A Matter of Trust

Chapter 28





Eli Hall was early for his first day as an adjunct professor at the University of Washington—he still felt a bit funny saying “UDub”—School of Law. Ten students—the maximum number—were registered for his session, but he felt as nervous as if he were about to address a crowd of thousands.

He was in the faculty lounge pouring a cup of burnt-smelling coffee when Mia Quinn walked in. “Want some?” he said, holding it out to her.

Her smile seemed distracted. “I probably should say no.” But she still held out her hand.

He noticed it was trembling. If Eli hadn’t already been a little off balance himself, he wouldn’t have said what he did next.

“So are you nervous too?”

“What?” She tilted her head. “Oh no, it’s not the teaching that’s getting to me. I just came here from listening to what I thought was going to be a murder confession.”

Eli took a step back. “Murder?”

Mia leaned against the counter, which was cluttered with torn sugar packets and discarded sections of the Seattle Times. “I’m investigating the murder of one of my colleagues, Colleen Miller. I was just with the homicide detective at the home of a suspect. The second wife of Colleen’s ex-husband, if you can follow that. Anyway, we thought she was going to confess to murdering Colleen, but it turned out that she was really confessing to not wanting to be a mom anymore.”

“That must have been hard on both of you,” Eli said. “Does she by any chance have a teenager?” He thought of Rachel. She was sixteen and had figured out how to push every button he had. As he spoke, he poured another cup of coffee for himself.

“No.” Mia’s lips turned down, and he realized that his joking response was not quite in step with what she was feeling. “A baby they adopted three months ago when he was a year old. Only he hasn’t started to walk or talk, and now the doctors think he’s probably autistic. This woman’s looking at thousands of dollars of bills in early intervention therapy that may or may not work.”

Eli was getting a little lost. “So what does that have to do with Colleen’s murder?”

“As I said, this is Colleen’s ex-husband’s second wife. And her cell phone records showed that she was near Colleen’s house around the time of the murder. But she says she was just planning to talk to her about adjusting how much her husband pays in child support. And that when she saw the cop cars roaring up to Colleen’s house, she turned around and left.”

Eli cut to the heart of the story. “Do you believe her?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” Mia took a tentative sip of her coffee and grimaced at its bitterness. “She didn’t try to hide that she disliked Colleen. It was not liking her baby that she had trouble admitting. I think for her it would almost be easier to confess to murder than to confess to not loving her child. They sacrificed everything to have a child, and now she’s feeling stuck with it. Like it wasn’t worth it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly like you can give them back.” For all the trouble she could get into, Rachel was healthy and smart. Eli sometimes lost sight of those blessings. And he had the hope that she would gain maturity, learn to make better decisions. A disabled child might never grow up, never leave home. “Having a kid is more permanent than anything. You can abandon your pet, you can get a divorce”—a touch of bitterness entered Eli’s voice at the thought of how Lydia had just walked out of their lives—“but unless you do something so bad the court takes them away, a kid is yours forever.”

“I’ve got two. It’s one of the reasons I’m so tired.” Mia took a deep breath and drank the rest of her coffee in one gulp. By the time she finished, her nose was wrinkled in disgust. Eli couldn’t help noticing it was a cute nose, straight and slightly snub. “I think she might be telling the truth, but the homicide detective isn’t too sure. This lady clearly had the motive and opportunity. And she and her husband even own the same caliber of gun as the one that killed Colleen. But she flatly denied taking it with her that night.”

“Too bad it’s way too late now to check for gun residue on her hands,” Eli said. There was also no way to figure out if a gun had been fired recently, despite what some TV shows would have you believe. “And wasn’t another King County prosecutor murdered the same way a few years ago? Wouldn’t that rule this lady out? After all, she wouldn’t have had any motive to kill him, would she? What’s your working theory on that case?”

“That’s the problem. We don’t have one. Or rather, we have too many.” Mia threw her cup in the trash. “Did I hear you just moved from Portland? What made you come up here?”

Mia’s honesty brought out his own. “I wanted to give my daughter a fresh start. She’d fallen in with the wrong crowd in Portland.”

Eli had felt they had to get away. Away from the kids Rachel was hanging around with. Away from Lydia. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so obvious that his ex-wife didn’t want to spend time with their daughter. After all, a sixteen-year-old did not exactly fit with Lydia’s new image.

“How old is she?”

“Rachel’s sixteen.”

“I have a fourteen-year-old myself. It’s an . . . interesting . . . age. It’s probably more challenging for Gabe because”—she began to turn her wedding ring with her thumb—“my husband was killed in a car accident a few months ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Eli was kind of surprised that Mia was teaching with all that on her plate. Although maybe she had to, now that her husband had died. His own caseload was already overwhelming, but he needed the extra cash. The flip side was that it gave Rachel a couple of hours where he couldn’t even stay in touch by text.

“So are you settling in?” Mia asked after the silence had stretched out too long.

“Kind of. Tami’s files are a bit disorganized.”

Calling them files was generous. Tami Gordon seemed to have kept much of what she knew in her head. And what little was in her files hadn’t been entered into a computer, but jotted down in her scrawled handwriting that seemed to substitute whole strings of letters for a single curvy line.

Still, she had been a good defense attorney. Not good in any way Mia would think of as good. But she had succeeded in striking plea deals for many of her clients, people who would otherwise have had to throw themselves on the mercy of a judge or a jury. People with track records and track marks. People with very few redeeming characteristics.

“I need to stop by and speak to one of your colleagues,” Eli said. “I think her name is Kristina?”

“Katrina?”

“That’s it. The morning of what turned out to be Tami’s last day, she offered a pretty generous plea deal for one of Tami’s—now my—clients. I’m just hoping she hasn’t changed her mind.” He realized he was probably saying too much. “I guess I probably shouldn’t be discussing that with you.”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t my case. I didn’t like dealing with Tami. She could be . . .”

“Very persuasive?”

“More like a pit bull. Her only priority was her client. She would bend any rule, make any wild accusation—for her the end always justified the means.” Mia sighed and looked at her watch. “I guess I had better get moving.”

Eli thought about how dark it would be when they finished. “Want me to walk you to your car after class?”

“That’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

Eli didn’t press it, even though he knew rapists liked college campuses. Lots of girls who were engrossed in their texts and Tweets and Facebook updates, headphones in their ears, or girls who had had a little too much to drink, girls who believed they didn’t even need to worry about being safe, that bad things only happened to other people.

“Then I’ll see you next Thursday. And I’ll bring some good coffee for both of us.”

She brightened at that. “Sounds like a plan.” She gave him a little wave as she left.

Mia Quinn. There would probably come a time when they were on the opposite sides of the courtroom. Eli didn’t know whether he was looking forward to it or dreading it.



“Welcome to Trial Advocacy,” Eli said a few minutes later in the miniature courtroom that was actually a classroom. “In this course you are going to be on your feet for most class sessions. This is the one place where you really get to practice what we have taught you over the last three years. By the end of the semester you’ll have practical experience in jury selection, opening statements, direct and cross-examination, introduction of exhibits, use of expert testimony, and closing arguments. And we’ll be ending the course with a full-scale trial for which we bring in a real judge and a jury of laypeople.”

Eli looked from face to face as he spoke, almost in the way he would examine jurors. They represented a range of ages, races, and levels of attentiveness. This one seemed fully engaged, that one seemed distracted, this one nodded a little too eagerly.

He passed out white index cards. “I want you to write down the personality traits you believe you have that will help you be a successful trial attorney. When you’re done, put it in your pocket or purse. When class is over, I want you to check what you wrote to see if your self-image matches up with what we do tonight. I’ll give you two minutes to write your traits down.”

As they bent over their index cards, he wondered what traits Mia Quinn brought to her job as a prosecutor. Forthrightness, he guessed. Intelligence. Compassion.

And for himself? He was methodical and stubborn. Maybe those were great traits for a public defense attorney. But maybe not so good for his personal life. He needed to act on his gut more.

When they were finished, Eli said, “Now, when you think of the typical trial attorney, you might imagine some silver-haired, silver-tongued guy in a fancy suit who can quote you the law chapter and verse. But in point of fact, there are a hundred different ways to be an excellent attorney. I want you to pair up with someone you don’t know well. One of you will be the presenter, the other the subject. The presenter’s job is to interview the subject and figure out what personality traits he or she has that will bring them success in the courtroom. You need to uncover facts, examples, and stories, because the rest of the class is going to be sitting in the jury box. It’s not enough to say that Susan relates well to people; you need to be able to show the jury through a story that this is true.

“You’ll have five minutes to make your presentation. There are only two rules. One is to both address the jury and examine the witness—in this case, the subject. And the other is to make it interesting.”

Interesting, Eli thought as the students began to pair up. Well, if there’s one thing his life was right now, it was interesting. And he found himself wondering if the presence of Mia Quinn might make it even more interesting.



Eli was walking back to his car when he heard a commotion at the other end of the parking lot. A woman was shouting, “Get away from me. Get away!”

And he knew that voice.