The Jury

chapter eight

Dr. Gabriel Warnake is a private consultant under contract to the county crime lab. He is a hired gun, and works almost exclusively for police agencies around the country. He holds a doctorate in chemistry and can do a wicked reading in spectrographic analysis, using heat to break down molecules in evidence, exploiting them like fingerprints. He has burned his share of defense lawyers in his time. Warnake is also expert in forensic microscopy, the use of a microscope to identify and analyze hair, fiber and other trace evidence. This afternoon Tannery has him on the stand working on the white nylon cable tie used to kill Kalista Jordan.

“Can you tell the jury what this cable tie is made of?” Tannery is holding up the cut tie in its plastic bag, little rust-colored splotches still evident for the jury to see. They will no doubt take this as blood. It is, in fact, an indelible marker placed on the tie for purposes of identification at the crime lab.

“It’s a polymer-based resin,” says Warnake. “In the industry, it’s known as nylon sixty-six. It’s an old compound developed by Du Pont back in the thirties.”

“Is it always white in color?”

“Actually, what you have there is clear, sort of an opaque. But you can put dyes or pigments in it. Basically make it any color you want. Some manufacturers color-code their ties for purposes of identification as to tensile strength, or to identify certain electrical cables that are bundled together for later reference.”

“That’s what they’re used for mostly? Tying up electrical cables?”

“They’re used for a lot of things, but that’s a main one. A major market,” says Warnake.

“Can you tell the jury how these cable ties are made?”

“That particular polymer resin is injected into a mold, under heat and high pressure. In that form it will flow, not like water, more like honey, viscous.”

“What kind of heat are we talking about?”

“Nylon sixty-six melts at around four hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit. They’ll take it up to around five hundred and thirty degrees. That way, they can get it good and hot in order to work it. The mold temperature is usually lower. Once it starts to flow, it’s injected very quickly under high pressure. Five hundred to fifteen hundred pounds per square inch, depending on the mold and the heat applied.”

“Can you tell us about the molds used for forming the ties, what they are like?”

“They’re made of steel. Capable of containing high pressure, and polished to a very fine finish on the inside.”

Tannery smiles, finally getting to where he wants to be. Harry and I have speculated on this, the two areas where their witness might go. Warnake has rendered no formal written report, so we are left to guess. We are figuring toolmarks, either during manufacture or after. One presents a very real problem; the other may be less problematic, depending on what the good doctor has to say.

“You’ve actually seen these molds?” asks Tannery. “Observed them in production?”

“I have.”

“Have you examined the insides of one?”

“A cross section,” says Warnake. “Yes.”

“And did you bring that cross section with you today?”

Warnake nods and reaches for his briefcase.

“Let the record reflect,” says the judge, “that the witness is producing an item from his briefcase. Let me see that.”

Warnake hands it up to the judge on the bench, where a few seconds later we are holding an impromptu conference off to the side.

I tell Coats we’re seeing this for the first time.

“Why no notice?” asks the judge.

“We’re offering it only as a sample, Your Honor. To demonstrate the process,” says Tannery. “We don’t intend to put it into evidence.”

The judge considers this, then looks down at me.

“You have any objection, Mr. Madriani?”

“As long as it’s made clear that it’s not the mold used to manufacture any of the ties in question. And subject to an opportunity by our own experts to examine it later.”

Tannery nods. “No problem.”

“You can use it for that limited purpose,” says the judge. “Subject to later examination.”

Like that, the prosecutor is back to the witness asking him to describe the mold as Warnake holds it up for the jury to see. “I don’t know if you can see it from there, but there’s a small cavity, this line right here.” The polished edges, the tiny teeth of the locking gears cut in steel and polished, glitter like facets in a diamond under the overhead canister lights.

“This is a half section of a full mold. Ordinarily there’d be another half and the cavity would be sealed inside a steel block. You can see how the inside of the cavity has been polished.

“The nylon would be injected here into this port, until the entire cavity was filled, under very high pressure. This would happen in a fraction of a second. The speed ensures what they call uniform melt delivery, and it avoids what is known as premature freezing. If the nylon were to harden before it had a chance to fully form, you’d get a defective cable tie.

“Once it’s cool-they use water for that-the mold is opened and the finished cable tie is ejected. The whole process takes only a few seconds. Then it starts over again.”

“I assume they can make these cable ties in high volume?”

“One press,” says Warnake, “has as many as twenty or thirty individual molds. They can produce several thousand cable ties in an hour.”

“Is every one of them the same?”

“Only to the naked eye,” says the witness. “They look the same.”

“But they aren’t?”

“Not under a microscope.”

“Perhaps you can explain to the jury?” says Tannery.

“By examining the individual ties under a microscope it’s possible to identify what are called toolmarks,” says Warnake. “In the manufacture of anything involving molds, where uniform pressure is applied, and where metal comes into contact with the item being made, the surface of the metal will impart tiny microscopic marks on the surface of the product. No two molds are exactly the same. No matter how highly polished or how uniformly made, the surface of the metal will impart its own individual surface characteristics on the item in question.”

“Like fingerprints?” asks Tannery.

“That’s a good analogy.”

“In this case, on the nylon cable tie?”

“That’s correct.”

“Dr. Warnake, did you have occasion to examine the cable tie in this evidence bag, the one used to kill Kalista Jordan?”

“I did.”

“And did you find individual toolmarks on the surface of that cable tie?”

“I did.”

“And were you able to locate the mold used to make that cable tie?”

“By process of elimination and some research, I was.”

“Can you tell the jury where that cable tie was made?”

“It was made by a firm in New Jersey called Qualitex Plastics.”

“Do you know when it was made?”

“No. That I cannot tell you.”

“But you’re certain it was made by this company, Qualitex.”

“I am. I was able, by examining other cable ties produced by that firm, to identify ties that had the same identical pattern of toolmarks as the tie in that evidence bag.”

“And that would indicate that the sample ties you examined were made by the same mold as the cable tie that killed Kalista Jordan?”

“That’s correct.”

“And you’re certain about this? To the exclusion of all other manufacturing molds that might be used in this process, that this particular mold at Qualitex made the tie used to strangle the victim in this case?”

“I am.”

“Thank you.” Tannery retreats to the evidence cart and fishes through a couple of cardboard boxes until he finds what he’s looking for. He asks permission to approach the witness.

“Doctor, I would ask you to examine the cable ties in this bag.”

Warnake takes it and looks at the ties through the plastic bag.

“Do you recognize them?”

“I recognize the tag tied to them.”

“Are those your initials on the tag in question?”

“They are.”

“And did you examine the ties in that bag?”

“I did.”

“Your Honor, for the record, the ties in question are the cable ties found and previously identified by Lieutenant de Angelo during his search of the defendant’s house,” says Tannery. “They were marked for identification, and the record will reflect that they were discovered in the pocket of Dr. Crone’s sport coat hanging in the hall closet.”

Coats doesn’t even look up. Instead he nods his assent as he makes a note on the pad in front of him on the bench.

“Dr. Warnake, can you tell the jury what you did to examine the cable ties in this bag, the ones found in the defendant’s coat pocket?”

“I examined them separately, placing each of them under a stereo microscope. I looked for toolmarks on the surface at specific locations along each of the ties.”

“And what did you discover?”

“I determined that they were made by the same manufacturer as the cable tie used to strangle the victim, Kalista Jordan.”

There are noticeable murmurs in the courtroom. Whispering by people beyond the bar, some press types and the media sensing blood in the water.

“Were they produced by the same molds that produced that cable tie? The one used to kill Kalista Jordan?”

“No. They were made by other molds in the same production run. Molds in the possession of that same manufacturer.”

“Let me get this straight.” Tannery starts motioning with his hands as if drawing a picture for the jury. “There’s a whole line of these molds at the factory where they’re made? Not just one.”

“That’s correct.”

“And each one of these molds is giving off different toolmarks as they’re injected with molten plastic?”

“That’s right.”

“And after the ties are injected and cooled, what happens to them?”

“They’re packaged and shipped to distribution points around the country, wholesalers in some cases, retailers in others.”

“So if you went to the store and bought one of these packages of cable ties, you’d get ties that could be traced back to a whole line of manufacturing molds, probably in the same plant?”

“Yes. I believe that’s true.”

“And that’s what you found here?”

“Yes.”

“You were able to trace the production mold that made the tie used to kill Kalista Jordan?”

“Yes.”

“And in that same manufacturing plant you were able to identify molds that produced the two cable ties found in the coat pocket of the defendant”-Tannery points with an outstretched arm and an accusing finger-“the coat belonging to Dr. David Crone?”

“That’s right.”

Coats is now sitting up straight, looking down at the witness for the first time, his dark robe and gleaming bald head like an inverted judicial exclamation point to this evidence.

“Were you able to conclude from this that the tie used to kill the victim, Kalista Jordan, and the cable ties found in the coat pocket of the defendant had been purchased at the same time, from the same location?”

“Objection.” I’m on my feet. “Calls for speculation.”

“I’m only asking as to the probability,” says Tannery. “The witness has surveyed manufacturers and points of sale. He should be allowed to testify on the issue.”

Coats is not sure about this. He wants to talk to us. He calls the lawyers up to the side of the bench.

“Mr. Madriani, it seems as though the witness has already testified to this.”

“Then it’s been asked and answered, Your Honor. There should be no need for the question.”

“No, it’s not quite the same.” Tannery wades in. “I asked him about production runs, and shipping practices. I’m only trying to tie it all together,” he says.

“There’s no way this witness can know whether the tie used to kill the victim and the ties found in the defendant’s pocket were from the same store.” I am red out to the tips of my ears. “This exceeds any issue of expertise. It raises questions of factual knowledge.”

“It raises issues of probabilities,” says Tannery. “We know all the ties came from the same factory. They came from the same press run of machines. Is it not probable they were purchased at the same store?”

“That calls for speculation.”

The judge is shaking his head. I can’t believe it.

“You’ll have your chance to cross-examine him, Mr. Madriani. I’m going to allow it.”

We step back from the bench. Harry’s looking at me, like What gives? I simply shake my head. It’s how you feel when you’ve lost a call that you know is wrong.

“Is there not a good probability, Doctor, that the tie used to kill Kalista Jordan and the cable ties found in the coat pocket of the defendant, David Crone, were purchased at the same point of sale?”

“I believe so.” Warnake is actually smiling. He knows there is no way he can prove this. Tannery has pressed it too far. It is just the kind of error that can lead to reversal on appeal.

“Perhaps they were part of the same package?” says Tannery.

“Your Honor, I have to object.”

“Sustained.” I can see it in the judge’s face. He has made a mistake, and he knows it.

“Let me ask you this, Doctor Warnake. From what you now know, can you exclude the possibility that all of these cable ties came from the same package in the same store?” says Tannery.

He has turned it around so that there is no basis to object, though I do it anyway.

“I’ll allow that,” says Coats.

“No, I cannot exclude that possibility.”

Crone is looking up at me from the counsel table. His hand comes over on my arm as if he is actually consoling me. His expression says he is not surprised, the scientist accepting the conclusions of science.

From Harry I get a different look: one that says, I told you so.

Within seconds of the judge’s gavel coming down, a phalanx of county jail guards moves in to escort Crone back to the holding cell. There he will change from his suit and tie back to jail togs and rubber flip-flops for the shackled walk across the bridge that links the criminal courts building to the jail.

Harry and I collect our papers as the courtroom empties. A few bystanders, court hangers-on, chew on the events of the day. Most of the reporters have headed back to the pressroom where they will file their stories by e-mail, driving one more spike into our client’s reputation, and tallying one more brick on the scales for the state.

Tannery’s evidence is beginning to come in cleanly, the outline of a case taking shape like a Polaroid print developing in front of our eyes. Lawyers can sense when an opponent hits his stride. It’s a feeling that brings on heart-pounding panic, even as you are pulling all the legal levers in court with simulated confidence and spinning a web of lies to the media outside.

The challenge, as always, is to lie to yourself and to do so convincingly. That is the art of a true believer, who will accept every deceit, even his own, on faith. Neither Harry nor I am of this religion. We are cockeyed pessimists with a cynical twist. I have my own unspoken doubts about the case. I am convinced that at the heart of it lies some corrosive deception, though I still cannot accept that my client killed Kalista Jordan.

It isn’t until I turn to stash my copy of West’s softcover Penal Code in my brief box that I see him, sitting alone, forlorn in the back of the courtroom. Frank Boyd has been watching our case unravel from the shadows of the last row.

He is wearing a pair of white painter’s overalls, bits of sawdust on one shoulder that he has missed in brushing off. Some splotches of what look like dried glue on one pant leg.

Frank is a finish carpenter. He is an artist with wood. He has shoulders like a linebacker and forearms like Popeye. The man can move beams the size of tree trunks, notch and carve them into place single-handedly, with nothing but a hand-cranked come-along to hold the weight while he dangles from a ladder: the kind of guy you would want on your side if you had to go to war.

In another life, he’d been a teacher until he learned he couldn’t stand the confinement of the classroom. Frank took a job as a woodworker’s apprentice in a shipyard and over six years he mastered the skills of a shipwright, finishing the interiors of yachts, until the federal luxury tax crushed the industry and threw him out of work. Ever resilient, he started his own business, and for the past fourteen years has worked by hiring himself out to contractors on large homes that require an artist to finish the wood.

It runs in his blood, independence and art. I have seen charcoal and pencil drawings of his children framed in the hallway of their modest home. Doris tells me that these are Frank’s work. He had taken anatomy courses to better understand the articulation of the human body, how it moved and functioned. He now produces drawings-drawings with such a flourish of confidence one might think they were ripped from the sketch pad of da Vinci. It causes me to wonder what might have been, had he turned to oils or other media. Doubtless he would have been no more affluent. Unfortunately for Frank, he is also hobbled by the mercantile tin ear of the artist. He has no sense of his own worth.

Like a vagabond he now travels in his beat-up Volkswagen van, a sixties-vintage van, working on its third engine and for which the only spare parts can be found in wrecking yards. The rear springs sag under the load, tools of his trade assembled and collected over thirty years. Chisels and power saws, miters for angles and small curved handsaws of Japanese steel mail-ordered from Asia. He uses these for cuts of microscopic precision. I am told that he has assembled whole staircases in homes that might qualify as castles, only to dismantle the entire structure, risers, treads and railings, just to shave a little more wood until the pieces fit like the parts in a puzzle. Frank’s signature in wood is perfection.

He is an addict when it comes to to his craft. He will drive a thousand miles in the broken-down van with his ladders on top to labor for a month on a log mansion in the wilds of Montana, for some eastern investment broker with the palace appetite of the Medicis. For Frank, it is the work, not the client, that is critical. It is not difficult for a man like this to find himself laboring at art for which he will not be paid. The fact that contractors will hunt Frank down for these special jobs is a testament to his skill, even if what he receives barely covers his gas. He is today’s equivalent of the ancient metal smith hammering gold on a pharaoh’s mask. No one will ever know his name, even as they marvel at his craft.

Today the dust on his work clothes reflects the dull pallor of his face, which is lined with deep furrows as if some gnome had pulled a plowshare through the gullies under his eyes. I would bet he hasn’t shaved in three days, five-o’clock shadow gone to seed. He has lost forty pounds in the months since our last meeting, so that I have to re-calibrate the register of my recognition before I am sure I have the right person.

What passes for a smile these days edges across his face and then is gone just as quickly. He gets out of the chair and moves forward slowly, down the center aisle, then sidles sideways across the front row of chairs on the other side of the bar railing to approach.

“Frank. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

He extends a hand and we shake, somewhat shy. His large hand engulfs my own so that I have the feeling that it has been closed in a sandpaper glove. The flesh of his hands is tough enough to grind glass.

There has always been some social distance between us; Frank the blue-collar man, Paul the lawyer. He is constrained by self-imposed social divisions of another era. I suspect that doctors would unnerve him, like talking to God. For Frank, this would be an added point of stress in dealing with his daughter’s illness.

“Been a long time,” he says.

“It could have been under better circumstances.” I motion with my head toward the judge’s bench and smile.

“Tough day?” he asks.

“They’re all tough. You know my partner, Harry Hinds?”

“Don’t think we’ve met,” says Frank.

Harry gives him a mystified look and offers his hand.

“Frank Boyd. Harry Hinds.”

They shake hands, and Harry finally connects the name. “Oh, you’re the little girl’s. .” then catches himself.

“Right. Her father.” There is something about Boyd that brings to mind the actor William Devane. It is in the sad-sack eyes, and the face that seldom changes expression, as if the load of life were simply too oppressive to permit any real relief. It is the look of a man who is not allowed emotionally to come up for air, who is quietly drowning.

“How’s Doris?” I ask.

“Oh, good. Good. She’s tough.”

And then the inevitable: “Penny?”

At this he gives me an expression, sort of turns away. “Not too bad,” he says: the big lie. What he means is, not too bad for a child who is dying.

“I need to talk to you,” he says. “If you have a minute.”

“Sure. You want to do it here? I’m finished for the day.”

He looks around a little at the room, daunting formality, walnut railings and fixed theater chairs. “Maybe we could get a drink,” he says. “I’ll buy.”

Harry offers to clean up, to haul our files back to the office. He has hired some enterprising teenager with a hand truck and a van in the mornings and afternoons to help us with the cardboard transfer boxes filled with documents. These seem to propagate like rodents as the trial goes on.

Harry and I check signals for the morning, then Boyd and I take off. It is clear that Frank is suffering from more nervous agitation than usual this afternoon. When you know someone as I’ve known him, not intimately but through periods of calm and frenzy, it becomes obvious when there is a favor to ask and the person is uneasy about asking it.

He follows a half step behind me, across State Street, to the Grill at the Wyndham Emerald Plaza. Frank is uncomfortable here and shows it.

“I’m not dressed for this,” he tells me.

“Don’t worry about it.”

I suspect he’s wondering whether he has enough in his pocket to spring for the drink he has offered. Though Frank has all the work he can handle, I suspect that he and Doris have never made more than fifty thousand in a single year.

Doris held a seasonal part-time job with a small company for a while, but had to give it up when Penny became too sick for day care.

We shuttle between tables as the after-work crowd starts to settle in for drinks and embellishments on the day’s war stories: secretaries on the flirt, young lawyers on the make. The only ones you won’t find in here are the bondsmen from bail row a block away. They are too busy making money chasing tomorrow’s clients.

We find a table in the back, dim light and wood relief. I order a glass of wine, the house Chablis, and give the waitress my credit card to start a tab. Frank argues with me, but it is halfhearted. He accepts a drink, orders a beer, Bud, and thanks me.

He is a big man, sinewy and strong as a bull. He is a full inch or more taller than I am, even sitting here, hunched over the table.

He looks as if he hasn’t had a good meal in two days. I order up appetizers, chicken wings and some stuffed mushrooms.

Frank kills time with small talk, his latest job, a mansion for some software mogul. He’s been hauling one-ton beams into the basement for a mammoth hearth single-handedly. Using leverage, he moves the hundred-year-old timbers that he has salvaged from some closed-down mill in Colorado. Anyone wondering how the pyramids were built might want to discuss the matter with Frank.

I can tell he is waiting for the waitress to come back so that we won’t be disturbed. The drinks come first. Five minutes later the food, and Frank doesn’t hesitate. He’s into the mushrooms and chicken wings. “These are good,” he says, then notices that I’m not eating. He puts the chicken wing down on the little plate in front of him, self-conscious eyes looking around.

“You gonna have some?” he says.

“Sure.” I pick up a wing to keep him company.

“You’re wondering why I need to talk?” he says.

I smile.

“It wasn’t to get a meal. Or a free drink.”

“I didn’t think it was, Frank. You probably want what we actually owe you for your work in the office,” I tell him. Frank had handcrafted some bookshelves for us into some tight spaces in the office and charged us five hundred dollars for two thousand dollars’ worth of work. When I tried to pay him more, he wouldn’t take it, saying that what I had done for Penny was more than enough.

“I need a divorce.” He says it just like that. Like “Pass the salt.”

I don’t say anything, but he can read stunned silence when he sees it.

“It’s the health insurance,” he says. “I need a divorce because of the medical-insurance thing. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I tell him.

“Fine. But I’m not gonna eat unless you do.”

I spear a mushroom with a toothpick, if only to make him feel comfortable.

“It’s Penny,” he says. He picks up the chicken wing and starts to nibble on it, but I can tell his heart is not in it. He has lost the yen to eat and drops it back on the plate. Instead he goes to the drink, something to dull the senses. Takes a swig from the bottle, ignoring the glass that the waitress poured and is half full, shrinking by the head.

“Her medical expenses are huge.”

“I can imagine.”

“I don’t know that you can. Last month it was twenty-five thousand dollars.”

He’s right. I didn’t have a clue. He looks at me over the bottle caught by the neck in his large hand.

“You’re wondering where would I get that kind of money? Until last Tuesday, from the insurance company. But that’s about to end. A lifetime million-dollar cap,” he says. “We’ve bumped up against it with Penny. That’s why we need the divorce.” He puts the bottle down on the table and leans forward, a salesman about to make his pitch.

“Doris and I talked about it. She didn’t want to do it either, but you see, it’s really the only way. We were up ’til three in the morning, talking.”

I can see it in Frank’s bloodshot eyes.

“She wants to divorce you?”

“God knows why she didn’t do it years ago,” he says. “I haven’t been a great provider. A lot of squandered opportunities. If I’d stayed a schoolteacher, at least they’d have health insurance. Doris and the kids. Most of the wood I work on has more brains that I do. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions.”

I tell him he’s being too hard on himself.

At this moment I wish I had a few million in the bank I could loan him. Fact is, I’m tapped out, new practice in a new city.

“I’ve looked for jobs. But who’s gonna hire some burned-out termite? Besides, as soon as they find out about Penny they always come up with some reason not to take me on. Suddenly they’ve filled the position. No longer hiring.”

“You have your own business.”

“Yeah. Right.” He laughs.

“This is the extent of my business.” He holds up his leathered hands. “My only assets. According to the bank,” he says. “And I can’t sell them or mortgage them, not even for body parts. So where does that leave me? Where does it leave Doris and the kids?” He’s looking at me now, leaning across the table, whispering like this is some secret cabal.

“The insurance guy tells us there’s nothing he can do. Hell, if I hadn’t had the policy for years before Penny came along, they would have canceled us years ago. Fact is, we’re uninsurable,” he says. “That means the house, everything is on the block. They’ll take it all, every dime. My kids are gonna end up on the street,” he says. “I’d be better off dead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true,” he says. “At least they’d have a roof over their heads. I’ve got a million-dollar life-insurance policy. Paid up.” He tells me his parents had bought this for him years before, in case something happened on one of his jobs.

“Borrow against the cash value,” I tell him.

“There is none. Straight term policy.”

I tell him to relax, to calm down. But my words sound like what they are, the bravado and encouragement of the unaffected.

“Let’s think about options,” I tell him.

“What options? There aren’t any.” He finishes his drink and raises his bottle toward the waitress. “This one’s on me.”

The waitress comes over. I order a beer. Frank needs the gesture, if only to buy some pride back.

“When did you find out about the medical-insurance cap?”

“The million-dollar cap I’ve known about, but I didn’t know we were hitting up against it until last week. I guess I just didn’t think. The hospital bills went to the insurance company. We got copies and stuck ’em in a drawer. Went on for what, I don’t know. Two years, maybe.”

“Do you have any kind of appeal, to the insurance company?”

“I don’t know. You look at it.” He reaches under his coat, to the inside pocket, and hands me an envelope, ripped across the top like somebody opened it in a hurry with a finger. “It’s been burning a hole in my pocket for two days,” he says. “You keep it. Please.”

I read the letter. It is a notice of cancellation for the reason that the maximum lifetime benefits of the policy are about to be exhausted.

His second bottle comes, and Frank starts on it.

“Do you have a copy of the policy?”

“At home,” he says. “Someplace.”

“We need to look at it.”

“Why? I suppose I could argue with them over the numbers. But I don’t think I’d win.”

“You think you’re into them for that much? A million dollars?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah, all the experimental stuff. The treatment at the university. She was hospitalized four times last year with respiratory problems, three times the year before. She can’t control the saliva. It goes down her windpipe and gets in her lungs. She gets pneumonia and then she’s in there for a month, sometimes six weeks.”

“And a divorce will solve this?”

His eyes light up like those of some grifter with a good idea. He sits up straight in the chair and leans across the table toward me, salesman about to make a close.

“Here’s what we figured. The hospital bills are gonna break our back. In two months our savings will be gone. We’ll be broke. We have the other children to worry about. I talked to Doris, and she agrees. If we get a divorce, she takes the house, my retirement and custody of the other two kids. I’ll agree to it. Division of property. That’s what they call it, right?”

“Assuming some judge is willing to accept this,” I say.

“Why wouldn’t they? If I agree to it.”

“Judges are funny,” I tell him. “Especially if they think you’re doing this to defeat creditors’ claims.”

He ignores me. “I’ll have to pay support from my salary, whatever I take home in pay. They can’t touch that. Right?”

I make a face, like maybe. “Who’re ‘they’?”

“The state,” he says. “Here’s the deal. I take Penny and all the bills. That would qualify her for state aid. I’d be broke.” He smiles at the thought of being destitute and immediately reads the negative response in my eyes.

I start shaking my head.

“There’s no other way,” he says.

“Even if you did it, it wouldn’t work,” I tell him. “The state would see through it in a heartbeat. The Medicaid auditors would be all over the two of you before you could cash the first check.”

It is a fact of life that some cagey live-on-the-edge con artist might get away with it, drive a Mercedes and live the high life on somebody else’s laundered checks using a different name each day, bouncing from state to state always one hop ahead of investigators. But Frank and Doris Boyd are not cut out for this kind of life. I can see them in jail togs with their kids in tow.

I tell Frank this. From the desperate look in his eyes, I can tell immediately that this was a mistake. He looks at me like the enemy.

“That’s okay,” he says. “If they put us in jail, then the county could take care of Penny and the other kids, while Doris and I do time.” He is serious. It is the kind of mindless escape the middle class, people who have never seen the inside of a jail cell, might come up with when they are desperate. Frank has now sold his wife on this.

I argue with him, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Frank feels he’s found the only way out of a desperate situation. If I say no, he’ll sell his van and his tools to come up with a retainer and find some low-life shyster who will take his money to file for this ill-conceived divorce. If I can keep him under my umbrella and talk some sense into him and Doris, maybe I can convince them not to do it. Frank is the mover here, the shaker in the family. Doris would follow him to hell if he told her this was the way out. She’s too busy trying to raise three kids, keeping one of them alive.

We talk some more. I tell him I would have to think about it, look at the insurance policy first to see if there is any other way.

“Carriers get dicey when you threaten lawsuits, especially for bad faith. There’s a chance that you haven’t hit the cap yet. They are notorious for inflating costs. It could be you’ve got some more time.”

His eyes light up with the thought. “You think so?”

“It’s possible. Even if you don’t, we may be able to buy you some.”

He reaches across the table, his hand cold and wet from squeezing the bottle of beer, and cups his palm over my forearm. “You’d do that for us?”

I nod and for the first time, he settles back in his chair and takes a deep breath, a moment of relief, eyes cast up at the ceiling.