Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (11 page)

"You were with Mr. Goodwin, correct?"

"Yes. We were co-counsel."

"Was this the first time you had served as his
co-counsel, or was this something you had done rather
frequently?"

"We had worked together a number of times, usually in
murder cases."

"Did he seem any different that night? Anything seem
to be bothering him?"

"No, I don't remember anything. We worked until
sometime close to midnight, and then we left."

"Together?"

"We left the building together, if that's what you
mean."

"No, that isn't what I mean," I said brusquely, and
took a step toward her. "What I mean is: did you—the two of
you—spend the night together?"

With a withering glance, she declared, "We did
not!"

"Did you spend the night with anyone?"

"Yes, I did."

"With your fiance?"

She searched my eyes. "Yes, that's correct."

"And his name was?"

She looked down at her lap and then, licking her lip,
looked up. "Conrad. Conrad Atkinson."

"About how long after the death of Nancy Goodwin did
you end your engagement to Mr. Atkinson?"

"Two or three months, I think."

"And was this because you had become involved with
Mr. Goodwin?"

"No," she insisted. For the first time she looked
away from me and toward the members of the grand jury. "I had
worked with my husband—Marshall Goodwin—for several years. We had
become very good friends, but there was nothing else between us.
After his wife died—that was such an awful thing for him to go
through—he needed all his friends. I spent as much time as I could,
trying to help. It was only much later, after my engagement was
broken off, after he had had time to get over the death of his
wife, that we first began to go out. Until then, I don't think we
had even had dinner together."

"During the time you were working together, did he
ever mention to you anything about Travis Quentin?" I moved back to
the small table directly in front of her.

"No," she replied, without hesitation.

Draping one arm over the corner of the rickety metal
chair, I sat back, crossed my legs, and swung my foot back and
forth.

"You ever laid eyes on Travis Quentin?" I asked,
watching the pendulum-like movement of my shoe.

"Not that I'm aware of."

I looked up. "Not that you're aware of? Are you
saying you didn't deliver to Travis Quentin a sealed manila
envelope on the day he was released from the county jail?"

If she had had more time to think about it she might
have said, I remember being asked to deliver some legal documents
to a potential witness who was just being released. Instead, with
only an instant to make up her mind, she denied it.

"No, I did not."

I fixed her with an incredulous look and let her
wonder how I had found out and how much more I knew.

Chapter Eight

Before night fell on the day of his first appearance,
Marshall Goodwin posted bail and walked out of the county jail, not
exactly a free man but free enough. He could go where he wished, so
long as he did not leave the state, and he could do anything he
liked except break the law. The only real limitation imposed by his
release agreement was the obligation to maintain contact with his
attorney and make his scheduled court appearances.

Arraignment on the grand jury indictment had been
scheduled for nine-thirty. When I arrived at nine-fifteen, the
corridor outside was filled with television crews setting up their
equipment. Inside the courtroom, where cameras were not allowed,
dozens of carelessly dressed journalists filled the benches that
during most criminal proceedings held a handful of spectators, if
they held anyone at all.

Right at nine-thirty, Judge Stanley Roberts entered
from a door behind the bench and, arranging his robe, took his
accustomed place. The subdued cough, the whispered word, the
shuffle of feet sliding over the floor, the crinkling sound of a
turned page in a reporter's notebook—everything came to a sudden
final stop. "Good morning, gentlemen," he said, without expression.
His gaze drifted briefly to the vacant chair between us. "Is there
anything you would like to tell me, Mr. Jones?"

"I'm sure Mr. Goodwin will be here any moment, your
Honor," Jones replied, calm and confident.

We waited like the members of a wedding, wondering if
the bride had changed her mind. Standing at the counsel table, I
held my hands in front of me and stared down at the floor while I
used my thumb to push my shirt cuff above my wristwatch. On the
bench, Stanley Roberts rested the side of his round head in the
hollow of his hand and methodically tapped the end of a ballpoint
pen against a legal pad: two quick beats, followed by a slight
pause, and then two more, over and over again, like the sound of a
human heart filling up the silence of a lonely life. Below him, the
court reporter, hunched over her machine, reached down to rub her
ankle while she stifled a yawn.

The tapping stopped. Richard Lee Jones, both hands
shoved down into his pants pockets, looked up, a raised eyebrow the
only expression on his otherwise blank face.

"I don't imagine you thought it necessary to impress
upon your client the importance of punctuality?" Roberts asked,
irritation written all over his small mouth.

"I'm sure he'll be here, your Honor," Jones replied,
evading a direct answer.

Ominously, the two-beat tapping began again. A moment
later, the judge glanced down at his watch. "We were scheduled to
start at nine-thirty, Mr. Jones. It's now nine-forty. How much
longer do you suggest we wait?"

Any answer he gave would be wrong. In a gesture of
uncertainty, Jones shook his head and lowered his eyes.

"In that case, I think we have all waited long
enough," Roberts announced. Just as he started to get up, the door
at the back of the courtroom swung open. It was as if Goodwin had
been waiting outside, determined to push things every bit as far as
he could. Dressed in a dark blue suit and a red and gold striped
tie, he strode up the aisle.

"Sorry I'm late, your Honor," he said breezily, as he
stood next to his attorney. "Traffic," he explained with a brash
smile.

Biting the inside of his lip, Roberts studied him.
"How many times have you appeared in my court?"

The averted eye, the downcast look, the hopeless
aspect of the prisoner who stood, wretched and trembling, in the
drab uniformity of oversize clothes, had vanished entirely. Dressed
like a lawyer, he acted like the one we all remembered. With a
jaunty grin, he replied, "Only once as an inmate, your Honor!"

The anger in the judge's eyes abated. Whatever he
might say, he was not going to do anything. Goodwin had won.

"You know better than to be late," he said, while
Goodwin nodded dutifully. "If it happens again, you might find
yourself back in the county jail. And I'm sure you've had enough of
that," he added.

Chin up, Goodwin agreed. "I certainly have, your
Honor."

"All right, then," Roberts remarked, mollified.
"Let's get to the business at hand. Mr. Antonelli?"

"Your Honor, we are here once again in the case of
State versus Marshall Goodwin. The grand jury has now returned an
indictment charging Mr. Goodwin with the murder of Nancy
Goodwin."

Laconically, Jones extended his hand and announced
that the defense would waive a formal reading of the indictment. I
handed him the copy, and he put it face down on the table without
looking at it.

"The defense enters a plea of not guilty, your Honor,
and requests that the case be set for jury trial."

Roberts made the requisite notations in the court
file. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Goodwin exchange a wink
with the court clerk, a cheerful, kindhearted woman who had worked
at the courthouse longer than most of the judges.

Clearing his throat, Roberts put the file to the side
and, leaning forward, folded his hands together. He had written
something on a piece of paper. "It is a very serious matter when
anyone is accused of a crime," he began to read, "especially one as
serious as this. The defendant in this or any other case has the
right— the absolute right, I might add—to a fair trial and to the
presumption of innocence. The public, on the other hand, also has a
right—the right to the impartial administration of justice. We have
an obligation to avoid even the appearance of partiality. The
defendant in this case holds a position of great public trust and
in that position has worked on a daily basis with every judge in
this county. For that reason, we have all agreed that someone from
outside the county, someone from outside the judicial district,
should preside from this point forward with all proceedings
relating to this case, including, of course, the trial itself."

With the court file under his arm, Roberts got to his
feet. "As soon as a judge has been chosen, counsel will be
informed."

He started to turn away, then stopped. Looking
directly at Goodwin, he said, "I trust it will not be inappropriate
for me to say that I hope everything will come out the way it
should."

It would be difficult to invent a more neutral
statement of goodwill.

As slowly as I could, I gathered up the documents I
had brought with me and methodically placed them in the proper
order inside the case file. When I was finished, I sat down and
jotted some meaningless notes on a blank legal pad. I was killing
time, waiting until Goodwin and his lawyer had left. As far as
possible, I wanted to avoid the press, but I also wanted to see how
Richard Lee Jones was going to try his case to the public.

For more than a decade, Jones had given shameless
self promotion a bad name. How much of what he said he really
believed, and how much of it was a conscious attempt to attract
attention, was a question that perhaps not even he could have
answered. Like every young lawyer who has to start out on his own,
Jones had taken every case he could get. It was his own unique
achievement, from the first, to lose nearly every case he had.
Juries hated him. He called witnesses for the prosecution liars and
prosecutors negligent incompetents; he routinely accused the police
of either losing evidence that would have helped the defense or
manufacturing evidence that helped the state. Before he had tried a
half-dozen cases, he was already famous for closing arguments that
seemed to take longer than the trial itself.

His record of consecutive losses might have continued
to accumulate, had it not been for a remark by the district's only
circuit court judge. One Monday afternoon, as the court was about
to begin work on the criminal docket, the judge looked out over the
courtroom. "Those of you who are here today to be arraigned on
criminal charges are entitled to be represented by an attorney. If
you can't afford an attorney, the court will appoint one. We have
several fine attorneys in private practice who have made themselves
available for that purpose. When your name is called, you'll come
up here"—he nodded toward the long wooden table inside the bar—"and
Mr. Davies, the district attorney, will recite the charges that
have been brought against you. If you want to enter a plea of not
guilty, if you want to go to trial, I'll appoint someone to
represent you.

"But if you decide you would like to plead guilty and
get it over with, you still have a right to have a lawyer help you
get the best deal possible. In that case, I'll appoint Mr. Jones
over there," he said, tossing his head toward the side of the
courtroom where young Richard Lee was sitting alone. "Mr. Jones, I
can assure you, is about as good at making sure that the guilty get
what they deserve as anyone I've ever seen."

It was a story that Jones told about himself. Whether
it was true or just part of the legend he had tried to create about
himself, no one could deny that, from then on, Richard Lee Jones
began to treat everyone with at least a formal show of respect. His
string of losses stopped, and he began to win. But underneath it
all, he never stopped believing that he could take any side and win
any argument, and that if he lost it was only because someone had
cheated.

Everyone who had tried a case against him was willing
to concede he was a very good trial attorney; Jones himself
insisted he was the best there was. Everyone else was a pretender,
a charlatan, a fool. In almost every trial followed by the national
media, Richard Lee Jones would appear on camera and, with the
solemn regret of a parent who has to reprove a recalcitrant child,
offer his opinion that the lawyers in the case had failed to do
their job.

Closing the courtroom door quietly behind me, I moved
as unobtrusively as I could along the outer edge of the crowd that
swarmed around Jones and his client and his client's wife. Caught
in the hot glare of the television lights, their three faces
reflected all the self confidence of instant celebrity. They were
the center of attention, and they knew it.

As he listened to a reporter's question, Jones
readied himself. "You ask me what kind of case the State has
against my client? I'll tell you in a word: none. There is no
case," he continued, rolling his head from side to side, as if he
still could not understand how anyone could have done something so
shameful as charge his client with murder. "A man confesses to the
murder of Marshall Goodwin's wife, Nancy Goodwin. Does he make this
confession because he can't live with himself anymore? Because of
the guilt he feels for doing such a terrible thing? No. He
confesses only after he's killed a few more people and he's trying
to find a way to stay out of the gas chamber."