James Sheehan - The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

“We’re sending someone over tomorrow as a temporary replacement. Her name’s Alice Stevenson. Please give her the keys and show her around.” He didn’t wait for an answer.

When Clay Evans received the Notice of Appearance from Tracey James, he almost shit his pants on the spot. He’d never tried a case against her, nor had any of his staff, but he’d seen her billboards all over the state. There was no doubt she was big time. He’d been wheeling and dealing to make this case a slam dunk for himself on the assumption that good old Charley Peterson would be defending the kid. Having Charley as your attorney was like being represented by a dead man, which seemed most appropriate in a murder case: the dead representing the about-to-be-dead. Clay really got a chuckle out of that line the first time he thought of it. Now it didn’t seem so funny. He’d hidden evidence. He’d had a knock-down-drag-out fight with the coroner, Harry Tuthill, to convince him to alter his report-all based on the assumption that he could pull the wool over Charley Peterson’s lazy old dead eyes. And now he had Tracey James on the case. There’s still time. I could go back and fix things. I could drop the charges. Or. . Tracey James is big time-lots of publicity. If I really want to get out of here, I’ve got to take certain risks. .

His session with Harry Tuthill hadn’t gone as smoothly as he would have liked, either. Harry was like him, an old blue blood in a dead-end job. They often had a few drinks on Friday afternoon and bemoaned their present status in the world, which usually meant slamming Bass Creek and most of the sorry souls who resided there. Clay thought he could count on Harry but Harry balked. He was in his sixties, on the verge of retirement. Harry’s window of opportunity had closed a long time ago.

“You want me to leave information out of my report? That’s illegal.”

“Look, Harry, you know what they’re going to do with that information once they get it. This kid is going to sail out of here.” This time, however, Clay wasn’t preaching to the choir.

“I don’t care, Clay, I’m just the medical examiner. I report the findings and let the chips fall where they may. The fact is this woman had semen in her body-I can’t leave that out of my report.”

“You do agree, don’t you, that there were no signs of rape?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that the blood type on the floor and the blood type in the semen were different.”

“Yes.”

“What do you conclude from that?” Clay was practicing his direct examination.

“Either she had sex with someone she knew before she was killed or her lover killed her right after sex.”

“What about the other blood? How do you account for that?”

“I don’t. That’s not my job.”

“Think about it for a minute, Harry. Have you ever seen or read about a lover killing another lover right after sex without some evidence of a battle: the room’s a mess, bite marks, scratch marks?”

“Of course I have, Clay. You’re reaching for straws now. Besides, we haven’t seen the lover. He might have bite marks or scratch marks on him.”

“But there’s no evidence of an argument in that bedroom.”

“Look, she was killed in the bedroom. She had sex that night. She could have had sex with somebody who left the scene and then Rudy could have come over and killed her, or Rudy could have come and left and someone else could have arrived and had sex with her and killed her. Those are the two possibilities, one equally as plausible as the other. In either scenario, she didn’t fight with the person who killed her and there is no evidence of a break-in.”

“You’re wrong, Harry. We’ve got the broken glass in the garbage, blood on the carpet-different type from the semen. We do have evidence of a struggle with a different person than her lover. ” It was an accurate analysis and Harry mulled it over.

“I guess you’re right. We have evidence that she might have struggled with Rudy, which would make him the more likely suspect-assuming that a struggle occurred.”

“You know as well as I do that it was Rudy, Harry. As the evidence stands now, we both know I won’t even be able to get an indictment. This kid is going to walk unless you help me, Harry.” Harry hesitated for a minute before declining Clay’s invitation to become a co-conspirator for the second time.

“No. No. I can’t do it, Clay.”

“Wait a minute, Harry. You were thinking about something. You were thinking about a way to do it, weren’t you?” Harry didn’t answer right away. He was still thinking. Finally, he started thinking out loud.

“Are you certain Charley Peterson is going to handle this case?”

“Yes, I am,” Clay lied. It was a reasonable lie. He was pretty sure the mother couldn’t afford a private attorney, which only left Charley. He knew where Harry was going. If Charley Peterson was on the case maybe he could fudge things a little.

“The report isn’t complete yet. Toxicology tests are still being performed. We could issue a preliminary report. I could inadvertently not mention the presence of semen in the original preliminary report but include it in the supplemental report. There’s no problem in doing that. I could delay the supplemental report for a couple of months, but after that you’re on your own. Anyone who asks for the supplement gets it. And if Charley Peterson is not the lawyer on this case, all bets are off.”

Clay was ecstatic. Harry had given him more than he had asked for, a legitimate way to hide the evidence. Charley Peterson in his normal state of inebriation couldn’t even spell supplement. He’d never ask for it in a million years, especially since the toxicology tests had nothing to do with the cause of death.

Clay’s initial ecstasy at Harry Tuthill’s compromise was all in the past now. Everything had changed dramatically with the appearance of the famous-more like infamous as far as he was concerned-Tracey James. There was no way he could hide the supplement from her.

Harold Victor Fischer had purchased an old two-story Victorian house on the outskirts of Vero Beach to serve as his professional office. Vero was for the most part a typical example of modern urban sprawl, Florida style, littered with high-rises, mobile home parks, and characterless, vanilla homes, block after block, one after the other like a monopoly board gone haywire. U.S. 1, which ran through the middle of town, was bordered on both sides by every restaurant chain in existence, their multicolored signs poking up at different heights like wild, psychedelic weeds on an ill-kept lawn. H.V.’s place stood out like a cultured, well-heeled thumb, which is exactly the way he wanted it-to stick out, that is. Culture wasn’t really his game, although H.V. was a most pretentious son of a bitch.

He’d originally set up his practice in Miami but the competition had been fierce. All his money had gone into advertising. He wasn’t bilingual and besides, everything in Miami was turned upside down. The vast majority of the people were absolutely certifiable, so H.V. typically found himself helping the marginally sane cope with the wholesale insanity of the world around them. It was a unique perspective, one that he never forgot, but as a daily diet he found it terribly unsatisfying-and it was beginning to tear at the borders of his own psyche. So he moved up the road to Vero, which was like taking a trip from Mars back to Earth.

H.V.’s reasons for choosing Vero were similar to Tracey’s. He wouldn’t have the competition of Miami but he’d be in an area large enough to attract a lucrative clientele. With H.V., the emphasis was on lucrative. He was definitely in it for the money.