- Margolin - The Last Innocent Man

“I’m sorry, David. I really am,” she wept, “but there wasn’t any other way. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“Not even telling the truth?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t defend Larry. I thought…It looked so bad. And I still believe he is innocent. But no one else would have.”

David looked at her hard, trying to see behind her ravaged, tear-stained face.

“Innocent?”

“Larry swears he is. I don’t know if…I don’t think he’s lying.”

“But he lied to me about being with you on the evening of the murder.”

“Yes. I told you, that day in your office. We fought. He had dinner with Barry Dietrich, then went back to his office to work. I was sick of it. I never saw him anymore. It was that damn job. Making partner was all that counted. I called him and told him that I was going to leave him.”

As David listened to Jenny, he could hear echoes of his fights with Monica. David sagged and sat down on the bottom of the staircase. Jenny looked spent. She had stopped crying.

“The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. Larry is like a child, self-centered, domineering. Everything had to be what he wanted. That night he came home in a rage. He shouted at me, called me names. ‘I didn’t understand him.’ ‘I didn’t want him to succeed.’ After a while I didn’t even hear what he said. I went upstairs and slammed the door to my room.”

“Your room?” David interrupted.

“Yes. You didn’t know? Of course you didn’t. No, we hadn’t slept together for a month. I told you, things had been bad.

“I heard Larry’s bedroom door slam and it was quiet. I don’t know why I remembered about the fund-raiser. I think the invitation was on my dresser on top of some other mail. I just needed to get out, so I took it and left.”

“And Larry?”

“He was still at home when I drove away. Don’t you see how hard it was for me? I felt so guilty. When I met you, when you made love to me, it was so different. I felt as if you were giving something, not taking, like Larry. I didn’t know what to do. At first I thought I would just leave him. Then I didn’t have the courage. And I still loved him in a way. It was all so mixed up. And it got a little better after that evening. He tried. He cut down on his work a little. Stayed home more. It wasn’t much, but it was an effort, and I was still guilt ridden because I had cheated on him. I didn’t feel as if I’d cheated. It had all been so good. But a part of me felt as if I had betrayed a trust.”

She stopped and he moved over to her, sitting on the floor, letting her rest against him.

“Then Larry was arrested and I realized what night the murder occurred. The evidence looked so convincing. His shirt, our car. That policeman saying it was him. But Larry said he was innocent. That he had stayed home after I left. He swore it to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“I was afraid. I wanted you to represent Larry, because I believed in you. I knew you could clear him. If I told you the truth…reminded you that the murder occurred on the night we met…you would have been a witness against Larry.”

“And now, as his lawyer, I can’t be.”

She looked away from him again and said, “Yes,” in a very small voice.

“So what do we do now, Jenny?” David asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you committed a crime yesterday. You perjured yourself. And so did Larry. And I know about that. Do you know what my duty is under the Canons of Ethics? As an attorney, an officer of the court, I have a duty to tell the judge what you did and a duty to get off the case if Larry won’t recant his testimony. I’m committing a crime and subjecting myself to possible disbarment if I don’t tell Judge Rosenthal about this.”

“You wouldn’t-” Jenny started.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m so mixed up I can’t think.”

David stood up and walked to the door. His feet felt leaden, and he had no heart for anything anymore. The trial, his practice, this woman, his life. Nothing seemed to mean anything. There were no values, no goals.

“David,” she said when he reached the door, “I love you. You know that, don’t you? Tell me you know that I never lied about that.”

David turned to face her. He was not angry at her, just dead inside.

“I know you used me, Jenny. I know you played on my emotions. I know I still love you, but I don’t know if I can ever trust you again.”

“Oh, God, David,” she called after him. “Don’t cut me off like this. Don’t you see? I don’t know if Larry killed that woman or not, but if he’s innocent, you must help him, and if he’s guilty…I couldn’t let him go to prison thinking that he’d gone after that woman because of me.”

THE ROADSIDE FLASHEDby and car horns occasionally broke the stillness. It would be easy to end everything by simply closing his eyes and letting the car take control. When the road began to waver, David shook his head to clear it. He did not want to die. He was certain of that. But life at the moment was confused and a torment.

He had several choices. He could make Jennifer retake the stand and recant her perjured testimony; he could go to the judge if she refused; or he could do nothing. If Jenny recanted, Larry would surely be convicted.

Would that be so bad? Yes, if he was innocent. There was still that possibility. Until tonight David had been convinced of Stafford’s innocence. The pictures discredited Ortiz. Larry’s story was so believably told. But what if he was wrong and Stafford was guilty?

David thought about Ashmore and Tony Seals. He felt sick. Once more he saw the autopsy photographs of the little girls that Ashmore had molested, then killed, and once again he heard Jessie Garza describe crawling down the mountain. What was he doing defending these people?

And Larry Stafford, where did he fit in? David could see the gash in Darlene Hersch’s throat. That was why any lawyer worth his salt fought so hard to keep out pictures of the victims in death. Death could be handled and sweet-talked in the abstract, but pictures made it real for a jury. Made the jury feel and smell and taste the horror that is violent death. David could touch that reality now. The steel shell he had built around his sensibilities had started to crumble with Ashmore, and all his defenses were now down. But his fear of being responsible for setting loose another killer was still at odds with his feelings of love for Jenny. He felt used, he felt a fool, but he still loved her. In the end he no more knew what he would do than he had when he’d left her.

“Iknow everything,” David told Larry Stafford. They were seated in a vacant jury room that Judge Rosenthal permitted them to use for conferences. Stafford was dressed in navy blue with a light-blue shirt and navy-and-red-striped tie. Just the right amount of cuff showed, and his shoes were polished. Only his complexion, turned pasty from too much jail time, did not fit his young-lawyer image.

“I don’t understand,” Stafford said nervously.

“Jenny told me. Oh, you don’t have to worry about her. I figured it out. She didn’t volunteer anything.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean,” Larry answered warily.

David was tired of the games, and just plain tired. He had not slept last night, and he was having trouble handling even the simplest thoughts. He came to the point.

“I know that you and Jenny lied when you testified that you were together on the evening of the murder. I know you had a fight and she left the house. You have no alibi and you both committed perjury.”

Stafford said nothing. He looked like a little boy who was about to cry.