'First, anything you tell me is confidential, which means I won't tell anyone about our conversations without your permission, except the attorneys in my firm who are working on your case and Kate Ross, our investigator.
'Second, you are perfectly free to lie to me but I'm going to use the information you give me to make decisions in your case. If you do a great job fooling me and it causes me to do something that loses your case, please remember that you'll go to jail and I'll go home and watch cable TV.
'Third, I will not let you lie under oath. If you tell me that you murdered Senator Travis, I'm not going to let you testify that you were in Idaho when he was killed. I won't tell on you because we have the attorney-client relationship, but I will remove myself from the case. What I'm getting at here is that I am very honest and very ethical and you need to know that about me up front so that we don't have any misunderstandings down the line. Any questions?'
'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.'
