Capitol Murder Read online

  “What about you, Brad?” Jake asked.

  “I’ve got a position as a legislative assistant on the staff of Senator Jack Carson of Oregon,” Brad said. “I start next week.”

  “That should be interesting,” Dana said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “You don’t like him?” Brad asked.

  “I’ve never met the guy, so I don’t know what he’s like personally, but his politics suck. I’ll be amazed if he gets reelected the way he kisses up to terrorists.”

  “He doesn’t kiss up to terrorists,” Brad answered defensively. “He’s said time and again that he backs our efforts to deal with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He just wants a sane approach to our political strategy in the Middle East.”

  “A sane policy would involve nuclear weapons. I wouldn’t mind seeing that whole area turned into a parking lot.”

  “Whoa, amigos,” Jake interjected. “We are not going to let politics ruin a perfectly good dinner. Rancor is bad for digestion.”

  “I second that motion,” Ginny said. “No politics at the dinner table, children.”

  Dana glared for a moment and gave Brad and Ginny a glimpse of the side of her personality that was truly scary. Dana knew no limits when it came to violence, and Brad was glad he was not her enemy.

  Dana shifted gears quickly. “All right. I’ll get off Brad’s knee-jerk liberal back.”

  “And I’ll agree to a truce with this fascist,” Brad answered with a grin.

  “I hope that this is the most controversy we’re involved in all year,” Ginny said, “or the rest of our lives, for that matter.”

  “I’ll second that,” Brad said. “I hope the rest of our lives are boring and that nothing of consequence ever happens to us again, ever.”

  “That’s not going to happen if you’re working in the Senate,” Jake said.

  “I meant in our personal lives. If I never see another serial killer or assassin again, it will be too soon. I’ve had it with excitement. That’s why I married the dullest woman I could find.”

  “Hey,” Ginny said, slapping him playfully.

  The foursome joked back and forth for the rest of the meal. While they waited for the bill, they decided to go to a nearby bar with live jazz that Jake knew about. When the check came, they cracked open their fortune cookies and read them out loud. Everyone laughed when Jake’s slip told him that he was going on a long journey. An inheritance was in Dana’s future, and Ginny was going to meet a dark, handsome stranger, which got Jake going.

  “What’s your fortune?” Dana asked Brad.

  “It’s pretty bland,” Brad answered, “It just says, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ ”

  Jake threw his head back and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Brad asked.

  “You’ve never heard that before?” Jake asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, my friend, that is an old Chinese curse.”

  Chapter Two

  When Millie Reston woke up, the sun had not yet risen in Portland, Oregon, and it was well before her alarm was set to go off. She wasn’t surprised. It had taken forever to get to sleep; then she’d been up every two hours. It was nerves, pure and simple, and there was a good reason for them.

  When Millie was a child, her favorite fairy tale was Rapunzel. She would listen to her mother read the story and imagine that she was the beautiful princess locked in the tower who let down her long golden hair so the handsome prince could climb up her tresses and rescue her.

  As she grew up, Millie became painfully aware that her looks weren’t much to talk about. She was gawky. Her hair was dull brown, not gold, and frizzy and unmanageable. Millie’s skin was far from smooth. She wasn’t fat, but she was overweight and her figure was lumpy. Millie did have one serious boyfriend in college, but that hadn’t worked out. Since then her social life had been bleak, and she had finally come to accept the fact that no one with or without royal blood was waiting for her.

  Millie’s professional life was as depressing as her social life. Her grades in college had been good, but she didn’t perform well on standardized tests like the LSATs, so she’d gotten into only second-tier law schools. Millie had graduated in the top third of her class, but the big firms wouldn’t even look at graduates who weren’t on the law review or from an elite law school. She had hoped that some of the smaller firms might want her. When they didn’t, she had been forced to hang out a shingle, and she’d been eking out a living ever since, handling divorces, small claims, and court appointments.

  Then Clarence Little came into her life and everything changed. Clarence had been sentenced to death three times for the sadistic murders of three young women, one of whom was Laurie Erickson, an eighteen-year-old who had been abducted while babysitting for Christopher Farrington when he was the governor of Oregon. The authorities believed that Little had actually killed thirteen women because that was the number of severed pinkies that had been found in a jar buried in the Deschutes National Forest.

  After Farrington became the president of the United States, Brad Miller, an associate at Oregon’s largest law firm, proved that Little had been framed for Erickson’s murder. When Miller left Oregon to clerk at the United States Supreme Court, Millie had been appointed to represent Little in his postconviction cases.

  At nine o’clock, Judge Norman Case would reveal his decision in Clarence’s cases. Millie was certain that he would send them back for new trials and her triumph in Clarence’s case would bring her the notoriety that had escaped her so far. She foresaw new clients willing to pay large fees for an attorney who had prevailed in the most notorious murder case in the history of Oregon, a case that had been covered by every major American news outlet and was front-page news all over the world.

  Millie’s father was a doctor, her mother was a college professor, one of her brothers was a neurosurgeon in Seattle, and the other had gone to Columbia for law school and was a partner in a Wall Street firm. Millie’s parents doted on the boys. Though they tried to hide it, she knew that they viewed her as a disappointment. If she won Clarence’s case, she would finally gain their respect.

  More important, she would be saving the life of someone she loved. It was Rapunzel in reverse. The handsome prince was caged on death row, and Millie Reston was going to save him from the prison in which he had been unjustly incarcerated. For Millie believed with all her heart that Clarence was innocent.

  The first time she went to the penitentiary to meet Clarence, she had been a wreck. The press had portrayed him as a monster who got sadistic pleasure out of torturing young women in the most hideous ways. But Clarence was nothing like the vicious beast in those news stories. He was charming, considerate, and soft-spoken. He took a real interest in her life and always asked Millie how she was doing. She had been surprised by her attraction to a man who was alleged to be Oregon’s worst serial killer, but he seemed so sincere, and he was so warm and had treated her with respect that she rarely received from a man.

  Clarence insisted that he was innocent, and he cited the Erickson case as proof that his convictions were in error. Millie had been leery of his protestations of innocence, but the more she learned about Clarence, the more she believed him. He was an educated man with undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. He had been employed by a reputable firm. His neighbors and coworkers had told the police that Clarence was a bit of a loner but he also participated in company social functions and was friendly at work and to the people in his neighborhood. No one could believe that Clarence was a sadistic murderer and many of those interviewed had assured the police that there had to be a mistake.

  Then there were the murders themselves. The Erickson case was indisputably a frame-up, so why not the rest? The killer’s victims had been abducted, then tortured in the most unspeakable ways for days on end. After meeting with Clarence for more than a year, Millie found it impossible to believe that he could do the horrible things of which he was accused.
Spurred on by love and the knowledge that she was serving Justice by righting a great wrong, Millie had put together the best brief she had ever written, and everyone said she had been brilliant during the hearing. Clarence had brought out the best in her, and she was so certain she’d win that she had started fantasizing about further victories at Clarence’s retrials, ending with the star-crossed lovers united with no bars or bulletproof glass to keep them apart.

  Millie lived in an old brick apartment house just off Twenty-third Street. It was a little pricey because of the location, but it was one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. The furniture was secondhand and the art on the walls was reproductions or posters. There was a dining area, but Millie rarely entertained, and she ate her meals at a table in the small kitchen. Tea and toast was all she could handle this morning, but she enjoyed reading the paper because the Oregonian had a special feature about Clarence’s case in the Metro section, and she was mentioned several times.

  Millie had bought a new outfit for court and had gone to the beauty parlor to have her hair straightened to take out the frizz. After she applied her makeup, she rehearsed the speech she would make to the reporters after her victory, watching her facial expressions in her bathroom mirror to make sure they were just right. Then she dressed in a black business suit and sky blue silk shirt. She hoped she looked professional for the cameras, but more important was looking good for Clarence when she met with him at the penitentiary in the afternoon to tell him that he was one step closer to freedom.

  The Marion County Circuit Court heard all postconviction cases because the state penitentiary was in Salem, Oregon’s capital, and Salem was in Marion County. The Marion County courthouse, a dull white steel-and-glass building, was an example of fifties functional government architecture, and Judge Case’s courtroom was as sexy as a DMV office, but Millie couldn’t care less about her surroundings. The spectator section was packed with reporters and the curious, and every eye, including Millie’s, was focused on the overweight, gray-haired man in the black robe who was seated behind the bench.

  “The issue before me is whether Clarence Little’s convictions for the murders of Winona Benford and Carol Poole must be reversed because evidence concerning the murder of Laurie Erickson was introduced by the prosecution at those trials,” Judge Case began.

  “This is an extremely troubling matter. I would say that it is the most troubling case I have handled in thirty-two years on the bench. The person responsible for the murders of these innocent young women is no common criminal; he is a monster and deserves the most severe punishment the law permits. But our Constitution requires that all trials be fair, no matter who the defendant is, and my job is to study what happened in these two trials to make certain that they meet the requirements of the constitutions of Oregon and the United States.

  “In my written opinion, I have set out in great detail the evidence in Mr. Little’s trials. There are great similarities in all of the crimes in the way these women were abducted, the method of torture, and of course, there is the signature removal of the victim’s pinkie in each case. Yet the state concedes that Mr. Little is unquestionably innocent of murdering Miss Erickson.

  “Laurie Erickson’s case was one of the most highly publicized cases in recent history. Not only did it attract local interest, but it was reported nationally and internationally. Miss Erickson was abducted from the Governor’s Mansion while Christopher Farrington was the governor of this state. Mr. Little’s separate trials for the murders of Winona Benford, Carol Poole, and Miss Erickson took place while Mr. Farrington was the vice president of the United States.

  “Mr. Little was prosecuted first for murdering Miss Benford and was convicted. He was then tried for killing Miss Poole. After he was convicted in that case, he was tried for the murder of Miss Erickson. Evidence from all three murders was introduced at each trial on the theory that the method used by the killer in all three murders was so similar that only one person could have committed all three crimes, something we now know may not be true.

  “After a thorough reading of the record, I cannot in good conscience conclude that the evidence from the Erickson case that was introduced in Mr. Little’s other trials did not affect the verdicts in those trials. Therefore, I hold that the verdicts in those cases must be set aside and the cases must be remanded to the circuit courts in the counties that tried them for whatever action the district attorneys in those counties deem appropriate.

  “I hold further that no evidence from the Erickson case may be introduced at any retrial of the remaining cases.”

  Judge Case spoke for ten more minutes, but his words did not register. The moment the judge ruled for Clarence, Millie’s heart soared high above the courtroom and she lost focus. She’d won the most important case of her life. She was a success. The horde of reporters who bombarded her with questions as soon as court was adjourned reinforced her belief that her life had turned a corner.

  Millie parked her car in the visitors’ lot at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Walls topped with razor wire and guarded by gun towers loomed above her as she walked down the lane that led from the lot to the prison’s front door. Millie had no time to contemplate her somber surroundings because more reporters rushed to interview her.

  Millie made a brief statement, then went into the prison reception area. She was enjoying her fame, but she was relieved that she would not have to give any more interviews for a while. Millie told the guard at the reception desk that she was there to meet with her client, Clarence Little. Then she took a seat on a green prison-made couch and started reading Judge Case’s lengthy written opinion.

  When the guard called Millie’s name, she went through the metal detector. Her heart beat faster as she walked down a ramp that ended at a set of steel bars. The guard signaled to another guard in a control room, and the bars rolled aside. Millie entered a holding area and waited until the first bars rolled back in place and a second set opened to admit her to a short hallway. Millie had visited Clarence several times and she knew the routine. Her escort led her down the hall and opened a thick metal door. She entered the visiting area, but instead of being taken into a large open room with couches, tables, and vending machines, where a number of prisoners played with their children or talked to loved ones, she was led to a second visiting area reserved for prisoners deemed too dangerous to be permitted into the open area. Windows made of bulletproof glass were set in two of the walls. Visitors sat on folding chairs and talked to the prisoner on a phone receiver fixed to the wall.

  At the end were two rooms set aside for attorney-client visits with death-row inmates. The rooms were barely large enough to accommodate a bridge chair. The guard ushered Millie inside one of them. Her chair faced a glass window set in concrete blocks painted institutional brown. A slot for passing papers had been built into the bottom of the window, and a metal ledge just wide enough to accommodate a legal pad jutted out from the wall beneath the window.

  Millie was sick with excitement as she waited for Clarence. On the other side of the glass was an identical closet-size concrete-block room. A metal door in the back wall of the other room opened, and two guards led Clarence in. One of them unlocked his shackles, and the other handed him a file stuffed with legal papers.

  Clarence was five eleven and wiry, with wavy brown hair and gray-blue eyes. Millie thought he was very handsome. As soon as he sat down, she picked up the receiver attached to the wall on her side of the glass and pressed it to her ear. Clarence flashed a big smile and she felt as if she could float.

  “You look very nice,” Clarence said as soon as the door closed behind the guards. “Is that a new suit? I don’t think I’ve seen you in it before.”

  Millie was thrilled that Clarence had noticed. “I bought it this week so I’d look good in court.”

  He examined her thoughtfully. “Stand up and turn around for me.”

  Millie blushed. “I couldn’t.”

  “Please,” Clarence said with a warm sm
ile. “I love to look at you.”

  Millie stood, but she was too embarrassed to meet Clarence’s eye, so she looked at the floor as she turned slowly, the way she’d seen the fashion models she so envied make a turn on a reality television show she watched religiously.

  “You did something to your hair, didn’t you?”

  Millie blushed and nodded.

  “You look better every time I see you,” Clarence said.

  “You don’t have to say those things. I know I’m a little heavy and . . .”

  “Don’t run yourself down,” Clarence said angrily. “You have a great body. You’re no string bean like those ridiculous women in the magazines. You’re a real woman.”

  Millie didn’t know what to say. The only other person who had ever complimented her figure was her college boyfriend. She doubted he had been sincere. In retrospect, it was obvious that he had flattered her so he could get her into bed.

  Before that train of thought could travel very far, Millie remembered why she was in the prison. She broke into a grin, unable to contain her excitement.

  “I have wonderful news.”

  “I know,” Clarence said. “You won my postconviction cases. Thanks to you, the circuit court set aside my convictions.”

  Millie looked disappointed that her news wasn’t a surprise. “How did you find out? The judge only ruled an hour ago. I rushed over to tell you.”

  “And I appreciate that, but the prison grapevine is better than the Internet. It’s hard to keep news like this quiet. But I don’t know how you won. That’s what I’m waiting to hear.”

  “It was the Erickson case. The prosecutor introduced evidence about Erickson’s murder when he prosecuted you for the murders of the other two women, but you were framed in that case.”

  “And the others, Millie,” Little reminded her.

  “I know, Clarence.”

  “Go on. Tell me how you pulled off this miracle.”