Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

"Are you this optimistic with all your clients?"

Smith flashed a grin. "Just the ones that can write a check and the check for murder one is a hundred thousand dollars. Up front. We get down to fifty grand, you put in another fifty. We keep going like that until the money runs out or the jury comes back."

Mason stood against the wall, shackled hands hanging in front of him. He sometimes apologized to clients when he told them about his fees. Smith's were no different than his. The difference was in the delivery. Mason felt like he was being hustled, but that he didn't have a choice. He'd gotten what he'd asked for.

"I don't have my checkbook with me," he said.

"Don't you worry," Smith said. "Like I told you, your auntie is a force of nature." One of the guards knocked at the door. "Let's go ask Judge Pistone what he had for breakfast. That way, we'll know what kind of mood he's in."

***

Judge Joseph Pistone was a small man with a heart to match, hunch-backed from years spent on the bench looking down at the papers in front of him, looking up at lawyers and litigants only if provoked. Mason had made the judge look up more often than most lawyers, a distinction that served his clients but not himself.

Pistone was an associate circuit court judge. His days were spent listening to an endless parade of minor disputes that earned decent ratings for TV judges, but offered no entertainment value to the people who came before him. When he wasn't handling the adult abuse docket, the deadbeat dad docket, or the landlord-tenant docket, he heard criminal arraignments. Veteran lawyers understood that the bail he set rose or fell depending on which side incited his chronic indigestion.

The preliminary hearings he conducted to determine whether a defendant should be bound over for trial in the circuit court were models of efficiency. The result rarely deviated from his monotone recital that the state had established reasonable grounds to believe that the defendant had committed the crime with which he was charged.

Arraignments were equally perfunctory. Defense lawyers usually waived a formal reading of the charge, entered a plea of not guilty, and hoped that the bail bondsman was in a generous mood. Judge Pistone's courtroom was small, his docket rarely attracting a crowd, arraignments no different. A handful of defense attorneys waited their turn as an assistant prosecutor worked her way through a stack of files; the judge exercised his gavel, mumbling "next case."

Mason heard the buzz before one of the deputies opened the door to the courtroom. It was the chatter of the lawyers and reporters that had elbowed their way into the courtroom, a seat at his arraignment being the hottest ticket in town. Mason had never sought the limelight. His cases had shoved him into the glare. He was good copy for the media and tough competition for his brethren.

Reporters had packed the courtroom, certain of a good story for the six o'clock news or the morning edition. His competitors were there to watch him go down. Some were sympathetic, the kind who knew that everyone took their turn in the barrel. Some silently cheered, the kind who watched NASCAR races hoping to see a wreck.

The noise stopped when Mason entered, the last sound a collective gasp. He stutter-stepped toward the counsel table on the far side of the courtroom. His hands and feet were manacled, and deputies were at his side. Claire, Harry, Blues, and Rachel Firestone were in the first row of spectator seats behind his table. He nodded to them, mouthing his thanks, taking his seat, wishing Abby was there. He knew why she wasn't. She had begged him too many times to show up now and tell him she told him so.

Patrick Ortiz sat at his table, an assistant nervously drumming a pen until Ortiz took it from her. He pretended not to notice the crowd or Mason as he walked past.

Dixon Smith leaned over the rail, whispering to Blues, when the judge's bailiff instructed everyone to rise. Smith turned and cupped Mason's elbow as Mason stood.

"Be cool," Smith told him.

"The court calls the case of State v. Mason. Counsel, state your appearances," Judge Pistone said, his chin aimed at his lap, scribbling notes on the docket sheet.

"Patrick Ortiz for the state, your Honor."

"Dixon Smith for the defendant, Lou Mason. We waive reading of the charges and enter a plea of not guilty."

"Bail?" Judge Pistone asked.

"We ask that the defendant be released on his own recognizance," Smith said before Ortiz could answer.

Judge Pistone looked up, leaned back in his chair and held up his hand as Ortiz started to reply. "You're slow off the mark today Mr. Ortiz, but you'll get your turn. Mr. Smith," the Judge continued, "have you ever known any judge to release someone charged with capital murder on their own recognizance?"

"No sir," Smith answered.

"Then why would you make such a ridiculous request, knowing that I'll never grant it?"

"It's no more ridiculous than what the prosecutor is going to ask for, especially if he opposes any bail."

"I've denied bail in many murder cases," the judge said. "Why will the prosecuting attorney oppose bail in this case?"

Smith moved from behind his counsel table to the center of the courtroom, placing himself between the judge and Ortiz, blocking out his opposition. Elbows angled out from his hips, hands open, he filled the stage he had set.

"Mr. Ortiz is going to tell you that this was a heinous crime-that Mr. Mason is a lawyer and that lawyers are held to some higher standard because they are officers of the court. He is an officer of the court but that doesn't mean he gets any less justice or due process than the lowest born. The prosecutor is going to tell you that there's overwhelming evidence of Mr. Mason's guilt and that that makes him a flight risk and a danger to the community. Mr. Ortiz is going to tell you all of that and then ask you to set bail so high Mr. Mason can't possibly post it or deny it outright."

"Mr. Ortiz," Judge Pistone said. "Sounds like Mr. Smith has heard you make that speech before, as have I."

Ortiz rose, strolled past Smith, and rested his forearm on the shelf beneath the judge's bench that lawyers used during trial when they wanted to tell the judge something they didn't want the jury to hear. He turned toward the audience, ignoring Smith, and smiled, covering his irritation that he had let Smith get out of the box ahead of him.

"Your honor, it was true the first time I said it and it's even truer today," he said, pivoting back toward the judge, both hands on the shelf, shrinking the courtroom to an intimate box that excluded Mason and his lawyer. "This was a cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The defendant lured Sandra Connelly to an office park at night when no one would be around to interfere with his plan. He has admitted shooting her with his own gun and has made up the biggest fish story since Jonah and the whale to blame it on some mysterious assailant. There's a very good argument to be made that bail should be denied."

"If there is, Your Honor, that's not it," Smith said, joining Ortiz at the bench, crowding the prosecutor. "We're not here to try this case. If we were, you'd hear evidence that the killer disabled Mr. Mason with a stun gun, fired the fatal shot, put the gun in Mr. Mason's hand, pulled the trigger a second time to frame Mr. Mason, and then tried to make Mr. Mason kill himself."

Smith returned to his counsel table, then paused enough to let the scenario he'd painted sink in. He drew the judge's attention away from Ortiz who was forced to turn his back to the judge so he could hear the rest of Smith's argument. Standing behind Mason, his hands on Mason's shoulders, he continued.

"If the killer had succeeded, Mr. Ortiz would say it was a murder-suicide and call it a day. The killer didn't succeed because Wilson Bluestone, a former homicide detective, chased the killer away. The court knows Mr. Mason. He's a well-respected lawyer who has lived in this community all of his life. Sandra Connelly was his friend and former partner. There's nothing more important to him than clearing his name and finding out who killed her. He's not going to flee and he's not a threat to anyone. Mr. Ortiz hasn't got a motive for Mr. Mason to have killed Ms. Connelly and he hasn't got a reason for Mr. Mason to be a threat to anyone else," Smith said, leaving Mason for the podium between the counsel tables.