Death by Jury (Alo Nudger Series Book 9) Read online

  Other books by John Lutz

  Lazarus Man

  Jericho Man

  The Shadow Man

  The Alo Nudger Series

  Buyer Beware

  Nightlines

  The Right to Sing the Blues

  Ride the Lightning

  Dancer’s Debt

  Time Exposure

  Diamond Eyes

  Thicker Than Blood

  Death By Jury

  Death by Jury

  John Lutz

  SPEAKING VOLUMES, LLC

  NAPLES, FLORIDA

  2012

  DEATH BY JURY

  Copyright © 1995 by John Lutz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  9781612321981

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Tnree

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  For Lucas

  The law is like Silly Putty.

  —Professor Francis M. Nevins,

  1988, over a glass of wine.

  Chapter One

  If attorney Gideon Schiller hadn’t referred Lawrence Fleck to Nudger, Nudger would have thrown Fleck out of the office. He was that objectionable.

  “You might think you know the ropes but you’re an innocent,” Fleck was saying in his rapid-fire nasal tone. He seemed to bark words out through his nose. “People won’t talk to you, Nudger, they talk to me. Why? ‘Cause I know how to ask. Knowing how to ask is everything. You get my meaning?”

  “Sure,” Nudger said. He leaned back in his eeeeking swivel chair and studied Fleck. The pugnacious attorney was little more than five feet tall and had the face of a bulldog beneath an obvious black wig that contrasted with his gray eyebrows. His suit was brown with a faint dark check and his shoes were shiny brown wing tips that looked immense on such a diminutive man. He gave off a nauseating scent of some sort of cologne or deodorant that was no doubt supposed to smell like musk. A little musk went a long way, and Fleck must have used it by the gallon. He moved his arms a lot as he talked, his hands clenched into tight little fists that punched the air for emphasis. Nudger wished he’d quit building himself up and get to the point.

  “I seen plenty of poor sad people try and thread their way through the law on their own, can’t make headway. They ask but they don’t get answers. I get answers. Know why?”

  “Because you know how to ask?”

  “No! Because I’m me! You go to this office or that office and they give you the runaround, know how to brush off your average John Q. Citizen. Takes somebody knows the ropes, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wrong! Takes somebody knows the right ropes. You pull the wrong ropes, all you’re doing is wearing out your arm. Maybe even yank something heavy down on top of you. Right?”

  Twice burned, Nudger chose not to answer.

  Fleck didn’t notice. He paced back and forth in his clumpy shoes and continued to bark at Nudger. “Sometimes it’s only one rope, but you gotta be able to recognize it. I can do that. Know how much I charge an hour?”

  Nudger shook his head.

  “Hundred and fifty an hour for a consultation. I get it, too. You know why? Because I’m goddamn worth it. You wanna hire a cheap lawyer?”

  Nudger shook his head again.

  “Do that you’ll just lose time. You got a dollar waiting on a dime. He’ll waste your time while he’s wasting your money.”

  “Know what I charge by the hour for a consultation?” Nudger asked.

  Fleck stopped pacing and stared at him. “No.”

  “It’s not a hundred and fifty,” Nudger said, “but it’s something. And I charge a hundred a day plus expenses.”

  “Hell, that’s cheap!” Fleck said, taking the high ground again. “But Gideon says you’re good. Says you probably need the work, too. That right?”

  “Right enough. Point is, Mr. Fleck—”

  “Call me Lawrence.”

  “Point is, Lawrence, I need to know why you want to hire me.”

  Fleck cocked his head to the side and advanced on Nudger. Beyond him, Nudger could see pigeons strutting on the brick windowsill, their heads cocked and their chests puffed out just like Fleck’s. Nudger didn’t like pigeons, and so far he didn’t like Fleck.

  Fleck placed both hands on the desk and stared hard at Nudger. This was going to be confidential, important stuff, all right.

  “I’m defending an accused killer,” Fleck said, in a somewhat lower voice than he’d been using to harangue Nudger.

  Nudger wondered when the defendant would be executed. He waited, gaze locked with Fleck’s tiny and intense brown eyes. There was a green fleck in the right eye. Odd.

  “You hear about the Dupont murder?” Fleck asked.

  Nudger had. If he remembered correctly what he’d read in the paper and seen on TV news, a local banker named Roger Dupont had been charged with murdering his wife. It had only been about a month ago; it was unusual for a case to reach court so quickly. Usually defense lawyers delayed trials as long as possible, hoping memories would fade or key witnesses would die or go blind. But then, Dupont apparently had Lawrence Fleck as his attorney.

  “I’m defending the husband,” Fleck said, without waiting for Nudger’s reply.

  “How’s it look?” Nudger asked.

  Fleck snorted, paced away from the desk. Paced back. “He’s got a shitpot full of circumstantial evidence against him. One chance he’s got is me as his lawyer, but the dumbfuck doesn’t seem to know it.”

  Circumstantial evidence, Nudger thought. He knew plenty of cases where it had been enough.

  “You want me to investigate and try to find the real killer before your guy’s convicted?” he asked, thinking it sounded like something from a crime novel.

  “Hell no!” Fleck barked. “You’re hearing me but you’re not listening! You understand?”

  Nudger nodded.

  Fleck threw a nifty right cross at the air. “This Dupont claims he’s innocent.”

  “Maybe he is,” Nudger said.

  “Damn it! Try and listen to me! It doesn’t make any difference if he’s innocent, the way the legal system works. You hear that, Nudger?” He leaned over
the desk, so close that Nudger felt spittle spray his arm as Fleck spoke, driving each word into the skull of the recalcitrant Nudger like a nail. “It-doesn’t-make-any-difference!” He stood back and crossed his arms. “You got that Nudger? You finally got it?”

  “Got it for all time.”

  “Poor naive guy like you and all the rest of ’em, they see movies and old Perry Mason reruns and they think the law’s on their side, but it’s not. What’s on their side, what can save their asses, is a good lawyer. Know who that is, Nudger?”

  Nudger didn’t want to say.

  “Me!” Fleck said. “Me-me-me! But I don’t know if I can save Roger Dupont.”

  Nudger was surprised. He figured the Nuremberg trials would have gone the other way if the Third Reich had coughed up Fleck’s hundred and fifty an hour. “Why can’t you save him?” he asked. “You said the evidence is circumstantial.”

  “You were hearing but you weren’t—”

  Nudger raised a hand palm out, as if to deflect the machine-gun barrage of clipped words. “I need to know why you came here, Lawrence.”

  Fleck smiled and met the question indirectly. Nudger would simply have to wait for him to get to the point. “Call me Larry, why doncha? This Dupont told me right away he was innocent. You think I believe him?”

  “I don’t know,” Nudger said, squirming in his squealing swivel chair. Eeek! Eeek!

  “Doesn’t matter,” Fleck said. “Know why?”

  Nudger was too weary to answer. Besides, he’d caught on that it wasn’t necessary.

  “Because I’m his attorney,” Fleck said. “Innocent or guilty, he’s got a right to the best legal representation he can afford. Know who that is?”

  The breeze from the air conditioner was cold on his back, but Nudger was sweating heavily. He wanted to kill Fleck.

  “I’m the man,” Fleck said. “Dupont’s champion, just like the law provides. But here’s the problem, Nudger, case you’re interested. The evidence—circumstantial though it might be—is so strong against Dupont that even I might not be able to get him acquitted. ”

  Well! Nudger thought.

  Fleck stroked his pudgy cheek and looked thoughtful. A courtroom gesture? “What bothers me is this Dupont doesn’t seem afraid. No, lemme correct that: He’s definitely not afraid. I’ve seen hundreds of defendants and I can tell. Once the trial starts, my defendants are always afraid. I tell this Dupont we better plea-bargain. I can probably get him some time in exchange for a guilty plea. Save him from death by lethal injection. Know what he tells me?”

  “What?” Nudger asked, before he could stop himself.

  “He says he’s innocent and he’s got nothing to worry about. That he’s got faith in the legal system and he knows he’ll walk out of the courtroom a free man.” Fleck shook his head as if to fling from it some impure thought. “Faith in the legal system, he says! You got faith in the legal system, Nudger?”

  “Limited.”

  “Hmph! Only sensible thing I’ve heard you say. I ask this Dupont, what about all this evidence piled up like a mountain against him? He says it doesn’t mean anything because he didn’t kill his wife, and that’s that. I ask, can he explain. That’s that, is all he says. He can’t explain and he says he doesn’t have to, he believes in reasonable doubt. I tell him plenty of people been executed despite what they think’s reasonable doubt. My last client, for instance, got a one-in-a-million bad break nobody could have done anything about even if they were Clarence Darrow or that Mason guy on TV or even Matlock. Know what Dupont does when I tell him that, Nudger? He just smiles.”

  “Maybe he’s got a martyr complex and wants to be executed,” Nudger said.

  Fleck stroked his cheek again, exactly the same mannerism he’d used minutes earlier, and for the same number of strokes. Three. “Maybe. I seen that plenty of times. But this time I’m not so sure. The poor dumb naive guy’s probably gonna wind up getting his final vaccination if he doesn’t plea-bargain. He just doesn’t seem to realize it.”

  “What can I do about that?” Nudger asked.

  “I want you to look into the case.”

  “The police already did. That’s why Dupont’s going to trial.”

  Fleck made a backhand gesture, like a disdainful slap. “Gideon Schiller said you had a different approach, Nudger, that you sometimes got the job done when nobody else could. Said you were stubborn even if you were . . . Well, he said you were the man for this job.”

  “Suppose I find hard evidence that Dupont’s guilty?”

  “Jesus, Nudger! Weren’t you listening again? That’d be good news! The poor dumb schmuck would listen to me then and plea-bargain. He does that, I can save him from the big needle. I mean, how’s it gonna look, me losing two clients in a row to the Grim Reaper?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Nudger said, staring unbelievingly at Fleck.

  But Fleck recovered nicely. “I mean, my conscience wouldn’t let me rest, even though God Himself couldn’t get either of these guys off. If Dupont really is innocent and this trial goes the way it probably will if he don’t change his tune, how’m I gonna sleep nights, Nudger?”

  Like a baby, Nudger thought. He said, “I might find proof that he’s innocent, then everybody could sleep better.”

  “Maybe. Just maybe, Nudger, you could come through with the goods no matter what they say about you. Listen! I know I should simply do my job in a dispassionate manner and try and save this unfortunate trusting man-child from certain execution, but there’s something obscure about this case that’s disturbing my peace of mind, and I want to know what it is.” He dragged a large, square checkbook from an inside pocket, the kind usually kept in desk drawers. “And I’m willing to pay.”

  Roger Dupont was the one who’d pay, one way or the other, Nudger thought. But if Nudger found out the truth about the murder, it might be the best money Dupont ever spent.

  “One thing,” he said to Fleck. “I go wherever the truth leads me.”

  “Think I don’t know that?” Fleck asked. “I’m a lawyer. You haven’t been listening again! What I’m hiring you for is the truth, then maybe I’ll use it in court.”

  Nudger tried not to breath in the musk fumes while he stared out the window at the patch of blue sky visible between the buildings across Manchester. The musk, mingled with the sugary scent from the doughnut shop downstairs, was causing his nervous stomach to twitch against his belt buckle.

  Fleck was tapping the big blue vinyl checkbook on the edge of the desk, as if Nudger were Pavlov’s dog and would hear the sound and automatically reach for a contract and pen. Insulting little bastard.

  But at least he’d finally gotten to the point.

  Nudger opened a drawer and reached for a contract and pen.

  Chapter Two

  Roger Dupont’s trial was scheduled to begin in three days. That meant Nudger didn’t have much time. The way it looked right now, neither did Roger Dupont.

  Nudger parked his old Ford Granada in the parking lot behind the Third District police station at Tucker and Lynch. Most of the cars on the blacktop lot were marked cruisers. Three unmarked Chevy Caprices were lined along the fence in back, where the ranking officers parked. Nudger knew one of the Caprices belonged to Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith, his partner in a two-man patrol car when Nudger was on the force long ago. That was before his nervous stomach and a new police chief’s policy landed him in the unemployment line, then in his present occupation, which at times was not unlike the unemployment line.

  It was a typical St. Louis July day, and the heat-softened blacktop stuck to the soles of Nudger’s shoes and made faint sucking sounds as he walked across the lot to the rear of the angular brick building. He pushed through tinted glass doors, nodded hello to a uniformed cop he knew, then walked down the hall to the booking area.

  A skinny Black kid with wild hair and wilder eyes was standing cuffed before the booking desk while one arresting officer held him and another emptied his pockets and laid
their contents on the desk: a comb; a wallet containing nothing other than a driver’s license, a library card, and a carefully folded newspaper photo of Richard Nixon; a key ring with two keys and a tiny plastic replica of Michelangelo’s Venus as an ornament; a ticket stub from the Saint Louis Opera Theatre; and a .38 caliber bullet. Nudger wondered about the kid.

  The desk sergeant, a large, florid man named Foley whom Nudger knew slightly, duly noted the pockets’ contents and placed them in a yellow envelope, and the kid was led away.

  “I don’t know nothing about no animals,” he said several times to the arresting officers who flanked him.

  “What’s the charge?” Nudger asked Foley, when suspect and cops had disappeared in the direction of the holdover cells.

  “Grand theft, zoo,” Foley said. “Stole a gnu.”

  Nudger thought about asking why but decided against it. Kids these days . . .

  He did say, “Wait’ll the gnus media get hold of that one,” but Foley didn’t smile. “Hammersmith in his office?” he asked in a more serious tone.

  Foley nodded. “He said you called. Said to tell you to go on back.”

  Nudger thanked him and walked around the booking desk and down the hall to Hammersmith’s office.

  The door was open so he didn’t knock. Hammersmith was seated behind his desk, a sleekly obese man with smooth skin, parted and combed white hair that had receded so it appeared his face had suddenly jumped forward, and a cop’s pale gray eyes impossible to read. His clean-shaven, fleshy jowls spilled over his collar like liquid in a balloon.

  He was on the phone, and he glanced at Nudger and motioned with his head for him to sit in the chair angled to face the desk. It was a straight-backed oak chair that was very uncomfortable; Hammersmith didn’t like visitors to his office to stay long and waste his time.

  “... some kind of antelope,” he was saying into the phone, as Nudger sat down. He looked at Nudger and rolled his eyes.