Herbert Bronson was not expecting us, so our arrival, fifteen minutes out of Judge Franklin’s chambers, caused a bit of a stir in his offices. Herbert Bronson had offices. He had two receptionists, six partners, fourteen associates, and a coffee machine that made me wonder if I should drop off a résumé at the front desk and hope there was an opening.
‘Mr Bronson is in conference with a client,’ the receptionist, who informed us that her name was Brandee (I’m guessing on the spelling), said. ‘He can’t be disturbed.’
The waiting area was roughly the size of a football field and not completely full, so only thirty or so people heard when I raised the volume in my voice to say, ‘Well, I’m representing a client in a murder case that Mr Bronson couldn’t handle and he didn’t give me much time to prepare, so I’ll just wait for him to free up his schedule.’ Angie and I walked to a space right near the desk as a few heads turned. ‘Are these seats taken?’
‘We can just scoonch over,’ Angie suggested as we chose seats right next to a very well-dressed couple in the front row. ‘We can make new friends.’ She looked at the woman in the next comfortably upholstered chair. ‘Can you pass me a copy of Us?’
Brandee was already on the phone. She was talking fast. After a very short conversation she called out, ‘Ms Moss?’
I was on my feet immediately. ‘Has a slot opened up?’
We were in Bronson’s office in less than a minute, and given the distance we had to walk that was saying something. He turned out to be a tall man, well-proportioned if you like scarecrows, with a full head of expensively coiffed hair, mostly brown but with fashionable gray around the temples and anywhere near the part. He was well dressed. Patrick dresses casually but very well. Bronson dressed well but formally, which made sense since this was a law office.
‘Robert Reeves is guilty as hell but he wouldn’t accept a deal for manslaughter and ten years, which probably would have ended up being three years behind bars,’ he said before I could even tell him why I was there. He’d been reading the legal news.
‘Renfro didn’t offer any deal,’ I pointed out.
‘No, but show me the DA who wouldn’t have jumped at that offer if Reeves had allowed me to put it on the table.’
‘Robert Reeves insists that he is completely innocent of the charges, that he barely knew James Drake and that he was nowhere near the crane when the cables snapped. But then, you probably know that,’ I countered.
Bronson shook his head, not to disagree but to express his bewilderment with Reeves and my insolence at showing up in his office unannounced. I could only empathize with one of those.
‘Yes I do. And I’m here to tell you I’ve looked through every shred of evidence the police have and every possible witness who could testify and Reeves is the only person who had a motive and opportunity,’ he said. ‘The only way to defend him, if I may offer the advice, is to plea him down and hope nobody shivs him in jail just for being him.’
Angie, even in what was for her conservative attire, could command a man’s attention. She rotated her shoulders back in a ‘working-out-the-kinks’ movement and suddenly Bronson was noticing her. ‘Is that why he fired you?’ she asked. Angie appreciates subtlety but doesn’t see where it might apply to her own behavior.
Bronson redirected his attention to Angie’s eyes and his own narrowed a bit. ‘For the record, who is this?’ he asked me without actually diverting his gaze.
‘Record or no record, that is my security officer,’ I said. I had made up the title on the spot but thought it sounded official and worthy of respect. ‘There are people who want me to drop this case and they aren’t being especially delicate about it. So I need to take some extra measures.’ I indicated Angie, but nobody was looking at me.
‘Reeves says his wife is crazy and never had an affair with the guy who fell off the crane,’ Angie went on. I got what she was doing; she was trying to get a rise out of Bronson to see if he would drop his pompous façade under direct attack. The problem was, I suspected that under the pompous façade was a pompous interior.
‘That’s nonsense,’ he said. ‘And why are you the one asking the questions?’ His tone took a softer quality when talking to Angie. Like he had a chance.
‘She’s the nice one,’ Angie said in a dismissive tone. ‘I’m the security officer.’ She said that with more pride than was appropriate considering I’d just invented the term. ‘I’m the blunt one. So. What about Reeves’s wife?’
Bronson pursed his lips like something tasted sour. ‘He has a habit of marrying women who are … unstable. But everyone I spoke to who might have been a witness and was on that set agreed it was common knowledge that Drake and Tracy were, let’s say, involved.’
That’s not how I would ‘let’s say’ it, but I didn’t appear to be part of the conversation anymore so I just sat back to watch my bodyguard (I’d just demoted her again) pursue her line of questioning.
‘So everybody knew about it but it was just gossip,’ Angie said. ‘Is that even admissible in court?’
‘As hearsay, no,’ I jumped in, just to remind everyone that I was an attorney and the one representing Robert Reeves. ‘If no one actually saw something going on between those two, I don’t see how it can be admitted as a possible motive for my client to have killed James Drake.’
‘Tracy Reeves will testify to it and she should know,’ Bronson said, finally looking back at me again. ‘You must have seen her name on the prosecution’s witness list.’
‘A wife can’t be compelled to testify against her husband,’ I said. I had noticed her name and intended to call Renfro about it later today or tomorrow.
‘She’s not being compelled,’ Bronson said. ‘She volunteered. There was no subpoena. You’ve met with Tracy?’
‘She’s my next appointment after you,’ I told him.
‘You didn’t have an appointment with me.’
‘And yet, here I am.’
Bronson’s pomposity was at full strength. He shoved his shoulders back and straightened in his chair to achieve maximum height. If he’d put on a few pounds he could have been a GI Joe doll. Sorry. Action figure.
‘When you meet her you’ll find a woman who’s been married to a man she doesn’t especially like for less than a year and who had affairs – yes, more than one – just because she wanted to humiliate him. When Robert Reeves killed Jim Drake, he was doing exactly what his wife wanted him to do.’
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘Just so I know what I’m not going to do, how would you have defended Reeves in court?’
Either Bronson didn’t notice the insult or he just couldn’t come up with a snappy reply fast enough. ‘I would have had him plead down,’ he said with great force.
‘And that’s why he fired you,’ Angie pointed out.
As we were standing up to leave and Bronson (who had a picture of his wife and three children on his desk) was trying to figure out a way to ask Angie for her phone number, I checked my phone for messages: One from Patrick (typical), one from Nate (not urgent but important), one from Jon Irvin with no explanation, and one from my mother (definitely to be put off until later).
Bronson apparently decided on the sanctity of marriage and watched us (mostly Angie) leave. But before we made it to the very tall oak door he said, ‘People are threatening you to get you off the Reeves case?’
That was a weird question after all this. ‘Yes,’ I said. I reached for the doorknob.
‘I wonder why they didn’t threaten me,’ he said quietly as we left.