Rough Justice

Synopsis:

Criminal lawyer Marta Richter is hours away from winning an acquittal for her client, millionaire businessman Elliot Steere, on trial for the murder of a homeless man who had tried to carjack him. But as the jury begins deliberations, Marta discovers the chilling truth about her client’s innocence. Taking justice into her own hands, she furiously sets out to prove the truth, with the help of two young associates. In an excruciating game of beat-the-clock with both the jury and the worst blizzard to hit Philadelphia in decades, Marta will learn that the search for justice isn't only rough — it can also be deadly.

ROUGH JUSTICE
Lisa Scottoline

For the Truly Awesome Molly Friedrich,
and for Peter and Kiki

Undefeatability lies with ourselves.

— Sun-Tzu

I
t started with a slip of the tongue. At first, Marta Richter thought she’d misunderstood him. She felt exhausted after the two-month murder trial and couldn’t always hear her client through the thick bulletproof window. “You mean you struggled in
his
grasp,” Marta corrected.

Elliot Steere didn’t reply, but brushed ash from his chair on the defendant’s side of the window. In his charcoal Brioni suit and a white shirt with a cutaway collar, Steere looked incongruous but not uncomfortable in the jailhouse setting. The businessman’s cool was the stuff of tabloid legend. The tabs reported that on the night Steere had been arrested for murder, he’d demanded only one phone call. To his stockbroker. “That’s what I said,” Steere answered after a moment. “I struggled in his grasp.”

“No, you said he struggled in
your
grasp. It was self-defense, not murder. You were struggling, not him.”

A faint smile flickered across Steere’s strong mouth. He had a finely boned nose, flat brown eyes, and suspiciously few crow’s feet for a real estate developer. In magazine photos Steere looked attractive, but the fluorescent lights of the interview room hollowed his cheeks and dulled his sandy hair. “What’s the point? The trial’s over, the jury’s out. It doesn’t matter anymore who was struggling with who. Whom.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marta asked. She didn’t want him to play word games, she wanted him to praise her brilliant defense. It was the case of her career, and Steere’s acquittal was in the bag. “Of course it matters.”

“Why? What if it wasn’t self-defense? What if I murdered him like the D.A. said? So what?”

Marta blinked, irritated. “But that’s not the way it happened. He was trying to hijack your car. He attacked you with a knife. He threatened to kill you. You shot him in self-defense.”

“In the back of the head?”

“There was a struggle. You had your gun and you fired.” Without realizing it, Marta was repeating the words of her closing argument. The jury had adjourned to deliberate only minutes earlier. “You panicked, in fear of your life.”

“You really bought that?” Steere crossed one long leg over the other and a triangle of tailored pant flopped over with a fine, pressed crease. “ ‘In fear of my life’? I stole that line from a cop show, the one where everybody smokes. You know the show?”

Marta’s mouth went dry. She didn’t watch TV even when she was on, another television lawyer with wide-set blue eyes and chin-length hair highlighted blond. A hardness around her eyes and a softness under her chin told the viewers she wasn’t thirty anymore. Still Marta looked good on the tube and knew how to handle herself; explain the defense in a sound bite and bicker with the prosecutor. Wrap it up with wit. Smile for the beauty shot. “What is this, a joke? What’s TV have to do with anything?”

“Everything. My story, my defense, was fiction. Rich white guy carjacked by poor black guy. White guy has registered Glock for protection. Black guy has X-Acto knife. Not a good match.” Steere eased back into his chair. “The jury bought it because it was what they expected, what they see on TV.”

Marta’s lips parted in disbelief. The news struck like an assault, stunning and violent. Her mind reeled. Her face felt hot. She braced her manicured fingers against the cold aluminum ledge and fought for her bearings. “What are you saying?”

“I’m guilty as sin, dear.” Steere’s gaze was point-blank and his voice tinny as it passed through a thin metal grate under the bulletproof window. The cinder-block walls of the interview room, lacquered calcium white, seemed suddenly to be closing in on Marta.

“But he slashed your cheek with the knife,” she said, uncomprehending.

“He was dead at the time. I held his hand, with the knife in it.”

“They found fibers from your tux on his hands and clothes.”

“There was a struggle. He put up a fight. Mostly begging, boohooing like a little girl.”

Marta’s stomach turned over. “Tell me the whole story. The truth.”

“What’s to tell? A bum came at me when I stopped at the red light. He was waving a knife, drunk, screaming I should give up the car. Like I would. A new SL600 convertible. Wet dream of a car.” Steere shook his head in momentary admiration. “So I grabbed my gun, got out of the car, and shot him in the head. I called the cops from the cell phone.”

Marta crossed her arms across her chest. You could call it a hug but that wasn’t how she thought of it. She’d heard confessions like this from other clients, and though Steere didn’t look like them, he sounded like them. They all had the urge to brag, to prove how smart they were and what they could get away with. Marta had known Steere was tough-minded; she hadn’t guessed he was inhuman. “You’re a murderer,” she said.

“No, I’m a problem-solver. I saw some garbage and took it out. The man was a derelict, worthless. He didn’t work, he didn’t produce. He didn’t own anything. Fuck, he didn’t even live anywhere. This time he picked the wrong guy. End of story.”

“Just like that?”

“Come on, Marta. The man was
useless
. He didn’t even know how to handle the fucking knife.” Steere chuckled. “You did it better during the demonstration, when you held it under your chin. Did you see the jury? The front row almost fainted.”

Marta felt a twinge as she flashed on the jurors, their faces upturned like kindergartners. She’d hired the requisite raft of jury consultants but relied on her own instincts and experience to pick the panel, ending up with a solid reasonable-doubt jury. She’d stood in front of them every day of the trial, memorizing their features, their reactions, their quirks. Fifteen years as a top-tier criminal lawyer had taught Marta Richter one thing: the jurors were the only real people in any courtroom. Even the ones with book deals.

“They’re suckers,” Steere said. “Twelve suckers. The biggest loser was your friend the Marlboro Man. Better watch out, Marta. He had the look of love. He may be fixin’ to get hisself a filly.”

Marta winced. Steere meant Christopher Graham, a blacksmith from Old Bustleton in northeast Philadelphia. Marta had learned that Graham had recently separated from his wife, so she worked him the whole trial, locking eyes with him during her cross of the medical examiner and letting her fingertips stray to her silk collar when she felt his lonely gaze on her. Still, manipulation was one thing, and prevarication quite another. “Everything you told me was a lie.”

“It worked, didn’t it? You shot the shit out of their case. The bailiff thinks the jury will be back by noon tomorrow. That’s only four, five hours of actual deliberation.” Steere smiled and recrossed his legs. “I hear the reporters have a pool going. The smart money’s on you, twenty to one. There’s even action that they acquit me before there’s three feet of snow on the ground.”

Marta’s mind reeled. The media, more lies. She’d told the reporters Steere was innocent and declined to speculate on how long the jury would be out.
I just win, boys. I leave the details to you
, she’d said with a laugh. She wasn’t laughing now.

“It’s almost three o’clock,” Steere said, checking a watch with a band like liquid gold. “You’ve never had a jury out longer than two days, if memory serves.”

Marta flipped back through her cases. She was undefeated in capital cases and she’d win this one, too. No tough questions of physical evidence to explain away, just a disagreement over the way it had gone down, with the Commonwealth claiming Steere had intended to kill the homeless man. It took balls to prosecute a case that thin, but it was an election year and the mayor wanted to crucify the wealthiest slumlord in Philadelphia. Marta understood all that, but she didn’t understand the most important thing. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Since when are you so high and mighty? Did you ask if I was guilty?”

“I don’t ask my clients that question.”

“Then what’s the difference if they lie to you?”

Marta had no immediate reply except to grit her teeth. “So you made up this cock-and-bull story.”

“You never doubted it? One of the best criminal lawyers in the country and you can’t smell shit?”

Not this time, because she had let her guard down. Because she’d been attracted to him, though she wouldn’t admit it, even to herself. “Your story made absolute sense. We went over it and over it. You told it the same way every time.”

“I lied from the door.”

“Even to the cops? The statement you gave them. It was recorded. It was all consistent.”

“I’m excellent at what I do.”

“Lie?”

“Sell.”

“You used me, you asshole.”

“Come off it, dear.” Steere’s smile twisted into a sneer. “You got paid, didn’t you? Almost two hundred grand this quarter, including your expenses. Hotel, phone, even dry cleaning. Every cent paid in full. Twenty-five grand left on the retainer.”

“That’s not the point.”

Steere’s laughter echoed off the cinderblock walls of the interview room. “Easy for you to say, you’re not paying it. For that much money, using you should be included. Christ, for that much money, fucking you should be included.”

“Fuck
you
!” Marta shot to her feet, seething. She felt the urge to pace, to move, to
run
, but the interview room was as cramped as a phone booth. She was trapped. By Steere, by herself. How could she have been so naive? She still couldn’t bring herself to accept it. “So you killed Darnton, even though you’d be questioned? Charged?”

Steere shrugged. “It was a risk, but I run risks every day. I figured the D.A. would find a reason to charge me, but that’s okay. Any ink is good ink. I knew I’d hire the best and get away with it, and I will. Because of you.”

Because of you.
The words burned into Marta’s brain. Steere had written the story and she had sold it, better than she’d ever sold anything in her professional life. Pitched it to the jury in the day and the satellites at night. And she didn’t do it for the money or the facetime, not this time.

She did it for Steere.

In the split second she realized it, Marta’s fury became unreasoning. She could have sworn he wanted her, he’d given every signal. He’d lean too close at counsel table, look too long at her legs. Once he’d touched her knee, bending over to retrieve his fountain pen, and her response had been so immediate it surprised even her. The memory made her feel crazy, unhinged. Unleashed. “I’m going to Judge Rudolph with this,” she said.

“You can’t. I’m your client and this is a privileged conversation. Disclose it and you’re disbarred, ruined.” Steere laced his long fingers together and leaned forward on his side of the metal ledge. “Of course, I’d deny the conversation ever took place. You’d look like a fool.”

Then I quit. I’m not your lawyer anymore. I’m withdrawing from the representation.” Marta snatched her bag and briefcase from the tile floor.

“The judge won’t let you withdraw while the jury’s out. It’s too late in the game. It’s prejudicial to me, infringes my constitutional rights.”

“Don’t you lecture me,” Marta shot back, though she knew he was right about her withdrawal. “I suborned perjury for you.”

“Suborn perjury, my my. You can talk the talk, can’t you? So can I. You didn’t suborn perjury because I didn’t testify in my own defense.”

“It’s a fraud on the court—”

“Enough.” Steere cut Marta off with a wave. “Here’s what happens next: the verdict comes in by noon and I go free. Then I hold a press conference where I tell the world that the mayor is a smacked ass, the jury system is a blessing, and you’re the best whore money can buy.”

Marta froze. Her fingers squeezed the handle of her briefcase. Rage constricted her breathing. She felt choked, with Steere’s polished loafer on her throat.

“Then we’ll go to the Swann Fountain for the victory celebration,” Steere continued. “We can play footsies, just like old times. After that I’m booked to St. Bart’s on a Learjet that’ll take off from Atlantic City if Philly is snowed in. I love the beach, don’t you? Hate the water, but love the beach. Want to come?”

Marta only glared in response. She wouldn’t be used like this. Not by him. Not by anyone. She reached for the door of the interview room.

“Aw, don’t go away mad, honey,” Steere said.

“I have work to do.”