Guilty Blood Read online

  CHAPTER 4

  Nate finally heard Jessica Ames’s voicemail at nine o’clock that night.

  After Harry Clarendon’s deposition, Kevin had wanted to know everything Nate could tell him about the securities laws that Clarendon had violated. When he had exhausted Nate’s knowledge, he wanted a list of websites where he could do further research. Nate had no doubt that by tomorrow morning Kevin would know more about this particular corner of securities law than most lawyers at B&B.

  Nate could picture him now, sitting in his room/office. He would still have on the too-large suit he had worn at the deposition, unless his mother had made him change. He would be surrounded by his bank of monitors, each showing a different article or regulation. He would swivel from one to another, his pale complexion made paler by the glow from the screens.

  Kevin’s autism gave him a remarkable ability to focus and see patterns in seemingly random masses of data—but it could be a little draining for those around him, particularly when Kevin was excited about something. Well, better to have him excited than nervous and depressed, which he had been too often over the past year.

  After Kevin left, Nate went to the firm library to sketch out the first drafts of the letters he would send to the SEC and Fortuna’s board tomorrow morning. He went there for solitude, not knowledge—virtually all legal research was done online now. Nate doubted that most of the junior lawyers even knew how to do their jobs using actual books. And he wrote on an old-fashioned fourteen-inch legal pad, which made him feel even more anachronistic. A fountain pen in his hand would have completed the picture.

  The office had been nearly empty when Nate finally sat down behind his computer at half past eight. He was the only one over fifty who was still there, which he counted as a minor moral victory. Still, he was tired, and he winced when he found more than sixty new emails and three voicemails waiting for him.

  But in truth, there wasn’t any place he’d rather be. He loved his job—the courtroom battles, the client strategy meetings, the bar speeches—all of it. He would happily do this 24/7, and he basically had when he was younger and more energetic.

  He plowed through the emails first, deleting most of them. None of the rest was urgent, but he sent quick replies anyway. Clients liked getting same-day responses from a senior partner; it told them that they were important to him. And sending after-hours emails to junior attorneys and staff let them know that he was working at least as hard as they were.

  Then he turned to the voicemails. Jessica’s was second, and he never got to the third.

  “Nate, this is Jessica,” her voice said from his speakerphone. “Please call me as soon as you get this message. I need your help.” She paused, as if debating how much more to say. “It’s about Brandon.”

  He played the message back twice, listening to her voice. It was hoarse and fragile, like she’d been crying just before she called him. This must be bad. Well, he wasn’t completely surprised.

  He swiveled his chair and looked out into the darkness, gathering his thoughts before he called her. Lights dotted the Marin Headlands across the water, and headlights made a steady stream of sparks across the Golden Gate Bridge, blurring as they passed through the fog. It was a picturesque view, but Nate’s mind barely registered it. His mind was in the past.

  Three years ago, Nate’s best friend—and Jessica’s husband—Tim Ames died in a construction accident. Nate had helped her tie up the thousand loose ends Tim left behind. Tim had been a successful real-estate developer, and much of his money was stuck in half-finished construction projects or poorly documented partnerships that owned a hodgepodge of empty lots in the hills and valleys east of San Francisco. Making matters worse, he had died without a will, despite Nate’s repeated advice to get one.

  Jessica had needed a good lawyer, of course, but she hadn’t had the money to pay for one. The Ameses hadn’t lived beyond their means, but they had lived to them. And Tim didn’t have much life insurance. So Nate volunteered to do what he could.

  He had devoted hundreds of hours to the Ames family, but it hadn’t really been work, at least not after the first few months. A lot of the time was spent on long lunches with Jessica that started with discussions of something related to the estate. But their conversations always wandered off into a story about Tim, remembrances of someplace she and Nate had both been, a war story from one of his cases, or a funny anecdote about her quirky extended family back in the Midwest.

  Unbidden, his mind conjured up a memory of her sitting across the table from him at an outdoor café. Her smile was dazzling in the bright sun, and her brown eyes danced. The light brought out gold highlights in her auburn hair. Even during those dark times, she had been full of life and warmth.

  In truth, he had made little effort to keep their meetings focused on the business at hand. Partially, he wanted to lighten the weight of grief they both carried. But it had been more than that, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself. Even now, it made him uncomfortable to think about the feelings she stirred in him.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. He had known that it was unwise to be more than a good friend to her—and he could never allow her to be more than that to him. But he had allowed himself to linger too long in the vague borderlands between friendship and something more. It had been frighteningly hard to pull away in the end.

  The final wrap-up of Tim’s estate provided a natural end to Nate’s close contact with Jessica, and he took advantage of the excuse to ease away from her. He had managed to turn Tim’s complicated and messy little business empire into a bank account that allowed her to pay off all her debts and buy a nice two-bedroom condo in Pleasanton. She had found a job at an antique shop, and he thought that it more or less paid the bills. She had seemed to be putting the pieces of her life back together.

  But her son was a different story. Tim’s death had hit Brandon Ames very hard. He was a freshman at UC Berkeley at the time, and his life had fallen apart. He started drinking heavily, skipped classes, and got into fights at parties and bars. He almost got expelled as a result. Then he hit rock bottom one night when he crashed into a streetlight and blew a .21 on a Breathalyzer. He pled guilty to driving under the influence and started going to Alcoholics Anonymous. The last time Nate saw him, Brandon had been celebrating an offer from a construction company for a summer internship that could lead to a permanent job as an engineer. Nate had thought Brandon had cleaned up his life. Until now.

  He turned back to his desk and stared at the phone. He reluctantly picked it up and dialed.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jessica’s heart jumped when she saw Nate’s number on her phone screen. She answered immediately. “Nate, thank you so much for calling.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry I took so long to get back to you,” he said, sounding a little tired. “I’ve been out of the office all day. What can I do for you?”

  “Brandon was arrested,” she said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “The police have been asking him about a murder. They won’t tell me anything, but I found a statement on their website saying they’ve made an arrest in the murder of someone named Lincoln Thomas. I’ve never heard of him. Neither has Brandon.”

  The line was silent for several seconds. “I . . . I’m so sorry, Jess,” he said.

  “Can you help him?” she asked, gripping the phone tightly and praying he’d say yes.

  “I’ll do what I can, but I’m afraid it may not be much,” he replied. “I’m not a criminal attorney. I don’t have the skills Brandon is going to need. It would be borderline malpractice for me to represent him in a murder case—like a dermatologist doing brain surgery. Plus, I don’t think I’d have time to do his case justice.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

  Her heart sank, and a black fog of despair descended on her. She had gotten her hopes up, and she shouldn’t have. “I understand,” she said. “You said you would do what you could, which I really appreciate. Did you have anything particular in mind?”
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br />   “Well, I could give you a referral to some top-notch criminal-defense lawyers,” he ventured.

  “Thanks, Nate.” Might as well raise the big issue first. “Do you have any idea how much they’ll cost?”

  “They won’t be cheap,” he admitted.

  “I could sell my condo,” she said. “But I don’t think that will net more than two hundred thousand in this market. Will that be enough?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, doubt in his voice. “It might be, if you had a very efficient and inexpensive lawyer. And if you don’t need to pay for any experts.”

  “How much would it cost for your firm to do it?” she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

  “We typically only defend white-collar matters, so I’m not sure we could even handle a murder case. As for the cost, I can’t speak for my colleagues in our criminal section, but . . . Well, my client’s bill for the last case I took to trial was over ten million. I’ve been on cases that cost twice that much to try.”

  She gasped. “I had no idea. I’m embarrassed by my question.”

  “Don’t be,” he replied. “To tell you the truth, I’m embarrassed by my answer. No one’s time is worth twenty dollars a minute, yet that’s what Bingham & Brobeck charges for mine, and we’re not even the most expensive firm in San Francisco. Far from it.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “So my choice is the public defender or someone very cheap. And I only have a choice if I sell my condo.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “There are some very good public-defenders’ offices, and they put their best people on serious cases like this.”

  “But aren’t they all loaded down with too many cases?”

  “I actually don’t know. They live in a part of the legal world that I never visit.”

  She felt very tired. “I see. Well, I won’t keep you any longer. I know you have a busy schedule.”

  “That’s okay. I just wish there was more I could do.” He paused. “How about if I come to Brandon’s preliminary hearing? That’s where the prosecution lays out a summary of their case against him. We can see Brandon’s public defender in action, and if you’re still worried afterward, we can talk again.”

  “I don’t want to impose,” she said. “I—”

  “It’s not an imposition at all,” he replied. “I should spend a little time in criminal court, get a flavor for how things work over there. It would be good experience.”

  Jessica smiled—and realized it was the first time she had done that since Brandon called. “Thank you, Nate. I’d be very grateful if you could come. I’ll let you know when it is.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I’ll be there for you, if I can.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Brandon lay on his back, staring at the dark ceiling a foot in front of his face. He was the new guy, so he got the top bunk, of course. His cellmate—or celly in jail lingo—snored in the bunk below him. The man’s name was Benjamin Morton, and he had been arrested for domestic assault.

  To Brandon’s relief, Mo, as he liked to be called, showed no signs of being the psychopathic rapist typically assigned to first-timers in movies. Mo was a genial, middle-aged career criminal who had punched his wife after she slapped him during a drunken argument. He had the scarred fingers and thick forearms of a man who worked with his hands, but he wasn’t physically imposing. He was five-nine or -ten, balding, doughy around the middle, slope-shouldered, and he wore glasses. If Brandon had met Mo on the street or at a job site, he wouldn’t have given him a second glance.

  Mo didn’t seem to mind being locked up. In fact, he had commented on the luxuriousness of their accommodations—nonviolent offenders were housed in large group cages, while inmates accused of violent crimes got two-man cells. The downside, of course, was that you got stuck living with a violent criminal.

  Mo’s face had broken into a relieved and friendly smile when Brandon showed up. Despite the murder charge, Mo quickly decided that Brandon was “just a college boy who had a bad night,” probably because of drugs. When Brandon protested his innocence, Mo laughed and said, “Dude, there isn’t a guilty man in this place.”

  They chatted for about half an hour. Then lights-out came and Mo clambered into his bunk and promptly went to sleep, apparently secure in the knowledge that Brandon wouldn’t attack him in the middle of the night.

  Brandon wished he could go to sleep so easily. It had been a long and very hard day. There had been the repeated shocks of the arrest, learning that he was charged with the murder of a man he’d never even met, the devastation in his mother’s voice when they let him call her, and finally jail. He could hardly believe that the biggest problem he had faced when he’d woken up this morning had been a chemistry test that he hadn’t really studied for. Now he was inmate number 83949-034.

  How could any of this be happening? It was surreal—almost like the entire thing was an elaborate prank. The cops seemed so sure that he killed this guy, Lincoln Thomas. They kept demanding that he tell them the truth, asking whether it was self-defense, and so on. When he insisted that he was innocent, they just got mad.

  This must be a mistake. It would all get sorted out soon. It had to. But what if it didn’t? What if he was stuck in here for the rest of his life?

  Part of him wanted to cry. A big part. He pushed down on it. Hard. He wasn’t a little kid anymore. And he sure couldn’t afford to act like one in a place like this, surrounded by the worst men in the state. Mo seemed like he might be okay, but Brandon knew that most of them weren’t. Most of them were like the man who killed his father.

  His dad had hired a lot of ex-cons, despite the objections of Brandon and his mom. His dad said that most of them were good workers, and he wanted to give them a second chance. In fairness, many of them were good workers—but many weren’t. They arrived at work late, didn’t take care of the equipment, stole stuff, and so on. Sometimes they showed up drunk or high. That’s what Omar Sanchez had done on the day Brandon’s dad died.

  Omar was a big, heavily tattooed guy with a long, evil-looking scar creasing the right side of his face from the middle of his cheek all the way through his ear. But he had worked on heavy equipment for a decade before he went behind bars, and he knew his way around a backhoe and a bulldozer. So his dad had hired Omar and put him to work grading a slope while Dad supervised the laying of a foundation lower down.

  Brandon hadn’t been there, so he didn’t know the details of what happened next, but somehow Omar rolled the bulldozer over, killing his father and severely injuring himself. Omar’s blood-alcohol content had been .18 percent at the time of the accident, over double the legal limit for driving, let alone operating construction machinery.

  The temptation to cry faded as Brandon’s anger grew. And his guilt. He had worked on job sites with his father every summer since he turned sixteen and during most school breaks. His dad had suggested that Brandon take a gap year after high school. If Brandon wanted to study civil engineering and go to work for one of the big construction companies, he could take a year to really learn the trade and make some money before college, his father had reasoned. But Brandon had been eager to start school and declined. Six months later, his father was dead.

  If Brandon had taken the gap year, he would have been there when the accident happened. He probably would have been supervising Omar. Maybe he would have noticed the alcohol on Omar’s breath. He certainly would have kept Omar from putting the dozer in a position where it could roll. And his dad would still be alive.

  And now Brandon was lying on a jailhouse bunk, surrounded by thousands of men like Omar. Or worse.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jessica clicked between five different websites on criminal law. She had spent the last five hours trying to figure out the rules that would govern her son’s fate, but she couldn’t find clear answers on anything that seemed relevant. What would it cost to get him out on bail? When would his trial happen? How soon did the police have to explain why they ar
rested him?

  Maybe it would be easier to understand tomorrow morning. She glanced at the computer’s clock and amended that to later this morning. Her mind was fuzzy with exhaustion and an adrenaline hangover.

  She closed her laptop and got up from the kitchen table, which now doubled as her home office. Once upon a time, her home office had been her house’s fifth bedroom. It had an elegant little desk and matching printer stand, a high-quality speakerphone, and a nice view looking out over the leafy banks of the Arroyo Valle. But that had been in another life, one she had lived before Tim died. Now he was gone, the house was gone, everything was gone, and she was alone.

  She walked into her darkened living room and stood in front of the window, looking at the street outside but not really seeing it. She needed to talk to somebody, but who could she call? Her mother or sisters? They loved her, but they had no idea how to support her, to be shoulders to cry on. Jessica had always been the strong one in the family. If she called them in the middle of the night, vulnerable and broken, they would just be bewildered and maybe frightened. They would have no idea how to help.

  She missed Tim, missed him with an almost physical pain. He would have listened and understood as she poured out her worry and fear. He would have held her, prayed with her, stroked her hair, explained how everything would be okay.

  Could she reach out to her friends from church, or send an email to the prayer chain? She couldn’t bring herself to do it. The prayer requests that came to her were always something like “Pray for my brother with cancer” or “Prayers requested for Joe Smith, who just lost his job.” How do you ask people to pray for your son who was just arrested for murder?

  She went into her bedroom, pulled back the comforter, and collapsed into bed. But she couldn’t sleep. What mother could possibly sleep when her only child was in jail, accused of murder?