For the Defense

by M. J. Rodgers

  “Where are yours?” she asked.

  “If you haven’t covered the bases, I’ll let you know. Come on. I don’t have all day.”

  Diana handed over a copy of the questionnaire and took the chair in front of Staker’s desk. The chief prosecutor was his typical, insufferable self today. But his lack of questions told her he was not prepared for their meeting. That wasn’t like him.

  Was he too caught up in this campaign for judgeship to attend to the case? Probably. He no doubt thought this trial was going to be such an easy win he didn’t have to give the details his undivided attention.

  Diana rather hoped he kept on thinking that.

  Staker plucked at his thin mustache as he scanned through the questionnaire. The mustache plucking was something she’d seen him do in court and was an indication that he liked what he was seeing. Yet when he finished reading the questions, he immediately began with put-downs and petty complaints. He challenged her on the phrasing of nearly every sentence as though she were his bumbling secretary screwing up an assignment instead of a fellow officer of the court.

  Diana kept her temper only through an extreme effort of will. She kept reminding herself that if she didn’t get Staker to sign off on the questionnaire, Judge Gimbrere would very likely reject it. The jurors would be handed a short, meaningless form on the day they appeared for voir dire.

  That wouldn’t bother Staker much. He considered his case a lock no matter what happened.

  But Diana needed this questionnaire. Thanks to Jack, it was the best she’d ever prepared. With it they could learn crucial things about the prospective jurors, which was why she politely agreed to the demands Staker made for rewording, relieved that they did not dilute the original intent.

  Three long, tongue-biting hours later, Staker finally signed the document. He then had the audacity to not only instruct Diana to have the questionnaire retyped for presentation to Judge Gimbrere that Friday morning, but also to escort her out of his office implying that her inefficiency had made him late for an important luncheon.

  Diana was still seething when she pulled her car into the parking lot at Kozen and Kozen, switched off the engine, grabbed her briefcase and jumped out.

  Reaching the back door, she nearly got hit in the face when it swung open and she found herself face-to-face with Ronald Kozen.

  Diana nodded politely to him and stepped aside, expecting him to hurry on his way. The exalted Kozen brothers rarely stopped to chitchat with a mere associate at the firm. Their time was too valuable.

  But this time Ronald stopped, planting himself right in her path. The left side of Ronald’s lip lifted slightly in a perpetual smile that had nothing to do with his mood. A nerve in his face had been injured when he was a child. He couldn’t help the half grin, which gave him the benign expression of an indulgent uncle. Adversaries who didn’t know him rarely took him seriously until it was too late.

  Diana didn’t make that mistake.

  “Tell me about the Pearce case,” he said.

  “I met with Staker this morning on the jury questionnaire,” she said. “As soon as I make some revisions, I’ll get you a copy. I think you’ll find the questions to be—”

  “I don’t care about the questionnaire,” Ronald said. “I want to know about the new development on the case.”

  She stiffened, alert, uneasy. “New development?”

  “Gail said you’d found out something new. What?”

  Diana’s discomfort was both immediate and strong. She considered herself a woman of logic, but she had learned long ago that her body possessed instincts that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with survival.

  “Connie Pearce is talking now,” Diana said, careful to keep both her expression and voice from conveying her uneasiness.

  “What is she saying?”

  Diana sensed that telling Ronald the whole truth would be a mistake. But she couldn’t tell him a lie that would later be exposed.

  “She didn’t intend to hit Bruce Weaton,” Diana said carefully.

  “You’re going to base your defense on lack of intent?”

  “Or diminished capacity due to her distraught state.”

  Behind Ronald’s smile was an intense scrutiny. Diana pasted a look of thoughtful concern on her face and hoped to hell she was a good enough actress to be believed.

  “Forget diminished capacity,” Ronald said. He hadn’t made a suggestion. “Judge Gimbrere will be relieved when I tell him you’re not going to waste the court’s time and money with some stupid temporary insanity defense.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Parading a bunch of expensive psychiatrists in and out of the witness chair could extend the trial for days. This is a politically sensitive case. Be better for all concerned to get the damn thing over with quickly. No point in offending important people, is there?”

  Ronald headed toward his Lincoln Town Car.

  Diana stared after him, shocked that the man had had the nerve to say what he had. To call the legitimate presentation of an accused’s state of mind to the jury as a “waste of the court’s time” or “offending important people” showed a flagrant disrespect for one of the most basic and sacred tenets of the law.

  Diana went through the door and stomped down the hallway, her heart as tight as a fist. She charged into her office, skidding to a stop when she saw Gail sitting at her desk, pulling a pad of legal paper out of her bottom right drawer.

  Gail got to her feet, sending Diana a sheepish grin. “Kelli missed my office this morning when she came around to replenish supplies. You don’t mind?”

  Diana closed the door behind her. She’d been remiss in not locking it when she left. “Take what you need.”

  Even she could hear the ill will that encased her words.

  Gail frowned. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Dropping her shoulder bag and briefcase on top of her desk, Diana sank onto the guest chair. “What I told you before about Connie’s case was in confidence. Ronald cornered me out in the parking lot a minute ago about it.”

  Gail’s frown deepened as she sat back down. “Ronald is the senior litigator at our firm as well as our boss. He’s supposed to know how our cases are going and how we’re going to handle them.”

  “I should have been the one discussing strategy with him.”

  “I wasn’t discussing strategy with him. I was bragging about how sharp you were to uncover something important on the Pearce case after only two weeks when Earl couldn’t find anything to offer for her defense in ten months.”

  Diana heaved a heavy sigh. There was absolutely no way she could find fault with what Gail had done or her reasons for having done it. She reached across her desk and rested a hand on her friend’s arm.

  “Ronald told me not to argue diminished capacity because such a defense would waste the court’s time and offend important people. He doesn’t give a damn if Connie goes to prison for life. All he cares about is looking good.”

  Gail shook her head. “Political jerk. I can see why you’d be pissed. Even if Ronald thinks Connie guilty, he’s an imbecile to say such a thing to you. If we don’t give our defendants the benefit of the doubt, who’s going to?”

  Diana released her friend’s arm and slumped back in her chair. “Ronald has no right talking to Judge Gimbrere about my case, either.”

  “Hell, Diana, you should know by now that when these blabbermouths get together they violate confidentiality agreements as casually as they recite sports scores. At the firm’s picnic last month, I overheard three of our lawyers discussing the intimate details of cases right in front of their wives, kids and anyone else who might have happened to walk by.”

  That was true. Diana had caught snippets of those lawyers’ conversations without even trying.

  “But what I can’t believe is that Ronald would even think that you’d go for diminished capacity,” Gail continued. “What did you tell him?”

  “Only that Connie didn’t intend to hi
t Bruce.”

  “But there has to be more,” Gail said, looking at her expectantly.

  “The less I tell you about the Pearce case from now on, the better off you’ll be. Ronald knows we’re friends. If he asks you anything, tell him we haven’t talked about the case since you last spoke with him.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “It’s not that. I don’t want you compromised because you know something you can’t tell Ronald. You have enough problems with Earl trying to steal that junior partnership you were promised. Although why you agreed to come into the firm without getting it up front is beyond me.”

  Gail shrugged in what looked like a rare case of embarrassment as she flicked the corners of the legal pad with a nail. “They talked about the partnership as though it was a done deal.”

  Talked. Diana had thought her friend had more smarts than to allow herself to accept employment terms without having them in writing. Still, even the smartest people could make big mistakes.

  “Look, I have several good case references where the reasonable doubt defense was successfully argued when the accused actions were not intended,” Gail said. “I’ll have Kelli get copies to you before the end of today.”

  Diana shook her head. “Thanks, but I won’t need them.”

  Gail looked at her in sudden concern. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you’re going for diminished capacity?”

  “I’m going for the best defense for my client.”

  “Diana, I don’t blame you for being upset. Ronald’s lower than roadkill for telling you to go with a particular defense simply because he’s afraid of annoying his old crony Gimbrere.”

  Diana could hear the “but” coming. Gail didn’t keep her waiting long for it.

  “But you’ll be making the same mistake he is if you let him goad you into relinquishing your professional detachment on the Pearce case.”

  “If caring about a client means that I’ve lost my professional detachment, then plead me guilty. Connie’s a sweet woman facing the possibility of life imprisonment. I don’t care who I offend by being on her side. I’m giving her my best.”

  “Are you? Jurors distrust anything that smacks of temporary insanity, no matter what euphemisms we use to describe it. Psychologists and psychiatrists get up on the stand and contradict one another so much they end up irritating the jury. As a prosecutor, I always had a great time tearing them apart. And as good as I was at doing it, Staker is even better.”

  “He won’t expect me to go for diminished capacity,” Diana said, choosing her words. “You know he’s never good at counteracting what catches him by surprise.”

  “Even so, I collected a lot of that evidence against Connie before Staker stole the case from me. A surprise or two isn’t going to make a difference. And have you thought about what Ronald is going to do when he finds out you went against his direct order?”

  “He won’t know what I’m doing until the trial is well underway. By then it’ll be too late for him to intercede.”

  “Diana, you’re too damn smart not to know that you’re about to commit career suicide. I thought you loved the law?”

  “I do—especially the part where we’re all equal under it.”

  Gail shook her head as she walked toward the door. She stopped there and turned to face Diana. “That was a brave and bold ideal, proposed by some pretty brave and bold people. But we both know the reality is that the rich and powerful can manipulate the law as easily as they can manipulate everything else.”

  Gail closed the door quietly behind her.

  The air in the office suddenly felt oppressive, as if the barometer had dropped. Diana rested her elbows on her desk, staring at the framed law degree hanging on the wall.

  She’d graduated summa cum laude, made Law Review, passed the bar on her first try. Despite that, when she had gone looking for a job three years before there’d been three strikes against her—she’d been older than most law school graduates, a woman and a single mother.

  The Kozens had hired her after two other firms had rejected her application. She was grateful to the brothers.

  But she’d become a Wal-Mart greeter before she’d let them manipulate her.

  Diana wearily got to her feet, circled her desk and plopped onto her chair, wondering why anyone in her right mind would choose to become a defense attorney.

  She had one hand on the computer keyboard and the other around an apple when Kelli buzzed a few minutes later to say that Jack was on the phone. Diana realized that she hadn’t taken off her call forwarding. She did so and asked Kelli to put through the call.

  “How did the meeting with Staker go?” was Jack’s first question.

  “One day Staker will be murdered, and I will represent his murderer cheerfully and without charge.”

  Jack chuckled. “Did our questionnaire survive?”

  “Except for minor rewording. I’m making the changes now. I’ll e-mail them to you as soon as I’m through. Staker and I will present the questionnaire as a joint effort to Judge Gimbrere at ten Friday morning.”

  “Are you eating something?”

  Diana swallowed. “Sorry. Lunch is an apple. Was I munching too loudly in your ear?”

  “No, it was a nice, soft munch. Do you have a copy of the hit-and-run police report on Amy?”

  Only Jack could say her munching an apple in his ear was nice and make the words ring true. “I thought about trying to get the report, but to do so would mean I’d have to request it through the prosecutor’s office. That could alert Staker that Amy’s case relates to Connie’s.”

  “I’ll try my unofficial source,” he said.

  “Hear anything from that source lately?” she asked.

  “Tell you when I get back from following a lead. How late will you be working?”

  “Probably six.”

  “Give me a call on my cell when you’re finished.”

  Diana agreed to, scribbling the number Jack gave her on a pad beside her phone before hanging up.

  Being able to share things with him felt good, especially now that talking to her co-workers about the case was out of the question. The gratitude filling her was disturbingly seductive. She reminded herself that maintaining a proper business relationship with Jack was more than prudent. It was an absolute necessity.

  “HI, TINA,” Jack said as he smiled at the woman slumped in her chair at the Weaton Real Estate Company offices. Jack had waited until Lyle Weaton had left to show a property before approaching Tina.

  She looked up at Jack’s greeting and immediately pushed aside the multiple listing she’d been browsing through.

  “Well, hi, yourself. How do you know my name?”

  Jack pointed to the nameplate on her desk.

  Tina’s lips twitched with disappointment. “Oh.” Her tone morphed into a more business one. “What kind of property are you looking for?”

  “Something that would appeal to a bachelor. Anything come to mind?”

  He gave her a suggestive smile and watched her business façade vanish into a flirtatious squint. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

  “You were at Bruce Weaton’s funeral,” Jack said, knowing she’d jump to conclusions about the comment.

  “So that’s where I know you from.”

  “A funeral isn’t the right place for introductions. I would never approach a woman at one, not even a woman as pretty as you. But we’re not at one now, are we? I’m Jack.”

  He held out his hand. Tina slipped her hand into his, her inch-long bloodred nails nearly slicing through his flesh. Her grip was like a pipe wrench.

  “I’ve always liked a sensitive man.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink and you can tell me what else you like,” he suggested.

  Her smile said she thought that a great idea. But a frown followed when she looked around at the deserted office. “I’m the only one on duty now. Got to stay here to man the phones.”

  Jack looked her up and down suggestively. “Manni
ng phones. What a waste of womanpower.”

  Tina’s eyes darted to her watch. “Oh, what the hell. I’ll put on the answering machine. I can return the calls when we get back, right?”

  “Right,” he said as he finally extricated his hand from hers and reached for the sweater on the back of her chair. “A bit of a breeze out. You may need this.”

  She looked him up and down. “Honey, with you beside me, I won’t be cold.”

  DIANA CHECKED HER WATCH. Nearly seven. She’d called Jack’s cell at six and again at six fifteen, but received a recording both times that said he was not available. She’d left a message, but he hadn’t called back.

  The depth of her disappointment irritated her.

  Well, there was no use waiting around any longer. She picked up the phone to call her mother to let her know she was on her way, but got a busy signal. No doubt Mel was using the Internet. Diana locked the door of the deserted office behind her, got into her car and headed for home.

  Traffic was light. A breeze had blown away the clouds leaving the long summer evening warm and clear. Within minutes she was on a peaceful country road, the sun bouncing like a white tennis ball through openings in the heavy canopy of trees.

  Most of the other employees at the law firm lived within ten or fifteen minutes and would consider anything beyond that excessive. But Diana was comfortable with the longer commute because she liked living far from the hustle and bustle of town.

  Her childhood had been spent in large noisy cities. Every couple of years the dictates of her father’s career would have them packing up and relocating to yet another one. Always having to adjust to new schools and school-mates. No sense of security, permanency.

  Diana had promised herself Mel would know a stable environment. Her daughter had lived in the same community and home since she was two. Even after their move next week, her grandmother would still be close by and Shirley would be in their new place to surround Mel with her own special brand of zany love.

  But Diana didn’t kid herself. No matter what she gave Mel now, it would never be enough. She’d screwed up on the most important responsibility a mother had to her child—the choice of the right father.