“Certainly. But could an official adversary ask a question or two of an investigation-related nature?"
“Shoot."
“Did you come to Ukie or did he call you?"
“Pardon me?"
“Who came to whom first? About representing him? Did your office approach him or did he seek you out? I'm curious for a reason."
“Neither, actually. His brother called us from Houston. He's quite concerned about him, naturally, and Ukie had never so much as contacted him about all this. He read about it in the papers. Called the homicide squad here, got a lot of generalities that he thought were highly suspect considering that he gave them a reference in the Houston PD to check him out with. Anyway—to cut through—he was upset and his contact with the police worried him as much as the headlines had, and he called around and one of the firms in Houston put him in touch with us."
“Ukie's brother have that kind of money he can afford you folks?” Eichord kept a smile in his voice.
“As a matter of fact I don't think our fee is going to be a severe problem for Mr. Hackabee. He has a big, direct-mail firm. Far from indigent. Anything else?"
“I guess we can assume there's a book and movie, after all,” Eichord said, hoping she wouldn't slam down the phone.
“WHAT? Aren't you familiar with the Son of Sam law, Mr. Eichord?” She sounded exasperated at his ignorance.
“Uh,” he stalled, “well—"
“The legislature wrote it out East in response to the outraged public response to a killer making a profit off a work related to his or her commission of homicides. The Son of Sam law makes it impossible for a perpetrator to benefit financially from such a work. All proceeds must accrue to the relatives of the victims. Surely you must have heard of this?"
He could feel himself sinking again. Glad he was on the telephone so she wouldn't see his crimson blush as she began taking him through the intricacies of the law and talking about what legislatures around the country had done and one thing and another. He forced himself to listen. He could hear the disdain in her voice. Noel of his dreams. She obviously wasn't too impressed with the fuzz to begin with but, if THIS was Dallas’ idea of a serial murder expert—he sunk further as he mentally lashed himself.
“The one thing I still don't understand is why would someone of your fame be willing to take such a case? Mind commenting on that?"
“Someone of my fame? What does that have to do with anything?"
“Why would you wish to lend your well-known name and image to an individual who is a self-confessed mass slayer? Someone with a situation as cut-and-dried as this one is."
“First off, I'd disagree that it's all that cut-and-dried. Second, I've been drawn to the case since I first saw a story about it on the evening newscast. I'm fascinated and repelled naturally at the same time. Fascinated by certain legal aspects."
“But Ukie has given us dozens of bodies. What sort of a defense is even worth considering? I mean, I'm not asking you if you're going to plead him insane but—"
“Now we're getting back to that adversarial position,” she said.
“And certainly that has to be respected but in a GENERAL way."
“In a general way I say there is an outside chance he's not guilty. Did you ever th—"
“Oh, come on, Miss Collier, gimme a break. How can you even say he might not be the killer?"
“Not to try the case over the phone,” she sighed and didn't try to cover it, “but how much have you really investigated all the possibilities of accomplices?"
“We're looking into that all the time."
“You may be looking into it all the time but how MUCH time or manpower can you people devote to those avenues? There are only so many pieces in a pie. My point is, you have—oh, for example—this incontrovertible evidence. So circumstantial it's pathetic. A witness whom I could DESTROY on the stand—just to give you random examples. You've got a crime profile we can have a field day with in any court in the land.
“The bodies of victims. That's what you have and they are irrefutable, sure, and no question he knew WHERE they were but who says he put them there? Who's to say he's the one who killed them? What if—"
“All that's well and good but what is the attraction to you personally? Why would you want to get involved in something like this?"
“I'm just drawn to it, Mr. Eichord. Professionally there's something compelling about the case. It is just the way it all fell together. Almost nothing to do with the suspect you have in custody. Nothing fits. Nothing's right."
“I can't argue that."
“Also, what if William Hackabee is insane?"
“He should still suck gas—he's a mass killer. Or let's abolish capital offenses for capital crimes."
“Just to save some time let's leave it like I said before—let's not try the case on the telephone."
“Just to save us some time—you're going to plead him insane, right? I mean, that's the reason for the verbal smoke screens and all the goofy word games. He's just messing with everybody's head—right?—laying foundation for you, eh?"
“Come on.” She laughed. “You could say that about the whole legal system.” A B-I-G sigh again. Almost a moan.
“Huh?"
“Sure. The whole game. It's all a headfuck if you want to look at it like that."
He couldn't believe she'd said the word. “A headfuck,” he repeated with a sigh.
“That's the name of the game. Sorry, got another call.” And the line to Jones, Seleska, Beagle, Legal, and Eagle went dead as last New Year's bubbly. She'd named the tunes, all right. This whole enchilada had turned out to be a total, class-A mind-raper from the git-go.
Jack hung up the chunk of plastic he was clinging to and looked over at Wally Michaels, who raised his eyebrows in question.
“Batshit, catshit, ratshit."
Wally Michaels looked at him sympathetically. It was good to see the kid, which is still how Jack thought of him. He'd been one of those at Quantico that were a little more than just nameless young faces. He was one who'd shown a talent for it. Jack had no sense of being part of the Big D Police Department in the way he had in other cities. He'd been injected into a case that already appeared solved. And a PD under siege is like nothing else.
Ever since the world had watched Jack Ruby, the perennial “buff” of cop buffs, waltz up to the world's most infamous murder suspect and gun him down in front of all the shields and scribes and cameras that could be crammed into a hallway, the cop shop had tightened its belt in the security department. And this racial flare-up and the problems with community relations in general had only made a bad situation worse. Jack assumed it was akin to the situation in Atlanta, although MCTF had never reached out for him on that one. You had a scared community, polarized and angered by a parallel sequence of unrelated events, and a kind of dingy rep that still lingered from the 60s. Add it all up and it made a volatile, unfriendly mix.
“Check it out,” Michaels said and laid a file story in front of him. It was a pictorial piece on Noel Collier's spa. It had a waterfall in it. “Pro bonos didn't pay for that baby.” They talked about bad lawyers. About the public-defender system. They talked about good lawyers. There were good, young moral attorneys out there. Some. A few.
It made Eichord think about what he'd said to Noel.
“I asked her what sort of a defense would be worth considering, it being so apparently dead-bang. Nothing but guilty. But she shot that right down. Like pleading insanity might not be the route she'd go, which frankly surprised the hell out of me. I thought we had everything but the smoking gun—I mean, wow, that's a lot of info about bodies."