J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 02 - No Time to Die (18 page)

“We’ll do that. I think that’s reasonable. Tomorrow at 9:00 am. I’ll see you then, and we can also put some of these objections and arguments on the record at that time.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Brian McNaughten sat across the conference room table from Harrison Grant. Lawyers didn’t usually scream at their clients, but Harrison Grant administered verbal abuse that was usually reserved for first-year associates.

“
What the hell else is going to happen?” Grant folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t lose. I get paid because I don’t lose, and the reason I don’t lose is because I know everything before the trial starts. I figure out a plan, and then I execute the plan.”

Brian didn’t say anything.

“You convinced me not to depose these witnesses.” Grant held up a copy of the plaintiff’s witness list. He waved it in front of Brian McNaughten’s face. “I always depose every witness on a list, but you convinced me to violate my own rule.” He slammed the paper down on the table. “You said Jolly Boy wouldn’t pay for the depositions. You told me they were unnecessary, that these other lawyers were broke and didn’t have anything.”

Grant shook his head in disgust.

“Now I’ve got television stories and newspaper stories about a Jolly Boy graveyard. You think a jury isn’t going to hear about that?”

“
They’re instructed not to watch television or read the newspapers,” Brian said. “I heard the judge say it.”

“
That’s crap and you know it.” Grant shook his head. “I just got two emails from my wife saying they found seven bodies out there. The jurors are sitting at home right now. They’re free to do whatever they want. They can’t avoid this story. It’s everywhere.”

“
It’ll be fine,” Brian said. “You heard Judge Delaney. They need a connection, and they don’t have one.”

Grant started to scream again, but stopped himself. He needed to calm down. He had never let a client see him like this. He needed to bring his focus back. He was supposed to be unflappable.

They sat in silence for a few minutes while Grant thought about how to handle the rest of the trial.

“
I’ll move for a directed verdict in this case,” Grant finally said. “Maybe we can prevent it from ever getting to a jury. If they have nothing, then there is nothing for the jury to decide. Delaney will dismiss.”

“
That’s right.” Brian nodded his head. He was happy Grant was starting to look at this rationally again. He and his brother had been careful. Brian knew there was no connection. The only issue would be if Maus testified against them. Maus was the problem. Dylan needed to take care of Maus.

###

Deputy
Maus stood on his momma’s front porch. The farm had been in the family for more than 60 years. They had never been rich. The land was too sandy and dry to make any farmer rich, but they had managed to scratch out a living.

Now they just rented out the land to Jolly Boy and a few other companies. His daddy was in a nursing home, and his momma spent her days watching television.

Even on the porch, Maus heard the muffled noise coming from the television. It was always on. His momma never turned it off. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for her to sleep in the big recliner in the living room, watching television until her eyes fell shut.

Maus
tried to block out the noise. He had bigger issues down below.

The house rested on a small hill. The locals called
Jesser “poverty flats” for a reason. Its inhabitants were certainly poor, and Jesser didn’t have mountain vistas. So from the top of that small hill, there was a pretty good view.

Down south from the house, about three-quarters of a mile,
Maus watched the action just on the other side of their property line. It was marked by a cypress grove.

In the morning, it had just been a news truck. Now there were three cop cars, a couple of ambulances, and two more news trucks.

Maus wanted to get closer. He knew that they had found it, but he wanted to hear what they were saying and what they were thinking. It was his day off, and they’d ask him why he was there on his day off. He’d have to explain that he saw the activity from his momma’s house, and that wouldn’t be good. He didn’t want them to find out that he’d grown up here. He didn’t want them to find out that he had played in that cypress grove as a kid. That this was his real home.

Then
Maus thought about the bodies and DNA. He went to a class once about DNA. A professor from the University of Miami came and talked to the Sheriff’s department and some of the local police. Maus didn’t understand it all. He thought the professor was a big nerd, showing off how smart he was, but the message at the end of the lecture was pretty clear: DNA was everywhere.

He didn’t think that they’d find any DNA that would trace back to him.
It’s not like he’d raped ‘em or anything
, Maus thought. Plus, they’d have to get a DNA sample from him to compare it to. So if they found DNA, they’d just run it through a database of convicted felons and there wouldn’t be a match.

Maus
closed his eyes. He rolled his broad shoulders, trying to roll back his paranoia.

He continued to watch the activity down in the cypress grove awhile longer, wondering how they’d found it. It had to be his own bad luck. He thought about Tommy Estrada. That was just bad luck, too. He hadn’t buried the body deep enough. An animal got at it and pulled it into the nearby fields. It was just bad luck.

I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.

Maus
looked in his hand. It was a subpoena to testify in the Tommy Estrada trial. The woman attorney said they’d call him and let him know if he was needed. Maus hadn’t gotten a call yet.
That’s
good
, he thought.
I’m still safe
.

###

Dylan
McNaughten cut a line of coke on a small pocket mirror. He held it in his hand, looking down at his fractured reflection. His hand trembled in anticipation of the shot of white powder. He’d been off cocaine for a week, and he couldn’t hold off any longer. He needed the power.

Dylan took a cut straw out of his pocket and snorted a line.

He let the rush take him.

He leaned back against the cold wall tiles, enjoying the relative privacy of his brother’s downstairs toilet. He may have sat for a minute or maybe three. Dylan didn’t care. He just needed a little boost.

He wiped the mirror down, and then put the mirror and straw back in his pocket.

Before exiting, Dylan checked himself, and then returned to the bar in his brother’s man cave.

“You don’t need to start over.” Dylan pulled out a chair and sat down next to his brother, Brian. “Just give me the bottom line.”

“
Bottom line is that Maus is a problem. If there’s any evidence that Jolly Boy knew about what was going on with workers or ordered Maus to do this stuff, then all bets are off. Judge Delaney said he’d allow all the excluded evidence about Maus to come in and probably a lot more. The liability would be big.”

Dylan sat up in his chair. Money always got his attention. He had a lifestyle to maintain.

“Like how bad?”

Brian shrugged.

“Grant wouldn’t give a number. He’s a chicken-shit lawyer. But I think it could break us.” Brian waited. “Plus Grant told me there might be criminal liability, like anybody who helped Maus or helped him cover it up could go to prison.”

Brian let that hang in the room, and they both thought about what that would mean to them. Brian knew what had to be done, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. He was still imagining the tiny recording devices.

“So do you think you can handle this?”

Dylan nodded his head.

“I need some cash, though,” he said. “Lots of it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Michael folded a couple of dress shirts and put them in his suitcase. He picked up the framed picture of his namesake, wrapped it in a towel and laid it on top of the other clothes.

Jane came out of the bathroom and saw the suitcase.

“You’re leaving?” She walked across the room to Michael.

Michael closed the top of his suitcase and latched it shut.

“You seemed like you wanted some privacy, so I got a room at the Stay-Rite with Kermit.”

Jane folded her arms.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “Women think. That’s all I’ve been doing.” Jane walked closer to Michael. Physically she got closer, but there was an emotional distance between them. Their conversations were flat.

“You did a good job today. I asked you to get me a delay, and you got me a delay.”

Michael sighed. He knew they needed more. A delay was just a delay.

“
We need causation,” Michael said. “I can’t get you that.”

“No more tricks up your sleeve?”

Michael shook his head.

“Afraid not.” He picked up his suitcase. He walked over to Jane, set the suitcase down and then kissed her on the cheek. “Any word from the feds?”

Jane stepped back.

“
I don’t think so.”

“
Well stay on Justin,” Michael said. “That guy still loves you and there’s still some time.”

###

Jane sat alone on her ratty couch. It was the same ratty couch she had bought secondhand while in college. It was the same ratty couch she had during law school, and now, here it was. The ratty couch was in the middle of her sad, one-bedroom apartment in
Jesser, Florida.

She was rapidly closing in on 40 years old. She had no husband, no real boyfriend, no kids, no house, and a failing law firm. She rubbed her hand on the frayed cushion.

What the hell am I doing?

Jane allowed herself a few more minutes of self-pity, and then she got up. She walked over to the kitchen, opened her freezer, and found the pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

Jane grabbed a spoon, and walked back into her living room. She sat down on her couch, took off the lid, and then resumed the pity party in earnest.

The ice cream went down easy. One spoonful came after another, until it was all gone.

She set the empty container down on the end table, and then Jane laid down on the couch. She closed her eyes. She laid in the silence; thinking. She ran over the options in her head. They were options related to both the case against Jolly Boy and her life.

After sorting and resorting the list, Jane came to the simple conclusion that her future largely, if not entirely, depended on the case against Jolly Boy. She had to win. She had to figure out a way to win.

Jane eventually sat up and got her cell phone out of her pocket.

She punched in a few numbers, stopped, and then finished dialing.

It started to ring. For a moment, Jane thought about just hanging up and forgetting about it.

Then, an answer.

###

It took Justin Kent about an hour and a half to get there.

Jane opened the door and let him inside. They gave each other an awkward hug, and then Kent stood near the door. It was his first time back to her apartment after their broken engagement, and he was unsure of what to do with himself. Kent knew every inch of the place, but he didn’t think he should act on that knowledge.

Finally, Jane figured out what was happening. He wanted direction.

“I’ll take your coat,” she said. “Just have a seat at the table.”

Kent half-smiled, relieved.

He walked into the small kitchen area, pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jane came back from her bedroom after putting his coat on her bed. She opened the refrigerator.

“I’m having a beer. You want one?”

“
Sure.” Kent folded his hands in front of him. As Jane pulled out the bottles and began to screw off the caps, he filled the silence.

“
I’m glad you called me,” he said. “I wasn’t sure whether I should call after the meeting, but I wanted to. … You didn’t seem too happy afterwards.”

Jane handed him an open bottle of beer, and then she sat down on the other side of the table.

“It’s a lot to take in.” Jane took a sip from her bottle, and then started to pick at the label. “Sounds like Vatch wants him pretty bad.”

Kent nodded.

“He’s been after that money for years. Probably won’t ever stop.”

“
Well I was being honest in there. I really don’t know anything.”

Jane took another sip of beer.

“Of course I’ve asked a few times, but Michael always blows me off. In a way, I don’t want to know. He’s a good guy. He’s a friend.”

“
Do you love him?” Kent asked.

The question took Jane back.

“I
like
him,” she said, thinking about it. “I could love him, some day. Depends. There’s too much going on right now to fall in love, too much unknown.”

Kent nodded. He waited a moment.

“I miss you, Jane,” he said. He played with the beer bottle in his hand, a nervous fidget. “We aren’t getting back together right now, and I get that, but I still miss you. I miss seeing you in the morning when I wake up. You made me feel proud of what I do.”

Jane picked at the label on her bottle a little more, and then managed to pull it off. She balled up the wet sticker, and pushed it off to the side.

“If we were to do this deal,” she said, ignoring what Kent had just told her. “How long would it take?”

“
Not long,” Kent said. “We could set it up pretty quickly, but you need to tell us. You’re the one running out of time.”

“
We’ve got our medical expert, and then there’s Elana. She hasn’t testified yet, but she’s last.”

Jane finished her beer, and then got up and walked the empty bottle over to the sink.

“But the judge told us we needed to connect the dots, and neither the medical expert or Elana can do that. That’s why I need your help.”

She rinsed out the bottle, and then Jane put the bottle in the recycling.

“And you’re sure the feds aren’t going to do it just because it’s the right thing to do?”

“
If it was me, I’d do it in a heartbeat with no strings.” Kent smiled. “But this is the FBI.”

Kent got up and walked over to Jane. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Vatch knows he’s got leverage. He wants something in return.” Kent shrugged. “It’s not my call. I’m sorry.”