds good,” Gault said, standing. “I’ll give you a call.”

  Gault started to leave, then stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

  “One thing, Dave. If that had been the truth, if I really had killed Julie, would you have kept it a secret?”

  “I never reveal a client’s confidence.”

  “You’re all right, old buddy. And you should take care of yourself. You don’t look so hot. Get more sleep.”

  Gault winked and he was gone.

  7

  It took David a long time to calm down after Gault left. Was it all a joke? Gault had a sadistic streak in him. He had enjoyed seeing David wriggle on his hook. But when he was discussing the murder, he seemed so sincere, he seemed to be reliving an experience, not creating one. David didn’t know what to think, and the worst thing was that the attorney-client privilege prevented him from discussing with anyone what Gault had said.

  The intercom buzzed and David was grateful for the diversion. It was Monica calling from the district attorney’s office.

  “Can you come over, Dave?” she asked.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I want to talk to you about Tony Seals.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “And bring your shopping cart. We’re giving the store away today.”

  An arrow corridor led back to the depersonalized cubbyholes that passed for offices at the district attorney’s office. Monica had seniority and rated a corner cubbyhole somewhat larger than the rest. Her sole attempt at humanizing her work space was a framed Chagall lithograph that added a splash of color to the white and black of her diplomas.

  Monica was working on a file when David entered, and she waved him toward a chair. There were two in front of her desk, and he took a stack of files off one and placed them on the floor, then glanced at the newspaper that was draped over the top file on the other chair. Monica looked up.

  “I need Seals’s testimony and I’ll give him immunity to get it,” she said without ceremony.

  David said nothing for a second. He was watching Monica’s face. When he was certain she was serious, he asked, “Why do you need his testimony?”

  “Because he is the only one other than Zachariah Small who can testify that Sticks pulled the trigger up on the mountain. Without him Sticks will get off.

  “We had an informant who heard the three of them talking after they shot Jessie. Sticks and Zack were bragging about shooting her, and it was pretty clear that it was Sticks who shot from the car.”

  “Why don’t you use your informant?”

  “He’s gone. He split shortly after we interviewed him. He’s a transient who was staying at the Gomes house when the boys were arrested. I guess he got scared when he realized that we wanted him to testify. I’ve got the police looking for him, but even if we found him, I’m not sure how much good he’d be to us. He has a police record and he’s a drunk.”

  David was churning inside. He leaned forward slightly.

  “We get complete immunity?”

  “Yes.”

  David stood up. “I’ll talk t
o my client.”

  The guard led Tony Seals into the interview room at the county jail. The room was long and narrow, and a row of rickety wooden folding chairs was scattered along its length. There was one Formica-topped table at the far end. David sat in front of it, watching his client walk toward him.

  “Buzz me when you’re through,” the guard said, pointing to a small black button set in a silver metal box under some steam pipes near the barred door. Then he slammed the door shut and David heard the key turn in the lock.

  On visiting day this room was usually jammed full of anxious wives and girlfriends, talking in quiet tones to men they might not be making love to for a long time. But this was early on a weekday, and David and his client were alone.

  T.S. smelled worse than the last time they had met. There was a body odor that prisoners at the county jail had that was unique and vile. It was the type of smell you could believe would never be scrubbed away.

  David searched his client’s eyes as the gangly teenager shuffled toward him with a loose, puppetlike gait that made him look as if he had straw where bones should be. The eyes were vacant and as lifeless as his perpetual half smile.

  “Hi, Mr. Nash,” T.S. said. He had a soft voice that rarely fluctuated with any emotion.

  “Sit down, T.S.”

  T.S. did as he was told. He always did. David wondered if he had ever initiated an action in his life. Monica was right. It had to have been Sticks and Zachariah. He was dealing with a boy who lacked free will. Another person’s creature who got from point A to point B by suggestion only.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “I want to ask you a few questions, T.S., and I want truthful answers. This is important, so you have to be straight with me.”

  “Sure, Mr. Nash.”

  “Who shot Jessie when you were down at the hole? The first shot.”

  “That was Zack.”

  “You didn’t shoot her?”

  David detected a flicker of fear.

  “Honest, Mr. Nash. I didn’t never shoot her.”