Part Three
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DUNCAN HAD been waiting about twenty minutes when corrections officers finally brought Rafael in. A short time in jail had changed him: his thin features had turned a little puffy; bad food and lack of exercise had put some weight on him. But it wasn’t the physical change that was the most noticeable: it was how Rafael’s youthful enthusiasm had been burned away, leaving him sullen and withdrawn. Rafael hadn’t been the same since his time in solitary, and Duncan knew his visit today was certainly not going to make things better.
“I’m afraid I’m here with some bad news,” Duncan said once they were settled in. Rafael responded with a hard stare that made Duncan hesitate before continuing. “Something’s come up with my firm, a conflict. As I told you before, we represent Roth Properties, the developer behind all the changes at Riis. Long story short, they’ve decided that our representing you conflicts with our representing them. I tried to talk them out of it, but …”
Rafael looked puzzled as Duncan trailed off. “What’re you saying?”
Duncan hated to say it, but he forced himself to meet Rafael’s eyes as he did. “My firm’s going to have to withdraw from representing you. Meaning I won’t be able to be your lawyer anymore.”
Rafael shook his head, clearly struggling to process what he was hearing. “You’re quitting on me? I don’t have a lawyer no more?”
“You’ll still have a lawyer—the court will supply you with one, a public defender probably. I’ll turn over all my files to your new attorney. You’ll end up with a far more experienced criminal lawyer than you had with me. Your defense shouldn’t lose a step.”
Rafael’s response was a curled lip. “You told me I could trust you,” he said bitterly.
“This ended up being out of my hands. But your case is in great shape. We’re about to get the police statements from Dwayne Stevenson. Your new lawyer will hopefully be able to use him as a witness.”
“You had me thinking you really believed I didn’t do this shit.”
“I do believe that,” Duncan said. “That’s not the issue at all.”
“I should have known someone like you wasn’t really going to be in my corner. Nobody ever been there for me; why you going to be any different?”
“If it was up to me—”
Rafael wasn’t having it, his angry look unforgiving. “That’s what people always say when they setting up to let you down,” he said.
BY THE time Duncan made it back to his office his concentration was as shot as his morale. Not being fit for doing anything billable, Duncan turned to the mail his secretary had stacked in his in-box. Virtually nothing important came to him by mail; it was mostly law journals and pitch letters from legal service providers, so Duncan generally went through it only once a week or so.
At first the envelope didn’t mean anything to him, the Bank of America return address not enough for his frazzled brain to make the connection. He opened it, only mildly curious what it was, then unfolded the half dozen sheets of paper. Bank records, he realized, for Sean Fowler. He’d subpoenaed them over a month ago, unsure whether the bank would really comply. But here they were.
“What the f*ck,” Duncan muttered to himself as he looked through the statement. Sean Fowler, an ex-cop who was working construction security, had well over two hundred thousand dollars in the bank at the time of his death.