William Lashner - Fatal Flaw

Hailey Prouix.

But what had she wanted from me? She had laid on me the same slow seduction, the same banging of the knees that made it seem it was I doing the seducing. But it wasn’t my doing, was it? She followed the script, for some unknown reason of her own devising. What was it that I could have offered her? Why was I worth using?

The questions came crashing down upon me, along with the realization.

“You didn’t kill her,” I said to Guy, as a statement not as a question, though he took it as the latter.

“No, I told you, no. I didn’t. No.”

I glanced at Beth with a nervous hesitation. I wanted to see if belief was on her face, too, and I wanted to see something else. Had she figured it out, the madness behind my method? Had she matched his chronology about Hailey’s secret lover with the bare bones she knew of my failed relationship? Had she matched the dates when both started and both flamed out, filled in the gaps and taken a guess at my motives? She was staring now at Guy and I could read nothing in her expression.

“Why not?” she asked Guy. “She had stolen your money, taken another lover, left you without your family, your career, without a cent or a future. She had used you like a rented mule. Why didn’t you kill her?”

He looked at her strangely, as if it were a question he never considered before. “Because I loved her?”

“Please,” I said loudly, in a voice overflowing with exasperation. “Who loved better than Othello? In the history of the world love has caused more murder than ever it stopped.”

“What stopped you?” said Beth softly.

He didn’t answer right off. He stared off to the side, his face twisted in puzzlement. I expected him to come up with something soulful and religious, something all surface, like the answer of a beauty pageant contestant. I didn’t kill her because I believe that love can make the world a better place and we should shower our fellow humans with affection, not violence. But that’s not what he said, what he said instead was:

“Because it never occurred to me.”

It never occurred to him? It never occurred to him? How could it not have occurred to him in this post-Holocaust, post-9/11 violence-saturated, blood-soaked-blockbuster age of ours? It never occurred to him? He had come up with the perfect answer, because it rang so true. It never occurred to him. Isn’t that what keeps us on the razor’s edge of the straight and narrow more often than not, that falling off never occurs to us? With that answer the vestiges of my doubts were routed. I now believed him. I now believed his entire story.

I had been wrong, wrong from the start, dead wrong.

I had been wrong enough to leap at a false assumption, wrong enough to chase a man through the wet streets of the city, wrong enough to seek to consign a friend to a life in jail or, worse, an execution. I had violated every precept of my lawyer’s oath, had tried to railroad a guilty man, to elevate justice over form, to sacrifice means to an end, and all along I had been flat-out wrong.

There’s the rub with taking the law into your own hands. There may be things upon which to stake your life, at least you should hope so, but upon what can you hold absolute enough to stake the life of another?

It is not enough to suspect, to surmise, to sort of kind of believe. It is not enough. Maybe that’s what due process is, a method, devised over millennia, to allow us to treat our guesses as certainties. We can put you in jail without absolute certainty after we’ve jumped through all the hoops and played the game as fairly as we know how. Due process is not a way toward certainty but a way to handle uncertainty, and when you forget that, you begin to forget that uncertainty is all we ever have.

To the question of how you can represent a man you are certain is guilty, I give this answer: Who the hell can be certain of anything in this world?

So here I was in a universe different than that into which I awoke, representing a man who I now believed was innocent and whose defense I had relentlessly sabotaged from almost the very moment of the crime. Now what was I to do, now how was I to save him, to save myself? Whatever it was, I had to do it quickly, before the wheels I had set into motion fell like a hatchet, smack on Guy Forrest’s head.

“I have to tell you this, Guy,” I said, trying to hide the desperation in my voice. “The evidence against you is overwhelming. Your gun, your fingerprints, the bruise, which you’ll have to admit to if you testify, your attempted flight. They don’t know yet about the money, but if they do, it becomes even worse. I don’t believe you did it, and I’m willing to defend you to the best of my ability, no holds barred, but it might be time to seriously consider their offer.”

“You said we should fight it.”

“Yes, but that was before I learned about Gonzalez. You might win the murder case, but you’d still be up on fraud on the Gonzalez case. You’d still end up in jail. Look. Troy Jefferson offered up man one. You’d serve eight to ten years. I might be able to shave some months off. And I’ll make sure it covers what you did in the Gonzalez case, too. It’s not great, but you’ll be out before you’re fifty, with nothing hanging over your head and a chance to start over.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I know that, Guy. I believe that. But you did cheat the insurance company. And if you go to trial and lose, which with the Juan Gonzalez stuff is more likely than ever, they could keep you in jail for the rest of your life, or even kill you.”

“What about the other man?”

“We can argue he did it,” I said, “and we will. But it cuts both ways. It could also be a reason for you to kill her, jealousy, anger. It’s a dangerous game you want to play. Eight years is hard, but it’s not the end of your life.”

He turned to Beth. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a generous offer,” said Beth. “From what I understand, your father-in-law set it up to avoid a trial and the bad publicity. And to avoid any mention of Juan Gonzalez. I think it makes sense to pursue it.”

“Can I think about it?” said Guy.

“No,” I said. “There isn’t time. If Jefferson gets word of the Gonzalez mess, the deal will disappear. We have to decide now, this instant. Every second is dangerous. Give me authority to make a deal.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have the luxury not to know. You have to decide, now. I strongly suggest you make the deal. Beth strongly suggests you make the deal. It is your decision, but if you don’t decide now, it won’t be there later, and that could be the end.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I need an answer now, Guy. Now. Yes or no. What do you say? Yes or no.”

THE RECEPTIONISTbehind the glass window made us wait in the waiting area.

Mr. Jefferson, the receptionist said, was still in his meeting.

I had called right from the prison and had been told by that selfsame lady that Mr. Jefferson was tied up. I told her it was important, I told her it was urgent, I told her it was about the Guy Forrest murder case and that Troy Jefferson would very much want to speak to me right away.

She repeated her demurrer: “Mr. Jefferson is unavailable at the present instant.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said. “Don’t let him leave before I get there.”

And now here I was.

The receptionist smiled from behind the glass like a civil servant at the end of a long day and told us to please sit and wait. So we sat and we waited.

The waiting area for the DA’s office was in the elevator lobby of the fourth floor of the courthouse. It was a stark and uncomfortable space. It appeared they had bought the furniture secondhand from the office of a failed dentist. You could almost hear the echoes of the screams. A single door with frosted glass, its lock controlled by the receptionist, led to the offices. I tapped my watch, tapped my foot. A heavy woman walked out of the elevator and was immediately buzzed through by the receptionist. I worked on the Jumble in the newspaper left out on the table along with a Newsweek months old. CEZAR was craze. THICY was itchy. But DUGAY,DUGAY. I was stumped on DUGAY. Where was Skink when you needed him?