Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 1) (6 page)

I’m no phone geek but even I see the gaping hole in his process.

I try again. “But I'm not coming to Cozumel. And you're not coming back. I'm screwed, Arnie. I'm screwed because I'm your brother."

"Oh, Michael. You need a good night's sleep and a day away from the office."

"Please, Arnie."

"It's our food, Michael. Gotta go. So long for now!"

The line goes dead, and I replace my phone. I hang my head and a full-on shudder works its way up my spine and shakes my shoulders. Tears come to my eyes—not because I'm fearful, not because I give a damn about MexTel and their legal problems. The tears are for my dear, sweet brother.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle when there's no longer a bottle.

Mrs. L comes bustling into my office.

"I saw the light go off on your phone. Arnie's loose again?"

"He is. Watch everything you do and say very carefully."

"You look tired, Michael. You need to go home and get some rest."

"I'm going to, I promise."

She gives me that suspicious, Germanic iron-clad stare-down. She doesn't believe a word of what I just told her.

The truth is, I don't either.

A good night's sleep with my bedroom door unlocked is way down the road.

F
rancis Pennington Jr.
is called to the stand by the Assistant U.S. Attorney. He is a tall, lanky man whose stiff bearing and frozen face don't entertain any nonsense from the litigants and lawyers who appear before him in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. But today he is a witness here, not a judge.

He walks from the gallery down through the swinging gate and ambles toward the witness podium and chair in one fluid movement. One sees that here is a man who is accustomed to appearing almost regal in courtrooms while distancing himself from the riffraff that roam public buildings. His skin is patently white and taut across his face, and his eyes are a cloudy blue that remain filled with pain from what he encountered that terrible day when he found his wife slaughtered in her own home.

The Assistant U.S. Attorney wastes no time in getting to it, for the judge's testimony about the scene he walked into is counted on to energize the state's case and send James Joseph Lamb straight to hell.

"Directing your attention to March 2, 2014, tell us what you were doing that day," says LaGuardia from the lectern, where he has positioned himself and where he is standing half-facing the witness and half-facing the jury as if they have formed a common circle. Their grouping is one of inner-circle confidentiality; my client is not allowed inside, and neither am I.

The judge clears his throat and nods but just barely.

"Well, I finished up my calendar that morning in federal court. Then I met with two colleagues—two magistrates who had performed magisterial tasks on several of my cases—over lunch. We talked about those cases and eventually had it all said and done, and the after-lunch coffee was drunk so I went down to the basement where we park. This is a secured area not open to the public and guarded by the U.S. Marshal's service."

"What happened next?"

"I arrived home—maybe twenty-five minutes later. The garage door opened, and I pulled in and climbed out of my Volvo. Then up the stairs and inside through the mud room, where I stopped to change out of my work shoes into my moccasins. This is a particular habit of mine as I like to shift gears physically before interacting with my family. It sands away some of the sharp edges I must maintain downtown."

"So you're in the mud room and changing shoes. When do you first become aware something is wrong?"

"I called out my wife's name—Veronica—and she usually comes to meet me with a coffee or Ginger Ale. But today she doesn't answer. So I proceed through the kitchen into the family room and from there on it's all a jumble in my mind. I see her lying on the floor, on her back, one leg up over her piano bench. At first, I think she's fainted, so I rush to her. Then my mind accepts that I am looking at bullet holes in her bare chest and that there is a massive bullet hole in her head, between her eyes. I served in the military during the first Iraq War, and I know mortal wounds when I encounter them. So my next thought is my son. I run into the hallway and charge down to his room. Next thing I know I'm standing over him and he’s peacefully sleeping. I am so relieved I vomit. It's all too much for me, and I am crying and out of control and I know that the life I cherished is over. I put my hand in the center of his back and jiggle him so slightly and his eyes open. He sees me and smiles. I am suddenly lucid. The killer. He could still be in the house. So I go on alert and begin sifting through the other rooms in the house."

"Did you keep a gun of your own?"

"Yes, I have a small gun safe in my closet. I went to it and realized I couldn't remember the combination. Later on, I realized how distressed I must have been because the combination is three twists consisting of the date of my graduation from law school. Simple, yet vanished from my mind. The next several days were like that where I didn't know what month it was or where my office was. Of course, I was pretty heavily sedated by my doctor so maybe that's part of it. Veronica’s mom helped with my son.”

"So what did you do once you had searched the house."

"Well, the search only took maybe five minutes. I was angry and reckless, tearing from room to room without a gun of my own. If I had found the perpetrator I have no doubt, he would have gunned me down too. But he was gone. So I went back into the family room and sat down beside my wife. Then my son called out. I couldn’t have him walking in on this scene so I went back to his room and shut the door with me in there with him. I had my cell phone so I called nine-one-one. I explained the situation, and they immediately dispatched. Two police cruisers were first on the scene, and one of those officers took me and put me in the backseat of his squad car. Another officer took my son and put him in a second car. He stayed there with him. Then his partner went into the house and returned with a cold can of Ginger Ale and a banana. They were given to my little boy."

"What happened next, Judge Pennington?"

"It seemed like we sat in the squad cars forever. Finally, a special agent came and opened the door. They wanted to swab my hands for gunshot residue, which they did. Then they asked whether I had a gun and I said I did, and I gave them the combination to my safe. The combination had come to mind now just as quickly as it had fled before. Then the special agents left me alone in the squad car. I didn't realize at the time that I was a suspect, and they were keeping me in the patrol car as a person of interest. Then they returned to tell me my gun was still inside the gun safe, and they finished checking my ID and found out I was a sitting U.S. District Court judge, and they let me out of the squad car. They turned my son over to me. We returned to the kitchen and sat there for an hour until Elizabeth Franks, my family doctor, came walking in. She checked me over and left me a small, unlabeled bottle of tablets. Take one every four hours. And here's another pill. Take it for sleep. I thanked her, and she squeezed my hand and told me how sorry she was. By now Veronica's father and brother and mother had arrived. Angelina, the mother, took my son outside and they looked at a book out on the porch. Her father and brother were distraught, and my father-in-law came into the kitchen without speaking to me and sat at my table, weeping. My brother-in-law Harold Ramous was enraged and suspicious of me until the Special Agents pulled him outside and told him what they knew so far."

"Did he calm down after that?"

"He did. He came into the kitchen and hugged me and said how sorry he was. I told him I was sorry for him, too."

The witness pauses and asks for water. The Assistant U.S. Attorney quickly pours a glass of water from the pitcher on his table and hands it to Judge Pennington. As he testifies, I have been watching the jury, and they are mesmerized. These are people who have never talked to someone who came into a murder scene, and they are hanging on every word. I can tell that they are wondering how they would be reacting in such circumstances. It is crucial testimony, painful to hear, and I don't interrupt.

LaGuardia then takes the judge through his wife’s autopsy, the funeral, and memorial, the feelings, and emotions of it all. By the time Judge Pennington has finished with his testimony, there isn't a dry eye among the jurors. I notice that now they are looking at me and at my client with severe, angry eyes. I try to avoid eye contact. I am not your enemy, my body language says. And neither is my client, who I make an effort to re-humanize by clasping him on the shoulder at one point and whispering to him. He is not an animal, I am broadcasting, and he is not the one who did this terrible thing.

Judge Amberlos calls a recess before my cross-examination. I interrupt the adjournment just long enough to say that I have no questions for cross-examination. Judge Pennington's shoulders slump, and he leaves the courtroom. But I know: he'll be back. And his presence will demand of the jury that they point their finger at my client and tell the court my man is guilty of this terrible crime. It is an unspoken link between Judge Pennington and his supporters, the jury. My jury, the jury I have cultivated and handled so carefully—they are gone from me, and we are no longer on the same page. They belong to the victim and her husband.

My client is alone, with just me, while everyone else, including the trial judge, wishes he were dead. It will be my job to distract them and re-program them enough that they move in their minds from a common finding of guilt and disgust toward my client to a place where they can actually believe he is not guilty of this thing. That, I am telling you, is the most difficult task I have ever faced in a courtroom and I wonder if I am up to it.

Truth be told, I hate my client as much as the jury does right now. Blindly, even knowing he's not guilty, I have voted with the jury and against him. It is a compulsion, a spell we are all experiencing, the need to see justice done and someone put to death.

Even I will need to be re-programmed. Luckily I am capable of that. As a lawyer, I have long ago learned to lie to myself, to deceive my mind into actually believing that red is green, that day is night and vice-versa. No matter how damning the evidence and testimony, I can pull myself around to denying it all.

Plus, I know deep down that my client is innocent. James Joseph Lamb, while bordering on retardation and disqualification as a contributing member of society, was and is incapable of doing such a terrible thing. He is constitutionally incapable. He doesn't breed death in his bones.

He is not—and I will not let him be cast as—death come ‘round at last.

J
udge Pennington has finished
with his testimony, yet, when we start back up, LaGuardia tells Judge Amberlos that he needs to recall him to the stand for a short series of questions. I do not object. To do so at this point in front of this jury would be tantamount to opening my veins and bleeding out before them. It would be suicide to object.

I will see, in the days to come, whether I can pull my client into the jury’s inner circle. If I can, he will walk out of here a free man. If I can't, he will die some midnight in the next several years.

Judge Pennington walks back up to the witness stand, steps up onto the podium, and re-assumes his seat. He has collected himself, dried his tears, and is ready to answer again.

"Judge Pennington," LaGuardia begins sonorously as if this might be more than a short session, "tell the jury what you have experienced since the murder of your wife."

I almost object but restrain myself. It isn't time for that. The jury is still in the judge's pocket, and they want to hear what he has to say. It would, as I've said, be suicide for me to try to deprive them of that corporeal real estate.

"Sleepless. Can't eat. Can't think straight. I've even lost bowel control a few different times."

The jury looks at him in astonishment. Did he really just say that?

"Anything else?"

"Rage. Extreme rage. I want to kill the man who did this to my beautiful wife. Did you know she had just taken up watercolors? She was learning to paint a common drinking glass.” The judge is weeping now, and the jury joins him. Even I, the most jaded of anyone present, cannot keep the tears in my eyes from running down my cheeks. I cannot even imagine what Lamb, stoically staring straight ahead, must be feeling.

"You said you want to kill that man. Of course, you can't and you won't. So how would you tell this jury to help? What can they do?"

This is unusual, this question, but I again restrain myself.

"I would like to ask the jury to find James Lamb guilty and sentence him to death. An eye for an eye.”

"All right. Nothing further, Your Honor."

Judge Amberlos peers down at me, and I swallow hard.

"No questions," I say.

"Very well, the witness may step down. May the witness be excused?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

"The witness is excused. Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is a good place to take our lunch break. We're forty-five minutes early, but I expect we can all use a little time away from the courtroom right now. We'll resume at one sharp. We're in recess. Remember the admonition."

O
n the east
end of Schaumburg, south side of Washington Street stretches the Golden Years Home. As I walk inside and pass the reception desk and admin offices, I have the choice of right or left. I turn left, end of the ground floor corridor, and then right. Down four doors on the left is 1012.

Mom.

Her name is Anita Elizabeth Allbright. Which is a misnomer, because she is no longer bright at all. She is eighty-five and suffered early onset Alzheimers. Where mom was once a two-fisted drinker and legal secretary and, later on, a half-days volunteer at A.A. Central, she is now a frightened old nursing home resident who often doesn't know Arnie or me. Whenever I see her, she has either just lost something or just found something, usually the TV remote or her hearing aid.

Mom is tall—like me—and slender, also like me. She possesses a head full of hair that is still more brown than gray, although it had more streaks than two months ago when I'd last seen her. Yes, thanks to my trial calendar, it has been two months Her eyes are brown and moist and all-innocence—a far cry from the lunatic who gave me life and then mostly abandoned me until I was out of law school, and she suddenly decided to retire at sixty and needed "a little help" financially each month. We became fairly good friends for the first two years of her retirement, but then the Alzheimer's took over. Her doctor called me, and I moved her into the Golden Years. Now I try to see her at least twice or three times each month and have managed more or less that frequency.

I knock three times on her door and then let myself in.

Jeopardy is re-running on the Golden Years in-house channel, and the contestants' clothing indicates the show was probably filmed back in the eighties.

"Buenos Aires!" shrieks my mother at the flat screen. "Goddam fool!"

"Mom," I say, "it's Michael. What's this about Buenos Aires?"

"Who?"

"It's me. Michael."

"No thank you, not today."

"It's your son, Michael. I'm here to take you to lunch."

Without taking her eyes off the screen, she flings her right arm out and feels around on the TV tray beside her recliner. She locates her upper plate, and pops it into her mouth. Then she turns and has a look at her son.

"My God, you look familiar."

"I should, I'm your son."

"Keep telling ‘em that, big boy. Somebody's sure to bite."

"Mom, do you want to slip on your shoes? I'd really like to take you someplace for lunch."

"Today I'm eating in the cafeteria. It's taco Sunday."

"No, Mom, it's Thursday."

She taps the screen on the iPhone I gave her. Evidently she mastered the calendar app and took the time to enter the Golden Years lunch and dinner menus.

"Just like to be forewarned about the food," she chuckles. "This way I'm never disappointed."

"Well, I'm glad that works for you. But I was thinking more like the Red Dragon Inn. We could have one of their great pork tenderloin sandwiches and those onion rings you love."

"Who says I'm in love? With you?"

I sigh. All the air goes out of me as I see how distant she is today. There is little use in taking her out. Plus I have the trial starting up again in two hours.

"Come on, mom, let's hit the cafeteria. It's eleven o'clock. They're serving now."

"Can you wait while I get my shoes on? In a big hurry are we?"

She scowls and slips into her house shoes. They are the L.L. Beans I got her last Christmas—along with a few necessities like sweaters and underthings that Sue Ellen picked out. They look good: fleece-lined, deerskin house shoes that she selected from the catalog herself. She curls her toes and bounces her feet against the carpet.

She looks up at me and scowls then looks from side to side.

She stands, stretches expansively, and walks out the door, headed for the cafeteria.

"Wait," I say, "I don't think you have your lowers in."

Back into her room she clomps and returns with a complete set of teeth. She clicks them together and says, "Happy?"

Into the cafeteria, a place with that industrial cafeteria smell.

She precedes me through the lunch line, coming away with four fish sticks, mashed potatoes, green beans and corn, a napkin wrapped around two forks, and iced tea. My selections are the same, but I get a fork and a knife. We scan around for a place to sit—it is jammed, for eleven o'clock. We can only find a four place table with two chairs already taken. The two residents—guys in their eighties, I'm guessing—don't respond when I ask if they would mind company.

Mom sits down heavily, takes a bite of fish she holds in her fingers and chases it with a drink of iced tea. She doesn't chew properly, and chokes, and for several moments I'm thinking Heimlich. But no, another two gulps of iced tea seem to do the trick.

"So, mom," I say, "how have you been feeling?"

Whereupon she removes her lower plate and studies it. Satisfied, she pops it back into her mouth and resumes chewing her second bite.

"I said are you feeling pretty good?"

"I'm feeling fine," she says. "And I know you, Michael, so don't act so disappointed."

"I'm happy you know me. I love you, Mom, and I need you to know that."

"Well, I always loved you and your brother, too. I was never a great mother all the time, but I tried. Goddamn it, Michael, I tried!"

"I know you did, mom. Let's just let all that old stuff go. What matters is now. We get to spend time together; we get to tell stories and talk about the good times we did have. So let's enjoy it."

"Are you trying to hide something from me?" she asks in a new tone.

"Yes, mom, I'm trying to hide my real name from you. I'm really Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones."

"You're covering something. I know you, Michael."

"You do, mom. But I'm really not covering up."

"You look different. Are you older, son?"

"No, mom. Just a little worse for the road wear."

"Michael, would you get another lemon for my tea?"

"Sure, mom."

I stand and hurry back to the line, where I reach between two seniors and two-finger a half-lemon out of a bowl. I wrap it in a napkin. Then I return and pass the lemon over to her. She unfolds the napkin and plunks the lemon into her tea.

I am casually chewing when I notice.

She has removed her upper plate and placed it on the dinner plate of the man directly to her left. He is sitting head-down, pushing potatoes onto his fork with a dinner roll, and isn't objecting.

For a moment, I don't know what to do.

So I watch as mom tries to take another bite of her fish stick and can't do better than gum.

"Excuse me, mom, but is that your denture on the gentleman's plate?"

"Damn fool has taken his teeth out," she says. "Utterly revolting. I think I'm going to toss my cookies, Charles."

"Whoa up, mom, but I think that's your own denture. Why don't you pick it up and have a look."

"Have a look? What's that gonna do?"

"I mean, can't you tell your own plate by looking?"

"You have to put them in your mouth. What if you're wrong, and you have me putting that old fool's teeth in my mouth?"

She begins crying and I reach across and take her hand.

Then I retrieve the denture from the gentleman's plate and wrap it in my napkin and stand and walk around to my mother. I help her up, bring her food plate along, and walk her back to her room. We arrive with her flatware and her food plate. As well as her dental plate, curled in my right hand inside a very damp napkin.

I help her into her chair and move the TV tray in front of her. Then I place her fish sticks plate on the TV tray. Taking her dental plate to the sink and unrolling the napkin, I proceed to clean the plate with one of those funny toothbrushes denture wearers use. I then take her denture to her and hold it out. By now The Price is Right is fully underway, and I don't even try to interrupt.

She casually seizes the denture, expertly inserts it into her mouth, and doesn't miss a beat of her show.

She is happy, she is engrossed, she is chewing and seems to savor.

What more can I ask than to see my mother's needs met?

I ask myself that question as Marcel backs his pickup truck out of the visitors' lot with me riding shotgun.

What more could I ask?

We have an hour to get back downtown to court.

R
ecords custodians are called
to testify after lunch, and we are subjected to three hours of testimony that will allow into evidence all medical, criminal, crime scene, and court records the prosecutor wants to put before the jury. I am willing to stipulate them, but LaGuardia wants to pass them one-by-one to the jury so that they see them twice: now and once again in the jury room. I fight sleep and stare straight ahead, concentrating on ignoring the stale prison air my client is exhaling beside me. His air bears the scent of kung pao chicken with heavy garlic, and cigarettes. I move as far away as I can and shift positions so my back is more or less to him.

Finally, at five o'clock we are in recess. The court has personal business tomorrow, so we will resume trial on Monday. The jurors' faces reflect displeasure with this announcement because it means delay and more inconvenience in doing their public duty.

I tell Lamb I will see him before Monday, and I am gone.

Time enough tomorrow to continue this death march.

Time enough tomorrow for me to try to bring it to a halt.