Replacing the exquisitely handcrafted wood with its delicate finish, a museum piece I openly coveted, is a metallic surface a jet fighter could land on, reminding me of the Persian rug my old boss at the PD’s Office replaced after repeated coffee spills. Women keep trying to humanize the workplace, but work keeps getting in the way, I suppose. Sitting down across from her, I read the “Information,” as the formal charging document is called, and learn nothing new. Murder, as opposed to manslaughter, is, of course, a question of intention, a conclusion, and is easily stated.
“So what do you have?” I ask, clutching like a security blanket the briefcase on my lap as I wait for the bad news.
“We’ve known since the girl died that the cattle prod had very little tape insulating the handle,” Jill explains.
“It was a lethal weapon in the hands of somebody who knew what he was doing with it.”
To give myself time to respond, I pretend to study the paper in front of me, remembering Andy’s apparent lie to me that he had carefully wrapped it and couldn’t understand what had happened. God knows how many others he has told. If I’ve ever had a client who didn’t lie about something, I’d like to meet him. I say, “Obviously, I’d like to examine it. Do I need to get an order?”
Jill shakes her head as if I’m missing the point.
“Still, I gave Chapman the benefit of the doubt until we found out this,” she says, shoving at me a fourteen- year-old Blackwell County Circuit Court Consent Judgment that is styled: Pamela Le Master, by her Mother and Next Friend, Olivia Le Master, and Olivia Le Master, Individually, versus Dr. Hamilton Corbin,
I ask, knowing it doesn’t matter. I’m in a daze as I try to catch up. Olivia must have decided that not only would Pam be better off dead but that she, as her mother, would as well.
So how come I’m not reading about Olivia?
“Marvin Hippel has a long memory,” Jill says, nipping through her own file. Her posture makes my back ache. I couldn’t sit up that straight if I had a rod of reinforced steel inserted into my spine.
“The same Marvin Hippel who passes out his cards to doctors after he speaks at their meetings?” I say, remembering a seminar I attended when I first went to work at Mays amp; Burton. So what? Now that lawyers can advertise, I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw some of my colleagues walking up and down the street in front of the Blackwell County Courthouse wearing those front-and-back sandwich placards with their phone numbers in glitter on them.
A glint that might pass for a smile steals into the corners of Jill’s eyes. Hippel, who is a partner in one of the largest firms in the state, is notoriously shameless about hustling business he wants. Like our part-time state legislators who labor as employees the rest of the year on behalf of the industries for which they vote tax loopholes, Hippel professes not to have a clue as to the propriety of his conduct.
“They say he’s great in the courtroom, too,” Jill says, her voice sarcastic.
“Anyway, Hippel finally started hearing about the case and immediately came forward to let us know he had some information we would be interested in.”
Feeling perverse as well as powerless in this situation, I slump disrespectfully further into my seat.
“I ‘m sure the fact that he would like to torpedo what’s left of the settlement has nothing to do with the exercise of his civic duty.”
Jill, who now has removed a nail file from her drawer (we could be a husband and wife sniping at each other), says sweetly, “I wouldn’t be too holier-than-thou. There’s a rumor going around that you stole Chapman from Mays amp; Burton after you got fired, but I’m sure there’s not a word of truth to it. By the way, there was quite a bit left-over two million dollars.”
What have I ever done to this bitch? She hates my guts, or maybe she is just tough. I bite my tongue, telling myself she wants to goad me into something that will implicate Andy further. I wish I knew something. Now I can’t believe a thing out of his mouth.
“So what?” I say, feigning a casualness I don’t feel.
“My client didn’t stand to benefit from it.”
As if she has been waiting for me to say exactly this, Jill puts down her nail file and reaches into her desk drawer and takes out a document and hands it to me, making me straighten up.
“That’s not what Yettie Lindsey is going to say on the witness stand.”
Yettie has signed a statement for Jill, dated only twenty-four hours ago, in which she says that outside Andy’s office approximately a week before Pam died she heard Olivia tell Andy (among other things) that “there’ll be more than enough money for you to go back to school for as long as you want.” Yettie admitted that she has been trying to eavesdrop, and that someone had come up behind her and she had not heard anything further that she can remember. Yettie’s statement goes on to say that she had not previously disclosed this information to the prosecutor’s office because she had not understood or remembered the remark until it had been disclosed to her (by Jill, obviously) that Olivia stood to gain financially from Pam’s death. Nor had she divulged until now that it was her belief that Andy and Olivia were romantically involved because she had no proof (only her suspicions from the way they looked at each other and talked together) and because she was jealous of Olivia.
“It’s still a pretty thin case,” I say more bravely than I feel. I am furious for talking myself into believing there was nothing more to this case than a tragic accident. My problem is that I allowed myself to like my client too much. Damn it, I still do.
Jill picks up her nail file again and begins to go to work on the nail on her left pinkie, reminding me again of my old boss at the Public Defender’s Office. Her actions are totally unprofessional, but Jill is so calculating that I have to believe her studied casualness is a form of contempt. She looks up at me and says, “Come on, Gideon, your client has told more than one person he thought he had the cattle prod insulated.
I assumed he just didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and that’s why I only charged him with manslaughter.
Obviously, I didn’t have all this other evidence when I charged him the first time.”
I stand up, unable now to keep still.
“So why haven’t you charged Olivia?” I say angrily. But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize Jill needs Andy’s testimony to get her. Without it, she doesn’t have enough even to charge her.
With it, Olivia will go to jail for life. It flashes on me, too, that I know now why Ken Bowman, her lackey assistant, is not in this room. Jill had said in front of him, in a moment of self-righteousness, that she would never offer Andy a deal, and now she has to if she wants to get the woman who instigated this. I know what Jill’s version of this conversation will be: “I made him beg for it.”
She blows on the nail file to rid it of her dead skin.”
“There’s no hurry.”
Bullshit. Despite knowing where this is heading, I rise to the bait.”
“You wouldn’t get past a motion for a directed verdict without my client’s testimony,” I huff, “and you know it.”
Now that I’m on my feet, I have no place to go except out the door. Still, I have to see where she’s heading.
Jill begins on her ring finger. Her nails are clear and appear from where I’m standing to be perfectly buffed.
“Now that I know what happened,” she says, “I have no doubt there’s a lot more evidence out there. Your client won’t be going anywhere, will he? I think I would like to increase the bond a bit though.”
Thoroughly disgusted, I jam my hands in my pockets.
“You expect me to ask for a deal.”
She can’t suppress a smile.
“Not right now,” she purrs, holding her fingers up to the light for us to admire. Her fingers are long and surprisingly sensuous.
“But maybe you’ll want to after you’ve had a little talk with him. By the way, we’ve asked for a bond hearing
