Executive Privilege

Oregon

Chapter Seventeen

On Saturday morning, Brad Miller drove to Salem for his second meeting with Clarence Little. Ginny Striker was riding shotgun, and he was grateful for the company. He usually didn’t have any on a weekend. He also enjoyed discussing strategy with the attractive associate. In fact, he liked everything about Ginny. The only good thing to come out of Tuchman’s assignment was the opportunity it gave Brad to spend time with her. When he was with Ginny he felt none of the anxiety and sexual tension he always felt when he’d been dating Bridget Malloy, who seemed to go out of her way to keep him on edge. Ginny seemed genuinely nice, and the only friction between them arose when he refused to let her meet Clarence Little.

“Are you nuts?” Brad had replied when Ginny broached the subject. “I don’t want you within a mile of Little.”

“I’ll be perfectly safe,” Ginny insisted. “You told me there was concrete and shatterproof glass between you. How is he going to get to me?”

“That’s not the point. I don’t want him knowing you exist. What if he gets out somehow?”

“I don’t think freedom is in Mr. Little’s future, Brad. He’s serving three death sentences.”

“I don’t want to take any chances.”

“That’s sweet,” Ginny answered in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “but your chivalrous attitude is a bit outdated. I helped subdue paranoid bikers on speed when I was working the emergency room. I know how to take care of myself. If Clarence busts through the glass I’ll protect you.”

Out of desperation, Brad played his trump card. “Look, Ginny, I know you’re tough. You’re probably a lot tougher than me. But the truth is, you’d be a distraction.”

Ginny opened her mouth, but Brad held up a hand. “Hear me out. This guy loves to play games. He’s doing it with me, right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole deal with the pinkie collection is a sick practical joke that will have us running all over Oregon on a wild goose chase. God knows what he’ll want you to do if you show up with me. Little’s idea of a good time is torturing women. If he can’t get his hands on you, he’ll figure out a way to play mind games with you and that will complicate our job of figuring out if he’s telling the truth about his alibi.”

Ginny folded her arms across her chest and stared through the windshield. Her silence was a good sign. It meant she was thinking about what he’d said. Irrational as it might be, he was worried about what might happen if Clarence Little met Ginny Striker.

On Brad’s second trip to the prison there were different visitors in the waiting room, but they had the same look of tired desperation and fake joy as the women he’d waited with the first time he’d visited Clarence Little. When his name was called he felt like an old hand as he navigated the metal detector, walked down the ramp to the visitors’ area, and arrived in the noncontact room reserved for visitors to death row inmates. He should have been thinking about his meeting while he waited for the guards to bring his client. Instead, Ginny occupied his thoughts. She was still mad at him for refusing to let her go into the prison, but she’d grudgingly conceded that putting her in close proximity to a man with very odd ideas about male-female relationships might interfere with their goal of discovering the truth behind Little’s protestations of innocence. As he waited for Little, Ginny was waiting for him in a coffee shop near the penitentiary, working away on her laptop at her assignments from the partners.

The door opened and the guards escorted Little into the cramped space on the other side of the glass. When Little saw Brad he smiled. The smile might have simply been the inmate’s way of greeting a visitor, but Brad suspected that it signified Little’s satisfaction with his victory in their battle of wills.

Little and Brad picked up their phones as soon as the guards disappeared.

“Thank you for visiting again,” Little said. “You have no idea how boring it is sitting in my cell all day with nothing to do. Every break in my routine is a wonderful gift.”

“I’m glad I’ve brightened your day, Mr. Little,” Brad answered brusquely. “But I’m here to find out where you hid the pinkies so I can try to clear your name in the Laurie Erickson case.”

Little’s smile widened. “I knew I was right to trust you.”

“Yes, so, where are they?” Brad asked, anxious to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible.

“Before I tell you where I’ve hidden my keepsakes, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself.”

Brad rolled his eyes. “This isn’t going to be like Silence of the Lambs is it? You’re not expecting me to trade intimate details about my life for clues to the whereabouts of the pinkies?”

Little laughed. “Not at all. I’m just not in a rush to go back to my cell, and I think I’m entitled to know a bit more about the qualifications of someone to whom I’m entrusting my life.”

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Your accent suggests that you grew up on the East Coast.”

“New York. Long Island, actually.”

“And did you go to college in New York?”

“Hofstra.”

“What was your major?”

“English.”

“That’s not a very practical major. Why not something in the sciences or engineering?”

“I’m not very good at math or science and I like to read.”

“A good choice then. Where did you go to law school?”

“Fordham.”

“Didn’t you have the grades to get into Columbia or NYU?”

“My grades were fine, but I don’t do well on standardized tests. Look can we get back to the pinkies?”

“I see your patience is running thin. Impatience is not an admirable trait. I used to take a lot of time with my female friends. Here’s a tip, Brad. Never kill them quickly. It spoils the fun.”

“Okay, I’ve had enough. I don’t think there is a pinkie collection. I think you’re having fun at my expense.”

“If there’s no pinkie collection what happened to them?”

“You know, Mr. Little, I don’t care. I’m going now. I’ll do my best on your brief and I’ll argue your appeal, but I’m not going to waste my time and the time of my firm playing bullshit mind games with you.”

Brad stood up and Little started to laugh.

“Sit down. I’m fucking with you. I liked Silence of the Lambs, although it’s totally unrealistic. All those serial killer movies are ridiculous. I can’t sit through most of that shit. Watching them is like a busman’s holiday anyway.”

Brad stared through the glass, unsure of how to respond.

“Sit down, please. I wanted to see just how long I could string you along with this act. I don’t even talk like this. I even comb my hair differently when I’m not meeting with you. I was just doing my best Hannibal Lecter impersonation.”

“Your best…” Brad shook his head, thoroughly confused. “What’s going on here?”

“I thought you’d expect someone a little weird and I didn’t want to disappoint you. It was just harmless fun. I really am sorry I jerked you around.”

“I don’t appreciate being a mental hacky sack.”

“I said I’m sorry. It’s just that it really is boring sitting on death row all day with nothing to do. This was just a way of killing time.”

“So the pinkie thing was bullshit?”

Little sobered immediately. “No, no, that’s real. Get someone to fingerprint the pinkies and you’ll see I’m one hundred percent innocent of killing that babysitter. And I’m very serious about getting the bastard who had the audacity to frame me.”

Brad sat down. “No more nonsense. Where are the pinkies?”

“They’ll be a little difficult to find. Tell me, are you fond of the outdoors?”

“Not particularly. I’m basically a city boy.”

“Well, I’m a country boy, and I love to hike and hunt and shoot the rapids. There are so many wonderful wilderness areas in Oregon. You’ll thank me for introducing you to one of them.”

Oh, shit, thought Brad, whose idea of a wilderness adventure was a walk through Central Park.

“You buried the pinkies in the woods?”

Little nodded. “I was bringing them a new companion when I stumbled across Peggy and her friend.” He looked sheepish. “I hadn’t planned to kill her, but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.”

“The fingers are buried near the bodies?”

“You’re definitely much faster on the uptake than my trial attorney. I’m certain you would have won my case had you been representing me. Then we wouldn’t have to be going through all this trouble to prove my innocence.”

“Is this treasure hunt going to involve an overnight stay in the woods?” asked Brad, who was starting to worry about bears and mountain lions.

“No, nothing like that. I told you, Peggy left Portland on Wednesday and had made camp when I found her. The trailhead is a few hours from Portland, and I’ve buried my cache near a waterfall about five miles in on a side trail. The bodies are very close by. Say hello for me, won’t you?”

“You know I might have to give the authorities the location of the bodies and turn over the pinkies to the police?”

“I authorize you to do whatever is necessary to catch the son of a bitch who framed me.” Suddenly a dreamy look suffused Little’s face. “Wouldn’t it be interesting if he ended up on death row, say in the cell next to mine. That would create some fascinating possibilities.”

Chapter Eighteen

Sunday morning, Brad and Ginny drove down I-5, past the prison, and turned onto a state highway heading east toward the Cascade Mountains. The outlet malls, motels, and gas stations that passed for scenery on the interstate gave way to farmland then forest in almost no time. The pace of work at Reed, Briggs had been so intense that Brad hadn’t had a chance to explore Oregon, and he was surprised by the rapid disappearance of anything remotely resembling the crowded, tightly packed urban and suburban areas he’d grown up with on the East Coast. The population of the towns they drove through was often listed in three or four digits, and the road ran parallel to rivers and dense forest instead of strip malls and tract homes. Every once in a while the course of the two-lane highway would veer and without warning the snowcapped peak of a huge mountain would loom over the vast expanse of green foothills, only to disappear when the road changed direction again.

“Does this look anything like the Midwest?” Brad joked.

“Are you kidding? A five-story building passes for a mountain where I come from. This is awesome.”

“Long Island’s flat as a pancake, too. It’s where the glaciers stopped. When they retreated they turned the whole place into a parking lot. And I can’t remember seeing this much green outside of Saint Patrick’s Day.”

Ginny smiled. Then she took another look at the MapQuest directions she’d gotten from the Internet. It was almost an hour and a half since they’d turned off I-5.

“Start looking for signs for the Reynolds Campground. It should be on our left.”

Ginny was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and Brad caught himself casting surreptitious glances at her legs. He’d donned a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, the only items in his wardrobe that seemed appropriate for a hike in the woods, something he’d only done at summer camp when he was ten.

“There it is,” she said, pointing to a highway sign that was posted just in front of a gravel road.

Brad made the turn. A quarter mile later they found themselves in a primitive parking lot. A wooden sign pointed them toward a dirt path that served as the trailhead for part of the Pacific Crest Trail that wound through the Mount Jefferson Wilderness on its way from Mexico to Canada. Little had instructed Brad to follow the Pacific Crest Trail for a half mile before turning off onto another trail that would eventually take them-if Brad’s client was to be believed-to two decomposing bodies and a Mason jar filled with pinkies.

Brad and Ginny had purchased some collapsible digging tools at an outdoor store. They put them in their backpacks along with a few cans of soda, some bottled water, and a few sandwiches. Ginny claimed to have an excellent sense of direction and insisted that she lead the way. They set off after Brad gave her the directions Little had dictated in the prison.

The day was perfect for hiking. When they’d left Portland it had been warm and unusually muggy, but they were almost three thousand feet above sea level and the air was cooler. As soon as they were in the forest the shadows cast by the leafy canopy lowered the temperature some more. Even so, Brad’s lack of exercise began to tell after they’d walked only a mile and he began sweating and taking swigs of bottled water.

“How much farther?” he asked a little while later.

“You asked me that same question ten minutes ago. I feel like I’m stuck in a station wagon with an eight-year-old. ‘Are we there yet, Mommy?’”

“Give me a break. I’m not used to jungle treks.”

“Well, Jane, I’d guess we’ve got another thirty minutes before we get to the side trail to the waterfall. Think you can make it, or do I have to have the apes carry you?”

“Very funny,” Brad muttered as he forged on.

The area around the waterfall was idyllic. Most of the sun’s rays were blocked by the trees that stood on the crest of the high cliff where the water began to tumble down, leaving the ground in shadow. Green clumps of iridescent moss clung to the shiny black rock face, and a mist formed where the cascading water splashed into the pool at the bottom. They ate their lunch sitting on a log with their feet dangling in space as they watched the swirling stream formed by the falling water rush by with a soft shushing sound.

Brad wasn’t so certain that it was a good idea to eat so soon before digging up a moldering corpse, but he was starving and too exhausted to pass up food. He decided that he’d deal with a queasy stomach when the time came. He still wasn’t completely convinced that they would find anything anyway and he occasionally flashed on a chuckling Clarence Little brightening the days of his fellow death row residents with his hilarious tale of the gullible lawyer and the phantom pinkies.

“Have you thought about what we’re going to do if we find the bodies or the pinkies?” Ginny asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do we have to tell the police where they are?”

“I guess Susan Tuchman will make that decision. We’ll have to tell her what Little’s told us if we find anything that supports his story. But I did do some research, so I can advise her if she asks me what we should do.

“There’s a split of opinion about whether we have to call the cops. If we take possession of the pinkies we’ll probably have to tell the police about them eventually, but we should have a reasonable amount of time to have a private forensic expert print them. I’m not sure about the bodies. We’ll know where they are, but we won’t be in possession of them.”

“Damn straight,” Ginny said. “I’m not carrying them out.”

“I hadn’t planned on dragging a rotting corpse down the trail, either. But some legal experts think we have to tell the police the location of the bodies and others don’t think a lawyer who just sees the corpse has any obligation to reveal the location to the cops.”

“What about attorney-client confidentiality?” Ginny asked.

“That just extends to what the client says to you and not to physical evidence. We can’t be forced to tell the authorities how we knew where to find the bodies or the pinkies but we may not be able to keep them a secret.”

“It won’t take a genius to figure out that you got the information from Clarence.”

“True. All they’ll have to do is check the visitors’ list at the prison to find out who I visited or look up the records to see the list of my criminal cases-all one of them. But there won’t be a big battle over this. Little wants me to give the pinkies to the police so he can prove he’s innocent of the Erickson murder and he doesn’t seem to care if they nail him for Farmer.”

Ginny shook her head. “Your client sure has a twisted set of principles.”

“That could be one of the great understatements of all time.”

Ginny stood up and stretched. Her T-shirt rode up her flat belly. Brad looked away, embarrassed, and concentrated on picking up his trash.

“According to Little’s instructions, the bodies should be two miles in,” Ginny said.

“I can’t wait,” Brad answered with a shudder.

As it turned out, he could have waited-forever. That’s what Brad told himself as soon as he’d used a napkin Ginny handed him to wipe his mouth after throwing up in a bush a few steps from Peggy Farmer’s corpse.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Don’t mention it,” Ginny said as she placed the soiled napkin in the bag they’d brought for their trash before handing Brad a bottle of water so he could wash out his mouth. “I did the same thing the first time they brought a really bad accident victim into Emergency while I was training to be a nurse. This guy’s stomach was ripped open and his intestines-”

“Please,” Brad begged weakly as he bent over, eyes squeezed shut, and fought to keep from tossing his cookies again.

“Oops, sorry,” Ginny said sheepishly.

Little had told Brad that he’d buried Peggy Farmer and her boyfriend a few yards into the forest from a fallen tree. The tree was supposed to be an eighth of a mile off the trail that led past the waterfall. Ginny used an odometer to pace off the distance, and they found the thick capsized trunk exactly where Little had said it would be. So were the bodies, although there was a lot less of them than there had been when they were buried years before.

Scavengers had uncovered the shallow grave, and there was very little flesh left on the skeletal remains. Even so, the sight of a real dead body disoriented Brad even more than seeing Laurie Erickson’s autopsy photos. Ginny helped him sit with his back against a tree in a position where he couldn’t see the corpses. While he recovered his equilibrium, Ginny returned to the fallen tree and started digging under the trunk where Little said he’d buried his collection of severed fingers.

“I’ve got them,” she told Brad. “There’s no reason to look if you think it will upset you. I can just put the jar in my backpack.”

“No, I should look at them,” Brad said as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll have to at some point, and you’ve already seen me make a fool of myself.”

Brad took a deep breath and forced himself to walk over to the Mason jar Ginny had placed on top of the tree trunk. Brad was surprised that he didn’t have the same visceral reaction to seeing the fingers he’d had when they’d unearthed the bodies. Maybe between seeing Laurie Erickson’s autopsy photos and the dead bodies he’d exhausted his capacity for horror. Brad studied the fingers. They forced him to see his client with a clarity he’d been unable to achieve before. Clarence Little wasn’t weird or clever. Clarence Little was pure evil. Brad’s duty to do everything in his power to clear Little of Laurie Erickson’s murder made Brad feel worse than he had when he’d discovered Peggy Farmer’s body.

Chapter Nineteen

“Sit, sit,” Susan Tuchman said when her secretary showed Brad Miller into her office, first thing Monday morning. “How’s your project coming?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Brad answered nervously. “There have been a few developments.”

“Good. Tell me about them.”

“I went to Salem like you suggested, to the penitentiary.”

“I bet that was quite an experience.”

“Yes, it was very…interesting. Anyway, I talked to Mr. Little about his case. He says he’s innocent.”

Tuchman smiled knowingly. “I had dinner with the attorney general the last time I was in Washington. He told me he felt terrible because every person he sent to prison when he was a district attorney in Arkansas claimed he was innocent. He said he wished he could have convicted at least one guilty person.”

Tuchman laughed. Brad smiled dutifully.

“Little may actually be innocent,” he said.

Tuchman stopped smiling. “Why do you say that?”

Her tone was not friendly, and Brad guessed that she was sensing that his pro bono assignment might take more time than it was supposed to, which meant it would cut down on Brad’s billable hours.

“Uh, well, I did read the transcript of his trial and there was only circumstantial evidence connecting him to the crime.”

“Most murderers are convicted with circumstantial evidence, since any eyewitness is usually dead.”

“Still, looking at the case objectively, the key evidence against Mr. Little concerned other murders, which-by the way-he doesn’t deny committing. If the modus operandi of those cases didn’t match the MO in Laurie Erickson’s case the judge would probably have dismissed the case when the defense lawyer moved for a judgment of acquittal.”

“But it did match.”

“Well, yes.”

“So there you are.”

“Someone could have killed Laurie Erickson and copied Little’s MO.”

Tuchman sighed. She looked disappointed. Brad was glad Tuchman didn’t know about Ginny’s part in his investigation.

“You’re young, Brad, and I’m glad to see you’re still idealistic, but you’ve also got to be realistic. There are copycat killers in the movies and in legal thrillers. In real life one sick bastard does all the dirty work by himself.

“You’re also losing focus. This whole discussion is irrelevant to your assignment. You’re handling a case in which the only issue is whether Little’s trial attorney was incompetent. The guilt or innocence of Clarence Little is not your concern.”

“That’s a good point, except I’ve found evidence that could prove our client’s claim of actual innocence.”

“Evidence?”

“Yes. Mr. Little told me his alibi for the night Laurie Erickson was murdered. He claims that he was murdering another victim named Peggy Farmer in the Deschutes National Forest. He said it was impossible for him to have kidnapped Laurie Erickson from the governor’s mansion because he was too far away from Salem when Erickson was kidnapped. I checked. He’s right. If he killed Farmer he couldn’t have killed Erickson and vice versa.”

“I’m confused here, Brad. He confessed to another murder in the forest?”

“Yes. The police don’t know about it. That was his alibi, but he didn’t tell his trial attorney because he didn’t trust him.”

“How do we even know there was such a murder?”

“Uh, well I know because I dug up the corpse.”

“You what!!!”

“Actually, there was more than one. Mr. Little killed Farmer’s boyfriend, too. He told me where to find the bodies and his collection of pinkies, which was buried under a fallen tree near the corpses.”

“What pinkies?”

“Mr. Little took the pinkies of his victims as souvenirs. The police could never find them.”

Tuchman looked stunned. Her mouth was open and she was staring at Brad. He pushed on.

“Mr. Little says Farmer’s pinkie is in the jar, but Erickson’s pinkie isn’t. I have the pinkies, or rather Paul Baylor, a private forensic expert, has them. I didn’t know how to preserve them. I didn’t want the fingers to fall apart anymore than they have already or we won’t be able to test them for fingerprints. Mr. Baylor is a respected expert and he knows how to preserve, uh, body parts.”

“Oh. My God, Mr. Miller. What have you done? That’s tampering with evidence and I don’t know what else. How could you go off on your own like that without my permission?”

“I went down to the penitentiary on Saturday and I dug up the bodies on Sunday. I didn’t want to disturb you on a weekend when I didn’t know if Mr. Little was telling me the truth. And then when I did it…I just decided it would be better to tell you when you were well rested.”

“I don’t believe this.”

Tuchman took a deep breath and regained her composure. “Okay, here is what we are going to do. I’m going to get Richard Fuentes in here. He was a deputy district attorney and an AUSA before he joined the firm. You’re going to tell him what you’ve done and he’s going to figure out whether you or our firm have any criminal liability because of your impetuous actions. Then we’re going to give those fingers and the location of the bodies to the authorities. When that’s all done I’ll figure out what to do about you.”