Panther's Prey (8 page)

My arrest was quickly reported, probably as a result of the very leak I'd needled Chen about. The press was similarly forewarned of my release, and Rachel Stone had positioned herself to be the first person I saw when I emerged from the jail into the clear September morning. It was a rare hot day foreshadowing the beginning of San Francisco's only true summer.

“Leo, do you expect to be charged with Jordan Walker's murder?” shouted one reporter.

“Is it true the charges against Rodriguez are being dropped?” This, from another.

“Did you invoke your right to remain silent?” A reasonable question.

“Mr. Maxwell, turn this way, please.” A semblance of courtesy.

However, getting answers wasn't the point. The real meaning of this scene was that the tide had turned, and public opinion, knowing nothing of the true facts, had now labeled me a murder suspect. As I fielded the flurry of questions, I noticed Stone watching and
listening and occasionally making a note on her pad. By remaining silent, she made me think she expected to glean her information through other means.

I had a long walk back to the Seward, with a pair of reporters trailing me for over a block. I didn't hear a single question about Russell Bell or the gun in my apartment. As far as these escorts were concerned, I'd been detained because I was a suspect in Jordan's murder. I could set them straight, but that'd be like jumping out of the path of one train and landing in front of another. The last thing I wanted was for the murder of Russell Bell to be news again, when it had finally started to seem as if my family was going to live it down.

Once inside my room, I showered off the jail, then opened my laptop and checked the usual news sites. None of the articles reporting my detention went so far as to name me as a suspect in Jordan's murder. Rather, each simply stated the fact of my arrest, the reason being unknown. Every story identified me as the last person to see Jordan alive, and stated that it was known we'd had a sexual relationship, and that as Jordan's cocounsel I'd of course been aware of Rodriguez's alleged tendency to make false confessions.

Connect the dots.

No one as yet was calling for Rodriguez to be freed. The idea of a serial rapist seizing the opportunity to strike again, anticipating that Jordan's client would take the blame, remained far-fetched. I wondered again about that text she'd received. From what Chen had told me, it appeared the police hadn't yet identified the sender. On the other hand, if Rodriguez was innocent and the Panther didn't exist, then a lover—a category that included me—was the best candidate for another suspect.

I bought lunch, then retreated to my rented room to eat it, preferring to remain in the Tenderloin, where no one gave a shit that I'd been arrested and might have killed my girlfriend. In the TL, such notoriety was irrelevant to the more immediate business
of hustling to get laid or high, or else making a living off those appetites in others. The squalor of the place was like a cloak that I could pull around me at will, and I suspected this quality was why, despite having the opportunity to leave, I'd remained.

I called Nina Schuyler, my father's former court-appointed attorney, who, like Jeanie, had sworn off further involvement with him or with me. But that was before the jury acquitted him, and I had good reason to think victory had softened her aversion. I explained the situation and gave her the name of Roland McEwan, the former client who'd passed me the gun. “If we can find him and get a statement from him, that should be enough to take the DA off my back.”

“You want your guy to handle the investigation or you want me to subcontract it?”

I thought for a moment. My brother's former investigator, Car, could have dredged up this man in a heartbeat, but I owed Car too many favors—and, besides, if I was charged with Bell's murder, Car would be in the thick of it.

“Let your guy handle this. If he draws a blank, I'll put Car on the job, but I'd prefer to keep this one out of the family if possible.”

She agreed, saying she'd represent me for a small retainer of one thousand dollars, plus her investigator's expenses. “If you're charged, though,” she warned, “I'll need five figures to try it.”

I promised to put the check in the mail. Around four thirty, my phone rang. It was too early for Nina's investigator to have produced any results, but, still, I grabbed the phone with a surge of hope. Rachel Stone's name, not Nina's, appeared on the screen. I pressed Talk anyway. I couldn't just hide in my room, letting accusations and innuendo swirl around me.

“Don't worry. I'm not expecting a quote,” Stone said, sounding almost jubilant. “You'd be crazy, anyway, to comment on any of this ridiculous mess while the feeding frenzy's still going on. I'm not saying I'm stopping you from talking, but I'm not holding my
breath, either. The real reason I'm calling is I have the answer to the question you asked me the other day.”

My mind had traveled so far since my breakfast with the reporter I couldn't think what I'd asked.

“The phone,” she reminded me. “Remember, you asked me whether the police had found Jordan's phone at the crime scene or whether the killer might have taken it away with him. Well, the answer is the phone hasn't been found. The wireless provider can't trace it.”

I knew she must want something from me, that this information was merely the bait. But it was good bait. “Taking the phone suggests the phone contains evidence the killer wanted to conceal,” I said.

“A safe bet. What kind of evidence? A picture, do you think?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the text or e-mail she'd gotten when she was with me. But I don't see Rodriguez taking the phone and being smart enough to deactivate it. It's more likely he'd have tried to unload it for quick cash. You can't print that, though.”

“Doesn't help you.”

“I'm not worried about myself. You mind me asking you something?”

“I'll tell you that after you've asked me.”

“How well do you know Tom Benton?”

The idea had been swirling in my mind for some time. Jordan's abrupt departure from the firm remained unexplained, especially after the triumph of the Kairos trial, and I'd never fully accepted her explanation that the trial had burned her out. In fact, remembering it had seemed to energize her. I'd suspected her of the opposite of burnout, sensed that she'd loved trying cases and craved more trial experience than civil litigation could provide. Still, she was ambitious, and a jump to the public defender's office wasn't in the game plan. What I figured was that something must have happened
at Baker that made Jordan feel she needed to put distance between her mentor and herself.

The pause before Stone answered was a long one. “Like I said, we go a long way back,” she finally said. “I know Tommy very well. If you want the sordid details, I'm afraid you'll have to get them from someone else.”

“He was Jordan's mentor at Baker.” I chose my words carefully. “He advanced her much faster than any of his other associates. Special treatment, special attention. She tried the Kairos case with him. I understand you covered it. Yet after they'd won that huge verdict, Jordan suddenly up and left to be a volunteer at the PD's office. You probably know that, too. She talked about all her cases with her father, and even he doesn't know why she made the move. I'm just wondering what it was that might have left a bad taste in her mouth. Was it the firm, or Tom Benton in particular?”

“Well, Gary Cho committed suicide after he lost the case,” Stone said. “That would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth. Tommy and Jordan helped Jacob Mauldin destroy him.”

Mauldin owned Kairos, a local subcontractor on a huge, in part publically funded project to develop the site of the ballpark formerly known as Candlestick. The plan, which had undergone many iterations and was still in its early stages, was to redevelop the peninsula and the old shipyard that adjoined it as the centerpiece of a massive new retail- and housing-development.

Cho's construction company, Lizhi, had been awarded a minor subcontract, but had missed out on the more lucrative aspects of the deal. Cho's suit had alleged that Kairos was engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the public by submitting false invoices, overbilling the city, and falsifying its employment records.

“Kairos's defense,” Stone continued, “was that Cho had dreamed up the suit for the purpose of knocking Kairos out of the picture so that his connected cronies could move in and take over the project. They implied Cho was connected with organized crime
in Chinatown, and backed up their accusations with a sex tape of him with a teenage boy in a bathhouse run by a notorious Chinatown gangster.

“Not that it was Jordan's fault, or Tom's, that Gary committed suicide. But I've noticed that lawyers, young ones especially, tend to forget there are human beings on the other side of cases. Benton's ploy was probably the most devastating counterclaim I've ever seen.”

I remembered hearing about the death but for some reason hadn't connected it to Jordan's case. “The bathhouse tape was entrapment, I thought.”

“That's what Cho claimed, but Benton's point was that entrapment or not, Cho was in a position to take the bait. After that, he was facing ten years in prison and lifetime registration as a sex offender. Benton basically prosecuted the man for racketeering and sodomy before the judge put a stop to it. Still, the jury had heard enough. They ruled against Cho and in favor of Kairos, and awarded a huge verdict on their unfair business practices counterclaim. Cho's entire net worth was wiped out. Two weeks later, his car was found at the parking area of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's presumed he jumped to his death.”

Jordan had never mentioned Cho's death, but it potentially explained a lot. “Was there anything else? Anything that happened in the courtroom?”

Her tone turned defensive. “I wasn't in the courtroom every day. It lasted four weeks, and I gave it a total of five days. Opening statements, key witnesses, closing statements, and the verdict. That's a lot more time than I'd normally spend. This was a rare public view of the feeding frenzy San Francisco politics has become.”

“Sounds like Benton was the alpha shark. Those are some pretty heavy tactics.”

“I wasn't focused on the lawyers. They were doing their jobs. Tommy's ruthless, of course, but he's the kind of attorney who
never raises his voice. A gentleman. From what I remember, Jordan started in third chair but leapfrogged over the other associate to second chair by the end of the trial. That doesn't mean Tommy let her say a word in front of the jury, of course. The point is their team did their jobs, and fought hard but honorably.”

This fit with the idea that Jordan had come to the public defender's office to try cases rather than watch older men take all the speaking roles. I just didn't think she'd have lost patience so easily. Another few years and she'd have been first-chairing her own trials.

“Did you notice anything that suggested a personal relationship between Jordan and Benton?”

“It'd be unthinkable if anything personal showed between them in public, if that's what you're suggesting. Are you implying they may've had an affair?”

“I'm not sure. I'm just thinking aloud.” Even as I said this I remembered what Jordan had said to me the night of her murder, about commitments she couldn't throw off, ones that kept her from being able to walk away from Baker for good.

“Did you suspect her of seeing someone else?”

“I didn't suspect anything. We didn't talk about it. But, like I said, that message on her phone the night she was killed … She said it was from a client but also that it had nothing to do with any of our PD cases.”

“I doubt she'd have been communicating directly with clients from Baker.”

I'd reached the same conclusion. “So if it wasn't a client, it had to be someone else who felt justified in demanding her attention in the middle of the night.”

“And she accepted that demand. Threw you out because of it.”

“Not exactly. She ordered a cab and first took me back to my room. What I thought was that she was going to meet whoever it was at another location. But I was wrong.”

Of course, I had to wonder if the cab driver had been honest with me about where he'd taken her. He had no reason to lie, not unless someone had gotten to him before I did.

I realized I was edging over into paranoia.

“So you think I should take a closer look at my old friend Tommy,” Stone now said.

“If I were you, I'd want to understand why she left the firm. And, at the same time, why she felt she had no choice other than to return there.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

“And I'd like to hear what you find out.” I could only hope, though, that she'd keep me in the loop. It was also important to me that Jordan's dad not read the truth for the first time in the paper. Trying to prevent that was something I could do for her.

Stone made no promises, but I sensed a bit of give in her tone as we said good-bye. I realized I'd given far more information than I'd gotten, but I understood that I had little choice if I hoped to learn the truth.

The next step, I decided—sitting for a few moments after hanging up—was to talk with someone who'd spent more time observing the Kairos trial than Stone had.

I went into the LexisNexis database and pulled up the Kairos case docket, which had swelled to 543 entries. Many of the filings were sealed.

The lawyers were listed: Tom Benton, Jordan Walker, a second associate appearing on behalf of Kairos, and a single lawyer, Brian Ma, for Cho, the owner of the construction company Lizhi, who'd committed suicide after trial. It was Ma with whom I now got in touch.

I gave Ma's secretary a perfunctory hint of why I wanted to see him, and she scheduled the appointment for that afternoon. When I arrived she seated me in a small conference room with a spectacular bay view. Her boss, shorter than me but with a weight
lifter's build, came in a moment later and gripped my hand in a shoulder-loosening handshake. We sat down on either side of the table, San Francisco arrayed like an architectural model at our feet.