WILL WAS DRIVING DOWN A LONG, wooded country lane on his way to the houseboat where he planned on staying while he worked on the Mary Sue Fellows case. A small sign at the side of the road—“Public Landing 1 Mile”—gave him hope that he was driving in the right direction.
Two issues in the case had been haunting his mind. One was immediate—and it was threatening to Will’s professional career. The other was a more transcendent issue, involving Mary Sue’s guilt or innocence—and his need to get some answers to her seemingly unanswerable dilemma.
The first issue lay right at Will’s doorstep. In two days, the deadline imposed by Judge Mason would expire. The judge had ordered Will to produce the whereabouts of Mary Sue or to arrange her turnover to the authorities, and pursuant to that, he had noticed a status hearing on the fifth day to ensure that Will was before the court to explain his response in person. Every step that Judge Mason had taken on that issue confirmed Will’s suspicion that any disobedience to his order would result in a finding of contempt of court. The sanctions for contempt could run the gamut—from a fine to imprisonment. For Will, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Todd had reported in promptly with the results of his legal research, but they were less than definitive. The obligation of a lawyer to disclose the location of a client who had fled a jurisdiction in anticipation of an arrest warrant or an adverse order from a court was murky at best. On the one hand, an attorney was bound to protect the confidences of a client—and that would include confidential communications by a client that informed the attorney of his whereabouts. On the other hand, an attorney had an obligation to disclose ongoing or anticipated criminal conduct that a client mentioned to the lawyer.
If Will chose wrongly by withholding the information, it might not only jeopardize Mary Sue’s case—it could result in his disbarment, and a contempt order sending him to jail.
On the other hand, if Will were to discover Mary Sue’s whereabouts and then disclose them to the court against her desires, that also would be an ethical violation. And if Mary Sue was then located and Joshua was wrenched from her care, he could well be in danger if Mary Sue was correct in concluding that he was suffering from an undiagnosed and mysterious medical problem. Indeed, his condition had appeared to be deteriorating under the care of the family physician. Now, ironically, according to Mary Sue in her last telephone contact, Joshua now seemed to be improving somewhat.
The second issue was equally troubling, but for different reasons. As Will lined up the pieces of evidence from the prosecution that proved Mary Sue’s complicity in poisoning her own son, they were chillingly consistent.
His client did not have a good explanation for why she took out a $100,000 insurance policy on Joshua at the same time his medical problem started surfacing. When Will had questioned her about it in their previous conversation, her only response was that she’d thought the policy was only $10,000, the premiums were rather cheap, and the insurance broker was a friend, who was starting out in a new job. She thought she was doing him a favor. She honestly had no idea—or so she explained it to Will—that the face value of the policy was actually $100,000, not $10,000.
In addition to this, the forensic evidence from the scene showed hydraulic brake fluid in the kitchen and on Joshua’s cup. There were several potential explanations for how the toxic fluid might have accidentally ended up in the kitchen. Mary Sue might have had it on her hands, or detective Tracher and the other officers might have picked up some of the fluid while searching the garage and then inadvertently contaminated the kitchen. Or finally, the forensic lab might simply have been mistaken in its finding that the substance was hydraulic brake fluid and not something else. The latter option, while possible, seemed the least likely. And though detective Tracher might have contaminated the kitchen, it was very unlikely he would have thoughtlessly touched Joshua’s cup—a prime piece of evidence in such a case—with hands or gloves that had already been exposed to another substance.
That left only the first option—accidental exposure by Mary Sue. Up until now, Will’s client could not remember any instance, in the time frame shortly before Joe’s arrest, when she would have handled brake fluid on the farm.
Will considered the final piece of evidence was the most powerful. The Delphi Community Hospital had concluded that Joshua’s blood contained poisonous amounts of ethylene glycol, one of the main ingredients in hydraulic brake fluid.
Before driving out to the houseboat, Will had taken a side trip to this hospital. It was relatively new and surprisingly up-to-date for a small community. In the medical library, he’d done some preliminary research on ethylene-glycol poisoning. The results, at least initially, were not promising.
Ethylene glycol was most commonly associated with child poisoning by engine coolant—antifreeze. Will reviewed the Index Medicus, but a quick check revealed no medical-journal articles dealing with hydraulic brake fluid poisoning.
Will also knew that law enforcement officers would occasionally make errors by contaminating or misinterpreting forensic evidence. But as a general rule, the rate of error among medical personnel was even smaller. Personally, he had found that particularly true when the evaluation was done, not by a lab technician, but by the chief pathologist.
According to the affidavit of Dr. Parker, the pathologist, the levels of ethylene glycol in Joshua’s blood could not be accounted for by incidental exposure, such as a small amount of brake fluid on the fingers, that was then ingested by a child. The amount consumed had to be substantial in order to account for the levels he had measured in Joshua’s blood sample.
Will’s concentration was interrupted as he crested a hill. The road dropped down steeply to a sloping boat ramp at the lake. A sign off to the right read simply “Private Piers.” Will turned right and glanced quickly at his scribbled directions. Coming to the third landing, he slowed down and saw a houseboat. He pulled into the short driveway that dead-ended where the aluminum pier began.
The houseboat was a simple affair with a walk-around deck and square living quarters in the center. There was a small wheelhouse on top. Parking his car, Will boarded the houseboat and looked out over the lake. It was clear, with a cloudless sky, and the lake was a deep blue. As a light breeze rippled over the water, Will took a minute to gaze out, listen to the lapping of the water, and enjoy the gentle swaying of the pine trees that rimmed the lake.
It all took him back to his days as a boy, when he would spend his summers on a lake in Maine. His father, an editor of a Massachusetts newspaper, would come up to the little cabin and join Will and his mother on Thursdays and then leave again on the train the following Monday.
Though Will was just a “summer kid,” over the years he’d developed close relationships with the “townies.” He would spend his summers fishing, hiking through the white-pine forest, or hanging out at the little log-cabin store.
Somehow the houseboat on this lake was bringing those idyllic summers back to him. This, he thought to himself, was a beautiful and peaceful place to spend his time while he was preparing for Mary Sue’s case.
After a few minutes, he unlocked the door and brought in his bags. He’d just begun unzipping them, when the phone rang. Picking up the phone, he recognized Mary Sue’s voice at the other end. No doubt she’d been relayed by his office.
“I heard you’re staying on a houseboat—that sounds nice. Eden Lake?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s beautiful out here. How are you and Joshua doing?”
“Pretty good, considering the circumstances. He’s not throwing up nearly as much, and he’s eating a little bit better. I’ve tried to keep a diary of what we’re feeding him out here—it might be different. Maybe that’s a factor.”
“Are you going to get him to a doctor soon?”
There was a pause. “I’m working on that.”
Will knew that his time was running out regarding Judge Mason’s order, and he had to confront Mary Sue about it.
“I’ve been ordered to discover your location and reveal it to the court, or to produce you and Joshua to the authorities.”
There was a silence on the other end for close to a minute.
Finally Will spoke.
“Mary Sue, I can’t encourage you or assist you to disregard an order from the court, no matter what my personal feelings may be about the inappropriateness of that order. Will you tell me where you are, or will you surrender yourself and Joshua to the court or to the police?”
Mary Sue sighed at the other end and cleared her throat. When she spoke her voice was quiet but firm.
“Will, I can’t do that. I’m absolutely innocent. Joshua has some medical problem that is not going to be diagnosed properly if they grab him from me and put him in a foster home. You are simply going to have to prove my innocence so I can return. I want my family back together again. I want my husband out of jail…” At that point Mary Sue’s voice began trembling.
“You realize how difficult this is going to be for me? Your case is going to be hard to defend with an empty chair next to me in court rather than my client.”
“I know that, Will. But I have to do what is right. I have to do what I believe God wants me to do. I have to take care of my son and my family. Just protect me, please. Be my defender. Deliver me out of the hands of those who are after me.”
In the background, Will could hear the sound of an occasional car or truck roaring past his client. It sounded as if she were at a phone booth on the highway somewhere.
He glanced down at the phone and suddenly noticed it had caller ID. He saw an area code on the display.
His heart sank.
“Mary Sue, I want you to listen very closely to this next question.” Then he thought through what he was going to ask her.
“This phone has caller ID,” Will said. “I see your area code right here in front of me, as well as the number. Are you instructing me not to divulge your whereabouts to the court? Are you demanding that I withhold that information?”
“I can tell by what you’re saying—by your voice—that this is an important decision, isn’t it?” Mary Sue replied. “What I tell you next is going to have an impact on you, isn’t it, Will?”
“I’m not the issue here—you and Joshua are. I need you to tell me straight—what is your decision?”
“Okay, then.” There was another pause, and then Mary Sue gave Will his marching orders.
“Will Chambers, you are my attorney. I am instructing you not to tell the court anything about my telephone number or where I called from, or where I might be located. That’s my order to you.” She paused and then added, “And may God help you when you deliver that message to the judge.”
Will then said his goodbyes and hung up. He thought of the old black-and-white adventure shows he’d watched on Saturday mornings as a child. The ones where the hero is caught in some forbidding dungeon—and the walls are being cranked closer and closer together as the hero holds his hands and feet out in a vain attempt to stop the slow, massive pressure of inevitable doom.
Head down, he stepped out onto the deck of the houseboat and put his hand on the railing. Feeling the breeze from the lake wash over his face, he looked up. Off in the distance, a gull flapped its wings, then dove down into the water, grabbed something with its beak, and accelerated up with aerodynamic ease.
Will sensed the walls slowly grinding in toward him. If he were going to escape, he would have to learn how to fly. Somehow—some way—he needed to find some wings.