“You weren’t so worried about conflicts of interest when you helped broker a deal for Myers to pay off Leon Symanski to give us a false confession.”
Celina had walked them through each step in the sequence of events. After the drug bust at Pulse, Rodriguez had phoned his girlfriend from the jail with the bad news. Distribution of an eight-ball of meth. With his record, he wouldn’t be out until their kid was in first grade. She spent the night crying on her father’s sofa.
By dawn, Leon had conjured up a way to solve his daughter’s problems. He called Nick Warden’s lawyer and proposed a deal. Nick could give the government what they wanted. He could flip on his friend with no remorse, because the so-called real killer would be caught within days. In return, Symanski needed a hundred grand and a walk for the father of his grandchild.
Ellie still didn’t understand how a daughter could allow her father to make that kind of a sacrifice, but she’d long ago ceased trying to understand the inner workings of other families.
“I didn’t broker anything,” Parker said. “I have an obligation to my client to convey communications made to me in the scope of my representation of him.”
“Not when those communications make you a coconspirator,” Donovan said.
“I had no knowledge of the agreement between my client and Rodriguez. You offered my client a cooperation deal, and he was willing to take it. It is not a lawyer’s responsibility to probe a client’s motivations.”
“Give me a break,” Donovan said. “The handover went down in this very office.”
According to Celina, the plan had been her father’s idea, but Parker had overseen the details of its execution. Once the charges against Rodriguez were dismissed and he was freed from custody, he had gone directly from the jail to Parker’s office. Jake Myers had been waiting for him with a hundred thousand dollars in casino chips and a red chandelier earring for Symanski to plant in his house.
“I am not aware of that,” she said, shaking her head. “As you already said, I went to college with Jake. He came here to tell me he wasn’t involved in that girl’s death. Jaime Rodriguez showed up-uninvited, without an appointment-to thank me for getting the deal that he benefited from. If they passed something between them when I stepped out of the office-”
Donovan didn’t bother masking his ridicule. “Are you really ready to sell that story to the partners around here?” He glanced around Parker’s office. “Because I’m picturing you on the street within an hour, juggling all of your personal belongings in a cardboard box, with an ethics complaint brought by this firm against you with the bar. Pushing the boundaries for your white-collar clients is one thing in a place like this, but it won’t seem so hunky-dory when it’s a murder case at stake. The only way to distance yourself from the dirty laundry is to throw it out yourself. They’ll make sure you’re disbarred.”
Parker held Donovan’s stare. She broke first.
“What do you want?”
“I want Jake Myers to take a polygraph.”
“And how am I supposed to get in touch with Jake?”
Once Parker had agreed to represent Warden, no court in America would have allowed her to simultaneously represent Jake Myers. Any attempt by Parker to contact Myers directly would show up in the jail’s records, and she’d then have to explain to Willie Wells why she was contacting his client without his consent.
“You talk to Nick Warden,” Donovan explained. “He visits Jake in custody. Tells him there’s a problem. Convinces him to take the polygraph.”
“As long as you understand he can’t make Jake do anything. And I can’t make Nick do anything.”
“I understand.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll call him now. This all stays in this room? The firm doesn’t hear about any of it?”
“You have my word,” Donovan said.
Ellie and Rogan nodded in silent agreement.
For the second time in a week in this same office, a conspiracy had been struck. The first had been to concoct a lie. Now they were conspiring to get the truth.
CHAPTER 41
FIVE MINUTES AFTER Nick Warden visited Jake Myers in custody, Myers called Willie Wells and fired him as his attorney. His next call was to Susan Parker, seeking her representation for the purpose of contacting Simon Knight and offering to take a polygraph examination to clear his name. By the time that call came in, Knight had already lined up the polygrapher.
They all knew, of course, that the so-called lie detecting machine was far less reliable than its name might suggest. The machines were only as good as their operators and, even at their best, were not entirely accurate. But the intangible value of a polygraph transcended the questionable science.
A defendant’s willingness to sit for one said something in itself, especially if he managed to make it through an entire examination without breaking into a spontaneous confession. And a good polygrapher’s opinion, while no guarantee, would do a lot to confirm the feeling in Ellie’s gut that Jake Myers-although guilty of other wrongs-was no murderer.
The process was painstaking, with the most important components transpiring before Myers was even hooked up to the machine. It started with an open-ended debriefing in which Myers was free to state his version of the facts-at his pace, in his own words. Then he was subjected to detailed questioning from Ellie, Rogan, and Donovan, until all three were satisfied they had asked every possible question that might trip Myers up.
Only after the conversation had been exhausted did the polygrapher hook Myers up to the instruments that would measure his physiological responses during innocuous inquiries such as “Is your name Jake Myers?” and money questions like “Did you cause the death of Chelsea Hart?” By the time the polygrapher announced that he had detected no signs of deception, Ellie could already replay the scene between Chelsea Hart and Jake Myers in her head.
“Holy shit. What the fuck did you give me?”
When Chelsea had snorted the line of whatever Jake had passed her in the VIP lounge, she had assumed it was cocaine. She’d tried it twice before and thought she could handle it, but tonight something was different. Whatever the powder had been, Jake and his friend had done a lot more of it than she had.
“Just a little speed. It’s great for a second wind.” It was meth, actually, but he knew a lot of girls freaked out about the name.
Jake placed his arms around Chelsea’s waist and pulled her closer on the dance floor. She treated him to a little grind and didn’t object when he slipped his hands beneath the back of her shirt. His palms felt good against her bare skin, but she knew it was time for her to wrap things up before they went too far. She had promised Stefanie she’d be just behind them, and she knew what a worrywart her friend could be.