Rogue Divorce Lawyer Read online

  “It’s all in the divorce papers, too … her declaration for custody.”

  “Oh? Good. Funny thing, though.”

  “What?” Gary’s eyes froze on the file and his heart double-timed.

  “Skip’s buddies on the construction site didn’t know a thing. Worked with him every day, partied on weekends, and not a witness among them.”

  Gary shrugged and looked up. “What do you expect? Birds of a feather. Protecting their own.”

  “Probably.”

  “Anything else for me?”

  “No. You and your secretary confirmed the divorce. That’s it.”

  Gary considered embellishing to help seal Skip’s fate. Kim’s death had negated any attorney-client privilege, but Gary was afraid of being put on the stand. Instead, he turned the pages in the arbitrary file he chose.

  * * *

  The detective stood to leave. “I’ll need a copy of those divorce papers.”

  “Give Vicky your card. She’ll fax it.” Gary flipped through his file and picked up a pen.

  “Thanks.” Gonzalez put his notebook away.

  As Gonzalez turned the door handle, the dread and tension leeched from Gary’s body. He riffled through a second file to sound busy. The detective had his killer. Even better, the damning testimony at trial would come from outraged relatives and neighbors—not Gary.

  “Excuse me.” Gonzalez turned. “Do you ever go to your client’s homes?”

  Gary looked up from the nothing he was doing. Nerves raw he replayed his retreat from Kim’s house, I can’t hesitate.

  “No.”

  “To see how they live?”

  A nervous smile involuntarily popped across his face as he stuttered, “I … I … keep business here … in the office.”

  Gonzalez scrutinized Gary but then strutted out closing the door behind him.

  * * *

  Gary sunk back in his chair. Damn it. Damn it.

  His hiccup in self-control had shattered his performance with a “tell”—the smile and the stuttered words blundering off his tongue.

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  Copyrighted Material

  Chapter 4

  Gary’s “tell” did nothing to disturb the course of expedient justice against Skip—the wife abuser and supposed murderer. Nor did it derail Detective Gonzalez’s fixation on Skip. Skip was an easy target and a neat package—the obvious one, the blue-collar construction worker turned wife abuser. Another notch on Gonzalez’s gun. Investigation closed.

  * * *

  After being brought in for “questioning,” Skip never felt freedom again. He was arrested and booked for murder. At the arraignment and bail hearing, the judge found him a danger to the community and his children.

  “Remanded,” the judge ordered. “Next case.”

  “I loved Kim,” Skip screamed as he was dragged back to jail. “I love my kids.”

  Skip’s only break? He wasn’t charged with first-degree murder. Gonzalez had found no evidence of premeditation—if he had bothered to look. How much time was a woman like Kim worth to taxpayers, after all?

  Skip was indicted and charged on the sole count of second-degree murder. A.D.A. Monica Ortega, the assistant district attorney, didn’t include possible lesser charges of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. Her intentional omissions meant the jury, if their sympathies were touched, couldn’t convict Skip on any lesser charge.

  For Ortega, it was all or nothing and she believed in “all.” Her personal mission was prosecuting crimes against women. She was just shy of a hundred percent conviction rate.

  * * *

  The defense dance began. In prison, Skip, cuffed and cowed, knew fear when Ortega lashed him with her eyes and tongue from across the negotiating table.

  His first offense to her was murder. His second was refusing the deal she offered. His third, snubbing the attempts by Elmer Finley, his overworked public defender, to manipulate and badger him into taking a plea.

  Skip was forcing these public servants to go to trial—to overburden an already overburdened system when it was clear to everyone he was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” or would be when they were through with him.

  He was intransigent. He was sure a jury would see he was an innocent man being railroaded.

  * * *

  September arrived with Skip still waiting in jail—caged and cut off from the outside world. His fury and despair festered knowing that Kim’s real killer was out there and out of his reach.

  He was angry that his children were now motherless and, if he was convicted, fatherless too—maybe forever. He was angry he hadn’t moved back home sooner. He had loved Kim—with all her big-mouthed warts—and he loved his kids more. He ached to hold them. He ached for his life back. He wanted his weekends again with beer and his friends watching baseball or football and, of course, talking smack about their construction foreman. He wanted to doze off on his Lazy-boy in front of the TV at night. He wanted Kim beneath him in bed, a soft submissive receptacle that during the day cooked, cleaned, and took care of his sons.

  He regretted hitting her—even though she deserved it—had deserved it.

  * * *

  Skip rarely saw his public defender after the plea deal discussions fell apart, and then only with a pile of legal files in hand, as Finley flitted from inmate to inmate.

  “Kim called to ask me back,” Skip insisted again. “I don’t know why. She was afraid of something … something else.”

  Finley shuffled through his stack of files to find Skip’s and scanned it, refreshing his multi-defendant cluttered mind.

  “Oh, yeah. Kim. Your wife.”

  “Yeah, my wife. I’m Skip Duran.” Skip thumped his chest. “Remember? Murder?”

  Finley ignored Skip’s sarcasm and reviewed the updated reports for the first time. “The police have nothing new.”

  “Big fucking surprise. That lazy asshole detective just wants a scapegoat. He doesn’t give a shit who he fucks up or who really did it.”

  “Our own investigator apparently doesn’t either from the report.” The public defender kept reading.

  “Look, I’m telling you something was wrong with Kim. You need to find out who really killed her.”

  “The money we got for an investigator is used up. She found nothing.”

  “A she. No wonder that bitch found nothing.”

  “She’s good.”

  “Bullshit. Get a man to do the job. Do it right.”

  “There’s no more money.”

  “Then you do something. I didn’t kill Kim. I loved her.”

  “With the police reports of your beatings, no jury will buy that as our defense.”

  “Shit.” Skip wanted to punch this asshole’s pie hole just like he had Kim’s—but he needed this mouthpiece. “Do something to help me, dammit!”

  “I have. I’ve looked at everything … every report … every statement. There’s nothing exculpating there.”

  “Exculpa . . ?”

  “Nothing that will get you off.”

  “I was at my mother’s. I was packing to go home to Kim. I told you.”

  “We’ve gone over this. Your mom wasn’t there with you.”

  “So what? I was.”

  “If it can’t be verified it’s not a viable alibi. Oh, excuse me. ‘Viable’ means ‘enough for an alibi.’”

  Finley’s condescension blasted through Skip.

  “Look, you son of a bitch.” Skip hit the table with his fists instead of beating this punk to a pulp.

  “I don’t care about your fancy words. I didn’t kill her.”

  “Sure.” Finley stood juggling his files and briefcase.

  “You fucking worthless pussy!”

  “I’ll see you at trial.”

  “Wait.”

  Finley didn’t.

  Skip had heard hardened inmates call public defenders public “pretenders.” He understood now.

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks, Skip’s parent
s visited, but they were useless. He needed a private, good criminal defense attorney to get him off and a male investigator who was on his side. Like Skip, whose house was now in foreclosure, his parents had no money.

  “We got together a thousand from the family.” Skip’s mother sat crying.

  “That’s not enough.”

  “They all did their best.” Skip’s dad didn’t bother to sit.

  “We’re sorry, son.”

  “Could we sell the house?” His mother pleaded.

  “Skip doesn’t want you on the street.” The father warned off his son.

  “No, I don’t.” Skip glared up at the man who had raised him using the buckle end of his leather belt—the sound of it being pulled from his belt loops and the smell of cowhide mixed with whiskey was burned into his memory.

  “The truth will come out.” Skip’s father stood his wife up. “Let’s go.”

  “I love you, son.” His mother cried as she was marshaled out.

  So what, you stupid cow, Skip thought watching his well-trained mother obey the man who Skip mirrored.

  As the door closed behind them, any hope Skip had went with them.

  A life in prison? Skip thought. Never.

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  Copyrighted Material

  Chapter 5

  With Skip being ground up by the justice machine, Gary returned to his routine. Why not? Weeks had passed devoid of further contact from Detective Gonzalez and any hint of other suspects—namely him.

  Gary eagerly resumed satisfying his appetites: greed, female subjugation, booze, and gambling.

  He churned his clients’ cases for money. He farmed referrals, took cold calls, and used his contacts to troll for new clients—his specialty, deserted, bewildered, and desperate wives.

  He tried to satiate his sexual urgings with his remaining regulars, but they were no Kim. He craved fresh flesh.

  At the Phoenix, he fed on the rush at the loudest crap tables as the dice hit the backboard, bounced, and rolled to a landing. He leered at the cleavaged women who served him free drinks and ate up the table’s adulation with his many dice rolls before crapping out.

  Since Kim’s death, Gary had gambled too late and lost too big. He hated going home to his sleep that mutated into non-sleep when Kim invaded his head. She ruptured his rest—not with guilt but with fear. The fear that she might yet grab him from her casket and destroy his life through Skip.

  Skip needed to be put down like Kim—like horses turned into dog food.

  * * *

  On a Tuesday, after losing large again, Gary came to work late but wired. He needed to make up for his losses.

  Vicky was on a call as he unlocked his office—out of bounds for all but him. As usual, he threw his suit coat on the closest client chair. He grabbed a stack of client files with stickies listing the boilerplate discovery documents for Vicky to prepare. He dropped the stack under her nose.

  He mouthed, “Right away.”

  She knew the drill. The sets of discovery were computerized templates personalized for estranged husbands. They were designed to enrage men who had already capitulated and wanted to settle. Gary couldn’t make money helping honest, amicable spouses settle their divorces with a minimum of fuss. He needed conflict to make the big bucks. He had learned through the years that serving invasive requests to produce financial documents and probing personal interrogatory questions was the best way to make estranged husbands irate and, thus, make settlement impossible.

  Gary also counted on the kickbacks he exacted from his forensic accountant who analyzed the husbands’ financials. The two had a long-standing, symbiotic and mutually lucrative relationship.

  * * *

  At his desk, Gary proceeded to bill other clients for prep time, research, drafting inflammatory letters, and redundant routine discovery requests. Of course, all this work was boilerplate, but he billed as if he was doing it for the first time.

  After all, Gary not only had gambling losses to cover but the expenses of Mary, his wife—his live-in bloodsucker.

  Gary’s Mary acted like a millionaire’s wife and spent money commensurate with that fantasy every day—designer wardrobe, maintenance rituals, pilfering money for her adult children, gifting grandchildren, and throwing money at her uncountable charitable black holes. Chairing charity committees and concomitantly leading the charge with donations fed her ego and filled her time.

  * * *

  Gary paused in his billing flurry and remembered when he first met Mary at Cal State San Bernardino—a blonde, blue-eyed, thin, gorgeous freshman. Not very bright, but socially connected and, best of all, totally taken with him—all of him, missionary style. It was enough then. Simple relief was all he knew or wanted. His mistake was marrying her.

  After law school, they bought the old stucco duplex in downtown San Bernardino, rezoned it for two offices, and put out his shingle. They leased the second office to a retired Navy dentist. Gary never let that drunk touch his teeth, but the patients flocked in and on the way out thanked him for his service.

  Mary decorated his office when it opened, but never updated it. Why would she? The money flowed in no matter what—and kept flowing thanks to Gary’s creative client billing.

  With Mary, the sex faded after their first kid and disappeared after the second. Gary had become an afterthought in Mary’s life—at least that’s how Gary saw it.

  Mary’s final divisive act was to force him to take on an immense mortgage at the River Ranch development in Alta Loma. River Ranch was the most exclusive and only gate-guarded community in San Bernardino. They couldn’t afford it, but she bullied him into buying it.

  Once they were neighbors with the elite, Mary’s ignorant but never silent tongue-lashed Gary into silence and debt. She zapped him with words like stingy, ungrateful, or “tax deduction,” a term she had heard on television talk shows where she got all her half-baked knowledge. If that failed, she would launch a full-bore screaming attack on his gambling and drinking. Her backup? Haranguing him from her saintly bully pulpit with her sacrifice of her own college education to put him through law school.

  He had long since come to regret marrying the now over-weight, middle-aged stranger who inhabited his life.

  * * *

  Gary shut out his agony by working on his cases to keep financially alive. He reviewed his time sheets for the last several days and solved his problem this time by simply doubling most of the billings.

  Why not? He thought. What do clients know about billing or anything legal?

  If anyone didn’t pay, he’d send a follow-up demand letter threatening to sue—because he could. Let them leech off some softhearted friend or relative to line Gary’s pockets.

  If that didn’t work, he would crush them in the legal system they feared—feared because he gave them a horrendous introduction to it.

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  Copyrighted Material

  Chapter 6

  When Vicky got off the phone, she interrupted Gary’s creative billing machinations with a knock.

  “What?”

  She set four pink message forms on his desk. “From this morning.”

  “Wait. Here, get these bills out today and prepare the follow-up letters to put the squeeze on for next week.”

  “Sure,” Vicky asked no questions. “The top slip there is Eliana Thurston, a new client coming in at eleven.”

  “A new client? Damn it. I told you I needed to phone screen any new clients.”

  “You weren’t here. She was desperate. She lives in The Oaks.”

  “The Oaks? You did the right thing.” Gary had trained Vicky well.

  “We’ll help her out. Did you tell her to bring her financials with her?”

  “Yes.”

  The Oaks was not River Ranch. Still, it was the next best thing. It had no guard or gate, but it did have oak trees and quarter-acre lots for the young monied. He was practiced in the unscrupulous tactics he would use to suck any equity out of expensive homes to pa
y his fees.

  Vicky asked, “Do you want coffee? I’m making fresh.”

  Vicky made coffee in the office alcove all day to keep going.

  “No, go get us both lattes from down the street. A double shot in mine.” Gary needed the caffeine to prepare for his new meal ticket—Eliana Thurston of The Oaks.

  “On me.”

  Vicky grabbed the ten-dollar bill Gary held out before he changed his mind.

  “Get a couple muffins, too.” He threw another five at her—what was a couple of bucks compared to a house in The Oaks.

  As he shut Gary’s door Vicky said, “Your wife wants you to call her cell.”

  Gary had ignored Mary’s calls and texts on his own cell, but couldn’t have her calling the office all day. He auto-dialed her. It went to message.

  “Hi, hon. Sorry I missed you. Meetings all day.”

  Not sorry—relieved. Now, he could avoid her until tonight—her blabber about adult-kid problems, their grandchildren, house troubles, and her social-climbing plans for them that sucked up his evenings.

  * * *

  Gary went to his file cabinet and scrambled through files for more husbands to agitate with discovery requests.

  He grabbed two files but stopped at the next one—Duran—Kim Duran. Her screeching mouth tore through his mind. Her lifeless eyes flashed into his consciousness. He was time-capsuled back to his kill.

  “Shit.” He slammed the drawer and sat at his desk with the two files in his shaking hands.

  Gary felt no guilt, no remorse. He was just plain angry—angry at himself for letting that bitch invade his day. Angry Skip hadn’t taken a plea. Angry Skip’s trial wasn’t over. Angry Skip was not permanently put away so that Gary could permanently put Kim away, too.