Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [62]
What she didn’t mention was her plan to have Griffin arrested for harboring a fugitive as soon as the interrogation was over and the current charges were dropped. She had the unshakable feeling that Griffin was still hiding something.
Marched into the courtroom by a uniformed officer, Kim Dean looked around for Stubbs, the moon-faced young lawyer, and didn’t see him. Except for a judge, bailiff, court stenographer, a guy in a suit talking to the judge, and the cop who’d escorted him, the room was empty.
Dean had spent a miserable, sleepless night and an anxious morning at the jail. He’d almost abandoned any hope that Stubbs had gotten through to Claudia. But maybe he had, and Claudia was in the process of lining things up and getting him a good criminal attorney.
The cop put Dean in a seat and hovered behind him. What if the guy in the suit was his new attorney? Kim watched the man eagerly, waiting for him to turn from the judge and make a sign of recognition in his direction. Instead, he picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom just as Stubbs rushed in.
“Did you call my friend?” Dean whispered.
Stubbs scrunched into the seat next to Dean, and looked at the cop, who moved out of earshot.
“I did.”
“And?”
“She thanked me for the call,” Stubbs replied.
“That’s it?” Dean hissed. “What did you say to her?”
“I told her where you were and what the pending charges are.”
Kim took a deep breath. “Have you been contacted by another attorney?”
“Listen,” Stubbs said in a terse whisper, the color rising on his cheeks. “You made it clear yesterday that I am not the lawyer you want. That’s fine with me. Let’s just get you through the arraignment. You’ll be formally charged, given copies of the criminal complaints, and informed of your constitutional rights. I’ll enter no plea on your behalf and you won’t have to say anything. In fact, I don’t want you to. The DA will ask for bail to be denied, and I’ll argue against it. Don’t get your hopes up. The charges are serious.”
Feeling sorry for himself, Dean sighed with resignation.
“Have the police tried to talk to you since yesterday?” Stubbs asked.
Kim shook his head.
“Good. Keep it that way. If you want, I’ll call around to several good criminal trial attorneys. You’re going to need one.”
Kim had waited long enough for Claudia to come through for him. “Why don’t you do that?” he said brusquely
The judge shuffled papers and called Dean’s case.
“Gladly,” Stubbs said, getting to his feet.
The drive from Santa Fe to Taos was always a hassle, especially along the section of the two-lane twisting highway that paralleled the Rio Grande, where Kerney got stuck between two slow-moving motor homes.
In town, summer tourist traffic clogged the narrow main street, and it was stop-and-go all the way until Kerney reached the turnoff to the police station a few blocks north of the old plaza.
Inside, he met with Victor Pontsler, the police chief, who’d held the top cop position on three separate occasions over the span of his thirty-five-year career with the department. Twice in the past, Pontsler had been given the boot after a change in city administration, reverting back to his permanent rank of captain. Now he was back in the chief’s chair again, this time to clean up the mess left behind by a heavy-handed predecessor who had driven officer morale into the ground and alienated the city fathers.
No more than five or six years older than Kerney, Pontsler kept himself in good shape. He weighed in at about a hundred and sixty pounds on a five-ten frame. He had a full head of hair and a crooked nose with a thin pink surgical scar that ran down to his nostrils. It had been badly broken years ago when Vic had responded to a fight in progress that turned into a bar brawl between cops and drunks.
Pontsler sat behind his cluttered desk and twirled a rubber band around his fingers. “I spent time after you called thinking about who you should talk to,” he said. “Michael Winger would be your best bet. Back in the old hippie days he called himself Montana. He grew up in Manhattan