from the judge.
Unless we can quash the indictment, or at least wash out the special circumstances in a pretrial motion, Laurel will spend the duration waiting for trial, behind bars. Though that may not be the worst of our worries. This morning Harry starts with the little stuff, trashing what had been an early dream, some way to attack probable cause for the arrest and spring Laurel back to her kids. At best this would have been a temporary fix, assuming there was cause, until they reconvened the grand jury. “Even if we succeeded, she fled the jurisdiction on the night of the murder. Laurel was due in court the next day on the custody case. She’s given the authorities no explanation for this trip. They claim this is highly suspicious,” says Harry. He is right. They could hold her on this alone. What is more troubling is that Laurel has given no better accounting to us. She insists that she did not kill Melanie, but refuses to tell me what she was doing in Reno the night of the murder. She says she had a bona fide reason for the trip. Presumably she will share it with us sometime before she is convicted. “Maybe she’ll have an explanation ready for us in the morning,” I tell Harry. This is when I am scheduled to see her again at the jail. “Sure.” He cackles, always the artful dodger. Harry has seen clients like this before.
People who wonder if they should tell their own lawyer and instead end up doing it for the first time on the stand. I shiver and put it out of my mind. I’ve told Harry about Vega and the fact that Jack was wired for sound in his office. He thinks Lama was trying to set me up, some compromising statement that perhaps I had knowledge of Laurel’s whereabouts. This could make me an accessory after the fact, or at very least cause the bar to launch a probe like a photon torpedo into my practice. Either way Jimmy Lama would have a psychic orgasm. Harry’s fanning through pages on his desk, materials copied by the police and given to him under our application for discovery. At this point, with an ongoing investigation they have supplied everything except the names and addresses of any witnesses, people who may have seen things outside the house that night. These they will hold back until their investigation is complete. Lama would not want us talking to these people until he can cast their stories in concrete. He will tape their words and take signed statements so that they cannot later have some altered recollection.
“There is the rug,” says Harry. “The one she was cleaning when they took her down.” I question him with a look.
“Heard me right,” he says. “She was not in the casinos pulling handles when they got her.” Harry punctures what he knows was my best hope to explain Laurel’s trip. There are people who consider travel, blurry-eyed and at the speed of light over the mountains, as a quick fix for the gambling disease. “She was in a laundromat doing the spin cycle when she was rudely interrupted,” he says. “She was washing a bathroom throw rug,” says Harry. He gives me a look like this is some crazy lady. What makes this worse for our side, as he explains, is that this particular rug has been identified by Jack Vega as belonging to him, part of the spoils of divorce. Jack has told the cops that it was in the house on the night of the murder, somewhere on the floor near the bath where Melanie was found dead. What Laurel was doing a hundred and thirty miles from home washing a rug is not clear. Harry shrugs his shoulders on this one. “Did the cops find anything on the rug? Blood?” I say. He shakes his head. “Clean as a whistle. She washed it in one of those chemical machines, the industrial ones with solvent.”
“They’ll argue she cleaned it to destroy evidence,” I tell him.
“They already are, in a roundabout way,” says Harry. “Powder-residue tests on her hands. Came up negative. She’d dipped them into the solvent.” Visions of Laurel’s
Unless we can quash the indictment, or at least wash out the special circumstances in a pretrial motion, Laurel will spend the duration waiting for trial, behind bars. Though that may not be the worst of our worries. This morning Harry starts with the little stuff, trashing what had been an early dream, some way to attack probable cause for the arrest and spring Laurel back to her kids. At best this would have been a temporary fix, assuming there was cause, until they reconvened the grand jury. “Even if we succeeded, she fled the jurisdiction on the night of the murder. Laurel was due in court the next day on the custody case. She’s given the authorities no explanation for this trip. They claim this is highly suspicious,” says Harry. He is right. They could hold her on this alone. What is more troubling is that Laurel has given no better accounting to us. She insists that she did not kill Melanie, but refuses to tell me what she was doing in Reno the night of the murder. She says she had a bona fide reason for the trip. Presumably she will share it with us sometime before she is convicted. “Maybe she’ll have an explanation ready for us in the morning,” I tell Harry. This is when I am scheduled to see her again at the jail. “Sure.” He cackles, always the artful dodger. Harry has seen clients like this before.
People who wonder if they should tell their own lawyer and instead end up doing it for the first time on the stand. I shiver and put it out of my mind. I’ve told Harry about Vega and the fact that Jack was wired for sound in his office. He thinks Lama was trying to set me up, some compromising statement that perhaps I had knowledge of Laurel’s whereabouts. This could make me an accessory after the fact, or at very least cause the bar to launch a probe like a photon torpedo into my practice. Either way Jimmy Lama would have a psychic orgasm. Harry’s fanning through pages on his desk, materials copied by the police and given to him under our application for discovery. At this point, with an ongoing investigation they have supplied everything except the names and addresses of any witnesses, people who may have seen things outside the house that night. These they will hold back until their investigation is complete. Lama would not want us talking to these people until he can cast their stories in concrete. He will tape their words and take signed statements so that they cannot later have some altered recollection.
“There is the rug,” says Harry. “The one she was cleaning when they took her down.” I question him with a look.
“Heard me right,” he says. “She was not in the casinos pulling handles when they got her.” Harry punctures what he knows was my best hope to explain Laurel’s trip. There are people who consider travel, blurry-eyed and at the speed of light over the mountains, as a quick fix for the gambling disease. “She was in a laundromat doing the spin cycle when she was rudely interrupted,” he says. “She was washing a bathroom throw rug,” says Harry. He gives me a look like this is some crazy lady. What makes this worse for our side, as he explains, is that this particular rug has been identified by Jack Vega as belonging to him, part of the spoils of divorce. Jack has told the cops that it was in the house on the night of the murder, somewhere on the floor near the bath where Melanie was found dead. What Laurel was doing a hundred and thirty miles from home washing a rug is not clear. Harry shrugs his shoulders on this one. “Did the cops find anything on the rug? Blood?” I say. He shakes his head. “Clean as a whistle. She washed it in one of those chemical machines, the industrial ones with solvent.”
“They’ll argue she cleaned it to destroy evidence,” I tell him.
“They already are, in a roundabout way,” says Harry. “Powder-residue tests on her hands. Came up negative. She’d dipped them into the solvent.” Visions of Laurel’s
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