The Last Innocent Man (17 page)

T
HE ROADSIDE FLASHED
by and car horns occasionally broke the stillness. It would be easy to end everything by simply closing his eyes and letting the car take control. When the road began to waver, David shook his head to clear it. He did not want to die. He was certain of that. But life at the moment was confused and a torment.

He had several choices. He could make Jennifer retake the stand and recant her perjured testimony; he could go to the judge if she refused; or he could do nothing. If Jenny recanted, Larry would surely be convicted.

Would that be so bad? Yes, if he was innocent. There was still that possibility. Until tonight David had been convinced of Stafford’s innocence. The pictures discredited Ortiz. Larry’s story was so believably told. But what if he was wrong and Stafford was guilty?

David thought about Ashmore and Tony Seals. He felt sick. Once more he saw the autopsy photographs of the little girls that Ashmore had molested, then killed, and once again he heard Jessie Garza describe crawling down the mountain. What was he doing defending these people?

And Larry Stafford, where did he fit in? David could see the gash in Darlene Hersch’s throat. That was why any lawyer worth his salt fought so hard to keep out pictures of the victims in death. Death could be handled and sweet-talked in the abstract, but pictures made it real for a jury. Made the jury feel and smell and taste the horror that is violent death. David could touch that reality now. The steel shell he had built around his sensibilities had started to crumble with Ashmore, and all his defenses were now
down. But his fear of being responsible for setting loose another killer was still at odds with his feelings of love for Jenny. He felt used, he felt a fool, but he still loved her. In the end he no more knew what he would do than he had when he’d left her.

“I
know everything,” David told Larry Stafford. They were seated in a vacant jury room that Judge Rosenthal permitted them to use for conferences. Stafford was dressed in navy blue with a light-blue shirt and navy-and-red-striped tie. Just the right amount of cuff showed, and his shoes were polished. Only his complexion, turned pasty from too much jail time, did not fit his young-lawyer image.

“I don’t understand,” Stafford said nervously.

“Jenny told me. Oh, you don’t have to worry about her. I figured it out. She didn’t volunteer anything.”

“I’m still not sure what you mean,” Larry answered warily.

David was tired of the games, and just plain tired. He
had not slept last night, and he was having trouble handling even the simplest thoughts. He came to the point.

“I know that you and Jenny lied when you testified that you were together on the evening of the murder. I know you had a fight and she left the house. You have no alibi and you both committed perjury.”

Stafford said nothing. He looked like a little boy who was about to cry.

“Did you kill her, Larry?” David asked.

“What does it matter? Would you believe me if I said I didn’t?”

“I’m still your attorney.”

“It’s been like this my whole fucking life,” Stafford said bitterly. “So close. Then, bam, the door snaps shut. I marry this dream girl. She’s beautiful, wealthy. And she turns out to be a bitch who thinks only of herself.

“I kill myself to get through law school, get into the best firm, and the bastards won’t make me a partner, because I don’t have the right breeding.

“But this is the biggest joke of all, and I’ll probably end up in prison.”

“I asked you if you killed her.”

“You won’t believe what I say any more than Jenny did.”

“Then why do you suppose she lied for you?” David asked, angered by Stafford’s display of self-pity.

“How would it look? Jennifer Dodge of the Portland Dodges, who already married below her station, married to a murderer. How could she hold her head up at the horse show?”

“You’re a fool, Stafford. You’re so self-centered, you can’t recognize—”

“I recognize when I’m getting the shaft. I know what that little bitch wanted out of this. I was one of her charity projects, like that school she teaches at. Take a poor boy to lunch—or, to tell it like it was, to bed. She was slumming, Nash. But as soon as I wanted to make something of myself, she started in. She never understood me. That I didn’t want to owe her anything.”

“But it didn’t bother you when she perjured herself and risked prison for you?”

“If she hadn’t run out on me that night, none of this would have happened.”

“None of what?” David demanded. Stafford stopped, confused.

“None of…my arrest. Look, it’s obvious I didn’t do it. You proved that. I mean, Grimes already said that the killer had long brown hair, and what about those pictures and what Walsh said about the car?”

“What are you trying to do, Larry? Convince me you’re innocent? Let’s look at the facts the way I would, with my information, if I was prosecuting this case.

“The killer wears a shirt identical to a shirt that you own and wears pants similar to pants you own. He drives the same make and color car. He has the same build. And a trained police officer swears under oath that he is you. What do you think the statistical odds are that two people in Portland would own the same pants, shirt, and expensive car?

“You had the opportunity. No alibi. And it would be natural for a man who has just had a fight with a woman who has cut him off sexually…”

Stafford’s head snapped up.

“Yes, I know about that, too. It would be natural for such a man to go out looking for a woman.

“Then there’s motive. If you had been arrested for prostitution, your marriage would have been endangered and your tenuous chance to make partner destroyed.

“Arrayed against these motives and amazing coincidences in dress and physique, we have the word of one old man that the killer did not have curly blond hair, some fancy statistical footwork that probably won’t get by any halfway intelligent juror who starts thinking about the sheer number of those coincidences, and a few trick photographs.

“What would your verdict be, if you were a juror?”

Stafford hung his head. “What do you want me to say?” he asked.

“What do I want…? Goddammit, you’re lucky I talked to you at all. I should have dragged your wife in front of Judge Rosenthal and made her recant on the stand. But I’m still your lawyer and I want it from you. Did you kill Darlene Hersch?”

Stafford wagged his still-bowed head from side to side but did not look David in the eye.

“I don’t care anymore,” he said. “And once the jury hears what we did…”

“If,” David said.

Stafford looked up at him, like a dog begging for food.

“You’re not going to—?”

“You aren’t the only one involved in this. I don’t know if you killed that woman or not, but I’m not going to let you drag your wife down with you, by making her admit that she perjured herself.

“And if you are innocent, there isn’t a chance that a
jury would find you innocent if it learned about what you two did.”

Stafford started to cry, but David did nothing to comfort him.

“Just one more thing, Stafford. Are there any other little goodies that I should know about? And I mean anything.”

“No, no. I swear.”

David stood and walked to the door. Stafford seemed to lack the energy to move. He sat hunched over, staring at the floor.

“Pull yourself together,” David ordered in a cold, flat monotone. “We have to go to court.”

D
AVID TOOK HIS
place at counsel table and watched the events of the day unfold like a dream. The jury was seated in slow motion and Monica appeared, her arms loaded with law books. If he had been concentrating, this would have struck him as odd on a day set aside for closing argument, but nothing was registering for David. He just wanted the case to end, so he could decide what to do with his life without the pressure of having to care about the lives of other people.

Stafford had been brought in by the guard before the jury appeared, but he exchanged no words with his attorney. The judge came in last, and the final day of the trial commenced.

“Are you prepared to argue, Ms. Powers?” Judge Rosenthal asked.

“No, Your Honor,” Monica replied. “The State has one rebuttal witness it would like to call.”

“Very well.”

Monica signaled toward the back of the room, and Cyrus Johnson swaggered in, dressed in a white shirt, crewneck sweater, and brown slacks. David watched Johnson walk to the witness stand, trying to place the face. It was only when the witness stated his name that David began to feel uneasy.

“Do you know that man?” David demanded. Stafford paled and said nothing, unable to take his eyes off the witness.

“Are you also known as T.V., Mr. Johnson?” Monica asked.

“You’d better tell me what this is all about,” David said, his voice low and threatening. Stafford did not reply, but his face had the look of a person who knows that his death is imminent.

“And would you tell the jury what your occupation was on June sixteenth of this year?” Monica asked, swiveling her chair to watch David and Stafford react.

“Uh, well, uh,” Johnson started uneasily, “I guess you could say I managed some women.”

“You mean you were a pimp?” Monica asked.

There was a commotion in the courtroom and the judge pounded his gavel for quiet.

“Ms. Powers, you are asking this man to admit to criminal activity. Has he been warned of his rights?”

“Mr. Johnson is testifying under a grant of full immunity, Your Honor,” Monica replied, handing a notarized document to the Court and a copy to David. The judge studied it.

“Very well,” he said when he was finished. “You may proceed.”

“Mr. Johnson, have you ever seen Larry Stafford, the defendant in this case, before?”

Johnson stared at Stafford for a moment, then turned back to Monica.

“Yes, I have.”

“Would you tell the jury the circumstances of that meeting?” Monica asked.

Johnson shifted in the witness box and Monica tensed, waiting for David’s objection. When it did not come, she glanced tentatively at her former husband. She was startled by what she saw. David, who was usually so intense, was slumped down in his chair. He looked sad and uncaring. Monica had sprung surprises on David before and had seen him handle other lawyers’ challenges. Thinking on his feet was where David excelled. The David she saw now looked defeated.

“It was a couple of years ago. I would say in September. This dude, uh, the defendant, come up to one of my women in the Regency Bar, and they split a few minutes later. Now, I don’t make it a practice to bother my girls when they’re workin’, but somethin’ about this dude bothered me, so I followed them.”

Judge Rosenthal looked over at David. He, too, was waiting for an objection. When David said nothing, the judge toyed with the idea of calling the lawyers to the bench to discuss the direction the testimony was taking, but Nash was an experienced attorney, and he had conducted an excellent trial so far. The judge decided to let David try his case his way.

“We was usin’ a motel on the strip then, so I knew right where they was goin’. I parked in the lot near the
room and waited. About ten minutes later I heard a scream, so I went up to the room.

“Mordessa is naked and scramblin’ across the bed, and this dude,” Johnson said, pointing at Stafford, “is right on top of her, beatin’ her good. She got blood comin’ out of her mouth and her eye looked real bad.

“I was carryin’ a piece which I pulled and told him to freeze. He does. Then I asked what happened. Mordessa says Stafford wanted her to do some real kinky stuff, like tyin’ her up and whipping her. She tells him it’s extra and he says that’s cool. Then somethin’ about him scared her and she changed her mind. And that’s when he starts beatin’ on her.”

“What happened then?”

“The cops, uh, police arrived. I guess someone heard Mordessa screamin’ and called ’em. Anyway, this white cop asks Stafford what happened and he don’t even speak to me. Stafford says we tried to roll him and the next thing I know, we’re down the station house charged with prostitution and attempted robbery.”

“Did you tell the police your story?”

“Sure, but they wasn’t too interested in our version.”

“What finally happened to the charges against you?”

“Nothin’. They was dropped.”

“And why was that?”

T.V. smiled and pointed at Stafford. “He wouldn’t prosecute. Said he never said no such thing to the police.”

“Is there any question in your mind that the man who beat up Mordessa is the defendant, Lawrence Dean Stafford?”

Johnson stared at Stafford and shook his head.

“No, ma’am.”

Monica paused for effect, then said, “Your witness, counselor.”

The courtroom was hushed and all eyes turned toward David. Stafford’s head was bent and he stared at the blank legal pad that lay before him. He had not moved during Johnson’s testimony.

David also sat motionless. As Johnson had testified, the lawyer in him had seen the numerous objections and legal motions he could have made to keep Johnson’s testimony out, but he had made none of them, because there was another, more human, part that would not let him.

Each time he thought about objecting, he thought about Tony Seals and Ashmore. He was tired of letting the animals out of their cages and tired of justifying his actions by the use of philosophical arguments he no longer believed in. Stafford was guilty. He had murdered Darlene Hersch. There was no longer any doubt in David’s mind. David had to protect future victims from a man like Stafford, not use his skills to endanger others. Stafford had taken a life and he would pay for it.

The judge was calling his name for a second time. The jurors were staring at him. A low rumble of voices was beginning to build among the spectators. David shook his head slowly from side to side.

“No questions,” he said.

And Stafford never said a word in protest.