The Fifth Justice (Michael Gresham Legal Thrillers Book 10)

by John Ellsworth

  Justin stepped forward.

  And looked around her room.

  He was hungry. He looked at the GPS on her phone at restaurants nearby. One captured his attention. Thai. That was it. He loved Thai. His finger touched the phone icon.

  “Order for delivery, please,” he said to the accented voice that picked up.

  “Your name?”

  “Justin Maybe.”

  “What can I get you?”

  “We all want Thai.”

  “How many orders will that be?”

  “There are two of us. Wait, I forgot about Chloe. We are three.”

  “All right, sir, I’m ready when you are.”

  “Everyone’s trying to talk at once. I must call you back.”

  Justin ended the call. He closed his eyes and demanded silence from Maddy and the others.

  The voices relented, and he opened a legal pad to a fresh page.

  “Now,” he said, “I’ll take orders one at a time.”

  He wrote. Several minutes passed as he wrote.

  The smartphone rang again.

  “Chloe Constance, please.”

  Justin passed the phone to her. She came forward and squinted as she tried to decipher the handwriting on her legal pad. It said:

  • Maddy: Anything Mild.

  • Justin: Barbecue duck.

  • Chloe: Thai asparagus.

  “I’ve got this,” Chloe said to Justin. “I don’t know what you’ve done here.” She raised the phone to her ear. “This is Chloe,” she said into the phone.

  “Hey, man, this is Tommie’s Thai. I called the caller ID for Chloe Constance. Did you just call about an order for four people?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Dude, I’m sure you did.”

  “Dude, I’m sure I didn’t.”

  She ended the call. Her hands were shaking. She fumbled the phone. It fell to the floor, but she didn’t pick it up. Then she realized it wasn’t fear that made her hands shake; it was joy. She was with them, the others, and she had heard them.

  She sat upright, stretched out her back, and rubbed her eyes. She pulled herself into a healthy posture in her chair and said, “All right, we’re not ordering Thai. I’m tired, and we’re going to bed.”

  “Do you need me to take over?”

  “No, Justin. I’ve got this. Goodnight.”

  “Thank you, Chloe,” said Maddy.

  Long pause.

  “Are you making me go away, Chloe?” asked Maddy.

  “Maddy, I’m asking all of you to admit you’re part of me.”

  “Who says?” asked Maddy. She was such a punk.

  “Dr. Zastrow says. And I say. Please join me. Everyone else is.”

  “Fine. Whatever you say.”

  “I say. And everyone listen up. We’re going home to Chicago for good. I need my kids. I need my husband.”

  There was no response so she said, “Can we all let me be me now?” It was slow in coming, but one by one, they assented. She heard a grunted response from Maddy, and then, Justin.

  Tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Tears of joy, because the others had come forth and spoken with her, both at the same time. She cried herself to sleep in her bed.

  She slept. There were no voices; there were no middle-of-the-night trips here or there. Nothing, just pure, blissful sleep until she awoke at seven, made coffee, packed her bags, and called a cab to the airport.

  Before boarding, she turned and faced them for the last time. “I’m leaving you now,” Chloe told them.

  There were tears, and there was crying, but it soon passed.

  “Even me?” said Justin. “You won’t need me, you’re sure?”

  “I’ve got this now,” she told him, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Just say my name if you—”

  “I’ve got this now.”

  She turned and walked away.

  But she wasn’t fooling anyone. They were all there with her when she strapped into her seat. Still, no one said a word.

  Over Omaha, she connected with Justin, her favorite self. He checked the engines and studied the passengers nearby. She knew he would speak up if the situation warranted.

  Safe and at peace, Chloe fell asleep and didn’t come awake until O’Hare International and her other life waiting below.

  Two days later she was arrested in Chicago and taken to jail in San Diego.

  Andrew Constance called Michael Gresham.

  Chapter 56: Michael Gresham

  Chloe spent the months before trial locked up. There wasn’t any way to convince the judge to set bail because it was a capital murder case and because the proof was evident (video) and the presumption (that she’d done it) was great. Those are the standards by which they consider the possibility of bail. The judge decided all three prongs against Chloe; no bail. So we visited inside the lockup and did our case preparation there, behind bars.

  Marcel was fully healed and wanted to help me with the trial. I told him to hop aboard. I was glad to have him back in court with me.

  They had captured Chloe’s every movement at the restaurant on closed-circuit video. The authorities saw through the Justin disguise when an outside camera caught Justin Maybe removing the wig and eyeglasses. Facial recognition software worked its analysis and named her. They had made her.

  Downtown at the Hilton in San Diego, I set up a small office in the room adjoining my own. The trial was destined to be a long, hard-fought battle, and I needed my best people with me. Mrs. Lingscheit flew out from Chicago to help with legal strategy in her new paralegal role. A new hire—a young trial lawyer, named Noah Ricker—joined me to second-chair the trial. And now Marcel, who’d taken the room next to mine, was there for light-duty.

  Noah Ricker was a new Chicago Law grad, a sharp guy with a jutting jaw, wire-frame glasses, and a prehensile brain—what I needed this time out. He would be responsible for our legal research, the true definition of a lawyer.

  Three days before trial—the Friday before—we held an 8 a.m. meeting in our office with breakfast brought in. As we buttered toast and sopped up egg yolk and munched bacon and sausage, we had a four-way conversation.

  Our initial goal was to find a defense among the facts of the case. There were many possibilities; but we knew we had to find the path that rang true. Juries have great bullshit sifters: you better be on the side of truth or pack your toothbrush for a long, long stay inside bars. My idea, where I thought we should begin, was to admit Chloe had killed Reno Rivera. After all, there was the video of Justin entering the restaurant, whacking Reno, and leaving the restaurant. It took little imagination for the police artist to remove the killer’s wig by use of her software and to present Chloe herself without the disguise. How did she know to do this? Because San Diego PD had been working with Alton PD, the police department able to come up with the ID and photo of Chloe near the time Reno plucked her out of the hospital. Homicide investigations always begin with the surviving spouse. This survivor was Chloe.

  “Let’s do this one more time,” I began. “We’re talking a defense theory.”

  Marcel spoke up first. “We need to admit up front that Chloe provided the body that killed Reno, while Justin provided the personality who carried it off. The only question was whether Justin was within his rights in killing a human trafficker. Justifiable homicide is the defense that wins for her.”

  “Justifiable defense,” I said. “Very unusual. But also interesting. Anyone else?”

  “I don’t see it, Michael,” said Mrs. Lingscheit right out of the gate. “No jury will ever agree it’s justified to kill someone in cold blood. She walked into the restaurant and stabbed the guy in the heart. That’s premeditated with malice. Evil intent, Michael. They will hate her.”

  “Agree,” said Noah, “although you have room for argument.”

  “Okay, Noah,” I said, “tell us about that.”

  “Well, California’s Penal Code is very wordy. It says murder is jus
tifiable when committed in the lawful defense of a person when there are reasonable grounds to apprehend a design to commit a felony or to do great bodily injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished. Distilled down, you’re talking murder in defense of another.”

  “That’s our case,” I agreed. “Chloe killed Reno so that no more young girls would be kidnapped into sex trafficking by him.”

  Noah shook his head. “But the problem is, there must be imminent danger, Michael. A history of kidnapping to traffic isn’t enough. It must stare someone right in the face when Chloe steps in and sticks a knife in Reno’s heart.”

  From across the room, Mrs. Lingscheit looked up from her computer. “Michael, seriously?”

  Even she wasn’t buying. She’d buy most of my half-assed theories of defense, but not that time out. I ignored her comment, glad she wasn’t in the jury pool.

  “So how do I overcome a perceived lack of immediate danger?” I asked.

  Marcel looked ready to speak, but first he pulled what appeared to be a McDonald’s napkin out of his shirt pocket. There were notes scribbled front and back.

  Noah busied himself with his laptop, lip-reading the Penal Code so we’d know he was engaged.

  Marcel said in a firm, sure voice, “Does it have to be like he’s about to shoot someone? Or can it be as simple as he has Mary Lou out on the sidewalk where he’s making her sell her ass?”

  Stunned, gobsmacked between the eyes—that was me. Here was a new way of looking at “imminent danger.”

  “As in,” I said, “she’s being put at risk of contracting AIDS--”

  “Or hepatitis.”

  “Or beaten to death.”

  “Or raped and throat slit.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Those are the real dangers of human trafficking. At least some of them. So how do we make it profoundly personal?”

  “I like that phrase,” Noah said with a wry smile, “profoundly personal.”

  I said, “By that, I mean, who can we put in front of the jury who will testify that on the night Chloe knifed Reno, that witness was about to be or had been, put in harm’s way by Reno Rivera and his empire of sex slavery?”

  “What about Chloe herself?” Marcel asked. “If Reno had discovered Chloe in that restaurant where he was about to die, she would have found herself bound and gagged and thrown into the trunk of his Cadillac, headed for Sex Land. Isn’t that good enough?”

  He had me. It won the day, Marcel’s argument. Nobody could claim closer proximity to immediate death than Chloe. Yet—I could feel the opening statement coming on—she had set aside her fear and bravely gone to that restaurant and confronted him. Not only confronted him—she had neutralized him with a knife to the heart.

  “Good enough?” opined Mrs. Lingscheit. “I’ve never met the gal, but she already has my vote. Isn’t that what you want, Mr. Gresham, my vote?”

  I turned to her. “That’s exactly what I want, Mrs. Lingscheit. I want their votes.”

  “All twelve,” said Noah. “We want a unanimous defense verdict.”

  “We’re getting close, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “Now, I need a corroborating witness or witnesses. Who can I call to back up Chloe’s claim Reno posed an immediate danger to her?”

  “Call her,” said Marcel, jumping in once again. “Call her and ask her other selves to come forward and speak to the jury.”

  Three of us, me, Mrs. Lingscheit, and Noah—we all sat there all speechless. Our investigator had just laid out our entire defense. The discussion didn’t need to continue. We had our answer.

  Call the alters.

  Marcel busied himself with stuffing the napkin back into his shirt pocket. “There,” he said, patting the pocket. “At last I can sleep.”

  “How’s that?” Noah asked.

  Marcel smiled the smile I knew from those times when he’d score some major points in an investigation.

  “I just put a good woman on the U.S. District Court.”

  Chapter 57: Trial

  The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 31

  Thirty-four year-old Chloe Constance goes on trial today for the murder of Reno Rivera of La Jolla, California. If convicted, Constance will be facing the death penalty. She is defended by Attorney Michael Gresham of Chicago. Attorney Gresham says he will prove Constance’s admitted killing of Rivera was a justifiable homicide. The government says Gresham’s claims are predictable and imaginary.

  Adrian T. Ellison, Reporter

  Judge Roy McClintock opened his court with an announcement to the jury panel of sixty that a murder trial would occupy the next jury for ten days. I knew he would see hands waggle in the air, and he did. I counted eight raised hands, prospective jurors set to unload their unsolicited excuses why they couldn’t do ten days in a jury box. But Judge McClintock shook his head. “Not yet,” he said sharply. “We’ll deal with all the reasons why you can’t do your civic duty after a while. For now, I’m just getting wound up. Let me tell you how this works, and then you can complain.”

  He had just insulted the only jury my client would likely ever get.

  The clerk drew names from the voter list. These were the twelve who would comprise our jury to start out. The lawyers would question them, and they would excuse some. Most would stay. Some of these would be hand-raisers. I made a note beside their names to be sure and excuse them from service. The defendant never needs a pissed-off citizen on her jury.

  Then began the process of winnowing. For Chloe’s sake, I wanted jurors who could keep an open mind, jurors who understood that human psychology could vary from person to person. This was the approach I took in my questions with the jury. In the end, we had our dozen jurors. Here’s what they looked like: two were individuals who would be very difficult to convince of alternate personalities; eight were individuals willing to keep an open mind; and we had two people whose responses were so guarded and vague that I wasn’t sure which way they were tending, but I was out of challenges and couldn’t get rid of them in hopes of someone better. The difficult ones included the gentleman originally from Ohio, a retired civil engineer, and a woman who believed alternate personalities existed in some people but they were the devil’s handiwork. She thought them to be demons. When I finished up my questions with her, she was so convincing she had me half-believing she was right, that Justin and Maddy, the alters starring in my client’s psyche, were nothing more or less than demons, the devil at work. I remember thinking, Let’s pray she doesn’t get elected jury foreperson and convince everyone my client was possessed with demons when Reno Rivera was murdered.

  The prosecutor was a young woman, African-American, dark-complected, short hair, large, frameless eyeglasses, wearing a white suit, pale pink shirt, and a red scarf at the throat. She looked fantastic. Her name was Linda Betts.

  She made the opening statement, in which she said Hammond’s Restaurant had a video system that had captured Chloe coming into the restaurant, disguised as a man, ordering a beer, then watching Reno while he ate his dinner. When he went back into the restroom, she followed. At that point, there was no further video until Chloe re-entered the dining room from the bathrooms and hurried out the main entrance. A short while later, someone found Rivera in a toilet stall.

  When the prosecutor finished, the jury was on her side, if facial expressions and body language can be trusted. They were relaxed, sitting back in their chairs, open to whatever the prosecution did next. Instead of the prosecution, however, they got me with the defendant’s opening statement.

  I plunged ahead with the defense theory of the case during my opening statement:

  “The defendant will testify in this case. Which is unusual. But she wants to tell you what’s going on inside her. She wants to tell you about the other people living in there. Because Chloe Constance isn’t just Chloe Constance. She’s also a young woman named Maddy, an older man named Justin, and a family tree of other personalities, too. I hope you’ll get to meet some of them as we go alon
g. I can’t guarantee they’ll come forward and speak to you through Chloe, but I will ask.”

  The jury stopped making notes. Some were facing me with their arms crossed—DOA. Others were staring at me with their mouths wide open as if stunned. Two women were nodding at me, tears filling their eyes. Then there was the gentleman from Ohio, the engineer who built secondary roads in Cleveland, transplanted to San Diego. What I had to say failed to move him. One-hundred-percent dubious. He didn’t believe a word of my multiple personality pitch at all. I would have to present a case of logic with a plateful of bland to win him over.

  So be it.

  Chapter 58: Trial

  When the first witness called by the state finished testifying, no one doubted Reno Rivera’s killer was sitting beside me in the courtroom. The police artist unmasked Justin in the video, removing the wig and glasses. Chloe was easily discernible beneath the disguise.

  Plus, there was the video of the entire incident. The only thing missing was the actual kill as that happened inside the restroom where Hammond’s allowed no cameras. Which some defense lawyers might take as an opportunity to argue their client didn’t kill the guy that someone else did. But I chose not to go that way. First, if you fail, you’re getting hit right between the eyes, right where it hurts, with a first-degree murder conviction. California has executed no one in a long time, but that didn’t mean Death Row no longer existed. It did, and I didn’t want Chloe to wind up there. So I decided when it came time for the defense witnesses I would choose door number two, which was to admit she—Justin—did the killing but to present facts that would support a finding of justifiable homicide.

  Still, with the video now in evidence, it would be tough to come back from that. Juries like simple facts: she did it, ergo she goes to prison. Stuff like that. The notion of a murder that was justified—legalized—in the eyes of the law would be an uphill slog. It would take everything we could come up with to make even two feet up at the hill, never mind making the summit. That would take nothing less than a miracle.