M.J. Rodgers - For The Defense

The restaurant catered to business clientele, its patrons appropriately attired. But Jack had taken off his suit coat and tie, opened the collar of his shirt and rolled its sleeves to the elbows. Despite the lack of sunshine, he wore large reflective sunglasses and—what was strangest of all—a false beard.

After the waiter had taken their orders and scurried away, the reason for Jack’s altered appearance finally occurred to Diana.

“Do you still get recognized when you go out in public?” she asked.

“Enough that I do my best to avoid it.”

“How do fans react to seeing a screen villain in the flesh?”

“Depends on the fan. The nice ones smile and ask for my autograph.”

“And the others?”

“They demand to know why I stole my uncle’s business while he was in the hospital with a brain tumor, refused to give my nephew part of my liver when he required a transplant, drove my horse-racing competitor to suicide, seduced my sister’s best friend when she was in mourning, denied her baby was mine and then tried to murder her husband when he returned from the Amazon—having not been killed in the plane crash after all—only to find he was my long-lost brother who had been raised in the orphanage when we were separated as infants.”

She shook her head in amusement. “My, my, you were busy. I must have missed taping a few of the shows.”

“I’m surprised you taped any. You don’t strike me as a soap fan.”

“Mel was writing a paper that involved your TV character, and my assignment was to preserve your performances via the VCR,” she admitted. “You might find her conclusions interesting reading.”

“If Mel wrote the paper, I might find her conclusions above my reading comprehension.”

He was smiling, and Diana suddenly found herself smiling back. She knew few adults—and no men—who would have felt comfortable enough with themselves to admit that, even in jest.

This man had a couple of nice points about him.

The waiter delivered Diana’s seafood salad and Jack’s sliced roast beef along with their iced teas. Diana realized she was quite hungry and dug in. Her first bite tasted heavenly. This sure beat yogurt and an apple at her desk.

“I understand why you don’t want Connie convicted of murder,” he said between bites. “That would be unjust.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” she said, and she was. But she was cautious, too. “Now tell me why you feel that way.”

She studied his face for any sign of the confidence with which he’d greeted her that morning. Or the captivating attention he’d lavished on Connie. But his sunglasses and beard hid so much of his face that reading any expression was next to impossible.

“Connie isn’t capable of intentionally squashing a bug, much less a man,” he said. “I can’t imagine that anyone talking with her for five minutes could think otherwise.”

Actually, Diana knew a lot of people too cynical to see her client for who she was. She was relieved to learn Jack wasn’t one of those people. That told her something important about him that nothing else could have. He did have some genuine emotional substance beneath the polished surface.

“Have you told the prosecutor what happened?” he asked.

Diana’s mouth was full of chunks of tender shrimp and fresh avocado. She shook her head in response.

“I think you should. Any prosecutor who heard Connie’s story would understand that she wasn’t responsible for her actions at the time she ran over Bruce Weaton.”

Diana swallowed before responding. “Any prosecutor in the wonderful world of TV maybe. In real life our Chief Prosecutor has too much time and effort invested in proving Connie’s guilt to entertain any thoughts of her possible innocence.”

“You don’t think he’d care about getting to the truth?”

“All George Staker cares about is arranging the facts in front of a jury so he wins the case. If I told him Connie’s story, he not only wouldn’t believe me, he’d do everything within his power to use the information against her.”

“You’ve been up against Staker before,” Jack guessed.

Diana nodded.

“Tell me about it.”

She sipped her tea as she gave his request some careful thought. It would be fair to tell him, she supposed. If he stayed on this case, he would need to know exactly what he’d be up against. Relating the basic facts should be enough.

“My client was a retired military man in his sixties, taking care of his wife who had terminal cancer,” she began. “He got up to attend to her in the middle of the night and inadvertently gave her too much medication. In the morning, he found her dead. Staker claimed the man had deliberately given his wife an overdose to collect on her term life insurance that was due to expire. He charged him with murder.”

“Are you sure your client was innocent?”

“Positive. I spoke to the hospice nurse. She’d visited the night my client’s wife died and administered pain medication without mentioning that fact to my client. He was asleep on the couch, exhausted from caring for his wife. When he was awakened a few hours later by his wife’s moaning, he gave her another dose of medication, assuming she hadn’t had any. When I learned all this, I went to Staker and asked him to drop the charges.”

“He didn’t,” Jack guessed.

“And he used what I told him to strengthen the state’s case. In his opening statement to the jury, he said the hospice nurse had spent many nights at my client’s home, implying they were having an affair. When the hospice nurse got on the stand, Staker cross-examined her about her recent divorce and asked if she was lying because she wanted my client’s wife dead so she could be with him.”

“And her denial didn’t carry any weight,” Jack said, “because the force of the accusation was enough to get the jury to believe the affair was true.”

Diana nodded. “I’m always amazed how ready people are to think the worst about someone without a lick of proof.”

“Your client was convicted?”

Diana put down her fork, her appetite suddenly abandoning her. “He took his own life.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jack had spoken the words softly. Without his impressive array of facial expressions and tonal range, he still sounded very sincere. Diana wondered how he’d managed to do that. Was that ability part of his training, or could it be she was seeing the real him?

“When did this happen?” he asked after a moment.

She hadn’t thought she’d share this next part. Now she realized she wanted to.

“Two years ago. I’m still not able to discuss the case dispassionately. Maybe I never will be. My client was a good man who loved his wife dearly. He was depressed over her death and filled with guilt for having had a part in ending her life prematurely, however unintentional.”

“Is that why he killed himself?”

“I think he would have come out of his depression if he hadn’t been unfairly accused and tried. He left a letter, thanking me for believing him and asking me to make sure that the hospice nurse was not victimized.”

“What did Staker say when you showed him the letter?”

Diana spoke the words through a clenched jaw. “He said he wished the guy hadn’t killed himself before the jury had reached their guilty verdict because he was robbed of another win. Staker was competing with the prosecutor in a neighboring county for most convictions within a calendar year.”

Jack called Staker a filthy name, so filthy in fact that Diana decided right then that she liked Jack very much.

“Is Staker in another competition?” he asked, his tone cool with contempt. “Or does he have a vendetta against Connie?”