Philip Margolin - Capitol murder

“The FBI may not know where the attack will take place. I don’t know if I can get the information.”

Koshani leaned forward and stared directly into Carson’s eyes. “Pray that you can.”

Lawrence Cooper’s office was in a strip mall in Hyattsville, Maryland, between a liquor store and a nail salon. Cooper rarely had visitors he needed to impress, so the office reception area was furnished with cheap furniture that looked as though it could have been made in a high school shop class. Most of the furniture and furnishings in Cooper’s private office weren’t much better, but his wife had hung hunting prints on the wall behind his desk in hopes of giving the office a little class.

Cooper had an aversion to exercise and the sun. You would expect him to be fat, but he had allergies to so many foods that he ate like a bird and looked anorexic. His chest was sunken, his shoulders stooped, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor. Initial impressions pegged him as weak, but he was tenacious in business and strong-willed if not strong of limb. Cooper earned a respectable living by fighting his way up the food chain, and very little scared him. Steve Reynolds was an exception.

Reynolds appeared in his office shortly after Cooper’s secretary left. Cooper thought his secretary had locked the front door so he was surprised when he looked up and found Reynolds standing in his doorway. Cooper got over his initial surprise quickly, but he didn’t pull out the drawer where he kept a loaded. 38 Special because his visitor was a neatly shaved white man with a styled haircut who was dressed in an Armani suit. Instead, he furrowed his brow, perplexed by the situation, and asked his visitor what he wanted.

Reynolds sat on a plain wooden chair across from Cooper.

“I want to make you some easy money,” he said with a warm smile.

Cooper didn’t return the smile. Life had taught him that there was no such thing as easy money. Still, he was intrigued.

“Talk to me,” he said as he eased open the drawer that held his protection.

Reynolds raised an eyebrow. “There’ll be no need for the gun, Mr. Cooper. Besides, I emptied it last night.”

Cooper looked as though he had not understood Reynolds or understood him but couldn’t get his head around the idea that he had been burglarized. Reynolds waited patiently while Cooper checked the gun. There were no bullets in the chamber. Cooper’s face darkened.

“What the fuck is this?”

Reynolds held up a conciliatory hand. “I apologize, but I don’t like getting shot, and I thought our conversation would go better if neither of us was armed.”

“You know what?” Cooper said, “We’re not going to have a conversation. I don’t converse with assholes who break into my office.”

Reynolds nodded. “I’m not surprised that you’re upset, but hear me out. I’m going to offer you ten thousand dollars in exchange for a favor and another ten once it’s performed.”

The money caught Cooper’s interest. “What kind of favor?”

“I want you to hire four men. You won’t have to pay them to earn the money. You’ll just have to tell your managers to use them.”

Cooper smirked. “What will these gentlemen say when INS asks for their green cards?”

“They’ll say they have them. You won’t get in trouble with the Immigration people.”

“I don’t like this.”

Reynolds sat up and leaned forward. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to do it.”

“And if I don’t?” Cooper answered belligerently.

“This is not a negotiation,” Reynolds said. “Either you do everything I ask of you and make some money or you refuse and your comfortable life will come to an end. And don’t even think about going to the police. That would be a huge mistake. Anytime you get set to contact the authorities, think about how easy it was for me to break into your house last night.”

“My house?”

“Check the dresser in your bedroom. Look under your winter pajamas. The envelope with the ten thousand dollars is folded inside the flannels with the tartan check.”

Transcripts from Clarence Little’s trial for the murder of Winona Benford were piled up on the coffee table in Millie’s living room. An empty mug was perched on top of the transparent plastic cover that protected one of them. Scattered across the living room floor were more transcripts and the police, forensic, and defense investigation reports in the Winona Benford and Carol Poole cases.

Millie put down the police report she had just finished and rubbed her eyes. Then she picked up the coffee mug and picked her way through the legal debris until she reached her kitchen. It was Monday morning, and Millie had risen with the sun to finish rereading all of the paperwork in the two murder cases, a task she had started on Saturday and was about to finish after two twelve-hour weekend days.

In Clarence’s postconviction cases, the issue before Judge Case was whether the state had violated Clarence’s legal rights, not whether Clarence had murdered someone. In preparing for the postconviction hearing, Millie had focused more on the legal issues than on the facts. At Clarence’s new trials, the issue the juries would decide was whether Clarence had killed the two girls, so Millie was rereading everything from a different angle. The more she read, the more uncomfortable she felt.

The state did not have overwhelming evidence that Clarence had murdered Benford or Poole, but the evidence against him was disturbing. Of course the evidence against Clarence in the Erickson case had been very persuasive, and he was totally innocent of that murder. Still…

Millie refilled her coffee mug and walked over to the kitchen window. The leaves on the trees that lined her street were starting to turn from green to gold, and the sun looked cold. Fall was visiting Oregon, and months of rainy, dark days would soon follow.

Millie took a sip of coffee and thought about the jar of severed pinkies that had been discovered while Clarence was on death row. The evidence was significant because the pinkies in the jar matched every one of Clarence’s alleged victims except Laurie Erickson. It was strong circumstantial evidence that the person who had placed the pinkies in the jar had not killed Erickson. The contents of the jar and other evidence pointing to the real murderer had led the state to concede that Clarence had not killed Christopher Farrington’s babysitter.

The discovery of the pinkies had cleared Clarence of one murder, but it raised a disturbing question in Millie’s mind.

An attorney could not be compelled to tell the authorities anything a client confided, but a lawyer had a duty to turn over physical evidence that came into his possession if it related to a crime. One police report mentioned that Brad Miller had given the jar with the pinkies to Paul Baylor, a private forensic expert, to make sure they were properly preserved, and a partner in Miller’s firm had told the authorities where to find the bodies. Everyone assumed that Brad Miller had unearthed the jar and the two decomposing bodies that had been buried in the Deschutes National Forest.

If it was Miller who had unearthed the bodies and the jar, who had told him where they were buried? Millie had looked through the file searching for the answer. It was nowhere to be found because there was no record of an interview with Brad Miller. What upset Millie was the possibility that Clarence had told Brad where to find the evidence. That would explain why no one had interviewed Miller, who would have been compelled by law to assert the attorney-client privilege to protect his client.

Had Clarence been lying to her all along when he claimed he was innocent? That was the only conclusion she could draw if Clarence knew where the bodies and fingers were buried. The impressions Millie had formed while representing Clarence convinced her that he was a victim. All of a sudden, she wasn’t so certain.