Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 1) (3 page)

"Did you find blood on any of his shoes?"

"No. We took them all into custody."

"But there was no blood."

"No. Correct."

"Any fingerprints?"

"No."

"Any DNA in any of the sinks, traps, victim's skin, gun?"

"No."

"No prints on the gun and no DNA?"

"No."

"So the only link between James Lamb and the murder is the confession?"

"There was the gun under his mattress."

"Which I believe you planted there, Mr. Fordyce. Which leaves the confession."

"Free and voluntary. It has his signature on it, counselor."

"Can my client even read?"

The special agent looks at me. It is a very fundamental question. His eyes move over to the AUSA, whose head suddenly jerks up. What? His look says. Can he read?

"I assumed he could. He looked at the confession."

I shake my head. "But did you ask him if he could read?"

"No."

"So, for all you know, he didn't even understand what he was signing?"

"His lips moved. That meant he was reading, far as I was concerned."

"His lips moved. And that means to you that he was reading?"

"Yeah. Lots of people's lips move when they read."

"But again, you didn't ask him if he could read?"

"No."

"And you didn't ask him whether he understood what he was reading?"

"No."

"That is all for now, Mr. Fordyce. Your Honor, I reserve the right to call Mr. Fordyce during the defense's case."

"So noted. Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll break here for the day. Please remember the court's admonition that you are not to discuss the case with any person, avoid all newspaper and TV accounts of the case, and immediately report to me if anyone tries to discuss the case with you or in any way influence your vote. Thank you. We're adjourned for the day."

I take the elevator downstairs without talking to the reporters who have crowded into the car with me. They are pushing mikes in my face and repeating the same question: "Is your client prepared to plead guilty if they give him life and waive the death penalty?" That's all they want to know. For myself, I'm wondering the same thing, but the problem is, no one from the U.S. Attorney's Office has made such an offer. This one appears headed to the table with the straps and the silver needle.

Down the sidewalk, a hundred steps is where I find my SUV waiting at the curb. Inside is Marcel Rainford, my investigator, and driver, who has been in attendance in the courtroom for much of the day. He's there to be my eyes and ears to what's going on in the courtroom while I'm busy and can't keep attuned to the general mood, whispers, and strategies between cops and AUSA's, and all the rest of the minutiae that bubbles up.

I climb in the backseat and reach up front. He places two cigarettes and a yellow Bic lighter in my hand. That's my daily limit. They're bad for me and all that, yes, I know, but the stress of criminal law will kill a fifty-five-year-old much faster than a couple of cigarettes. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

"Hey, Boss," he says. "That went down hard."

"Yes. We got our ass handed to us in there today."

"Tomorrow's a new day."

He backs out of our slot and puts it in drive. We begin picking our way to my home on the near north side of Chicago.

Marcel has been with me almost fifteen years, and we go back to when we got called up to go to Iraq during Bush Two's misadventure. I served ten months in-country in the JAG Corps; Marcel served two tours as General Dumont's logistics officer—meaning, basically, he was a bodyguard who didn't get to shoot anyone because he was guarding a four-star Army general. We both came out frustrated, but we had gotten to know each other at beer call, and we had hit it off. When we returned to the states, I had a law practice to try and revive, and Marcel had no place to go so he tagged along, got his investigator's license, and began working up criminal cases for me. It worked out well, and here we are.

Like me, Marcel is unmarried. His sad story is a deceased wife with colon cancer. My story is a wife who ran off with a younger man to have a baby late in life. Which leaves the two of us alone to commiserate, something we do at beer call on Wednesday nights. My limit is two beers, and Marcel, who has graduated beyond beer, usually sips a JW on the rocks. I don't know his limit; he's usually ordering a third about the time I'm heading home.

After Sue Ellen had left me, I was filled with shame. So many times she had asked—begged—for a baby and I had refused. It was never the right time, and the money situation was always in flux. Those kinds of excuses. She finally got tired of waiting and went after the lifeguard at her tennis club. She ran him to the ground, seduced him, and convinced him that a forty-five-year-old woman has more to offer a thirty-two-year-old man than his peers. They started rendezvousing; she wasn't coming home some nights, and it was a quick downhill from there. As for me, I haven't been seeing anyone. There was a fitness trainer at my gym that I considered asking for coffee until I noticed the fat diamond on her finger when she took off her workout gloves. That would have been ugly. Am I lonely? Well, I am alone, and there are times I am dying for someone to tell about my day. But that's about the worst it gets. The rest of the time I keep myself busy defending criminals and planning how to pay Sue Ellen's alimony.

The alimony is a whole other story.

Marcel drops me at my house, backs his personal car out of my garage, and we say good night.

I inspect all the rooms inside my house—the inner man needing someone to talk to and, of course, finding no one there to listen. I wonder if it will always be this way, this silent and small when I come home at night.

I fight down the old divorce pain. Grown men embroiled in life or death trials don’t have time for personal angst while the heat’s turned on high. Finally I settle on a TV show where contestants sing and judges turn their backs on them. But even this makes me realize I am no different from those contestants.

Nobody ever said this would be easy.

I
'm
up early the next day, take my four-mile jog, shower, and dress, and then Marcel drives me downtown to my building on LaSalle Street on the Lower Loop, and we park underground. It is eight a.m. when I arrive. Court starts at ten. He goes off in search of fresh bagels while I head upstairs.

I bellow as I enter my office, "Morning, Mrs. Lingscheit! April Fools! This is the perfect day for us to run off together and tell the law to bite it!" Evie Lingscheit, a large-boned Germanic woman, knows I will never leave law because I don't earn enough to run off. She's doubly certain it wouldn't be with her if I did.

She is speaking into her headset and holds up one finger.

I'm not broke, not even close. But I have very high overhead, which is all about my ex-wife's alimony. A bellicose divorce judge gave Sue Ellen everything she asked for, including fun money of $7500 per month. A week later he told my lawyer, at a Bar Association social, he did it because he loves cheerleaders. How he knew Sue Ellen had been a cheerleader on the Longhorns' spirit line, I'll never know. But he gave her enough alimony that she'll never have to work again—as long as she remains unmarried. Sue Ellen has since bedded but not wedded three suitors that I know about. RAH-RAH-SIS-BOOM-BAH!

"No calls, no drop-ins," I tell Mrs. Lingscheit as I lunge past her desk.

Mrs. Lingscheit responds to me, "Good morning, Michael."

She points behind me.

My heart falls. Sue Ellen Gresham is sitting in our small waiting area with the younger man who stole her away from me.

They are all smiles.

"Good grief," I manage, "the smiling couple."

"We need to see you, Michael," my ex- says. She looks ten years younger since our divorce. "Your drop-ins beat you here."

"Funny lady," I shake my head.

"How are you sir," says the boy scout. I don't respond. I have no clue how to speak to the kid who wrecked my marriage. So I turn back to Evie.

"Ten minutes first," I tell Mrs. Lingscheit, holding up all fingers. She nods and my ex- puts her nose in the air, but there is tacit agreement. Ten minutes is fair; otherwise, it's an ambush, as they are unscheduled drop-ins.

"Ten minutes," I smile at Sue Ellen and close my office door behind me. My phone message light is blinking. I hit PLAY.

The voice of Arnie, my older brother, gushes over the line, "Michael, oh boy oh boy have I got news for you! I've met this guru—granted she's only nineteen—but the things she knows about me! I haven't even said a word, and she's given me my entire history! How's she do it, Michael? It's a miracle. And she has predictions and warnings for me. Anyway, we're at a hotel on Wacker that shall remain nameless and we are passing certain items back and forth, and we are inhaling. I was calling to say I won't be able to make lunch today because I have a deposition and my paralegal tells me the other lawyers have voted to have lunch catered, so we don't have to break. I'm telling you, Michael, this girl—her name is Esmeralda—she's going for her nursing degree by day and meeting men at night to pay her tuition. We're lucky we had our parents back in the day, Michael because tuition has gone through the roof. Did you know I was high pain-tolerant, Michael? Esmeralda has helped me see that. Anyway, Michael, I might not need Dr. Allington anymore because Esmeralda looked over my paperwork and—"

The recording runs out, and I am left dangling. But only for a moment. When Arnie refuses to take his meds, this is the kind of call I get. The other type of call I get will be from his partners at his law firm begging me to help control my brother. What can I do? Arnie's actual diagnosis depends on which psychiatrist he is seeing. Sometimes he is bipolar, and that explains his mania. Other times he is agoraphobic, and that explains his refusal to leave his apartment for days, hanging out in his pajamas and refusing to shower. Other times he is suffering from a dissociative disorder that explains the new personality my brother suddenly has speaking for him. I don't know; maybe he's all three. My mother is in a nursing home, and my father is long dead and there are no other siblings, so Arnie falls to me. Which is fine; truth be told, I all but worship my brother. One day, science will solve the mysteries of Arnie’s psychology, but it hasn't done so yet.

I walk to my desk and sit down slowly. Having received the phone call, I gird myself for the follow-on bizarre behavior that is sure to come when he's refusing to medicate. Something is coming. Storm clouds are forming on the horizon.

I
busy
myself with other calls, return two, and just allow Sue Ellen and her playmate to generally cool their heels. Then my curiosity gets the better of me, and I buzz Evie. "Send them in."

Sue Ellen enters my office with a haughty flourish. She is wearing a yellow dress with red roses in honor of this spring day. A thin white cardigan takes away the nip in the morning air. Her hair is yellow and goes well with the dress, and she is wearing platform heels that display just how beautiful a woman's legs can be. Sue Ellen has a fantastic body, a great smile (her dad is a dentist), and the personality of a homecoming queen. She was a runner-up in the Miss Texas pageant, where her talent was ragtime piano. Tales of how much the Phi Delt men loved her piano playing in college plagued me through our time together. Sue Ellen was always very quick to share her body. Thank goodness I no longer have to wrestle those demons.

Young Stuff (I refuse to learn his real name) brings up the rear, sitting beside Sue Ellen as she pats the chair next to hers, indicating her preference for his roost.

"So, Michael," she begins, "how have you been? You're looking good!"

"Thanks, I feel good."

"Well, that's just wonderful!"

"Except for the first of the month when I have to write your child support check."

"Child support?"

"Well, in the paperwork it's actually called ‘alimony.' But we don't need to kid ourselves about that."

She begins to frown, thinks better of it, and tilts her head at me. "I do thank you for keeping your promise. You always were a man of your word. That's what I'm hoping Eddie can learn from you. Consistency."

Consistency. She says it like it's a code word capable of sending men to war. What she really means, though, is that I didn't file an appeal from our divorce. I didn't, and it's too late now. I took it like a man. Mainly because I was so damn hurt by her betrayal of me with Young Stuff that I couldn't gather the energy I needed to write the appeal. It just wasn't there. But now my IRA is almost depleted and paying her every month is all but impossible. She doesn’t know that. Yet.

"Well, Sue Ellen, I just can’t stand the suspense. What can I do for you?"

She leans forward. ”You’re going to like this, Michael.”

"That would be good."

"We want to have a baby."

My first reaction is predictable; I tip-toed around having a baby with her when she was mine—much to my later regret; I'm all but shut down before she even launches into her spiel.

"A baby? You're forty-five, Sue Ellen. Do you mean you want to adopt?"

"Eddie is only thirty-two. He wants his own family of his own children. Not adopted children. His own."

"So. What would my role be in your conception? The very fact you’re here telling me this means you need something from me. It’s not high-IQ sperm you’re after, is it?” I immediately regret it but my feelings are hurt, damn it. If Sue Ellen’s having a baby it should be with me.

"I went to a fertility doctor. Here's the process. Eddie's sperm goes to the laboratory, and they mix it with some younger woman's eggs. The eggs are then implanted inside of me. There are lots of shots and growth hormones to make me ready to accept the implant and grow it."

"Do you really want growth hormones? Don't those cause cancer?"

"There is a risk with everything, silly. You took a risk when you drove to work. How did you know you wouldn’t get sideswiped and die? You didn't. But you took the risk. Well, that's how I feel. I don't think my body is going to sideswipe me if I inject it. Instead, I think it will love me back and give us a baby. Our own family."

"Again, what's my role?"

"We're short on funds."

"You need money from me?"

"I'm hoping you can advance one year of alimony payments in a lump sum."

"That's ninety thousand dollars. One, I don't have it. Two, even if I did, I wouldn't do it. It's not a good investment for me."

She leans forward and places her elbows on my desk. She points a long, enameled fingernail at me.

"That is where you are wrong. It's the best investment you'll ever make, Michael. Because if you do this one thing, I'll sign an order for the judge saying you never have to pay me another dime."

I am stunned. This is almost too good to be true. And I know in a flash that I will do it. I don't have the money, I don't know how to get the money, but I will get it. This, I will do, and then I'm free! Seriously? I will jump through rings of fire to get this chance. But I keep my cool.

"Well, it's interesting," I say. "It deserves some thought. Can you give me a few days?"

"We need the money by the first. That's four weeks. If we can't get it by then, I'm putting the house on the market, and I won't ever speak to you again if I have to sell our”— meaning hers and my—“house."

"You're threatening me that you'll never come here again to borrow money from me?"

"I'm threatening you that I'll never marry. You'll still be paying me when you're eighty-five and I'm seventy-five. That's a solemn promise, Michael."

"Well, there is that," I say. "Okay, I'll talk to my bank. I'll see if they'll give me a home-equity line of credit. If they will, we'll meet and talk and go over an order for the judge. If they don't, I will try elsewhere, but that is very iffy. My best chance is Bank of America."

"Michael," she purrs, "I can always count on you, can't I? You're still trying to make my life good."

"Why would I want your life to be anything else but good? Of course, I'll try."

Not to mention I just might wind up free of you and free of the millstone around my neck.

Two sharp knocks on my door and Mrs. Lingscheit comes bustling in.

"Sorry to interrupt. Michael. We need to talk immediately."

"All right," says Sue Ellen, "we're out of here. I'll expect to hear from you in the next week or so, Michael."

Young Stud reaches across the desk to shake my hand. Grudgingly I accept. His hand is warm and sweaty. Just as I hoped.

When we are alone, Mrs. Lingscheit turns to me and begins.

"Arnie is in trouble. He's at the Willis Tower. Here's the address. He's supposed to be in a deposition. He showed up in handcuffs."

"Whoa up, woman. How do we know this?"

"Sam Shaw called. He's furious."

Sam Shaw is the managing partner of Arnie's law firm. I am already calculating. Court doesn't begin until ten this morning as the judge has other cases to process between nine and ten o'clock. I might have time to take care of this before then.

I throw on my blazer and hit the door.

It's faster to walk than grab a cab, so I make my way from LaSalle down to Wacker and head north to the Willis Tower. As I walk, I call Sam. He updates me: another attorney on the scene called him and gave us what happened. He describes the event. I have to ask him to repeat it.

As the Willis Tower elevator doors part, I take a deep breath.

Cleaning up after Arnie is never fun.