Motion to Suppress (23 page)

She reached for a cigarette, which she stuck unlit between her lips. "These state guys are leaning hard on him. They’re telling him, either he helps nail Prize’s or they arrest him for conspiracy."

"He ought to move on, to the Bahamas or something, if he wants to play blackjack," Nina said. "Everybody knows him now anyway."

"He really likes it here. Can you believe it? That tin can we live in. He’s quitting. He’s retiring. He’s got enough socked away and he’s fifty-five, he wants to write up his memoirs. But first he has to get rid of this hassle." She inserted a nail into her hair and scratched thoughtfully. "We figure you could handle it. Get the point across to the State of Nevada that Al can’t help and they should leave him alone."

Sharon the loyal wife? Nina could go along with that, but she had a feeling Sharon Otis wanted more.

"Is that Al’s only legal problem?" she asked.

"Al? Yeah, he’s clean otherwise. But I have a problem or two."

"And you want me to represent you too?"

"Lawyers cost a lot. I don’t want Al to find out about all my business. He doesn’t need the stress. He has high blood pressure. You help me out, I’ll fix you on your case."

"What kind of problems are we talking about?"

"Some grand larceny, some drugs. Major bad guys are mad at me right now. So, are you in?"

"I’m thinking. While I’m thinking, tell me about your marriage to Anthony," Nina said.

"Married to him for about six months in Fresno eight years ago. He was a hot-blooded dude, no mistake, cop to the max. Left him first time he laid a hand on me. Don’t get me wrong, he never had a chance to beat me. But you know, we had a lot in common." She laughed. "That’s why we got married. And that’s how we got involved later. ’Cause he worked at Prize’s and I knew he’d go for a deal."

"How long have you been married to Al?" Nina said.

"Two years," Sharon Otis said. "I sold a little meth about five years ago. In Nevada, that means a year in the women’s pen. A very bad year. Al picked me up hustlin’ downtown at the Glass Slipper. He took me back to the trailer and I’ve been there ever since. He set me up here and gave me a half interest in the business. He gives me space, he doesn’t give a damn when I ride my new bike with the club...."

"Your new Harley?"

"Business is good," Sharon said, tapping the cigarette on the desk.

"You ride one," Nina said, "but you don’t wear the wings."

Sharon looked down at her jacket. "Oh, you mean my pretty silver Harley wings. Al told me you had them."

"In a police evidence storage locker at South Lake Tahoe. Found right outside the bedroom at Anthony’s house. When were you there?"

"The answer to that question is your retainer when you agree to represent Al and me, Counselor." Sharon smiled. Red lips, a flash of gold in her mouth. A real rough rider.

"Let me make sure I understand. You want me to perform legal services for you, and in exchange, you will give me some information that you say will help my client. Look, Ms. Otis—"

"Missus," Sharon Otis said. "It’ll pop the DA’s case like a bullet in a bald tire."

"You need a Nevada attorney. I only have a California license. I don’t know the Nevada gaming or criminal laws. It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s a question of competence."

"Okay, you bring in the Nevada mouthpiece and cover the cost, make sure he handles it right."

"I can’t pay you for providing information. It would make your information valueless, and it would violate legal ethics."

"Far be it ..." was all Sharon Otis said. "But I really have no particular reason to tell you anything, otherwise. This may surprise you, but no matter what your client has told you, Anthony was a good guy. He’d had a rocky life, like me, took it in the gut a few times. When he met Misty, he still had it in him to love her, deep, deeper than I’ll ever get. And she took away every shred of dignity he had left. Pisses me off. I ain’t helpin’ her for nothin’."

"Maybe you don’t know nothin’," Nina said.

"Maybe you’re full of it," Sharon said. "Let me try again with you. Maybe I went to see my ex-husband while little Misty was at work. Maybe we talked money and a few other things. Maybe Misty came home and walked through the front door while I was moving out the back. Maybe I stuck around and saw something very, very interesting. Something that will clear the little brat, not that she deserves my help."

She shrugged. "You’re not the only one I’ve talked to. But I’d rather give you the exclusive, ’cause you can do more for me." The phone buzzed again. She ignored it. "So you better decide quick, Counselor."

"I advise you to tell me now Obstruction of justice is a crime "

"Listen, you want me to help you, you help us only do favors when I get favors in return " She finally lit the cigarette She leaned her head back and opened her mouth with an odd little pop Out floated a series of perfect smoke rings. Nina didn’t know anyone could do that anymore

"Mrs Otis, it’s dangerous to withhold information about a crime," Nina said.

"Ooh, you’re scarin’ me Call me when you decide " Sharon got up, giving Nina her card, trailing the odor of hair spray and smoke through the room. She picked up a gold-glittered, lacquered helmet off the table with the name Sharon emblazoned in flame lettering on the way out When she saw Nina looking at it, she tucked her hair underneath, saying, "I’ve been in trouble too much to get picked up in California for some jack-shit violation of the helmet laws "

"Tell Gene to lock up, baby cakes," she sang to a salesman as they walked out to the bikes, then she swung up into the saddle of a black-and-purple Harley Sportster She pulled goggles out of the saddlebag, kicked the kick-starter a few times, and the machine roared to life "Take it easy, Counselor," she called to Nina, working the throttle a little She gunned it and roared out the driveway, then quickly pulled over a few feet down the street

"Hey! Counselor! C’mere!"

Nina walked over, admiring her style, the way her slim legs straddled the bike, the wrist tattoo, the way she acted like she owned the road The traffic whizzed by the Harley at the curb Sharon seemed to pay no attention "I’ll give you a clue, so you know I’m not kidding," she said, still working the throttle "Check the brand of ciggies in Anthony’s pocket, if you can Virginia Slims He had to borrow mine "

Nina knew it was no accident, because she was turning back toward the lot and saw the car hurtling up the road, veering toward the sidewalk and the Harley and the two of them, speeding up even more as she dove for cover into the bushes, crashing with terrific force into the Harley from behind.

Time stopped after the crash, and the small figure in the gold helmet flew up and slammed into another moving car. Even on hands and knees from the bushes Nina could see the blood leaking out of the helmet as Sharon Otis slid slowly to the curb. Then Nina was scrambling, shouting, and a crowd was gathering. The car backed away from the bike and tore off, its muddy license plate illegible.

An old Chevy with fins. Was it the one that had been behind her? Sharon Otis lay bleeding in the road, her shiny Harley a few feet away as spattered and torn as she was, spectators blocking out her blue sky, one praying, a lone child crying. She died before the ambulance shrieked around the corner.

20

AT FOUR O’CLOCK on the day after Sharon Otis’s death, Nina found Collier Hallowell chatting with the county clerks in their big second-floor office across from Judge Milne’s courtroom. "Could we talk in the law library?" Nina asked. Piling a load of papers into his arms, he followed her next door. In the small library, empty except for them, they looked out the windows toward the new community college campus across Al Tahoe and the cumulating clouds.

The room’s incandescents glowed in a feeble protection against swiftly descending blackness. Windowpanes rattled and trees writhed in the gale winds outside. Nina was tired. Her night had been haunted by the small figure in the golden helmet slamming with bone-crunching force into the car windshield, over and over. "Sharon Otis," she said. "She was murdered."

"Go ahead," Collier replied. His thoughtful face showed the strains of the day. He had already spent several hours at his desk, she knew, lining up witnesses, and several hours in court, and he had probably missed lunch.

"Do you know who I’m talking about?"

"Sharon Otis," Collier said. "Hit and run during rush hour last night on Reno’s busiest boulevard. Anthony Patterson’s ex-wife, ex-inmate at Carson City Women’s Correctional Center, ex-hooker and meth addict, wife of a card sharp, suspected current meth dealer.... Yeah, I know."

"I saw it," Nina said.

"I heard. Was it bad?"

"I had just finished talking to her. She was going to provide me with important exculpatory evidence in the Patterson case. She told me she was at the Keys place and saw something. We were standing together at the curb. I saw the car coming, but she couldn’t see behind her. She never had a chance. I told the Reno police everything."

"What did she see?"

"I don’t know. She insisted I do some legal work or pay her off before she would tell me."

"She said specifically she was there?"

"She said maybe she was there. She played with me."

"Why would she be there?"

"I can’t go into any details of the defense that you don’t have to know now," Nina said. "You understand my position."

"Well, but you have to understand mine, too, Nina. Think about it. Sharon Otis had plenty of enemies. Hard-driving boss who cut deals off the back of her bike."

"She was Patterson’s ex-wife. She was still friendly with him. They did some business together."

"If she was killed so she wouldn’t tell you something," Collier went on inexorably, "why was she killed after she talked to you, not before?"

"Maybe the car was aimed at me, not her."

"I see."

"It could have been the same car that pushed me off the road with my client in May."

"Can you swear it was the same car?"

Nina didn’t answer.

Collier spread working hands with square fingers and calluses. "Suggestive, but I don’t understand what you want from me."

"I want the name of the person that told you about Dr. Cervenka. I want protection for myself and Michelle Patterson. I want you to reopen the investigation."

The storm struck.

Collier’s teeth gleamed in the flash of lightning, disappeared, and showed again as a second bolt slashed through the trees. All of Tahoe, whipped first by wind, now beaten by rain, ran for cover.

"Makes me feel small," he said loudly, his words fighting the thunder. "Scares me. I want to go home, batten down the hatches. This work I do, the files, the people, the whole thing, doesn’t seem important when the sky is falling."

She understood what he felt perfectly. "We’re so exposed up so high in the mountains," said Nina. Matt and Andrea would be scurrying to bring in the patio mats and settling the kids in front of a fire. She wished she could be there. She wished Bobby were back from Jack’s. "The weather. The people. It’s so raw." She turned to look at him. "How do you handle all the suffering you see?"

"Bad things happen, sometimes to people I’ve tried to protect. I lost a witness a year ago. I almost quit. Dangerous people stay out in the streets. Things happen that would tear me apart if I let them."

"By all accounts you’re the best, Collier," she said.

"I’ll call the Fresno police and ask them to watch out for your client, Nina. I’ll send patrol cars by your office and home. Here’s my home phone number. Call me if you need me, and I’ll be there. But—"

"I won’t make you promise everything will be all right. I know I have to look out for myself. Thanks."

"You could just drop the case, Nina. You could go back to appellate work, writing those fine briefs you write."

"Run scared, you mean," she said. "Believe me, I think about that whenever it’s dark outside. At this point sometimes I wish I’d never met Michelle Patterson. But she depends on me. She needs me. She’s so vulnerable. You know she’s going to have a baby?"

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

"Collier. Tell me the name of your informant."

"I already checked," he said. "The informant was sixty miles away from Reno when Sharon Otis was killed. That information is reliable. You can trust me on this."

"But—"

He held up his hand. "Wait. We never know enough to protect ourselves completely. The person who told us about Dr. Cervenka, who you think might have attempted to enter your client’s room at the Lucky Chip, who you think ran you off the road, is not the person who killed Sharon Otis. She could have been killed for some reason totally unrelated to this case. The same is true for all these events.

"Maybe Michelle Patterson’s burglar was a late-night drunk who thought he was locked out of his room," he went on. "It happens. Maybe the car that ran you off the road was another jerk driver who went too far. You said in your report that the car behind you blinked its headlights. Assassin or road hog?"

Nina swallowed. Another flash cut through the clouds of rain.

"Or maybe you are right, you and your client are being pursued. Assume the worst, Nina. Take precautions."

Nina reached in her purse and took out the tape she had made during her conversation with Sharon Otis. "I’m going to go ahead and give you this, Collier. Listen to it. I want to persuade you to look at this case another way, to consider for a minute that Michelle is telling the truth."

"The investigation is open until trial. I’m always happy to learn additional facts that help us get closer to the truth. No offense, Nina, but you seem to be in a tough situation with your client confessing and yet not willing to take the only fair offer I can make...."

"You know this isn’t a first-degree murder case. Even if she’s lying, there was no premeditation."

"Premeditation can occur in a very short period of time. She had time to take him out on a boat. She struck him a second time when he was probably helpless. She threw him overboard. She cleaned up the mess afterward, at home and on the boat."

"You know this is a voluntary manslaughter case. You know if she killed him, he drove her to it. But I don’t think she did it."

"I’m sorry, Nina. We have the three factors listed in People v. Anderson that add up to premeditation." He listed them on his fingers. "One: Evidence of planning activity just prior to the homicide. Two: Motive to kill based on the prior relationship. Three: Manner of killing, from which it can be inferred that there was a preconceived design."

He fleshed out the threat of life in prison for Michelle Patterson.

"Think about the offer of a plea to second-degree murder, Nina."

"Not with somebody out there trying to end the case another way, Collier. And Judge Milne hasn’t ruled on my motion to suppress the tape."

"He got back yesterday."

"And?"

The expression on his face said everything. She ran for the clerk’s office and read through the single sheet of pink paper with fury.

Collier had won. If she put Michelle’s mental state at issue in the trial, the confession would be allowed.

"We call that thing propped over by the door there an umbrella," said Sandy when Nina dripped into the office. "You might want to take it next time they tell us there’s a one hundred percent chance of rain." Nina hung her jacket on the bentwood rack and sipped from hot coffee Sandy handed her. "Jeffrey Riesner is in the library. Chose not to wait in here."

Riesner stood up when she entered the room, but he didn’t extend his hand. "I have coffee," he indicated. "And," he said, nodding his head toward the door behind which Sandy sat, "I wouldn’t dare ask her, if I didn’t. You can spare a couple of minutes before you go home, I take it?" No one waited in the waiting room, they both knew.

"A couple of minutes."

"You know that the Tengstedts consulted me about your case?" he said.

"Yes."

"Maybe you don’t know that after I talked with Michelle, I was ready to file a complaint against you with the bar association. "

"No. I didn’t know that."

"The way you’ve handled this case ... well, I probably don’t need to go into the fact that mistakes have been made. The kind of mistakes you might expect of a rank beginner."

She waited, standing, arms folded.

"No. A beginner would have taken the original plea. That makes everything you’ve done even harder to buy. After I finished thinking about the hellish mistakes you’ve made, it occurred to me that it might help if I—"

"I don’t need your help, Mr. Riesner."

"Wait a minute. Let me finish. Michelle is so ... young. I would like some assurance that you’re planning to proceed with more prudence than you’ve used so far."

"You are not working for the Tengstedts now, are you?"

He shook his head.

"You may disagree with the risks I’ve taken. My client doesn’t." Since she didn’t drop me for you, Nina didn’t say.

His face reddened slightly.

"I’m confident I can defend my handling of the case, if necessary. When we go to trial—"

"Don’t go to trial. I don’t want to see you ... your client crucified."

"Plead her out."

"Exactly."

"Look, nobody’s willing to make any deals that are remotely favorable to my client at this time. Unless you have heard something different?" He said nothing. "You like to win, don’t you?"

"Of course."

"So do I. I don’t plan to lose."

"You don’t plan," he amended. "You compel me to give you some information that I hoped would be unnecessary. My firm represents Dr. Frederick Greenspan. We have handled his legal work for some time. He is concerned that, in your flailing about for some distraction from your client’s guilt, you will attempt to harm his reputation in the community."

"What does he think I’m going to do, accuse him of the crime?"

"Even you would hardly go that far. However, I think you would go so far as to suggest that he was somehow professionally negligent in his treatment, such that your client became unhinged. Even if that is not your idea, he is not going to become involved in some flimflam defense. If you subpoena him, one might assume his testimony will not be favorable."

"One might wonder what he is trying to cover up," Nina said.

"Dr. Greenspan has helped many people in the community over many years. He has a sterling reputation, unlike you. He won’t be slandered by some fly-by-night. Before I came here, I asked around town about you. Since nobody knew much, I called San Francisco. Not Jack McIntyre. My friends in the City."

"You have friends?"

"You’ve never handled a felony trial on your own until this one. You’re an appellate attorney. That something I haven’t given the press, yet. So before you gratuitously attack my client, do me the courtesy of thinking very carefully about alternatives that might serve you better at trial."

"I’ll certainly remember what you’ve said. And now I’m sure you have better things to do," Nina said. "I know I do."

"Nice to see you working hard for a change, Sandy," Riesner said as he left the reception area. He didn’t see the jutting finger with which she bade him adieu.

When he was gone, Nina flopped down into her office chair. Sandy came in and settled herself across the desk.

"A prick," she said. "Told you."

"We lost the motion, Sandy," Nina said.