Deadlocked

Chapter 55

Mason worked late that night, banging away at his laptop, Tuffy curled at his feet. He was wrung out but too wrung out for sleep. He'd shut his practice down when he was arrested for Sandra's murder. Back in business a little more than twelve hours, he had two clients, Mary Kowalczyk and Nick Byrnes.

Mary was guilty of killing Whitney King. No one would dispute that. The line drawing would be over whether it was premeditated, a sudden impulse, or justifiable. There was a lot of room in the surrounding facts for him to maneuver. Patrick Ortiz, his political antennae tuned to the next election, would be wary of the land mines buried in her case.

Nick Byrnes had two days left before the statute of limitations expired on his wrongful death claim. Mason had called him earlier in the evening. Nick was more concerned for Mason than for his case. Mason explained to him about Victoria King and the law of civil conspiracy, how if two or more people conspired to conceal a crime, they could be liable in damages almost as if they had committed the crime themselves.

That's why Mason was working late. He was redrafting the lawsuit against Whitney King, substituting Whitney's estate as one defendant since Whitney was dead, and adding Victoria King as another. She had conspired to hide her son's crime, defrauding Nick Byrnes of his claim against Whitney. She hadn't pulled the trigger, but Mason was confident a jury would hold her liable even with her diminished mental capacity.

Still, that wasn't his only purpose in adding Victoria to the lawsuit any more than it was his purpose to line Nick's pockets with money Nick neither wanted nor needed. It was about finding the truth. All of it. Without guns, knives, or death. It was about the law and about justice.

He logged on to the Internet, punching in the Golden Years Web site. The truth was there. He picked up the phone and woke Samantha Greer again.

At eleven o'clock on Monday morning, Patrick Ortiz held a news conference in the courtroom previously used by the grand jury. The time was calculated to give the media sufficient notice to assemble their coverage, giving broadcasters a lead story they could run beginning with their noon broadcasts and print journalists an entire afternoon to write their stories for Tuesday's editions.

Ortiz had called Dixon Smith first thing Monday morning to tell him that the charges against his client were being dropped and that he'd like both Smith and Mason to attend the news conference. Smith asked if Mason knew the charges were being dropped, and Ortiz replied that he'd let Smith tell his client so he could take the credit.

"Get your suit out of the closet, Lou," Smith told Mason when he called him at home.

"I only wear a suit when I go to court," Mason said. "The trial is still two months off."

"Not going to be a trial, son," Smith said. "I talked to Ortiz this morning. After that heavy shit you pulled yesterday, he's agreed to drop the charges. Damn, boy, you are something. I go to the lake for the weekend and look what you do."

"You were gone the whole weekend, huh?" Mason asked. "You missed the tornado on Saturday and the shootout on Sunday. I hope you at least caught some fish."

"That I did, but I'm back now and Ortiz has invited us to his news conference where he's going to surrender and we're going to declare victory and go home."

"I can put on a suit for that," Mason said. "Tell you what, you figure out how much I owe you, take it out of the retainer, and bring me a check for the rest. I'll buy you lunch after the news conference and tell you what you missed."

"Can do," Smith said.

At the news conference, Samantha Greer and Al Kolatch stood to Ortiz's left. Mason and Dixon Smith flanked him on his right. Claire and Harry sat in the front row, Claire blushing at Ortiz's description of her courage as Harry beamed.

Invoking the power of the presumption of innocence, Ortiz declared Mason innocent of the murder of Sandra Connelly. Decrying those who sought to corrupt the system of justice, he offered a heartfelt apology for the execution of Ryan Kowalczyk, noting that mercy and sympathy would temper justice in his determination of what charges he brought against Mary Kowalczyk. He ended by announcing that the investigation into the murders of Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes, the jurors, and Christopher King was now officially closed.

Mason had reserved a table at the Union Cafe located in the center of Union Station. It was an open air restaurant with an upper level that afforded splendid views of the grand hall and the immaculately restored hand-painted ceiling. Seated at a table along the outer rail of the upper level, he and Smith could talk privately, their conversation shielded by the surrounding white noise of people passing through the station.

Smith handed Mason a check for seventy-five thousand dollars. "I didn't have time to prepare an itemized bill," Smith told him. "But, you and I know that twenty-five grand is a fair fee for where we were in the case."

"Fair is right, Dixon," Mason said. "Watching you tap dance on Ortiz at the arraignment was worth the money."

"You're the one who did the heavy lifting," Smith said. "You make the rest of us look like pantywaists."

"I'd just as soon do the heavy lifting in the courtroom. I'm getting too old for the cowboy stuff. I'll tell you one thing, though. I never would have figured Victoria King for a mother who'd kill her husband to cover up for her kid."

"Like messing with a momma bear's cubs, I guess," Smith said, stirring his cocktail enough to swish a few drops over the edge of the glass.

"Then she checks into the nut house to cover herself. Imagine that. Her dead husband is rich, which means she's richer with him dead, and she gives up life in the big mansion to hang out with the loonies."

Smith let go of his swizzle stick. "I thought she had a breakdown."

"Nope," Mason said, taking a sip of his beer. "Faked it."

"You're kidding me!"

Mason leaned forward. "Not one damn bit, Dixon. You know how your old client Damon Parker got into the psychiatric hospital business? He was a shrink. It's right there in his bio on the company Web site. Guess he figured out there was more money to be made running hospitals and nursing homes than in listening to people's troubles eight hours a day."

"I knew he had a medical degree, but I thought he quit practicing."

"He just had one patient," Mason said. "Victoria King. He signed off on her admission, her treatment-which was mostly to leave her alone-and the insurance claims filed to reimburse Golden Years for taking such good care of her. Samantha Greer told me about it this morning before the news conference."

Smith inched toward Mason, keeping his voice down. "Parker hired me to represent him in a Medicare fraud investigation. The feds want him for filing phony claims, shit like that. Victoria's was one of the claims. I probably should have told you about it, but it was privileged. You understand."

Mason took another sip of beer and stared hard at Smith. "No problem, Dixon. Don't worry. I didn't hear it from you. But you might be interested in knowing that I'm going to sue Parker and Golden Years for conspiring with Victoria and Whitney King."

"Conspiracy? To do what?"

"Conceal the truth about her son and keep Nick Byrnes from suing the King family for his parents' wrongful deaths. It's going to be a huge case. Frankly, I could use your help. You know what's going on at Golden Years. Now that you don't represent Parker any longer, I was hoping you might want to change sides."

Smith laughed. "Isn't there a small problem of ethics, Lou? I represented the man. I know his secrets."

"Compared to the money I'm going to get out of Parker, it is a small problem. You can stay in the background. I'll split with you fifty-fifty after I collect. As long as you really do know Parker's secrets."

Smith rolled his cocktail glass between his hands, set it aside, absently picked up his knife, tapping the blade against the table as he studied Mason, finally chuckling again. "I told you that you and I were a lot alike, Lou."

"Black or white, Dixon, we're all about the green underneath, man."

"How much green you figure is underneath us in this case?"

Mason pursed his lips. "I figure compensatory and punitive damages could go as high as fifty million. There's no jury that isn't going to be seriously pissed at these people. My fee is one-third. Half of that is yours. You do the math and I'll keep your name out of it. Parker will never know."

Smith cocked his head to one side. "When I get done talking to you, fifty million will be chump change."

"Then talk to me, baby," Mason said, grinning.