Ties That Bind (10 page)

“I know, Mr. Hayes. I got him in room number two.”

“Thanks,” Hayes answered as he glanced through the glass at a woman in a business suit and a young black man who were huddled over a stack of police reports in the room nearest the elevators.

Buckley led Hayes to the second visiting room and let him in through a solid-steel door. A second door at the back of the room led to the unit where the prisoners on the floor were housed. Jon Dupre, dressed in an orange jail-issue jumpsuit, was sprawled in one of the two molded plastic chairs that stood on either side of a round table secured to the floor by metal bolts. Hayes walked past Buckley, and the guard pointed to a black button that stuck out from the bottom of an intercom that was recessed into the yellow concrete wall.

“Press that if you need assistance,” he told Hayes, even though he knew that the lawyer was familiar with the routine.

Buckley relocked the door just as his radio came to life and the dispatcher notified him that another attorney was on the way up. He ambled down to the door and watched a harried public defender walk out of the elevator, reading a police report. Buckley recognized him and let him into the corridor.

“Hey, Mr. Buckley, I’m here for Kevin Hoch.”

“They’re bringing him down.”

Buckley was passing the second contact room when Wendell Hayes crashed into the glass window.

“What the . . .” Buckley started to say, but he froze with his mouth half open when Hayes turned his head and blood poured out of his left eye socket, smearing the glass. The public defender made a strangled cry and tried to burrow through the far wall as Hayes pushed off the glass and turned toward Dupre. Buckley watched the prisoner stab the lawyer, then snapped out of his trance when more blood sprayed across the window and Hayes sank to the floor. He wanted to break into the room but his training took over. If he opened the door, he would be facing an armed man without a weapon and endangering everyone else on the floor.

“Major assault, major assault in contact visiting room two,” Buckley shouted into his radio as he rushed to the window. “A man is down.”

Buckley pressed against the window so he could judge Hayes’s condition. Dupre thrust a jagged metal object at the guard. Buckley jumped back, even though the glass was between them.

“I need backup,” Buckley shouted. “Weapons are involved.”

Dupre kicked the window. The glass shuddered but didn’t break.

“What is the man’s condition?” the dispatcher asked.

“I don’t know, but he’s bleeding bad.”

Dupre ran to the door at the back of the room and slammed his hands into it, but the steel door didn’t move. He began pacing frantically and muttering to himself.

“Who else is on the floor?” the dispatcher asked.

“I’ve got a lawyer and prisoner in room one and an attorney in the corridor,” Buckley answered as Dupre turned his attention to the other door.

“Evacuate. I’ll get the sergeant.”

“Get out, now,” he told the public defender, as he opened the hall door. When it was relocked, Buckley opened the door to visiting room one and told the woman to leave. Her client looked confused.

“There’s an emergency,” Buckley told the inmate, keeping his voice calm. “The guard will be here for you in a moment.”

The woman started to protest just as Buckley heard Dupre slam a chair against the glass window. The window was thick but Buckley wasn’t certain that it would hold.

“Out!” he yelled, grabbing the attorney by the arm and hustling her into the hall. The prisoner got to his feet.

“My papers,” she started to say. Then the chair hit the window again and she clamped a hand to her mouth when she noticed the blood-smeared glass for the first time. Buckley locked her client in and pushed the woman into the hall with the elevators. This time she didn’t protest. Buckley followed her and locked the door. If Dupre broke through the glass he would still be trapped in the narrow hall outside the visiting rooms.

“This is Sergeant Rice. What’s the situation?” a voice asked over Buckley’s radio.

“There’s a prisoner in one. I just locked him in. I don’t know if there’s an inmate in three yet, but someone was supposed to bring Kevin Hoch down. I’m in the hall outside the elevators with two attorneys. I think Wendell Hayes is dead.” Buckley heard an intake of air. “He’s inside room two with Jon Dupre. Dupre stabbed him several times. He’s got some kind of knife.”

“Okay. Hold your position, Buckley. The jail is locked down and I’ll have help to you in another minute. Then I’ll go in through the back door with the CERT boys.”

As they spoke, the elevator doors opened and ten members of the Corrections Emergency Response Team rushed out of the elevator in flack jackets and face shields. They were all carrying nonlethal weapons, like Mace, and three of them had man-sized Plexiglas shields.

“Buckley?” one of the men asked. Adam nodded. “I’m Sergeant Miller. What’s our situation?”

Buckley repeated what he’d told Sergeant Rice.

“Let’s go in,” Miller said. Buckley opened the door to the hallway. Over the radio, Buckley could hear Sergeant Rice talking to Dupre.

“Mr. Dupre, this is Sergeant Rice. I’m on the other side of this door with fifteen armed men. If you look into the corridor, you’ll see many more armed men.”

Dupre spun toward the window. He looked desperate. Both of his hands were bleeding and he was holding something shiny. Wendell Hayes was sprawled on his back. His throat and face were drenched in blood.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Sergeant Rice told Dupre. “If you put down your weapon and surrender we’ll just cuff you and return you to your cell. If you don’t surrender I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Dupre’s eyes darted to the men in the corridor. They looked intimidating in black, with their weapons and shields.

“What will it be, Mr. Dupre?” Sergeant Rice asked calmly.

“Don’t come in here,” Dupre shouted.

It was quiet for a moment. Then the rear door crashed into the room and four men swarmed in, their body shields leading the way. The room was narrow and there was nowhere for Dupre to run. He jabbed at the shields as he was driven into the wall. A CERT team member sprayed Mace in his eyes. Dupre screamed, and two of the men grabbed his legs and brought him down while the other two wrestled the knife from his hand. In less than a minute, Dupre was cuffed and in custody. Buckley saw another deputy rush over to Hayes. She searched for a pulse, then shook her head.

But Toby was at poolside. As soon as he saw Amanda, he grinned and waved.

“Change your mind about swimming on the team?” he asked.

“Nope,” she managed. “I’m just here for a workout.”

“Too bad. Senior Nationals are in a few months. Then there are the Senior Worlds. They’re in Paris, this year.”

“Chlorine in Paris. How romantic,” she said, forcing a smile.

Toby laughed. The Masters swimmers finished a set and started to group by the pool wall.

“I’ve got to get these guys moving. Have a good workout.”

Toby turned to his swimmers and yelled out their next set as Amanda grabbed fins and a kickboard from a pile on the pool deck. She was putting them on the edge of the pool in front of her lane when she saw Kate Ross walking up the ramp from the locker room, dressed in tight jeans, a blue Oxford work shirt, and a bomber jacket and carrying her shoes and socks. A twenty-eight-year-old ex-cop whose specialty was computer crime, Kate was a muscular five seven, with a dark complexion, large brown eyes, and curly black hair. Several months before, while working as an investigator at Portland’s largest law firm, she had asked Amanda to represent Daniel Ames, a first-year associate who was charged with murder. Amanda had helped clear Daniel’s name, then hired him as an associate at Jaffe, Katz, Lehane and Brindisi. Shortly after, Amanda lured Kate to the firm.

“Come for a swim?” Amanda asked, her good mood fading because she realized that Kate’s appearance meant her workout plans were kaput.

“I don’t do water.”

“What’s up?”

“Judge Robard tried to reach you in Judge Davis’s courtroom, but you’d skedaddled. He’s waiting for you in his chambers. Your dad sent me to find you.”

Amanda’s shoulders sagged. Judge Robard had made her life miserable in the few trials that she’d been unfortunate enough to have before him. The only solace in being in his court was that he made life equally miserable for the prosecution. Now he’d ruined her workout. Unfortunately, there was no way that she could turn down an urgent summons from a circuit court judge without ruining her legal career.

“I’ll change and go straight downtown,” she sighed. “You can go back to my dad and tell him you’ve accomplished your mission.”

“He’s cooking dinner for you at his house and wants you to drop by after you see Robard.”

“At last,” Robard said without looking up from his work.

“My investigator dragged me out of the pool,” Amanda answered. If she was looking for sympathy from a fellow athlete, she didn’t get it.

“Sorry about that,” Robard answered without conviction as he stacked the papers on which he was working in a neat pile and finally looked at Amanda, “but we’ve got a situation.”

A punch line from an old joke—“What you mean
we
, white man?”—raced through Amanda’s head, but she held her tongue.

“You heard about Wendell Hayes?”

“It’s all anyone’s been talking about.”

“You know anything about the guy who killed him, Jon Dupre?”

“Only what I read in the paper.”

“He’s a pimp, a drug dealer. I just heard a prostitution case where he was the defendant.”

Amanda suddenly knew the reason for Robard’s hasty summons and she didn’t like it one bit.

“What happened?” she asked, to stall for time.

“I had to dismiss. The state’s key witness no-showed. After I dismissed, she turned up dead. Anyway, Harvey Grant got the bright idea of assigning me the homicide because I handled the other case. So, as I said, we’ve got a situation. The Constitution says that I have to appoint counsel for Dupre, but that wonderful document doesn’t tell me what I’m supposed to do when every attorney I call says that they would rather not represent someone who stabbed his previous lawyer to death.”

Amanda knew what Robard wanted her to say but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him, so she sat silently and waited for the judge to continue. Robard looked annoyed.

“What about it?” he asked.

“What about what?”

“Miss Jaffe, the one thing you are not is stupid, so don’t fence with me. I asked you here because you’ve got more guts than any lawyer in town, and I need a lawyer with guts on this case.”

Amanda knew that he was thinking about Cardoni, and she wanted to tell him that her lifetime allotment of courage had been used up last year.

“You should hear the excuses I’ve been getting from your fellow advocates,” Robard went on. “What a bunch of babies.”

“I thought Dupre had the money to hire a lawyer. The papers said his parents are rich.”

“They disowned Dupre when he was kicked out of college and decided to deal drugs and sell women.”

“What about the lawyer who handled the promoting case?”

“Oscar Baron? Don’t make me laugh. He’s as scared as the rest. Says Dupre can’t afford his fee. And he’s got a point. Only millionaires can scrape up the money to pay a lawyer in a capital case. Besides, he’s not qualified to handle a death-penalty case. So, what do you say?”

“This is a bit overwhelming, Judge. I’d like some time to think, and I’ll want to talk it over with my father.”

“I spoke with Frank earlier,” Robard answered with a weaselly smile. “I can tell you that he’s all for it.”

“Oh he is, is he? Well, I’d like to know why. So it’s either give me some time or I’ll politely decline your kind offer to spend the next few months with a homicidal maniac.”

“Time is of the essence, Miss Jaffe.”

Amanda sighed. “I’m having dinner with my dad tonight. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

Robard’s head dipped a few times. “That’s fair, that’s eminently fair. I’m usually here at seven.” Robard scribbled something on his business card. “Here’s my back line. My secretary doesn’t get in until eight.”