William Bernhardt - Double Jeopardy

Finally he stepped out of the lake, feeling much better. He started to walk on, then thought of Jimmy, back behind him. Alone.

Harold headed back the way he had come, walking, then jogging, then flat out running, the whole time wondering who the hell Thomas J. Seacrest was and how he got himself into so much trouble.

5

8:10 P.M.

TRAVIS SPREAD THE MOROCONI file out on his desk. It was all he could do to suppress his growing nausea. He opened the Maalox he kept in his briefcase and drank straight from the bottle. His stomach had been churning all day long.

Most of the trial attorneys he knew suffered from ulcers; some doctors called it lawyer’s elbow. The tremendous pressure of trial practice was unrelenting. Anyone who handled more than a few trials a year eventually started to feel the cracks in their professional facade.

And this new case was only making matters worse. Travis gazed out his office window at the Dallas skyline. He saw the NCNB Plaza, Dallas’s tallest building, trimmed in green argon light. Through the other window, Reunion Tower, with its illuminated geodesic dome, beckoned to him. It was almost enough to make him forget. Almost—but not quite.

He carefully read the case summary in the pretrial order and scrutinized the snapshots the police photographer had so thoughtfully provided. There were several details Judge Hagedorn had neglected to mention. Hideous details. How the rapists broke the woman’s rib cage with blows from a tire iron. How they urinated on her and in her mouth. How, when they finished raping her the usual way, they went at her instrumentally, with the tire iron and a Coke bottle. How they abandoned the woman, all but dead, bleeding in a dozen places, naked, facedown in the mud, by the side of the road. How she was in the hospital for weeks, and was forced to undergo a double radical mastectomy as a result of her beating.

Travis’s client was Alberto Moroconi. Moroconi had been drinking Scotch and sodas in O’Reilly’s, the off-campus bar where the victim, Mary Ann McKenzie, came looking for her roommate. Moroconi admitted being there, and admitted seeing several men leave shortly after she did, but he claimed he played no part in the rape and torture.

As far as Travis could discern from the prosecutor’s witness and exhibit lists, there was little concrete evidence disputing Moroconi’s testimony. The decision to prosecute him on this rape charge appeared to be based entirely upon Mary Ann’s identification. She picked Moroconi out of a lineup, with the help of more than gentle persuasion from the Dallas PD. Given the poor woman’s mental state, Travis didn’t think it proved anything.

Travis knew the constitutional guidelines for lineups by heart, and he doubted whether those guidelines had been met. Moroconi was the only man in the lineup close to the size, height, and weight description Mary Ann gave for any of her three white assailants. If she was going to identify anyone out of that lineup, it would have to be Moroconi. Travis wondered why Moroconi had been picked up by the police in the first place. They claimed they were acting on a tip from an unnamed informant.

Travis interpreted the facts in the file thus: the police brought in a sucker, pushed the victim for a positive ID, and ran with it to the prosecutor. Which, of course, didn’t necessarily mean Moroconi was innocent, but it did give Travis something to dispute during the trial. To his surprise, he saw no indication in the file that Seacrest ever filed a motion to suppress. Amazing. If Travis could get the lineup ID excluded, everything that followed therefrom also would be inadmissible—fruit of the poisonous tree. Perhaps Seacrest considered that type of tactic beneath him. Travis didn’t. As a criminal attorney, his job was to exculpate his client, period. If he could do so by means of a legal technicality, he was ethically bound to do so.

“Dinner’s here.”

Gail, the firm’s receptionist and secretary, entered Travis’s office with a white Styrofoam container.

“Gail, why on earth are you still here?”

“I’m looking after you, of course. You’d forget to eat altogether, left to yourself. You’d just sit here all night drinking Maalox, wondering why your stomach hurts.”

She probably was right. Now that the subject had been broached, Travis realized he was hungry.

Gail tossed the carryout container on his desk. “Here you go. Chow down.”

Travis peered inside. It was a salad, of course. Doctor’s orders. Dr. Anglis had barely let him squeak by his last insurance-mandated checkup. His blood pressure was too high, his cholesterol count was too high, his ulcer was active, he was twenty-five pounds overweight, and according to Anglis, he was “the most clear-cut Type-A personality” the doctor had seen in his entire career. In short, Travis was a heart attack waiting to happen: The doctor put him on an all-vegetables-and-salads diet and ordered him to get more exercise. As if saying it would make it happen. Travis would’ve loved to exercise more; he hated the way his body had deteriorated since he quit the police force and joined the relatively sedentary legal world. But when? He barely had time to breathe, much less run laps and do sit-ups.

Unfortunately, Dr. Anglis had repeated his orders to everyone in the office, including Gail. She couldn’t make Travis exercise, but she did a thorough job of monitoring his diet.

“Yum, yum,” Travis said, licking his chops in cartoonish exaggeration. “Rabbit food—accept no substitutes.”

Gail smirked. “This one’s a chef salad. Of course, I had them remove all the meats.”

“Which leaves what? Lettuce?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Great.” Travis reached for his wallet. “What do I owe you?”

“My treat.”

“No, no, take a fiver.”

“Just put your money away, Travis. This is the least I can do, considering all you’ve done for me.”

Travis could see this was important to her, so he relented. Gail had been having problems with an ex-felon ex-husband who had suddenly taken a renewed interest in their eleven-year-old daughter, Susan. Gail was terrified he would involve Susan in his miasma of booze, drugs, and orgies. Travis had drafted airtight custody documents and represented Gail at the hearing that almost totally marginalized her ex. He ended up with radically reduced visitation—one Saturday a month, no overnights, and only under Gail’s supervision. After the case was over, Travis tore up the bill, which he knew she could ill afford.

“I’m monitoring the level of your Maalox bottle, too,” Gail announced.

“I’m delighted.”

Gail was a few years older than Travis, not conventionally pretty, but not unpleasant either. A winning personality easily compensated for crooked teeth in Travis’s book.

“You know, Travis, it wouldn’t hurt to take a night off.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

She toyed with a lock of his curly black hair. “Well, I could make a few suggestions.” She sighed, then walked a dancing step toward the door. “Oh well, maybe in another life.”

And a fine life it would be, Travis thought to himself. If only we had several to work with.

“Enjoy your salad.”

“Thanks, Gail. I will.” Travis returned his attention to the photographs. It was best if he didn’t dwell on what he was eating, since there wasn’t much of it and what there was was far from appetizing. Soon he was deep in the case. Time passed as Travis compared statements, examined reports, planned cross-examinations, and tried to discern what really happened.

“Travis, have I mentioned that you work too damn hard?”

Travis, engrossed in his research, started. It was Dan Holyfield, his boss. “About a hundred times, Dan. Make that a hundred and one, now.”