Hardy 11 - Suspect, The (30 page)

24

Understandably, Juhle's betrayal on the arrest
deal also knocked the bottom out of Gina's well of credibility with Stuart. How in the world, he wondered aloud to her in angry terms at his very first opportunity before the arraignment and bail hearing, could she possibly have been ignorant of the fact that Juhle would trace her location by cell phone? Surely this was a standard police procedure, done every day? Surely she should have known about this, and avoided such a telephone call at all costs? And if she did know, why did she trust Juhle not to do it? Was she stupid or naïve? Because clearly she was one or the other.

Then, she should absolutely have known that her assurance to him that he would be able to peacefully turn himself in on their timetable was chimerical at best and negligent at worst. Not only was his decision to surrender based on that faulty presumption, but his very life was immediately and directly threatened. If he'd had his wits about him enough to actually reach for the gun right at his tableside, there was no question either Juhle or one of his backup officers would have shot him dead. Surely, this was malpractice if ever there was such a thing.

As if that wasn't bad enough, she'd talked him into agreeing to something he desperately didn't want to do, and also she'd done it in a way that had actually, and dramatically, hurt his case, and the perception of his guilt. In fact, although Stuart never used the gun, the mere fact of his possession of it created a sea change in the tone of reporting on the case. Why had she not warned him to get rid of the gun before she made the phone call?

Before, the killing was newsworthy because of the personalities and profiles of the principals; Stuart's marginal fame; the usual glamorous smorgasbord of money, complicated business issues, and sex. And although Stuart was clearly the front-running suspect, in most of the early stories, there was a sense of debate: Did he or didn't he? What were the pros and cons? How much evidence, really, was there, and what did it matter?

Since the arrest and its details—the flight to a motel room, registering under a false name, the loaded gun within an arm's reach on a table next to the bed—had become public, the presumption of innocence, or even the suggestion of possible innocence, was no longer in the mix. And this, of course, made it easier to believe in Stuart's "threats" to Bethany, and even in his "threatening" visits to Fred Furth and Kelley Rusnak, in spite of these latter witnesses' statements to the contrary. It didn't matter if they had felt threatened during their talks with him; Stuart's very presence was a threatening act. The talking heads and columnists got it right: an armed murder suspect with an all-points bulletin out on him calls on you while you're working, there's an element of threat.

But beyond even that, the near-ubiquitous perception that Stuart was at the very least no better than every murder suspect the Hall had entertained over the years had other immediate and personal consequences.

The first of these was bail. Normally there is no bail in a murder case, or at least no bail that anyone could reasonably be expected to make. But occasionally, especially when there may be issues of self-defense or of lofty community standing, a judge will grant bail of, say, a few hundred thousand dollars. Which of course in Stuart’s case would have been doable. But at the bail hearing, Gina could hardly argue with any credibility that her client wasn't a flight risk. Everybody in the courtroom, and most certainly the judge, knew that he'd already tried that once.

First, the judge simply denied bail. Then, when Gina quite correctly pointed out that some bail was required in a noncapital case, the court promptly set bail at $20 million.

Secondly, and more upsetting especially to Kymberly than almost anything else, was the judge's refusal to allow Stuart, even accompanied by armed sheriff's deputies, to attend Caryn's funeral. From Stuart's perspective, this was pure spite, and an indication of how reviled he'd come to be among the regular denizens of the Hall.

Not that any of this would necessarily be admissible or deemed relevant at the hearing or trial. But for a million understandable reasons it all played hell with Stuart's confidence in his attorney. Also with Kym's and Debra's. After living with his confusion and doubts and anger for nearly two weeks, when he came in to see Gina in the attorney's visiting room at the jail, Stuart had finally made the decision to put it to her directly: Why shouldn't he let her go and get himself another attorney with more experience? Didn't she think it might be better for his chances if she simply withdrew?

So now, having just been chewed up and spit out by her friend the district attorney, Gina found herself fighting for the job she now wanted more than anything else in her career, more than anything in her life, in fact, since she'd prayed for David Freeman not to die.

Stuart's question itself didn't surprise her; she had expected something like it or stronger, an actual dismissal, for some days now. But if he was going to give her a chance to talk herself back into his trust, and the question implied that he hadn't made up his mind definitely to fire her, she was going to take it.

"First," she began, "I admit I screwed up the arrest itself. How it went down was my fault. I should have taken the gun from you, and I should have made the call to Juhle from my office. All of that is true, and I'm sorry."

Stuart sat a few feet down from her on a plain wooden chair, limp as a puppet with cut strings, looking lost in his bright-orange jumpsuit. He had already lost some weight in jail. The deeply tanned skin showed a distinct pallor under the hollowed-out cheeks. "I hired a supposedly experienced criminal attorney who was comfortable enough charging me sixty-five thousand dollars to take the case," he said.

"That's true. But it's also true I told you that I'd been out of practice for a while and that sixty-five is a discounted rate for this kind of case. And by the way, how much of that have you paid me up to now?”

The answer, which they both knew, of course, was—none of it.

"And yet I'm still here, aren't I? Every day." She held up a hand. The point spoke for itself: She was committed to him and to this case. "All I'm trying to say is that a murder case is the major leagues, and once in a while they throw at your head. I didn't expect Juhle to do that, but he did. He won't catch me off guard again."

Gina hated making excuses for herself; she was, in fact, fairly intolerant of them in others as well. David's motto, borrowed from Churchill she believed, and which she'd long ago adopted, had been "Never complain, never explain." And it had served her well too. Yet here she was, begging this man she hadn't known a few weeks ago to understand her and to forgive her for what she'd done.

So she was forcing the words out, but her body language betrayed no weakness. She sat at the room's one long table, an elbow resting on it, her legs crossed in a relaxed posture. Her confession concerned her technical failure, but there was very little mea culpa. "So we took a hit, Stuart. My fault more than yours, but there it is. But I didn't screw this up all by myself. I didn't let Kymberly talk to Bethany, and if you had bothered to tell me that you were going to let her, I would have pointed out what a truly terrible idea that was. I didn't run from the police. And as for the gun, you seem to forget the reason they found it on you is that you refused to give it to me."

"All right, fine," Stuart said. "I'll accept all that. But why should I have to keep paying the price for it now?"

"Well, the easy answer is you don't have to, Stuart. You say the word, and I'm gone and that's the end of it." Her bulldog expression dared him to call her on it if that was his decision. She wasn't going to show any sign of wanting or needing this job. She could take whatever he could dish out. But when his eyes fell away from her gaze, it seemed to her to be a small retreat. She still had some control over her fate here; for some reason, perhaps only inertia, maybe a fear of the devil he didn't know, he was reluctant to pull the trigger and tell her he was going to go with another lawyer.

"The thing is, Stuart," she said, "I don't know if you can tell or if you care, but I'm pretty angry right now. At Juhle mostly, but also at Gerry Abrams and even Clarence Jackman. They didn't have to play your arrest the way they did. I was being cooperative. We were coming in the next morning, and they knew it. So it was all macho bullshit."

"Pretty effective macho bullshit, though."

"Sure. Sometimes it is. But now I know where they're coming from. I know how they intend to play it. I've been doing this— defending people in Superior Court—for twenty-some years. I'm on great terms with the judges and bailiffs and clerks, and don't let yourself believe that doesn't matter. We get into court and Mr. Abrams and Inspector Juhle will, I hope, suddenly discover that I'm a bit of an old pro myself. And now I'm an old pro with a grudge and a score to settle, and I don't intend to make it pretty." She paused. "If you'd like me to stay on."

"Given that, are you sure you'd want to?"

"Yes, of course. I thought I'd made that clear. But while we're talking and before you make up your mind for good, there's one other thing we've got to get straight."

Stuart sighed and scratched at the stubble on his neck. "What's that?"

"Well, with all respect," she mustered her calmest voice, "I understand how you feel about the arrest and then me telling Juhle you weren't and never had been armed. That was a mistake too. If I hadn't told him you'd never taken the gun, okay, we're arguably in a much better position right now. So that's strike two on me.

"But the problems haven't been all on me. I didn't take the gun in the first place.
You
took the gun, and that's why you had it with you. That's not anything to do with me. If you remember, I wanted to take it home with me that night, get it out of your hands. I pleaded with you to let me have it. That was my advice. But you overruled me."

"I thought I might need it."

"Right. That's what you said. Your ecoterrorist friend might have followed you somehow. But the point is: why you're in all this trouble right now, it isn't all me. It isn't even mostly me. I wish it were. But I need you to see that so much of this is what
you
did. Talking to Juhle that first day. Deciding to take your gun with you. Sneaking out through your back door. Stealing license plates. Using a phony name. Asking Kymberly to talk to Bethany ..."

"She did that on her own."

"Maybe. But that's not what Bethany said she told her."

"She got it wrong, then." Stuart put both of his hands up to his forehead. "God, God, God." He looked across about four feet of space to where Gina sat. "So remind me. What are we arguing about?"

"About whether I keep my job or not. You've lost a lot of confidence in me, and I understand that. I wouldn't blame you, Stuart. But I'd like you to be sure that it's me, after all. Not just these shitty circumstances. And don't get me wrong, they're plenty shitty. I didn't predict any of this happening, and maybe I should have."

He nodded, then grew quiet for nearly a full minute, until he finally took a deep breath. "Help me out here, Gina. Kym's all over letting you go. So's Debra."

Gina shrugged. "It's not their call, Stuart."

"But then who do I go with? Jedd Conley? I don't know any other lawyers."

"I do," Gina said. "I could recommend any number of them. Though probably not Jedd," she added with a trace of humor. Then, in all seriousness, "Either one of my partners would take you on, and they're both excellent."

"But," he said. "I hear a 'but.' "

"No you don't. They're good guys and good lawyers with lots of experience. And they almost certainly wouldn't suffer from the incredible handicap of believing you're innocent. Wes—one of my partners—even told me, 'Whatever you do, don't start believing he's innocent. He'll just break your heart.' "

"Sounds like a sweetheart."

"He is." She met his eyes. "He's just another pro who's seen it all before. He often says he doesn't believe anybody except his dog. He loves his dog, though."

Stuart cocked his head. "What about your David?"

The question quickened her somehow. "What about him?"

"I mean, with his clients. Didn't he ever believe they were innocent?"

She took a moment before shaking her head. "His rule was he'd never ask and never let them tell him. It was one of the first things he always told his clients. 'I don't want to know. All I want to know is what evidence they've got and if I can make the jury doubt some or most of it. That's the job. Whether you did it or not doesn't matter to me.'"

"He didn't really feel that?"

"Oh, yes he did. Really for truly. With his whole heart."

"And what about you?"

"Well"—she felt herself break a rueful smile, and it surprised her—"you're watching me break new ground. If I had come to this from a different angle, I don't know what I'd be thinking. Probably that, like everybody else, you don't get all the way to arrested if you're not guilty. As I say, that's the professional approach."

"This time I really do hear a 'but.' "

"Yep," she said. "You do." She raised her eyes and stared him full in the face. "But in this case, I don't believe you killed Caryn." Lowering her voice, she went on. "Wes may be right, I'll get my heart broken over it, but I don't think so."

"I won't break your heart," Stuart said.