Phillip Margolin - Ties That Bind

"Yeah. What's in this for you? Court-appointed lawyers aren't paid shit. You must be pretty hard up if you'll work for peanuts."

"Trying a death case is a specialty. Very few attorneys have the training to handle a capital case. Judge Robard asked me to represent you as a favor to him."

"Why is that?"

"I'll be straight with you, Jon. He asked me for two reasons: First, I'm a very good lawyer, and second, the other lawyers who could handle death cases were afraid of you."

"And you're not?" Dupre said with a smirk, holding up his manacled hands, giving Amanda another look at the cuts on his hands and forearm.

"You have no idea what I had to go through to get Judge Robard and the jail commander to agree to a contact visit of any kind."

"Yeah," Jon answered sarcastically, "I bet you'd be dying to be locked in with me if these chains were off. You're scared to death."

"Do you think that my fear is unreasonable? Please focus on the fact that I'm willing to fight very hard for you knowing that you murdered your first lawyer."

Dupre leaped to his feet. He looked furious.

"Fuck you, bitch. I told you the last time I didn't murder anyone, and I don't want a lawyer who thinks I did."

The front and rear doors flew open seconds after Dupre leapt to his feet and started screaming at Amanda.

"Please . . ." Amanda started as the guards grabbed Dupre, but her client cut her off.

"Get me out of here," he screamed. The guards obliged.

The doors slammed, temporarily locking Amanda in with her thoughts. This was never going to work. Dupre was a lunatic. He'd murdered two men and he deserved anything he got. It suddenly occurred to Amanda that Dupre's rage had been sparked by her assertion that he had murdered Wendell Hayes. Now that she thought about it, Dupre had also gone ballistic the first time she'd implied that he was guilty. Dupre had insisted that he hadn't killed anyone both times, which was ridiculous in light of the evidence. Then she remembered something that she had forgotten in the excitement, something that had bothered her the first time she met with Dupre and continued to bother her now--something that made her wonder whether it was possible that Dupre was telling the truth.

* * *

Oscar Baron's receptionist buzzed to tell him that he had a collect call from Jon Dupre. Baron debated taking the call, but Dupre could still refer clients to him.

"Hey, Jon. How are they treating you?" Baron asked in a hale-and-hearty tone as though he didn't know that Dupre had gutted a fellow attorney.

"They're treating me like shit, Oscar. They've got me in fucking solitary and they stuck me with a cunt for a lawyer. Some bitch who's scared to be in the same room with me."

"Amanda Jaffe, right?"

"How did you know?"

"She visited me."

"What was she doing at your office?"

Dupre sounded outraged. Baron smiled.

"Calm down. She just wanted the police reports from the case I got dismissed."

"Don't give her shit, Oscar. I'm getting rid of her as fast as I can."

"Did you come up with the dough for my fee?"

"No, I can't make that."

"Then you might want to stick with Jaffe. She's okay."

"I don't want 'okay,' Oscar. This is my goddamn life we're talking about."

"She did that serial case and the case for the associate at Reed, Briggs. She knows her way around."

"Look, I didn't call so you could give me a pep talk about Amanda Jaffe. I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I don't want to talk about it over the phone. Come over to the jail. And don't worry about getting paid. Ally is on the way over with enough money to cover the fee for what I want you to do."

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The offices of Oregon Forensic Investigations were located in an industrial park a few blocks from the Columbia River. Late in the afternoon of the day after her unsuccessful meeting with Jon Dupre, Amanda drove along narrow streets flanked by warehouses until she found the complex where Paul Baylor worked. A concrete ramp led up to a walkway that ran in front of the offices of an import-export business and a construction firm. The last door opened into a small anteroom. It was furnished with two chairs that stood on either side of an end table on which were stacked several scientific journals. She rang a button on the wall next to a door, for assistance. Moments later, Paul Baylor walked into the anteroom. Baylor was a slender, bookish African American with a degree from Michigan State in forensic science and criminal justice, who had worked at the Oregon State Crime Lab for ten years before leaving to set up his own shop. Amanda used him when she needed a forensic expert.

Baylor ushered Amanda into a small office outfitted with inexpensive furniture. A small desk was covered with stacks of paperwork, and a bookcase was crammed with books on forensic science.

"I've got a few questions I wanted to ask you about a new case I've got," Amanda said as she opened her briefcase and took out a manila envelope.

"The Travis and Hayes murders?"

Amanda smiled. "You got it on the first try."

"It wasn't hard. I can't read a paper or turn on my TV without seeing you. I should probably get your autograph."

"If I gave you my autograph you'd be able to sell it and retire. Who'd do my forensic work?"

Baylor laughed as Amanda took a stack of photographs out of the envelope and handed them to him.

"Jail personnel took these right after Wendell Hayes was stabbed to death. What do you make of these cuts?"

Baylor shuffled through the pictures, stopping to study some of them longer than others.

"They're defense wounds," Baylor said when he was ready. "When you have a homicidal attack with a knife, the victim's wounds will normally be deep or long and haphazardly spaced. You're going to find cuts like the ones in the photos on the victim's hands, fingers, palms, and forearms, because he's going to throw up his hands and forearms automatically to ward off the attack, or he'll try to grab the weapon. That's what we have here. A long deep cut on the forearm, a slice on the webbing of the hand, and cuts on the palms and fingers."

"Is there any way that the person wielding the knife could have received those wounds?"

"Sure, if this was a knife fight where both people were armed or one person lost the knife and the other person got it for a while. But those wounds were received by someone who was being attacked."

"Very interesting."

"Not to me. They're exactly what I'd expect to find on Wendell's arms and hands."

"Oh, I agree there. Only these arms and hands belong to Jon Dupre."

Frank Jaffe worked in a spacious corner office decorated with antiques, which was basically unchanged since the firm was founded shortly after his graduation from law school over thirty years ago. When Amanda rapped on Frank's doorjamb, he looked up from a brief.

"Do you have a minute, Dad?"

Frank put down his pen and leaned back. "For you, always."

Amanda threw herself onto a chair that stood before Frank's immense desk and told her father about Dupre's violent reaction when she suggested that he might be guilty of the Hayes and Travis murders and about Ally Bennett's assertion that Senator Travis had attacked Lori Andrews. Finally she told her father about her meeting with Paul Baylor.

"What's your take?" Frank asked when Amanda was through.

"Those defense wounds bother me. Dupre was treated for them immediately after his arrest in the visiting room."

"Any chance they're self-inflicted?" Frank asked.

"Why would he cut himself?"

"To fashion a self-defense argument in a case that's impossible to win any other way."

"Who would believe Dupre, Dad?"

"No one. Which is the problem you're going to have trying to sell this theory to a jury. The logical explanation for those cuts is that Dupre brought the shiv into the visiting room and Hayes somehow got the knife away from him and stabbed Dupre in self-defense. Before you can argue that Dupre acted in self-defense, you're going to have to prove that Hayes smuggled the shiv in, which presents another problem. What motive could Hayes possibly have to attack Dupre?"