Proof of Intent (15 page)

“This book,” I said, after Lisa finally gave up on the radio. “It's very bad news.”

Miles blew some air out of his mouth, puffing out his cheeks. “Yeah,” he said. “I got to thinking about it. About what's in that book, I mean. I haven't read it probably in twenty-five years. But once I started going over the story in my mind . . . Well, there's an awful lot of coincidence there, isn't there?”

“Maybe more than coincidence,” Lisa said.

“That's what I mean,” Miles said. “Coincidence in the sense of not really being coincidence at all.”

“Can you think of anybody who would have read this book?” I said. “Somebody who might have tried to manipulate the death of your wife to make it look like . . . well . . .”

“You're talking about somebody framing me,” Miles said.

I was silent for a moment. “I've been a criminal defense attorney for over twenty years, Miles. I've never even
heard
of a successful frame-up. Or even an unsuccessful one for that matter. Frame-ups are for the movies. Too complicated for real life. But I am thinking maybe somebody nudged the facts around a little, knowing that there were some parallels with this book.”

“Will the judge admit it?”

I cleared my throat. “I hope not. We'll go to the mat on this one.”

Miles stared across the room for a while. The woman jabbering away in French on the radio finally shut up and started playing some music, an old French waltz with a sweet and wonderfully maudlin fiddle part.

“No,” he said. “I'm at a total loss here. That book's probably been out of print since we left New York. I just, I just . . .” He sighed a long, racking sigh.

We sat silently for a while, Lisa and I looking at Miles, and Miles staring gloomily at the floor.

After a minute or so of this dismal scene Lisa stood, took Miles by one manacled hand and pulled him to his feet. She slid herself inside the circle of his arms and rested her head against his shoulder, then led him into an awkward dance around the room to the sound of the plaintive fiddle. His ankle chains clinked softly in waltz time as they dragged on the floor.

As their dance continued, Miles slowly relaxed, as though all the tension and horror of the past weeks had begun slowly to drain away. The initial awkwardness of their movements disappeared, and soon they were dancing smoothly, despite the chains, as though both their bodies were under the control of a single mind. By the end of the song, Miles was beaming as he danced, eyes closed, seemingly lost in some other place.

After the song ended and the French announcer began talking again, we packed up and left without saying another word, leaving Miles standing in the middle of the room, eyes still shut, lips upturned slightly at the corners, rocking gently back and forth to the music in his head.

How do I hate expert witnesses? Let me count the ways.

In a case like this one, you need experts. It's a given. Somebody to undermine the blood evidence, the hair, the fiber, the blood spatter, whatever. Maybe a psychologist to say that Miles Dane was incapable of doing what the prosecuting attorney says he did. A defense attorney can't live without them. But boy oh boy do I hate them.

The first call I made was to James D. Meriwether, MD, from Chicago, the retired medical examiner of Cook County and a legendary expert witness forensic pathologist. His expertise was in finding fault with autopsies. He combined all the traits you want in an expert: a bulletproof résumé, first-rate knowledge of the field, brass balls, the instincts of an actor, a firm jaw, and a lovely head of hair.

Here's how the phone call went.

“Charles, marvelous to hear from you.” He had a big, radio announcer's voice, well modulated, oozing charm. “I've been following your case with a great deal of interest.”

“Wonderful, Dr. Meriwether. I go by Charley. I've heard great things about you.”

“All true.” Ha ha ha. Big laugh, a man not afraid to enjoy his own sparkling wit. “I'm due at the skeet range in a few minutes. Shall we cut to the chase?”

“I'd be interested in using you for the Miles Dane case.”

“Marvelous. Based on what I've read, I think I could be of great value to you. FedEx me a copy of the ME's report, the police file, all pleadings in the matter, and a retainer in the amount of $20,000, and I'll get started on it tomorrow. My rate is $750 an hour and my total bill including prep, expenses, and testimony will likely run between forty and sixty K. I bill by the month, and if payments aren't up-to-date as of trial, I don't testify.”

Like I said, let me count the ways. Reason one: greed.

“I'll be honest with you, Doctor,” I said, “I just don't have that kind of budget. Of course I can offer a great deal of exposure and—”

“Exposure doesn't heat my pool, Charley.” The big self-congratulatory laugh again. “Were I you, I'd instruct your client to dig around in the sofa for a few more nickels. Call me again when Mr. Dane can afford the best.”

So much for phone call number one. Phone call number two went to the Right Reverend Doctor Bobby Ray Armitage III, MD, JD, MDiv, a professor who taught at Emory University in Atlanta in the schools of law, medicine,
and
divinity. Given all the time he'd spent earning degrees, I figured he'd spent a good fifteen minutes in the actual practice of law, medicine, or the ministry. But that was alright. He had a hugely impressive résumé, and I thought the divinity part would play well on the stand. Plus, I'd heard his rates were reasonable.

“Mr. Sloan, I can't tell you what a
pleasure
it is to talk to you. Really. I've been following your case and it
really
looks like a travesty, a
terrible
injustice.”

“Well, I certainly think so.”

“What can I do for you, sir?” He had the accent of a rich Southerner of the old school, but dripping with the sort of exaggerated concern that I associate with pointy-headed liberals of the Eastern university genus.

I gave him an outline of the case, buttering him up about his qualifications and his good judgment. Then he told me about several cases involving poor, downtrodden innocents whom he'd represented after getting out of Yale Law back in '71.

Finally—reluctantly—he broached the subject of fees. I told him that I could spare $7,500 plus T&E, cash on the barrelhead, take it or leave it.

After thinking about it for a minute, Bobby Ray Armitage said, “Okay. What do you want me to say?”

My heart sank. Reason two: dishonesty. I hate guys like Meriwether for their arrogance and greed. But at least Meriwether is honest. It's the whores who really bother me.

I floated a trial balloon: “I want you to testify that the autopsy is flawed, that the ME is a scoundrel and an incompetent, and that my client could not possibly have committed the crime.”

“Make it ten grand even, I'll testify the pope's a Southern Baptist,” the Right Reverend Dr. Armitage said. Apparently his pool cost a good deal less to heat than Dr. Meriwether's.

People like Armitage make my skin crawl. I told him I'd be in touch if and when I needed him.

After that it was more of the same and more of the same and more of the same. It took almost thirty calls to assemble a team of experts whom Miles Dane could afford and who didn't make me feel like taking a shower when I was done speaking with them. Thirty phone calls and I'd already blown well over half my budget for the trial.

I once drew a grid onto the back of a napkin to describe the qualities you might find in an expert. Here's how the thing came out:

The perfect witness is an honest brilliant good-looking person, well educated and with a masterly command of the field, who has the acting instincts and skills of a Jack Nicholson and who is willing to testify, not for money, but for the sheer love of doing good. Such a person, for all practical purposes, doesn't exist. So you make do.

For my blood spatter expert I had to settle for a cheap, honest woman of modest credentials. She was also gorgeous—which is more important in the courtroom than we'd like to admit. For my autopsy expert I found a forensic pathologist with middling credentials, who seemed reasonably ethical in his approach. I had never met him so I wasn't sure how he'd be on the stand . . . but he sounded okay on the phone. There's no such thing as a cheap doctor, but under the circumstances, his fees were pretty darn fair. My psychiatrist—in case I ended up needing one—was a close friend, Bob Williams, who came cheap as a personal favor to me. And last of all, since it seemed like a long shot that I'd need a tool mark expert, I broke down and went with the expert witness version of a truckstop whore.

By the time I was done, my twenty-grand budget for experts had roughly doubled. The one thing that was entirely plain to me after I'd finally gotten all my experts corralled: This trial would eat me alive financially.

Particularly if I lost. State prison, after all, is not much of a place to raise money so you can pay your lawyer.

“Dad? Dad? Hello? Are you there?” As soon as I heard Lisa's voice on the answering machine, I knew something was wrong. And ten to one I knew what it was. “Dad can you call me? I, um . . . look, just please call. It's important. Kind of a good news, bad news thing.” She left the name and number of the hotel where she was staying.

People, places, and things: That's the slogan of AA. The central tenet of the high church of addiction recovery is that alcoholics run into trouble when they find themselves amongst the people, places, and things where they used to drink. Stay away from the old crowd, you've got a chance of staying clean. Hang out with your old running buddies, you fall off the wagon.

I'd just sent my own daughter back to the place and the people and the things where she'd run into trouble in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I felt like I'd had a pretty good year. After paying my rent, my mortgage, Mrs. Fenton's salary, my car payment, alimony payments to my third wife (who has stubbornly refused to remarry and who even more stubbornly believes that she should continue to live on the same grand scale she did when we were married and I made a great deal more money than I do), and the eye-popping sticker price of another year at an Ivy League law school, I had about three grand left in the bank. I hadn't made arrangements to sell the shotgun yet, so the fifty-grand retainer that I was due from Miles Dane still only existed in virtual reality. A couple more flights to New York and I'd be running on fumes. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, then called my travel agent and told her to book me on a redeye to New York.

After that I stowed a beautiful wooden box in the trunk of my Chrysler, got in the car, and drove to the airport. I kept hitting redial on my cell, trying Lisa's room at the hotel, but nobody answered.

My flight reached La Guardia at a little before two in the morning. I called Lisa at her hotel again, but nobody answered. I took a cab to the same Midtown hotel, checked in, then went to Lisa's room and knocked on the door. It was past three by then. Still no answer. My heart sank.

“Lisa! Lisa! Are you there?” I banged on the door with my fist. “Lisa!”

A door down the hall opened and a sleepy-looking young guy glared at me. He wore a gold ring through his upper lip, and black geometrical tattoos ran from his right shoulder to his wrist.

“Sorry,” I said. When you start waking up the tattoo-and-lip-ring people, it's time to pack it in for the night.

The next morning I called Lisa's ex-roommate and a variety of her law school acquaintances and professors who I hoped would know where Lisa was. But none of them had seen her.

Since wandering the streets aimlessly in hopes of bumping into her seemed like a fruitless plan, I decided to get some work done and wait for her to call. First, I called Sotheby's and asked to speak to whoever was in charge of selling shotguns. Eventually I reached a man named Elliot Fosterthwaite III. He sounded very busy and preoccupied until I explained that I was looking to sell a near-flawless boxlock Purdey double gun with Damascus barrels and extensive engraving. He allowed as how he might be able to spare a moment or two that morning.

I took a cab down to Sotheby's, where I was treated to tea on Spode china and a great deal of fussing.

Elliot Fosterthwaite, a tall man with a fake British accent and a double-vented English suit with the seams pulled just a hair too tight, praised the gun to the heavens. Some unusual details in the lock mechanism, the marvelous condition of the barrels, the intricacy and condition of the gold inlay on the brightwork—well, it was a terribly, terribly exciting gun. Possibly verging on
important
. Pity there was some unfortunate wear on the brightwork. Elliot shouldered the weapon and pretended he was blasting a brace of pheasants.

“How soon can you sell it?” I said.