"Why didn't you stop then?"
Dupre looked incredulous. "He was trying to murder me. I was locked in with him. Hayes is huge and I didn't know if he had other weapons. I had to finish him."
"I've got to level with you, Jon. This sounds . . . far-fetched. Why would Wendell Hayes want to kill you?"
Dupre looked down at the table and shook his head.
"Did he even know you before Judge Grant appointed him?" Amanda asked.
"Not really. My parents knew him, but they weren't friends. Before I was banned from the club I saw him at the Westmont a few times."
Amanda shook her head. "This isn't going to fly."
"You think I'm lying?" Dupre asked angrily.
"I didn't say that. In fact, I have a witness who supports your story."
Amanda told him what Paul Baylor had concluded after viewing the photographs from the jail infirmary.
"Unfortunately, Paul's testimony alone won't be enough to acquit you," Amanda concluded. "Can you think of any other way to prove that Hayes attacked you?"
"No."
"Then you see our problem. Your word is not going to be enough to convince a jury that a prominent attorney would try to kill a client he hardly knew. What's Hayes's motive? How are we going to counter the argument that Hayes couldn't have smuggled the shiv through the metal detector? You didn't go through a metal detector, and the weapon is the type of homemade job that jail inmates make."
"I could take a lie detector test."
"The results aren't admissible in court."
Dupre threw his head back and slammed his hands on the table. The guard on the other side of the window started to raise his radio to his mouth as he moved toward the door. Amanda waved him off.
"Forget Hayes for a moment. Tell me about Senator Travis," Amanda said.
"I didn't kill him."
"Why did you argue with him the day before he was killed?"
"He dated one of my girls and she turned up dead."
"Lori Andrews?"
Dupre nodded. "The last time he dated her he beat her up."
"Did Travis admit that he had anything to do with Lori Andrews's murder?"
"No. He said he didn't touch her. But I didn't believe him."
"I'm surprised that you cared about Andrews. Her disappearance helped you, didn't it? It got your case dismissed."
"I'm glad Lori didn't show up, but I didn't want her dead."
"The police found an earring at the Travis crime scene that's supposed to be identical to one you were wearing when you argued with Hayes at the Westmont."
"They did?"
"You didn't know?"
"No. What did it look like?"
"It's gold, a gold cross."
"I have one like it, but I have no idea why it would be at Travis's place. I've never been there."
"Did you talk to Travis again after you saw him at the country club?" Amanda asked.
"No."
Amanda made a note on a legal pad. "What about the evening that Travis was killed? Was anyone with you?"
"A few of the girls were over earlier in the evening. I got high and passed out. When I woke up in the morning they were gone."
"I'll need a list of the women who were at your house so Kate Ross can check them out."
"Joyce Hamada was there. She's a student at Portland State. And Cheryl . . . uh, Cheryl Riggio. Talk to them."
"Okay. We have a bail hearing set for tomorrow. Don't get your hopes up about getting out. There's no automatic bail in a death-penalty case."
"Yeah, I know." Dupre was suddenly very quiet. "Oscar told me."
"I take it you've heard?"
Dupre nodded. "Do you know what happened to him?"
"Only what I read in the paper and heard on the radio, which wasn't much."
"Was he tortured?"
"That's what the paper said."
"Burglars, right?"
Amanda nodded. "It seems unreal. I was talking to him a few days ago about your case."
"Yeah," Dupre agreed, "unreal."
Chapter Twenty-Six.
When the Multnomah County Courthouse was completed in 1914, it occupied the entire block of downtown Portland between Main and Salmon and Fourth and Fifth, and was the largest courthouse on the West Coast. The exterior of the concrete building was brutish and foreboding, but the lobby had a majestic elegance until it became cluttered with metal detectors and guard stations.
Amanda and Kate had to fight their way past the TV cameras and through the throng of reporters who started to shout questions at Amanda as soon as they entered the lobby. They hurried up the wide marble stairway toward Judge Robard's courtroom on the fourth floor, hoping that the uphill run would discourage the heavily loaded cameramen and the sedentary reporters, but a few hearty souls jogged after them, panting questions, which Amanda ignored.
The corridor outside the courtroom was packed with people who were trying to get a seat. They had to wait in line and go through another metal detector to get inside. Amanda flashed her ID, and she and Kate were waved through. Judge Robard had seniority and one of the older courtrooms. Amanda couldn't help thinking how the high ceiling, marble Corinthian columns, and ornate molding made the setting ideal for a judge with such an exaggerated sense of his own importance.
The spectator benches were almost full, and Tim Kerrigan was already at the prosecution counsel table; his second chair was a young Hispanic woman whom Amanda had never met. Kerrigan heard the stir in the courtroom when Amanda came in, and turned his head toward the doorway. The prosecutor whispered something to his colleague and they both stood.
"Hi, Amanda, Kate," Kerrigan said. "This is my second chair, Maria Lopez."
The women nodded at Maria then Kate took the end seat at the defense table.
"You're not really asking for a full-blown bail hearing, are you?" Kerrigan asked Amanda.
"Yup."
"Robard will never grant bail."
"Then I'll be wasting my time."
The prosecutor laughed. "I knew you'd be a pain in the neck."
"Hey, it's my job."
Kerrigan was about to say something else, when Jon Dupre was led into court in manacles and leg chains. With a look of deep satisfaction, Maria Lopez watched Dupre struggle forward. Amanda remembered that Lopez had prosecuted the prostitution case, which had been dismissed.
"Sit down with your attorney," ordered Larry McKenzie, one of Dupre's guards.
"Aren't you going to take his chains off?" Amanda asked when McKenzie made no move to unshackle her client.