I call Booker at the office and explain that a divorce client of mine killed her husband last night, but she’s really a sweet girl and I want her out of jail. I need his help. Marvin Shankle’s brother is a criminal court judge, and I want him to either release her on recognizance or set a ridiculously low bond.
“You’ve gone from a fifty-million-dollar verdict to a sleazy divorce case?” Booker asks jokingly.
I manage a laugh. If he only knew.
Marvin Shankle is out of town, but Booker promises to start making calls. I leave the office at eight-thirty and speed toward downtown. Throughout the night, I’ve tried to avoid the thought of Kelly in a jail cell.
I enter the Shelby County Justice Complex and go straight for the office of Lonnie Shankle. I’m greeted with the news that Judge Shankle, like his brother, is out of town, and won’t return until late afternoon. I make a few phone calls and try to locate Kelly’s paperwork. She was just one of dozens arrested last night, and I’m sure her file is still at the police station.
I meet Deck at nine-thirty in the lobby. He has the arrest records. I send him to the police station to locate her file.
The Shelby County District Attorney’s office is on the third floor of the complex. It has over seventy prosecutors in five divisions. Domestic Abuse has only two, Morgan Wilson and another woman. Fortunately, Morgan Wilson is in her office, it’s just a matter of getting back there. I flirt with the receptionist for thirty minutes, and to my surprise, it works.
Morgan Wilson is a stunning woman of about forty. She has a firm handshake and a smile that says, “I’m busy as hell. Get on with it.” Her office is impossibly stacked with files, but very neat and organized. I get tired just looking at all this work to be done. We take our seats, then, it hits her.
“The fifty-million-dollar guy?” she says, with a much different smile now.
“That’s me.” I shrug. It was just another day’s work.
“Congratulations.” She’s visibly impressed. Ah, the price of fame. I suspect she’s doing what every other lawyer is doing — calculating one third of fifty million.
She earns forty thousand a year max, so she wants to talk about my good fortune. I give a brief review of the trial and what it was like when I heard the verdict. I wrap it up quickly, then tell her why I’m here.
She’s a thorough listener, and takes lots of notes. I hand her copies of the current divorce file, the old one and the records of Cliff’s three arrests for beating his wife. I promise to have Kelly’s medical records by the end of the day. I describe the injuries left by a few of the worst beatings.
Virtually all of these files around me involve men who’ve beaten their wives, children or girlfriends, so it’s easy to predict whose side Morgan is on. “That poor kid,” she says, and she ain’t talking about Cliff.
“How big is she?” she asks.
“Five-five or so. A hundred-ten pounds dripping wet.”
“How’d she beat him to death?” Her tone is almost in awe, not the least bit accusatory.
“She was scared. He was drunk. Somehow she got her hands on the bat.”
“Good for her,” she says, and goose bumps cover my thighs. This is the prosecutor!
“I’d love to get her out of jail,” I say.
“I need to get the file and review it. I’ll call the bail clerk and tell him we have no objection to a low bond. Where’s she living?”
“She’s in a shelter, one of those underground homes with no names.”
“I know them well. They’re really quite useful.”
“She’s safe there, but the poor kid’s in jail right now, and she’s still black and blue from the last beating.”
Morgan waves at the files surrounding us. “That’s my life.”
We agree to meet at nine tomorrow morning.
Deck, Butch and I meet at the office for a sandwich and to plot our next moves. Butch knocked on every door of every apartment near the Rikers’, and found only one person who might’ve heard something crash. She lives directly above, and I doubt if she could see me exit the apartment. I suspect what she heard was the column disintegrate when the Babe swung and missed with strike one. The cops have not talked to her. Butch was at the complex for three hours and saw no signs of police activity. The apartment is locked and sealed, and seems to be drawing a crowd. At one point, two large young men who appeared to be related to Cliff were joined by a truckload of boys from work, and the group stood beyond the police tape, staring at the apartment door, cursing and vowing revenge. It was a rough-looking bunch, Butch assures me.
He’s also lined up a bail bondsman, a friend of his who’ll do us a favor and write the bond for only five percent as opposed to the customary ten. This will save me some money.
Deck’s spent most of the morning at the police station getting arrest records and tracking Kelly’s paperwork. He and Smotherton are getting along well, primarily because Deck is professing an extreme dislike for lawyers. He’s just an investigator now, far from being a paralawyer. Interestingly, Smotherton reported that by mid-morning, they were receiving death threats against Kelly.
I decide to go to the jail to check on her. Deck will find an available judge to set her bond. Butch will be ready with his bondsman. As we’re leaving the office, the phone rings. Deck grabs it and gives it to me.
It’s Peter Corsa, Jackie Lemancyzk’s lawyer in Cleveland. I last talked to him after her testimony, a conversation in which I thanked him profusely. He told me at that time that he was just days away from filing suit himself.
Corsa congratulates me on the verdict, says it was big news in the Sunday paper up there. My fame is spreading. He then tells me that some weird stuff is happening at Great Benefit. The FBI, working in conjunction with the Ohio Attorney General and the state Department of Insurance, raided the corporate offices this morning and started removing records. With the exception of the computer analysts in accounting, all the employees were sent home and told not to come back for two days. According to a recent newspaper story, PinnConn, the parent company, has defaulted on some bonds and has been laying off loads of employees.
There’s not much I can say. I killed a man eighteen hours ago, and it’s hard to concentrate on unrelated matters. We chat. I thank him. He promises to keep me posted.
It takes an hour and a half to find Kelly somewhere back in the maze and bring her into the visitor’s room. We sit on opposite sides of a glass square and talk through telephones. She tells me I look tired. I tell her she looks great. She’s in a cell by herself, and safe, but it’s noisy and she can’t sleep. She really wants to get out. I tell her I’m doing all I can. I tell her about my visit with Morgan Wilson. I explain how bail works. I do not mention the death threats.
We have so much to talk about, but not here.
After we say good-bye, and as I’m leaving the visitor’s room, a uniformed jailer calls my name. She asks if I’m the lawyer for Kelly Riker, then she hands me a printout. “It’s our phone records. We’ve had four calls about that girl in the past two hours.”
I can’t read the damned printout. “What kind of calls?”
“Death threats. From some crazy people.”
Judge Lonnie Shankle arrives at his office at three-thirty, and Deck and I are waiting. He has a hundred things to do, but Booker has called and schmoozed with the judge’s secretary, so the wheels are greased. I give the judge a flurry of paperwork, a five-minute history of the case and finish with the plea for a low bail because I, the lawyer, will be required to post it. Shankle sets the bond at ten thousand dollars. We thank him and leave.