First, Kill the Lawyers, page 9
“Mr. Siegle, can you describe the man?”
He did better than that. He gave me the make and model of the car and its license plate number.
“Mr. Siegle,” I said, “I assure you that you’re in no danger. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just relax, okay?”
“If you say so.”
I ended the conversation and called Freddie.
“My man,” he said.
“Busy?” I asked.
“I can spare a few minutes.”
* * *
I found Walter O’Neill’s car exactly where Clinton Siegle said it would be. It was a pleasant September afternoon, and the driver’s-side window had been rolled down. O’Neill was leaning against it, his elbow propped on the frame. The passenger-side window, however, was rolled up. It had that new-glass sparkle. I was almost sorry when I used the sharp end of my penlight to shatter it all to hell the same way I did the day before. Once again, O’Neill was startled enough to hit his head on the roof of the car.
“Goddammit, Taylor,” he said. “What the fuck’s your story?”
Because he was preoccupied with me, O’Neill didn’t see Freddie until he placed both hands against the driver’s door and leaned in.
“Hey, Walter,” he said. “Long time no see.”
Once again, O’Neill was flustered.
“Shit, Freddie,” he said.
“Shit, Freddie? What kinda greeting is that? Taylor, see how the man says hello? I haven’t seen the fucker in six months. Longer even.”
“Possibly he’s ill at ease.”
“Can’t figure why, racist piece of garbage like ’im usin’ his badge to whoop on the brothers and sisters. ’Course, he ain’t got a badge no more. Do you?”
“C’mon, you two,” O’Neill said. “What gives?”
“You wouldn’t answer my man Taylor’s questions yesterday. I thought you might answer mine.”
“We’re all professionals here. You know I‘m not going to give up my client.”
“Is that right?”
O’Neill smiled, an odd thing to do, I thought, considering the circumstances.
“Word is you’ve mellowed since you married that Japanese girl and had a son,” he said.
“She’s fucking Chinese, asshole.”
O’Neill stopped smiling.
“No disrespect,” he said.
“No disrespect? What the fuck, you insult my woman—”
Freddie tried to yank the car door open. O’Neill grabbed the handle and pulled back to keep it closed. At the same time, he reached under his jacket with his free hand. Freddie and I saw it at the same time, both of us tensing up and trying to hide it from the other. We’ve both been threatened, beat up, and shot at and pretended it was just part of the job, like rush hour traffic, even made jokes about it from time to time. That didn’t mean we liked it. At least I didn’t. I was never sure about Freddie.
“Don’t do it, Walter,” I said. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Go ’head,” Freddie said. “Give me a reason to cave your fuckin’ head in.”
Walter’s hand came out from under his jacket. It was empty. Freddie stopped trying to open the door, but Walter didn’t stop trying to keep it closed. He looked at me over his shoulder.
“I don’t know what you two hope to accomplish,” he said.
Clinton Siegle must have seen us from his window. He stepped out of his house and stood on the sidewalk watching us. I waved him over.
“Mr. Siegle,” I said, “do you know this man?”
Siegle bent down to look at Walter through the driver’s-side window. “Never in my life,” he said.
“His name is Walter O’Neill, disgraced ex-cop trying to make it as a private investigator.”
“Fuck you,” O’Neill said.
“He’s been conducting surveillance on you for at least two days. He followed me yesterday because he was surprised to see you speaking to another PI. Tell us, Walter”—I liked using his first name—“did you tap Mr. Siegle’s phone, too? Are you monitoring his email?”
“Like you two would never do anything like that.”
“We’d never get caught at it,” Freddie said.
“Are you working for Standout?” Siegle asked. “Are you? Tell them I never violated the severance agreement. I’ve never told anyone about the memo I sent.”
O’Neill grinned. “You just told me,” he said.
Siegle stepped back from the car. He looked first at me, then Freddie, as if he wanted us to explain to him if he was in trouble or not.
“Do you have your cell phone?” I asked.
Siegle nodded.
“Call 911,” I said.
“Goddammit, Taylor,” O’Neill said.
“Call 911.”
Siegle retrieved his cell from his pocket, connected the proper dots to give him access, and inputted the correct digits. I made a gimme gesture with my fingers, and he handed me the phone just as the operator identified herself.
“My name is Clinton Siegle,” I said, adding his address. “I don’t know if this is an emergency or not, but there’s this man who’s been sitting in a car near my house for the past two days watching the kids in the neighborhood.”
“You bastard,” O’Neill said.
I told the operator the make and model of O’Neill’s car along with his license plate number. The operator said they would send a patrol car to investigate. By then O’Neill had flipped us the bird, started his car, and drove off. I ended the call and handed the cell back to Siegle.
“What just happened?” he wanted to know.
“The cops will come by,” I said. “Tell them exactly what I just told the 911 operator. Okay?”
“All right.”
“One of three things is going to happen. Either your enemies are going to end their surveillance of you, or they’re going to send someone else, or O’Neill will be back with a different vehicle and resume his surveillance from a less aggressive location. In any case, keep a sharp eye out. If he or anyone else should come knocking on your door, call us immediately.”
“But why?” he asked. “Why is Standout doing this?”
“Remember the girl with the tats who asked you about the memo?”
“Yes.”
“You thought at first she was with Standout Investments trying to determine if you were keeping quiet about it, and then later you decided she was with the plaintiffs that sued the company—that she approached you to confirm the existence of the memo.”
“That’s right.”
“We think that might happen again, that someone will ask you to authenticate the memo, confirm that it exists and that you wrote it. Standout wants to know who. That’s my guess.”
“Why? The lawsuit was settled.”
“There’s a chance it might be reopened.”
“Am I in danger because of this?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. But then I tell people a lot of things that aren’t necessarily true.
* * *
Freddie and I walked to our cars.
“So,” Freddie said. “We’re not being followed.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pretend that we are. What did Sara say?”
“She’ll be in later this afternoon. Said she was having her hair done.”
“That gir…” I was about to say “girl.” Freddie smiled at my confusion.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“Have you been cross-indexing the five cases?”
“I was just starting when you called.”
I gave him the names of April Herron and her two friends.
“Watch for ’em while you’re doing your thing,” I said.
“What do you know, an honest-to-God clue.”
“Treat it gently. It’s the only one we have so far.”
“How did you make the leap from O’Neill to Standout Investments?”
“Who else would be interested in Siegle?”
“I’m asking because you told me that Cormac Puchner hasn’t informed them about the hack yet. Said the man hoping the problem will go away so he won’t have to.”
“Apparently he has his eye on a corner office.”
“Sounds like him,” Freddie said. “Only if he didn’t tell ’em, how does Standout know there’s a problem? How’d they know to hire O’Neill?”
“Someone must have told them.”
“But who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about the Guernseys?”
“What about them?”
“Are they involved in Scott Mickelson’s bribery case?”
“You tell me. You’re the one with all the computer skills.”
We both stopped and stared at the empty space where Walter O’Neill’s car had been parked. There was a thin pile of broken safety glass along the curb.
“Do you get the feeling there’s somethin’ they’re not telling us?” Freddie asked.
“Always.”
CHAPTER NINE
Jernigan sucked on the stem of his dormant pipe. Apparently he didn’t smoke it, even in his own office. I settled into a comfortable chair in front of his desk. He pointed the pipe at me and said, “I have never lost an acquaintance rape trial.”
“You must be very proud.”
“Are you giving me attitude, Taylor?”
“Sorry. It’s starting to be a long day.”
“Most rape cases, like this one, never even go to trial,” Jernigan said. “Do you know why? Skeptical jurors. For a long time I would challenge women thirty-five and older during voir dire. I would try to keep them off the jury because research claimed they’re the toughest demographic when it comes to rape cases. That was until I learned that they’re also the toughest judges of victims. They’ll tell themselves that if the victim was drunk or even had just a little bit to drink, she was putting herself out there. They’ll tell themselves that she was at least partially responsible for what happened to her. Now I just load up the jury with older white women.”
“There’s nothing that justifies a rape,” I said. “Ever.”
“Did I say there was? I’m just trying to tell you that rape cases are notoriously difficult to try because the burden of proof is on the victim. If there’s a lot of physical evidence, if she was beaten, if there are rope burns on her wrists, if the assailant gained entry through a broken window, that makes it easier. If there isn’t any evidence of coercion…”
“Coercion?”
“For lack of a better word. If there’s no physical evidence, then the defendant can argue that the sex was consensual, which is what we do most of the time. We make it an issue of he said, she said.”
“From my own experience as a cop, the vast majority of women who report a rape are telling the truth,” I said. “Something like ninety-eight percent.”
“There’s that two percent, though, isn’t there? It’s called reasonable doubt, Taylor. Now, that percentage might shrink a bit if there’s an outcry witness. Someone who saw the victim soon after the incident who can testify that the victim was hysterical, shaking, trembling, and afraid. Someone who can not only tell a jury what the victim told her but can testify to the victim’s demeanor, how she was behaving.”
“Did you have that here?”
“Yes. The victim’s sister. But the fact that she was related to the victim actually worked against her credibility, and having to testify that she had been drinking, too—she wasn’t doing her sister any favors. Juries are judgmental as hell, Taylor. Besides, I was perfectly willing to have a forensic evaluator take the stand and testify that, from a clinical perspective, if a woman perceives that she was victimized she may develop symptoms similar to those that occur when someone is actually victimized.”
“What?”
“If a woman perceives that she was powerless to stop a sexual encounter, then she may develop symptoms that mirror those exhibited by women who were actually raped, such as feelings of betrayal, fear, embarrassment, guilt, or depression and even symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. We argue that she might mistakenly believe she was raped even though the sexual encounter was consensual.”
“How do you get away with this bullshit?”
“I told you, Taylor—juries. Lawyers are blamed for every little thing people believe is wrong with the judicial system, but really it’s the juries. They’re the ones who make the decisions, not us.”
“What happened in this case?”
“Rachel Rozanski and Todd Kendrick were students at the same college. They met at a party just before Valentine’s Day. They had a few drinks. They danced. Todd walked Rachel to her off-campus apartment, which she shared with her younger sister. They kissed at the door. Rachel said Todd forced her inside. Todd said Rachel invited him inside. Rachel insisted that she was an unwilling participant. Todd referred to Rachel’s alleged resistance as mild protestations that he interpreted as a sign that Rachel was excited about the sexual contact. He claimed that they actually kissed good-bye before he left.
“Something else. Rachel also said that when Todd forced her facedown on the living room sofa, she heard the metallic sound that a camera makes when it’s taking photos. She said Todd took selfies as he raped her. She said she saw a cell phone. Later, she said that she didn’t actually see the phone, only heard it. The police confiscated Todd’s cell phone. No photos. Nor did it make a clicking sound when taking pics.
“Taylor, you know how this works as well as I do. The victim will meet with uniformed police officers; she’ll undergo a forensic sexual-violence exam in a hospital; she’ll talk to detectives, county prosecutors, a judge, the defense attorney, and eventually a jury. By the time her case is heard, usually eight to fourteen months after reporting the incident, she’ll have told her story from beginning to end a dozen times or more. If there’s any discrepancy at all in any of the accounts, an attorney like me will clobber her on the witness stand.
“Now add that to the fact that Todd was squeaky clean. No convictions, no arrests, not even a parking ticket. A good student from a moneyed family who’s never had a whiff of scandal attached to his name. Even his ex-girlfriends liked him. All said, if you were the Ramsey County attorney, would you have prosecuted?”
“How moneyed?” I asked.
“Enough to afford me.”
“Any relationship to the Guernsey family?”
“None that I’m aware of. Why do you ask?”
“Just a thought. Going back to the camera. There was one, wasn’t there?”
“How did you know?”
“The hacker stole something that was incriminating.”
“Pics that were sent to me,” Jernigan said.
“Sent to you?”
“Todd didn’t use his cell phone. He used a camera that belonged to a friend of his. Tiny sucker. Fits in the palm of your hand. He returned the camera to his friend as soon as he realized that not taking no for an answer might get him into trouble.”
“He gave incriminating evidence to his friend?”
“Dumb, right? The so-called friend emailed sample pics to me after he learned that I had been retained by the family.”
“Why?”
“Why d’you think?”
“How much did you pay?”
“I didn’t pay anything.” Jernigan pointed his pipe at me for emphasis. “No. Hell no. I didn’t even think about it. Accepting evidence of a crime, and then what? No, no, Taylor. I would have been aiding and abetting an offender after the fact. I would have been guilty of a criminal offense. That wasn’t going to happen.”
“What did you do?”
“I replied to the email. I told Todd’s friend to go to the police. I told him to take the camera, the SD card, and anything else he might have to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office. I told him not to contact me again. Afterward, I deleted his email and the attachment. Unfortunately, it’s been explained to me that deleting something from your computer doesn’t actually delete it. It was those pics that the hacker recovered.”
“Deleting the pics, isn’t that the same as destroying evidence?”
“I didn’t actually see what was in the attachment. I never opened it. Only an idiot opens attachments sent by unknown sources. So I didn’t actually know if it was evidence or not. At least, that’s my story. Prove it isn’t true.”
“At the same time, though, you never told the prosecutor that Rachel was telling the truth, that her rapist did take selfies while he assaulted her?”
“Now we’re in that gray area of an attorney’s obligation to the court and his obligation to his client.”
“Did Todd’s friend try to blackmail the family after you turned him down?”
“I don’t know. We never discussed the matter.”
“The pics never surfaced, though.”
“No.”
“How convenient.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Charges against Todd were dropped.”
“Insufficient evidence.”
“If the pics surface now—”
“He’d be recharged.”
“Wouldn’t anything stolen from your office still be considered privileged information and inadmissible in court?”
“It wasn’t privileged. Todd didn’t tell me about the pics or email them to me, a second party did.”
“Do Todd and his family know that you’ve been hacked?”
“I told them immediately.”
“What about the friend?”
“What about him?”
“Do you want to tell me who he is?”
“He can’t be our hacker, Taylor. If NIMN uploads the pics, he’ll lose his leverage. There’d be no reason to pay him.”
“Is the family still paying him?”
“I don’t know.”
“He might have bragged it up some,” I said. “Might have told a friend what a clever SOB he is. Someone might have overheard him.”
“His name is James Cowgill.”
* * *
Like most people his age, James Cowgill had Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest accounts. I knew what he looked like in about 10 seconds and where he lived in about 130 more. I knocked on the door to his apartment located just off Snelling Avenue in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood of St. Paul, so-called because it included Hamline University and was halfway between the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis. No one answered, so I retreated to my Camry. I drove to a side street and settled in an unobtrusive spot that provided clean sight lines to both the building’s front door and rear parking lot.
