Prosecution: A Legal Thriller

THE PROSECUTION

A Legal Thriller D. W. BUFFA

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Blue Zephyr at Smashwords

Copyright © 2010 D.W. Buffa

www.dwbuffa.net

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights
under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of
this book.

* * * * *

THE PROSECUTION

For Hal Martin

* * * * *

Chapter One

Lying always came easier to me than telling the
truth. When I was a small boy, I climbed onto the kitchen counter
to get to the cookie jar and knocked my mother's favorite crystal
bowl over the edge. Watching it shatter into pieces on the floor, I
knew in my heart that if anyone ever found out I was as good as
dead. Carefully, I gathered up the shards of glass and tried to
hide them behind some pots and pans in the cupboard. Holding one of
the largest pieces in his hand, my father asked me that evening if
I knew anything about it. I did what anyone would have done: I
denied it.

He did not seem to believe me. Sitting in his chair,
he put his hand on my shoulder and started telling me about George
Washington and the cherry tree. I knew then I was finished. That
story was everywhere. You couldn't run away from it. Every father
told it to his son, and every schoolteacher told it to her class.
You might go all the way through grade school without knowing
anything about American history, but you knew young George had
ruined it for the rest of us when he made his famous confession,
"Father, I cannot tell a lie."

I stood there and stared down at the laces on my
shoes. There was no way out of it, but I still could not bring
myself to lift my eyes and say those words. The best I could do was
nod my head and hope that this excruciating silent admission would
be the only punishment I had to endure. It was not clear to me even
then whether the lesson was never lie or never get caught.

I have not always told the truth in my life, but I
never lied in a court of law, and I spent years defending murderers
and rapists and thieves. I did not need to lie; the law itself
allowed me to make certain that people who should have been
punished were set free. I had wanted to be a lawyer who never lost
a case because every client was innocent; instead I became a lawyer
whose only concern was preventing anyone from ever proving that my
client was guilty.

I had no qualms of conscience, no late-night regrets,
about what I did or how I did it. I was a criminal defense
attorney, sworn to put on the best defense I could for my client.
When one trial ended, another began, and I never thought twice
about what might happen because someone guilty had been acquitted;
not until, as part of an exquisite scheme of revenge, the only
truly innocent man I ever knew was charged with murder, and I was
betrayed by the only woman I ever loved.

Leopold Rifkin was the most honorable and decent man
I have ever known. The senior circuit judge, he had done everything
he could to help when I was just starting out, a graduate of the
Harvard Law School who did not know the first thing about trying a
case in court. From the very beginning, I was drawn to the power of
his mind. Learned in ways I could only imagine, he studied the
classics in the original languages and owned the largest private
library I had ever seen. After I had become known as a lawyer who
seldom lost, he worried that I won too often and wondered if I
understood the price I might one day have to pay.

The day he warned me about finally came, and the
price was higher than even Leopold Rifkin could have foreseen. I
suppose there is a certain irony in the fact that the first time I
cared more about the defendant than I did about myself was the
first time I thought I might lose. Unwilling to take that chance, I
defended him for a crime he did not commit by committing one of my
own. I told a witness to lie, and, as a result, Leopold Rifkin
walked out of court a free man. A few days later, he took his own
life, and the day of the funeral, Alexandra, the woman I wanted to
marry, walked out of mine.

It had been more than a year since a jury found
Leopold Rifkin not guilty of a murder he had not committed and for
which he should never have been prosecuted, more than a year since
I abandoned the practice of law. In that time I never returned to
the courthouse. There were too many memories, too many things I did
not want to think about. If Horace Woolner had not asked me, I
might never have come at all.

The court reporter gazed ahead as his fingers pressed
the silent keys of his machine. At the counsel table an assistant
district attorney looked glumly at the floor, his hands shoved into
the pockets of his dark blue suit. The only spectator, I sat on a
wooden bench in the back, remembering the last time I had been
here, waiting to hear the verdict of the jury in a case in which I
had convinced a witness to lie.

Now Horace Woolner was on the bench, presiding over a
simple sentencing. Determined to let everyone know what he thought,
the prisoner raised his shackled wrists and extended the middle
finger of each hand in a gesture of double defiance. A few feet
away, a deputy sheriff moved forward. Woolner raised his hand and
shook his head. The deputy stopped and backed away.

Resting his arm on the bench, his huge shoulders
hunched forward, Woolner narrowed his eyes, measuring the young man
on whom he had just passed sentence.

"That will be six months for contempt of court," he
said finally. "To run consecutive to the twenty-four month sentence
you were just given on the burglary charge."

His lawyer tried in vain to stop him. Screaming an
obscenity, the prisoner thrust his two raised fingers into the air
again, his blue eyes fierce with rage. The deputy grabbed him by
the shoulder and threw him down into the empty chair as the lawyer
looked on in open-eyed astonishment.

"You knew what the sentence would be before you were
brought in. You filled out a plea petition," Horace said, waving an
eight-page document stapled at the corner. "This is your second
felony conviction. You knew exactly where you stood, exactly what
the sentencing guidelines call for.

"We went through this petition." He indicated the
document. "You said you understood it. You said you had reviewed it
with your lawyer. There were no surprises, Mr. Merriweather.
Despite that, you have to put on this little show of yours to
demonstrate how tough you are. Is that the game we're playing
here?"

Straining under the hand that held him down in the
chair, the prisoner retreated into a scowling silence.

"I can give you another six months for contempt, if
you'd like," Horace said. His deep voice seemed to come from
everywhere at once. "And then you can give me the finger again, and
we can keep doing this, over and over."

The deputy was holding the prisoner down as hard as
he could. Merriweather had the lean, well-muscled look that
prisoners his age often have. Tension rippled down the tendons of
his neck.

"Let him go," Woolner ordered, as he got to his
feet.

You could see the surprise register on Merriweather's
face as Woolner moved around the bench and came toward the table.
It was one thing to challenge a heavyset black man with graying
hair and a judicial robe flowing over his rounded shoulders. It was
something else to watch the distance close between yourself and a
thick necked man you just realized had to be at least six foot two
and well over two hundred fifty pounds, a black man coming right at
you with cold-eyed confidence.

"What... ?" he asked, his eyes darting from the judge
to the deputy and back again to the judge.

Standing directly in front of him, Woolner laid a
huge hand on the prisoner's shoulder and gazed into his eyes. "I
wish I didn't have to do this," he said, in a quiet, unhurried
voice, "but I have to. So why don't we both handle it like
men?"

The tension seemed to drain out of the prisoner. With
Woolner's hand still on him, his shoulders slumped forward and,
lowering his eyes, he slowly nodded his head.

"Let's go back to the beginning," Woolner said,
resuming his place on the bench.

Standing next to his lawyer, Merriweather looked
smaller and younger than he had before.

"In accordance with the guidelines, I sentenced you
to twenty-four months in the care and custody of the State
Department of Corrections," Woolner went on, in a calm, firm voice.
"Is there any comment you would like to make about that
sentence?"

Merriweather stood there, blinking.

"Is there any comment you wish to make, Mr.
Merriweather?" the judge repeated.

This time Merriweather understood. "No, sir," he said
politely, shaking his head for emphasis.

"Very good. In that case, the six-month sentence
formerly imposed for contempt of court is withdrawn." As the deputy
started to lead the prisoner away, Woolner added, "One more thing,
Mr. Merriweather. This is your second felony conviction. Don't let
there be a third. You understand my meaning?"

The prisoner was taken out of the courtroom, and the
lawyers began to gather up their papers.

"Welcome back to the criminal courts, Mr. Antonelli,"
Woolner called out in a clear, jovial voice, from his place on the
bench. Both attorneys stopped what they were doing and looked up.
"That's right, gentlemen, Joseph Antonelli really does exist."

He led me into chambers, where I sat down in front of
his desk and watched him remove the black robe and hang it on a
rack next to the door.

"Alma is going to kill me," he said, examining a hole
in his pants. "I just got this suit last week," he explained, as he
slid into the chair behind the desk. "She's just going to kill me.
I got to stop doing this," he mumbled to himself.

The words had barely left his mouth when he began to
laugh, a deep, rumbling noise. "When that kid gave me the finger, I
got so mad I started to grind my fountain pen into my leg. Damn
good thing it isn't real!"

"You didn't look mad. You looked like you were in
complete control the whole time."

It was almost instinctive, the way he deflected
praise. " 'Judge beats twenty-two-year-old defendant to death with
bare hands' isn't the best headline to get when you have to run for
re-election, is it?"

"You saved him from himself, and no one is ever going
to read about that," I replied.

He dismissed it. "He's just an angry kid. Can't
really blame him, either. Both his parents were drug dealers. Start
out like that, not much chance you're going to do all that well, is
there?" His voice had become so quiet I could hear his breath
underneath the words he spoke. He leaned back in the chair and let
his gaze drift across the book-lined walls of the room. The
venetian blinds on the room's only window were open, and gray light
cast a dreary pallor over the desk and our thoughts.

"I didn't know you had taken Leopold's courtroom, not
until I walked in here this morning."

Horace was staring out the window. "I didn't want
to," he said finally, turning back to me. "It didn't seem quite
right. Besides, I liked the one I had. It was bigger, and I was
used to it. But then, after Leopold died"—he hesitated, tactfully
avoiding any reference to suicide— "I didn't like the idea of some
other judge having it, either."

He shook his head with disdain. "They were all so
willing to believe he must have been guilty, even though he was
acquitted." His head jerked back. "Strange, isn't it? We're the
only two people who know what really happened, and you inherited
his house and I ended up with his courtroom...

"You look different, Joe," he said presently. "More
relaxed." He changed his mind. "No, that's not it. More
concentrated." Beaming, he exclaimed, "That's it, isn't it? It's
that damn library. You're starting to act like Leopold. It's that
same look, something behind the eyes."