Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘What are my chances?’ she says.

To this point we have never discussed this. We have dealt with the details, the bits and pieces of evidence, the calculations on credibility as to each witness, including Laurel. So far the high point was the coup de grâce delivered to Mrs. Miller in pretrial motions. That evening when I carried the news, Laurel was for an instant, the flicker of an eye, almost giddy. The first time, I think, since she was jailed, that Laurel has entertained seriously the thought that she might actually beat this thing. From the dark pit that is her cell, her kids gone, her life a shambles, it is hard to see any solid ray of hope.

‘They’ve got physical evidence that links you, Jack’s testimony, a solid motive in a domestic vendetta, endless circumstances that appear to paint you in the colors of incrimination, your trip to Reno, your visit to the house earlier that night. You want it straight, no sugar?’ I ask.

She nods.

‘Something less than fifty-fifty.

‘Right now they’re wounded,’ I say. ‘Smarting a little with the loss of Mrs. Miller. An eyewitness who put you at the scene near the time of the murder. That would have been a lock,’ I tell her. ‘Still, they’re licking their wounds. Not a bad time if we want to talk a deal.’

‘Is that what you’re recommending?’

The lawyer’s toughest call. What you can’t always say with words. A pregnant pause.

‘No. I don’t think so. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are no guarantees.’ At this moment I am a big sigh.

‘And you’re not just any client,’ I tell her. ‘Not to me. Not to Sarah. Not to your kids. I’d have an awfully large audience waiting for explanations if you go down hard,’ I say. ‘Not least of all myself.’

‘You’ve done everything you can,’ she says. ‘I got myself into this mess.’

‘Circumstances got you into this mess,’ I say. ‘And at this point the only sure way out with your life,’ I tell her, ‘might be a deal with the prosecutors.’

She mulls this behind the shield of glass. Downcast eyes, for what seems like an eternity. The decision of a lifetime.

‘How long would I get?’ she says.

‘It depends on what they’re willing to offer. If I can get them down to second degree, it’s fifteen years to life. You might get out in ten.’

‘What happens to my kids?’ she says.

‘What happens to them if you’re executed?’

‘I mean, would Jack take custody?’ she says.

We’re back to this. My guess is that Jack might end up doing his own stretch in the slammer, once I finish with him here and feds get a glimmer of the way he was trying to play them for sympathy. But I don’t tell Laurel this. There’s no sense lighting up her day.

‘He could,’ I say. ‘What difference?’

‘I don’t want him to raise my children. Besides, ten years is a long time.’ Suddenly, to Laurel, it’s an eternity.

‘Your kids would still be around.’

‘They’d be grown.’

‘So you’d have grandchildren.’

‘You really want me to do this?’ she says. ‘Enter a plea?’

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘What I want is for us to make the right decision.’

What I really want, but I don’t tell her, is for someone else to make the decision, to take this cup from my lips, to lift the trial from my shoulders.

‘You sound like you’re afraid to try the case,’ she says. ‘Is it that bad?’

‘Not if you were anybody else.’ As the words leave my lips I see this for what it is: the ultimate admission of a wrung-out lawyer. For more than a decade I’ve taken the money of a thousand strangers and thrown the dice, always wondering, always worrying, but never looking back. I have dodged my share of bullets. No client has ever died in the little green room. I have known lawyers who have suffered this fate, quivering wrecks, some of whom have spent years seeking absolution in the bottom of a bottle. Harry in a past life.

‘It’s not the trial that I’m afraid of,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the result.’

‘Then I will make the decision for both of us. I want my life back. I want my children back. I don’t want any deals. I don’t want any plea bargains,’ she says. ‘I want to go to trial. I want to plead my case. My decision,’ she says. ‘I will live or die with the consequences.’

For the moment we are both silent, not running over each other’s lines. Then Laurel fills the void.

‘She put an awful lot on you,’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Nikki. I know you’re doing this for Nikki.’

‘I’m doing it for all of us.’

She makes a face like it’s nice of me to say this.

She sits and looks for a long second in silence, then gives me the universal gesture of affection for all those who sit on that side, the flat palm of her hand pressed against the glass that separates us. I match it like we are touching fingers, on my side. And without another word Laurel stands, turns, and is gone.

This morning Harry and I take the courthouse elevator up to four. When the door opens, it’s a mob scene. But the lights and microphones are not in our faces. Today the press is doing double duty.

Laurel’s trial competes for attention with a circus across the hall, the trial of Louis Cousins, a twenty-seven-year-old wiz-kid, graduate of Stanford and scion of a wealthy family who is accused of sodomizing and slitting the throats of two teenage girls out in one of the suburbs three years ago.

Cousins has straight blond hair that spends a lot of time covering half of his face, images of Adolf, and eyes that reek of unmitigated evil. His features, while fine, look as if they have been chiseled in arctic ice, so hard is his demeanor; a face that for its expression could carve the heart out of a passing nun and not look back.

Cousins’ trial has become a farm club for shrinks who want to break into the big time of courtroom testimony. This is all paid for by Louis’s father, who is leading a sort of psychic safari into his son’s past. Each therapist and clinician has a more entertaining notion of Louis’s debased and brutal childhood, all of which of course occurred behind the walls of private estates and the tinted windows of chauffeured limos.

After hours of examination, and tests that some might equate to the stirring of entrails in a dish, the high priests of the human mind seem no longer to be in doubt to what happened, only who did it. This was quickly resolved after a brief consideration of Old Man Cousins’ net worth, the source of their fees. It has now been determined that it was one of Louis’s nannies who must have debased the boy during his formative years. At least this is what Louis has fished from his repressed memory during hours of psychic handholding and graphic descriptions by his lawyers of death in the gas chamber. His attorneys are now hell-bent for retirement peddling this theory to the jury.

Harry is deeply moved by the compassion of those who heal the human mind. Lately he has asked more than once why Laurel can’t come up with her own horrific tales of childhood trauma. Like Harry says, ‘she could at least sit on the commode for a while and try.’

Harry is playing Keenan counsel. In cases involving the death penalty in this state the defendant is entitled to two lawyers: one to handle guilt or innocence — my role — and the other to do what is called the penalty phase, whether if convicted, Laurel should be put to death or be sentenced to life in prison. Harry is therefore on a perpetual search for mitigation, anything that might jerk a tear from the eye of an empaneled juror.

This morning Laurel is brought in without shackles, followed by a matron and another guard, who melt into the background as soon as she is seated at the table with us. This is done each day of the trial, before the jury is allowed into the box, to avoid any implications of guilt that might attach if jurors were to see her constantly in custody, attended by guards.