The Last Plea Bargain (40 page)

Epilogue

TWO MONTHS LATER

On Tuesday, November 6, Bill Masterson won the election for attorney general by four percentage points, propelled in part by the dramatic turn of events that had ended Caleb Tate's case. Masterson had become the Wyatt Earp of Georgia, taking law and order to a whole new level.

After a rousing acceptance speech at the Atlanta Hilton and a little postcelebration drinking with some friends, Masterson told everyone he was heading home to get some well-earned rest. Instead, he went straight to the office.

It would be his last night as DA. He would resign immediately so he could start focusing on the transition to attorney general, a job that technically started in January. Regina Granger would be appointed as the interim DA until a special election could be held.

Masterson turned on the lights in his office, kicked off his shoes, and poured himself a bourbon. It wasn't often that he had a moment of quiet reflection to consider the events of the past several years.

Men didn't reach his elevated status, he told himself, without a fair amount of baggage. There was Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick. His brother John and Marilyn Monroe. And more recently, Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York, who had been sleeping with prostitutes while serving as New York's attorney general. And who knew how many others? Great men who accomplished great things but had skeletons in their closets that nobody knew about.

The difference between the John Kennedys of the world and the Eliot Spitzers wasn't that some had superior moral compasses; it was just that some of them were smart enough to never get caught.

And that's why, on the night of his greatest achievement, Bill Masterson was in his corner office tying up a few loose ends. Details were the difference between success and failure.

It had been thirteen years since his troubles first bubbled to the surface. Rikki Tate, who was then known as Rikki Pearlman, had an impressive list of johns. And her lawyer was no fool. When Caleb Tate first came to Bill Masterson to cut a deal for Rikki, he proposed a side agreement as well. Rikki would conveniently forget one of her clients, so long as that man agreed to recommend no jail time for the young escort and occasionally return a favor on selected future cases for her lawyer. When Masterson went along with the deal, he knew that the devil had just slapped a mortgage on his soul.

But Masterson and Caleb Tate were professionals, and everything was fine until Rikki's conversion to Christianity. When she started telling Caleb that she just couldn't live with herself unless she told the truth about Masterson, Caleb had come straight to Masterson. Caleb had grown disenchanted with his wife and her holier-than-thou ways. He had a brilliant plan for taking care of her that would land both Caleb and Masterson on the front page of the paper, coverage that both men desperately needed. They each knew Gillespie was their ace in the hole, the man who could rig the counseling records of Rikki Tate to say whatever the coconspirators needed. Masterson had agreed to eventually nol-pros the Caleb Tate case so they wouldn't have to risk a renegade jury.

When Tate spent three days in jail, he thought up the no-plea-bargaining idea, which took the plan to a whole new level. That serendipitous twist had propelled Masterson to the AG's office and made him a player on the national stage.

Jamie Brock had almost ruined everything. Her insistence on prosecuting Tate, even when Masterson decided to nol-pros, was problematic. The first plan was to rig the DA computer files so it appeared that Jamie's father would be implicated in a bribery scheme if the case proceeded. This required bringing Rivera into the conspiracy. But Jamie surprised everyone by still insisting on going forward. That's when Masterson and Tate had implemented plan B—the tape recording of Rafael Rivera that imploded the state's case.

The casualties could have ended with Rikki Tate if Mace James had minded his own business. But once James started figuring things out, he had to go. Masterson never intended to let Jamie die. He knew Gillespie was supposed to give her an overdose of narcotics. But Masterson had always intended to show up at Caleb Tate's house like the cavalry, kill Tate, Gillespie, and Rivera before they could implicate him, and rush Jamie to the hospital in time to save her life.

He'd had to improvise a little, but things had turned out even better than he'd expected.

There was a saying that Masterson subscribed to completely—two men can keep a secret, as long as one of them is dead. A corollary, of course, was that four men could keep a secret as long as three of them were dead.

The investigation into the shoot-out at Caleb Tate's house was now complete. The hardest thing for Masterson had been explaining his sudden last-minute appearance. But he was a man of details. He had told Gillespie to keep Jamie's cell phone with them in her 4Runner at all times. That way, according to the plan, Gillespie could send a text from Jamie's phone while at Caleb Tate's house, helping to place her at the scene of the crime.

Knowing this, Masterson had called some colleagues with the state police after receiving Jamie's fake e-mail rant against Tate and Mace James. He had asked them to triangulate her cell phone. That gave him the excuse he needed to go to Tate's house, where he knew his coconspirators would be. Once there, he parked at the end of the driveway, snuck up behind Jamie's 4Runner, and called for backup. Before help could arrive, he took decisive action and shot Gillespie, saving Mace James in the process.

The timing had been tricky, and the story wasn't perfect, but it satisfied the investigators.

Now he needed to tie up the final details. He accessed the DA's computer database and pulled up Robert Brock's case files for Milton County. Six months ago, he had changed the names of the actual judges on many of Brock's successful cases to Judge Snowden's name. He had even scanned in a few substitute orders with her name and forged her signature so the backup documents matched. He had done the same thing with two other defense lawyers.

And now, on his last night in the office, Masterson undid all those changes. The DA's electronic database was once again an exact copy of the actual court files. When he completed the task, he proofread the resignation letter that he had drafted earlier in the week, anticipating this moment. He stuck it in an envelope, put Regina's name on the outside, and placed it in his out-box.

He finished at about 4:30 a.m. and took a final swallow of bourbon. He turned out the lights and thought about how much he would miss this place.

The justice system wasn't perfect. Sometimes it needed a little help from men like him. He was determined to make up for his past mistakes by doing a good job as attorney general. Georgia needed an AG who would kick butt and take names, and Bill Masterson was just the man.

He left the office, backing out of his reserved parking spot one last time, and headed home to get some sleep. In two months, he would start his job as Georgia's top law enforcement official.

There would be a new sheriff in town. And the bad guys had better watch their backs.

ONE MONTH LATER

Regina Granger's second press conference as the interim district attorney for Milton County did not garner much interest. I was there, sitting in the back row. Next to me sat Mace James. LA was leaning against a side wall.

The room had been set up for more than a dozen reporters, but only five had come. They assumed that Regina had called the press conference to announce her intention to run in the special election—a foregone conclusion. The reporters looked bored, checking their smartphones as Regina talked about the organizational changes she had made in her first thirty days. The plea-bargaining crisis was behind us, and things had returned to some semblance of normalcy.

As Regina talked, my mind drifted to the events of the last few months. I still found it hard to believe that I had been spending so much time with a defense lawyer, someone seven years older than me, and someone who had defended my mother's killer. But after that first picnic together, we found excuses to get together again. It turned out that we had a lot in common and, yes, some pretty stark differences, too. But I liked hanging out with a man who was challenging and unpredictable and not at all threatened by my strong opinions.

I knew we had something special after I told him about Judge Snowden and my dad. I had to say something. I felt like a fraud carrying around that secret, but it still took me three days to get up the nerve. I told him when it was just the two of us, sitting on the back porch, the dogs playing in the grass.

I told him everything—how I had struggled with whether to say anything before Antoine's execution, how I had eventually passed the information on to Masterson, how he had relayed it to the AG's office, and how it had led me to sign the affidavit trying to save Antoine's life. Mace took it stoically, staring at the back lawn as I spoke. He asked a few questions and got pretty quiet.

He left that night without a hug or a thanks or any other display of emotion. As I watched his truck pull out of the cul-de-sac, I was certain that he would never come see me again.

The next day, he came back. And this time, he was all business. “I checked the court records for all of Snowden's cases,” he told me. “Your dad's as well. And Caleb Tate's. What you're saying doesn't make sense.”

We compared notes, and later that day I checked our research against the DA's database. That's when I discovered that somebody had changed the names of the judges in the database. My father's cases all still had the same results, but somebody had made it look like Judge Snowden had presided over most of his winning cases.

I told Mace about the mysterious runner in the Peachtree Road Race, the one who handed me the note about being careful who I trusted, the note that mentioned morphine. I had assumed that Caleb Tate paid someone to slip me the note—trying to keep me from trusting LA and talking to him about my dad's involvement with Judge Snowden. But how did Tate know about the morphine? I had concluded that either he had been working with Rivera all along, just setting us up, or he really did have a source on the inside.

Now I realized it was both.

We broadened the investigative circle to include LA and Regina Granger. On election night, when Bill Masterson changed the DA's files, we knew we had him. From there, LA did the legwork. He interviewed women who had been in the same escort service as Rikki Tate nearly thirteen years earlier. There were rumors that one of Rikki's clients was a powerful public official who had never been caught. On a hunch, LA enlisted one of Rikki's church friends to call Bill Masterson and tell him that she knew about Masterson and Rikki. After all, new believers like Rikki liked to confess their past sins. LA had the woman wired when Masterson paid her the hush money.

For me, working on the Masterson investigation caused some of the greatest heartache and confusion of my life. The only bright spot was that it felt like I had regained my father. The man I knew and loved was exactly who I thought he was—hardworking, principled, committed to his clients, and successful in front of a variety of judges. But the man who had taught me how to practice law was a fraud. And now, as Regina Granger prepared to make an announcement that would take down Georgia's attorney general–elect, I couldn't help but feel melancholy.

The Bill Masterson I knew had defended me when defense lawyers attacked. He had shown me tough love and taught me how to hold my own in the courtroom. I had seen him risk his life to convict gang leaders and refuse to prosecute cases when he believed the cops had it wrong. This was the man who had been beside me and given me strength as I watched the execution of Antoine Marshall.

But, of course, all that was nothing but an act from a man living a double life.

I looked at LA, and he gave me a wink. If he was upset about my relationship with Mace James, he never showed it. And who could blame him? He had undoubtedly moved on to women more beautiful and fun-loving than me. We had been thrown together by the pressures of the Tate case, but we were very different people.

“I also want to read a short statement about a recent indictment,” Regina Granger said. “I won't be taking any questions, however.”

Two of the reporters glanced up from their smartphones. The others shrugged it off.

“No matter how long I serve in law enforcement, I am sure that this day will be one of the saddest moments of my professional career,” Granger continued.

She now had everybody's full attention.

She swallowed hard and stared straight ahead, gathering her composure. Bill Masterson was her friend too. More than that, he had been her mentor. He had appointed her as his chief assistant years ago and just recently offered her an endorsement for her campaign.

“Yesterday, a Milton County grand jury indicted Attorney General–Elect Bill Masterson on multiple counts of murder in the first degree. As I speak, Milton County deputies are placing him under arrest. I don't believe in perp walks, and I don't believe in trying my cases in the press. When you leave today, I will have copies of the indictment for each of you. In fact, you can take multiple copies since so many of your colleagues decided not to show up.”