Substantial Risk (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 5) Page 5

  He wondered if she still had the mask.

  “The sex club case, right?” she guessed. “Yeah, everybody’s talking about it.”

  Brunelle raised his eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

  Robyn nodded. “Sure. Guy offs his sub and is facing a manslaughter rap? That’s way more interesting that some tweaker with meth in his pocket.”

  “I suppose so,” Brunelle agreed.

  “Besides,” Robyn added. “Nick won’t shut up about it. His guy fired him and he’s pissed.”

  Damn it, Brunelle thought. That pisses me off too.

  “He probably shouldn’t do that,” Brunelle replied. “Attorney-client confidences and all that. He doesn’t need the Bar coming after him.”

  But Robyn waved the suggestion away. “Naw, Nick’s not stupid,” she started.

  Brunelle wasn’t so sure, but he managed to keep a poker face.

  “He just told us the shit that wasn’t protected. Like where his guy waved attorney-client privilege or something.”

  Brunelle nodded. “Okay,” he said absently. If Lannigan was off the case, that meant Atkins was going to get an upgrade at attorney. Brunelle was more interested in who the new attorney would be that in whatever Lannigan had been going around telling people.

  “You seem distracted, Dave,” Robyn said. She reached out and took him by the elbow—which only succeeded in distracting him more. Her hand was so warm—and strong. She turned him toward the coffee cart at the other end of the lobby. “Let me buy you a coffee.”

  Brunelle wasn’t about to decline. For one thing, he could use a coffee. For another, Robyn still had a hold of his arm.

  “So yeah, anyway,” she said as Brunelle went through the possible attorneys in his head. Herschel. Clausen. Moser. All the experienced, expensive ones the juries seemed to love. The case was going to be difficult enough. He didn’t need a worthy opponent reminding the jury that sometimes accidents just happen. “Did you know,” Robyn went on, “the most common way for an attorney-client communication to be not privileged is to have a third party in the room?”

  Brunelle nodded. “Sure. Right.” He didn’t really worry too much about that attorney-client stuff. He didn’t have a client. Not a flesh-and-blood one, anyway. His client was the State of Washington, whatever that meant.

  They’d reached the coffee cart. Brunelle looked up at the menu board. Maybe a mocha, he thought, but Robyn interrupted his selection process.

  “Let me order for you,” she said.

  He looked down at her, a bit perplexed. He tried to recall if they’d ever had coffee together before. “Do you know what I like?”

  Again, that smile of hers, but combined with lowered eyelids that sent his blood rushing again. “I think so,” she practically purred. She turned to the barista. “The gentleman will have a vanilla latte,” she announced.

  Brunelle cocked his head. “Vanilla latte? I don’t like vanilla—”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Robyn interrupted with a laugh.

  The blood that had been rushing redirected itself straight to his cheek. And realizing he was blushing just made him even more embarrassed. And angry. “Wow,” was all he could manage to say. He spun away and headed back to the elevators.

  “Oh, come on, Dave!” Robyn yelled after him. “It was only a joke.”

  But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t like being teased. And he didn’t like being mad at her. Especially because it just made him want her that much more.

  Chapter 11

  Not usually prone to being moody (at least if you asked him) Brunelle felt strangely out of balance when he got to his desk. Still angry and embarrassed by Robyn’s little joke, he walked right past Nicole without saying hello and threw himself into his desk chair. Nicole knew his moods well enough and left him alone. He just needed time to focus and work and let the feelings burn away. The last thing he needed was a phone call from Master Michael’s new attorney.

  “Hello?” he answered the phone brusquely, eschewing his normal ‘Prosecutor’s Office, Dave Brunelle’ greeting.

  “Uh, hello,” came the deep male voice on the other end. “I was trying to reach David Brunelle.”

  That shook Brunelle out of his funk. No reason to let his professionalism drop. “This is Dave Brunelle.”

  “Ah, Mr. Brunelle,” came the reply. “I’m glad I reached you. This is Ron Jacobsen.” Then, as if Brunelle should recognize it, “Of Smith, Lundquist, Jacobsen and Brown.”

  Brunelle had heard of ‘Smith Lundquist.’ They were one of the dozen or so mid-sized law firms in Seattle. Most of them were what was known as ‘corporate firms,’ meaning their clients tended to be corporations and their practice tended to be civil. Most criminal defense attorneys were solo practitioners, or maybe in a small two or three person partnership. So, while Brunelle had heard of Smith Lundquist, he’d never given much thought to the attorneys in the firm, let alone the other names on the front door. Now he was talking to one of them.

  “Mr. Jacobsen,” Brunelle feigned familiarity. “Nice to hear from you. What can I do for you?” Maybe, Brunelle thought, they were suing somebody and needed a copy of the police reports. But no such luck.

  “I’m calling regarding the Michael Atkins case. Mr. Atkins just hired our firm to represent him in the criminal case against him. It’s my understanding you’re the prosecutor assigned to his case.”

  Brunelle sighed, but hoped not too loudly. So much for Nick Lannigan. Damn.

  “That’s right,” he confirmed. “It’s my case.”

  “Oh good,” Jacobsen replied, his grin audible over the phone line. “Now I know who to serve with our motions.”

  “Motions?” Brunelle asked. He hated motions. Criminal law was about trials, not motions. Either the defendant robbed the store, shot the other guy, stole the car, or not. Bring in the witnesses, have them tell their stories, and let the jury decide. The only time motions were important was in drug cases where if the defense couldn’t suppress the drugs for an unlawful search it was going to be pretty hard to convince the jury that the crack in the defendant’s pocket wasn’t his. But Brunelle wasn’t in the drug unit; he was in homicide. Dead bodies and long trials. But not motions. Please, God, not motions. “What kind of motions?”

  “All kinds of motions, Mr. Brunelle,” Jacobsen answered gleefully. The corporate lawyers were all about motions practice. That’s how they settled cases: overwhelming the other side with motions. Motions to compel discovery, motions to resist discovery, motions for subpoenas, motions to quash subpoenas, motions to dismiss, dissuade, disembowel. “This case cries out for several motions, the first of which is to modify my client’s conditions of release.”

  “His conditions of release?” Brunelle questioned. “But he already posted bail. He’s out. What needs to be changed?”

  “It’s not just about money, Mr. Brunelle,” Jacobsen replied. Ironic, considering he was being paid to say that. “You’ve also restricted his movements unnecessarily and unjustly.”

  Brunelle tried to recall what the conditions were besides the dollar amount Atkins had to post to get out of jail. There was nothing special that he recalled. Just the usual stuff: no contact with witnesses, stay away from the crime scene, show up for court dates, don’t leave the state. “How did we do that?”

  “Why, Mr. Brunelle, I’m surprised,” Jacobsen teased. “Don’t you read the orders you obtain from the judge?”

  Brunelle shrugged to himself. “Of course I do. But I don’t always remember them. How exactly did we unjustly restrict your client’s movements? Does he want to travel out of state?”

  “Not at all,” was the reply. “He wants to go back to the Cu-CUM-ber Club.”

  “But that’s the crime scene,” Brunelle protested reflexively.

  “And that assumes there was a crime,” Jacobsen pointed out. “Shame on you, Mr. Brunelle. You know my client is presumed innocent.”

  “Presumed innocent doesn’t mean innocent in fact,” Brunelle c
ountered, growing increasingly irritated by Jacobsen’s smugness. “Every defendant is ordered to stay away from the crime scene.”

  “But not every defendant has hired Smith, Lundquist, Jacobsen and Brown.”

  Brunelle felt grateful for that. “Right. Aren’t you guys a civil firm? Why are you coming in on a criminal case?”

  “We have a white collar crime team,” Jacobsen explained.

  Brunelle rolled his eyes. That was how corporate lawyers excused handling criminal cases, lest the good people of the world think they were as lowly as the prosecutors and defense attorneys who lined the gutters outside the courthouse. “Manslaughter isn’t a white collar crime,” he pointed out.

  “But Mr. Atkins is a white collar client,” Jacobsen replied. “He has a good job—”

  “He must,” Brunelle interrupted, “to hire you.” He immediately regretted the remark.

  “Well, yes,” Jacobsen answered. “That is how it works. We can’t all draw a government check, Mr. Brunelle.”

  Brunelle considered arguing the merits of public service versus private practice, but decided to forego the argument. At least for right then.

  Jacobsen filled the silence. “Our motion to modify Mr. Atkins’ conditions of release will be delivered to your office this afternoon. We’ll note it for a hearing pursuant to the court rules.”

  How professional, Brunelle thought. The court rules would give him five court days to prepare for the hearing. Even so, he preferred the collegiality of Jessica Edwards calling him mid-afternoon to tell him she’d scheduled the bail hearing for the next morning, knowing he might have to do the same to her sometime on a later case. “Great.”

  “We’ll be filing several more motions in the coming days, Mr. Brunelle.” Jacobsen’s words were half way between information and threat. “Please keep in mind that we don’t accept service by email for your responses.”

  Brunelle shook his head. If he ever needed to be reminded why he should thank God he did criminal law, he just needed to lock horns occasionally with a civil lawyer. “Duly noted.” Then he decided to provide his own information and threat. “You know, Ron,” a little familiarity to catch his attention, “I’m not like the civil attorneys you usually go against. I don’t have a client who’s going to run out of money to reply to all of your frivolous motions.”

  Jacobsen actually seemed to enjoy Brunelle’s little bit of aggression. “Of course not. But, Mr. Brunelle, I bill hourly. The more work I do, the more I get paid. You don’t get paid one penny more no matter how much extra work I pile onto you.” He paused. “Unless, you’d like to talk settlement. My client has authorized me to accept an offer of a misdemeanor.”

  Brunelle let out a small laugh. “I’ve been threatened with a lot worse than a pile of paper. I’ll look forward to your abusive motions practice.”

  Jacobsen didn’t seem to be grinning any more. “Have it your way, Mr. Brunelle. May the best lawyer win.”

  Brunelle loved getting an opening like that. He hoped Jacobsen would be as sloppy in front of the jury. “No, Mr. Jacobsen. May justice win.”

  Chapter 12

  The motions kept coming. By the day of the bail hearing, Brunelle had been served with the Motion to Change Conditions of Release, plus a Motion to Change Venue, a Motion to Compel Discovery, a Motion to Dismiss for Insufficient Evidence, and a Motion for Leave to File More Motions. Actually, the last one was just something Brunelle thought of cynically as the pleadings piled up, but unfortunately, Jacobsen didn’t need permission to file more motions. He could file as many as he wanted, frivolous or not, and Brunelle would just have to respond to each and every one of them. In civil cases, frivolous motions were subject to monetary sanctions against client and counsel. In criminal cases, they were lauded as zealous advocacy in defense of the accused.

  Brunelle checked his mailbox on the way down to court. No new motions as of 8:53 a.m. The courtroom was packed, but then again it usually was that time of day. The bail hearing had to be scheduled in front of the judge who had originally set bail, and the judge who had originally set bail was the one who was assigned to the arraignment/plea court that six-month rotation. Judge Gary Douglas, who took pleas all morning and conducted arraignments all afternoon. So going back in front of him meant scheduling the bail hearing right before a morning docket full of guilty pleas. So the courtroom was full, but not necessarily for the sex club case. It was just full of criminals and their friends and families.

  The one news camera was there for Brunelle though. Or more correctly, it was there for Master Michael Atkins and his attorney du jour, Ron Jacobsen. Brunelle was just window dressing. But that was no reason not to say ‘Hi’ to the cameraman and reporter.

  “Hey, Jack. Hey, Bill,” he greeted them as he passed through the gallery toward the secure courtroom behind the bulletproof glass.

  “Hey, Dave,” Bill, the reporter, replied. “Any chance we can get a sound bite from you after the hearing?”

  Brunelle smiled. “Depends on the ruling,” he quipped. But really, it didn’t. He was going to stay far away from the cameras on this one. There was no way he could discuss the details without being at least R-rated. Accordingly, anything he said could potentially be inflammatory, and therefore unethical. The last thing he needed was the Bar Association up his ass while he tried to get his conviction.

  He stepped through the door and found Jacobsen and Master Michael already waiting for him, seated comfortably at one of the two counsel tables within. Jacobsen was a big guy. Easily 6’3” and well over two hundred pounds. He was in his fifties and was at that stage just before he started to look exhausted from having carried that large frame around his whole life.

  The only person missing was Yamata. She had other cases of course and had another hearing scheduled at the same time Jacobsen had set the bail hearing. Rather than try to get Jacobsen to agree to reschedule—the definition of ‘quixotic’ …which Brunelle had had to look up after Yamata used the word—they figured Brunelle could probably handle a simple bail hearing by himself.

  Brunelle preferred to stand at the bar in that particular courtroom, so he set his file on the counter and greeted the young prosecutor whose unfortunate assignment was to do pleas all morning, every morning. The only break came in the afternoon, when that same prosecutor would do arraignments all afternoon, every afternoon.

  “Morning, Jason,” he said. “Can I go first?”

  The young attorney nodded a bit too emphatically. “Oh, of course, Mr. Brunelle.”

  Brunelle smiled slightly and sighed. He’d been around long enough for the young attorneys to mean it when they used the title ‘Mister.’ But there was another young attorney in the courtroom who he didn’t mind when she used the word ‘Mister.’

  “Hiya, Mr. B.” Robyn waved to him from her spot leaning alluringly against the far wall. She was with the public defender’s office and as a junior attorney there, she’d be spending her day handling the other side of the assembly line of pleas and arraignments.

  Brunelle, the professional orator, felt that usual moment of speechlessness whenever he saw the young redhead, but he was saved by the sudden entry of Judge Douglas.

  “All rise!” commanded the bailiff. Brunelle was already standing, but Jacobsen, Atkins, and the gallery all complied. After a moment, Judge Douglas sat down on the bench and informed the courtroom, “You may be seated.”

  Then he looked to Brunelle and Jacobsen. “Are the parties ready on the matter of State versus Atkins?”

  Both attorneys replied in the affirmative, and Judge Douglas wasted no time taking control of the hearing. He was in his late fifties, about average age for a Superior Court judge, and had been doing the job long enough to know how to respect the attorneys without letting them take over.

  “I’ll hear first from Mr. Jacobsen,” he announced.

  Jacobsen rose importantly. “Thank you, Your Honor. I have brought this motion on behalf of Mr. Atkins to ask the court to modify his conditions
of release. We are requesting two things. First, we would ask you to exonerate Mr. Atkins bail and release him on his own recognizance. He has no prior criminal history and has gone to the trouble and expense of hiring an attorney. Indeed, I am the second attorney on this case. Mr. Atkins takes this matter so seriously that he dismissed his prior attorney, after paying him far more money than that attorney’s experience might have warranted, and then hired my firm, again at no small expense. Mr. Atkins is more than adequately invested financially in this case. There is no reason to hold even more of his money in the clerk’s office.”

  And Brunelle then realized how Atkins could afford a new lawyer: he was counting on getting his bail money back.

  “In addition,” Jacobsen continued, “the court previously ordered that my client have no contact with the establishment where this unfortunate event occurred. We are asking the court to lift that restriction. This case was not a homicide, it was an accident. There is no risk that Mr. Atkins might injure anyone else at the club. Moreover, the club has long since reopened for business, so the crime scene has been more than corrupted. There is no danger that allowing Mr. Atkins to reconnect with his support community will result in evidence being compromised. Accordingly, in addition to exonerating bail, the court should also lift that particular restriction. Thank you, Your Honor. I stand ready, should the court have any questions.”

  Judge Douglas didn’t have any. He turned to Brunelle. “The State’s response?”

  This was the tricky part. Jacobsen had a point. Actually, he had two points. And they were good points. Atkins wasn’t going to flee the jurisdiction and he was probably not going to choke out another sex partner. And he was already out, having posted the bail. There was no good reason to keep the money. On top of that, the crime scene was undoubtedly corrupted. Again and again, most likely. It was the only time Brunelle ever hoped a crime scene was cleaned with bleach. There wasn’t a great reason to keep Atkins out of his bondage barn. But it was standard operating procedure: homicide defendants have high bail, and all defendants have to stay away from the crime scene.