A Matter of Life and Death Page 8

  Eventually, Hennessey fell into a nightmare-plagued sleep. When he woke up, it was still dark, and he was still exhausted. Hennessey tried to get back to sleep, but failed miserably. A little after six, he scarfed down a breakfast of black coffee and toast, which was all he could tolerate, and drove to work. Only a few people were in, and the deputy with whom he shared his cramped cubicle wasn’t there yet.

  Hennessey logged on to his computer and typed in Stacey Hayes. He couldn’t find any outstanding warrants, but he did find an order from circuit court judge Wilma Malone dismissing two prostitution cases and two warrants for failure to appear. The order had been put in the system shortly after Stacey moved to Portland.

  Hennessey had tried a case in Malone’s court. She was new to the bench and had practiced insurance defense in one of Portland’s big firms. Why would Malone get rid of Stacey’s warrants? It made no sense. Then Hennessey wondered if Malone knew about the order. It would be pretty simple to slip an order of such little consequence into a pile that had been sent to the clerk’s office. If that’s what happened, who had authored the forgery?

  Anthony Carasco, the only person Stacey knew in Portland, was the most likely suspect. And that led to more questions. When they were in Carasco’s chambers and at dinner, Carasco had acted surprised when Hennessey told him that Hayes was a prostitute who had warrants out for her arrest in Oregon, but he had to know if Carasco was the person who had gotten rid of them. How did Carasco learn about the warrants? The obvious answer was that Hayes told him. But if Hayes knew the warrants didn’t exist anymore, why did she threaten Hennessey?

  The young prosecutor remembered his case that had been shifted to Carasco’s court on the morning Hayes lured him to her apartment. Hennessey had thought the switch to Carasco’s court had been odd, but he also thought it was fortuitous because he got along so well with Carasco. But what if he’d been set up?

  Stacey was a professional, and professionals were adept at using sex to manipulate men. Stacey had made Hennessey think she liked him, then she’d cut him off for a week so he would be aching to see her. Stacey had lured Hennessey to her apartment in late morning with the promise of sex. Then she had threatened to destroy him if he didn’t make her warrants disappear. Did Carasco lure him to his courtroom later that day because he knew Hennessey would seek his advice? Why would he do that?

  There was an answer to that question that made Hennessey’s mouth go dry. The judge had made certain that Hennessey was with him when his wife was murdered. Was that part of a plan? Had Carasco hired someone to kill his wife and used Hennessey to provide a cast-iron alibi?

  Ian closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Carasco had introduced him to Hayes and set up their first date knowing that Hennessey would be easy prey for a woman like Stacey. It had been a classic honey trap. Hennessey felt dizzy and disoriented. If he was right, Carasco had masterminded his wife’s death, Stacey Hayes was his accomplice, and he was the dupe they were using to get away with murder.

  PART THREE

  A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  On Saturday morning, Robin opened her eyes slowly and stared at the bedroom ceiling for a moment before forming her lips into a sleepy grin. She didn’t go to the gym on the weekend, but an hour earlier, she had engaged in another, very satisfying type of exercise before falling back to sleep. Robin turned her head toward the other side of the bed. It was empty. The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and the sound of plates rattling on the island in the kitchen provided clues to Jeff Hodges’s whereabouts. It took a supreme act of will to get out of bed, but she managed to do it. She showered and threw on jeans and a Trailblazers T-shirt. By the time Robin wandered into the dining area of their apartment, Jeff was putting the finishing touches on an omelet.

  Jeff was six foot two with shaggy, reddish-blond hair, broad shoulders, green eyes, and pale, freckled skin. He had been a police officer in Washington County until he’d suffered serious injuries during an explosion in a meth lab he was raiding. When they’d first met, Robin had been fascinated by the faint tracery of scars on his face, but they barely registered now.

  “I was just going to check on you,” Jeff said. “I was worried that you were dead.”

  Robin smiled. “There are worse ways to go.”

  “Too true,” Jeff answered as he flipped the finished product onto a dish that was sitting next to another plated omelet.

  Robin sat at her place and sipped the glass of orange juice Jeff had thoughtfully placed there. A steaming cup of coffee stood beside the juice glass.

  Jeff tucked the newspaper under his arm and carried the omelets to the table. He put one on Robin’s place mat before handing her the sports section.

  “Did you know about this?” he asked as he held up the front page.

  The headline read JUDGE’S WIFE SLAIN IN HOME INVASION. Robin read the first sentence. Then her head jerked up, and she stared at Jeff.

  “Anthony Carasco!”

  “Mark told me you had a run-in with him recently,” Jeff said.

  “Yeah. The guy’s a jerk, but he didn’t deserve this.”

  “Judges have a human side,” Jeff said. “Even the ones who are jerks.”

  Robin finished the article before handing the first section of the paper back to Jeff. He turned his attention to the editorial page, and Robin read an article about the Seahawks. They both missed the story on the bottom of page 7 about the two ten-year-old boys who had found a man’s body in a weed-covered lot not far from the tent city where Joseph and Maria Lattimore had lived.

  Carlos Ortega was a fifty-eight-year-old ex-marine. The VA had a file on him. He had PTSD and was addicted to heroin. He was also no stranger to the justice system and had been in and out of jail on minor assault and possession charges. An address for Ortega’s wife was in the VA file, and she was notified two days after her husband’s body was found.

  Not mentioned in the article were the results of a blood test, which found a tranquilizer in Mr. Ortega’s system, or the similarity of the injuries to those of Elizabeth Carasco.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  On Monday morning, Robin was editing a memo she was writing in support of a motion to suppress when her receptionist told her that Harold Wright was on line two. Judge Wright, a brilliant jurist with a great judicial temperament, was one of Robin’s favorites.

  “Hi, Judge,” Robin said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m acting as the presiding judge this week while Nancy is on vacation, and a man charged with aggravated murder appeared in my court an hour ago. A public defender appeared with him, but he says you’re his lawyer. He’s indigent, so you’d have to be paid on the court-appointment fee schedule if you take the case.”

  Robin frowned. “What’s the defendant’s name?”

  “Joseph Lattimore.”

  As soon as she heard Joe’s name, Robin assumed that Lattimore’s case involved the illegal fight, but she had no idea why it would be charged as a death penalty case.

  “Before you tell me whether you’ll accept the case,” Wright continued, “you need to know that the victim is Tony Carasco’s wife.”

  “Lattimore is charged with killing Judge Carasco’s wife?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Attorney-client.”

  “So, you do represent him?”

  “Let me talk to Mr. Lattimore. I’ll tell you if I’ll take the case after I meet with him.”

  * * *

  The Multnomah County jail was on the fourth through tenth floors of the Justice Center, a modern, sixteen-story building in downtown Portland that was separated from the courthouse by a park. When Robin got out of the jail elevator, she found herself in a narrow concrete hall. She pressed the button on an intercom that was affixed to the wall next to a thick metal door that sealed the elevators from the area where defendants were housed in the jail.

 
After a short wait, Robin heard electronic locks snapping in place, and the door was opened by a corrections officer. The guard led her into another narrow hallway that ran in front of three contact visiting rooms that she could see into through large, shatterproof windows. The guard opened the steel door for the first visiting room, and Robin entered a concrete rectangle whose sole furnishings were two molded plastic chairs and a table that was secured to the floor by metal bolts.

  Moments after Robin sat down, a second door on the wall opposite the window opened, and a guard escorted Joseph Lattimore into the contact visiting room. Lattimore was wearing a loose-fitting jail-issued orange jumpsuit. His shoulders slumped, and he looked at the floor when the guard guided him onto his chair. As soon as the guard left, Lattimore raised his head. He looked exhausted.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he blurted out. “She was dead when I got there.”

  Robin held up her hand. “Stop! I’m not your attorney, Joe. All I did was answer a question for you.”

  “You’ve got to help me,” he pleaded. “I was set up.”

  “You have a public defender. I know her. She’s experienced. She’ll do a good job.”

  “I don’t want someone who’ll ‘do a good job.’ Maria and the baby have no one but me. If I’m convicted…”

  Joe shook his head back and forth slowly.

  “This was planned. Getting me to that house…” There were tears in Joe’s eyes. “They knew I was desperate. You have to hear me out. Once you understand what they did, you’ll see that you have to help me.”

  Robin studied Lattimore. He sounded hopeless. More important, he sounded like he might be telling the truth.

  “I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I’m not promising to represent you. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah. I get it. I’m sorry. I have no right to ask you to do this. You have big clients—important people with money. I’m broke. I don’t have anything to offer you. But I didn’t kill that woman. I was set up.”

  Robin sighed. She had never been drawn to the practice of law for the money. Helping people motivated her, and anyone accused of killing the wife of a judge would need a lot of help.

  “Talk.”

  “Remember I told you about the illegal fight?”

  Robin nodded.

  “What you don’t know is what happened after I … after I killed the man I fought.”

  “Let’s do this in order. Start at the beginning.”

  “Okay. I was running to keep in shape when this guy passed me in a car. A little bit later, I saw the car again, and the man was standing beside it. He said that his name was Sal, and he knew I was a boxer. He asked if I wanted to make some money by fighting in a no-holds-barred fight. He said I could make three hundred dollars for a few minutes’ work. I was almost broke, and we needed the money, so I said I was in.

  “The night of the fight, I was picked up in a van. There were other people in the van. We drove for about an hour. When we stopped, we were in the country at a farm.

  “The fight was in a barn, and there was a big crowd. Everyone was gambling. When we got inside, the guy who seemed to be running the show had us write down our first names. Then he paired us up. He said that winners were paid and losers got nothing. He also told us to make the fight bloody.”

  Joe stopped for a moment as an unbidden image of Carlos’s ruined face crept into his head.

  “Are you okay?” Robin asked.

  “No. I can’t forget Carlos, the guy I killed.”

  “Was he one of the people who rode to the fight in the van?”

  “No. They brought him out of a room in the back of the barn. I thought that was strange.”

  Joe paused again and shook his head in an attempt to get rid of the vivid, blood-soaked image.

  “I’ve thought about the fight over and over. Something was wrong with Carlos. He was old and so slow. It was easy to hit him, and I could see his punches coming from a mile away. I think he was drugged. I’m sure that’s why it was so easy for me to hurt him.”

  Joe stopped again. He took a deep breath.

  “I got carried away, Ms. Lockwood. I needed the money to get Maria and the baby somewhere safe. I couldn’t afford to lose, so I kept on hitting him, but as soon as I realized how bad I’d hurt Carlos, I yelled for a doctor. The guy who ran the fight told the crowd to leave. I wanted to stay and see if Carlos was okay, but he gave me an envelope with money and hustled me out. The guy who drove me to the barn was waiting outside with the van. We’d been staying in a tent city. He drove me there after the fight.”

  “Did you get the driver’s name?”

  “No. I didn’t get anyone’s name, except for Sal’s, who refereed the fights.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “When we stopped, the driver told me they had a recording of me killing Carlos and they’d give it to the cops with the location of the body if I didn’t do what I was told. He gave me a cell phone and said I’d get a call about a job. If I did good, I’d be paid, and no one would see the video. He said they were watching me. If I tried to run, they would hurt Maria and the baby. Then he took us to the motel where I was arrested.”

  “Did they call you?”

  Joe nodded. “Friday night, the driver called. He was outside the motel. He drove me to the house where the woman was killed. He said that no one was home and there was no alarm. He gave me a combination that was supposed to be for a safe in the living room. He wanted the jewels in the safe and said I could keep any cash. When I went into the entryway, I saw a body in the living room. It was a woman. I put on the lights to see if she was okay. One look at her face and I knew I couldn’t help her. So, I ran.”

  Joe shook his head. “I’m so stupid. I should have seen it coming. The driver was gone. Then another car came around the corner and lit me up with its headlights. I took off and went back to the motel to get Maria and Conchita. We were going to run, but the cops came before we could go. They must have called the cops and told them where I was.”

  “Do you know the location of the fight or how to find any of the people you think set you up?” Robin asked.

  Joe shook his head. “The back of the van had no windows, and no one but Sal used names.”

  “What about the phone? Do you have the one they gave you?”

  “No. The driver took it back.”

  “Can you describe any of the people involved in organizing the fight?”

  “The driver who took me to the barn was a giant, over six feet tall—six five maybe—and three hundred pounds or more. He was bald, and his head was twice the size of a normal human’s.”

  “Race?”

  “White, and he had a cauliflower ear and gang tattoos.”

  “Can you tell me the gang?”

  “No.”

  “What about the people who were running the fight?”

  After Joe described the man who seemed in charge, the doctor, and Sal, Robin sat back and thought. Joe watched her, knowing that his best chance for surviving his ordeal was weighing the pros and cons of taking his case.

  Robin stood up and rang for the guard.

  “Will you help me?” Joe asked. He sounded desperate, and Robin wished that she could give him an answer.

  “I don’t know. I have to think about this.”

  “Yeah, I get it. But can you do one thing for me? Can you find out where Maria and Conchita are? No one will tell me. If I know they’re safe…”

  “I’ll see what I can do. And I won’t make you wait long for my decision.”

  * * *

  On the way to her office, Robin realized that she could be plunged into a defense attorney’s worst nightmare if she accepted Joseph Lattimore as a client. On television, every client is innocent, and every defense attorney is excited to represent an innocent man. In the real world, there were two cases a criminal defense attorney took on with great trepidation: a case where her client faced the death penalty, and a case where her client was innocent.


  Most people who are arrested are guilty. If you represented a guilty person, you tried your very best to get your client out of his scrape with the least wear and tear. If he pleaded guilty or was found guilty at trial and you had tried your hardest, you slept soundly knowing that your client had done the crime with which he’d been charged.

  Then there was the rare case where your client had been arrested for something he had not done. No attorney wanted to carry that weight. An acquittal only brought a sigh of relief, and a conviction brought endless, sleepless nights and agonizing days filled with the nagging thought that you had failed to do something that would have kept your client out of a cage.

  Robin knew that she could avoid the anxiety and constant stress she would feel by leaving Joe’s case with the public defender’s office. But her conscience would not let her do that. If Joe were innocent and facing death, she had a duty to help him. How could she look herself in the mirror if she walked away?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Robin called the public defender who had represented Lattimore at the arraignment and got a briefing on everything she knew about the case. Then she called Jeff and Mark to her office and told them what Joe had told her and what she’d learned from the public defender.

  “What should I do?” Robin asked.

  “Do you believe him?” Mark asked.

  “I do. If he’s making up his story, he should be writing bestselling fiction. It’s the details. He sounds like he’s describing things that happened. And he did ask me about his culpability when he met me outside McGill’s. I believe that illegal fight really happened.”

  “Oh, they hold them,” Jeff said. “When I was a cop, we heard rumors.”

  “Did you ever do anything about them?” Mark asked.

  “No. It was all very shadowy. It’s not unusual for the promoters to move the location every time they hold a fight, so we weren’t even certain that they were being held in our jurisdiction. Plus, the word was that some pretty important people attended the fights—people who make big contributions to the people who decide what cases should be pursued.”