Violent Crimes (3 page)

The Multnomah County Courthouse is a brutish, eight-story gray concrete building that takes up the entire block between Fourth and Fifth and Main and Salmon in the heart of downtown Portland. When Amanda stepped out of the elevator on the sixth floor, she almost ran into Mike Greene. Amanda and Mike had been dating steadily for a year, and they flashed wide smiles the minute they saw each other.

Mike had curly black hair, pale blue eyes, and a shaggy mustache. People always assumed that he had played football or basketball because of his massive, six-five body, but Mike, who didn't even watch sports on TV, was a jazz musician and an expert-rated chess player.

“What are you doing in my domain?” the chief criminal deputy of the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office asked.

“I'm here to try to convince Larry Frederick to dismiss a case,” Amanda answered.

“If your client is innocent, I'll instruct Larry to resist your
entreaties,” Mike answered sternly. “Anyone can convict the guilty. Convicting the innocent presents a challenge.”

“Have I ever told you that you are a fascist pig?”

“Frequently.”

“What are you up to?” Amanda asked.

“A short appearance in Judge Embry's court. I should be finished in a half hour if you're up for coffee.”

“I can't. I'm interviewing a new client at the office. But you can take me out for sushi tonight.”

“Deal. I'll pick you up at your office around five,” Mike said before heading to Judge Embry's courtroom.

Larry Frederick was a mild-mannered Georgetown Law grad, whose wire-rimmed glasses were always slipping down his nose and who constantly brushed back the long brown locks that fell across his brow. Amanda got the impression that Frederick wore his hair long not for style but because he forgot to get it cut. The deputy DA took an intellectual approach to his cases, and Amanda appreciated Frederick's reasonable attitude. She could not say the same for Detective Alan Hotchkiss, a stocky ex-wrestler who dealt with defendants in the same overly aggressive way he'd dealt with his opponents when he'd been racking up pins for Oregon State.

“What have you got for me?” Frederick asked with an easy smile once Amanda had seated herself across from him. Amanda could see a section of the West Hills through the window behind the DA. The fact that Frederick's office had a view was a tip-off that he was a senior deputy.

“It's Tom Beatty's assault case. My investigator has interviewed four witnesses to the fight, and they all say that the complainant started it and threw the first punch.”

“Did they also tell you that Beatty broke the victim's nose, dislocated his shoulder, and smashed up his knee so bad he needs surgery?” Detective Hotchkiss said.

Frederick held up his hand to silence the detective. “This wasn't your average barroom brawl, Amanda. Mr. Roux is in terrible shape. When Alan talked to him at the hospital, he was in a lot of pain.”

“I feel sorry for Mr. Roux and so does Mr. Beatty, but Mr. Roux is much bigger than my client and he was the aggressor.”

Amanda handed Frederick a stack of investigative reports. “Every witness says that Mr. Roux is a bully. This isn't the first time he's picked on someone smaller. What he didn't know is that Tom is a hero, a decorated Navy SEAL. He can't tell me about his missions except to say he was in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he did say that he's skilled at hand-to-hand combat. When Roux started the fight, Tom got scared, and he acted on reflex.”

“If he's so good why couldn't he just deflect the punches?” Hotchkiss asked. “There's defending yourself and there's beating the piss out of someone. He could have killed Roux.”

“You're right, Alan,” Amanda agreed. “Tom could have killed Roux easily, but he didn't. Tom feels terrible about Roux's injuries, but Roux is so much bigger Tom couldn't take a chance. He told me he had no idea how good a fighter Roux was and the fact that Roux was so aggressive made him keep fighting until he felt safe.”

“I hope you're not buying this John Wayne crap, Larry,” the detective said.

“I'm not going to form any opinion until I've read these reports and you do a follow-up,” the DA answered. “Then I'll get back to you, Amanda, okay?”

“Sure. And why don't you hold off on an indictment.”

“Don't worry. I won't go to a grand jury unless I'm convinced your client wasn't acting in self-defense.”

Something was definitely wrong. The figures didn't make sense. Take Dale Masterson's income. In order to meet the conditions of bank loans that had helped Masterson, Hamilton weather the recession, the partners had agreed to take less when income was distributed, and the auditor reported that Dale's draw was substantially lower than it had been. But Dale's credit card statements had been included in the mounds of material she'd been given, and Christine had noticed that Masterson was spending a lot more money than he was being paid by the firm.

And the taxes. She'd asked for the firm's books but Masterson kept putting her off, so she'd pulled the actual invoices from cases to see how much the firm made. The taxes the firm were paying were far in excess of what they should have been paying. Why would that be? One explanation that had occurred to Christine was that the income in the books that had been shown to the auditor was inflated to make the firm's financial situation look healthier than it really was; the reported income would require
the firm to pay more taxes than it should have been paying. Christine had rejected that explanation early on, but now she was beginning to wonder if it might be true.

Christine wanted to ask Mark Hamilton or Dale Masterson about these and other discrepancies, but they had been meeting with the Global representatives at an undisclosed location and had been out of the office for two days, with no indication of when they would return. She looked at her phone. It was seven thirty. She blinked. She had been so wrapped up in the dilemma posed by the firm's figures that she'd lost all track of time.

When Christine stood up and stretched, she noticed that the normal hum of conversation and machinery had disappeared from the office. She walked into the hall. Somewhere in the distance she heard voices, but most of the floor was silent. Dale Masterson's office was at the end of the hall. She turned toward it. A member of the cleaning crew was vacuuming the floor after having emptied the trash can. An idea occurred to her. A few months back, Dale had needed some information from his computer during a negotiation and had given her his password so she could locate an e-mail that was essential to settling a term in a contract. She remembered the password, which would give her access to Masterson's computer and, she hoped, the answers to some or all of her questions. But that would mean intruding on the privacy of one of the firm's senior partners without his permission. If Masterson found out . . . Well, she didn't want to think of what would happen to her.

Christine went back to her desk and stared at the figures again. The auditor had found nothing wrong. All Dale had asked
her to do was explain the condition of the firm as set forth in the auditor's report. The auditor didn't have any doubts about the firm's financial position, so why should she? The easy thing to do would be to go with the flow, but her conscience wouldn't let her tell the people at Global that everything was just great when her gut told her that it wasn't.

Christine went into the hall again. The voices she'd heard earlier had gone quiet and she saw two associates heading for the elevators. She looked around and listened. Nothing. She was alone. She looked at Dale's office again. She knew she shouldn't, but she had to. Christine headed down the hall. She hesitated at the entrance to Masterson's office, then took a deep breath, walked behind his desk, and sat down in front of Masterson's computer. She booted it up, then paused, her fingers floating above the keyboard. One more deep breath and she was typing in Dale's password. Moments later, she was in.

The first thing she did was try to locate the books, but they weren't in any file she could find. Maybe, she thought, they were forwarded to Masterson in an attachment to an e-mail. She logged on to Masterson's e-mail account and thought for a moment. Then she typed in “Kenneth Jennings,” the name of the auditor. A large number of e-mails came up. Some were from Jennings, some were to Jennings, and one of the more recent e-mails was from Mark Hamilton to Dale Masterson concerning Jennings. Christine read it, and grew light-headed.

“Jennings taken care of,” it said. “He's playing along—the report will provide smooth sailing and everything is going as planned.”

Christine leaned back and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt like she might throw up. When she had regained her composure she
reread the e-mail and tried to put a different spin on it, but there was no interpretation she could think of that would do that.

Christine went through the other e-mails that mentioned Jennings but found no more incriminating texts. She turned off the computer and the lights in Masterson's office. She walked back to her office in a daze. She loved her job and she was definitely on track to move up in the firm, but she had evidence that her bosses were committing fraud. If she exposed the fraud, her career would be destroyed. If she didn't, she would be abetting a crime. Christine slumped in her seat and put her head in her hands. An hour later, after she had pored over the records again, she turned off the lights and went home, with no idea of what she should do.

Amanda had been having a terrible week. On Monday, July 7, she'd lost a motion to suppress that she thought she was going to win. On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals had affirmed the conviction of another client. An old superstition held that things happened in threes, so she feared the worst when Larry Frederick called her on Wednesday morning.

“What's up, Larry?” Amanda asked.

“I've got an early Christmas present for you,” the DA said. “I'm not prosecuting Tom Beatty.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said after exhaling with relief.

“I'm just doing what I think is right. Alan disagrees with my decision, but after talking to the bartender and the other witnesses to the fight, I'm convinced Mr. Beatty acted in self-defense. Considering the sacrifices your client has made for his country, I'm relieved that I won't have to go after him.”

A few minutes later, Amanda hung up and smiled. Her original motivations for practicing criminal defense had not been
philosophical. Her mother had died giving birth to Amanda and she had been raised by her father, Frank Jaffe, and one of Oregon's leading defense attorneys. As soon as Amanda was old enough to understand what her father did for a living, she wanted to follow in his footsteps. In junior high, Amanda's girlfriends fantasized about boys and shopping while Amanda read legal thrillers, watched
Perry Mason
reruns, and daydreamed about trying murder cases.

When Amanda was old enough to understand that Frank's clients were usually guilty, she had asked him why he was so passionate about his job. Frank had explained that making sure that the American System of Justice was working the way it was supposed to was more important than any particular case. Frank believed that giving the worst defendants a fair trial assured others that they would be treated fairly if they were ever arrested for a crime. When people lost faith in their government, the result was revolution. He also told Amanda that she would represent innocent clients from time to time and that helping an innocent person stay out of prison was the most important thing she would ever do. Tom Beatty's case reinforced her belief that she had chosen the right profession.

Not long after they made junior partner at one of the older established Portland law firms, Dale Masterson and Mark Hamilton grew impatient with their slow climb up the firm's ladder and formed their own firm. Masterson, Hamilton had grown swiftly by bonding with the young entrepreneurs who were turning high-tech start-ups into multimillion-dollar enterprises. But
Masterson and Hamilton had been unwilling to put all of their eggs into one basket, and had used their contacts to pull in a number of coal mining and oil companies. Now Masterson, Hamilton, Rickman and Thomas leased three floors in a modern glass-and-steel, forty-story building in downtown Portland.

Tom Beatty was in his cubicle on the twenty-first floor working up a witness list for one of the litigation partners when his phone rang.

“I've got great news,” Amanda Jaffe said. “The district attorney isn't going to pursue your case.”

“What do you mean?” Tom asked.

“I gave him our investigative reports and an affidavit from Dr. Fisher and he's decided that you acted in self-defense. So you're free and clear. The charges have been dropped.”

“That's . . . that's great. Thank you, so much.”

“Every once in a while the system gets it right. I'm just sorry you were arrested and spent a night in jail.”

“That wasn't so hard. And I do feel bad about hurting Roux but I—”

“There's no need to say anything more. You can put this incident behind you.”

“You did a great job, Miss Jaffe. What do I owe you?”

“Your retainer covered my work so we're square. It was a pleasure meeting you. I appreciate your service to our country.”

Tom hung up. Then he leaned back in his chair and took some deep breaths. He still felt bad about what he'd done to Harold Roux, but he was relieved that his ordeal was over. When he was calm again, Tom got up and walked down the hall and up the stairs. He wanted to tell Christine the good news in person.

The partners' offices were two floors above his cubicle. Tom climbed the stairs, opened the door, and entered the twenty-third floor hallway. Christine's office was halfway between the stairwell and Dale Masterson's huge corner office. Tom had taken several steps when the door to Masterson's office opened and he saw Christine come out. Her head was down and she was walking swiftly. Her gait and the set of her shoulders made Tom think that his friend was upset.

Christine flung open the door to her office, then slammed it shut seconds before Tom reached it. Tom debated whether he should disturb her. Brittney Vandervelden, Christine's secretary, occupied a cubicle across the hall from Christine's office. She was in her early thirties, a well-dressed redhead with a nice figure and a sharp mind. Tom did a lot of work with Christine, so he also saw a lot of Brittney. He'd thought about asking her out, but dating a coworker was usually a bad idea. And he had so much baggage that he hesitated anytime the idea of getting close to someone became a possibility.

“Hey, Brit, I wanted to tell Christine something but she looked upset. Do you think I should wait?”

“I would.”

“What's up?”

“I don't know, but it has something to do with Mr. Masterson. And don't ask me what because I don't know.”

“Okay. When you get a chance, can you tell her my case was dismissed . . . ?”

“That's so great!” Brittney said, flashing a wide smile.

“Yeah, I'm really relieved.”

“Christine was pretty confident her friend would handle it.”

“Miss Jaffe did a terrific job. She convinced the DA I acted in self-defense so he's dropping the matter. I guess Christine can get her bail money back. You should tell her that too.”

“I will. And I'm sure she'll want to talk to you when she has some time.”

Tom left Brittney's cubicle, and frowned. Christine was normally intense, but she'd looked unusually upset. Tom wondered what was bothering her. Then he decided that it was none of his business.

Brittney knew better than to interrupt her boss when she was in one of her moods, and she also knew how long it normally took for Christine to calm down. After a reasonable amount of time, she walked across the hall and tapped on the door to Christine's office.

“Yes,” Christine barked.

Brittney walked in even though Christine's tone told her that she was still seething over whatever had upset her.

“I just thought you'd want to know: Tom's case was dismissed.”

Christine's scowl morphed into a grin and she straightened up.

“That's fabulous. How did you find out?”

“Tom came up to tell you but you'd just come back from your meeting with Mr. Masterson and it didn't look like you wanted to be disturbed.”

Christine's smile disappeared, and she looked lost in thought.

“Please ask Tom to come up,” she said.

“Sure thing,” Brittney said as she backed out of the office and closed the door.

“Boss wants to see you,” Brittney told Tom over the intercom.

Four minutes later, Brittney looked up and saw Tom walk into Christine's office and shut the door behind him.

Twenty minutes later, Brittney heard loud voices coming from Christine's office. She couldn't make out the words, but Tom and her boss were definitely arguing. Ten minutes after that the door to Christine's office swung open and Tom walked rapidly down the hall and disappeared into the stairwell.