The Lawyer's Lawyer (15 page)

O
n the day scheduled for his execution, Thomas Felton was moved from his cell on death row to the death cell near the execution
chamber. Jack stayed with him all day. They had still not heard from the supreme court, and Jack tried to keep his client
optimistic. The argument had gone very well, but Jack had had better clients and stronger arguments in the past and still
lost, a fact he did not share with Felton, who was extremely nervous.

It was four o’clock. The execution was scheduled for six. Jack knew they would hear something before then. He just didn’t
know when or what the verdict would be.
Why do they always wait until the last minute?
he asked himself. On the other hand, maybe it was good to give people hope right up to the final hour.

Felton had been given the option of receiving a generic form of Valium, diazepam, which he had accepted, but it had not yet
arrived. His last meal was due any moment as well. He was jumpy as all get-out, and angry.

“I’m gonna die because of the testimony of one stupid police officer. I can’t believe it.”

His analysis was off base but Jack wasn’t going to correct him. His job was to keep Felton calm and hopeful.

“The judges have all the information. It’s not over yet, Tom.”

His meal finally arrived: a strip steak with mashed potatoes, green beans, and biscuits. Felton inhaled everything, his anxiety
consuming him. Jack thought of an evening many, many years ago. He was a young boy waiting for dinner and he was famished.
When his mother set his supper on the table, he wolfed it down.

“You ate that like it was your last meal,” his father had said to him in a disapproving manner. Now, after all these years,
he knew literally what his father had been talking about.

Thankfully, a guard came with the sedative as soon as Felton finished his supper. Then he was off for his last shower, leaving
Jack alone in the cell. Jack knew what was coming next. A preacher would come in and talk to Tom. Then the warden would read
the death warrant. Jack would have to leave after that as final preparations for the execution began.

Why do I put myself through this?
he asked himself.

Felton came back from the shower dressed in a white shirt and prison pants.
All clean and dressed in white
, Jack thought.
Purified for the slaughter. Does that somehow relieve our collective conscience?

The preacher came in to speak with the prisoner and Jack got up to leave.

“I’ll be right outside the door, Tom,” he said to Felton, whose demeanor had changed dramatically. He was totally subdued
now and a look of resignation had settled on his face.

“Don’t, Jack. Don’t come back. Go now. I don’t want to talk anymore.” Felton hugged him. “I appreciate everything you’ve done
for me. Nobody could have done more.”

The warden offered his office for Jack to sit and wait and Jack accepted.
I’m not going out with the anti–death penalty protesters this time
, he told himself. At every execution, a group of protesters gathered outside the prison gates until the execution was postponed
or the inmate was executed. They carried placards and sang hymns. In the past, Jack had joined them. He just wasn’t up to
it this time and he didn’t know why.

He was sitting in the warden’s office at ten minutes to six, imagining Tom being strapped onto the gurney and the medical
team putting the heart monitors and the IVs in place, when the warden burst in.

“I just got the call. The supreme court granted your motion for a new trial.”

Jack accompanied the warden back to the death cell where Tom Felton was waiting. The man was in shock. He was still a little
subdued from the diazepam, but he was aware enough to know that he had been minutes away from death, strapped to a gurney
with IVs in his arms and heart monitors on his chest when everything stopped. Nobody had told him anything yet.

The warden let Jack in and closed the cell door behind him.

“Let me know when you’re ready and we’ll move him back to his cell,” the warden told Jack.

Jack sat in the death cell with his client for a minute or two before either of them spoke. Tom was sitting on the bed, his
head down, his hands holding onto the cot for dear life.

“They should have finished it,” he said finally. “I was ready. I won’t be able to do this again. I’ll have to find a way to
kill myself.”

“You won’t have to do it again,” Jack said.

Tom looked up, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The supreme court granted you a new trial.”

“So that’s what this was about. Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“I guess they figured you should hear it from me. You probably have a lot of questions, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for
the warden or the guards to try and answer them.”

“I see. We never did talk about what would happen if I got a new trial.”

Felton still seemed a little wary, as if he didn’t or couldn’t believe what was happening.

“No, we didn’t. I don’t think the State can retry you. They just don’t have any evidence.”

“You mean they’re going to set me free.”

“They could. I don’t know. They could hold you on a different crime.”

“They’ve never charged me with anything else, have they?”

“No. The guards are going to take you back to your cell. I’ll check with the State, but I believe we’ll know something within
a few weeks.”

“That long?”

“Maybe not. I can’t say at this point. I hoped you’d be a little happier.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I’m still a little dopey from the drug, and I think I’m in shock as well. Thank you.”

“No problem. I’ll walk you back to your cell.”

Jack went to the door and signaled for the guards.

A
fter leaving the prison, Jack went back to the condo in Oakville. He was emotionally exhausted and immediately went to bed
but he couldn’t sleep. Henry had bought a bottle of Jack Daniel’s a few weeks back, and Jack decided to pour himself a shot
and sit out on the patio and listen to the crickets sing. It was a beautiful night, clear skies with a slight breeze. He brought
the bottle with him and poured another shot a few minutes later. After that second one, he could feel the tension rise from
his body like steam from a natural spring.

When Henry was released, Jack was ecstatic. He didn’t feel that way about Tom Felton because he still wasn’t sure that Felton
was innocent. There had always been a safety valve in the back of his mind to establish that innocence, something he hadn’t
discussed even with Henry.

For Felton to be guilty, some of the evidence had to be legitimate. Obviously, the bowie knife was not the murder weapon in
the Brock/Diaz murders, but it could have been the actual weapon used by the killer when he attempted to kill Stacey Kincaid.
If those fingerprints on the bowie knife were real and not planted, something that would be apparent to any fingerprint expert,
the State could still charge Felton with the attempted murder of Stacey Kincaid. That was Jack’s out. If they didn’t charge
Felton with attempted murder, the fingerprints were definitely bogus and Felton was innocent.

Jack took a long deep breath and poured himself one last shot. In a few minutes he wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping.

After the new trial was granted, things happened a lot faster than Jack had expected. The supreme court’s opinion in the case
of
State of Florida v. Thomas Felton
was a scathing rebuke of the state attorney and the coroner’s office. The police department escaped criticism because there
was no real evidence to conclude that they were part of the plot to railroad Felton. The coroner was dead but Jane Pelicano,
the prosecuting attorney and now
the
state attorney for Apache County, was still very much alive. The day after the supreme court’s decision, the
Oakville Sun
ran a front-page headline summarizing that opinion and its castigation of the prosecutor and the coroner. Jane Pelicano immediately
resigned.

The next day the governor appointed a man named Robert Merton as her successor. It was a logical decision. Merton was the
chief assistant in the office, so continuity was assured, and he had not been around at the time of Felton’s trial, so the
taint was removed. Still, the quick appointment made Jack suspect that the governor had either known about Pelicano’s resignation
before it happened or had
caused
it to happen.

Merton wanted the whole Felton affair over with so he could start on a clean slate. Even though Sam Jeffries was adamant about
initiating a new prosecution based on the attempted murder of Stacey Kincaid, Merton was having none of it.

“We’ve still got evidence to prosecute for the attempted murder, Bob. We can keep him in prison,” Sam told the new state attorney
when he visited him in his office almost immediately after the appointment.

“And how do we explain the knife at the Brock/Diaz crime scene? Felton, who was not guilty of the Brock/Diaz murder, just
wandered by and dropped it off? Do you think the court’s going to exclude evidence of what this office did in the Brock/Diaz
murder prosecution when we try to introduce this knife into evidence in this new case? Of course not. This office will have
yet another black spot on its reputation.

“That’s not the way I’m going to start my tenure, Sam. There’ll be no new trial and there’ll be no new prosecution. Thomas
Felton is going to be released.”

Jack went to visit Felton two more times before his release. The first time was only a few days after the scheduled execution,
and Felton asked some questions that Jack thought were slightly unusual.

“Everybody around here heard about my stay of execution. They all say I’m going to be released.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jack cautioned. “I believe you will be released as well but that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Somebody said I could file a claims bill and get paid for the time I’ve been in here.”

That was the surprise. Jack had fully expected Felton to ask him to file a claims bill at some time in the future but not
three days after the scheduled execution.

“You can. I’ve done it before and I’ve got the forms. It’s fairly simple. I know a few state representatives who could introduce
the bill.”

“How much should I ask for?”

“How much do you want?”

“Twenty million dollars—two million for each year I was on death row. Do you think that’s too much?”

“It’s not too much to ask for as long as you understand you’re not going to get it. You are more likely to get somewhere between
three and five million if they decide to give you something. It’s totally at their discretion. Asking for twenty actually
gives them a little cover. No matter what they eventually give you, they can say you were asking for a lot more.”

“No matter what it is, Jack, I want you to get a third.”

“I didn’t do this for money. You can give it to Exoneration if you want.”

“Exoneration didn’t save my life, Jack. You did. I’ll give it to you. You can give it to them if you want.”

Jack thought about it for a few seconds. It wasn’t the way he wanted to do it but Exoneration needed the money. He had time,
and he had the forms on his computer to get this taken care of in a day. He didn’t want to give Felton’s generosity any time
to change its mind.

“Okay. How about if I do the paperwork tonight and bring it back tomorrow? That way, if you are released and as soon as you
are released, we can file the claims bill.”

“Sounds great,” Felton said.

Jack returned the next day with a copy of a claims bill for Felton to keep and a contingency fee agreement for Felton to sign
stating that Felton would give Jack one-third of whatever he received from the legislature as consideration for Jack’s past
representation and his representation during the claims process. Jack did explain that he would most likely have to go to
Tallahassee a few times to convince the legislature to do the right thing. They made a copy of the signed contingency fee
agreement at the jail and Jack left Felton with a copy of that as well.

“I can file the claims bill right away,” Jack told his client, “but I have no idea when the legislature will act on it. It
could take months or even years.”

“I hope I can wait,” Felton said.

Jack had no idea what he meant by that remark.

Jack was driving back from Bass Creek in a rainstorm when he heard the news of Felton’s release. The warden called him to
tell him it was imminent.

“I’d like to be there,” Jack said.

“The paperwork is almost done. It will probably take no more than an hour to complete. After that I have no authority to hold
him,” the warden said. Since Jack was at least four hours away, there was nothing he could do.

Even though the only ostensible reason for Jack to leave his home in Bass Creek was to be in close proximity to the case,
which had just ended abruptly, and his client, who would very shortly no longer be in prison, Jack continued driving to Oakville.

“I just felt I needed to be there,” he told Henry later. “And I didn’t know what for.”

He would find out soon enough.

T
he rain was coming down in sheets as Kathy made her way home late Wednesday night. She could barely see the red brake lights
of the cars ahead of her as she drove north on I-95. Her windshield wipers were on the fastest speed but the rain was coming
down so fast that it was as if they weren’t moving. Cars were pulling off on the shoulder to wait it out but not Kathy. She
wasn’t wired that way. She’d worked overtime, she was tired, and she wasn’t going to stop until she was home.

She’d read somewhere that it was rain like this that spawned the phrase, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” The way she’d heard
it, a hard rain in London around the turn of the century would cause cats and dogs to be swept into the sewers—thus the phrase.
She didn’t know if it was true or not but if it was, this was certainly a cats-and-dogs downpour. Kathy had never seen rain
this hard anywhere but in Florida.

She’d almost missed her exit in North Miami, catching a glimpse of it through the sheets of rain at the last minute. Once
off the highway, she could negotiate the side streets almost from memory. Still, she was careful.

“Shit!” she yelled out loud. She was on her street now and almost at her driveway when she remembered that she couldn’t pull
into the garage. Her ex-husband, Steve, had stored some of his stuff in there and had not yet picked it up although Kathy
had been on him to do so. The divorce had been six months ago and his shit was still there. “If he doesn’t pick it up this
week, it’s all going in the garbage!” she told the air as she reached into the backseat with her right arm and rummaged for
her umbrella, which was on the floor back there somewhere.

She pulled into the driveway. The rain was coming down harder now, harder than she had ever seen it. She put the car in park,
turned it off and half opened the umbrella. There was a trick to this. If she opened the door, stuck the half-opened umbrella
out first and opened it fully, she might not get as wet as she sprinted from the car to the front door. The shoes were new.
She wanted to save them if she could.

She opened the door, but the rain was coming down too hard, and she had not anticipated the wind, which suddenly shifted toward
her. The umbrella was up quick enough but she was still soaked by the time she stood upright. Nothing to do now but make the
mad dash. Between the rain, the darkness, and the wind, she had trouble finding her own front door. With the umbrella positioned
in front of her, she never saw the dark figure to her left. If she had, she might have thought it was a tree anyway. There
was a tree over there somewhere.

Finally she was at the front door, key in hand. She opened it as quickly as she could, but as she pushed the door in, she
felt a force from behind her propel her across the threshold. She knew it wasn’t the wind; she could feel an actual contact
with something. Then she was on the floor and heard the door slam shut. Someone, something was on top of her. She turned her
head to look.

“This is going to be so much fun,” a voice said as something struck her simultaneously on the left cheekbone. She felt a sharp
pain, saw a flash of light, then nothing.