Talon Winter Legal Thrillers Box Set

by Stephen Penner

  But Gallagher moved on. “Sounds good. Next is the nature of the defense.” He looked down at Talon. “What is your client’s defense?”

  Up to that point, Gallagher had seemed impressed with her, and decidedly not so with Quinlan. Reasonable in comparison to the whiny prosecutor. On-going interviews and secret forensics investigations. All very impressive. Surely, she had an equally impressive defense for her client, the unjustly charged Mr. Michael Jameson. There were so many.

  Self-defense? Yes, he killed Jordy McCabe, but he was defending himself.

  Alibi? He was at home watching movies with his elderly mother.

  Entrapment? He did it, but only because the cops tricked him into it.

  Duress? Kidnappers had his family and threatened to kill them all if he didn’t take out McCabe.

  …ugh. Talon sighed. She had nothing. Because Michael wouldn’t give it to her.

  “General denial, Your Honor,” she admitted.

  Gallagher’s expression fell. “Oh,” was all he said. It was all he needed to say.

  After a moment, he looked up from the form he’d been filling out. “All right then. We’ll confirm the case for trial in six weeks.” Then he offered Talon a small frown. “Good luck, Ms. Winter.”

  She knew the unspoken part: ‘You’ll need it.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Not long after the omnibus hearing, Talon was at her desk near quitting time. Quitting time for others, anyway. Not for a solo practitioner with a man's life in her hands. Trial was rapidly approaching and she still hadn’t settled on a cohesive strategy. Self-defense was a tenable claim. Three armed gangsters were racing toward Michael and his brother. But the problem with self-defense was that you had to admit the underlying crime. It wasn't a defense of 'I didn't do it.' It was, 'I did it, but it's okay. And I'd do it again.' It was always a risky proposition to admit the crime. It spotted the prosecution nine points in a ten-point game. Plus, the jury was unlikely to be sympathetic about Michael and Ricky having to defend themselves against gangsters trying to steal the street drugs they were pushing on the Hilltop.

  The more obvious defense was the one Michael had forbidden: just blame Ricky. Tell the jury Michael wasn't the shooter. Truthfully, it might not matter. The jury could still convict him as an accomplice. But there was a good chance the jury would give a pass to the younger brother who was just along for the ride. Especially after twenty-five years.

  Then again, they could . . .

  “Hey, there. Don't work too late, huh?”

  Talon looked up from her legal pad of half-doodled trial strategies. Greg Olsen was standing in her doorway, coat on and briefcase in hand.

  “The work will still be there tomorrow, right?” he said with a friendly grin.

  Talon had come to like Olsen during the short time she'd been office-sharing there. He was a conscientious office mate. He never left paper jams in the copier and he actually replaced the staples in the stapler when it went empty. On top of that, he struck the right balance between being politely social, greeting the others and confirming good weekends, and respectful of privacy—they weren't best friends after all. And they all had more than enough work to do.

  All except Talon and her one case.

  And even about that, Olsen was kind. He didn't tease her about staying late with only one case. Instead, he offered the advice of an older attorney not to let her work overwhelm her life, an all too common fate for a lawyer.

  But she was the younger attorney, so of course she rejected the advice.

  “Thanks, Greg, but I'm going to be working a lot of late nights now. Trial on that murder case is coming up. I need to be ready.” She thought for a moment. “More ready than I've ever been for any trial.”

  Olsen nodded. “Yeah, I had a few cases like that over the years. I still remember them all. They're like milestones on my journey as a lawyer.” He tipped his head toward the file on her desk. “That case may be the biggest milestone you ever have on your own road.”

  Talon wasn't much for poetic metaphors, but she appreciated the effort. “Right. Well, if I’m going to have a big fat milestone on my road, I’d like it to mark a win.”

  Olsen laughed. “Good thinking.” He looked over at the clock on her wall. “So what’s keeping you past five o’clock this evening?”

  Talon shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out the best way to approach the case. In law school, they called it the ‘case theory.’ The story you tell the jury.”

  “Do you have one yet?” Olsen asked. “A case theory?”

  Talon frowned. “I’ve got too many. I’m trying to pick one, but none of them seem right.”

  Olsen thought for a moment, then set his briefcase down in her doorway and took a seat in her office. “I’ve got a little extra time tonight. Linda’s picking up the kids from the Y. Why don’t you run your case theories past me?”

  Talon was a bit surprised. “Really?” One of the things she’d started to miss about working at a larger firm was the ability to just walk down the hall and get some advice from another attorney. Office-sharing was different. In the corporate firm, most of the attorneys spent their nine-to-fives at their desks; court was rare. But solo attorneys usually did criminal defense, bankruptcy, divorces, or some combination of those—all court-driven practices. She’d go days without even seeing Olsen. And Curt was fine for some aspects of the case, but he wasn’t an attorney. “Uh, yeah. That’d be great. Thanks.”

  She gathered her thoughts for moment and looked down at her legal pad. “Well, I figure there are two main ways to approach it. The first is self-defense…”

  So Talon explained her options, and her own opinions as to each. She told him what Jameson had told her about the incident—the attorney-client privilege would extend to any lawyer she consulted—and how Jameson instructed her not to pursue any angle that implicated his brother. She was a bit embarrassed about that part, but she hoped Olsen could appreciate her respect for her client’s wishes, even if they were misguided. She ran through how much easier it might be to go self-defense, but how she was unsure how to do it if she didn’t put Jameson on the stand. And if she did, how was he going to tell the story without mentioning Ricky? She also couldn’t put him on the stand for an alibi defense, because that would be suborning perjury. She couldn’t knowingly have him tell a story about spending the night at Aunt Louise’s beach house in Oregon when he’d already told her he was on the Hilltop running drugs with his big brother.

  “So yeah,” she concluded, “I don’t know what to do. How do I tell a story to the jury when I know the story is a lie?”

  Olsen chewed his cheek a little and nodded at her question. Then he asked a better one, “Why are you telling a story at all?”

  Talon frowned. “Well, uh.” She was surprised by the question. “I mean, like I said, I’m trying to come up with my case theory. My story.”

  Olsen thought for another moment. “This is your first criminal case, right?”

  Talon inferred a little condescension in the question. She was glad she could answer, “No, actually. I defended a man against a murder charge when I was still with Gardelli, High and Steinmetz. Pro bono,” she clarified. “He was a tribal member and, well, it’s a long story.”

  “Was that an alibi defense?” Olsen asked.

  “Uh no,” Talon replied. “He kind of confessed to it.”

  “So you had to build a story around his confession?”

  “Right.”

  “Did Jameson confess too?” Olsen inquired.

  “No,” Talon answered.

  “Then why are you telling any story at all?” Olsen challenged. “Make the prosecutor try to tell the story, then rip the story down.”

  But Talon shook her head. “General denial? I don’t know. Isn’t that really just saying, ‘Oh yeah? Prove it.’?”

  Olsen shrugged and smiled. “Maybe. But that’s not always a bad thing. Especially when they can’t prove it.”

  Talon considered tha
t for a moment.

  “This is a cold case, right?” Olsen confirmed. “They might not even be able to prove a murder happened. Most of the cops are probably retired. Hell, some of them are probably dead. The ones who are left won’t remember this case. Just another shooting up on the Hilltop. If they can’t remember what they did, they can’t testify about it. The prosecutor might not even be able to show anything happened at all, so don’t get up in your opening statement and admit everything they can’t prove.”

  But Talon wasn’t convinced. “They wrote police reports, Greg. They can just use those to testify.”

  Olsen shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. They can use them to refresh their recollection, but if they have no recollection to refresh, they can’t just read from them. That’s hearsay.”

  “And there’s a hearsay exception,” Talon countered. “Past recollection recorded. If a witness can’t remember something they used to remember, and they wrote it down, they can read the report to the jury.”

  Olsen laughed a bit. “Sure, in a civil case, like what you’re used to. But in a criminal case? No way. Some evidence rule can’t trump the Constitution. Your client has a right to confront the witnesses against him—something your civil clients never had. How does he do that if the witnesses just read from their reports? Confrontation is grounded in the concept of effective cross-examination. You can’t cross them if they just read from their reports for the prosecutor, and then answer, ‘I don’t remember, I don’t remember,’ to every question you ask.”

  Talon’s instinct was to argue back. She was a lawyer after all. But she liked what Olsen was saying. “Go on.”

  “You’re used to your client telling you what happened, then the other side finding it out through discovery. Interrogatories and depositions and stuff like that.”

  Talon winced at the thought of her own interrogatories, still setting on top of her file cabinet, untouched. Luckily, Olsen continued.

  “But you’re a criminal defense attorney now. The other side doesn’t get to know anything about what your client said. If he didn’t tell it to the cops when they arrested him, then they can’t make him say it now. It’s all on them. They have to prove it. And you don’t have to let them.

  “Object to the police reports. Object to the autopsy report. Hell, object to the calendar from twenty-five years ago without a witness from the calendar publishing company. Make them prove it all up, because they’re going to have a lot of difficulty with that. You may never have to tell the jury any case theory story if they can’t establish in the first place that a murder actually occurred. Don’t spot them that. Make them prove it, because maybe they can’t.”

  Talon was nodding by the end. She liked that approach. Maybe part of the reason she was having trouble settling on a case theory was because she shouldn’t settle on one at all. Not until the prosecution put on whatever evidence they could actually muster a quarter-century later.

  But Olsen had one more question. “If your guy didn’t confess, how did they link him to it?”

  Talon ran a hand through her hair. “That's the worst part. It was a total fluke. My guy's house was burglarized. One of the things the burglars stole was a gun. It didn't take the cops long to find the burglars and recover the stolen goods, including the gun. It's extra time if you steal a gun, but only if it's operable, so the cops test-fired it. When they uploaded the ballistics to IBIS, it came back as a match to the murder.”

  Olsen blinked a couple of times, then smiled. “That's ridiculous. The thinnest of connections.”

  Talon shrugged. “Yeah, but it's true.”

  But Olsen shook his head. “Irrelevant. That's the weakest link in a chain of weak links. Attack that ballistics match as hard as you can. Who's your ballistics expert?”

  Talon thought for a moment. “It's some guy from the State Patrol Crime Lab. Langston or Lindstrom or something.”

  “No, no.” Olsen shook his head. “That's their expert. Who's your expert? Who's the defense expert?”

  Talon took a beat. “We don't have one.”

  “Get one,” Olsen replied. He stood up. “I know someone.”

  A few moments later, he'd gone to his office and returned with a business card. He handed it to Talon.

  She examined it, then looked up at Olsen. “Anastasia St. Julian?” she read the name aloud. “Really? Sounds like a comic book villain.”

  Olsen laughed. “Yeah, I guess it kind of does. Well, she goes by ‘Ann.' And she looks more grandma than villain. But juries love the name. And they love her.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Anastasia St. Julian?” Curt asked after examining the business card Talon handed him. He was in the passenger seat of her Accord. They were cruising southbound on Interstate 5, toward Long Beach. Long Beach, Washington.

  “She goes by Ann,” Talon replied. “I’m told the jurors like the full name. Sounds sophisticated.”

  Curt shook his head. “I think it sounds ridiculous.” But he shrugged and slid the business card into a shelf under the radio, between Talon’s gum and extra phone charging cable. “But if Greg says she’s good, I trust Greg.”

  He looked out the window at the lush rolling nothingness between the small towns that dotted State Route 101. “God, it takes forever to get to Long Beach.”

  Talon nodded. “Why couldn’t Greg have recommended an expert from Tacoma?”

  “Or at least Seattle,” Curt suggested. It felt like he was about to say something more. But he didn’t.

  Talon sighed to herself. It was going to be a very long drive. She was glad they were driving together this time. She wanted to talk to him. It didn’t really matter about what. Anything. But words failed her. Her, the trial lawyer.

  Ironic, she thought. Then she thought harder. Or is it just coincidental?

  She shook her thoughts from that particular semantic puzzle and glanced over at Curt. He was still gazing out the window. He had a really nice profile.

  But she wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead, she looked out the windshield at the empty road ahead of them.

  Symbolic, she told herself. Then she frowned. Or is it metaphorical?

  Talon sighed again, audibly this time. But Curt didn’t turn to look at her. She was relieved. It wasn’t like she could tell him what she was actually thinking.

  Yeah. It takes forever to get to Long Beach.

  * * *

  ‘Long Beach Welcomes You,’ announced the sign as they finally entered the small town tucked away in the southwest corner of the state. Then a quick glance toward the ocean revealed the one landmark the town had: a large arch over the roadway that led onto the beach, adorned with the phrase, ‘World’s Longest Beach.’

  “Hence the name,” Talon muttered to herself.

  “Hm? What’s that?” Curt stirred from the passenger seat. He’d fallen asleep about a hundred miles earlier. The slower speed as they re-entered civilization must have brought him closer to the surface. He sat up in his seat and rubbed his eyes with his fists like a little boy. “Are we here?”

  “Yup,” Talon answered. “Beautiful Long Beach, Washington. Home of, uh…” She paused, unsure what Long Beach really had to offer, besides a long beach.

  “Anastasia St. Julian,” Curt supplied the answer. The one that mattered, anyway.

  Talon nodded. “Good enough.” She glanced at the GPS on her phone. “Her address is up ahead another couple of miles.”

  Long Beach had a main road that ran parallel to the beach. The downtown lasted about four blocks, with one traffic light. After that, it was a residential strip of old houses and new condos.

  St. Julian’s address was a large lot with a classic northwestern Craftsman-style house set back from the road and a large outbuilding—more shop than barn—behind the house. That’s where the driveway led and that’s where they found St. Julian, clearly visible inside as they parked in the gravel driveway. She didn’t turn to look at them as they crunched to a halt.

  Talon stepped out
of the car. “Ms. St. Julian?” she called out. “I’m Talon Winter. This is my investigator Curt Fairchild.”

  St. Julian took another moment to finish whatever task had been holding her attention as they drove up, then she set something down on her workbench and turned around. She was a tall woman, with a thin frame wrapped in a flannel shirt and worn jeans. She had a head of thick gray hair pulled into a loose ponytail. Sharp eyes peered out through round, wire-rimmed glasses. She dusted her hands off on each other, then stepped forward to greet her guests.

  “Call me Ann,” she said as she extended her hand. “You’re early. I like that.”

  Talon shook her hand. “It’s always a quick drive to Long Beach.”

  Ann narrowed her eyes and smiled. “That,” she pointed at Talon, “is a lie. So, I already know you’re a good attorney. Come on, let’s go inside and talk over coffee.”

  Ann didn’t wait for a reply, but headed toward the house. Talon wondered whether she should be offended by the lawyer comment, but there was something disarming about the woman they’d just met. She looked like that farmer grandma everyone on TV has, who knows all the answers but still somehow manages to let the kids figure it out on their own.

  They entered the home through the back door, directly into the kitchen. A fresh pot of coffee was already brewed. Ann gestured toward a wooden breakfast table with three cups and saucers laid out and brought the coffee over on a tray, complete with cream and sugar.

  “So, Greg says you need a ballistics expert for your case,” Ann started. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” Talon started, “the gun was linked to the crime from bullets left behind at the scene. What we’re thinking is—”

  “No,” Ann interrupted. “Not the ballistics. The case. I’ll figure out the ballistics. I want to hear about the case. Did he do it?”

  “Uh, well,” Talon started. “Does that matter?”

  “It may not matter to you,” Ann replied, “but it matters to me.”