So now . . . Wednesday! I wipe the sweat off my forehead, make it to the bathroom, shower and shave and dress in my best monkey costume for court this morning. It’s in one of the regional branches, not the criminal courts, so I decide to go straight from home to court.
I get there early and meet my client, who is worried beyond belief. I calm her down and gently prepare her before we enter the cattle call of a courtroom. I fill out an appearance and tell the clerk we want a trial, which means we’ll go to the end of the pack. It’s not until after ten o’clock that they call our case.
It’s an attempted battery case that will be tried to a judge, not a jury. The husband says the wife tried to stab him during an argument over money. It’s a common tactic in a child custody case, one side accusing the other of assault or battery, hoping to use it as leverage to get the kid in the divorce. Everyone in the criminal justice system knows it—the cops, the judges, the prosecutors—but nobody wants to acknowledge it openly. Prosecutors aren’t allowed to drop the charges on a domestic battery, even if they suspect it’s one of these bullshit cases, because it only takes one mistake—that one case out of a thousand where the husband ends up killing the wife, or vice versa—and then everyone traces it back and finds that the county attorney’s office didn’t pursue charges when it had the chance, and someone has to lose his job.
So these cases go to trial, but the prosecutors don’t exactly put their best feet forward. They do their duty, putting on the allegedly aggrieved spouse, and rest. I have the additional advantage in this instance of representing the wife; most of these cases, it’s the wife accusing the husband, but in this case the roles are reversed. I’ve never been in front of Judge Oliver, but I can see the look on his face while he listens to the husband, a big meat-eating guy, give his version of how his wife lunged at him with a kitchen knife, and I’m pretty sure I can get a “not guilty” even if I don’t cross-examine the husband. But cross him I do, tying him in knots until he’s about to come out of his seat and do some lunging of his own.
The verdict isn’t a surprise or an accomplishment, but I savor it nonetheless. This, I’ve come to realize, is truly my best medicine, the only thing I know, the only time I’m not thinking about those Altoids in my pocket—the competition. Every time I lose a case, it haunts me. Every time I win, I drink it in. And I keep track. As a prosecutor, I won all but three of my cases, with the proviso that a plea bargain is considered a victory because, regardless of the reduced offense the descendants plead to, they are convicted of something, and a conviction is a win. As a defense lawyer, I lose more than I win, in part for the same reason about plea bargains, and in part because it’s not a fair fight. The prosecution gets to begin the lawsuit whenever they want, whenever they’re sure they have a rock-solid case, and only then does the defense attorney enter the arena. They also have a considerable advantage in resources compared to most defendants, who can’t afford fancy experts or investigators. I remind myself of all of that, but it still punches me in the gut every time a client goes to prison. I hate, hate, hate to lose, even more than I like to win.
My client, overcome with relief, kisses me on the cheek and takes my arm as we walk out of the courtroom. I pull out my phone, turn it on, and text “NG” to the divorce lawyer who referred me the case. I have two divorce lawyers who routinely kick these cases my way. It’s a decent stream of business to fill the gaps.
After wishing my client well, I look again at my phone and see that I have two missed calls from an unknown number and a voice mail.
“It’s James, James Drinker,” the voice mail says. “There was another murder last night. I didn’t kill her, either.”
28.
Jason
Wednesday, June 19
Back in my office, I push away a half-eaten cheeseburger I had picked up on the way back and go online to the Herald’s website. It isn’t hard to find, though by midday the story is no longer the headline. The victim is Nancy Minnows, age twenty-three, dead from multiple stab wounds. The police call it “premature” to speculate as to whether there is a connection between this stabbing and the others.
The promised rain begins to fall in sheets outside, turning everything gray. It will douse the temperature a bit and funk up the air. But I like the post-rain smell. It makes me think that even nature is fallible.
On the roller coaster that is my opinion of James Drinker’s culpability in these murders, I’m currently in a free fall, sure that he is the man who butchered four women. There is plenty of reason to believe otherwise, but this whole thing is starting to give me the heebie-jeebies. I grab my tin of Altoids for some midday happiness. As I chew up the tablet, it’s not lost on me that I may not be in a superior position to be judging the guilt or innocence of anybody.
Ten minutes later, I have my phone to my ear, pinching the bridge of my nose with my free hand as I listen to the heavy breath of James Drinker on the other end of the connection.
“Her name is Nancy Minnows,” he says. “And I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure you don’t know her?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you might know a Nancy but not know her last name, or something like that. Or you might recognize her face but never knew her name.”
“Well, they showed a picture of her on the news this morning and I didn’t recognize her.”
“It could be an old picture, something from a college yearbook or something that’s dated. How old is this girl?” I ask, even though I already know the answer from the Internet.
“I don’t know. She looked . . . young, I guess. Like the . . . like the others,” he adds with some hesitation.
“Well, if you’re right that someone’s trying to frame you, James, then they’re not doing a very good job of it.”
“Yeah . . . yeah, I guess. But it’s weird, right?”
Yes, it’s weird. This whole thing is weird. Once again, this guy is giving me the creeps, but having a weird feeling about a guy isn’t a very strong basis for breaking your sworn oath as a lawyer and turning in your client.
“I was home last night, alone,” he says. “I didn’t talk to anybody that I can remember. I was online for a while. Should I document all that?”
“Definitely. But James, you were going to get me those phone records,” I remind him. “The ones that prove you were talking to your mother from your home phone on the night of the third woman’s murder? The night that grad student, Holly Frazier, was murdered?”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I will. It’ll be on my phone bill. When I get my bill this month, I’ll send it to you.”
So he’s not going out of his way to expedite the process, to ask the phone company for an early peek at his phone records or to set up an online account and do it that way. But this could explain his innocence as much as his guilt. If he really was on the phone with his mother that night, and he really didn’t kill anybody, then he’d have no particular urgency to get me the data.
“Let’s go to the police,” I suggest. “I know you’re concerned about handing yourself over to them, but you didn’t kill those women, James, and the cops are going to come to you anyway, eventually. Between dating Alicia Corey and being friends with Lauren Gibbs, it’s bound to happen sooner or later, so you look better getting out in front of it. And now you look far less suspicious, because there have been two more stabbings, and you’re telling me you have no connection to these last two women.”