“Me, too. Because the other choice is accomplice.”
On the loggia, the Honduran housekeeper was back with their drinks and three uninvited guests. Two plainclothes detectives and Ray Pincher.
“Already,” Victoria said.
“Let's go to work, partner,” Steve said.
They hurried back just as Pincher was telling Katrina that the Grand Jury had indicted her for first- degree murder, and she had the right to remain silent.
“Our client invokes all her rights,” Steve called out.
“Solomon and Lord. On the same side?” Pincher said, a twinkle in his eye. “This is going to be fun.”
“What does he mean by that?” Katrina asked.
“Shh,” Steve said. “You're remaining silent.”
“We'll want a private entrance to the jail for booking,” Victoria said to Pincher.
“Not necessary,” Steve said.
“No advance word to the media,” Victoria said. “We don't want a circus.”
“Circus is fine,” Steve said. “Cirque du Soleil even better.”
“Mrs. Barksdale will need twenty minutes to get dressed,” Victoria said.
“Make it an hour,” Steve said.
Pincher beamed and turned to one of the detectives. “Del, I think we could charge admission to this one.”
Looking worried but retaining her composure, Katrina stood and started toward the house. “I'd excuse myself,” she said to Pincher, “but my lawyers instructed me to remain silent.”
Steve pulled Victoria aside and whispered, “Go help her. You know what clothes to pick out?”
“Something subdued,” Victoria said. “Maybe a Carolina Herrera pantsuit.”
“Wrong,” he said. “A slinky dress, maybe one of those leopard prints, something off the shoulder. Show some boobs. And those stockings with holes.”
“Fishnets?” Victoria was shocked.
“Yeah. And red lipstick, really red.”
“You want our client to look like a hooker?”
“I want her to look like a farm girl, an innocent naif from the Midwest who was corrupted by the dirty old man she married. He twisted her into his perverted sex slave.”
“You think we can sell that?”
Steve's tone of righteous indignation was a rehearsal for the jury. “How dare the state accuse this woman of murder when all she did was try to satisfy her husband's deviant demands? What is she guilty of, besides giving too much of herself, unaware of the dangers?”
“That's our defense?”
“For now, it's all we've got,” Steve said.
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE ELEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA-FALL TERM, 2005 INDICTMENT MURDER FIRST DEGREE
Fla. Stat 782.04(1) amp; 775.087
STATE OF FLORIDA vs. KATRINA BARKSDALE
IN THE NAME AND BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Florida, duly called, impaneled and sworn to inquire and true presentment make in and for the body of the County of Miami-Dade, upon their oaths, present that on or about the 16^th day of November 2005, within the County of Miami-Dade, State of Florida, KATRINA BARKSDALE did unlawfully and feloniously kill a human being, to wit: CHARLES BARKSDALE, from a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, by strangling the said CHARLES BARKSDALE with a weapon, to wit: a leather device, in violation of Fla. Stat. 782.04(1) and 775.087, to the evil example of all others in like cases, offending and against the peace and dignity of the State of Florida.
Mitchell Kaplan
Foreperson of the Grand Jury
4. I will never carry a pager, drive a Porsche, or flaunt a Phi Beta Kappa key… even if I had one.
Thirteen
DOODADS AND DILDOS
“You're saying Charles Barksdale forced Katrina to have kinky sex?” Victoria shouted above the wind.
“Not physical coercion,” Steve answered. “More like emotional pressure. ‘If you love me, you'll do this.' And financial pressure. ‘Look at everything I've given you.' Plus the trump card: ‘If you won't wear a strap-on, if you won't whip my ass, if you won't do bondage, I'll dump you and find someone who will.'”
Victoria was dubious. “Kat told you all that?”
“What?” Steve was dialing through the static, searching for a radio station. Top down on his ancient Cadillac, they were headed across the MacArthur Causeway from Miami to South Beach, the car spewing contrails of oily smoke. In the backseat, Bobby was speed-reading a coroner's textbook, Medicolegal Investigation of Death. Victoria had glanced at an autopsy photo and turned away.
The Solomon Boys, as she'd started thinking of them, had picked her up at her condo, Steve saying they could work on the drive to the office. Taking one look at the convertible, she knew her hair would be wrecked in two minutes. Always a good soldier, she didn't complain.
It was the day after they'd signed up Katrina, who was immediately booked, fingerprinted, and jailed for first-degree murder. There were a hundred things to do, starting with prepping for the bail hearing. Victoria had not had time to interview their new client, so she was forced to rely on Steve's recitation of what Katrina had told him. Naturally, he'd taken no notes. Had she been running the show, they'd have tape-recorded every syllable, and by now they'd have the transcripts indexed and color-coded. When she told Steve this, he smiled tolerantly and said that at the beginning of a case it was better to keep a client's memory flexible.
“Flexible,” she thought. A slippery lawyer's word.
She questioned whether this shotgun marriage was going to work. Sure, Solomon had all that experience. But he was so aggressive, so reckless, he would lead them into untold disasters. She was still furious at him for stealing her client, but she had vowed to put up with him. She needed this case to get on her feet, start building her practice. As far as learning trial tactics from Solomon, she'd study his every move, then do the exact opposite.
He must have found the radio station he wanted, because he stopped fiddling with the dial, and Robert Palmer was singing that a woman was simply irresistible. Victoria yelled over the music and the wind: “Did Kat tell you Charles would dump her if she didn't do what he wanted?”
“Not in those words. I filled in a few gaps for her.”
“You coached her?”
“I amplified her responses.”
“You make fine distinctions.”
“That's what lawyers do, Victoria.”
Victoria, she thought. No more “Vickie.” At least he was starting to show her respect. Crossing the causeway, she looked enviously at a cruise ship steaming out Government Cut toward the Atlantic. The passengers were waving at a party fishing boat following in their wake. The air tasted of salt, and the wind whipped at her hair.
“You're saying Charles pressured Kat into choking him as part of their marital relations,” she said.
“Marital relations? Who talks like that?”
Victoria motioned toward the backseat. “I do, in front of a child.”
Bobby said: “So they had a freaky way of doing the bone dance. Big deal.”
