"Because Mel Tooley said it would be worth the trip. Really, really worth the trip. He's got something the PA has to hear in person. And nine p.m. with no reporters within a mile, that's the best time."
"Jimmy, I got a wife and a kid."
"I got a wife and two kids," Brand answered. He was smiling, though. He thought it was cute, the way Tommy sometimes acted as though he'd invented having a family. Brand had more faith in Mel Tooley than most people because Mel shared office space with one of Brand's older brothers.
"So background me," Tommy said. "This guy, the poisoner, what's his name again? Harnason?" Eighteen months ago, the head of the appellate section in the office, Grin Brieson, had begged Tommy to argue the case. He recalled that much and, naturally, that he had won despite Sabich's dissent. But the other details were gone in the wash of time.
"Right. He's been in the breeze for a year and a half now."
"I remember," said Tommy. "Sabich gave him bail." Last month, N. J. Koll had been running commercials calling Rusty out, ballyhooing the fact that the PAs had opposed bond for Harnason. Once Barbara croaked, N.J. had to take the high road and pull his stuff off the air, a relief to Molto. Tommy didn't like having his office in the middle of an election fight, especially that one.
"They grabbed Harnason yesterday in Coalville, burg three hundred miles south, on the other side of the state line, population twenty grand. That was Harnason's new homestead. He hung out a shingle as a lawyer, practicing under the name of Thorsen Skoglund."
"Asshole," said Molto. Tommy took a second to remember Thorsen, long gone now, an honorable man.
"So he's practicing law and on the side, get this, he's working as a children's party clown. You just can't make this stuff up. He was bringing in more as a clown than a lawyer, which may tell you something, but it was all going pretty good until his drinking problem got the better of him and he caught a DUI. The print comparison came back from the FBI about two hours after he had bonded out. Harnason apparently thought it was still the old days when it would have taken weeks. He was at home packing when the local sheriff came for him with a SWAT team."
Mel Tooley had waived extradition and the sheriff in Coalville had driven Harnason back to the Tri-Cities himself. Not a lot of bail-jumping murder fugitives were picked up in Coalville. The sheriff would be talking about Harnason the rest of his life. So far, Harnason had not been to court, and the press had no idea he was in custody again, but the story would probably get out. All in all, that would be good news for Rusty. When Koll's ads went up again, he wouldn't be able to wave his arms around about the madman Sabich had set free, who was still on the loose.
By now, Tommy and Brand had been buzzed through the two sets of massive iron bars, a sort of air lock between captivity and freedom, and were escorted by a corrections officer named Sullivan back to the interview rooms. Sullivan knocked on a white door and Tooley came out into the narrow corridor. Mel, usually a bulbous fashion plate, was in civvies. He'd been gardening, apparently, when Harnason had hit town about five p.m. There was dirt under Mel's polished fingernails and on his jeans. It took Tommy a second to realize that in the rush, Tooley had forgotten his toup. The truth was he looked better without it, but Tommy decided to spare Mel that opinion.
Tooley did the usual bowing and scraping because the almighty PA had come out at night.
"I love you, too, Mel," said Tommy. "What's the scoop?"
"Okay, this is strictly hypothetical," said Mel, lowering his voice. In the jail, you never knew what side anybody was playing on. Some of the COs worked for the gangs, some were on a reporter's pad. Tooley crept close enough that you would think he was cozying up for a kiss. "But if you were to ask Mr. Harnason why he decided to make a run for it, he would tell you he had advance word of the appellate court's decision."
"How?"
"That's the good part," said Mel. "The chief judge told him."
Tommy felt as though he'd been hit in the head with a board. He couldn't imagine this. Rusty had a very hard stick up his ass as a judge.
"Sabich?" Tommy asked.
"Yep."
"Why?"
"It's a pretty strange conversation. You'll want to hear it yourself. There's some juice here. I mean," said Mel, "at a minimum you're going to bounce him off the supreme court with this. At a minimum. You may even make him an aider and abettor on the bond jump. And criminal contempt. For violating the rules of his own court."
Mel was like everyone else who thought Tommy would give up a nut to get Rusty again. The PA laughed out loud instead.
"With Harnason as the only witness? A one-on-one between a convicted murderer and the chief judge of the court of appeals? And me as the prosecutor?" Worse, the way this tale would dovetail with Koll's commercials, everyone would ridicule Tommy as N.J.'s gullible stooge.
Mel had meaty cheeks on which the acne scars caught the shadows.
"There's another witness," Tooley said quietly. "He told somebody about the conversation at the time."
"Who?"
Mel smiled in his lopsided way. He had never been able to raise the right side of his face.
"I'll have to assert the attorney-client privilege at the moment."
There's a dream team, Tommy thought. A scumbag murderer and a scumbag lawyer. Tooley was probably dirty on this whole thing and had helped Harnason light out for the wilderness. But Mel was Mel. He'd make sure Harnason forgot about that part, and Tooley would clean up fine on the stand. He knew how to fool a jury. He'd been doing it for close to forty years.
"We gotta hear this from your guy," Tommy told him. "No front-side deal. We like what he's saying, we can talk. Call it a proffer. Hypothetical. Whatever the frig you wanna call it, so we can't use it against him."
After a second with his client, Tooley waved Brand and Molto into the attorney room. It was no more than eight-by-ten, whitewashed, although black streaks appeared irregularly up the wall. Molto preferred not to think about how the heel marks got there. As for the prisoner, John Harnason did not look particularly well. He'd shaved his mustache and let his hair go gray when he skipped, and he'd picked up weight. He sat in his optic orange jumpsuit, his hands manacled and his legs in irons, both sets of restraints chained to a steel loop embedded in the floor. The pale shadow of the watch they had taken from him when he was captured was still visible amid the strawberry blond thatch on his forearm, and he looked around anxiously, pivoting his head the full 180 every few seconds. He'd been in the county jail only a few hours but was already habitually on the lookout for whatever might be coming from behind. Screw all that stuff with waterboarding and foreign rendition, Tommy thought. They should just dump al-Qaeda in the Kindle County Jail overnight. You'd know where Osama was in the morning.
Tommy decided to question Harnason himself. He started by asking when he'd begun planning to run.
"I just couldn't face going back, once I knew I was going to lose the appeal. Before that, I was really thinking we would win. That's what Mel thought."
Tooley did not quite dare raise his eyes to Tommy's. Winning appeals was a rarity for a defense lawyer. Tooley had been setting up his client for another ten grand for a cert petition to the state supreme court.