Act of God (12 page)

Corey continued blissfully on, seeing Elise for a few precious hours at night, occasionally enjoying the luxury of an uninterrupted
weekend, and even making time to participate in a number of activities involving his new church, until August when it was
time for him to go back on patrol.

His only contact with his bride during the next two and a half months was a weekly “family-gram,” containing a maximum of
fifty words—including salutation and signature—which was routinely read by his commanding officer, and to which he could not
reply. It was a most unsatisfactory form of communication, but given the highly sensitive and secret nature of his work, it
was all the Navy would allow.

He spent every wakeful minute of the tour dreaming of her, planning their future, reliving their nights and weekends together
in such intimate detail that his reaction made him blush, and sent him searching for a square foot of privacy. He returned
to shore at the end of October, eager to resume his storybook marriage with his very own princess.

On a Saturday afternoon in the middle of March, there was a knock on the front door of the house on West Dravus.

“Corey Dean Latham?” inquired one of two civilian men in dark suits, thrusting a badge in his face that identified him as
a police detective.

“Yes,” he replied, perplexed because he recognized both the badge and the man.

“You are under arrest for the bombing of Hill House,” the detective said, “and for the murder of one hundred and seventy-six
people.”

“What are you talking about?” Corey asked, looking from one to the other.

The two men ignored the question. Instead, one of them moved in and began to run his hands up and down Corey’s body, until
he had assured himself that his suspect carried no weapon. Then he pulled Corey’s arms behind his back and snapped handcuffs
around his wrists. The other detective pulled out a card and began to read aloud the most chilling words the young naval lieutenant
had ever heard.

“You have the right to remain silent…”

After a brief flurry over protecting one of its own, the United States Navy decided it wanted no part of the Hill House bombing.
Once the King County Prosecutor’s Office claimed jurisdiction in the matter, Bangor relieved the lieutenant of his duties,
put his career on hold, pending the outcome of the case, and retreated.

O
kay,” Paul Cotter said pleasantly. “You’ve met him, you’ve talked to him—what do you think?”

Always the consummate strategist and gentleman, he had not summoned Dana to his office first thing Tuesday morning, but had
given her until well after lunch to make a decision.

“I think there’s a pretty good case here for rush to judgment,” she replied automatically, the effects of her sleepless night
not evident. “When did the bombing happen, six, seven weeks ago? Hardly enough time to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. As far
as I can tell, Corey Latham is not a fanatic, and doesn’t appear to be emotionally unbalanced. In fact, he seemed perfectly
normal to me. Of course, I’m hardly an expert,” she hastened to add. “You can certainly have him examined by a psychiatrist,
if you like.”

“Would you put him on the stand?”

“You’d almost have to,” she responded.

“How would he do in front of a jury?”

“I think he’d do just fine. He’s a bright kid, good-looking,
clean-cut. He gives straightforward answers to direct questions, and comes across as quite sincere. Any mother’s dream.”

“Did you believe him?”

Dana had never let herself be much concerned about the guilt or innocence of a client, only with the merits of the particular
case. As her father had told her, from the time she was old enough to understand what it meant, a defense attorney’s job was
to defend, no matter what, and getting caught up in believing or disbelieving your client very often got in the way.

Of course, a death penalty case might be different; she didn’t know. It was true that Corey Latham was unlike any of the clients
she had so far come across in her career. He was young, and cooperative, and very vulnerable, and could easily be destroyed
by a system that more often than not didn’t really care. But that wasn’t going to be her problem.

“Let’s just say, if I were a member of the jury, I might be persuaded to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she replied.

“It’s odd,” Cotter mused, toggling a gold pen between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. “I’ve looked at the
file. What they’ve got may have been enough for a warrant, might even be enough for an indictment, but it’s far from being
conclusive. Yet everyone’s running around the prosecutor’s office like this thing was open and shut.”

“They’re under a lot of pressure.”

“Yes, but they need a conviction here. An acquittal on a case this big would give them a black eye they’d never get over.
If the kid’s got even half a story to tell, why are they so hot to trot?”

“I’m no psychic,” Dana said with a shrug. “But maybe they’re counting on the emotion of the situation to sway the jury. Or
maybe they figured they’d be going up against a public defender, and it would be a walk in the park. I don’t think they ever
expected Latham to come in with a top firm.”

“Or maybe we’re not totally in the loop?”

Dana shook her head. “I checked,” she replied. “Brian Ayres is the prosecutor assigned to this case. I know him. I used to
work with him. He doesn’t play games. Probably because he doesn’t have to. He’s been around awhile, and he’s one of their
best. No, for whatever reason, I think he thinks he sees a solid case.”

“And you see reasonable doubt?”

“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation. “So far as I can tell, the evidence is wholly circumstantial, which makes it wide
open to interpretation. Of course, it’s our job to see things that way, and their job to paint as convincing a picture as
possible. But I don’t see any walk in the park here, not at all.”

“Which brings us to the real issue, doesn’t it?” Cotter suggested, getting down to business. “You’ve spent some time with
the boy. You seem to like him. At the very least, you’re apparently impressed by what you saw. And you know how big this case
is, how important the right defense will be. We want you to lead it. We think you have what it takes. And hell, who knows—he
may even be on the level. So, what’s your answer?”

Dana had her answer ready, worked out during the early morning hours as she waited for dawn and Sam to rise. She was not going
to take the bait. She was not going to be maneuvered into defending Corey Latham. Whether she liked him or not was irrelevant.
Whether he was guilty or innocent was irrelevant. Despite having the full resources of the firm to back her up, as Cotter
had promised, she knew enough to know, even if he did not choose to acknowledge it, that she was in way over her head. It
was
her
reputation at stake here, not the firm’s. They could simply cut her loose if she became an embarrassment to them. No, it
was her career on the line, and the small matter of the client’s life.

She looked the managing partner directly in the eye, although she could not keep her stomach from churning. She had played
the good soldier, agreeing to go to the jail, meet with
Latham, and see him through the arraignment. But she had been resolved, even before she crossed Freedom Park, not to take
this case, whatever she might find when she got inside. And in all honesty, as much as she felt for the young man—and she
had to admit she did—nothing had transpired to alter that original decision. On the contrary, her encounter with Corey Latham
had only strengthened her resolve.

For at least half a dozen perfectly rational reasons, she knew this was not a case in which she wanted to be involved, and
not a cause with which she wanted to be associated. Certainly not as first chair, and not even as second, should it come to
that.

Her plan was quite simple: do the groundwork she had been asked to do, and then go back to Cotter, report her findings, and
sever all connection with the matter as soon as possible. That plan was still in place.

She opened her mouth to tell him. “I’ll take the case,” she heard herself say.

T
here were cases that made headlines, and there were cases that made lawyers. As low-profile as her experience at Cotter Boland
and Grace had been to date, Dana knew that the Latham case, whatever the outcome, was going to make both.

“I don’t have a clue what I’m doing,” she was confiding to her father over the telephone half an hour later. “I don’t know
if I’m thrilled or petrified.”

“A good measure of each would probably be appropriate,” Jefferson Reid advised from his waterfront office in Port Townsend.

“I feel like I’m three years old again,” she said, “and you’re about to throw me into Puget Sound.”

“I remember,” he replied with a chuckle. “And I also remember that you not only survived, you went on to lead the high school
swim team to the state finals three years in a row, and set four records along the way.”

“So I did,” she conceded. “But this is different.”

“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Because this time, it isn’t just about you.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Dana replied thoughtfully. “I didn’t want to take this case. I opened my mouth to say no, and yes popped out.
I didn’t want to like Corey Latham, but I couldn’t help myself—I do like him. The whole country is out to crucify him for
this bombing, whether he did it or not. I want to know that he’s got the right person in his corner. Someone who won’t just
go through the motions, but will go to bat for him, you know what I mean? But why do I think that has to be me?”

“I assume because it’s the only way you can make sure he gets the kind of representation you think he should get,” Reid suggested.

“But what if I’m letting my ego get in the way? I have no experience here. What if I’m not good enough?”

“You don’t need me to tell you you’re good enough,” he chided her. “Look into your heart, my girl. Ask yourself why you really
took this case.”

For a moment, there was silence at the Seattle end of the telephone, and the crafty, patient Port Townsend attorney leaned
back in his chair to wait. He had taught his daughter well, and had little doubt she would work her way through to the truth
of the matter. Without any help from him, she was perfectly capable of exploring her own motives and arriving at her own conclusions.

“It has nothing to do with any kind of commitment,” Dana said finally. “I just felt sorry for him.”

“That’s not an unreasonable place to start.”

“Guilty or innocent, he’s scared to death. I mean, here’s this guy who serves on a nuclear submarine, which is about as scary
as it can get, and he’s locked up safe and sound in the King County Jail, panicked to the point of paralysis. I just didn’t
think any of the other partners at the firm would know how to deal with that.”

“Then it would appear that the young man has himself the right attorney,” her father said.

Dana did not respond. On the surface, it might appear that her father was right. But then, there were things that he didn’t
know about.

“You’ve handled capital cases in your career, dad,” she said suddenly. “Legal shenanigans aside, if you thought there was
a chance your client was being railroaded, how did you deal with it?”

“Thankfully, that’s happened just once in my lifetime,” he replied. “And I must tell you, it didn’t end particularly well.
To this day, I believe he may have been innocent. I know he was railroaded. He was also convicted and executed, and I couldn’t
do anything to prevent it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“There are no easy answers in a death penalty case, and not many sleep-filled nights ahead of you,” he told her. “As I think
you’re about to discover, defending someone who is guilty is tough enough, for all the obvious reasons. But defending someone
who may be innocent can be terrifying.”

“We’d like an interview,” a reporter from the
Globe
said over the telephone, right in the middle of dinner. “We’re planning on a whole feature actually, in-depth, with pictures
of you at the office, and at home with the family. And anything else you might want to include.”