“Well, as Spencer Tracy once said of Katharine Hepburn,
‘There ain’t much meat on her, but what there is is cherce.’ “
Steinberg stared for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The two entered Steinberg’s office. Michael rose from the sofa as they walked in. Steinberg walked around and sat at his desk, with Talmadge taking one of the chairs as Michael sat back down.
“Good morning, Mr. Schiftmann,” Talmadge said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Michael answered nervously, “and please, it’s Michael.”
Talmadge nodded. “Okay, Michael.”
“Wes has the material the Davidson County district attorney’s office returned to us in reply to the discovery motions,” Steinberg said. “By law, the prosecution is obliged to provide a defendant with all the evidence against him or any exculpatory evidence prior to any trial or consideration. Our job at this point is to evaluate the evidence and to figure out how to best answer it in order to place in the minds of the jurors reasonable doubt.”
“If we can do that, then there’s every reason to expect a favorable verdict if this ever does, in fact, go to trial,” Talmadge added.
“Is there a chance we can head this off before trial?” Michael asked. “Can we make this go away without a trial?”
Talmadge leaned back on the sofa. “Well, that’s problematic. Of course, we’ll try. The list of motions that we’ll file during this phase of the process reads almost twenty typed pages. We’ll challenge everything from the jurisdiction of the court to the makeup of the grand jury. We’ll move to suppress everything they throw at us. But in the real world, unless there’s been some incredible screwup on the part of the DA, you don’t get very far most of the time.
“And in one sense, the district attorney has taken an incredible chance by announcing that he’s going to seek the death penalty. He’s essentially bet the rent money on the outcome of this. Now, I know Bob Collier pretty well, and he’s not a blowhard and he’s not a grandstander. The fact that he’s even going for the death penalty means he thinks he’s got a good case. And as a rule, if you’re defending a capital case and it actually goes to trial, you’re in trouble before it even starts.”
Michael stared at the floor for a moment, then looked back up quickly. “That’s as a rule. But let’s talk specifics.”
“Okay,” Talmadge said, opening his briefcase. “Let’s look at what they’ve got. I’ve taken the liberty of summarizing it for the purposes of our conversation so we don’t have to spend hours going over it in detail.”
He pulled out a stack of papers and thumbed through them, then pulled out a single sheet. “First, they’ve got the evidence of the crime scene. This was reported in the media as one of the bloodiest, goriest murder scenes to come down the pike in a long time, and from the photos I saw, they were right.”
“Any chance we can get those photos suppressed?” Steinberg asked.
Talmadge nodded. “A chance we’ll get at least the worst ones suppressed,” he said. “They’re clearly prejudicial. But all of them? I doubt it.”
“Then what?” Michael asked.
“The photos in and of themselves only prove there was a crime committed. They don’t prove you did it.”
Michael nodded quickly. “Okay. Good.”
“Then we’ve got the usual. The autopsy reports, the forensic evidence. The good news, to get to the bottom line, is this: They’ve got nothing that explicitly places you at the crime scene, at least not yet.”
“Not yet?” Steinberg demanded.
Talmadge returned. “The results of the DNA swabs they took won’t be in from the lab for at least another week or two.”
“And the bad news?” Michael asked.
“They’ve also got nothing that explicitly proves you weren’t there.”
A tense silence followed as Michael sat there, trying to take everything in.
“Yes,” Talmadge said after a few moments. “And then we move on. They’ve got credit card receipts, rental car and hotel receipts, restaurant receipts, all of which place you in Nashville the night of the murders. But so what? We concede that. You were doing a book signing. It was in the newspaper. But then we go on from there. The police have questioned witnesses at the hotel who say you left the hotel about ten that Friday night and didn’t return until almost two in the morning. Which places you outside the hotel during the time the murders were committed.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Michael said. “I never can after a book signing. I went out, hit a couple of bars, had a few drinks.”
“Fair enough,” Talmadge said. “You try and remember what bars you hit and we’ll try to find people who can place you there.”
Michael nodded. “I’ll start working on it.”
“But then we come to the one thing they’ve got that might be problematic. Several days after the murder, a bum found a bunch of bloody clothes, a pair of latex gloves, couple other things in a Dumpster about three miles or so from the murder scene. The blood on the stuff was traced to the murder scene, and they’ve positively typed it to the two victims.”
Michael shrugged. “So?”
“So,” Talmadge continued, “they found the rental car you had the night you were in Nashville. They tracked it down to New Orleans, and when they examined it, they found traces of blood in the trunk. When they ran tests on the samples, they matched the blood on both the bloody garbage stuff and the murder scene.”
“But that’s impossible!” Michael said loudly. “That’s crazy. No wait, it’s not impossible, it’s bloody fucking convenient. How much trouble does it take to dab a blood sample on a piece of carpet that you already know matches the victims into a car?”
“Maybe,” Talmadge said. “It’s certainly something we can look into.”
“And how many people,” Steinberg broke in, “had rented that car in the time between when Michael had it and how long it took them to find it?”
“Yeah, how long did it take them to find it?”
Talmadge shuffled through some papers. “Just a few days shy of two months.”
“Two months,” Michael spewed. “How many people rent a car in two months? It’s crazy. They can’t tie me to it.”
“It’s weak. And we can find out how many other people had rented that car. If we can break the causal link they’re trying to establish in that fashion, then we’ve made a big dent in their case.”
“What else have they got?” Steinberg asked.
“Of substance? Not much. Some pretty wild theories.” Talmadge faced Michael and looked directly at him. “They’re going to produce a witness who says that the plots to your books are pretty similar to some other murders that have occurred around the country. I think they’re going to try and convince the jury that you’re some kind of serial killer or something like that.”
“That’s insane,” Michael said. “I’ve already explained those similarities. I’ve been researching a series of murders for years and using the material in my books.”
“In any case,” Steinberg offered, “that’s the sort of testimony that we’re never going to let them bring into court. No judge with half a brain is going to allow that kind of material in and run the risk of being overturned on appeal. We’ll get that suppressed easily.”
Talmadge nodded. “I don’t think it’s much of a threat. But the blood evidence is another matter. And, of course, the results of the DNA tests are absolutely crucial.”
“I can tell you right now, there’s nothing there for them to find,” Michael said.
“Then we’ll proceed on that premise,” Steinberg said.
“But let’s also assume, for the sake of argument, that the worst-case scenario will prevail and we’ll go to trial. What’s the next step?”
Talmadge sighed. “We have to be prepared for that, although I hope we can cut them off at that pass. But we have to start putting the team together.”
“Team?” Michael asked.
Talmadge nodded. “We’ll need to hire a jury consultant. I know the best one in the business. She’s been on 60 Minutes, Court TV, the whole package. She’ll start putting together what we need from a jury. And keep in mind, there’s every good reason to think that while we probably won’t get a change of venue, and maybe don’t even want one, that we’ll wind up going out of county to get a jury. Which means Jackson, Memphis, maybe Knoxville. And what we look for will change depending on where we go. Getting a death-qualified jury is a challenge. We want a good one.”