Panther's Prey (4 page)

As soon as I walked out of Southern Station I called Gabriela Alame, the elected public defender and my boss, to tell her I'd be in tomorrow. She tried to convince me to take at least the rest of the week off, but I knew too well that work was the only antidote. The prospect of the empty hours I'd have to fill would otherwise be intolerable.

I let my brother know what had happened and that I was okay. He offered me his couch, a consideration that would never have occurred to the old Teddy, his concern yet another sign of the changes the bullet had wrought. I thanked him but declined. No matter how awful my little room and the recent memories it contained, I needed to spend this evening alone.

I slept only fitfully and was ready for the dawn when it came. By 7:30
AM
I was at my desk. Several colleagues stopped by and spoke a few words, but my affair with Jordan hadn't been common knowledge, and it was an open question what special consideration the weeklong sexual partner of a murder victim should receive.
Rebecca, with a longer claim to friendship, hadn't come to work. Only when I'd been there a few hours did it dawn on me that people might see me as callous for showing up the day after finding her dead.

This realization came as a shock and was my first sign that my internal calibrations were disturbed, my self-assessments not to be trusted. But my dread of going home and being alone outweighed my worries about what my coworkers might think.

I sat at my desk staring at a document open on my screen, completely unable to work or to think of anything but Jordan. If I let them, the images of our relationship bowled me over. There was much to remember and I was afraid of losing the immediacy of the nights we'd spent together. I e-mailed the court reporter and ordered the transcript from Rodriguez's trial. Never mind the expense; I could find a justification later for needing it.

As for the rest, we might as well have been writing on water. And now the universe had sucked Jordan away.

I sat at my desk all morning, forgetting lunch, until a piercing headache reminded me I'd had no coffee. When I came out of my office, I realized it was late afternoon. Instead of pouring myself a cup I went outside and walked, following Embarcadero around the city until I was lightheaded with hunger, my heels sore. I meant to find food but instead I walked home through downtown, climbed the stairs to my room, and fell into bed.

Jordan's funeral took place Friday afternoon. The burial would come later, when the medical examiner released the body. But the family had decided to hold the ceremony now.

Dozens of lawyers were in attendance, including Rebecca and Gabriela, who'd given a rousing speech to the troops at the office.
There are those who say we couldn't do the work we do if we knew how it felt to be victims. But the truth is none of us is immune, and we're not indifferent. The crucial thing is not to let anger overwhelm us. What Jordan would want, what any of us would want, is that we go out with renewed
purpose and fight all the harder for the clients she'd hoped to spend the rest of her career defending.
To Gabriela, Jordan was a martyr to be exploited in the service of our mission, not the warm-blooded woman who'd slept in my arms.

At the funeral, by contrast, the emphasis was on a reconstructed, sanitized version of a life that to me bore little connection with the Jordan I'd known, the passionate lover, the hard-nosed lawyer. It was as if her adult self, including her professional persona, had been carefully set aside. The priest recalled memories of her as a teenager. Then her best friend from high school talked of trouble they'd gotten themselves into during a trip to Europe before college. The facts that she'd been murdered, most likely by one of her own clients, and that she'd suffered terribly before dying, weren't mentioned at all. By the end, the effect was nauseating to me. I couldn't take seriously a religion that wouldn't call the devil out.

A large contingent was present from Baker Benton. I recognized Tom Benton, the named partner, from his profile on their website. I'd looked him up when Jordan and I first teamed up, after she told me about the case they'd tried together just before she took her leave of absence. Benton was all vertical lines, as if carved from a slab of wood, with hair precisely chiseled and fixed in place. He wore a black suit and a red tie over a cream-colored shirt. The lawyers with him seemed to form their own tribe, set apart by their awareness of their superior gifts.

Jordan's father, by contrast, was weak chinned and narrow shouldered. Standing between wife and daughter, he seemed not to know where he was, or why. His wife had to prod him to stand for the hymns. Both men wept openly: Walker's head dipped as if in shame, Benton's high. By the end of the service, I disliked the latter without having exchanged a word with him.

In the receiving line afterward, Benton ended up next to Gabriela. Each evinced a similar aura of charisma held carefully in check. They appeared to know one another, but that was hardly surprising.
Gabriela was required to stand for election every four years, which meant she had to seek campaign donations from those with the means to give, and to ingratiate herself with the power structures that made her lesser power accessible.

I waited my turn, then shook hands with Jordan's father, sister, and mother, introducing myself by reference to the case we'd just tried. When I mentioned Rodriguez's name, Hiram Walker just nodded. He was glassy-eyed, undoubtedly unused to whatever sedative had been urged on him. His silver-haired wife stared at me with the sharpness her husband lacked. The receiving line behind me couldn't move until I walked on, and I couldn't do that until her eyes released me.

“Jordan was very proud of your accomplishment,” she said, tilting her head back for emphasis. “I asked, ‘What if he's guilty and goes out and rapes someone else?' ‘Mother,' she said, ‘I can't worry about that.' It wasn't all principle. She believed he was innocent. She and her father argued terribly about it before the trial.”

Her gaze went instantly cold, as if suddenly she'd remembered who I was and what I'd done to cause her daughter's death. I had an urge to tell her how I'd felt about Jordan. Yet if my throat hadn't choked up, such a declaration was the last thing she or anyone in her position could want to hear. Meanwhile the line was moving forward, pressing me on.

Monday morning I was seated at the back of the courtroom when the deputies led Rodriguez in. He'd been arrested over the weekend and according to news reports had immediately confessed. Several of us from the office had managed to find places in the crowded gallery. Gabriela and her deputies were there, as was Rebecca. I'd walked over with the others, but there wasn't enough room for us all to sit together. So I'd found a spot near the back, wedging
myself in between family members waiting for their loved ones' cases to be called on the felony arraignments calendar. It felt strange to be sitting on the DA's side of the courtroom. Jordan's family was near the front. They still had the look of people who'd been pulled alive from rubble. Because there was no room left in the gallery, the deputies had allowed reporters to sit in the jury box.

Seven arraignments were scheduled for Department 22 this morning, but the crowd was only here for one of them, and the judge called Rodriguez's case first. When my former client was led in between three deputies I felt a wave of déjà vu. He wore the same county orange he'd worn when he was arraigned for the rape of Janelle Fitzpatrick. He looked just the same as he'd looked then, as he shuffled in shackles between the deputies from the holding cell to the well of the courtroom. He was over six feet tall, with tree limbs for legs and arms, his addict's wrists knotted with scar tissue and showing the faded blue of amateur tattoos. His beard was matted and tangled. Despite his size he seemed to cower as the deputies led him forward, presenting the same pitiful aspect that had struck me so powerfully the first time I saw him.

Rodriguez had experienced only a week of freedom since his initial arraignment over a year ago. At that time, of course, Jordan had still been with Baker Benton, preparing for that big trial with her mentor. I'd been the sole lawyer defending the case. He wasn't represented by the PD's office today, of course. His appointed lawyer, a private attorney paid hourly to handle cases where our office had a conflict of interest, stepped to the well of the courtroom to take his place beside him. He said a few words and touched Randall's arm. Instead of Harold Cole, Mark Chen was the lead investigator at the DA's table beside Saenz.

Judge Ransom addressed the defendant and read a summary of his rights, including the right to remain silent and to have an attorney. Then he read the charges, which included sexual assault and first-degree murder, and asked Rodriguez if he understood.

Possibly Rodriguez was still high. His tone was assertive and sharp, like someone voicing a grievance. “That's right, judge. I did it. I'm guilty just like you said.”

A stir passed through the gallery. Rodriguez tried to turn, blinking as if he'd just noticed the crowd. Walker bowed his head and his wife stared at the man who'd just spoken. The lawyer bent and whispered furiously in Rodriguez's ear, seeming to get his attention for the first time. He nodded. The lawyer stepped forward. “Alex Ripley for the defendant. The public defender's office has declared a conflict of interest.”

“You're appointed.”

“I'd like to raise a doubt as to the competency of my client to stand trial or enter a plea, and I'd like to request a mental examination.”

Rodriguez's lawyer may not have realized this—I hoped he did, because any competent lawyer ought to have known it—but he was repeating word for word the request I'd made at Rodriguez's initial arraignment.

Rodriguez raised his hand, like a kid in school asking permission to speak, but again the lawyer silenced him with a tight grip on his arm, whispering into his ear. The judge studied him with a frown, then said, “Let's take this up in my chambers.”

A recess ensued. The bailiffs returned Rodriguez to the holding cell. Ripley and Saenz followed the judge out the back of the courtroom to his chambers. At the DA's table, Chen turned and went to the rail to speak to Jordan's family, crouching low to put himself at their level. I hadn't noticed before, but now I saw that Janelle Fitzpatrick's father was in the courtroom. He sat beside Mrs. Walker.

After twenty minutes, the judge and the lawyers returned, and Judge Ransom declared he had no doubt Rodriguez was competent to stand trial under California law. Perhaps fearing another spontaneous outburst, Ripley immediately asked for a continuance before entering a plea. The judge granted this. Ripley didn't bother to ask for bail.

Next, the judge called a recess so the spectators could clear the courtroom and allow the remaining arraignments to proceed in peace. I ought to have been prepared for what happened when I stepped into the hallway. I'd been screening my calls and deleting phone messages from reporters all week, and I'd just barely managed to avoid being cornered after Jordan's funeral. This time, however, the crowd coming out of the courtroom propelled me straight into the mouth of the beast.

Turning away from one camera crew, I found myself with another lens in my face. A blond woman holding a logoed microphone appeared. “I'm here with Leo Maxwell, who along with cocounsel Jordan Walker pulled off the acquittal in the rape trial of Randall Rodriguez last week. In a shocking twist, Mr. Rodriguez today confessed in open court that he murdered Ms. Walker. Mr. Maxwell, you were at the funeral Friday. What words did you have for Jordan's family?”

“Their loss is beyond words,” I said, because this was undoubtedly true. “Jordan was a lovely woman and a fine attorney. She didn't deserve to have her life brutally cut short.”

“We understand from police sources that you've admitted to a sexual relationship with Ms. Walker, and were with her just hours before her death. Did your personal involvement with your cocounsel compromise your handling of Mr. Rodriguez's case in any way?”

The question did what it was supposed to do: anger me into saying something foolish. “That's an incredibly stupid question, given that Mr. Rodriguez was unanimously acquitted of that crime by a jury of his peers. We presented overwhelming evidence that in spite of having confessed to rape, he was innocent. The jury obviously agreed with us that our client's confession was false.” I stopped, took a deep breath, then said, “Now if you'll excuse me.”

No matter what else happens, the machinery of criminal justice will always grind on. The day after Rodriguez's arraignment was my first back in court after the murder. I had a preliminary hearing. I'd thought I was prepared, but when my chance to cross-examine came I was like a sleepwalker. During my argument, the judge twice had to prod me to finish sentences. Being in better command wouldn't have changed the outcome, as it was a foregone conclusion my client would be held over for trial. Nonetheless, the experience disturbed me. I'd walked into that courtroom believing I was fine when I wasn't.

Back at the office, I found a message from Rebecca asking me to call her right away. “Jordan's father's at my house,” she reported, picking up, her voice just above a whisper. “I don't know what to do with him. He wants the
details
of the crime scene.”

“How long's he been there?”

“Twenty minutes. He went to the office first, but neither of us was there. They called me from the desk, and I gave the okay to
send him over. I've been able to put him off so far. You're the one he really wants to talk to.”

I wasn't surprised. My ten-second sound bite had undoubtedly been seen by half the Bay Area's TV audience.

“The thing is, he's feeling very confused. This is a sheltered man we're talking about, Leo.”

A shiver went through me as I was visited by a bodily memory of Jordan on my lap, my hands on her hips, her hands on my shoulders gripping hard for leverage, my palms alternately thrusting and pulling her back. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“Just tell me you'll be here.”

I assured her I was on my way.

Rebecca and her girlfriend, a banker, lived a few blocks from Dolores Park, in what had become one of San Francisco's most desirable neighborhoods. She nodded toward the big corner living room and I went in ahead of her, crossing a wide expanse of rug to where Hiram Walker hunched in a corner chair.

I had to speak his name twice, his eyes finding me as if from a long way off. Then he shook my hand. I perched on the footstool across from him, noting that his eyes, though inflamed and dark shadowed, were clear, the pupils not dilated as they'd been at the funeral.

When he spoke, his tone was more commanding than I'd expected, drawing Rebecca in from the hall. “Is it true you and Jordan were in a relationship?”

“I don't know if you could call it that.” I was determined to give him the truth and nothing but—whether or not it might be painful, or not what he wanted to hear. “And we never had the chance to find out what it was.”

Rebecca stood leaning in the threshold. It was her house but we were both prisoners to the man in the wing chair, waiting to hear what he wanted.

“I saw you on the news last night,” he said after a pause. “Even after what happened, you still seem to think you were right. That
takes pigheadedness. I suppose it's no different from these district attorneys, the true believers who refuse on principle to accept the possibility they might have convicted an innocent man. The flip side of that is the defense lawyer who believes all his clients are innocent. Is that what you are—a true believer?”

“I'm able to admit when I'm wrong. All I was saying is that we did our jobs. The DA's supposed to convict the guilty and not charge the innocent. My job is simpler. No matter what a client's done, I'll try to get him off. I did that. Jordan and I did it. We did it together. And we did it well.”

“I'm sure she did. She was on her way to becoming a brilliant attorney. I never understood why she wanted to throw it all away on the public defender's office.” He looked around, his gaze again seeming to return from an immense distance. “No offense, it's just how I feel. I'm angry, you see. Very angry. So I need someone or something to blame. You, your office, the whole shitty system. Just not my daughter.”

“I see,” I told him, even though I couldn't imagine the pain of losing a child the way he'd lost Jordan.

“Jordan liked to talk to me about her cases. The Kairos case, for instance. They knew for months it was going to trial. She'd come home on the weekends and we'd sit at the kitchen table, share a bottle of wine, talk through whatever problem she was working on. Tom gave her the plum assignments. No one was more surprised than I was when Jordan first decided on law school. She'd always been so independent. I never thought she'd want to follow in my footsteps. I was very proud. It's a wonderful thing to share one's profession with one's child, to discuss important matters as equals.”

He cleared his throat. “After the verdict, those talks stopped. I didn't hear anything more about her work for months. Then the last time she was home, we spoke about your case. It was the first time Claire and I'd seen her in months, since she'd taken that sudden leave of absence from Baker. I was feeling left out of the loop.
I needed to understand what was going on with her—why she'd been shutting me out. I suppose bringing home the Rodriguez case was her way of making amends.

“I didn't think much of your theory of defense when I first heard it. Why would the man confess if he was innocent? I've spent a substantial portion of my career representing police officers against allegations of misconduct. I'd built up a professional wall of skepticism, and she wasn't prepared for that. We fell into an argument after too much wine. It ended with her telling me she thought Rodriguez was innocent and me laughing at her.”

He winced and closed his eyes tightly, waiting for that painful memory to pass. “She walked out. Her last words to me were, ‘Daddy, the problem with you is you always have to be right.'

“I tried to call her after the verdict to congratulate her, but she didn't pick up. She probably knew I wasn't ready to make a real apology, that I was going to rain on her parade by saying I hoped nothing bad would come of it, that sort of thing. Of course, it turns out I
was
right. Now, for the first time my life, I find I don't want to be.”

“Would you rather the killer was still at large?”

He ignored my question. “Can Rodriguez even be made to suffer? I don't think he can. It's at least an open question whether a man who wants to confess, who wants to be locked up, as the two of you argued, can experience punishment, whether you can even call it that. How do you go about punishing a masochist? You can only reward him.”

“So you want someone who can be made to suffer to be responsible for this crime?”

He shook his head as if I were missing the point of what he was saying.
“Jordan
suffered terribly. How long do you think she was alive in that bathroom, half-suffocating before she died? They won't tell me. It must have been at least an entire day, maybe as much as forty-eight hours. She was strong. She wouldn't have
given in. She'd have held out as long as possible, hoping someone would come.”

Someone like me,
I thought. But, clearly, her father had cast himself in the role. “I can't tell you how long she might have lived,” I said. “The position she was in could have constrained her breathing, leading to rapid suffocation. I'd like to believe she didn't suffer.”

He was shaking his head, refusing to accept this cold comfort. “I know she was alive, waiting for help, because I know my daughter. You were the last one to see her alive. The last one except the killer. Tell me what happened between you that night.”

I took a deep breath and told him the truth, or rather the facts, leaving out how I'd felt about them. I told him that we'd gone back to her apartment after dinner, that it was the first time she'd taken me there, and that we'd been in bed when she'd received an e-mail or a text on her phone. I told him about what she'd said, her refusal to explain, and the cab ride we'd taken together, with Jordan dropping me off before continuing to a destination she hadn't disclosed. Also, I told him about the gun.

He seemed to take it all in. “And then she ended up back at her apartment, and someone was waiting there,” he said. “Someone who'd committed a crime like this before.”

“Someone like Rodriguez.”

“Someone who knew about Rodriguez's trial and was following it,” he said. “What I think is that it was someone who had a special interest in following that trial, enough of an interest to know who Rodriguez's lawyer was, and enough vicious imagination to pick her out as his next victim, knowing Rodriguez would stand up and confess. You might also hypothesize this was a crime of opportunity, but the steps the killer took are too deliberate. The man who did this had done it at least once before.”

“A serial rapist.”

“A serial killer,” Walker said. “Listen, for once in my life I want to have been wrong where my daughter was concerned. I don't
want to live knowing I won the last argument we ever had. What I need is for someone to agree with me on this.”

Rebecca had taken a step back from the doorway but was still there, listening.

“About Rodriguez being innocent, you mean.” I lowered my voice. “He'll have to plead guilty this time, or stand trial and be convicted. The defense we used won't work a second time. All the DA has to say is look what happened last time he got out.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, the police have their man, and this time the DA's going to obtain a conviction for sure, or more likely force a plea. The case is closed. I'm not agreeing that Rodriguez is innocent, but either way, it's going to happen now just how it happened before, except this time they're going to seal the holes. After all, we showed them how.”

Rodriguez's confession was the easy answer, a thoughtless balm, and I'd wanted it to be true. Until now I'd accepted it, though it didn't sit right. But I knew Jordan wouldn't have given in so easily. She'd have gone on fighting for her client.

Though I'd been relieved of that responsibility, didn't I owe it to Jordan, at least, to find out where she'd gone in that cab? Walker didn't ask me to do anything. His desire was to understand what had happened, without resort to the easy answers the press and the police had seized on. It didn't seem the moment to mention that if Rodriguez were eliminated as a suspect in Jordan's death, the police would just try another easy answer.

When he stood to leave, I realized I didn't actually want him to go. Talking to him had cleared my head.

“It's magical thinking,” Rebecca insisted when the door had shut behind him. “I don't want any part of it. He thinks he can somehow
bring her back by believing the man who confessed is innocent. He's not. Jordan was wrong. We almost always are in this business, and that's how it should be—even though we fool ourselves with every case, or, at least, we try to. Rodriguez is guilty.”

“Jordan didn't think so. Her father's right that this new confession wouldn't have changed her views. A confession is what you'd expect if our theory of defense is correct.”

“Yeah, but Jordan doesn't get to decide, and you don't get to win arguments by saying what she would have thought. She's not here to speak for herself and she didn't nominate you to speak for her. So don't tell me what Jordan would want.”

“She'd want whoever did this brought to justice. She wouldn't want her client blamed because blaming him is the most expedient solution.”

“How do you know Rodriguez isn't telling the truth? Leave it to the police.”

“I'd certainly like to know the identity of whomever she was planning to meet when she left me. That message could have been a trick, or a trap. Maybe someone was trying to lure her away from her apartment.”

“Or maybe there was no text. Maybe there was no cab ride.” Rebecca faced me across the room. She held my gaze long enough to make clear she'd said more than she intended, but that the words, irretrievable now, would not be called back.

“I'm sorry,” she said, her jaw trembling. “Or, rather, I'm not. Anything could've happened. Anyone could have done this if Rodriguez didn't. My loyalty is to Jordan. You were the last person with her. Who knows if you had a motive? Or if you needed one. I don't know you. Why should I believe you?”

I stood shocked in front of her.

Rebecca walked past me, opened the door, and held it open for me to leave.