44
Maggie’s car was in the garage when I pulled in. She wasn’t in the front room but I saw an open bottle of red wine on the counter when I glanced into the kitchen while passing through the house. I found her on the back deck. There wasn’t much here, just a table and chairs, a Weber grill, and a hot tub we never used, and no view of the city. All you could see was a hedge and part of the neighbor’s house above us on the hillside street.
“Mags, what are you doing back here?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just having a glass of wine.”
“You want to sit in the front, watch the sun go down?”
“No, I’m happy here.”
I started stripping off my tie.
“I’m going to change and then I’ll be back out here.”
“You don’t have to. You can go watch the sunset.”
“Is something wrong?”
“You should have told me.”
“What, about going to see Adebayo? Why? I mean, I can’t go to the DA herself every time I have a case. That would look bad for both of us.”
“This case you should have brought to me. It would have saved you the embarrassment. Saved me too.”
“What are you talking about? What embarrassment?”
“The case isn’t there, Mickey. You’re taking a wild swing at your own redemption over a case you think you should have won twenty years ago.”
“You’re passing?”
“Yes, we’re passing. Monday you’ll get the formal reject from Adebayo. This whole thing could have been avoided if you had just shown it to me first.”
I pulled out a chair and sat down. I started thinking about how I would break the news to David and Cassandra Snow. I tried to mentally review the petition I had spent a day writing. I was sure all of the elements of habeas were there. New evidence unavailable at the time of conviction, medical research, medical witnesses — I had everything.
“It was all there,” I said. “Why was it rejected? I don’t want to wait till Monday. Just tell me.”
“We had no choice,” Maggie said. “It took only a search of the National Institutes of Health website to see that osteogenesis imperfecta was first described a hundred fifty years ago. Mickey, you have her condition right, but you should have had it back then. It’s not new evidence.”
“No, it was not diagnosed back then. Her mother wasn’t around to give a history, and the specific genetic test for her type of OI wasn’t available at the time. That is the new evidence. If I didn’t make that clear I can rewrite the petition. Whatever you need.”
“I just need you to stop, Mickey. It’s not happening.”
I ran a hand through my hair.
“You can always take it to federal court,” Maggie said.
“He’ll be dead before we get to the first hearing,” I said. “That’s the whole reason I went to you. He’s dying and his daughter wants to get him out.”
“Well, but you didn’t come to me. You went around me.”
“Jesus, I did not. I went through established channels. It would have been inappropriate to take this directly to you. Is that what this is really about? I could tell you were upset before you even looked at the petition. My client is being punished because you think I did something wrong.”
“It’s not that, and you know it. It’s a decision based on the law. Look, you were a young lawyer back then. You didn’t know what you know now. It’s the same with all of us, and we all have to live with the mistakes we made and the cases we lost.”
I shook my head. What she said was true of all lawyers, but it was not true of the case at hand. I was devastated by the decision.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “This guy has spent twenty years in prison for something he didn’t do. I know it, his daughter knows it. And now it’s a death sentence.”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said.
“So am I.”
45
Maggie and I kept our distance over the weekend. Rather than work in the back office of the house, I went downtown to work at the warehouse and prepare for the trial week ahead. I couldn’t know for sure how Judge Ruhlin would decide on the future of juror eleven or the petition for mistrial, but I needed to be ready for all possibilities. To that end, I met with Jack McEvoy for three hours on Saturday, and together we structured the direct examination of Nathan Whittaker, the Tidalwaiv coder I planned to put on the stand as my last witness. By the end of the session I was confident I would be able to use Whittaker to show the jury, whether it was composed of eleven or twelve members, how the programming of Clair could have been tainted and led to the violent end of Rebecca Randolph’s life.
On Saturday night I had a quiet dinner with Maggie at the Musso and Frank Grill. We mostly talked about our daughter and the architect Maggie had just hired to design the rebuild on her home. We didn’t discuss the Snow case at all, and Alessio, the restaurant manager, fawned over us enough to distract our thoughts from the gulf that had opened between us. Until dessert, that is. After the sand dabs, we ordered a slice of cheesecake to share, and it was then that Maggie floated the idea of moving out of the house on Fareholm.
“Maggie, you don’t have to move,” I said. “I want you to stay with me.”
“Well, you don’t like me very much right now,” she said.
“That’s not true, and even if it were, I’d get past it. We’re on opposite sides of a case. But this is about our life. I somehow feel that everything that’s happened, the fire and everything, was meant to bring us back together. I know that sounds like over-the-top magical thinking, but it’s what I feel. And the Snow case, it’s just a test to see how strong we are. How strong we could be.”
“What about that tech billionaire sticking his nose into my business? Is that a test too?”
“Look, I know that’s disturbing, and rightfully so, but he was just using you to try to get to me. I’m going to pay him back for that in court. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“You hope so.”
“I know so.”
“Don’t be overconfident.”
“Act like a winner and you’ll be a winner.”
“Legal Siegel — I know you miss him.”
“Yeah, but I had a good day prepping for my next witness and the knockout punch I’m going to deliver after that. So I don’t have to act — I am confident.”
“You know, you often talk in terms of physical violence when you talk about court. Have you noticed that?”
“Sounds appropriate to me. It’s a no-holds-barred fight. The Octagon. Even in civil. Maybe even more so in civil.”
With that, I looked out of our booth and signaled to Luis, our red-coated waiter, for the check.
I stayed on a roll until Sunday night, when I met Cassandra Snow for dinner. I didn’t want to deliver the bad news by email or text or phone. She picked the place based on ease of access, and we met at the Lab on Figueroa by USC. I got right to the point before we ordered food or even told the waiter what kind of water we wanted.
“We’ve had a setback with the DA’s office,” I said. “They’re going to pass on the petition.”
She shook her head, then held still while she composed herself.
“Did they say why?” she asked.
“They believe the medical evidence that you had OI was available to me at the time of the trial,” I said quietly.
“But that’s not true.”
“It is and it isn’t. They’re taking the position that people have known about OI for a long time, so it could have been diagnosed then. I think they’re wrong, and that’s why I will still take this to US district court.”
“That will take forever. My father doesn’t have that kind of time.”