Kill All the Lawyers

Five

A pelican sat on a coral boulder, scratching its feathery belly with its beak. Steve and Victoria walked along Bayfront Drive, a wall of condos on one side, the flat, green water of Biscayne Bay on the other. Her sunglasses were perched on top her head and her long stride tugged her Sunny Choi pencil skirt tight at the hips. Steve didn't know Sunny Choi from chicken chow mein, but he'd started picking up slivers of fashion information by listening to Victoria's end of phone conversations with Jackie.

They headed in and out of shadows cast by the high-rises, the sun slanting toward the Everglades. In the light, Victoria's hair glowed with butterscotch highlights. In the shadows, her green eyes gave off their own light. She seemed happy, already forgiving Steve for being late, for being obstreperous, for being. . Steve.

"I did something in Kreeger's case I'd never done before and haven't since," he said. "And I'm not proud of it."

"Tell me. Tell me everything, Steve."

Her nurturing tone. That was it. Women were born nuturers. Cling to their warm bosoms, and everything will be all right. This would be easy. Victoria was, by nature, supportive and caring. And forgiving.

"The case against Kreeger was purely circumstantial," he said. "I thought I could win."

"You always think you can win."

"Yeah, but this was different. I thought Kreeger was innocent."

He didn't have to say, "as opposed to not guilty." Victoria knew the difference. In criminal cases, you seldom defend a person who is truly I-didn't-do-thecrime innocent. But you'll often defend someone who almost certainly did the crime; the state just can't prove it. That's the difference between innocent and not guilty.

As everyone knows who watches blabbermouth lawyers on TV dissecting the latest trial of the century, the state must prove guilt beyond every reasonable doubt. The prosecutor is the sturdy workman at the center of a storm, carrying sandbags to the dike, staving off the flood that will swamp the state's case. The defense lawyer is the vandal, poking holes in the sandbags, pissing in the river, and praying for even more rain. Steve believed he was second to none in the hole-poking and river-pissing departments. He took seriously the lawyer's duty to zealously defend his client. And he always had. Except once.

"Kreeger had no criminal record," Steve continued. "He was wealthy, well known, respected. He was the court-appointed expert in a nasty child custody fight. At the same time, he was having an affair with the mother."

"Not nice."

"A woman named Nancy Lamm. Not only does Kreeger seduce her, he gives her bushel baskets of pills, overprescribing antidepressants and sedatives. They have a falling-out, and she threatens to file a complaint with DPR, go after his license."

"Sounds like the state had its motive. Kill her. Shut her up."

"That's what Pincher argued to the jury, but think about it, Vic. If Kreeger planned to kill her, would he do it at his house, in his hot tub, with his drugs in her system?"

"If criminals were smart, we'd be out of business."

"Kreeger has a genius IQ. If he wanted to kill Nancy Lamm, it would have been a lot cleaner."

"Unless he snapped."

"He's not given to rages. He's a smart, calculating man who just happens to have a woman drown in his hot tub after mixing booze and barbiturates."

"Any signs of trauma?"

"Excellent question, Counselor. Laceration on the skull. Pincher's theory was that Kreeger bashed her with something, then tossed her into the hot tub. Kreeger told me he was in the house mixing a pitcher of daiquiris. When he came out, he found her in the tub. My theory was that she was zonked out of her mind, slipped on the wet pool deck, hit her head on the rounded edge of the tub, and tumbled in."

"Sounds pretty far-fetched to me."

"I had a human-factors expert who backed me up. Said it was within the realm of reasonable probability. We also put together a video animation that looked pretty convincing."

"So you made the slip-and-fall argument without blushing?"

"I never blush."

"Right. Not even when you claimed your client shouldn't have to return the engagement ring she accepted when she was. . what was the term you used?"

" 'Temporarily unavailable for matrimony.' "

"Right. Solomon-speak for 'already married.' "

They walked past the Sheraton Hotel and neared the bridge to Brickell Key, once an undeveloped island, now a concrete jungle of high-rises, with barely a tree or shrub that wasn't potted on a condo balcony. A heavyset shirtless jogger plugged into an iPod lumbered past them.

"What did the coroner say about the laceration?" Victoria asked.

"Inconclusive. Could have come from impact with the tub or something else with a rounded edge."

"Such as?"

"The skimmer pole used to clean the pool."

"Did they test it, match up the marks?"

"Couldn't. The pole was missing. Never found."

"Oh, isn't that convenient?"

"Yeah, Pincher ranted and railed about that. Suggested to the jury that Kreeger smacked the woman with the pole, then got rid of it before he called nine-one-one."

They approached the small park at the point where the Miami River pours into Biscayne Bay. Off to one side was Miami Circle, the archeological site that dates back two thousand years. Long before Brickell Avenue was populated with lawyers and investment bankers and CPAs, a hardwood hammock stretched along the bay, a prairie ran inland, and Native Americans camped on the banks of the river, cooking their wild game over open flames and making carvings in the limestone.

"You already know what the jury did," Steve said. "Acquitted on murder and convicted on manslaughter."

"The curse of the lesser included offense."

"Exactly. A no-guts compromise verdict. They should have either convicted Kreeger of murder or acquitted him. But forget that for a second, Vic. You be a jury of one. What's your verdict?"

"I hope you don't think I'm being critical," she began. Her feminine way of softening whatever might follow, couching her criticism in terms as comfy as bedroom slippers. "I'm surprised the jury didn't acquit. Without a murder weapon, with a reasonable alternative scenario for the head wound, your guy should have walked."

"I thought you'd say that. But it wasn't a fair question. I left something out."

"Something incriminating?"

"You tell me. Let's go back almost twenty years. Kreeger's just finishing med school at Shands. To celebrate, he takes a weekend trip down to Islamorada with a couple classmates. One's his best friend, a guy named Jim Beshears. The other is Beshear's girlfriend."

Victoria seemed puzzled. "What's a trip to the Keys have to do with the dead lady in the hot tub twenty years later?"

"Like I always say to the jury, please wait until my entire case is presented before reaching any conclusions."

Victoria shrugged and he continued. "The three of them-Kreeger, Beshears, and the girlfriend-charter a boat to go after marlin. Now, they've been drinking all weekend, and everything they know about fish they learned at Red Lobster, but somehow Beshears' girlfriend manages to hook a marlin and fight the thing till it's alongside the boat. Not a huge one as marlins go, but still a couple hundred pounds or so. The captain's on the fly bridge, and Kreeger and Beshears are like Abbott and Costello trying to land the fish. Kreeger's waving a gaff and Beshears is leaning over the gunwale, and somehow the fish lands in the cockpit and Beshears lands in the drink."

"Okay, so he went overboard. They haul him aboard, right?"

"The girlfriend throws him a life ring but he can't reach it. Beshears is swallowing water and panicking. Kreeger leans over the side, holding the gaff for Beshears to grab on to. But the boat's rocking and Beshears is riding up and down on the waves, and somehow in the confusion, Kreeger brains him with the gaff. The captain's trying to maneuver the boat and they lose sight of Beshears until he's dragged into the props and chopped into sushi."

"Oh, God. You're not saying Kreeger intended to kill him? I mean, there's no proof of that, right?"

"No more than with Nancy Lamm in the hot tub."

"Meaning what?"

"All weekend long, Beshears had been busting Kreeger's balls about some paper he wrote, claiming Kreeger'd phonied up research to justify his conclusions about evolutionary psychology. Kreeger believed that murder is a natural consequence of our being human, that evolution favored those who kill their rivals."

"Survival of the homicidal."

"Exactly. Kreeger wrote that killing is programmed into our DNA, rather than being aberrational conduct. He did some studies with undergrads, measuring their propensity for violence. Beshears needled him the way guys do, calling him a fraud. Kreeger warned him to shut up, and it just kept getting uglier."

The sun had angled lower in the sky and was shooting daggers into their eyes. Victoria slipped her sunglasses down from the top of her head. "Pattern conduct," she said softly, as if thinking aloud. "Beshears and Lamm. Two people who pose threats to Kreeger. Each one gets clobbered on the head and knocked into the water. Both end up dead. Each time it looks like an accident. Similar facts under the Williams Rule."

"Which is how Pincher got the Beshears story into evidence, crippling my defense."

"Pincher's usually so lazy, I'm surprised he discovered the earlier case."

"He didn't."

"So how'd he find out about the fishing trip and the guy dying?"

"I told him," Steve said.

"No. You didn't."

"I did, Vic. I gave Pincher all the evidence he needed to convict my client."

Victoria's lower lip seemed to tremble. Then she shook her head, as if trying to cast out the memory of what she just heard. "You violated your oath?"

"I had a good reason."

"There's never a good reason," Victoria said, turning away.