Private Practice Ch. 02

"How do you know that?... just kidding, just kidding." I said. "No, you don't have to tell me, and I'm glad you're telling me about the problems there."

Teresa said "Claire may be using that situation as a cudgel against Jerome Davis, as well, especially if it divides MCD into camps. And Roark is not very well liked by his co-workers. I'm hearing that his partner George Newman may ask for a transfer back to Vice, or to the Precincts. So... what are you planning to do?"

I said "Twiddle my thumbs while you solve the problem. Just kidding. Seriously, we'll see how it plays out. Roark is a pretty sharp guy. He makes good observations, and he appears to be good, or at least 'teachable', at interrogations."

We'd arrived at the Cop Bar, which cut off our discussion. We went in and found that the Sheriff's party had the back 'Command Room' to ourselves.

After ordering, Cindy announced "Well, it's official: the trial of Stanley Locklear begins Monday. In New Courtroom."

"Wow, not Old Courtroom, what with all the publicity and Media feeding frenzy?" I asked in reply. New Courtroom was the largest of the new Courtrooms that were built with the expansion of the Courthouse complex some years before. Old Courtroom was the largest chamber, and was in the decades-old old Courthouse that was the front façade of the complex.

Sheriff Griswold growled "Judge Folsom chose security over the larger space. And I think he's trying to limit the access to the trial, to keep it from becoming a Media circus."

"He could do that by throwing the case out." I said sourly. "This thing should not even be going to trial, and especially not for Fineman's political vendetta and ambitions."

"I am the choir. You are preaching to it." growled Griswold. Teresa nodded vigorously in agreement.

Cindy did not say anything. I stared hard at her as I said "And Miriam Walters could be stopping this legal lynching of an innocent man, as well."

Cindy cooly returned my stare, and then said "Let it play out."

"Play out?" I gasped, dumbstruck. "This isn't a fucking traffic ticket! It's a capital murder case of a man who acted in self defense!"

"Don, would you just listen for just one minute?" Cindy replied, her voice getting shrill, and angry. "Have you even considered just why Miriam is letting Savannah do this?"

"It doesn't matter why!" I fired back, anger beginning to replace disbelief inside me. "That 'why' isn't going to do much good if Stanley Locklear is put to death! And then that precedent is used to execute anyone who defends their homes, families, and lives with firearms! The Second Amendment might as well be put in the shredder!"

I then thrust my face forward right at Cindy, and said menacingly "And it's Miriam Walters that is enabling Savannah Fineman to try to put that man to death! And if Fineman succeeds, you can tell Miriam Walters that her own hands will be the ones stained by his blood!"

With that, I got up and stalked out. I didn't even wait for Teresa; I went to my Police SUV, got in, and hurtled out with a screech of tires...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

1:10pm, Tuesday, August 24th. There was a knock on my office door, followed by it opening and Our Sheriff coming in. He placed a plastic bag full of food cartons on my desk. "We had them bag your order." the Sheriff said. "You gotta eat, and I know you hate to waste food."

"Thank you, Sheriff." I said. "Have a seat."

"I'll come back in a few minutes." the Sheriff said. "You're easier to talk to when your belly is full. I'm going to go check in with Father Romano."

He left the room, and was back in 20 minutes, just as I was finishing the last of my delicious Double Breakfast Cheeseburger and Fries. He sat down without being asked, which was okay with me.

"Romano has been looking at the names Mary Milton gave him." Griswold said. "He thinks he's beginning to see a pattern. We already knew that both Locklears went to marriage counseling, then Stanley stopped while Marla continued. Romano says he's found three other couples with that same pattern: the husband stops going after a while and the wife continues going. Motive for murder? That's not so clear."

I said "I think finding names then having him look them up is going to be fruitless. That way of doing it is exactly 'bass-ackwards'. If we could, I'd have every Detective on the Force looking through the files. Yes, the husbands stopping and the wives continuing is something to look at. But we need to see files of wives seeing Frost without their husbands going at all, and then do checks to see who ended up in Divorce Court, and so on and so forth. But right now only one guy can look at the files, and it's going to take him a long, long time to do that."

"So you don't think Frost's murder is related to the Locklear trial?" the Sheriff asked, observing me closely as he asked.

"I don't think it's just that one case, though it may have been the trigger that started a chain of events that led to Frost's death." I replied.

The Sheriff said "So maybe his insurance company was behind it? He's about to be publicized by the Locklear trial. That might start other wives and couples coming out of the woodwork. Lawsuits begin, and the insurance company is on the hook, even if they try to drop coverage of him. So maybe BigLiabilityInsurance hired that little turd that Romano shot to do the job on Frost, too. He's short, so he could've fired the first shot upwards."

Griswold: "The perp had to get the servers, which is why he followed Frost to his office... or maybe kidnapped him and forced him to drive to his office at gunpoint. And maybe Frost was pretending to get the keys to the server cage, but instead rushed the perp to try to get his gun from him, and just barely failed, leading to the contact-range shot."

Griswold: "And I remember those really old James Bond movies, the ones with Sean Connery. And I think Ian Fleming's Bond books had this too: James Bond carried a Beretta 25, then was forced by 'M' to upgrade to a Walther PPK. Bond tried hard to keep that Beretta, though. So maybe our perp just happens to like his.25 caliber, instead of the more common.22 that most professional hit men prefer."

"That's Iron Crowbar thinking, there, Sheriff." I said, holding up the red crowbar. "I'd let you hold it, but you'd run off with it, and I'd have to send Carole and Tasha after you to get it back." We both broke out laughing at that for a moment.

I then said: "Everything you said fits the data, except for two things: first, that perp Father Romano shot was carrying a nine millimeter, and he fired it accurately into Buchannan's chest, so he was comfortable with it. So I can ask the question two ways: 'Why didn't the perp use the nine on Frost?' -or- 'Why didn't the perp use the.25 cal to attack Father Romano?'."

I continued: "And second, despite your plausible theory, I just still can't see the perp letting Frost get that close to him, or him that close to Frost. Everything else makes sense, but I just can't reconcile that in my fuzzy little head."

Griswold: "I have a feeling that when that 'fuzzy' in your head clears up, a perp is going to go down."

I nodded, then said "Okay, sir, let's stop avoiding it. The 800-lb. elephant in the room. Cindy."

Griswold: "I would not recommend you call Cindy an 800-lb. elephant to her face." I smiled wanly at the joke, and the Sheriff continued: "She's just trying to help, you know."

"Yes sir, I know." I said. "But she's going about it in the totally wrong way. I get it, sir; I know what she's doing. She trying to explain my side to Miriam Walters, then explain Miriam's side to me, and try to get us to meet in the middle. Where the problem is, sir... is that for me there is no middle. Savannah Fineman is trying to have Stanley Locklear executed... put to death, sir... and Miriam is letting her do it, if not outright supporting her. And there's no middle ground with that, no halfway."

Griswold said "Then I'll ask the question: what would Miriam have to do to get you to work things out with her? What if she got Savannah to drop going for the death penalty?"

I looked the Sheriff dead in the eye and said "Then why doesn't she do it, sir? Why hasn't she already forced Fineman to do that? If I may make an analogy, sir. When I was working at that lab before coming to the TCPD, the company instituted this program where they would pay smokers $250 to quit. They had to take physicals, and had to agree to pay it back if they were found to have smoked any time in a year after being paid."

Me: "So I went and applied for the $250, though I never smoked a day in my life. Of course they rejected me, so I threatened to sue them over it. When my boss asked why I was creating trouble like that, I said I thought it was wrong to reward bad behavior by paying people to quit smoking, while those of us that did right all along didn't get diddly-squat. So they had to drop the program altogether."

"Har!" barked the Sheriff, his mustaches twitching merrily. "That's you, Crowbar. But I'm shocked you didn't get fired."

"And then I really had a lawsuit, didn't I?" I replied. "But the point, sir, is that I'm not going to (air quotes) 'reward' Miriam by (air quotes) 'meeting her halfway', when she should be doing the right thing all along, anyway."

Me: "It's dead wrong for her to be letting Fineman try to put Stanley Locklear to death, not to mention trying to make Leftist anti-gun-rights and anti-self-defense-rights political cases, and I don't need Cindy trying to explain her side to me; it doesn't matter why Miriam is doing it... she's doing it. And she's wrong."

I finished up: "So, sir, there is nothing Fineman can do; I won't work with her no matter what. With Miriam, it's my way... or the highway. More accurately, she has to do the right things without bribes nor enticements nor compromises, and it's damn near too late for her to save herself. I am out for her political blood, I mean to get her beaten in the next Election, and there's nothing Cindy can do nor say to convince me to do otherwise."

"All right, then." said Griswold. He stood up and said "Thanks for talking with me. Let me know how these cases go."

"Thank you for the lunch, sir." I replied...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Ten minutes later, I received a call on my personal iPhone. It was from Laura, and an encryption/decryption app activated so that I could take it. You'd think my wife once was in the CIA or something... oh, wait!

"Hello, Darling." Laura said. "I looked up Michael Bertram's Hospital record. He had an operation four years ago on his knee. The surgeon was Dr. Carla 'Bones' Keenan, who was my doctor for my arm after the Hospital explosion." (Author's note: 'Believer', Ch. 01.)

Laura: "Michael Bertram's patella was broken, and pretty badly. He also had ligament damage from hyperextension. Something hit him in the knee really hard and pushed his knee backwards, the direction it was not designed to go. There's nothing in the records on what happened, on how he got the injury. He made a full recovery, but I suspect he'll be a knee-replacement candidate when he gets older."

I said "Sounds like his P.I. work can be pretty dangerous at times. Okay, thanks for the info. I owe you one."

"And you're going to be paying that debt this weekend." Laura replied huskily. "At least your talented tongue will be..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

2:10pm, Tuesday, August 24th. Miriam Walters was talking with D.A. Investigator Gregory Mitchum in her office. She said "The trial is starting on Monday. I'm running out of time. You don't have anything, either way?"

"No ma'am." said Mitchum, a broad-shouldered, tough, grizzled white man in his fifties. "There is simply nothing there. I can't even get anything that wouldn't be admissible in Court but would at least tell us the truth. I can't get anything on Dr. Peter Frost, except for a few names that filed complaints against him and were paid off to withdraw the complaints. They won't talk, and one of them filed for a Restraining Order against me."

Mitchum: "And with Frost's murder, his records have been sealed up tighter than a jealous Crusader's chastity belt, especially the ones regarding the Locklear case. My gut instinct is that he's innocent, but I don't have a thing to prove it nor prove that he's guilty."

*BUZZ!* *BUZZ!* *BUZZ!*

It was Miriam's desk phone that buzzed. She pressed the speaker button and said "Yes?"

"Ma'am," her assistant said, "Chief Deputy Sheriff Cindy Ross is here, and has asked to speak with you, without appointment."

"Send her in." Miriam said. To Mitchum she said "We'll talk later. Put together what you have, and I'll review it."

The door opened, and Chief Deputy Cindy Ross came in, wearing her khaki uniform shirt with darker brown pants, the one gold star of her rank gleaming on each of her collars, and the metal-bordered red, blue, and purple ribbons in a line over her right shirt pocket flap.

"Nice to see you, Chief Deputy." Gregory Mitchum said as he passed by her as he headed for the door she'd just entered.

"You as well, Mr. Mitchum." Cindy replied politely. She then walked up along the long table in front of Miriam's desk, to where Miriam was sitting.

"What is it, I'm very busy today." Miriam said.

"Thank you for making a few moments of time for me." Cindy said courteously. "I need to ask you something." Miriam pointed at the chair opposite hers, and Cindy sat down in it.

"I hope you're not here arguing about something on Donald Troy's behalf." Miriam said, trying to make her beady black eyes bore into Cindy's ice-blue peepers. But Cindy was used to worse.

"Why don't we just forget about the name 'Donald Troy' for just a minute?" Cindy said. "Let's just forget he exists, okay? This is not about him."

"Then what is it?" Miriam said.

Cindy said "I just want to know... if you really think the Locklear case should be a Death Penalty case---" Seeing Miriam's eyes roll, Cindy said "Hold on, hold on. Drop the shields and give me a chance, here, willya?"

"It's Savannah's case." Miriam said, sounding exasperated.

"Drop that, too." Cindy said. "You are the District Attorney, not her. I'm here to ask you if you, if Miriam Walters truly believes this should be a capital murder case? Do you, Miriam Walters, believe that Stanley Locklear should be on trial for his life for that alleged crime? The Police hadn't even finished their investigation---"

"I THOUGHT you said you wouldn't bring up Donald Troy!" Miriam all but screamed.

"AND I HAVEN'T!" Cindy yelled, worn to ragged exasperation with Miriam's obstinance. "I haven't mentioned him at all! I'm talking about ALL of the Police! Some of the Detectives think Stanley is guilty. Some think Marla is guilty! And some think neither of them are guilty, that it was a tragic accident. But you let Savannah run to the Grand Jury before anything at all was decided. So I ask you again, Miriam: are you really okay with putting that man to death?"

Miriam said "I respect the Jury System. It's up to them, not me. If they find him guilty, the law states that it's special circumstances, and he can be put to death---"

"I'm not talking about the God damned processes of the law!" Cindy said. "Stop trying to hide behind excuses like that, and excuses like it's Savannah's case. I'm asking YOU, Miriam Walters, if YOU truly believes this case merits death?"

Cindy: "I'm not talking about just guilt, either. You can take death off the table! You can order Savannah to do it. You can walk right over to Judge Folsom and tell him yourself that death is off the table. And don't tell me its not up to you. You are the District Attorney! It's absolutely up to you!"

Cindy could see that Miriam's eyes were hardening, and she (Cindy) said "Miriam, I'm asking you to reach into your heart, into your soul, and tell me if you truly believe that this is a Death Penalty case, if you truly believe Stanley Locklear should be put to death for the very murky circumstances of this case. Savannah has no qualms about using a man's life as a pawn in her political and personal vendetta games. Are you really in your deepest soul that much in agreement with her views that you'll allow a likely innocent man to be subject to be put to death?"

Miriam looked Cindy in the eyes and said "If the Jury finds him guilty, and they vote for the Death Penalty... then I will respect that and be okay with it."

Cindy said "Stop hiding behind the decision of others when in the right here and right now it's solely up to you. Are you truly okay with that?"

Miriam said "Yes, I am."

Cindy raised her hands in exasperation, and also defeat. As she got up, she said "Okay. Okay, if that's how you truly feel in your heart and soul, I won't bother you any further. I'll never speak of this with you again. Nor anything else. Thank you for your time." She began walking to the door.

Miriam called out "Okay, okay. I'll talk to Savannah about it, and I'll consider taking death off the table."

Cindy stopped and turned, then said with devastating calmness: "You do whatever the hell you want to. And whatever you do will have no effect on how I felt about you when I got out of that chair, and how I feel about you now. I just told you that I won't speak of it with you any more. Goodbye, Miriam."

Miriam fully realized what Cindy was truly saying with that last 'goodbye', and she knew she had just squandered the goodwill of someone who had truly been trying to help her, and that in the power struggle against the Iron Crowbar, there was no longer any hope of mediation nor peaceful resolution...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Captain Claire Michaels went through the formalities: she asked my assistant Helena if she could see me, Helena ushered her in at my request, and Claire stood until I invited her to sit down.

"Sir," she said as she held up a file folder with papers in it, "Lieutenant Warner has made a formal written complaint about Detective Coleman. She cites general disrespect bordering on insubordination, which I've observed myself; and she says his comments earlier show that he's been working with Stanley Locklear's Defense Counsel while she is prohibited from talking to or working with the D.A.'s Office on the same case."

She handed me the file and I skimmed its pages. Then I closed the file folder and put it on the far side (nearest Claire) of my desk. I said "Do you really want to do this?"

"Sir," Claire said, "I believe her complaint has merit."

I said "Hold on. Let's do this the right way." To Claire's dismay, I called Lt. Jerome Davis and told him to come to my office. He arrived instantly...well, in an 'instant coffee' kind of instantly. I had him sit down and showed him the file.

"Nothing was said to me by anyone, sir." Jerome said as he handed the file back to me, and I noticed that he was 'efforting' to not look over at Claire.

"I suspected as much." I said. "And I reserve Lieutenant Warner's punishment for going over your head unto myself. As to this situation with Roark, let me first ask both of you: is Lieutenant Warner going to formally complain about the instances -I- worked with the Defense to get the Prosecution defeated? Specifically the Nathaniel Jones and Peter Dwayne Gordon cases?" (Author's note: 'Case of the Black Badge', Ch. 01; 'Falsely Accused'.)

When they said nothing, I continued: "The point, people, is that there is nothing wrong with Police helping the Defense. We are not the Prosecution's play-toys nor their personal servants. And we are on the side of Justice, not just the Prosecution."