Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

She exhaled, and a plume of cigarette smoke drifted toward the ceiling.

"I don't know. Something!"

Chrissy poured a second cup of coffee for each of us. Outside the kitchen window, the sun was blinking through thin streaks of clouds where the horizon touched the ocean. "I wanted to kill my father. I wanted to be cleansed, but I didn't want to go to prison. I'd done some reading. I knew about posttraumatic stress disorder. Damn it, Jake, I had it! I was just able to rationally decide what to do."

"Rationally?"

"Yeah. What difference should it make if a woman blows away her abusive husband while he's beating her, or if she does it after sitting down and thinking about it? That's the only difference here. I thought about it for a while, then did it."

"The difference," I said, "is between manslaughter and first-degree murder."

"Then they should change the law."

"Great, write your legislator." Chrissy's coffee was burning a hole in my gut and my mood wasn't improving. "Did Schein ever encourage you in this rational plan to kill your father?"

"Not in so many words. He did say something like my father's death could be therapeutic, but phrased real vaguely. He never used the word 'kill' or 'murder.' "

"What about Guy? Did he know?"

"I certainly didn't tell him."

"But Schein did! Don't you see? They wanted you to kill your father. They set you up with a phony defense, then trashed it the night before trial. They want you convicted."

"Why?"

"Money! Guy gets the entire estate and you spend the rest of your life in prison."

She wasn't rattled, and she still didn't cry. "That doesn't make any sense. Guy's rich enough."

"Some people never are. And there are other reasons, too. Guy never got over the fact that you were the pampered child. He probably hated your father for it."

"No. The first few years were tough on Guy—he was treated like hired help—but Daddy made it up to him. He brought Guy into the business, turned it over. It can't be that."

"Then what is it, Chrissy? If it's not money, if it's not anger, what's his motive?"

"I don't know."

"You have to know!" Losing my patience.

She angrily tossed the cigarette stub into her coffee cup. "You don't believe me. You never have. That's why you tricked me into taking the lie detector test."

"On a relative scale, that should rank somewhat lower than tricking you into committing a first-degree murder." She glared at me and I added, "If they really did trick you."

"Bastard! How can you defend me if you don't believe me?"

"I do it every day. It's my job."

"That's not the way I want it to be," she said, her tone more sad than angry.

"Fine, I'll ask the judge for permission to withdraw. If he grants it, you'll get a continuance. Maybe another lawyer can figure out—"

"No! I want you. I trust you, even if it's not reciprocal."

"I don't know how to try the case. I don't know how to win."

"Don't change anything. Play the tapes. I'll tell the jury I damn well planned it, and I'd do it again. Let Schein testify I planned to kill Daddy. Let's tell the truth."

"The truth?" The idea was so preposterous I just laughed.

"Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't that what you demanded in your holier-than-thou tone? Okay, Mr. Self-righteous. Let's take the truth and go with it."

"There are times," I said sadly, shaking my head, "when the truth will not set you free."

21

I Wanted Me

I sat in the cushioned chair in front of Judge Myron Stanger's desk. Freshly shaved, my hair still wet from the shower, packaged in my sincere blue suit and burgundy power tie, I almost looked like a lawyer, even with my neck bulging out of my collar. Abe Socolow sat in the leather chair next to me, his sallow complexion set off nicely by his funereal black suit. A young woman sat next to the judge, perched over her stenograph, awaiting the words of jurisprudential wisdom, or at least semigrammatical English, that are occasionally spoken in chambers.

On the sofa behind us all, beneath dozens of plaques proclaiming His Honor's civic high-mindedness, sat Chrissy, her legs demurely crossed. She was dressed in a charcoal-gray suit over a white silk blouse that she had once wore in a TV commercial while playing a business executive with intestinal gas.

"Let me get this straight, Jake," Judge Stanger said. "A hundred prospective jurors are cooling their heels in the courtroom right now and you're asking to withdraw from the case."

"That's correct, Your Honor."

"And you will not state the grounds for your motion to withdraw?"

"I cannot, Your Honor, without prejudicing my client's case."

The judge fingered the latch on a cedar cigar box that occupied a prominent position on his desk. At Christmas, trial lawyers with spirit of giving delivered smuggled Cuban cigars to the judge. "That's not good enough, Jake."

"All I can say is that my client and I have irreconcilable differences as to the handling of the case."

"Hell, Jake, my wife and I have had irreconcilable differences for thirty years, but neither of us has cut and run."

Next to me, Abe Socolow tried to suppress a smile. He enjoyed seeing me squirm.

"It's not in the best interest of my client for me to represent her," I argued.

"That so?" The judge removed his yellow-tinted glasses from his bulbous nose and looked toward Chrissy Bernhardt. Myron Stanger had been a personal injury defense lawyer, representing the Southeast Railroad Company, which had an unfortunate habit of hiring alcoholic and color-blind engineers. After thirty-five years of wrongful-death and quadriplegia cases from railroad crossing collisions, Stanger, an avid Democratic party fund raiser, had called in a marker from the governor and been appointed to the bench. Trial lawyers generally liked him because he let them try their cases without too much interference. "How about it, Ms. Bernhardt? Would you be better off with a new lawyer?"

Chrissy seemed to pout, or was that her usual look? "No, Your Honor. I want Mr. Lassiter.