Stanislav, Kennedy, Helin, and DuBois was a litigation practice. It provided all the services you’d expect from a serious Top Ten law firm, yet its specialty was kicking ass and taking names. Every one of the fifty-seven attorneys on its roster had trial experience. Helin once told me that class ranking was low on the firm’s list of prerequisites when interviewing potential associates. Mostly what the partners wanted to know was, Can you take a client’s suit and beat someone over the head with it?
Some people might find such behavior appalling and point at SKH&D as an example of what’s wrong in our sue-happy legal system. Can’t we all just get along, they’d say. On the other hand, it’s been responsible for a third of Freddie’s income and mine over the past five years. Not to mention the best Christmas party of the season.
Which was one reason why I was always happy to walk the three blocks from my office to the Wells Fargo Center on Sixth and Marquette. The law offices were located on both the forty-first and forty-second floors, but the reception area was on forty-two, so that’s where I stopped the elevator car. The doors slid open and I found Ramsey County Attorney Marianne Haukass glaring at me.
“Taylor.” She spoke as if she had actually expected to see me there. “Talk to your friend.”
She pushed past me as I stepped out of the elevator. Martin McGaney was with her. We had to perform a little dance before we could get around each other.
“Hey, Martin,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Same old, same old. You?”
“Can’t complain. See much of Scalasi these days?”
“Nah, man. The air she breathin’ since they put stars on her shoulders is way too thin for us mere mortals. You?”
“Not since she married the architect.”
“I hear he’s a prick.”
“McGaney,” Haukass said.
McGaney stepped into the car.
“You know, boss, it doesn’t always have to be a thing,” he said.
The elevator doors closed before I heard her reply.
* * *
The receptionist recognized me and pressed a phone to her ear as I approached. She hung up just as I reached the desk and waved toward my right.
“He said to meet him in his office,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Helin started talking as I passed through the door.
“I was just about to call you,” he said. “I’m taking Mrs. Barrington out of the adult detention center. Five o’clock. I’d like to do it later. Midnight. That way we’d miss the six and ten P.M. news cycles. The county deputies running the jail are acting all large and emphatic about it, though, insisting that inmates be released directly to the lobby no later than five P.M., which is bullshit, which makes me think Haukass is up to something. Anyway, I want you to be there. All right?”
“Sure.”
“I’m trying to keep it secret, so there shouldn’t be any cameras. But you never know.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good. Now tell me what you’re doing here.”
I don’t know why I didn’t just come out with it. Instead, I told him about my meeting with Professor Campbell, identifying a coupe similar to the one she described in Mrs. Barrington’s driveway, and the fact her children had been unable to produce the gun.
“You could have told me that over the phone,” Helin said.
“I bumped into the CA at the elevator.”
“She came all the way across the river to offer me a deal, do you believe that?”
I wasn’t surprised. The American justice system is dependent on deals; it’s a rare case that actually sees the inside of a courtroom. That’s because, unlike in the legal dramas you see on TV where the accused is nearly always innocent and usually saved by the heroic efforts of a brilliant, eccentric, and oh-so-sexy attorney who plays by his or her own set of rules, the vast majority of criminal defendants are guilty as hell. At the same time …
“This early in the proceedings?” I said. “Isn’t that—”
“Bullshit.”
“Premature? Especially if they can’t produce the murder weapon?”
“Like I said before, she knows something I don’t.”
“Yeah, about that…”
I explained it all. Helin didn’t speak for a long time, and I didn’t interrupt him.
“Do you believe it’s true?” he asked.
“The daughter says no. I have a meeting scheduled with her for later.”
“Do you believe it, Taylor? You spoke to the man.”
“Does it matter? How do you refute something like that?”
“You don’t.”
“It’s so prejudicial—can the CA even get it into evidence?”
“She’ll argue that it goes to motive, and once the words are spoken out loud in court—incest, mother-son incest—that’s all the jury’s going to hear. It’s all they’re going to think about. Maybe we should let Mrs. Barrington stay in jail a little while longer.”
“I have a thought.”
“Please.”
“Joel is adamant that his mother killed Emily. I don’t want for a second to tell you how to make your case, but to get his cooperation, I suggested that Emily was hiding from someone and that as soon as we learn who she was and who she was hiding from, we’ll know who killed her.”
“Plan B—it had crossed my mind. We know that the St. Paul Police Department ran her fingerprints through the FBI’s fingerprint identification system and came up empty, which means Ms. Denys was never arrested anywhere for anything. Beyond that—it’s possible the reason the cops haven’t ID’d her yet is because they haven’t been trying very hard. It’s possible the CA doesn’t want them to. Why complicate what looks like a slam dunk? Certainly, if we could argue Emily was hiding from someone—even if all we have is a person or persons unknown—that would provide a big complication.”
“That’s why I get the big bucks, to complicate things.”
“You said you have an appointment with Devon Barrington? Go easy with her, Taylor. Kid-gloves treatment. She’s underage.”
* * *
“Plan B?” Freddie asked.
“Mrs. Barrington is going to need it.”
I told him why.
“That is totally fucked up,” Freddie said. “A mother sleeping with her son—I can’t think of anything more fucked up than that.”
“A father sleeping with his daughter?”
“How is that worse?”
“It just feels worse, maybe because I had a daughter.”
“You know what I’m feeling? I’m feeling you might’ve been onto something before. I’m feeling this is one we really should walk away from.”
“Nah, Freddie, you were right the first time. We can’t quit. It’d be bad for business. Bad all around.”
“Okay, so Plan B, then. You go talk to the little girl. I’ll work on gettin’ Emily’s Social Security number; start there, see where it leads. I’m guessing the po-lice ain’t gonna give us what they have.”
“Sooner or later Haukass will have to turn over all pertinent information gathered in the case to Helin, but it’s going to be later, as in the last possible moment.”
“S’kay. I’m on it.”
“Whoa, whoa. What about the prenup investigation we promised what’s-his-name, you know, the gay guy who wanted us to check out his partner before he put a ring on it?”
“Tom Averback? A little overtime never hurt anyone.”
“I don’t want Echo to be upset with you.”
“After I get done explaining, she’s gonna be pissed at you, not me, don’t worry about that.”
“Who’d have thought you’d be the responsible one.”
“Marriage and fatherhood does that.”
“Yeah, I remember.”