Executive Privilege

“I think I heard about it,” Brad said so Tuchman wouldn’t think that he was a typical New Yorker, who thought you fell off the edge of the Earth as soon as you left the five boroughs, but the case didn’t really ring any bells.

“The firm has taken on the representation of Mr. Little in federal court. I think you’ll find the assignment very challenging. Look through the file and get back to me if you have any questions.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Brad said as he stood.

“I’ll have the banker’s boxes with the rest of the file delivered to your office.”

Oh, no, Brad thought. Banker’s boxes were big, and Tuchman had just said that there was more than one. He remembered all the new work he’d just found piled up on his desk.

“Remember, Brad, this is literally a matter of life and death, and,” she added in a confidential tone, “it might get you up to the United States Supreme Court. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“I’ll work very hard on Mr. Little’s case, don’t worry,” Brad said with great enthusiasm, which disappeared as soon as he was out the door of the senior partner’s office.

“This is just what I need,” Brad muttered as he descended the stairs. Not only was he loaded with work for other partners but he knew absolutely nothing about criminal law and cared less. He’d taken the required course in criminal law his first year in law school and a refresher course when he was studying for the bar, but he remembered almost nothing he’d learned. Then there was the added pressure of knowing that a person might die if he messed up. Of course, that person was a convicted serial killer, someone he had no interest in saving from the gallows. If the guy really did it, society would be better off if Little was executed.

“Why me, God?” Brad muttered as he shoved open the twenty-seventh floor door. When he received no answer, he concluded that either the Deity wasn’t interested in his problems or the Gods on the thirtieth floor were more powerful than whoever he’d previously considered to be the Big Boss.

Brad spent the rest of the morning and afternoon working on the contract for the Lincoln City condominiums. It was five-forty-five when he finally e-mailed a memo outlining the problems that the construction company faced to the partner who’d given him the assignment. He was exhausted and he toyed with the idea of going home, but he had too much work and the assignments were going to keep coming.

Brad sighed and ordered a pizza. While he waited for the delivery, he went to the men’s room, where he recycled the coffee he’d been guzzling and splashed water on his face. Then he grabbed a Coke for the caffeine from the lunchroom refrigerator and got to work on the banker’s boxes that held the files for Little v. Oregon. One box contained the fifteen-volume transcript of the trial and the nine-volume transcript of Little’s sentencing hearing. Another had files with the pleadings, legal motions, and memos. A third contained correspondence, the police reports, and miscellany like the autopsy report and the photographs of the autopsy and the crime scene.

Two hours later, Brad was still at his desk, casting anxious glances at a manila envelope that lay a few inches from him in the center of his blotter. The only dead body he had ever seen was at his great-grandmother’s funeral, and he didn’t have a clear memory of that because he’d been five when she died. He did know that his great-grandmother had died peacefully in her sleep. She hadn’t been tortured and chopped up like Laurie Erickson, the teenage girl whose autopsy and crime scene photographs were in the envelope.

Brad knew Laurie Erickson had been hacked to pieces and tortured because he’d just finished reading the report of Laurie’s autopsy. It was very u

The temptation to view photographs of the ghastly crime drew Brad to the envelope in the same way a freeway accident drew the eye of every driver who passed by. What argued against opening the envelope were the autopsy’s gory details and the fact that he’d recently ingested three slices of pepperoni pizza. In the end Brad’s morbid curiosity won out. He pulled the envelope to him, opened the flap, and slid the top photo out while averting his eyes so he didn’t have a clear view. Then he turned his head toward the photograph slowly so he wouldn’t have to take it in all at once. The picture showed a young woman with skin the color of wax who was stretched out naked on a stainless steel table with her arms at her side. It took Brad a moment to register the hideous nature of the wounds the poor girl had suffered. When he did he grew light-headed, his stomach rolled, and he wished he’d followed his instincts and left the autopsy photos in the envelope.

“What have we here?” Gi

“Eeek,” Gi

Brad’s hand flew to his chest. “Geez, Gi

“And a great worker’s comp case. Why are you looking at these disgusting photographs?”

“Susan Tuchman saddled me with a habeas corpus appeal,” Brad said. Then he waved a hand at the files that covered his desk. “As if I don’t have enough to do.”

“An associate’s work is never done. He must toil from sun to sun.”

Brad indicated the open pizza box. “Want a slice? These photos made me lose my appetite.”

Gi

“I didn’t know you were so squeamish,” Gi

“I’ve just never seen anything like this before. Have you?”

“Oh, sure. I was a nurse before I went to law school. I’ve seen more than my share of gaping wounds and internal organs.”

Brad blanched and Gi

“What’s your case about?”

Gi

“Clarence Little, my newest client, is a serial killer whose current address is death row at the Oregon State Pen. He’s there for murdering several women, including an eighteen-year-old girl named Laurie Erickson. I’ve been told that the Erickson case was very high profile out here when it happened because the victim was babysitting for the governor when she disappeared.”

“I heard about that! Wasn’t she snatched from the governor’s mansion?”

“That’s what they think.”

“They did a whole hour on one of the prime-time news shows about it. It was a few years ago, right?”

“Yeah, a year before Nolan picked Farrington as his ru

“This is so cool, and why are you complaining? A murder case is way more interesting than the usual shit we have to work on.”