Kill All the Lawyers

Six

Victoria tried to process what she had just heard. Just yards away, students at the dig site worked on hands and knees with trowels and whisk brooms, searching for archeological treasures.

She could hardly believe what he'd told her. Steve never rolled over and played dead for anyone. In court, he always fought hard and sometimes dirty. More than once, he had spent the night behind bars for contempt.

"A lawyer who's afraid of jail is like a surgeon who's afraid of blood."

He'd told her that the day they met. At that moment, they were ensconced in adjacent holding cells. He had provoked her in the courtroom. She'd lost her cool and they'd been held in mutual contempt. Which is the way they felt about each other. In the lockup, he had ridiculed her propriety; she'd railed about his ethics, or lack thereof.

"You make a mockery of the law."

"I make up my own. Solomon's Laws."

She knew that Steve cut corners to win. But breaking the law to lose? That was a new one. And perhaps even more frightening because it cut to the heart of the lawyer's oath. A lawyer was supposed to zealously defend-not double-cross-his or her client.

"Come on, Steve. You didn't give incriminating evidence to the state."

"Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"Kreeger lied to me, and I caught him at it."

"Then you should have withdrawn from the case."

"Then he would have lied to his next lawyer, and he would have gotten off. Like you said, without evidence of the earlier death, the state had a weak case."

"That's the system. The net has holes in it. Sometimes the guilty fall through so the innocent won't be snared. You, of all people, must know that."

Here she was, a former prosecutor, telling Steve-the-Shyster that it's okay for murderers to walk. She couldn't believe the role reversal at play.

"Somebody had to stop him," Steve said. "Kreeger killed Jim Beshears and Nancy Lamm."

"Dammit, Steve! You don't know that."

"I felt it in my bones. I was dead-solid certain."

"Even if you're right, a defense lawyer can't be a secret agent for the state."

She glared at the man she loved, the man she planned to live with, might even someday marry. But this was just astonishing. Something her mother once said came back to her.

"Men's deceptions are always the tip of the ice cube."

"You mean iceberg, Mother?"

"Not if they're drinking Scotch on the rocks. My point, Princess, if you catch them in one lie, others will surely follow."

In her chosen career as a glamorous widow, Irene Lord, The Queen, had developed a healthy cynicism about men. Victoria had picked up some of that. But it never seemed to apply to Steve. Most men put on a front and hide their aggravating traits. Like the archeology students at the dig site, you have to scrape with shovel and trowel to find their true nature. Not so with Steve. He hid his softer, caring side-his love for Bobby, his pro bono work, his passionate commitment to justice-under an exterior that could be both overbearing and unbearable.

She forced herself to speak to him in even, measured tones. "I understand your motive, but you stepped so far over the line, I have to question whether you're fit to be a lawyer."

"Jeez, why are you taking this so personally?" Sounding hurt.

"How am I supposed to take it? I'm your partner. And your lover."

"You weren't either one when this went down."

She clenched her teeth so hard, she felt her jaw muscles ache. "Would you like to restore the status quo ante?"

"Aw, c'mon, Vic. I didn't mean it that way. More like, you weren't around to influence me, so I did some things I wouldn't do now."

"Nice recovery, Slick. But what you did was still unethical and illegal."

"Okay, already. I've gotten over it. You should, too."

"Just like that! Could you give me a few minutes first?"

One of the students at the dig site, a young woman in khaki shorts, stood and yelled. She held something in her hand and waved to the others. From this distance it was impossible to make out the item. A shard of pottery, an arrowhead, some artifact of the Tequesta Indians? Scratching away to learn secrets of the past.

Victoria went into her lawyer mode. Speaking softly, as if thinking out loud, she said: "Kreeger probably can't sue you because the statute of limitations has run. But there's no limitations period on ethical violations. He could have you disbarred."

"Or hit me with a marlin gaff."

He told her then about the gaff delivered to the office. "The marlin on the door. The gaff. Kreeger's way of saying he knows I torpedoed his case."

"But why tell you?"

"To let me know he can do the same thing to me he did to Beshears and Lamm."

"So selling out your client wasn't just blatantly illegal," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "It was also unbelievably stupid."

Her anger surprised him. What happened to that warm and comfy nurturing he'd expected?

What happened to clinging to her warm bosom?

Steve thought back to the day he'd discovered Kreeger's secret. He'd been looking for helpful witnesses, not damning ones. Kreeger had become a bit of a celebrity. The psychiatrist had done work with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit and gained some credibility as an expert on serial killers. Turn on CNN or Court TV, and he'd pop up every time some freak was loose. Then he moved into personal relationships, which Steve figured wasn't all that different than homicide. Relaxed in front of the camera, Kreeger got his daytime TV show, dispensing wisdom to women fed up with their men, an inexhaustible and ever-growing audience.

Steve traveled to the med school in Gainesville, trying to find character witnesses. He spoke to a professor who remembered Kreeger and told a murky story about a fishing trip gone bad. A few more calls turned up the former girlfriend of the late Jim Beshears. The girlfriend told Steve that Kreeger had been enraged by Beshears' charges of academic fraud. The two men had argued, and from her vantage point in the cockpit of the boat, she thought Kreeger might have pushed Beshears overboard, then intentionally hit him with the gaff. But everything had happened so fast and she'd been so shaken, she couldn't be sure. Officially, the death was declared an accident without a full criminal investigation.

Then Steve read Kreeger's bestselling book: Looking Out for Numero Uno. The man's views of human nature were downright macabre. In chapter one, "Screw Thy Neighbor," Kreeger posited that greed, hedonism, and selfishness are good. Altruism, charity, and sacrifice are stupid. Self-interest is the only interest. Be the screwer, not the screwee. The more he read, the more concerned Steve became.

He went back to Gainesville and puttered around in the Shands Hospital library. He found Kreeger's monograph, Murder Through the Eons: Homicide as an Essential Element of Evolutionary Biology. While a hospital resident on the psychiatry staff, Kreeger had argued that human beings were bred to be murderers. Homicidal instincts, he wrote, are survival tactics dating from prehistoric times. By historical practice, it is rational and sane to kill anyone who threatens your cave, your mate, or your dinner. Our DNA carries those instincts today.

"Murder should not be considered a perversion of human values. Murder is the essential human value."

Then Kreeger went even further. To kill rationally, he declared, does not require one to be engaged in self-defense. Setting aside man-made notions of right and wrong, it would be logical to kill a rival for a promotion at work or for the love of a woman or even for the last seat on a bus.

Suddenly, preparing for the man's trial, it had all become clear to Steve.

William Kreeger, MD, was the love child of Ayn Rand and Ted Bundy.

A man so possessed of narcissism and self-interest and so devoid of feelings for others that he would eliminate anyone he believed was a threat.

His classmate. His lady friend. Or his lawyer.

Sure, Victoria was right. Not only was it illegal to turn over incriminating evidence to the state, with Kreeger as a client, it was also dangerous. So what now? Kreeger wouldn't be satisfied with pranks involving dead fish, marlin gaffs, and trash talk on the radio. Those were just preludes.

Kreeger could be planning his attack right now.

Which meant Steve needed a counterattack. Or better yet, an offensive. A way to bring down Kreeger before he took his shot. But how?

Storm into the radio station, jack Kreeger up against the wall, and rattle his fillings.

Nah.

Steve was a lawyer. A schmoozer. He could bob and weave in front of a jury and play rope-a-dope with opposing counsel. But violence? Not his style. Sure, he'd taken one swing with a stick that cracked a man's skull, but that had been necessary to rescue Bobby. What else?

Punching that probation officer in dubious defense of Cece's virtue? Not very impressive. Starting a brawl years ago by spiking the Florida State shortstop while breaking up a double play? Nah, nobody even got bruised.

But Kreeger? The man had a track record of deadly violence. So Steve needed a plan. But a problem there, too. How do you outsmart a man who is both brilliant and a killer, when you are neither?

SOLOMON'S LAWS

3. When you don't know what to do, seek advice from your father. . even if he's two candles short of a menorah.