Ties That Bind

Chapter Twenty-One.

Amanda's hands were clammy and she felt a little dizzy as she waited for the guard to let her into the contact room where Jon Dupre had murdered Wendell Hayes. Judge Robard would only agree to sign the court order compelling the jail to permit a contact visit if she agreed to go along with the safety measures that Matt Guthrie proposed, so she knew that guards would be posted outside both doors to the contact room and that Dupre would be in chains. Still, she could not calm down. The jail commander had also wanted Kate Ross present for the interview, but Amanda had drawn the line there. She knew that she had to meet one-on-one with Dupre if she was going to repair the damage caused by the noncontact visit.

Amanda fought the urge to run when the guard locked her in. "I can do this," she told herself. "I can do this."

There were no visible signs of the killing, but Amanda had seen the crime-scene photographs and she kept her back to the spot where Hayes had died. To distract herself, Amanda took out her pad and her file. She was arranging them on a small, circular table, when the lock on the back door snapped open and the guard motioned Jon Dupre into the room. He stared at her for a moment before shuffling to the table and sitting down.

"We'll be right outside," Dupre's escort told her, gesturing toward the guard who was watching through the window in the corridor. Amanda studied her client. He looked just as angry and defiant as he had during their first meeting, but she thought she sensed something else--desperation.

"Good afternoon, Jon," Amanda said when the guard had locked them in.

Dupre slouched in his chair and didn't answer her. Amanda decided to go over some basics, to try and get Dupre involved and because it would help her calm down.

"Before we discuss your case I want to make sure you understand the attorney-client relationship."

"Oscar Baron told me all this shit."

"You may find that Oscar and I practice law a little differently, so humor me, okay?"

Dupre shrugged.

"First, anything you tell me is confidential, which means I won't tell anyone about our conversations without your permission, except the attorneys in my firm who are working on your case and Kate Ross, our investigator.

"Second, you are perfectly free to lie to me but I'm going to use the information you give me to make decisions in your case. If you do a great job fooling me and it causes me to do something that loses your case, please remember that you'll go to jail and I'll go home and watch cable TV.

"Third, I will not let you lie under oath. If you tell me that you murdered Senator Travis, I'm not going to let you testify that you were in Idaho when he was killed. I won't tell on you because we have the attorney-client relationship, but I will remove myself from the case. What I'm getting at here is that I am very honest and very ethical and you need to know that about me up front so that we don't have any misunderstandings down the line. Any questions?"

"Yeah. What's in this for you? Court-appointed lawyers aren't paid shit. You must be pretty hard up if you'll work for peanuts."

"Trying a death case is a specialty. Very few attorneys have the training to handle a capital case. Judge Robard asked me to represent you as a favor to him."

"Why is that?"

"I'll be straight with you, Jon. He asked me for two reasons: First, I'm a very good lawyer, and second, the other lawyers who could handle death cases were afraid of you."

"And you're not?" Dupre said with a smirk, holding up his manacled hands, giving Amanda another look at the cuts on his hands and forearm.

"You have no idea what I had to go through to get Judge Robard and the jail commander to agree to a contact visit of any kind."

"Yeah," Jon answered sarcastically, "I bet you'd be dying to be locked in with me if these chains were off. You're scared to death."

"Do you think that my fear is unreasonable? Please focus on the fact that I'm willing to fight very hard for you knowing that you murdered your first lawyer."

Dupre leaped to his feet. He looked furious.

"Fuck you, bitch. I told you the last time I didn't murder anyone, and I don't want a lawyer who thinks I did."

The front and rear doors flew open seconds after Dupre leapt to his feet and started screaming at Amanda.

"Please . . ." Amanda started as the guards grabbed Dupre, but her client cut her off.

"Get me out of here," he screamed. The guards obliged.

The doors slammed, temporarily locking Amanda in with her thoughts. This was never going to work. Dupre was a lunatic. He'd murdered two men and he deserved anything he got. It suddenly occurred to Amanda that Dupre's rage had been sparked by her assertion that he had murdered Wendell Hayes. Now that she thought about it, Dupre had also gone ballistic the first time she'd implied that he was guilty. Dupre had insisted that he hadn't killed anyone both times, which was ridiculous in light of the evidence. Then she remembered something that she had forgotten in the excitement, something that had bothered her the first time she met with Dupre and continued to bother her now--something that made her wonder whether it was possible that Dupre was telling the truth.

* * *

Oscar Baron's receptionist buzzed to tell him that he had a collect call from Jon Dupre. Baron debated taking the call, but Dupre could still refer clients to him.

"Hey, Jon. How are they treating you?" Baron asked in a hale-and-hearty tone as though he didn't know that Dupre had gutted a fellow attorney.

"They're treating me like shit, Oscar. They've got me in fucking solitary and they stuck me with a cunt for a lawyer. Some bitch who's scared to be in the same room with me."

"Amanda Jaffe, right?"

"How did you know?"

"She visited me."

"What was she doing at your office?"

Dupre sounded outraged. Baron smiled.

"Calm down. She just wanted the police reports from the case I got dismissed."

"Don't give her shit, Oscar. I'm getting rid of her as fast as I can."

"Did you come up with the dough for my fee?"

"No, I can't make that."

"Then you might want to stick with Jaffe. She's okay."

"I don't want 'okay,' Oscar. This is my goddamn life we're talking about."

"She did that serial case and the case for the associate at Reed, Briggs. She knows her way around."

"Look, I didn't call so you could give me a pep talk about Amanda Jaffe. I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I don't want to talk about it over the phone. Come over to the jail. And don't worry about getting paid. Ally is on the way over with enough money to cover the fee for what I want you to do."