“Let’s take a ten-minute recess.”
Nanston rose and walked down the two steps from the bench and into her chambers, followed by her staff.
Blaine stepped toward the low barrier behind which Donnally stood.
“What’s she doing?” Donnally asked.
“I don’t know, but I sure hate it when judges get ideas on their own. They just screw things up and make unnecessary work for both sides.”
They looked over at Perkins to gauge whether she’d divined what the judge was thinking. She rolled her eyes and walked over.
“What wheel is the judge trying to reinvent this time?” Perkins asked.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Blaine said, then looked back and forth between Perkins and Donnally. “You two know each other?”
“No,” Donnally said, reaching out his hand. It annoyed him that she seemed so likable.
Perkins gave it a firm shake, then asked, “What brought you into this?”
Donnally shrugged and flipped the question back. “I was wondering the same thing about you.”
“I’m surprised to be here.” Perkins smiled. “The Albert Hale Foundation’s choice in causes is sometimes rather bizarre.”
Donnally smiled back. “I take it you got your fee up front?”
“We gave them a discount rate. Half price. A case this big fulfills most of the firm’s pro bono obligations for the year.” She glanced over at her two legal assistants sitting at the defense table. “And it gives the kids some experience.”
“I don’t understand why Albert Hale picked Brown,” Donnally said. “I did some research. On crime issues, the foundation is usually on the other side.”
“I think you may be looking at this backwards. It may not be about Brown being some kind of victim, but”-Perkins glanced at Blaine-“more about embarrassing the prosecution. The theme that runs through most of their causes is government incompetence and weakness.”
Blaine smirked. “So they try to prove their point by helping a murderer go free? Hale must be nuts.”
“I know it’s crazy,” Perkins said. “We tried to explain it to him-”
“To Hale personally?” Blaine asked.
Perkins shook her head. “I’m not sure anyone has actually seen Hale in years. He put millions of dollars into the foundation, then disappeared from public view.”
“But you think he remains the invisible hand?”
Perkins nodded. “The president of the foundation says Hale is on a mission he’s not sure even Hale comprehends.” She looked at Donnally. “Did you see that environmentalist on television the other day, the idiot who said he’d give his life to save a damn tree frog?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s Hale, except his tree frog today is a lunatic.”
Donnally rotated his thumb toward Brown sitting hunched over and rocking back and forth at the defense table.
“You sure you want to refer to your client as a lunatic?”
Perkins smiled again. “As often as I can.” She winked. “Maybe I’ll even convince myself.”
The bailiff’s “All rise” stifled the courtroom conversations.
Donnally returned to his seat while Blaine and Perkins walked back to the counsel tables.
Judge Nanston was on the bench when Donnally looked up.
Nanston’s gaze shifted back and forth between Perkins and Blaine, then she took off her reading glasses.
“Ms. Perkins, would you outline for me the materials the prosecutor has given to you in discovery?”
Perkins squinted up at Nanston. “I’m not sure why you want-”
“You don’t have to be sure why I want to know.”
Perkins turned to her cocounsel, Doris Tevenian, who searched through a banker’s box, then handed her a list. Perkins showed it to Blaine, then read off the items.
“We have the original crime scene reports, witness statements, and forensic analyses. A two-page psych report from Dr. Sherwyn when the defendant was taken for the evaluation on the day of his arrest. We have the reports of the psychiatrists from his first competency hearing-”
“Do those address his mental history?” Nanston asked.
“Only tangentially, Your Honor.”
“Have you contacted the doctors to determine whether they retained the defendant’s records?”
Perkins looked at Blaine.
“Both are deceased and their files have been destroyed,” Blaine said.
“Anything else, Ms. Perkins?”
Perkins leaned down close to Tevenian and whispered a few words. Tevenian pointed toward the bench. Perkins glanced at Blaine, then straightened up.
“May we approach, Your Honor?”
“Maybe we better do this in chambers.”
Chapter 17
“W hat do you mean the public defender lost the rest of their file?” Nanston’s voice rose in anger. “I worked in that office for fourteen years. I know exactly what their procedures are. Files don’t get lost.”
Blaine had asked Donnally to come along and no one had objected. He leaned against the wall by the door, understanding that he had no more status in the meeting than the coatrack in the corner.
Perkins shrugged. “That’s what they’re telling me.”
Nanston searched the county directory on her computer, then reached for the telephone.
Five minutes later the chief public defender, Izel McAdam, stood before her, alternating between fidgeting with the pendant hanging from a chain around her neck and brushing away strands of gray hair from in front of her eyes.
Behind her lurked the chief assistant, bearing what Donnally had come to recognize during his years in the criminal justice system as the cowering countenance of a bureaucrat who’d been promoted far beyond his competence.
The judge looked at the two, her lips thin, her expression communicating bewilderment at how an office in which she’d worked for over a decade and had come to love had fallen into the hands of buffoons.
“Your Honor,” McAdam said, “our office handles sixty thousand cases a year. More than a million since Mr. Brown was arrested. One case among all of those-”
“This isn’t a lottery, Izel. This is a homicide.”
McAdam reddened. “But-”
Nanston held up her finger, then looked at Blaine.
“Our file is intact,” Blaine said. “And we’ve turned over everything except our work product.”
Blaine then glanced over at Donnally as if for confirmation, but he didn’t react. He had no way of knowing what Blaine had handed over to the defense. He only knew what he had given Blaine.
“I’ll need your assurance that you aren’t using an overly broad definition of what that is,” Nanston said.
“The only thing we didn’t turn over is some legal research and my own handwritten notes.”
“What about psych records you collected?”
“The burden wasn’t on us. It was on the public defender, so we didn’t subpoena any. If the defendant had been found competent to stand trial and had put on an insanity defense then, of course, we would’ve gathered a war chest of them.”
Nanston looked at McAdam. “When was the last time you’re certain the file was in your possession?”
McAdam glanced at her chief assistant. It seemed to Donnally as though she was trying to slough off the responsibility onto someone who didn’t seem capable of even serving as a fall guy.
When he didn’t respond to the judge’s question, McAdam said, “About fifteen years ago. That’s when the defendant was transferred into the civil system and we withdrew from the case.”
Nanston turned to Blaine. “When was the last time the developmental center submitted a report regarding Mr. Brown’s progress toward the restoration of his competency?”
“I haven’t looked at the court file,” Blaine said, “but the last report our office received was twelve years ago.”
Nanston glanced back and forth between Blaine and McAdam, her eyebrows furrowed.
“You mean no one in your office or in the public defender’s office has paid any attention at all to this case in over a decade?”
Blaine and McAdam answered with silence.