John Nance - 16 Souls

“How about the success of an appeal?”

“You’ll have a better shot with an appeal, but it’s not a slam dunk. What’s really needed is a legislative change to prevent this kind of miscarriage of justice from ever happening again. Oh, and Judith, one more item. After you boy’s little mortality-threatening stunt on Long’s Peak? Expect Gonzalez to vacate bail and jail him immediately after the verdict as a flight risk, no pun intended.”

She sighed deeply, eyes averted downward as she thought about the agony of having to prepare Marty Mitchell for the worst.

“Judith, you breeding any rabbits?”

She jerked her head up suddenly. “Excuse me? Oh! Sorry. I… well, I’ve been puzzled by Grant Richardson’s conduct.” She outlined the refusal to offer a plea bargain and the apparent anger driving his prosecution and having unleashed the firm’s private investigator as early as possible to find reasons. “I just thought there might be some personal animus that I could use as a basis to seriously question the indictment on grounds of misconduct. I even stated that to the news people the day after Mitchell tried to kill himself.”

“Yes. I saw that performance, Judith. Very polished, very professional — and very dangerous. You know my thinking on trying cases in public.”

“I do, but I’m very worried and maybe a bit desperate to crack this. Jenks, you know him personally, don’t you?” she asked.

“We’re talking Richardson, right? Not the judge?”

“Grant Richardson, yes.”

“I know him, but I don’t like the little pontificating weasel. I even caught him cheating at golf.”

“Can you think of any connection he’d have with any of the victims of the crash? I ran every name through every possible connection or family link I could think of, but found nothing.”

“Grant’s an arrogant climber who wants to be president and doesn’t care who he steps on along the way. I don’t think the man has any principles, and of course we don’t need any more people like that in government. But I tell, you, Judith, it’s hard for me to imagine Richardson caring for anyone deeply enough to want to avenge their death. It’s just not like him. I wish I had a better forecast for you… I think the jury will have no choice but to convict, because you can be certain the jury instructions Gonzalez will approve are going to be simple and tough. You know, if there are clouds in the sky, you must convict. No latitude.”

“And no justice.”

“Hey, young lady,” he said with a grin. “Where do you get off thinking this is a system of true justice? We’re just working at it. That’s why we call it a practice.”

Near Denver International Airport

Perhaps it was the darkened interior of the large hangar-like warehouse, or maybe he was losing the ability to come up with creative adjectives. But the only word Scott Bogosian could think of to describe the atmosphere in the warehouse was ‘spooky.’

The Boeing 757 had not been torn to shreds in the crash, but the fuselage had broken along what was commonly called a ‘production splice,’ and the two major parts of the fuselage sat grotesquely twisted and forlorn on the concrete floor, the wings and engines removed, surrounded with a jumble of various tagged parts that had come off the bird.

The landing gear and the tires in particular were Scott’s main focus, and his escort — the head of the local office of the National Transportation Safety Board — had been more than accommodating when Scott called.

“I hate to bother you,” he’d begun, “…but there’s a part of the raw accident report on Regal Twelve that’s bothering me.”

In fact, it was two things: an unusual lateral cut on one side of a main gear tire mentioned in the factual report and almost visible in one of the color photos of the wreckage; and, the insistence of the captain that lights had suddenly appeared on the runway just ahead. The common assumption seemed to be that he’d mistaken a glimpse of the approach lights and misunderstood, thinking they came from a misplaced snowplow still on the runway. There must have been something unusual to explain why a competent captain would attempt a dangerous go-around on fumes and with a broken airframe on his right wing.

But where had that cut on the tire come from? Was it pre-existing, or had the 757 hit something other than the runway that night?

And then there was that one additional detail from his own memory that kept nudging Scott: Fresh tire tracks in the deepening snow that couldn’t have been made by a behemoth fire truck. He remembered them with crystal clarity. They had been small tracks, like those a car or pickup would make, going in one direction as the fire truck he’d been riding in turned in another. Admittedly, Scott thought, his sense of both direction and location that night were markedly poor. The tracks he saw could be easy to explain, and yet, considering the fact that the captain was adamant that lights had appeared on the runway ahead, the question was inevitable: was there any substantive proof that a vehicle had, in fact, been on the runway? What vehicle had made the tracks he saw, and why?

The NTSB rep had asked if Scott would like to take a closer look at the wreckage, and offered a field trip to the warehouse near Denver International where they were storing it pending the completion of the investigation.

“It’s all been tagged and photographed extensively so, I don’t want you touching or moving anything, but you can look at anything you like.”

“Where are the main gear tires?” Scott asked, following his host’s guidance to a jumble of twisted landing gear parts and tires. He moved carefully around each one, trying to recall which tire of the four on the right main landing gear had a lateral cut, but found it quickly.

Scott looked up at the investigator.

“Let me just sit here for a second and look at this and think, if you don’t mind,” Scott said.

“Sure,” was the response, and the NTSB rep paced slowly away, trying not to appear bored as Scott took out a pocket flashlight and began examining the cut.

Present Day — Afternoon of September 5, the day before the start of trial

The so-called ‘war room’ of Walters, Wilson, and Crandall’s gleaming main offices in downtown Denver had never been used for a criminal trial. Judith had commandeered both the war room and the firm’s treasury to pay for whatever help was needed to defend the Mitchell prosecution — and also to fund comfortable hotel rooms a block from the offices. With Marty living in Boulder and Judith only a few miles closer to Denver, avoiding an exhausting daily commute and the chance of being late for court was more than worth the expense. From the Hilton, the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse was a mere five blocks away.

One of the senior partners, Roger Crandall, had started pushing back weeks before against the growing expenses. But Judith’s none-too-subtle reminder that he, himself had been largely responsible for bullying her into taking the assignment rapidly ended the conversation.

“Whatever you need, Judith,” became the watchword.

Unlike the glass-walls of the main conference room, the war room was larger and fully enclosed, with walls of fine oak paneling dominated by a highly polished walnut conference table covered in an avant-garde tablecloth of legal papers, exhibits, and pleadings. Judith was the commanding general of this army of evidence, assisted by two paralegals, an outside criminal defense attorney, and two in-house legal associates — young eighty hour-a-week partner wannabes intrigued that their stiff, white collar, corporate law firm was hip deep in a criminal case.