Philip Margolin: Capitol murder

“What about you, Brad?” Jake asked.

“I’ve got a position as a legislative assistant on the staff of Senator Jack Carson of Oregon,” Brad said. “I start next week.”

“That should be interesting,” Dana said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“You don’t like him?” Brad asked.

“I’ve never met the guy, so I don’t know what he’s like personally, but his politics suck. I’ll be amazed if he gets reelected the way he kisses up to terrorists.”

“He doesn’t kiss up to terrorists,” Brad answered defensively. “He’s said time and again that he backs our efforts to deal with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He just wants a sane approach to our political strategy in the Middle East.”

“A sane policy would involve nuclear weapons. I wouldn’t mind seeing that whole area turned into a parking lot.”

“Whoa, amigos,” Jake interjected. “We are not going to let politics ruin a perfectly good dinner. Rancor is bad for digestion.”

“I second that motion,” Ginny said. “No politics at the dinner table, children.”

Dana glared for a moment and gave Brad and Ginny a glimpse of the side of her personality that was truly scary. Dana knew no limits when it came to violence, and Brad was glad he was not her enemy.

Dana shifted gears quickly. “All right. I’ll get off Brad’s knee-jerk liberal back.”

“And I’ll agree to a truce with this fascist,” Brad answered with a grin.

“I hope that this is the most controversy we’re involved in all year,” Ginny said, “or the rest of our lives, for that matter.”

“I’ll second that,” Brad said. “I hope the rest of our lives are boring and that nothing of consequence ever happens to us again, ever.”

“That’s not going to happen if you’re working in the Senate,” Jake said.

“I meant in our personal lives. If I never see another serial killer or assassin again, it will be too soon. I’ve had it with excitement. That’s why I married the dullest woman I could find.”

“Hey,” Ginny said, slapping him playfully.

The foursome joked back and forth for the rest of the meal. While they waited for the bill, they decided to go to a nearby bar with live jazz that Jake knew about. When the check came, they cracked open their fortune cookies and read them out loud. Everyone laughed when Jake’s slip told him that he was going on a long journey. An inheritance was in Dana’s future, and Ginny was going to meet a dark, handsome stranger, which got Jake going.

“What’s your fortune?” Dana asked Brad.

“It’s pretty bland,” Brad answered, “It just says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ ”

Jake threw his head back and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Brad asked.

“You’ve never heard that before?” Jake asked.

“No.”

“Well, my friend, that is an old Chinese curse.”

When Millie Reston woke up, the sun had not yet risen in Portland, Oregon, and it was well before her alarm was set to go off. She wasn’t surprised. It had taken forever to get to sleep; then she’d been up every two hours. It was nerves, pure and simple, and there was a good reason for them.

When Millie was a child, her favorite fairy tale was Rapunzel. She would listen to her mother read the story and imagine that she was the beautiful princess locked in the tower who let down her long golden hair so the handsome prince could climb up her tresses and rescue her.

As she grew up, Millie became painfully aware that her looks weren’t much to talk about. She was gawky. Her hair was dull brown, not gold, and frizzy and unmanageable. Millie’s skin was far from smooth. She wasn’t fat, but she was overweight and her figure was lumpy. Millie did have one serious boyfriend in college, but that hadn’t worked out. Since then her social life had been bleak, and she had finally come to accept the fact that no one with or without royal blood was waiting for her.

Millie’s professional life was as depressing as her social life. Her grades in college had been good, but she didn’t perform well on standardized tests like the LSATs, so she’d gotten into only second-tier law schools. Millie had graduated in the top third of her class, but the big firms wouldn’t even look at graduates who weren’t on the law review or from an elite law school. She had hoped that some of the smaller firms might want her. When they didn’t, she had been forced to hang out a shingle, and she’d been eking out a living ever since, handling divorces, small claims, and court appointments.

Then Clarence Little came into her life and everything changed. Clarence had been sentenced to death three times for the sadistic murders of three young women, one of whom was Laurie Erickson, an eighteen-year-old who had been abducted while babysitting for Christopher Farrington when he was the governor of Oregon. The authorities believed that Little had actually killed thirteen women because that was the number of severed pinkies that had been found in a jar buried in the Deschutes National Forest.

After Farrington became the president of the United States, Brad Miller, an associate at Oregon’s largest law firm, proved that Little had been framed for Erickson’s murder. When Miller left Oregon to clerk at the United States Supreme Court, Millie had been appointed to represent Little in his postconviction cases.

At nine o’clock, Judge Norman Case would reveal his decision in Clarence’s cases. Millie was certain that he would send them back for new trials and her triumph in Clarence’s case would bring her the notoriety that had escaped her so far. She foresaw new clients willing to pay large fees for an attorney who had prevailed in the most notorious murder case in the history of Oregon, a case that had been covered by every major American news outlet and was front-page news all over the world.

Millie’s father was a doctor, her mother was a college professor, one of her brothers was a neurosurgeon in Seattle, and the other had gone to Columbia for law school and was a partner in a Wall Street firm. Millie’s parents doted on the boys. Though they tried to hide it, she knew that they viewed her as a disappointment. If she won Clarence’s case, she would finally gain their respect.

More important, she would be saving the life of someone she loved. It was Rapunzel in reverse. The handsome prince was caged on death row, and Millie Reston was going to save him from the prison in which he had been unjustly incarcerated. For Millie believed with all her heart that Clarence was innocent.

The first time she went to the penitentiary to meet Clarence, she had been a wreck. The press had portrayed him as a monster who got sadistic pleasure out of torturing young women in the most hideous ways. But Clarence was nothing like the vicious beast in those news stories. He was charming, considerate, and soft-spoken. He took a real interest in her life and always asked Millie how she was doing. She had been surprised by her attraction to a man who was alleged to be Oregon’s worst serial killer, but he seemed so sincere, and he was so warm and had treated her with respect that she rarely received from a man.

Clarence insisted that he was innocent, and he cited the Erickson case as proof that his convictions were in error. Millie had been leery of his protestations of innocence, but the more she learned about Clarence, the more she believed him. He was an educated man with undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. He had been employed by a reputable firm. His neighbors and coworkers had told the police that Clarence was a bit of a loner but he also participated in company social functions and was friendly at work and to the people in his neighborhood. No one could believe that Clarence was a sadistic murderer and many of those interviewed had assured the police that there had to be a mistake.