John Nance - 16 Souls

The old friend who’d recommended the Churchill as their meeting place waved to him from the far corner, near the bookcase, and Scott moved to greet him.

“Hope you don’t mind, Scotty,” he said, “…but I haven’t had one of these in months.” He held up the lit Rocky Patel. “And, I suppose it’s not too early for a scotch. What’ll you have?”

A waitress materialized and Scott ordered coffee as he sat down.

“How long has it been since we’ve seen each other?” Scott asked.

“Well… since the paper folded, probably. We started working together back in the 80’s if you’ll recall.”

Scott laughed. “Yeah, I do. Others do, too! A friend… in fact, the chief ranger up in Rocky Mountain National… remembered you recently as the guy carrying a sack of Nikons.”

“About right,” he laughed. “But that was back when dinosaurs walked the earth and we used something called film. Nowadays I dance with the pixels!”

“Which is why I wanted to see you,” Scott replied.

“Uh, oh. Not a social occasion, huh? Business?”

Scott pulled an 8x10 photo from a thin folder and slid it over the table.

“This is one of yours, right?”

The veteran news photographer studied the shot for a second. “Yep. That’s one of mine. I don’t know the exact date, but sometime in late January.”

“That was taken at the funeral of one of the Regal Airlines crash victims, as I recall?”

“Yes. I remember, her name was Martha Resnick. The teenage girl killed in the crash. Why are you interested?”

Scott sighed. “I’m trying to figure out why our district attorney is so damned determined to put this airline captain in prison. The captain of the Regal Air crash in January.”

“Right. Just doing his job, I guess, right?”

“Well, Richardson is making a lot of people in aviation very angry by charging the guy with murder and really stretching the law to do so, but the odd thing is, he’s all but snarled about it in news clips, like he really hates that pilot. Why the intensity? I can’t find any evidence or even rumors that he and the captain knew each other or had ever met. I checked school records, newspaper morgues, a world of databases, military records… you name it. Nothing. So, I have to wonder, was there was someone he knew in that accident? Someone who’s death upset him? I haven’t found any connection yet, but I thought it might be a big clue if he had attended any of the funerals.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t know, but that’s where you and this shot come in. I looked at the newspaper and online coverage and saw your shot and when I looked closely, there’s this one guy standing just behind the main family group who might, just might, be Grant Richardson. I just can’t see his face.”

“So… you’re hoping I have more shots in the file, and maybe one or two of them might show him?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t know, Scotty, but I’ll look. You mentioned you’re doing a book on that crash, right?”

“I’m really close to making a launch decision, yes. But there’s no real hurry.”

“A lot of very shaken people came off both those planes.”

Scott sighed. “Probably none more so than a woman on the 757 who thought her fiancé was in the cabin of the Beech on their wing. Lucy Alvarez. She was sitting right across from them and was convinced she’d seen him in one of the windows.”

“If he was aboard the commuter, though, he lived. Right?”

“Well,” Scott began, “…after she lived through hell, it turns out he was at her place in Denver with a dead phone wondering where the hell she was. He’d ditched his business trip to be with her, and she was angry at him and fleeing to Florida.”

“So they’re probably married now?”

“Nope. Broke up,” Scott replied. “Survivor’s guilt was part of it.”

“You do know the trial is coming up in two days, right?”

“This has nothing to do with the timing of the trial, and in fact, the captain’s lawyers probably already have this question about Richardson answered. I just can’t stop wondering.”

“Tell you what,” the photographer said. “Rather than emailing, I’ll dump everything I shot at that funeral on a flashdrive and get it to you. It won’t be many pictures… I was taking pains to be very discreet and respectful.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. Who knows. One of the frames might show Richardson passing money to a Russian prostitute or something else deliciously salacious.”

Present Day — September 4

Office of the Managing Partner — Walters, Wilson, and Crandall, Denver

One of the primary reasons Judith Winston had accepted the post-law school job offer from Walters, Wilson, and Crandall so many years ago was the warmth of Jenks Walters, one of the cofounders. With a fearsome reputation as a corporate litigator, personally he was as jovial and friendly as he was a truly excellent lawyer. Compared to the only other living senior partner, Roger Crandall — who was cold, humorless, and always gave the impression of being royally pissed off about something — Jenks was somewhere between a grandfatherly entity and a very sharp colleague.

Now, Judith needed the latter.

She had spent the previous fifteen minutes briefing the senior partner on the Mitchell prosecution, and he had reviewed the pleadings as well as a particularly brilliant paper she had commissioned from an outside expert on the law pertaining to sea captains and airline captains and their emergency authority.

“Judith, great preparation as always. I said you’d have no trouble rising to the challenge of a criminal case, but… you’ve got to understand the basic equation here. Judge Gonzalez is an angry little man with a couple of huge chips on his shoulder who has little use for arcane legal theory. I tried a fairly simple corporate case before him several years ago and he, honest to God, actually told me to cut out all the ‘legal schmeegal’ arguments and just state the law. I was stating the law, but he didn’t have the patience, or perhaps the understanding, to follow.”

“He is a lawyer, right?”

“Yes, and I checked up on him. He was fairly high in his law class at UNM in Albuquerque. But he just doesn’t have the patience. And… that’s why I’m bringing this up. That paper you commissioned may only be useful on appeal. All it’s likely to do for Gonzalez is irritate him.”

Judith had been standing, more or less gazing out of the window toward the front range of the Rockies while Jenks sat back in his plush desk chair and studied her. With the last statement, Judith turned to face him, her stomach tightening as the slight bravado she’d felt evaporated.

“Jenks, you… you think we’re going to lose this?”

Jenks Walters looked at her for a long time before answering.

“Well, Gonzalez is going to let Richardson put on as much of a show as he wants, and Grant is more actor than lawyer so he’ll play to the jury, and you already expect him to read the criminal statute word for word which, as you know, clearly says that if the defendant knowingly caused a death he’s guilty of second degree. Judge Gonzales is not going to allow anything in regarding the broader law of the air and sea, and… on top of all that… while I don’t necessarily disagree about putting your captain on the stand…”

“Bottom line, Jenks?” she interrupted.

“They’ll convict him,” he shot back without a pause. “They won’t freaking have a choice, unless you can pull an entire warren of rabbits out of your hat… and you don’t normally wear hats, to torture the metaphor.”