The Zen Man (5 page)

One of them did a bad job suppressing a grin. The one talking, Dan Steiner, a former classmate at D.U., gave me a hard sizing-up, seemed to believe me.

“Need help, give a call, okay?” he said.

“Sure thing.”

Sam watched them leave, his arms crossed. “Didn’t know you and Dan were friends.”

“We aren’t.”

“Watch out for him. He only wants the media case.”

“I guessed as much.” If the Jeffco sheriffs didn’t find evidence pointing at someone else as the murderer, I’d be their poster boy. Suspended lawyer-junkie turned gumshoe whose ex-wife is found brutally murdered on his property…it’d be a feeding frenzy for the media. Any lawyer representing me would benefit big-time from all that free PR. Make enough money and gain enough glitz to propel him or her into the upper echelon of high-priced, in-demand lawyers.

And to think Laura had hoped this weekend would be about
me
getting more jobs.

Laura.

“I gotta protect her, somehow,” I murmured, staring at her. “She can’t afford to lose this place.”

“Look, Rick, if things get…” Sam patted me on the back. “…well, just know I’ll represent you two, pro bono.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Or maybe I was afraid that responding made the fear real.

I heard Laura’s throaty laugh. Looked over to see the detective flashing her a grin. I suppose if he hadn’t had that Mario Lopez thing going for him, I could’ve cared less.

“They’re only laughing, Zen Man.”

“Hot-shot deputy should move on, do his job. Killer is probably still here.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Sam scanned the crowd. “Only a criminal defense attorney could commit the perfect crime.”

Grudgingly, I looked away from Laura and Mario-Dude. “I’m not sure this is such a perfect crime. Too exhibitionist, show-offy. As though some narcissistic, megalomaniac psycho is thumbing his nose at his peers. Hey, look what I did right in the midst of you, and nobody caught me.”

“Think it’s a he?”

A loud clang, followed by a curse, cut through the night. At the top of the stairs that led down to the parking lot, the deputy coroners were wrestling with the laden gurney. It was going to be one hell of a descent. Just like Wicked to be the center of attention until the bitter end.

I returned my attention to Sam. “Doesn’t seem like a woman would do it to her while Wi—Deborah was naked.”

“But naked and alone, that is when she was most vulnerable—prime opportunity if one is bent on killing her, whether they’re a man or woman.”

I thought about the stab wound in the heart area. Why hadn’t the killer just stuck the knife into her brain stem? Or done it prison style, which any good criminal defense attorney would know, by stabbing repeatedly and quickly for max blood loss? Brain stems. Prison style. Ways a man might do it. But as I well knew, women attorneys had balls, too. Sometimes bigger ones.

I checked out the clusters of lawyers, sizing them up. In one clump of baby sharks, a wiry dude was smoking and chattering to a pal. His embroidered coat and paisley tie were a clash of patterns and color, making me wonder if that’s how he’d planned to dress or if he’d run out of clean clothes that matched.

I shifted my gaze to another group of heftier, older CrimDefs, none of whom wore paisley. One of the men in the group, Max Cameron, was in a twelve-step group I used to attend in Denver. He’d kicked a bad crack habit fifteen years ago, which included time for selling drugs to an undercover cop. That he’d rebuilt his life and practice was a success story among us recovering junkie-lawyers.

“If only I hadn’t let her talk me into bringing her,” Sam said, staring at the deputy coroners folding one of the blue plastic sheets.

“She said it’d been your idea.”

He shook his head slowly, side to side. “Never knew with her what was real.”

“True. I think she was determined to be here, maybe to confront me although I’m not sure it was really about that necklace. You know her, talking stuff up before it’s a done deal. Probably had announced to all kinds of people she’d be here. Unfortunately, one of those people was the killer.”

“Premeditated? I don’t know. Stabbed through the heart sounds like a crime of passion to me.” He made a shushing sound. “We have a visitor.”

Footsteps crunched to a stop. “Richard Levine?”

A petite redhead in a Jefferson County sheriff’s uniform, topped with a zipped-up leather jacket, stood in front of me. Her short, curly red hair, big eyes, and oversized mouth reminded me of a Raggedy Ann doll.

“Yes.”

“I’m Sergeant Friesen. Sheriff Benning asked me to interview you—mind answering a few questions?”

“He won’t be doing that,” interrupted Sam. “I’m his lawyer and he’s invoking his right to remain silent.”

I needed help, yes, but I’d been around the block enough times to know it made me look better, as in innocent, if I answered questions now. “It’s all right, sergeant, I’m happy to comply.”

“But…” Her eyes shifted from me to Sam and back. “…he says he’s your attorney. Is that correct?”

“I am.” Sam edged his tall frame between me and Red. When I started to speak again, he made a halting sign with his palm.

“Especially, sergeant,” he said, regarding her like a cockroach that needed to be stepped on, “since you know that once he says he wants an attorney, you have to head for the door, figuratively speaking. It’s called the Sixth Amendment. It’s good reading, and for your benefit, it’s short.” He extracted a business card from his breast pocket. “Let me write my cell number on the back.” He frowned, patted his shirt pocket again, then reached into his pants pocket. He scanned the ground at his feet.

“Problem, counselor?” asked Red, those big eyes narrowing.

“I seem to have, uh, misplaced my fountain pen.”

Oh, this was working out well. Sam had aggressively stepped in, damning her perception of me with that Sixth Amendment jab…and now he was fretting over some goddamn fountain pen. Just the kind of representation I’d always dreamed of while on the brink of being charged with first degree.

For the first time in a long, long time I craved a drink. Or a toke. I cleared my throat. “I’d like to explain—”

“I’m taking him down to the station,” Red called out to the Mario Lopez deputy charging our way.

Laura was also speed-walking toward us, her face tight with worry, obviously concerned by what she saw coming down.

“He’s lawyered up.” Red explained to the deputy, who’d halted next to her, one hand hovering over the butt of his gun as though I might go
loco
any moment.

“Turn around, sir,” she said to me, pulling her handcuffs off her belt, “and put your hands behind you.”

Only a fool wouldn’t have done as told. As I turned, I muttered to Sam, “Get me out of this.”

“You’re retaining me?”

I nodded stiffly.

“Then shut up,” he said, clapping me on the back. “I’ll do the talking from here on out, old chap.”

It is just as is and ain’t no is-er.
—Rural American Zen

I
t was Sunday morning and I was fucked.

Incarcerated on first-degree murder charges for an ex-wife I despised and had successfully avoided for the last five or so years, then the one time she steps foot on my property, she’s murdered with an
alleged
object I’d been waving at her in self defense an hour before her ugly demise. I’d had plenty of time sitting in the cell to ponder what could be worse than my being fucked on trumped-up charges, and hadn’t come up with anything other than my own death, which meant I was about as fucked as they come.

Such thoughts weren’t exactly on the enlightened top ten for the Zen Man, but when you’re incarcerated in a cold, impersonal Jefferson County Detention Center cell where everything’s bolted down, even the toilet, with walls painted the color of that green shit that flew out of Linda Blair’s mouth in the
Exorcist
, Zen thoughts fly outta your head, down the hall, into the visitors’ waiting area, and out the door to the light, breezy, sun-filled outdoors that you begin to wonder if you’ll ever see again.

Sitting on my three-inch thick plastic-covered straw mattress, I stared down at my orange jumpsuit—decorated with the letters JCSO for Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office—to my tan inmate-issued flip-flops and decided for the nth time that whoever murdered Wicked had picked the CrimDefs retreat to do so because I’d be nailed for the crime. A walking, quacking fucking duck.

Who did it?

I again went over everyone who’d been at the retreat, from Iris to Max to that foppy looking rock star dude to any one of the several dozen other attorneys present that evening. Who had motive? Obviously everyone had opportunity. And means as, from what Sam had learned from the medical examiner’s office, the knife stuck into Wicked was the same kind I’d earlier wielded, meaning the killer lifted the knife from our kitchen. If only I hadn’t taken that stroll to clear my head and breathe in some mountain air…if only I’d asked Sam to accompany me. Or Laura. Hell, even Mavis…detectives could’ve pulled physical evidence from her paws, seen the part of the property we’d been walking on, the lack of blood spatter on the fur. Yeah, even Mavis could’ve been my alibi, but no, I was alone, no witnesses, motive up the wazoo.

A Jeffco detention deputy sheriff whose stomach seriously strained the green fabric of his shirt sauntered in front of my cell. I vaguely recalled grilling the dude in a trial years ago, assault and battery case. From the smug, I-got-you-asshole look on his face, he remembered, too. I had to be his dream-cell fantasy come true. A lawyer in chains.

“Levine,” he barked, opening the door. “Visitor. Chop chop.”

He secured my leg shackles and escorted me to the visitation cell, a square cinderblock room with a thirty by forty-inch window of thick glass. On the other side sat Laura, looking pale and drawn with circles so dark under her eyes, they looked painted on. I hated what I was putting her through.

“I’ve missed you,” I said into the phone.

“Me, too.” She closed her eyes, reopened them. “Cancelled the housekeepers, caterers…even the laundry service. Figured there won’t be business for a while.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.” She forced a small smile. “Mavis and I are doing fine, really.”

“She must love having my chair all to herself.”

“When she’s not there, she’s lying at the kitchen door, waiting for you to come home.”

That got to me. I had to swallow, hard.

She straightened, looked almost eager. “Judge set bail, and I’m working on making it.”

Good news, as most people charged with first-degree murder aren’t even entitled to bail. But if it was a judge who hated my guts, bail could be higher than Jerry on his eighty-four summer tour. “The number?”

“Half a million.” Seeing the look on my face, she quickly added, “We’ll be able to post it using the equity in the lodge.”

“You can’t do that. Even if you could, it’s your livelihood. Your home.”

I knew what roots meant to her. She’d grown up in a series of dusty, broken-down trailer parks throughout Arizona and California. Her dad had fancied himself a construction worker, and had occasionally even found jobs pounding nails, but the truth was he spent more of his time chasing jobs than keeping them. Which meant Laura and her family were good at packing up the trailer and towing it to another town, another possible job. Her mom had been lonely and depressed, her main outlets bitching about her old man and drinking. Laura was more a mom to her kid sister, Becky, who at fifteen ran away with a boy and was never heard from again. When I’d first hooked up with Laura, I’d tried to help find her sister, but there were no links to her maiden name, I couldn’t dredge up a social, and nobody had a clue where she and the boy might have gone.

All of which had left Laura with a yearning to have a stable, predictable home. The very thing she could lose, thanks to me.

I blew out an exasperated breath. “I know how these things work. It’ll take several days just to get an appraiser there—”

“Already come and gone.”

“They don’t work that fast.”

“He owed Sam a favor.”

So Sam had called in a marker. “Nice of him to set that up. But you just bought the place. There’s not enough equity—”

“He appraised it for nearly eight hundred thousand.”

Obviously, Sam had suggested that exact figure to the appraiser ahead of time. Which meant he’d rigged our bed and breakfast to have five hundred grand equity—the exact number for bail—above our loan. For all his polish and panache, Sam had the soul of a slick backroom Shylock.

I wasn’t gonna ask any more questions. Our conversation was being recorded, so anything else about Sam’s tactics we could discuss later in private.

“And the property bond motion has been filed with the court,” she continued, “should be approved by the judge tomorrow, next day at the latest I’ve been told.” She paused, her eyes filling with emotion. “Can’t believe you’re in for murder one.”

“Why look any further than the ex-husband with the knife in his hand? Cops look for the most provable, likely suspect, not the truth. We have our work cut out for us.”

She frowned, a confused look on her face.

“We’re going to investigate my case, baby, and find the real killer.”

“Time’s up,” barked a man’s voice.

I glanced over my shoulder at a new sheriff, an older guy with a seen-it-all look in his frosty blue eyes. “Thought visitation was twenty minutes.”

“Not today.”

I looked back at Laura. “Pull together the addresses for everyone who attended the retreat. Print them out, bring them with you when you pick me up. And bring gloves, for both of us. Love you.”

“Gloves?” She glanced up at the video camera, back to me. “Love you, too,” she whispered.

As she hung up her phone and stood, a panic spiked in me. I couldn’t let this end. Not this moment, or the next, or forever. I tapped the glass.

She paused, arched a questioning brow.