Phillip Margolin - Ties That Bind

"Let's go in," Miller said. Buckley opened the door to the hallway. Over the radio, Buckley could hear Sergeant Rice talking to Dupre.

"Mr. Dupre, this is Sergeant Rice. I'm on the other side of this door with fifteen armed men. If you look into the corridor, you'll see many more armed men."

Dupre spun toward the window. He looked desperate. Both of his hands were bleeding and he was holding something shiny. Wendell Hayes was sprawled on his back. His throat and face were drenched in blood.

"We don't want to hurt you," Sergeant Rice told Dupre. "If you put down your weapon and surrender we'll just cuff you and return you to your cell. If you don't surrender I can't guarantee your safety."

Dupre's eyes darted to the men in the corridor. They looked intimidating in black, with their weapons and shields.

"What will it be, Mr. Dupre?" Sergeant Rice asked calmly.

"Don't come in here," Dupre shouted.

It was quiet for a moment. Then the rear door crashed into the room and four men swarmed in, their body shields leading the way. The room was narrow and there was nowhere for Dupre to run. He jabbed at the shields as he was driven into the wall. A CERT team member sprayed Mace in his eyes. Dupre screamed, and two of the men grabbed his legs and brought him down while the other two wrestled the knife from his hand. In less than a minute, Dupre was cuffed and in custody. Buckley saw another deputy rush over to Hayes. She searched for a pulse, then shook her head.

Chapter Fourteen.

Court adjourned early, so Amanda decided to head to the Y for a workout. It crossed her mind that she might see Toby Brooks, a possibility that made her uneasy. She tried to stop thinking about him but that was impossible. "This is stupid," she said out loud. "He's a normal guy. He won't hurt you." Then she felt sad. Before the Cardoni case, meeting someone like Toby Brooks would have excited her. The greatest casualty of her degradation at the hands of the surgeon had been her ability to trust people.

In the locker room, Amanda changed quickly, grabbed her goggles, stuffed her long black hair under her swim cap and headed for the pool. As she neared the revolving door, she grew short of breath and felt foolish. Brooks probably wasn't even working out. And if he was, he'd be swimming and there was no way she'd be able to talk to him.

But Toby was at poolside. As soon as he saw Amanda, he grinned and waved.

"Change your mind about swimming on the team?" he asked.

"Nope," she managed. "I'm just here for a workout."

"Too bad. Senior Nationals are in a few months. Then there are the Senior Worlds. They're in Paris, this year."

"Chlorine in Paris. How romantic," she said, forcing a smile.

Toby laughed. The Masters swimmers finished a set and started to group by the pool wall.

"I've got to get these guys moving. Have a good workout."

Toby turned to his swimmers and yelled out their next set as Amanda grabbed fins and a kickboard from a pile on the pool deck. She was putting them on the edge of the pool in front of her lane when she saw Kate Ross walking up the ramp from the locker room, dressed in tight jeans, a blue Oxford work shirt, and a bomber jacket and carrying her shoes and socks. A twenty-eight-year-old ex-cop whose specialty was computer crime, Kate was a muscular five seven, with a dark complexion, large brown eyes, and curly black hair. Several months before, while working as an investigator at Portland's largest law firm, she had asked Amanda to represent Daniel Ames, a first-year associate who was charged with murder. Amanda had helped clear Daniel's name, then hired him as an associate at Jaffe, Katz, Lehane and Brindisi. Shortly after, Amanda lured Kate to the firm.

"Come for a swim?" Amanda asked, her good mood fading because she realized that Kate's appearance meant her workout plans were kaput.

"I don't do water."

"What's up?"

"Judge Robard tried to reach you in Judge Davis's courtroom, but you'd skedaddled. He's waiting for you in his chambers. Your dad sent me to find you."

Amanda's shoulders sagged. Judge Robard had made her life miserable in the few trials that she'd been unfortunate enough to have before him. The only solace in being in his court was that he made life equally miserable for the prosecution. Now he'd ruined her workout. Unfortunately, there was no way that she could turn down an urgent summons from a circuit court judge without ruining her legal career.

"I'll change and go straight downtown," she sighed. "You can go back to my dad and tell him you've accomplished your mission."

"He's cooking dinner for you at his house and wants you to drop by after you see Robard."

Judge Ivan Robard was a fitness fanatic who spent his vacations running marathons. A vegetarian diet and all that exercise had left him with zero body fat on his five-foot-six frame. Robard's sunken cheeks and deep eye sockets reminded Amanda of a shrunken head she'd seen in a New York City museum. It was Amanda's theory that the judge would be much more pleasant if he ate more and worked out less.

Robard was seated behind his desk writing an opinion when Amanda was shown into his chambers. The walls were covered with pictures of the judge racing along city streets in Boston, New York, and other marathon locales, standing on top of mountains, hang gliding, bungee jumping, and white-water rafting. Just looking at them was exhausting.

"At last," Robard said without looking up from his work.

"My investigator dragged me out of the pool," Amanda answered. If she was looking for sympathy from a fellow athlete, she didn't get it.

"Sorry about that," Robard answered without conviction as he stacked the papers on which he was working in a neat pile and finally looked at Amanda, "but we've got a situation."

A punch line from an old joke--"What you mean we , white man?"--raced through Amanda's head, but she held her tongue.

"You heard about Wendell Hayes?"

"It's all anyone's been talking about."

"You know anything about the guy who killed him, Jon Dupre?"

"Only what I read in the paper."

"He's a pimp, a drug dealer. I just heard a prostitution case where he was the defendant."

Amanda suddenly knew the reason for Robard's hasty summons and she didn't like it one bit.

"What happened?" she asked, to stall for time.

"I had to dismiss. The state's key witness no-showed. After I dismissed, she turned up dead. Anyway, Harvey Grant got the bright idea of assigning me the homicide because I handled the other case. So, as I said, we've got a situation. The Constitution says that I have to appoint counsel for Dupre, but that wonderful document doesn't tell me what I'm supposed to do when every attorney I call says that they would rather not represent someone who stabbed his previous lawyer to death."

Amanda knew what Robard wanted her to say but she wasn't going to make it easy for him, so she sat silently and waited for the judge to continue. Robard looked annoyed.

"What about it?" he asked.

"What about what?"

"Miss Jaffe, the one thing you are not is stupid, so don't fence with me. I asked you here because you've got more guts than any lawyer in town, and I need a lawyer with guts on this case."

Amanda knew that he was thinking about Cardoni, and she wanted to tell him that her lifetime allotment of courage had been used up last year.

"You should hear the excuses I've been getting from your fellow advocates," Robard went on. "What a bunch of babies."

"I thought Dupre had the money to hire a lawyer. The papers said his parents are rich."

"They disowned Dupre when he was kicked out of college and decided to deal drugs and sell women."

"What about the lawyer who handled the promoting case?"

"Oscar Baron? Don't make me laugh. He's as scared as the rest. Says Dupre can't afford his fee. And he's got a point. Only millionaires can scrape up the money to pay a lawyer in a capital case. Besides, he's not qualified to handle a death-penalty case. So, what do you say?"