Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan), page 8
Rossi turned and looked to the back of the property. At the end of the cul-de-sac was an easement with a sign. “Did you say Volunteer Park is behind that wall?”
Ford nodded, and Rossi left the group and walked to the back of the property, then to the easement—a dirt trail that led directly into the park. When he returned, he said, “If Bernstein walked into the park, she could have come out that trail and avoided any security cameras on the houses along Federal Avenue.”
“Are there any security cameras in the park?” Thompson asked.
“Not likely,” Rossi said, scribbling additional notes, “but we’ll confirm.”
The men took a collective breath. No one spoke, not immediately. Rossi was wondering whether it could be this easy, maybe the grounder he and Ford kept seeking, but he shook that thought as way too premature.
Thompson said, “Let’s sit down again after we get Sirus Kohl’s burner phone records and determine what Upson learns about possible cameras picking up Bernstein after leaving her condominium. Anyone think of anything else?”
“Let’s also subpoena Adria Kohl’s phone records,” Rossi said. “Just to confirm what she’s told us.”
“She said her father had received threats,” Ford said.
“Look into those as well. I want to eliminate any other potential suspects,” Thompson said. “If we charge Jenna Bernstein, I don’t want Patsy Duggan intimating this is retaliatory because she got off in the Wei trial, or that we somehow rushed to judgment and didn’t consider other suspects. People threatening Kohl will be at the top of that list.”
“Patsy isn’t handling trials any longer,” Rossi said. Thompson, Ford, and Pan all gave him a long look. He backtracked. “At least I don’t think so. I mean, given the LaRussa case.” Keera had told Rossi her father was no longer trying cases. Reading between the lines, Rossi concluded that the booze had finally caught up to Patsy.
“His daughter?” Thompson said. “She defended Vince LaRussa.”
“What is his daughter’s name again?” Ford hid a smile, poorly.
“Keera,” Rossi said. “Keera Duggan.”
“Well, if the LaRussa verdict is any indication, especially given what transpired after the trial, she’s as formidable as her father,” Thompson said. “I’m told she kicked Miller Ambrose’s ass.”
“That was our case.” Rossi indicated himself and Ford. “I sat alongside Ambrose at counsel’s table. Keera Duggan is very good. Intuitive. Thinks outside the box.”
“Like her father,” Thompson said. “Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the tree; did it?”
Chapter 9
Minutes after Keera had left her father’s office and returned to her own, Ella knocked on Keera’s door and stepped in. Keera didn’t wait for Ella to speak. “Are you kidding me?” she said, gathering her briefcase. “I gave up my vacation to come in here and work for free? That’s bullshit, Ella.”
Ella closed the door and kept her voice low. “I understand you’re frustrated,” she said in the parental voice she had used when Keera was a child.
“I’m not frustrated. I’m upset. I’m pissed. Maggie pulls a power trip and doesn’t tell me who is in the office, and then Dad wants me to work for free.”
“I’ll figure something out. We can back bill your time for today. God knows we need another big case, and this will be very big, if she is charged.”
“She’ll be charged,” Keera said. “Based on what she’s told me so far . . . and hasn’t told me.”
“You think she’s withholding information.”
“I know she is.”
“How?”
“Because I know her. With Jenna, the truth is always a moving target. I’m more concerned about how she is going to pay going forward. PDRT is dissolved, and with the federal lawsuit pending, you can bet she’s spending what money she and her parents have on white-collar criminal defense lawyers and experts.”
“John inherited money,” Ella said. “At least that’s what Jenna told us five years ago. But I also know her parents took out a mortgage on their home and sold their summer house on Lake Chelan to pay for Jenna’s defense in the Wei case.”
“Well, I’m not doing this pro bono,” Keera said. “If she can’t pay the same rate we charged Vince LaRussa, she can get somebody else. And Patsy can’t do it. Not a case of this magnitude.”
Ella folded her arms. “What’s going on? I thought you and Jenna Bernstein were friends.”
“We were never friends.”
Ella gave her a quizzical look. “So what is it?”
Keera put her briefcase on her desk. “Maybe it’s because I know Jenna. I don’t believe she’s innocent in the death of Erik Wei, and I’m not buying her story this time either.”
“Okay, assume you’re correct. You’ve represented guilty parties before, and you will again. It comes with the territory, Keera. You told me you believed Mark Strickland was guilty. So why is this one bothering you so much?”
Ella was right. Keera had represented Mark Strickland though she’d suspected he had been guilty, but she hadn’t felt good about doing so and endured a few sleepless nights because of it—a holdover from her years as a prosecutor, perhaps. She wasn’t in the mood to capitulate, however, not at this moment, and not for Jenna Bernstein.
She sat on the edge of her desk and motioned to one of the two chairs. “I’ll give you a snapshot of who Jenna Bernstein is.”
Ella sat.
“Mom and Dad were significantly older parents for my class.”
“They struggled with that. They wanted you to feel included with your friends,” Ella said. “They wanted you to have all the things we had experienced.”
“I know. And I’ve realized, over the years, that they weren’t close to the Bernsteins, but they tried initially for my sake.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seemed a perfect fit, Jenna being an only child, and all of you having moved out of the house by the time I was ten. That’s when I started playing chess, to have some connection to Dad.”
“You were a prodigy.”
“I don’t know about that. I just know I grew to love it for more than the connection it gave me to Dad.”
“You were just a kid. You didn’t understand when Dad went on a binge.”
“I understood that he was like a different person when he drank, and I was scared of him. I used to think that maybe if I kept him occupied . . . I don’t know. Maybe chess was also a bit of an obsession. But Dad loved that I loved it. I know it sounds silly, but I felt like he’d stopped drinking—”
“Wishful thinking, Keera.”
“A child’s wishful thinking,” Keera agreed. “Anyway, back to my point. One summer weekend we were invited by the Bernsteins to their home on Lake Chelan, and I brought along my chessboard so Dad and I could play. Jenna saw it when I was unpacking and said she wanted to play. I told her I would teach her, but she said she didn’t need me to teach her.”
“Did she know how to play?”
“Rudimentary, at best. The first game, I beat her in five moves. More to teach her a lesson, like Dad use to do to me when I got cocky. She asked to play again. Again, I easily beat her. I told her I could teach her some things, but she just kept saying she wanted to play again, a third time, then a fourth and fifth. With each loss she became angrier, but she kept insisting we keep playing.”
“She was always determined to succeed.”
“It was more than that, Ella. She had to win.”
“Had to?”
Keera nodded. “I was only ten, but I figured her out that quickly. I grew tired of playing and tired of her attitude. I wanted to get outside and swim in the lake—the Bernsteins had a large bouncing trampoline with a slide just off their boat dock—but Jenna refused to stop, and I finally realized the only way I was going to leave that room before dark—”
“You let her beat you.”
Another nod. “And when she won, she said, ‘I knew I could figure it out. It’s not hard. You were just lucky.’
“Then I got angry. I said, ‘Let’s play again.’ But Jenna refused, upended the board, and ran from the room.”
“Hmm . . . ,” Ella said.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s just child’s stuff.”
“It does seem harmless.”
“There’s more. I no longer wanted to play with Jenna. I wanted to go home. I went and talked to Mom, who was reading a book on the dock, and I told her what had happened. She told me to let it go; that Jenna was probably just embarrassed I was so much better than her. She applauded my decision to let Jenna win and said it was too beautiful a day to waste.”
“Sounds exactly like something Mom would say.”
“I changed into my swimsuit and, when I got outside, Jenna was already on the trampoline, jumping up and down. Mom and Dad and the Bernsteins had gone inside to make lunch. I swam out to the trampoline, but when I grabbed a handhold to pull myself up, Jenna jumped on my fingers until I let go, and I slipped back into the water.”
Ella’s eyebrows knitted together.
“When I came up, Jenna said ‘Sorry,’ with this impish grin, and I tried again.”
“Let me guess. She jumped on your fingers again.”
“This went on repeatedly. I kept telling her to stop. I told her it wasn’t funny, that I was getting tired. I swam around the trampoline trying to find a different way up, but she just followed me. I started to have trouble staying afloat, but I was also determined not to swim back to the dock. I was determined to get on that damn trampoline.”
“But I assume Jenna was just as determined to keep you off?”
“The harder I tried to get up, the more physical she became,” Keera said.
“Physical how?”
“She’d pinch and hit my hand. She dug her nails into my skin and drew blood. She would sit down on the trampoline, put her foot in my face, and push me off.”
“Jesus,” Ella said and made the sign of the cross—one of their mother’s habits. “That goes a bit beyond normal behavior, I would agree.”
“I hated to let her win, but I was so tired by this time I was no longer sure I could swim back to the dock. I tried anyway, and I had swum about halfway, then got a leg cramp and went under. I came up and called for help. I recall, vividly, Jenna dropping to her knees on the trampoline and watching me sink under the water and struggle back to the surface again and again and again. She just watched, Ella. She just knelt there, watching.”
Ella remained silent, though with a look of morbid curiosity, as if she didn’t want to hear what happened next, though she knew, obviously, Keera had survived.
“I heard a loud splash and felt someone lift me up. Dad. He swam with me back to the dock, and Mom wrapped me in a towel. I was crying so hard Mom took me into the other room for a moment to get me to calm down. When she closed the door, she asked me what had happened, and I told her.
“She said it was probably just a game, but then I removed the towel and showed her the scratches on my hands and arms and the scrape mark on my neck. I also had red splotches where Jenna had punched and kicked me. Mom got this horrified look I’ll never forget. I know now it was the look of someone who is trapped and doesn’t know what to do.”
“You were at their house, enjoying their generosity. Mom likely wanted to leave, but she was unable to come up with a suitable excuse.”
“I think so too. I remember Dad came into the room, still a bit rattled from having to save me, and Mom showed him the marks on my arms and neck and told him what had happened. Dad and Mom talked for a while and decided that Mom would bring it up after lunch. They agreed that Mr. and Mrs. Bernstein should know. When Mom brought it up, Mrs. Bernstein asked Jenna why she wouldn’t let me on the trampoline.”
“What did she say?” Ella asked.
“She said it was just a game. She said we were playing King of the Hill and I lost, and I was just being a poor sport. She said we could play again, and she’d let me be king of the hill. But it wasn’t just what Jenna said. It was the way she looked at me, smiling very sweetly but with this gleam in her eyes. I don’t know how to describe it. Even now. The other thing that struck me then, and still to this day, was how easily Jenna lied, how convincing she sounded.”
“Did it appease her mother?”
“It did. Even though Jenna never apologized. She never said she was sorry. When I said I didn’t want to play anymore, Mrs. Bernstein said, ‘Don’t be a poor sport. Jenna said she’d let you be the king of the hill.’ And Jenna said, ‘She’s sulking because I beat her at chess.’
“I started to respond, but Mom touched my leg under the table.”
“Her sign to stop us from saying anything.”
Keera nodded. “She looked across the table at Dad. I could tell from the looks on their faces they both knew Jenna could not have beaten me. And I had told Mom I’d let Jenna win just so we could go outside to play.”
“They knew then that she was, in essence, lying to her parents.”
“After dinner, I asked Dad if he wanted to play chess, but when I went to set up the game, I noticed the queen was missing from Jenna’s side of the board. I looked all over the room, thinking maybe it had fallen under the bed when Jenna upended the board, but I never found it.”
“You think she took the queen, so nobody else could play the game,” Ella said.
“I think she took the queen so she would finish as the winner,” Keera said. “She always had to finish as the winner.”
“Did you tell Dad?”
Keera shook her head. “But I think he suspected what had happened. He found a piece of driftwood, did a little carving, and we used it as his queen. That night, Mom had me sleep in their room, not with Jenna. She told the Bernsteins I wasn’t feeling well. In the morning she used that as an excuse for us to leave early. I don’t think the Bernsteins bought it, not entirely, but they also didn’t try to talk us into staying.”
“Did the Bernsteins ever invite you back?”
“I don’t know if they ever invited us again, or if they did and Mom and Dad declined.”
“But you didn’t go back.”
“I never did,” Keera said. “But here’s something else I’ve thought about over the years. This was the fourth grade, and Jenna had switched schools that year. And Mom and Dad were older parents, not a first choice for a young couple seeking friends.”
“You’re wondering why they chose you to invite to Chelan?”
“I’ve wondered if, maybe, it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened.”
Ella didn’t respond so Keera continued.
“It’s not the only time Jenna did something like that, Ella, far from it. So as I said, she was never my friend, and the Bernsteins were never family or friends. So why did Dad cut them a deal on his fees? Why does he want to cut them a deal now? I don’t understand.”
“My turn to tell a story,” Ella said.
Keera nodded. “Okay.”
“I don’t know how much this might have played into it, or what you even remember, but back when you were in high school, Dad’s drinking got worse.”
“I remember. He showed up drunk at one of my chess tournaments. It’s the last time I played in a competitive tournament.”
“He’d also apparently shown up drunk at several school functions, and parents had complained to the administration. The principal called Mom and Dad in and told them going forward that they would have a zero-tolerance policy if Dad’s behavior continued. They said they would be asked to leave . . . you would be asked to leave the school.”
“I didn’t know this,” Keera said, thinking of her mother and how her father’s drinking had pained her. It must have been humiliating and embarrassing.
“Mom didn’t want you to know,” Ella said. “She didn’t want you to be embarrassed. Anyway, Dad stopped for a while, but as you know well, it’s never for good.”
“All too well.”
“The school had a casino night and auction to raise funds, and Dad got busy here at the office. He told Mom he’d meet her there. Apparently, he started drinking, and by the time he arrived at the school parking lot, he was drunk, smashed his car into the back of another car, and passed out.”
“Why didn’t I ever hear of this? Mom?”
“No. Because of John Bernstein.”
“What do you mean?”
“He, too, arrived late to the auction, and he saw and heard the crash. He went to Dad, who’d cut his head on the steering wheel, realized he was drunk, and got Dad in their car. He drove him home, got him bandaged, and put him in bed. When he went back to the school he spoke to Mom, who you can imagine was more than a little upset. She told John they were going to kick you out. John went to the parent who owned the other car, explained that Dad had been late and in a rush . . .”
“He left out the part about Dad being drunk.”
Ella nodded. “He said Dad had some bumps and bruises and had hit his head, and John had driven him home. He said Dad wanted the person who owned the car to know that he would pay for all damage. When the administration asked about it, suspecting Dad had been drunk, John told them the same story. And you got to stay at Forest Ridge.”
Keera was starting to understand. “Dad feels he owes John Bernstein.”
Ella nodded. “For you. Because of what John did. He saved you and Dad the embarrassment of being asked to leave the school.”
Keera sighed. “The firm isn’t in a position to be cutting anyone any deals, Ella. Not yet. We’re not out of the red.”
“I know. And I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll bill Jenna for your time today and moving forward. If Patsy wants to work for free, that’s his business.”
“It’s not his business, Ella. Not anymore. We’re all partners. It’s our business, and we can use the money this case is going to generate.”
“If Jenna is ultimately charged.”
“As Mom used to say, ‘Trouble seems to follow that girl.’”
“You think she’ll be charged.”
“I think the prosecuting attorney will proceed with caution, given what happened in Wei. He might take it to a grand jury first to be sure they have their ducks in a row before filing formal charges, but he’ll ultimately charge her.”
