house, but there was nothing taken, so it wasn’t a burglary that went wrong. Same MO as the Beck killing, as far as the shooting goes. Shot to pieces. And if it wasn’t just some random killing, then you have to ask yourself, who would want to kill a principal? And who would want to kill him and kill him and kill him?”
“Family member looking to speed up the inheritance?” Mooney said. “Disgruntled teacher? Or maybe it was the wife they were after.”
“It wasn’t the wife. They kidnapped Mr. Brockwell, took him for a long ride, tied him to a tree. They terrorized him. He was the target. They wanted him to suffer. His wife just happened to be in the way.”
“So answer your own question,” I said. “Who wants a high school principal to suffer?”
Fraley shrugged his shoulders. “I’m thinking a kid. A kid with a grudge. Probably looking for revenge.”
“But there were more than one,” I said. “Maybe three or four. How do you explain that? And what about the Becks? Why would a kid, or a group of kids, want to kill the Becks?”
“I don’t know yet,” Fraley said. “But at least I know where I’m going to look.”
“Mr. Snodgrass is here,” Rita Jones said over the office intercom.
“Thanks,” I said. “Would you tell him to come on back?”
William Trent, accused of having sex with his young female employees, was scheduled to go on trial in less than two weeks, and my case was in the toilet. Cody Masters, the young investigator who had originally brought the charges against Trent, had gone back out and interviewed more than two dozen of Trent’s current and former employees. Nobody wanted to get involved in a trial that would undoubtedly be highly publicized and would cause as much embarrassment for the victims as it would for the defendant. Not one of them would cooperate with us.
Two of the girls who had originally given statements to Masters had recanted. Girls who had talked to him but refused to give statements were now telling him they had nothing to say. All that was left were the two girls who had originally made the complaint, Alice Dickson and Rosalie Harbin. Both were now nineteen years old. Alice, the girl who’d kept a very detailed diary, was shy and backwards, and I was worried about how she’d do on the witness stand. Rosalie Harbin was a wild child who’d recently been arrested for forgery and theft. And the man who was about to walk through my door, William Trent’s lawyer, knew I was in trouble. He’d called a week earlier to set up an appointment with me. I didn’t have to ask what he wanted-he’d be looking to make a deal.
Snodgrass’s appearance surprised me, to say the least. I was expecting a refined, smooth-talking pretty boy, but what oozed through the doorway was a gargantuan man who seemed to fill the entire room. Snodgrass was at least six feet, seven inches tall and three hundred and fifty pounds. His face reminded me of a Chinese sharpei’s, with rolls of fat across the forehead, sagging jowls, and a flat, wide nose. He looked to be around fifty, with a greasy shock of wavy black hair that fell to his collar. Peering at me from behind thick glasses were small brown eyes that didn’t seem to fit his face. The white shirt he wore beneath a dark gray blazer looked like he’d been wearing it for a week.
“Have a seat,” I said after I introduced myself and shook his moist, fleshy hand. Small droplets of sweat had formed on his pink forehead, and I could hear him wheezing slightly. The effort of moving all that mass from the parking lot into the building and up the elevator to my office must have been almost more than his cardiovascular system could bear.
“Are you all right?” I asked as he dabbed his forehead with a stained white kerchief.
“Goddamned cigarettes are going to kill me,” he said in a deep, raspy voice, with just a hint of a Southern accent. “The wife’s been nagging me to quit for years, but I don’t pay any attention to her. I like to smoke. Son of a bitch, it’s hot in here! Don’t you people have any goddamned air-conditioning?”
“Feels fine to me,” I said.
“You must be descended from the goddamned Nordics. You must have a layer of blubber on you that keeps you warm all the time.”
I smiled at him, wondering how this blob of vulgarity had managed to build such a fine reputation and to get himself elected to two of the highest state and national offices in the field of criminal defense.
“What brings you all the way up here this morning, Mr. Snodgrass?”
He glared at me with his little eyes and kept dabbing his forehead with the handkerchief.
“You know goddamned good and well what brings me up here,” he said. “We’ve got a trial in two weeks, and both of us know that you don’t have a fucking leg to stand on, legal or otherwise. So let’s cut the bullshit and dispose of the matter this morning. It’ll save the state some money and save you and your office some much- deserved embarrassment.”
His tone was belligerent, his demeanor that of a wolverine rousted from sleep, and an air of superiority surrounded him along with the smell of stale cigarette smoke. I kept the smile fixed to my face and leaned forward on my elbows.
“I’ll bet you scare the hell out of the young guys, don’t you?” I said.
“You only have three witnesses on your list,” he said. “Two of them are tramps and the other is Barney Fife. Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to them on the witness stand, Dillard? I’ll filet them like halibut. You don’t have a speck of physical evidence to corroborate anything they say. And my client had an impeccable reputation until your wonder boy with a badge ruined it. I’m thinking seriously of filing a civil suit against him and his department as soon as my client is acquitted.”
“Your client is a perverted sociopath,” I said. “I’m looking forward to meeting him.”
“You can’t be serious,” Snodgrass said. “Surely you don’t plan to continue with this masquerade. The jig is up, Dillard, the fat lady is singing, the show is over. I hear you’re a good trial lawyer, and word is you’ve won a lot of cases, but you’re not Houdini. There’s no way you’ll get out of the box I’m going to put you in if you insist on trying this case.”
I leaned back in the chair and laced my fingers behind my head. He was right about my case, but I had a plan to salvage it. And judging from the way he was conducting himself, I knew his ego would lead him down a path at trial that he’d later regret. But I wanted to be sure.
“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Snodgrass? Do you really think these girls made up a story just to ruin your client’s reputation? I’m sure you’ve seen the statements from the other girls who are now refusing to testify. They corroborated everything Miss Dickson and Miss Harbin said.”
“What I think doesn’t matter,” he snapped. “What matters is what you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and you can’t prove that my client spit on the goddamned sidewalk, let alone convict him of all of these absurd sexual offenses.”
“So he’s going to deny having any sexual contact whatsoever with either of these girls.”
“You’re goddamned right he’s going to deny it!” Small beads of spit flew from his lips as his voice grew louder. “And do you know why he’s going to deny it? Because he didn’t do it! Do you really think he’d stick his cock in either one of those nasty little skanks?”
I was sure the vulgarity and the tone were designed to see what kind of reaction he’d get from me. If I lost my composure and started battling with him or suddenly became self-righteously indignant, he’d be sure to bait me at trial. I kept my face relaxed and my voice pleasant. He didn’t know it, but he’d just confirmed my strategy.
“You have your opinion; I have mine,” I said. “Now, I doubt if you came all the way up here just to argue with me and insult my witnesses. What is it you want?”
He shifted in the chair and rolled his head. When his chin dropped, it disappeared completely into the rolls of fat.
“I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse,” he said. “I want to give you an easy out, an opportunity to save face. I’m offering you a gift.”
“I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath and straightened his tie.
“In exchange for the dismissal of all of the felony charges, my client is generously offering to plead guilty to one count of misdemeanor assault,” he said dramatically. “He’s also willing to pay a fifty-dollar fine plus the court costs on three conditions. One, he doesn’t have to register as a sex offender. Two, you agree to unsupervised probation, and three, you agree that the charge will be expunged from his record after one year. Those are our terms. They’re not negotiable.”
