Thirteen_The serial killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury

by Steve Cavanagh

  “That billboard went up last week. PR for Bobby, but the movie has been held in a can for almost a year now. If Robert is convicted it’ll stay there. If he gets off after a lengthy trial, it’ll stay there. Only way that movie gets released, and the studio makes its money back, is if we demonstrate to the whole world that Robert is innocent. Bobby has signed a lucrative contract for three more movies from the studio. This is their tent-pole franchise. We have to make sure he’s able to fulfill that contract. If he doesn’t, the studio stands to lose a significant amount of money. Millions, in fact. There’s a lot riding on this, Eddie. We need a definitive result in our favor and fast.”

  I nodded, turned away from the poster. Maybe Rudy cared about Robert Solomon, but not as much as the studio’s money. Who could blame him? He was a lawyer, after all.

  All the newsstand boards on 42nd carried news of the trial’s imminent commencement.

  The more I thought about it, the more I thought this case was a nightmare. From the sounds of it, there might be a conflict between the studio and Bobby. What if the kid wanted to plead guilty, or cut a deal with the DA, and the studio wouldn’t let him? And what if he was innocent?

  We left 42nd and turned south, toward Center Street, and I thought about what I’d heard about the case on the news. Apparently, two police officers responded to a 911 call from Solomon telling police he’d found his wife and chief of security dead.

  Solomon let the cops into the house and they made their way upstairs.

  On the second-floor landing a table had been overturned. A broken vase beside it. The table sat in front of a window overlooking the back of the house, a small walled-in garden below. There were three bedrooms on that floor. Two lay dark and empty. The master bedroom at the end of the hall was also in darkness. Inside that room they found Ariella and her chief of security, Carl. Or what was left of them. Both lay dead and naked on the bed.

  Solomon had his wife’s blood on him. Apparently, there was more forensic evidence which the DA’s office would only describe as irrefutable proof of Solomon’s guilt.

  Case closed.

  Or so I’d thought.

  “If Robert didn’t kill those people, who did?” I said.

  The car turned onto Center Street, and slowed down outside the courts. Rudy shuffled forward in his seat and said, “We’re focusing on who didn’t do it. This is a police frame-up. It’s textbook. Look, I know this is a big decision. And I appreciate your moral standpoint. Take tonight to think about it. If you decide you want in, call me. No matter what happens, it was a pleasure,” said Rudy, handing me his card.

  The car stopped, I shook hands with Rudy, the driver got out and opened my door. I stepped to the sidewalk and watched the limo take off. Without seeing the files, I could guess that the cops figured Robert was the killer and maybe set about making sure he got convicted. Most cops just wanted to put bad people away. The more horrific the crime, the more likely the cops were to bend the evidence against the perp. And that wasn’t legal. It might be morally defensible, but the cops weren’t supposed to interfere with the evidence – because next time they might do the same to an innocent person.

  I knew some cops. Good ones. And any cop who manipulated evidence to suit their case was hated more by good cops than defense attorneys.

  Rounding the corner to Baxter Street I looked for my car. A blue Mustang. I couldn’t see it. I looked around. Then I saw it being hauled onto a flatbed trailer by a city parking official.

  “Hey, that’s my car,” I said, running across the street to the trailer.

  “You should’ve paid for the parking then, pal,” said the plump official in a bright blue uniform.

  “I did pay for parking,” I said.

  The parking guy shook his head, handed me a ticket, and pointed at my car as it was lowered by the crane onto the truck. At first I couldn’t tell what the guy was pointing at, but then I saw it. Tucked underneath the wiper on my windshield was a McDonald’s bag. Thirty or forty straws protruded from the top of the bag. There was something written on the brown paper in black magic marker. My tires hit the flatbed, I levered myself up onto the truck and grabbed the bag. The message read:

  “You’re LATE.”

  I threw the bag in the nearby trash can, took out my cell and dialed the number on the card Rudy had given to me.

  “Rudy, it’s Eddie. I’ve thought about it. You want me to go after the NYPD? To hell with it. I want to read the files as Robert’s lawyer – but on one condition. After I look at the case, if I still believe he’s guilty I walk away.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Any other time of year and I could’ve walked to the offices of Carp and Associates inside of ten minutes. My own office which, unbeknownst to my landlord, doubled as my apartment, sat on West 46th Street close to 9th Avenue. I pulled my scarf around my neck, huddled into my overcoat and set off from my office close to five thirty. Enough time to grab a slice of pepperoni and a soda on the way, and take my time about it. The sun had already gone down, and the sidewalks were beginning to ice up. I would have to take it slow if I wanted to get there in one piece. My destination – 4 Times Square. What was once called the Condé Nast Building. A legendary, eco-friendly skyscraper of forty-eight floors that ran on solar power. The people inside the building ran on Fairtrade, organic coffee and Kombucha. The magazine publisher, Condé Nast, had moved out in recent years and headed over to One World Trade Center. When they moved out the lawyers moved in.

  At five after six I entered the lobby. A hundred feet of polished tiles between the entrance and the reception desk which was shrouded in white marble. The ceiling was maybe eighty to ninety feet high and was made up of row upon row of burnished steel panels, folded to look like the armor of some great beast.

  If God had a lobby I guessed it wouldn’t look too different from this one.

  My heels cracked out a steady beat as I made my way to the reception area. Looking around, I didn’t see any couches or chairs anywhere. If you were waiting, then you were standing. The whole place seemed as though it was designed to make you feel small. After what seemed like a long time, I got to the reception and gave my name to a thin, pink-skinned guy in a suit that looked as though it was crushing his bird-like chest.

  “Is sir expected?” he asked, in a British accent.

  “I have an appointment if that’s what you mean,” I said.

  His lips curled into something that was supposed to look friendly. It didn’t. It looked as though he’d just tasted something unpleasant but was trying desperately not to show it.

  “Someone will be with you shortly,” he said.

  I nodded my thanks and took a slow, meandering stroll across the tiles. My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. The display read, “Christine”. My wife. For the past eighteen months she’d been living in Riverhead and working in a medium-sized law firm. Our twelve-year-old, Amy, had settled in well in her new school. Our break-up had taken place over a few years. It had started with my drinking, but the final straw had been a series of cases that had put my family in jeopardy. A year ago Christine and I had thought about getting back together, but I couldn’t take that risk. Not until I’d finished with the law. I’d thought about quitting many times, but something always held me back. Before I’d hit the bottle big time, I’d made the mistake of trusting a client and getting him off. Turned out he’d been guilty all along and on some level I’d known it. He went on to hurt somebody real bad. I dealt with that knowledge every day. Every day I tried to make up for it. If I quit, and I stopped helping people I knew that I could probably get through six months, but then I would start feeling it again. Guilt was a tattoo that weighed two hundred pounds. As long as I fought for those clients I believed in, I was slowly shedding that weight. It would take time. I hoped and prayed that Christine would be waiting for me at the end.

  “Eddie, are you busy tomorrow night? I’m cooking meatballs and Amy would love to see you,” said Christine.

  This was unusual
. I drove up on weekends and saw Amy. I’d never been invited on a weekday.

  “Actually, I might be taking on a new case. Something big, but I can always spare a few hours. What’s the occasion?” I said.

  “Oh, nothing special. See you at seven thirty?” she said.

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Be here at seven thirty, not eight or eight thirty, okay?”

  “I promise.”

  I hadn’t had an invite for dinner in a long time. It made me nervous. I wanted us to be a family again, but the work I did brought all kinds of trouble to my front door. For the past few years I’d been racking my brains as to how I could make a move into a more sedate practice. The cases I took led to trouble. And my family didn’t deserve that. Lately, I’d felt as though I needed to make the break more than ever. My daughter was growing up. And I wasn’t there every day to see that.

  Things had to change.

  The echo of footsteps drew my attention to a small, hard-faced woman in a black suit. Her blond hair, cut into a fierce bob, swayed and bounced as her heels announced her presence.

  “Mr. Flynn, follow me please,” she said in an accent with a hint of German beneath it.

  I followed her to a waiting elevator. Seconds later we were on a different floor. More white tiles led to a set of glass doors that read, “Carp Law”.

  Beyond the doors was a war room.

  The office was massive, and entirely open-plan apart from two large glass-walled conference rooms to the right. Laptop screens burned into the faces of Rudy’s army of lawyers on every desk. Not a shred of paper anywhere. In one of the conference rooms I saw a bunch of suits pointing at twelve people dressed in ordinary street clothes. A mock jury. Some of the big law firms liked to test out their trial strategies in mock trials with a jury mainly made up of out-of-work actors who’d signed thick, scary, confidentiality agreements in exchange for a handsome day’s pay. Unlike lawyers, actors tended to scare easy when it came to confidentiality agreements.

  In the other conference room I saw Rudy Carp, sitting alone at the head of a long table. I was led inside.

  “Take a seat, Eddie,” said Rudy, gesturing to a chair beside him. I pulled off my coat, threw it over a chair and sat down at a conference table. It wasn’t as big as the main conference room. The table had nine chairs. Four on either side with one at the head of the table for Rudy. Glancing across the room I saw a cabinet filled with awards. I saw statues, figurines and crystals from various venerable institutions such as the American Bar Association. My guess was Rudy put his clients on this side of the desk so they would have a direct view of the trophies sitting atop the cabinet opposite their seat. Part of it was advertising, but I was sure a lot of it was ego.

  “I have the case ready for you to take away, and you can read what you need to overnight,” said Rudy. The blonde approached, picked up a slim, metallic laptop from the far end of the table and put it in front of Rudy. He swiveled the laptop around and pushed it in front of me.

  “Everything you need is on the hard drive. We don’t let any paper leave this office, I’m afraid. There are reporters circling our staff. We have to be extra careful. Everyone on the case has a secure Mac. These machines have had their internet disabled so they only connect through a password-protected Bluetooth server in this office. You can take this with you,” he said.

  “I prefer to read on paper,” I said.

  “I know you do. I prefer it myself, but we can’t take the risk of a single page of this case getting into the papers before the trial. You understand,” he said.

  Nodding, I opened the lid of the laptop and saw a prompt for a password.

  “Forget about that for the moment. There’s someone I want you to meet. Ms. Kannard, if you would be so good?” said Rudy.

  The lady who’d shown me up turned and left without a word.

  My fingers tapped on the polished, oak veneer of the conference table. I wanted to get down to business.

  “What makes you think the cops framed Robert Solomon?” I said.

  “This is going to annoy the hell out of you, but I don’t want to say. If I tell you then you’ll focus on that line of evidence. I want you to figure it out on your own. That way, if we both come to the same conclusions I’ll feel better about putting that point to a jury,” he said, and as he spoke the word jury he flung his gaze, momentarily, at the mock trial going on in the conference room beside us.

  “Fair enough. So, how are the mock trials progressing?” I said.

  “Not well. We’ve completed four trials. Three guilty verdicts and one hung jury.”

  “What was the split?”

  “Three not-guiltys. During post-trial interviews those three jurors said they weren’t convinced by the cops but they didn’t think the officers were corrupt, either. It’s a fine line we have to walk. That’s why you’re walking it. If you fall, you fall. We carry on without you and repair the damage. You understand, right?”

  “I thought as much. Doesn’t matter to me. Only thing is I haven’t decided if I’m all-in yet. I need to read the case. Then I’ll decide.”

  Before I finished the sentence, Rudy stood up. His gaze fixed on the door. Two huge men in black, wool overcoats approached the office. Short haircuts. Big hands. Thick necks. Two more of them approached the office. Same size. Same hair. Same necks. They were following a small man in dark glasses and a leather jacket. One of the big men opened the glass door to Rudy’s office, stepped inside and held it open for the little guy. The man in their care entered the office, and the security man left and closed the door.

  From my memories of watching him on the big screen, I’d thought Robert Solomon was roughly my height and size. Six feet two inches tall. About a hundred and seventy-five pounds. The man in front of me was five-five, and probably weighed the same as one of his security guard’s arms. The leather jacket hung on slim, narrow shoulders and his skinny jeans made his legs look like toothpicks. Dark hair spilled over his face, and large sunglasses covered his eyes. He approached the conference table and I stood up as he held out a pale, bony hand.

  I took it, gently. Didn’t want to hurt the kid.

  “Is this the guy, Rudy?” he said, and instantly I felt like I recognized him. The voice was powerful and melodic. There was no doubting it – this was Robert Solomon.

  “This is the guy,” said Rudy.

  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Flynn,” he said.

  “Call me Eddie.”

  “Eddie,” he said, trying it on for size. I couldn’t help feeling a cheap thrill when he said my name. This was the kid touted to be the next Leonardo DiCaprio. “Call me Bobby.”

  The handshake, at least, was firm. Sincere, even. He took a chair beside me and we all sat down. Rudy put a document on the table in front of me, asked me to read and sign it. I skimmed through it. A pretty tight retainer agreement, binding me to client confidentiality. While I flicked through the pages I was aware of Bobby, sitting on my right, taking off his glasses and running his fingers through his hair. He was handsome. High cheekbones. Fierce, blue eyes.

  I signed the retainer. Gave it back to Rudy.

  “Thank you. Bobby, just so you know, Eddie hasn’t agreed to take on the case yet. He’s going to read the files and then make a decision. See, Eddie’s not like most defense attorneys. He follows a … well, I think code is too strong a word. Let’s put it this way – when Eddie finishes reading the file, if he thinks you’re guilty he’ll walk away. If he thinks you’re innocent he might help us. Helluva way to run a law practice, don’t you think?” said Rudy.

  “I love it,” said Bobby. He put a hand on my shoulder, and for just a few seconds we stared at each other. Neither of us spoke. Just stared. There was an element of searching on both sides. He wanted to know if I doubted him. I was looking for his tells, but also examining his eyes. The fact that he was a gifted actor never once left the front of my mind.

  “I appreciate you have your way of working. You want to read the c
ase. I’m cool with that. When it’s all said and done, the prosecution evidence doesn’t matter. Not to me. I didn’t kill Ari. I didn’t kill Carl. Someone else did. I … I found them, you know? Lying naked in my bed. I still see them. Every time I close my eyes. I can’t get that picture out of my head. What they did to Ari? It’s … just … Jesus. No one should die like that. I want to see the real killer in court. That’s what I want. If I could, I’d watch them burn for what they did.”

  It’s a sad fact that innocent people get accused of crime. Our justice system is built on it. Happens every Goddamn day. I’d seen enough innocent people accused of hurting their loved ones to know when someone is telling the truth and when someone is lying. The liars don’t have the look. It’s hard to describe. There’s loss and pain. But something else is there too. Anger and fear, certainly. And the last thing – a burning sense of injustice. I’d done so many cases like this that I could almost see it dancing in the corner of an eye like a naked flame. Someone murders your family, lover, or friend and you are the one standing trial while the murderer goes free. There’s nothing else like it on earth. And it’s the same look, all over the world. An innocent man, falsely accused, looks the same in Nigeria, Ireland, Iceland, you name it. If you’ve seen that look before, you never forget it. It’s rare to see that look. When it’s there – the person may as well have their innocence tattooed on their forehead. I guessed Rudy had seen it himself. That’s why he wanted me to meet Bobby. He knew I would see that innocence, and this would influence my decision more than reading the case file.

  Bobby Solomon wore that look.

  And I knew I had to help him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN