Prosecution: A Legal Thriller (4 page)

The money had long ago been spent, and the photograph
and typed directions to the location of his victim destroyed.
Quentin agreed to call Goodwin and threaten him with exposure
unless he paid more money. With the police listening on another
line and a tape recorder preserving everything that was said,
Goodwin answered the phone and, as soon as he heard who was
calling, said he did not know anyone by that name and hung up.

The case against Marshall Goodwin consisted of the
testimony of Travis Quentin and very little else. Quentin had been
arrested, and he had spent nearly an hour alone with the chief
deputy district attorney. The charges that could have been brought
against him were dropped, and instead of years in prison he had
served thirty days in the county jail. That was it, all of it, and
it was not nearly enough.

Drifting over to the French doors that led out to the
patio, I watched the lights glittering in the distance and found
myself wondering what Marshall Goodwin was doing at that moment.
Most murders had something of the commonplace about them, ordinary
acts of brutality by dull, dimwitted people for whom violence was
the principal form of expression. But this was not an act of
violence committed in a moment of rage, not if Travis Quentin was
telling the truth. This was murder for hire, carried out with a
clear mind and a cold heart. What possible reason could Goodwin
have had? And if he had done it—hired Travis Quentin to murder his
wife— had he managed somehow to put it all out of mind, the way
every prosecutor and every defense attorney forgets about each case
they try as soon as the verdict comes in and they start thinking
about the next one? Was it really that easy?

Turning away, I glanced at the clock on the desk. It
was a few minutes after nine, not too late to call. Horace answered
on the first ring. "You been expecting my call?" I said with a
laugh.

"No, I thought it was Alma. I've barely seen her this
week. Every night she's got a meeting, getting ready for their
fund-raiser Sunday."

I had forgotten the fund-raiser. "Listen, Horace," I
began, trying to think of the best way to get out of it.

"Listen, Horace yourself," he growled. "You're not
getting out of it. I have to go; you have to go."

The absence of logic in this was irresistible.

"No, Horace, you have to go because you're married to
the woman who's in charge. And because you're a judge who might
want to get reelected. I don't have to go anywhere."

"I understand all that," he said placidly. "I have to
go; you have to go. I have to go because I'm married to Alma, and
you have to go because she wants you there. Now tell me, you get
through all that stuff I gave you? What do you think?"

"You mean, do I think he did it?" I paused, trying to
draw some conclusion that made sense. "If I didn't know him, if I'd
never met him, if the only thing I knew was what this guy Quentin
says, I suppose I'd think there was a chance."

For a moment, Horace was silent. Finally, he said,
"You don't think there's enough there for a conviction, do
you."

I hesitated. "I'm not even convinced the case should
be prosecuted. Are you?"

"It's like I told you. I hope he didn't do it."

"But you think he did. Why?"

"Couple of things. The polygraph, for one. Quentin
passed it. The meeting with Goodwin and the way all the charges
were dropped. The way Quentin knew where Nancy Goodwin was going to
be. But maybe more than any of it, there's something about Goodwin.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't want to believe he did it, but
when the state police told me I didn't have the kind of reaction
you have when you just know something couldn't have happened that
way."

I knew what he meant: the certainty that someone was
innocent and the awful doubt that you might not be able to prove
it. If there was anything worse than defending someone who was
convicted of a crime they did not commit, it had to be prosecuting
the case that sent that innocent person to prison. It was the fear
that every decent attorney felt, and the sense of danger that gave
an edge to everything that happened in the criminal courts.

Horace had a gift for listening to the things left
unspoken. "Joe, you have all the right instincts. If Goodwin didn't
do it, you'll know it."

"What makes you think I'm going to do this?" I
asked.

"What makes you think you won't?"

Chapter Three

From a small city of gray stone buildings you could
walk across in ten minutes, Portland had grown into a maze of
misshapen skyscrapers and interlocking freeways. The federal
building and the county courthouse, once two of the most prominent
structures in town, were now buried in the shadows of the
surrounding office towers. For nearly a hundred years Portland had
been a center of the timber trade. Lumber was one of the things the
world could not live without, and the men who knew how to make
money from it had left behind mansions that were monuments to their
own bad taste and children educated in a way that made certain they
would have neither the vices nor the virtues of their fathers. The
sons of pirates became gentlemen, and the daughters of whores
became ladies, and if there was a certain loss of raw energy in all
this, it seemed a cheap enough price to pay.

The first generation had been driven by the desire
for wealth, and the second by a sense of honor; the third
generation was not driven by anything at all. Other names were now
better known, more familiar: the names of new founders, men, even
women, who had come from nowhere, without money or connections but
with that same narrow-minded determination to make their mark.
Whether they had old money or new, everyone wanted to be invited to
the Convention Center, to attend what Alma Woolner had managed to
turn into one of the social events of the year.

Built on the east side of the river, where there had
once been nothing but warehouses and railroad yards and corner
taverns for the men who worked there, the Convention Center was a
fairly recent addition to the city, a green glass tribute to
post-modernism with a flat three sided spire that shot straight up
toward the heavens. The Cathedral of Notre Dame had taken a hundred
and forty years to build as a tribute to an eternal God; this had
taken less than two years to complete as a center of commerce. It
was all a question of what you prayed to.

The lobby was jammed with men in black tie and women
dressed in everything from slinky black dresses to bright
floor-length gowns. Taking a glass of champagne from the first
waiter I passed, I made my way through the undulating crowd,
searching for Horace. With my glass above my head, I gradually
reached the other side and found him against the wall, proudly
watching his wife.

Barely touching the hands that reached out to her,
Alma spoke to one person and then to another. Turning away from a
wizened old lady wearing a beaded jacket over her stooped
shoulders, she spotted me. She smiled at a stout, square-faced
woman and moved past her. "I knew you'd come," she cried, placing
her hands on my shoulders. She rose up on tiptoe to bestow a kiss
on the side of my face.

"Thank you," she whispered, as if I had done her some
great favor. She let go and took my hand. "Look who I found," she
announced, as she led me to her husband.

Horace was waiting, his eyes exuberant with malice.
"Have you met the Chief Justice?" he asked innocently.The balding
middle-aged man next to him extended his hand. His tuxedo and the
ruffled white shirt that went with it were both a size too
large.

"Jason Cornelius," Horace continued with cursory
formality, "Joseph Antonelli."

For an instant, his grip weakened and then, as if to
compensate, grew even more firm than before.

"Yes, yes, of course. Mr. Antonelli. I remember," he
said, with a faint smile. Eager to avoid embarrassment, he had once
recommended to me that Leopold Rifkin resign from the court when he
was accused of murder. I had suggested in turn that a judicial
system strong enough to survive Cornelius's own incompetence could
certainly endure a false accusation brought against an innocent
man. Like most politicians, Cornelius might never remember a
promise, but it was not likely he had forgotten that exchange.
Before he could say anything more, I turned to his wife and
introduced myself.

"Your husband and I both had the good fortune of
counting among our friends the late Leopold Rifkin," I
explained.

She had no idea who I was talking about. "Rifkin?"
she asked, glancing at her husband.

"Yes, dear, Judge Rifkin. He died a year or so ago,"
he said. "It was all very sad, very sad indeed." And he patted her
on the arm as he led her away.

Leaning against the wall, his arms across his chest,
Horace chuckled under his breath. "Well, you handled that with your
usual charm."

"What did you want me to do, tell the truth?"

He laid his hand on my shoulder and looked past me,
surveying the glistening faces of the crowd. "You never want to do
that with someone like Cornelius," he said, so no one else could
hear, "unless you really want him to think you're lying."

The crowd around Alma Woolner shifted first one way
and then the other, gradually moving her away from where we stood,
until all we could see of her was the jet black hair that swept up
from the slope of her neck. Horace never lost sight of her.

"Alma looks wonderful," I remarked admiringly.

"Alma always looks wonderful."

"You're a lucky man, Horace."

He turned to me. "You have no idea."

And in an instant he started in on me. "Why don't you
wander around? Maybe you'll find a really attractive woman just
dying to spend her nights with a guy who likes to spend all of his
in a library." He began to move away, working through the crowd,
one eye on Alma, the other darting back to me. "Lot of
possibilities here," he taunted, nodding his head and raising his
eyebrows every time he passed anyone in a dress.

"They're all taken!" I yelled over the din.

He stopped and grinned broadly. "Not all of
them!"

"You didn't!" I called back.

"See you inside!" he shouted, as he disappeared from
view.

I stopped the first waiter I found and exchanged my
empty glass for a full one. Faces vaguely familiar slid by in the
distance, but I felt no urge to draw closer. A young woman with
laughing eyes glanced at me, and I remembered when that might have
been the first beginnings of a new romance. I stared back at her
for a moment, and then, looking away, moved on.

At the announcement that it was time to enter the
great hall where dinner was to be served, I left the crowd behind
me and made my way along the glass-lined lobby to the rest room.
Standing on the marble floor, staring at the tiled wall in front of
me, I barely noticed when someone used the urinal next to me. As I
zipped my fly, however, he spoke my name. I looked back and found
myself caught in the gaze of a gray-eyed stranger, looking at me
over his shoulder.

"Yes," I replied, reaching down to turn on the
faucet, "I'm Joseph Antonelli."

"We've never really met," he explained, moving to the
next basin. He turned off the faucet, wiped his hands on a paper
towel, and waited while I did the same. "I'm Arthur O'Rourke," he
said, as he shook my hand. The name meant nothing to me, but there
was something impressive about him. Tall and thin, with a high
forehead, deep-set intelligent eyes, and a narrow, sensitive mouth,
he had the generous look of someone always willing to help.

"I believe you know my wife," he said. "Gwendolyn."
Arthur O'Rourke, twenty years her senior, was married to the
DA.

"Yes, of course," I said, wondering what she had told
him about me as I let go of his hand.

"I was surprised when I heard you'd retired," he
remarked. "I know Gwendolyn was disappointed. She's always said you
were a great lawyer."

"It was kind of her to say so," I replied, as he held
the door open for me.

Walking down the hallway together, he asked me
whether there was any chance I might practice law again, quickly
adding that it was not something he could ever have done.

"Be a criminal defense attorney?" I asked.

"Oh, no. Be an attorney of any kind. I could never
imagine having to stand up in a courtroom," he said. "Gwendolyn
seems to thrive on it. I really admire that about her."

He spoke quietly, carried himself with an easy
elegance, and had the sensibilities of someone who flinches at the
utterance of a harsh word."Do you think you might practice law
again?" he asked, as we entered the dining hall.

"I'm thinking about it."

He stopped and turned to me. "You should," he said,
quite serious. "I always wished there was something I could do
really well," he went on, a trace of regret in his voice.

We said good-bye, but before I began the search for
my own table, I watched him work his way toward his, an unhurried
journey interrupted by acquaintances and well-wishers. I saw his
wife in the distance, moving purposefully from table to table,
fastening her glittering gaze on each person whose hand she shook,
making a deliberate circuit of the room. There were six hundred
people here, and I was certain that before coffee was served
Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke would convince each of them that he or
she was the only one she really wanted to see.