A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon (different ereaders txt) 📗

Will steps forward robotically and pulls out Luz’s chair, his face tight and drawn, a long scratch on his right cheek livid under the fluorescent lights.

Dars makes a show of welcoming them all, then settles back in his chair. “I understand the government has a motion,” he says, and nods at Shauna.

She stands. “Your Honor, the defendant consulted with an attorney, Jorge Estrada, in the months and days leading up to the murder. The government believes that Mr. Estrada will be a key witness at trial, which is scheduled to begin next week. We’ve subpoenaed him here today because he has rebuffed our attempts to speak with him, claiming that his conversations with the defendant are protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

Dars passes his hand over his pompadour, slick as sealskin. “Well, aren’t they? That’s what I learned in my first year of law school anyway. But maybe we do things differently at Harvard.” He smiles at Abby. “Ms. Rosenberg, isn’t that what you recall learning when you were there?”

Abby feels her smile freeze in a rictus on her face.

Dars turns to Shauna. “I’m a bit older than your worthy opponent, so we didn’t overlap. But as I recall, an attorney has a sacred obligation to keep the contents of his communications with his client a secret. What’s that case when Bill Clinton was in office, the White House Counsel who killed himself?” Dars looks up and snaps his fingers. “Vince Foster. The Supreme Court said even when Foster was buried six feet underground, they still couldn’t make his lawyer talk.” Dars smiles his ghastly smile again. “So why should I make that extraordinary demand of Mr. Estrada?”

Shauna says evenly, “Your Honor, there is a crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. If the communication was for the purpose of aiding the defendant in committing a crime—”

Dars raises his eyebrows. “Indeed, there is. But what evidence do you have that that’s the case?”

“The dates on Mr. Estrada’s invoice. The defendant spoke with him the day before the victim requested to change his life insurance policy. And that’s not all. Before, the proceeds were equally divided between Sergeant Hollis’s mother and father. The new policy names the defendant as the sole beneficiary. Weeks later, she murdered him.”

Dars turns to Abby. “Have you spoken with Mr. Estrada?”

Abby looks briefly at Will before getting to her feet. “Not as to the contents of his conversations with our client, no. We don’t believe it would be appropriate, for the reasons Your Honor stated.”

“Really?” Dars tilts his head at her, steeples his fingers under his chin. “That explanation, coming from a lawyer so thorough and dogged as yourself, seems a bit thin to me. Maybe, just maybe, what you don’t believe is that talking to Mr. Estrada would be helpful to your case.”

Abby feels her stomach start to turn, like the first sign she’s eaten a bad oyster. “If the court will indulge me,” she begins.

“Always, Ms. Rosenberg. As you know, I am always happy to indulge you.”

Abby tries her best to keep smiling. Dealing with Dars when he was the prosecutor in Rayshon’s case—his casual misogyny, his calculated race-baiting, his arrogance—had been a trial in itself, but at least back then they had been equals. Now that he’s wearing a black robe and high up on a dais, she’s had to accept the hard truth: Dars’s determination to dig his thumb into every bruise was something to be endured rather than combated.

“Ms. Gooden is taking a perfectly ordinary situation and trying to recast it as an evil plot. Every soldier is provided a life insurance policy by the government. It’s called Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance and it automatically provides a death benefit of $400,000. Sergeant Hollis needed to change the policy. His father, one of the original beneficiaries, had died. And he had a wife and a baby on the way. The baby, Cristina Rivera Hollis, is the contingent beneficiary on the policy. He could not leave the money to Cristina directly because she is a minor. This arrangement—leaving the money to Mrs. Rivera Hollis to use for the care of the child in the event of an unexpected tragedy—was the most practical thing to do.”

“Practical,” Dars repeats softly. “Yes, I suppose that’s one word for it.”

“People with young children who have preexisting policies naming other family members do it all the time,” Abby continues stolidly. “There’s nothing nefarious about it.” She pauses. “In fact, my son’s father, who is a veteran, just did the same thing himself.”

“Did he now? Well, that’s heartwarming to know.” Dars smiles cheerfully. “And did you stab him afterward?”

Over Luz’s audible gasp, Shauna clears her throat. “Your Honor, if I might, Sergeant Hollis made no changes to the policy prior to this point. To paraphrase Ms. Rosenberg, it is common practice for people to change the beneficiary on their life insurance policy when they get married, to make sure their spouse is taken care of. That did not happen. It did not happen for months after he knew he was going to be a father. It happened less than three weeks before his wife—the newly named sole beneficiary—killed him. Without that policy, the defendant was never going to inherit anything other than the $244 in their joint checking account. They had no home, no car, no investments. The policy was the victim’s only real asset and until the defendant spoke with Mr. Estrada, that policy named his parents.”

Abby tries again, “The deceased never consulted with Mr. Estrada at all. There is no evidence linking Sergeant Hollis’s decision to change his life insurance policy to my client’s decision to talk to a lawyer. And Ms. Gooden’s insinuations undermine her own theory, which is that my client killed her husband hours after finding out about his infidelity because his girlfriend, Jackie Stedman, emailed her to disclose it and to disclose the fact that he had a child with her.”

“What about it, Madame Prosecutor?”

Shauna shakes her head. “With all due respect to Ms. Rosenberg,