The Lawyer's Lawyer (12 page)

The two men’s eyes met. They didn’t often go back there because they didn’t need to. Henry was reminding Jack, as Jack had
reminded him just the night before, that one man through his faith and his tenacity can make a transforming difference in
another man’s life.

“Chapman made the right decision asking you to come along, Henry.”

“Good, because it’s going to cost him. Did I tell you I’m flying back to Miami, Jack? I want you and your trees to have an
opportunity to bond.”

The meeting at eleven didn’t go that well. Chapman was furious that Jack put conditions on whether he would represent Felton.

“We’ve only got two months, Jack. What if you review the files and meet with Felton and decide not to take the case? It will
be too late to get somebody else in and do an effective job.”

“No, it won’t. You’ve got the files right here.” Jack pointed to four boxes leaning against the wall in Chapman’s office.
They hadn’t been there the day before, and Jack correctly surmised that they were the files on Thomas Felton’s case. Chapman
had been pretty sure of himself.

“I can get through those files in a week and meet with Felton the following week. I probably want to meet with him at least
twice before the case management conference with Judge Holbrook. Meanwhile, you can line up an alternate if I don’t take the
case. I will certainly work with whoever you get to bring them up to speed. I’ll even attend the case management conference
with that person.”

Chapman wasn’t satisfied although he had no choice but to acquiesce. Jack was not going to budge.

“Okay, Jack, you’ve got two weeks.”

T
he trip to visit a death row inmate at Union Correctional Institute in Raiford, Florida, was something Jack would never get
used to. The formalities of signing in, being searched, leaving the freedom of fresh air and wide open spaces for steel bars
and narrow hallways always made him appreciate his life just a little bit more.

He had tried to get Henry to come with him, figuring Henry could pick out a cold-blooded killer, no matter how good a con
man he was, by just being in the room with him. Henry was reluctant to do it but he couldn’t say no to Jack. It was the warden
who put the kibosh on the whole idea.

“The only way Henry Wilson is going to be allowed on death row is when he comes back permanently,” the warden had told Jack.
Apparently the man had not gotten over the fact that Henry had been set free. And he had seemed so concerned for Henry’s well-being
when Henry was about to be executed.

Jack could have fought the warden’s decision, especially if Felton had agreed to the visit. However, it would have taken time,
and time was the one precious commodity he did not have. So he went alone to meet Thomas Felton.

The circumstances of the meeting itself were different from the usual procedure afforded to Jack. In the past, he had been
allowed to meet with his client in a room, face to face across a table. Today, he was allowed only to sit at a chair in one
room and talk to Felton by phone in another room while looking at him through a set of bars and windows. Death row inmates
had very strict monitoring regulations: they lived in a six-by-nine foot cell; they couldn’t mingle with the prison population;
they couldn’t even take a shower every day. Apparently, serial killers had even stricter regulations. Jack saw two guards
standing behind Felton as he sat on his stool on the opposite side of the bars.

For a brief moment before picking up the phone, Jack studied Felton. He was still a young man at thirty-three, tall, thin
and surprisingly handsome although his head was shaved. Jack looked into Felton’s clear green eyes. Felton returned the gaze.
Jack picked up the phone.

“Hello, Mr. Felton. I’m Jack Tobin. I’m a lawyer with Exoneration and I’ve been asked to look into your case.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Tobin, and I’m honored to speak to a lawyer of your standing.”

That was unusual. The typical death row inmate, including Henry, practically spit on him when he introduced himself. They’d
already been through a few lawyers and had been disappointed too many times to feel anything but enmity toward the litigators
who came to visit bearing false hope.

Felton was different. Jack knew from reading his file that he had had only one appeal and that was right after his conviction,
a perfunctory performance alleging the usual grounds—inadequacy of counsel and improper evidentiary rulings. It was as if
the lawyer wrote on the brief, “I don’t want to represent this guy but I have to, so here it is.” After that, there was nothing.
Nobody wanted to touch the serial killer’s case. No wonder he was happy to see Jack.

“Mr. Felton, I’ve reviewed your entire file, and I’ve got a good feel for what happened on the night of the murder and what
has happened with your case since then. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Just that I’m innocent. I didn’t kill those two people. I think they convicted me because I didn’t have an alibi.”

“Well, they did find a knife with your fingerprints on it.”

“I never saw that knife before they showed it to the judge and the jury in my trial. I don’t know where they got the fingerprints
from.”

“You never gave a statement to the police after you were arrested, correct?”

“No, I didn’t. I did tell them I was innocent.”

“Why not give them details, I mean if you were innocent?”

“I was a law student, Mr. Tobin. I was always told that no matter whether you were innocent or not, don’t talk to the police
without a lawyer. When I did get a public defender, he not only didn’t want me to talk to the police, he didn’t want me talking
to him. Would you have advised me to talk to the police?”

“Probably not. Listen, we’ve only got about seven weeks before your scheduled execution. I need something to take to the court.
Can you give me anything?”

In fact, Jack had already found something substantial that would provide a basis for a motion for post-conviction relief and
that indicated that Felton might be innocent. He was just testing Felton, trying to figure out in his own mind whether the
man was innocent or not.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tobin, I can’t. The police came to my apartment two times before that last murder occurred. I was already
a suspect in their minds because I had done my undergraduate work at the University of Utah and there had been a serial killer
at that campus when I attended. I just think they wanted to solve this murder, and I was the best candidate they could come
up with.”

“That doesn’t explain the knife with your fingerprints on it.”

“No, it doesn’t. I can’t answer that question. All I can tell you is I never saw that knife and I certainly never held it
in my hand.”

Jack met up with Henry in Oakville, which was only a half an hour from the prison. The status conference and any evidentiary
hearing that might occur before Judge Holbrook would take place in Oakville, so Jack wisely decided to make it his headquarters
even though he had not yet decided to take the case. Ron had a two-bedroom furnished condo available at the time for him and Henry.

“I try to keep one open at all times for you, Jack, in case you want to come and visit,” Ron told him.

The truth was that Jack had not been back to Oakville since he’d left two years ago. He’d tried to give Ron money for the
place but Ron wouldn’t take anything.

“I might be here for a month,” Jack said.

“So what,” Ron replied. “I shouldn’t have let you pay me last time. What are you going to give me? Five hundred dollars? Seven
fifty? I’m saving you up for when it really matters—you know, a hundred grand loan, maybe a hundred fifty. This is peanuts.
I’m just making sure you stay committed to me for when I need you. By the way, since you’re thinking of representing this
serial killer, don’t tell people you know me. It’ll be bad for business and possibly my health.”

“I’d better keep a low profile here. People are going to be upset,” Jack said rather seriously.

The three men were sitting in the living room of the condo. Ron jumped on the remark.

“Upset? That’s the understatement of the year, Jackie Boy. Some people are going to want your hide. Danni will be in the front
of the line in that group, by the way. And don’t come into The Swamp either. I’ll have to close the place down if you do.”

Jack just looked at Ron for a second, not knowing how to take that last remark.

“I’m just kidding,” Ron told him when he saw the serious look on Jack’s face. “I don’t give a shit what people think. You
know that.”

Then he was back to being a jokester again.

“Henry, I’d drop him now. No percentages in being a friend of this guy. You can pick him up again when he moves back down
to Pigeon Creek or wherever it is that he lives.”

Henry laughed. Ron could make everybody laugh eventually.

“I’m just helping him decide not to take the case,” Henry said. “Then I’m outta here.”

“Everybody’s a jokester,” Jack said as Ron and Henry continued laughing. It was good for all of them because if Jack did take
the case, they were all going to feel the pressure—Ron maybe worst of all.

When Ron left, Jack got down to business with Henry.

“I found something, something real substantial in Felton’s case files.”

“What is it?”

Jack went into his bedroom and came back with some papers.

“This is the coroner’s report. Take a look at the description of the knife wounds on the woman’s torso.”

Henry’s eyes scrolled down to where Jack was pointing. He read the description out loud. “The entry wound is approximately
one-quarter inch wide
at each entry point
and extends into the body approximately three and a half inches
again at each entry point
.”

“It’s the same description for the man’s torso,” Jack said.

“So it was the same knife used on both.”

“Exactly. And what kind of knife does that entry wound describe to you, Henry?”

“Probably a stiletto. Maybe a dagger although a dagger might be in excess of a quarter of an inch wide.”

“And you know the murder weapon they used to convict Felton with?” Jack asked excitedly.

The light went on in Henry’s head. “A bowie knife. It couldn’t possibly have been a bowie knife. It’s at least an inch and
a half or two inches wide. They convicted him with the wrong murder weapon.”

“That’s right.”

“Wait a minute, Jack. That just doesn’t make sense. Somebody would have had to figure this out on the way to trial. Somebody
would have had to see that this evidence doesn’t add up. I mean
the coroner
would have had to blow the whistle.”

“You’d think that would be the case unless they were all in on it.”

“That’s kind of hard to believe: Everybody agreed to set this guy up. It’s crazy.”

“Not if you think it through and I’ve been thinking about nothing else for days now. Let’s say just one person believes Felton
is the murderer and goes about setting him up.”

“Okay.”

“He’s got Felton’s fingerprints. The investigative file says that two officers on the task force surreptitiously obtained
his prints from a cigarette case earlier in the investigation. By the way, one of those officers was Danni.”

“Okay.”

“And he knows the killer used a bowie knife with a gargoyle handle when he tried to kill that girl who got away, Stacey Kincaid.”

“You’re way ahead of me, Jack. I don’t know all these facts.”

“Trust me, Henry. They’re true. And a bowie knife meets the MO of some of the other murders as well.”

“Okay, I accept everything you’re telling me. Keep going.”

“So he searches and finds the exact knife and buys it. When he gets called to the next murder, he plants the knife in the
bushes outside the apartment before he even goes in so he doesn’t know he’s planted the wrong murder weapon.”

“This is too much, Jack. You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. Nothing ever happens like this or at least I’ve never
heard of it. What about the fingerprints? How does he get the fingerprints on the knife?”

“You can transfer fingerprints, Henry. You can do it with Scotch tape as long as you have the fingerprints you’re trying to
plant. And the cops can do it another way: They can just say these are the prints we found on the knife. I don’t think that
happened in this case because too many people would have had to be involved.”

“You already told me the whole damn criminal justice system was involved,” Henry said.

“Not at first. In the beginning it was perhaps only one man. Then the scenario changed. They had Felton in custody and the
killings stopped. A couple of months passed. Everything was back to normal. What would you have done if you were the prosecutor
and you suddenly discovered the evidence didn’t match up? Would you put somebody you were sure was a serial killer back on
the streets to kill again? Would you put your community that had been living in terror for half a year in jeopardy again?
Would you accuse a member of law enforcement of tampering with the evidence under these circumstances? Or would you just let
it go—put Felton away and become a hero?

“You know the prosecutor just puts on a case. Of course, she’s supposed to do it ethically, but it’s up to the defense to
challenge the evidence. The public defender was probably clueless—just going through the motions.”

“I still can’t believe this.”

“Let’s look at it the only other way you can look at it. There had been eight murders before these last two, and the police
never found a trace of evidence. That excludes, of course, the evidence they obtained from Stacey, the girl who temporarily
got away. Then all of a sudden this mastermind killer drops a bowie knife with his fingerprints on it outside the scene of
a double homicide where he used another type of weapon to do his killing. Does that make any sense whatsoever to you?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Jack, who was already standing and walking around the living room as if it were a courtroom and he was pleading his case,
went to the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the refrigerator, opened them, handed one to Henry, and waited. He could tell
Henry was going over all of it in his head again, challenging every premise, filtering it through the mind of a criminal,
until he arrived at the place Jack expected him to get to.

“So I assume you have a person in mind who did all this?” Henry asked.

“I do.”

“And who might that be?”

“Sam Jeffries.”

“The chief of police?”

“That’s the one.”

“I can’t wait to hear your rationale for this one, Jack.”

“It’s very simple. Sam Jeffries was the head of the task force back then. His wife had been murdered
by the serial killer
two weeks before this double murder. The man could not have been in his right mind. He knew about the bowie knife. He knew
Felton was a suspect: Danni had tried to get a search warrant for Felton’s apartment. And let me show you something.”

Jack went in his bedroom and returned with a tape and popped it in the VCR. He and Henry watched a recording of Tom Felton’s
arrest. It started out fine with Sam reading Felton his rights. Then it got ugly: Felton nodded, telling Sam he understood
his rights, and Sam told him he had to respond verbally. Then came the part Jack wanted Henry to see.

“I understand what you said to me but I’m innocent,” Felton replied to Sam’s prompting. “I didn’t kill anybody. You’ve got
the wrong man.”

“We’ll see about that, dickhead,” Sam answered. “You’re going down. And don’t be fooled: that cocktail they give you up in
Raiford—it may be quick but it’s awful painful. They just paralyze you so nobody can tell.”