Hangman (22 page)

“Fuck me,” he moaned. The seriousness of the situation was overwhelming his ragged emotions. “I didn’t kill her.”

“I don’t care if you did. From here on, you leave everything to me.”

He began to cry.

“Hear me, Eth?”

“Yes, Jeff.”

“I do all the thinking. Trust me, buddy, and I’ll save your life.”

I let him cry himself out.

Then I knocked on the door.

*    *    *

The two of them were in the hall when I came out. The detective from Seattle and the Mountie from Vancouver. The Mountie locked eyes with me. We both knew the drill. Every murder trial is a game of chess, and this was the moment when both of us first engaged the player on the other side.

“Jeff Kline,” Maddy said. “Zinc Chandler.”

“Counsel,” he acknowledged.

“Inspector,” I replied.

I got his rank from the insignia on his red serge tunic. The Mountie, in his own way, looked as battered emotionally as Ethan did in his cell. The Horseman’s heart was bleeding for Alex Hunt. We didn’t shake hands. We were squaring off. Had we been wearing boxing gloves, we both might have banged them together before the first punch.

Sorry, Alex.

Mixed metaphors.

Chess game.

Boxing match.

Take your pick.

“I want to see the crime scene,” I said, moving a pawn on the board, coming out of my corner.

“Why?” asked Maddy.

“Why not?” I said. “You don’t have a monopoly on the evidence.”

“And if we say no?”

“It will return to haunt you. I’ll tell the jury at trial how you tried to scuttle my client’s defense. We don’t want another Haddon, do we?”

“No,” said the detective. “I’ll take you up.”

“
I’ll
take him up,” the Mountie snapped at Maddy with an edge to his voice.

I glanced at her.

I glanced at him.

There was definite potential here.

Was that the sour smell of a turf war I whiffed?

*    *    *

To secure the crime scene on “A” Deck, the ship’s elevators were out of use. We were forced to climb two flights of stairs, and on the way up I asked both cops if Ethan Shaw had said anything to them.

“Yes,” said the detective.

“Yes,” said the Mountie.

“What?” I asked.

“‘Find Jeff Kline. I won’t say a word until I talk to him.’”

Good, I thought.

A cordon of beefy cops blocked the entrance to “A” Deck from the stairwell. Sure enough, standing in front of a camcorder held by someone hired on the spot was a face I recognized from this morning. Ready to scoop the competition with another Hangman exclusive, the TV reporter Sue Frye was trying to wheedle her way through the door to the murder cabin.

A flash of a badge and we were in.

“Word travels fast,” I said as the door swung shut behind us.

“Too fast,” said Maddy.

“The ship has turned around. Where are we going?”

“Vancouver,” said the Mountie.

“On whose orders?”

“Mine,” he replied. “We’re in Canadian waters.”

“It should be Seattle,” the Seattle cop commented dryly.

A turf war for sure, I thought with satisfaction. Divide and conquer.

The scene outside the door to the death cabin was like that in the center aisle of a church in which the wedding had been canceled at the altar by a reluctant bride or groom. Those milling around from “her” side were Washington State cops and techs summoned by the detective. Those milling around from “his” side were British Columbia counterparts gathered by the Mountie. Each side eyed the other suspiciously, as if only one-half had a right to be in the aisle.

“Stand at the door,” the Mountie said, “and don’t step in.”

I got the distinct impression that neither cop trusted lawyers. One in front, one behind, they walked me along the passageway to the door and stood flanking me while I peered into the cabin. The tension coming off the Mountie was palpable. So strong was the feeling of hatred I sensed from him for whoever had killed his lover that I do believe he was capable of homicide himself. Blood will have blood, Gram used to say.

“Who found the body?” I asked.

“A crewman,” replied the detective.

“Why’d he look into the cabin?”

“The door was propped open.”

“Not closed? Not locked?”

“I said propped open.”

“Where was my client?”

“There,” said the Mountie. He pointed to the outline of a human being in the flow of gore from beneath the hanging body toward the open door.

Except for two women examining the bloody remains, the cabin had yet to be invaded by both teams of forensic techs.

“Gill Macbeth I know. Who’s the other doctor?”

“Ruth Lester,” the detective said. “A pathologist from Seattle.”

His and hers sawbones too, I thought. No doubt about it, the shit will hit the fan when the ship docks in Vancouver.

I indicated the knife in the blood on the floor.

“Has that been dusted for prints?”

“Not yet, Counsel. But rest assured we’ll compare any with your client’s,” said the Mountie.

I glanced at the hangman game on the wall.

“The letter
I
has been added to what I saw on the news this morning.”

“The killer can’t spell,” said Maddy.

“How so?” I asked.

“The
I
should be a
Y
if the word game is meant to spell Haddon’s name. It’s Bryce with a
Y
, not Brice with an
I.
”

“Interesting,” I said.

“You’re sure?” asked the Mountie.

“I read the file enough times,” replied the detective.

“I’ve seen enough,” I said.

“Well?” asked the inspector.

“Well what?” I said.

“May we talk to your client?”

I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “Anything he has to say will be said in court.”

He shook his head. “Answer a question? How can you defend someone you know is guilty?”

“Ahhh,” I said. “The perennial wonder.”

“That’s no answer.”

“
That
is,” I replied. I pointed to the name half-spelled in blood. “The writing is on the wall.”

*    *    *

I was back in the brig, helping Ethan drink a pot of coffee.

“There’s going to be a turf war fought over you,” I said. “The Seattle police and the Mounties both want to charge you with Alex Hunt’s murder. When we dock in Vancouver, they’ll make their moves.”

Ethan washed his weary face with one hand. “What a nightmare.”

“It could be worse,” I said. “Imagine yourself in the same fix without me as your lawyer.”

He tried a smile, and failed miserably.

“The first battle we fight will be to keep you out of the States. What with the noose and the needle, they play hardball down there. Win that fight and we’ll save your skin.”

“What’s the law, Jeff?”

Ethan was a civil lawyer. Extraditing someone from Canada to face execution in America wasn’t his field of practice.

Nor was it mine.

Until now.

“Remember Charles Ng? Wanted by California back in the 1980s for at least a dozen sex-torture killings? Ng was arrested in Calgary, and fought extradition back to the States by claiming he was protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights. Since Canada no longer has the death penalty, he said it would be cruel and unusual punishment for a Canadian court to send him back to face the gas chamber in California.”

“He lost, didn’t he?”

“Sure,” I replied. “What Ng had going against him was his citizenship. Lawyers for the States scared the Supreme Court of Canada with a floodgates argument. If Ng won, our country would become known as a safe haven for American killers on the run. Faced with having the dregs of the States as nose-thumbing tourists, the SCC ruled there was nothing wrong with shipping Yanks back to face their own legal system.”

That didn’t cheer him up.

His coffee cup was shaking.

“It’s one thing to send an American back to death in America, but it’s a profoundly different matter to expose a Canadian to a penalty Canada has abolished. Under the Charter of Rights, we have the legal right to enter, remain in, and leave our country. If extradited to face death, we would be denied the right to return home. Except in a box, and that doesn’t count.”

The cup was still shaking.

“Where does that leave me?”

“You told me this morning at the office that you were born in Seattle. In law, that makes you an American. The family was split, you said, when your parents divorced. Your brothers remained with your dad in Seattle, while your mom moved baby you to Vancouver so she could live with a Canadian she met at a Seattle convention. After he and your mom married, you got his last name through adoption. The question is, buddy, did you also get his citizenship?”

“No,” said Ethan.

“How come?” I asked.

“Mom didn’t know if the marriage would last. If it didn’t, we’d go back to the States. She came north only because of Brad Shaw, so what he did was sponsor us for permanent residence. Me as an accompanying dependent of Mom. We were issued visas and were landed as permanent residents of Canada. There was no reason for me to become a Canadian citizen, so I kept my American citizenship.”

“You fucked up, Eth. If only you had gone for
dual
citizenship, we could use your right to live in Canada as a Canadian to thwart America’s right to execute you as an American.”

He set down the coffee cup to keep from dropping it. Fear distorted his face.

“Don’t worry,” I added. “I’ll figure something out.”

“I didn’t
do
it, Jeff.”

“I know, Eth.”

“It’s a frame!” he said forcefully.

“By whom? Justin?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose as if in psychic pain. “He’s my
brother
, Jeff.”

“So?” I said. “Cain was Abel’s brother too.”

Ethan shook his head, trying to shake suspicion.

“I left him with you when Alex took me for a walk on deck.”

“We spoke for a few minutes in the bar,” I said. “Then Justin excused himself and left.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I have no idea. What if he followed you and Alex down to your cabin, knocked on the door while you were throwing up in the can, knocked her out with a blow to the head, then waited in ambush for you to come out of the toilet compartment? He knocked you out, hanged her and left you to blame.”

Ethan wasn’t convinced.

He was in denial.

“Why kill Alex? That doesn’t make sense. The Hangman hangs jurors, not crime writers, Jeff. I can see no reason for Justin to kill her.”

“I can, Eth. He gave me one himself. When we were talking after you and Alex left, he told me she wanted to write a book about the Hangman jointly with him. He said she had phoned him from Vancouver early this week and suggested they meet tonight on this ship to consider a partnership.”

“So?” Ethan said.

“Think it through. If Justin is the Hangman, as
you
suspect, what use to him would a writing partner be? He’s obsessed, remember? The Haddon crusade is
his.
At best, he’d see Alex as competition. At worst, he’d see her as a threat.”

“A threat to what?”

“His secret identity. Alex was sharp. We both saw that tonight. For all we know, Justin might have slipped up with her, and was fearful that clue might lead Alex to the skeleton in his closet.”

“So he killed her?”

“Why not, Eth? What you have going for you, buddy, is
lack
of motive. Opportunity and means can be pinned on you, but without motive the cops will never be able to convict you. The Hangman hanged Alex out of fear she would unmask him. Since you had no reason to fear Alex would unmask you, the police have no reason to suspect you are the Hangman.”

My law associate looked as if he was going to cry again.

“Jeff …”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m in
big
trouble.”

“Are you holding back on me, Eth?”

“I have a skeleton, too.”

“Motive?”

He dropped his eyes.

“How strong?” I asked.

“Strong enough to convict me. This morning, after I told you Justin was my brother, you asked why in all the time you’ve known me I never mentioned him. ‘There’s a reason,’ I said, then we changed the subject.”

“What reason, Eth?”

“I had
two
older brothers.”

“Had?”

“Yes. One twin died.”

“Died how?”

“Guess.”

“Jesus, he was
hanged.
”

It shocked me that I knew so little about Ethan’s background. We first met at school in the East End, and since our home situations were alike, I assumed he was an only Canadian child like me, also being raised by a single mom. His stepfather, Brad Shaw, was out of the picture by then.

“Spill your guts,” I said.

It came out like a confession.

“I was born Ethan Quinn Haddon. That name changed to Ethan Shaw when my mom remarried. I was just a baby when we left Seattle. My dad thought I was fathered by another man, so I never met him before he died. My mom loathed my dad and didn’t want me near him, so she saw the twins without me. The twins were raised in Seattle by my dad. One was named Peter Bryce Haddon. The other was Steven Mark Haddon. When Peter was found guilty of murder in 1984, Mark was a journalism student. He took a pen name and later made it legal. Steven Mark Haddon became—”

“Justin Whitfield,” I said.

Hired Gun

Vancouver

Tonight

“How can you defend someone you know is guilty?”

That’s the question the Mountie asked of me, and that’s the question every layman asks or wants to ask if he corners a criminal lawyer.

What’s the answer?

Well, I’ll tell you.

The
practical
answer is Peter Haddon. That’s what I meant by saying, “The writing is on the wall.” Enough people
knew
he was guilty to loop a noose around his neck and drop him through the gallows floor for a crime he didn’t commit.

You think he’s the exception?

Think again.

From 1900 to the present day, American jails have either executed or released from death row more than a hundred convicts who were found to be innocent. Canada bears the guilt of what it did to the three Ms: Morin, Milgaard, and Marshall. Britain hanged Evans on the word of Christie, and might have done the same in more recent years to framed Irishmen if it still had the noose.

Courts, not lawyers, determine guilt. A lawyer has no right to prejudge a client. The
last
thing a client needs by way of defense is a lawyer doing a half-assed job because he thinks him guilty. If lawyers turn away clients they prejudge, many an innocent accused may be denied counsel. If the day arrives when that accused is you, should you not have the right to demand of your lawyer, “I hired you for your skill as an advocate in court, not to suffer the prejudice of your personal beliefs?”

If you seek medical help for cancer, you don’t expect a doctor to turn you away because he thinks your death should help rectify the population imbalance between men and women. Nor do you expect him to refuse you treatment because your conservative politics are adding to the misery of the homeless on the streets. Instead, you expect him to be
professional
, and to put aside his personal beliefs while he does the goddamn job you want him to do.

So why not lawyers?

That, however, is only the practical answer to the Mountie’s question. As I was standing in the doorway to Ethan’s cabin, with the corpse of Chandler’s lover hanging from the rod, I could—if I hadn’t feared he’d haul off and slug me—also have given the inspector the
theoretical
answer.

When I became a lawyer, I took an oath. That oath imposed a duty on me to “uphold the rule of law.” The rule of law is the reason we live in a free and democratic society. Without the rule of law, chaos and anarchy are the norm: you take what you want, you rape who you want, you kill who you want in that Darwinian jungle.

The rule of law means
everyone
has the right to a fair trial. A fair trial is one in which the prosecutor presents the case against, the defense lawyer vigorously tries to tear it apart, and the judge and jury decide what’s true from what they witness in court. A lawyer cannot lack the courage to honor his oath. The moment lawyers start refusing to take cases because of conscience, the rule of law begins to fall apart. To quote an American journalist, Edwin Yoder, Jr.:

The law will protect the good man and the righteous cause only if it also extends an even hand to the evil and iniquitous as well. That lesson, hard to grasp and still harder to embrace, is the heart of the rule of law.

 

A lawyer is duty bound not to “throw” a case. The apotheosis of advocacy is boldly to defend the case of the most unpopular or repugnant client. In such cases, the lawyer represents a principle and an ideal: the notion that the worst client in the worst case is entitled to be defended by all honorable means.

Can it be put better than Sir Thomas More’s words in
A Man for All Seasons?
In the 1500s, More lost his head to King Henry VIII because the lawyer refused to forsake the rule of law so the king could marry yet another wife.

“How can you defend someone you know is guilty?”

I do it, says the lawyer, to protect us all:

ROPER: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast—Man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

 

Of course, I don’t know a single lawyer who thinks like that, so that’s why I didn’t give the Mountie both barrels of bullshit. The player on the other side knew the legal game, so he knew why we lawyers
really
defend clients we know are guilty.

Lawyers are gamblers.

Courts are gambling casinos.

Clients are betting chips.

And the goal of the game is to
win!

The harder the case, the bigger the
win!

The bigger the
win
, the greater your reputation.

The greater your reputation, the more money you make.

The more money you make, the more inflated your ego.

The more inflated your ego, the higher you rise to the top.

And when you get to the top, you’re the king of the world.

So was Ethan guilty?

Who gave a fuck?

I had a notorious case to
win!

That’s why, last Tuesday morning, November 14, four days after Alex Hunt was hanged on the
North Star
, and two days before the peril I’m in now, I strapped on the six guns and went to court.

Spread the word.

There’s a new gun in town.