The fire seemed localized around the Brickstone Mansion. Fire crews were called in. When they arrived, they realized the doors were all bolted shut on the outside. The building was “fully engaged.” When they attempted to put out the fire, the entire place exploded.
Debris fell all over that massive yard, but somehow it managed to miss outbuildings, vehicles, and people. Fortunately, the flaming debris did not ignite secondary fires anywhere on the property or on nearby properties.
But the mansion itself was a total loss.
By six A.M., it was clear to fire investigators that at least sixteen people had died inside that building-all of them unidentified. An accurate body count was, according to the report, TK.
Investigators found my client hiding between the shrubs and the stone wall-on the inside of the Brickstone property. He smelled of gasoline, had soot marks on his hands, and “couldn’t give a coherent account of where he had been or what had happened to him.”
Finally, when pushed, he said, “I had to do it,” and then clammed up.
The fire department called in the police, who arrested my client and brought him to the station.
I searched the file and found no mention of hospitals or trauma centers or counselors. I made a note of that too-because it was good for us.
Then I continued to read. At the police station, my client was offered breakfast, including coffee (they always make that sound like a service when, in fact, I think it part of the torture), which he declined. He was interrogated but refused to say much more than what he said to me, which was that no one would believe what actually happened.
Finally, the exasperated detectives figured they had enough to charge him and brought him into Judge Lewandowski, where the lucky defendant got introduced to me.
Which was going to make Mr. Palmer’s day-or, rather, his tomorrow. Because I was filing a motion first thing to have his case immediately thrown out for lack of evidence. And for severe mistreatment on the part of the police and fire departments. The man was covered in soot and gasoline. He needed to go to a hospital. He was probably disoriented when they found him.
There was no proof that he wasn’t in that house when it exploded and had somehow miraculously survived.
I was going to argue all of that in front of whatever sympathetic judge I could find (adding, of course, as much legal mumbo jumbo as I could assemble by nine A.M.).
I was pretty good at putting together case dismissal arguments, so good I wouldn’t need to do too much research on the case law. And I thought my client’s appearance (I’d put him back in his street clothes for court), his nonconfession, and one or two well timed coughs on his part would be enough to get him off.
I was in a great mood as I outlined the argument on my trusty laptop-until I got the harebrained idea to look up Palmer himself.
Palmer is an old and venerable name in Chicago. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Potter Palmer and his wife Bertha remade Chicago into the city it is today. In addition to building the Palmer House Hotel, they donated their private art collection to the Art Institute (those Monets? Bertha’s), redesigned downtown Chicago into the configuration it has today, and built the very first mansion on Chicago ’s Gold Coast.
In fact, it was their decision (rather, Bertha’s) to move north that segregated the rich from the rest of the plebs in Chi-town. If there hadn’t been Palmers in Chicago, there wouldn’t have been a Brickstone mansion to burn down, over a century later.
Richard Mark Harrison Palmer the Third was related to those Palmers but not on the right side of the sheets. From what I could gather, the first Richard Mark Harrison Palmer was really Richard Mark Harrison until he got someone to admit something and prove that there was Palmer blood in the Harrison bloodline.
That didn’t get Richard the First any money or any of the Palmer property (of which there is still a lot, at least according to city rumors), but it did give him some status among people who care about that kind of thing.
Which led to his son and his grandson getting the family name (and, apparently, the family snobbery), as well as inheriting the family business.
When Richard the First ran it, it was some kind of ghostly empire where a number of “real” mediums brought back the dead, if only for an evening and a bit of conversation. By the time Richard the Third inherited it, it had become a school for the psychic and those with magical abilities.
I didn’t make a note of that or any of the rest of this, particularly the files I found all over the internet about Richard the Third being some kind of magical hero-a man with strong abilities who wasn’t afraid to use them to fight the Forces of Darkness.
Stories like this-even though they came from places like the Star and the National Enquirer-would be enough to torpedo my case, if I couldn’t get the damn thing dismissed. At the moment, it wouldn’t negate my client’s mistreatment at the hands of the authorities, although it would explain that mistreatment.
No one likes a nutcase. Particularly a nutcase with delusions of grandeur.
And sure enough, the following morning, the prosecution brought it all up while we stood in front of the judge, arguing for dismissal. Palmer stood on the other side of me, reeking in his gasoline- and smoke-damaged clothing.
When we met just before court, I told him to look as pathetic as he could, which really wasn’t hard for him, considering the ill treatment he’d gotten in jail the night before. I’d also asked him to give me at least two deep tuberculoid coughs, one at the beginning of the hearing and the other somewhere in the middle.
His first cough, just after Judge Galica entered, was a tour-de-force of shudders and phlegm. It was so convincing that the judge himself asked Palmer if he needed water or a lozenge or-heaven forbid-a break. But Palmer managed to shake his head, and the prosecutor used that moment to shoot me an accusatory glare as if I’d been the one to do the coughing.
This time, the prosecutor wasn’t a baby. It was Rita Varona, one of the office’s very best. Normally she made me nervous.
This morning, she didn’t. They’d sent her because of the judge we’d been assigned.
Judge Joseph Galica had gone from law school to the Fair Housing Council and later became an advocate for the homeless before getting appointed to the bench. He was as liberal as possible, someone who knew the excesses of the Chicago police (some say because he was in the middle of the 1968 riots and got teargassed), and who actually believed that all defendants should be treated with respect.
Yes, I milked Galica’s attitude. But I did focus on the legal argument as well. I was brilliant, and was about to make my most important point when Palmer interrupted me with another prolonged coughing spell-this one requiring a glass of water from the bailiff.
That spell got Varona to butt in, saying what a fake Palmer was, both in his life and his profession, that he had a hatred of the Brickstones, and he’d told a number of people that the house on the coast was “evil” and had to be destroyed.
I carefully did not look at my client while these arguments were made. Varona talked a lot about my client’s beliefs, and finally she made the slip I was hoping for.
“He claims he’s a magician, Judge,” she said. “Once the arson squad’s reports come back, we’ll be able to show that he used the wonders of science-chemistry and physics-to explode that house as if he’d performed a spell on it.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked in my best snide manner.
Varona gave me a sideways glance. She’d hoped for that question. “To cement his claim that he’s the best wizard in the city of Chicago. To get rid of a family that he considered to be his enemies and to increase his business traffic and visibility at the same time.”