Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘It’s simple,’ says Cassidy. ‘The victim, Melanie Vega, was four months pregnant when she was murdered by your client.’ Smug, righteous indignation. A morality play for the press.

I don’t turn, but I can see Glen Dicks’ pencil flailing out of the corner of my eye. Tomorrow morning’s headline: CLIENT HAS FOOL FOR LAWYER.

‘But the state’s pathology report…’ I say.

Bone is looking at her, eyes that could kill from the bench.

She pops Pandora’s box once more, and this time has Lama span the gulf to hand me a copy of the coroner’s medical report, five pages single-spaced, little drawings on every page.

I scan it quickly, and nearly weep. Medical evidence of a potentially viable fetus. It is the stuff that Cassidy lives for. A cause. She will have pro-life groups stacked in the halls outside, placards and chanting, amidst pictures of pale and washed-out embryos floating in mayonnaise jars.

We have not yet started, and Cassidy has headed me at the pass. She has crushed one of the few advantages of our case, that if placed on the stand, my client on a single shining issue would ring true and loud, a beacon to the jury, the picture of Laurel, the image of the good mother. She sits here now sullied and seemingly with the blood of some unborn child on her hands.

I am told that going to trial against Morgan Cassidy can be a little like a honeymoon: every day there’s a new surprise, and all the while you are constantly being fucked.

Having been ripped in the arraignment, I waived a formal reading of the charges, scooped my slackened jaw off the floor, and retreated to the relative safety of the holding cells and the more amiable society of career felons.

On my way out I fired my only bullet, a motion to keep sealed the grand jury transcripts, the details of the evidence away from the prying eyes of the press and public, and a request for a restraining order to gag the prosecution and the cops.

Judge Bone, who was already in an ugly mood, having been transported there by Cassidy and her conduct, granted both, though only on a temporary basis. We are to return in ten days to argue the merits of a permanent restraining order. Cassidy may be able to screw me in court, but if she talks about it on the air or to the scribes in the front row, Bone will put her butt behind bars.

Laurel and I sit at the little table in the client conference area, door closed, a guard outside. I am struggling to put the pieces of our tattered case back together, my brain trying to communicate with damage control. In the courtroom I was unable to finish reading all the details of the indictment. I get to this now, language at the bottom of the page, further allegations of special circumstances. This is Morgan’s coup de grâce.

The unlawful killing of a woman carrying a potentially viable fetus constitutes two murders — what is known in the law as a multiple-murder special. This is true even if the perpetrator did not know of the pregnancy, and a single act kills both mother and child. In points and authorities delivered to me, Cassidy cites chapter and verse, case law directly on point. The only way Laurel can beat death now is to convince a jury that she didn’t do it, or if she did, that there were mitigating circumstances, some excuse that does not warrant the death penalty. With Cassidy stamping around in the blood of an unborn child, this will be no mean feat.

‘This is awful,’ she says. Laurel’s talking about the fact that Melanie was pregnant. ‘A baby.’ She’s shaking her head, looking at the tabletop as if maybe there’s an answer in the scarred metal surface.

‘I may have been capable of killing her,’ says Laurel. ‘God knows I hated her enough.’

Thoughts I would keep from a jury.

‘But not with a child,’ she says. ‘Never with a child.’

Laurel is one of those people to whom the young always seem to gravitate. Every family has them, aunts and uncles who speak a special language of love. These people know what makes kids move. On family outings Laurel would spend endless periods talking to Sarah, off in quiet corners. She knows more about my own daughter, her secret desires, the things that terrify her in the night, than I do. So this dead child, and the thought that others at this moment think Laurel is responsible, is a blow of staggering proportions.

‘They really think I did this?’ she says. For the first time she looks at me.

I don’t respond, but she knows the answer.

‘You didn’t know that she was pregnant?’

Laurel’s head is back in her hands, supported by fingers at the forehead. Eyes focused down once more.

‘How could I?’ she says. ‘Melanie didn’t share such things with me. Did she look pregnant to you?’ she asks.

‘I thought maybe Julie or Danny …’ I say. Like perhaps Melanie talked to one of the kids during periods of visitation at Jack’s house.

‘No. They would have told me,’ she says.

I have been wondering why this didn’t tickle Jack’s rage earlier, the death of an heir. His male ego, the fact that his seed was snuffed before it had a chance to come to full flower, is not something Jack could easily walk from, even if an extended family was not something high on his agenda. The reason for Jack’s seeming heightened hostility this morning now makes sense. Jack got his own surprise. The first hint that his wife was pregnant came from the medical examiner, after the autopsy.

‘One thing doesn’t make sense,’ I tell her. ‘Why would she keep it from Jack? Another child on the way. Seeds of a new family. Domestic tranquillity. With what they were doing in court, they could have used it in the custody fight.’

‘You’re assuming the child was Jack’s,’ she says.

‘I know there was no love lost,’ I tell her.

‘It’s not a matter of animosity,’ she says. ‘I know the child could not have been Jack’s.’

‘What?’

‘It was not something we talked about, even to the family,’ she says. ‘But Jack had a vasectomy twelve years ago,’ says Laurel. ‘Right after Julie was born. He could no more father a child than I could.’

She arrives wearing beige pants, a white blouse, and a long flowing caftan, yards of shimmering silk and open down the front. It is the feminine counterpoint to the rough cowboy’s duster on an abandoned street with guns slung low on the hip.

Dana Colby looks from across the room, the smile of recognition as she negotiates the small tables of the crowded restaurant, mostly couples paired off. She is a contrast in striking features, amethyst eyes against pale skin, and hair the color of burnished copper. She moves with a saucy confidence that screams divorced and in demand.

A score of male eyes wander from their dinner companions to stare at this electric beauty, the lusty-eyed look of children who have suddenly spied something better on the shelf.

I rise. She does the thing that is chic, takes my hand, then leans across the table and plants a kiss on my cheek, nothing amorous. To those initiated in the ceremony it says we are merely friends.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says. ‘Friday night. Traffic was hectic,’ she tells me. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

‘A few minutes.’ Looking at her, I know it was worth it.

Dana’s hair, like Rapunzel’s, if undone could lower a family from a burning building. Tonight it is braided in a single course, shimmering to the center of her back.

We are standing in the middle of the Chievas, the most expensive restaurant in Capital City, on main level, off the dance floor, a legion of envious eyes on her, male and female. I feel like the winner of the last jackpot on bingo night.

She sits. I slide her chair in.

‘Thanks.’ In her smile there’s enough heat to fire a boiler.