CHAPTER 43: PRECINCT BLUES Part 3: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

DARIS:

You know how you think you can look at a person and tell what they are thinking? I never used to believe that it was possible for people to be so transparent; believing that although their thoughts would cause visible emotions to be displayed, there would always be some notions that they would be able to suppress so that they would remain hidden. But looking at Claire Townsend’s face as Lance Freeman was being escorted into the interrogation room across the hall where she was being held, it spoke volumes.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone literally become the same shade as Casper the Friendly Ghost, especially someone as inherently evil as this termagant. But she looks so damn scared right now that I have to wonder if there is more to this story than we’ve been told to date.

“I want my lawyer,” she whispers.

“We are going to give you the opportunity to call your attorney, or if you can’t afford one, one will be appointed for you. I believe that was mentioned during the reading of your Miranda rights when you were taken into custody.”

“Was it? I didn’t hear that.”

“Perhaps the reason you didn’t is because you were too busy playing the hysterical mom while continuing to argue with your co-conspirator.”

“I don’t have a co-conspirator!”

“Just as you don’t have a husband, which is what you told the arresting officer, right?” I could already see the shock and anger on her face because her ploy to get off on a technicality wasn’t even about to become an option for her. Couple that with the first piece of idiocy she tried, which was to state that she and Craig Taylor were having their first fight as husband and wife, and it’s apparent that she now realizes that there aren’t any escape routes for her this time… just scapegoats. “Is there something you want to say, or do you want to wait for your attorney to get here?”

“Just that I’m the innocent and injured party in this whole mess.”

“And why would I need to know that, or even believe you at this point?” Strangely, I really am curious about what she’ll give me before going into the interview room with Lance Freeman. It’s not that I will believe her, but I’m interested to see what she’ll offer to get herself out of hot water.

“Just a small word of advice regarding Lance. It’s a case of believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear with him.”

“Well, everything he’s imparted so far has rung true. Perhaps he’s trying to turn over a new leaf,” I say, appearing to her to be giving the man the benefit of the doubt. She laughs.

“If you believe that, more the fool you.”

“Care to explain?”

“Do you know Lindsay Peterson?” she retorts.

“Yes, I’m familiar with her. Why?”

“Think of her while you interview him,” she tells me, before she marches in to take her seat. “Can you arrange for an attorney for me? I doubt Craig will even tell his attorney that I’m here.”

“I thought you two were closer than that,” I state.

She drops her eyes. “Yeah, so did I.”

I take one last look at her, and oddly, she doesn’t have the look of a scorned woman. Instead she has the sour look of a disappointed one. I decide that it will be interesting to hear her side of things, especially regarding her association with Craig Taylor. Perhaps she’s just tired of the game she’s been playing with her brother’s life all this time, I don’t know. But that is certainly the look of a world-weary woman if I’d ever seen one.

I pause as I see both Mel and Harry Donaldson coming up the hallway leading to the interrogation room. It’s then I remember that I promised Melanie Marcus that she could attend the questioning of Lance Freeman. As Harry goes into room to settle himself beside his client, she pulls me aside. “I think you should take a look at this,” she tells me as she hands me a small stack of papers.

“What is it?”

“You might want to question Freeman about the videos, but also why he was holding a copy of Brian’s last will and testament. But in case you don’t get an answer, take a look at that last page…”

I do and my eyes go wide. I now understand Claire Townsend meant when she said ‘Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear.’

MELANIE:

I can see the moment the implication of those papers reach into Daris’ psyche. I will say this about the D.A. chosen to prosecute this case: he’s far different from his predecessor. What I’m noticing the most about Daris is that he’s a by-the-book kind of guy, but he’s also one to take the rumors and innuendos he’s heard and line them up with the facts of a case to prove or disprove any given theory. No piece of evidence is too big, nor bit of gossip too small not to be fully analyzed. I think that’s why he was chosen. He’s thorough in a way few within the District Attorney’s Office are.

“Where did you get this?”

“I know my source may be questionable, but the answer is Lindsay. It was within the stack of papers she’d placed in the safe at our former house. There are other files in there which prove that she knows a lot more about these cases than she ever let on. I want to go see her again, but this time, I’ll need your actual permission to do so.”

“Why? What is it that you need to know exactly?”

“Other than information about a few other things I found in there, I need to know why she was collecting this information in the first place. I have a feeling that it goes deeper than the surface answer of protecting her investment, which is how I think she thought of Brian, even back in their college days. I know she didn’t trust Michael, but to go to these lengths…”

I look through the papers again, and can see exactly what she means. Lindsay Peterson was very thorough in keeping an accurate written account of conversations with Novotny, but it wasn’t just them. There are also printouts and ledgers accompanying the packet. “Are the others like this, too?”

“Every one of them that she accumulated are like this.”

“And the others…”

“Are on Michael, Claire Townsend, and Craig Taylor.”

“She had dealings with Townsend and Taylor? I mean, Novotny I can understand since he was considered her friend, but why the other two?”

“You’re forgetting a couple of things here, Daris. The first thing is that Lindsay was born a WASP. Her family is well known in that sect, so yes, she would have been acquainted with Craig Taylor for years, even if she didn’t make the immediate connection between him and Justin. As for Claire, I imagine that their association began when Brian brought her home to meet his family. It wasn’t so much that he wanted her to be his beard, which Lindsay may have hinted at a time or five hundred. It was to give them something else to focus on other than the fact that he was leaving them behind. The Kinneys… well, let’s just say that they were not the most supportive family to ever walk the face of the earth. The terms jealous, spiteful, and mean-spirited come to mind.”

“Yet Kinney still supported them?”

“He did. If for no other reason than to be able to keep them away from him. He wanted to live his life on his terms, not theirs. I think that may have been the cause of most the problems, especially between him and Jack Kinney.”

“What do you mean?”

Strangely, once I allowed myself to think outside of Lindsay's box, I found myself fascinated by this part of Brian Kinney’s history, which is not well-known and therefore not talked about. Well… unless it was mentioned in an off-hand way by Lindsay, or by that bastard, Michael. But when Michael talked about Brian's past, it was always done as if either meant to be sympathetic, or to incur sympathy for Brian's supposed defection in regards to how he continually disregarded Michael's feelings at one time or another. However, in retrospect, I think it was mostly done to remind Brian of two things: his humble beginnings, and to drill into his head that he owed Michael for the fact that he still breathed. Seriously, with friends- especially one who is supposed to be a best friend- like this, who the fuck needed enemies?!  

“Once Brian established himself within his career, he paid off the mortgage to the Kinneys house, even before he paid off his own loft. He gave John Townsend, Sr. fifteen grand to cover his mortgage for the remainder of the year because the man was suffering from a shattered femur, courtesy of Claire’s assumptions that he was cheating on her. Funny that it was actually her doing what she accused her husband of doing. Anyway, he required both surgery and physical therapy in order to return to work, so Brian took it on until John was supposed to complete therapy.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“You mean aside from Michael ranting about it, whining that it was unfair that Brian had to use their money to take care of his birth family? I remember looking at Michael like he’d lost his mind when he made that statement, before he registered what he’d said and tried to retract it. Lindsay ranted about the situation for a different reason, though. And I believe it was the moment when the idea to have Gus was born, even though it was years before we actually did it.”

“I thought it may have been during their assignation in college.”

“She may have daydreamed about it then, but I can almost guarantee that it wasn’t a full-blown idea until Brian brought me the contract Townsend requested they sign. He was determined to give Brian back all the money he spent taking care of Claire and his children. He felt that it wasn’t Brian’s responsibility; which it wasn’t. But I think it had more to do with how Townsend himself was being treated by the Kinney family, than it did about fairness to Brian. They had all grown up in the same neighborhood, and knew how things could be misinterpreted at the whim of others. He would rather be called a shiftless shit than to admit that he needed the help from his brother-in-law. Hence why he requested that Brian loan him the money as if he were a bank, instead of seeing it as the gift Brian would have preferred it to have been. But Brian understood better than John could have imagined, since he’d done the same for Jack Kinney. Only to Jack it was considered Brian’s familial duty, since he supposedly left the family instead of doing what was expected of him. To Jack, it was the only way for Brian to be accepted as his son again.”

“If all I’ve heard about the contentious relationship between Jack and Brian Kinney is true, why would Brian have wanted to be?”

“Because at base, blood is still thicker than water.”

DARIS: 

We enter the interrogation room with Mel’s words still ringing in my ears. I try to put myself into Brian Kinney’s shoes when thinking of wants versus needs; then requirement weighed against expectation. And you know what I’ve come up with? That Brian Kinney is a better man than I am, or could ever hope to be. No matter the expectation, or the fact that the family may have needed the monetary help, when weighed against the abuse Brian suffered at their hands, they could have gone and fucked themselves. I wouldn’t have helped them at all! I suppose that’s what makes me known as a heartless bastard within my own circle, and Brian mistaken for one within his own. Although on the surface he doesn’t appear to care, the fact is that he apparently cares too much… even if those who benefit never see it.

“What are those?” Harry Donaldson asks me.

“Before we come to the nature of the information within these files, I think we should once again hear Mr. Freeman’s side of the story. Tell us all again about the nature of your relationship with Michael Novotny.”

“Why? I’ve already told you everything you need to know. The fact is that I was wrong to get involved with Michael and his schemes; I know that. But I was desperate for Brian to notice me, to finally want me. Michael convinced me that I would never have him, but since Michael would, I could at least live within my fantasies through him.”

“So basically your argument is that you are easily led and were unduly influenced? That your own personal judgment was affected by your misguided belief that Brian Kinney would eventually want you, or if not, you could live vicariously through another man whom Brian Kinney also does NOT want?”

“That’s my statement and I’m sticking to it.”

“Okay,” I say, and pull the stack of files towards me.

“Okay? Is that all you are going to say?” Freeman asks me, warily.

“Well what else would you need me to say? You’ve given your statement for the record, which is why I needed you to recap what you’ve told us before.”

“I thought the last session was recorded.”

“It was, but since then there have been some… new developments.”

“What developments?” Again with the wary tone. I smile at him, already seeing the fear spreading across his face.

“To be clear, your attorney is aware of the situation as it stands now, and the fact that more charges will be added to the docket before the trial. But for you edification, I will inform you that the contents of your home in Holden Beach, North Carolina has been confiscated.”

“WHAT?! You had no right to enter my house!” Freeman yells, clearly agitated that his private obsession is no longer his alone, but now that of the Pittsburgh Police Department’s as well. It’s becoming increasingly hard not to clap my hands in glee at the thought that all parties are going to be punished to fullest extent of the law. If I’m sad about anything at all it’s that it has taken this long.

“Did you say the home in Holden Beach?” Harry looks positively aghast before turning to his client. “Lance, tell me you didn’t buy back my mother’s house?!”

“Of course I did since you wouldn’t!” he sneers. “She was always kind to me, and I wanted to live where she did.”

“And the fact that she took her own life there because of her madness had nothing to do with it?”

“She wasn’t mad; she was MISUNDERSTOOD!”

“God rest the dead, but my mother was a crazy bitch! Which I suspect is what you are trying to gain sympathy using!” Harry turns to all of us within the room, including Carl Horvath, and the fraud specialist, Joanne Carver. I understand why Carl is here, but not her. “Detectives and D.A. Linton, my mother was put into that house because she started hearing voices. The voices she heard kept telling her that her time was near. She began doing all of these off the wall things, like spending over half the day scrubbing herself and my younger brothers and sisters clean. She had them withdrawn from school against my father’s knowledge to indulge these edicts her warped mind was issuing. I happened to come home on college break to find her about to swing an axe to decapitate my sleeping siblings. My father and I decided, that instead of calling the police on her, we would put her into her own house and make her as comfortable as we could with round the clock care. We knew that up until her madness began to overtake her, when she was of sound mind, she was a wonderful person who was always willing to lend a helping hand to someone in need. They weren’t vicious acts intentionally committed, but those of someone who had let their mental illness go untreated for far too long. That is what I believe Lance here is trying to go for, instead of facing his bad decisions head on. And I’m NOT going to let that happen!”

I think I’m more shocked than anyone sitting around this table. I’ve known Harry Donaldson for a long time, but never in all those years had he mentioned anything about this. The pain in which he spoke… I can’t imagine what it all must have been like for him, or the fact that his nephew is trying to mock his great-aunt’s illness in order to escape jail. That’s just fucking sick!

“Daris, Lindsay stated as much in the file I found,” Melanie points out.

“And you’re going to believe that law-breaking bitch over me?” Freeman sneers.

“That law-breaking bitch as you call her didn’t trust you nor Michael. So she kept a record of all her interactions with the both of you,” She sneers back. “Therefore, on behalf of myself and my clients, Brian and Justin Taylor-Kinney, we are withdrawing our request for leniency on your behalf. We are no longer willing to accept any deal going forward that the D.A. may have been prepared to offer.”

“But…”

“No, buts, Freeman. You see, Lindsay Peterson was kind enough to provide the final nail in your proverbial coffin,” I tell him.

“Which is?” Lance asks, and I can see the sweat forming on his upper lip as I turn the packet to the last two pages.

I pass the packet around to Carl first, whose surprise registers almost immediately. Next, Joanne receives the documents, and with a snicker, she begins writing furiously into the legal pad she’s been writing notes in during the entire meeting. But it’s Harry’s response that causes the most lasting impression. Rising from his seat next to Lance, he slowly gathers his papers before closing his briefcase with probably the calmest ‘click’ of the locks I’ve ever heard.

“You need to find yourself a new attorney, nephew…” he says quietly before continuing with, “And so will I,” he says. It happened so fast that I wasn’t even sure it did until Carl called the officer, who was stationed outside of the interrogation room.

“What the hell happened to him?” the officer asks about the man sprawled unconscious on the floor beside the chair he formerly occupied.

“I did,” Harry states without an ounce of remorse as he holds out his wrists. “Mel, please call Alan to cover my other client meeting this afternoon, and ask Curtis to get down here before my arraignment. Officer, you should take my briefcase into evidence.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it’s what knocked the fuck out of Lance Freeman.”

“Harry, why would you risk your career this way?” Mel asks him, almost as sad as I am that it has come to this.

“Hopefully, I will get a judge, who is sympathetic the way my nephew was trying to. But the idea that he was not only trying to use my mother’s illness as his defense, but had documents and an i.d. forged stating that he was Michael Novotny in case of the deaths of Brian Kinney, along with Novotny's mother and uncle… that double-crossing bastard isn’t even fit to breathe the same air as his co-conspirators! And that right there says it all.”

“You can go, Ames. I’ll walk Counsel Donaldson down to lockup to await arraignment.” When the officer left the room, Carl turns to Harry, concern etched on his face. “Are you sure you want to do this? There’s not a person in this room who doesn’t know of the mitigating circumstances.”

Harry smiles. “Yes, Carl, I’m sure. First, I would never ask you all to cover up what I’ve just done. Secondly, we all believe in the justice system too much not to honor its tenets. Perhaps I will just get off with a mandate to attend anger management classes, or even pay a fine. I am fully aware that I can even get jail time, and possibly be disbarred. But if it means having at least a little justice served in this moment for my family, due to the imbecilic attempt to mock and possibly defame the character of a woman who meant so much to us all, well then, it’s a punishment I will gladly accept.”

MELANIE:

I watch in sadness as my friend and colleague of many years is taken into custody, while his lowlife nephew is being treated by the precinct’s medical staff before being returned to his cell. I am standing here wondering if there is something I can do on Harry’s behalf other than the phone calls that won’t seem like a conflict of interest. “Daris…”

“I’ll alert the authorities at the Federal prison. You have three visits to gather whatever information you need to from Lindsay. Make sure you take your clients with you, too. I’m sure they will have questions. I’ll call the judge and have the ‘no contact’ order delayed until the three days is up. You know what to ask?”

I smile grimly. “I certainly do.”