The Lawyer's Lawyer

CHAPTER Twenty-Nine



The trip to visit a death row inmate at Union Correctional Institute in Raiford, Florida, was something Jack would never get used to. The formalities of signing in, being searched, leaving the freedom of fresh air and wide open spaces for steel bars and narrow hallways always made him appreciate his life just a little bit more.

He had tried to get Henry to come with him, figuring Henry could pick out a cold-blooded killer, no matter how good a con man he was, by just being in the room with him. Henry was reluctant to do it but he couldn’t say no to Jack. It was the warden who put the kibosh on the whole idea.

“The only way Henry Wilson is going to be allowed on death row is when he comes back permanently,” the warden had told Jack. Apparently the man had not gotten over the fact that Henry had been set free. And he had seemed so concerned for Henry’s well-being when Henry was about to be executed.

Jack could have fought the warden’s decision, especially if Felton had agreed to the visit. However, it would have taken time, and time was the one precious commodity he did not have. So he went alone to meet Thomas Felton.

The circumstances of the meeting itself were different from the usual procedure afforded to Jack. In the past, he had been allowed to meet with his client in a room, face to face across a table. Today, he was allowed only to sit at a chair in one room and talk to Felton by phone in another room while looking at him through a set of bars and windows. Death row inmates had very strict monitoring regulations: they lived in a six-by-nine foot cell; they couldn’t mingle with the prison population; they couldn’t even take a shower every day. Apparently, serial killers had even stricter regulations. Jack saw two guards standing behind Felton as he sat on his stool on the opposite side of the bars.

For a brief moment before picking up the phone, Jack studied Felton. He was still a young man at thirty-three, tall, thin and surprisingly handsome although his head was shaved. Jack looked into Felton’s clear green eyes. Felton returned the gaze. Jack picked up the phone.

“Hello, Mr. Felton. I’m Jack Tobin. I’m a lawyer with Exoneration and I’ve been asked to look into your case.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Tobin, and I’m honored to speak to a lawyer of your standing.”

That was unusual. The typical death row inmate, including Henry, practically spit on him when he introduced himself. They’d already been through a few lawyers and had been disappointed too many times to feel anything but enmity toward the litigators who came to visit bearing false hope.

Felton was different. Jack knew from reading his file that he had had only one appeal and that was right after his conviction, a perfunctory performance alleging the usual grounds—inadequacy of counsel and improper evidentiary rulings. It was as if the lawyer wrote on the brief, “I don’t want to represent this guy but I have to, so here it is.” After that, there was nothing. Nobody wanted to touch the serial killer’s case. No wonder he was happy to see Jack.

“Mr. Felton, I’ve reviewed your entire file, and I’ve got a good feel for what happened on the night of the murder and what has happened with your case since then. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Just that I’m innocent. I didn’t kill those two people. I think they convicted me because I didn’t have an alibi.”

“Well, they did find a knife with your fingerprints on it.”

“I never saw that knife before they showed it to the judge and the jury in my trial. I don’t know where they got the fingerprints from.”

“You never gave a statement to the police after you were arrested, correct?”

“No, I didn’t. I did tell them I was innocent.”

“Why not give them details, I mean if you were innocent?”

“I was a law student, Mr. Tobin. I was always told that no matter whether you were innocent or not, don’t talk to the police without a lawyer. When I did get a public defender, he not only didn’t want me to talk to the police, he didn’t want me talking to him. Would you have advised me to talk to the police?”

“Probably not. Listen, we’ve only got about seven weeks before your scheduled execution. I need something to take to the court. Can you give me anything?”

In fact, Jack had already found something substantial that would provide a basis for a motion for post-conviction relief and that indicated that Felton might be innocent. He was just testing Felton, trying to figure out in his own mind whether the man was innocent or not.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tobin, I can’t. The police came to my apartment two times before that last murder occurred. I was already a suspect in their minds because I had done my undergraduate work at the University of Utah and there had been a serial killer at that campus when I attended. I just think they wanted to solve this murder, and I was the best candidate they could come up with.”

“That doesn’t explain the knife with your fingerprints on it.”

“No, it doesn’t. I can’t answer that question. All I can tell you is I never saw that knife and I certainly never held it in my hand.”

* * *

Jack met up with Henry in Oakville, which was only a half an hour from the prison. The status conference and any evidentiary hearing that might occur before Judge Holbrook would take place in Oakville, so Jack wisely decided to make it his headquarters even though he had not yet decided to take the case. Ron had a two-bedroom furnished condo available at the time for him and Henry.

“I try to keep one open at all times for you, Jack, in case you want to come and visit,” Ron told him.

The truth was that Jack had not been back to Oakville since he’d left two years ago. He’d tried to give Ron money for the place but Ron wouldn’t take anything.

“I might be here for a month,” Jack said.

“So what,” Ron replied. “I shouldn’t have let you pay me last time. What are you going to give me? Five hundred dollars? Seven fifty? I’m saving you up for when it really matters—you know, a hundred grand loan, maybe a hundred fifty. This is peanuts. I’m just making sure you stay committed to me for when I need you. By the way, since you’re thinking of representing this serial killer, don’t tell people you know me. It’ll be bad for business and possibly my health.”

“I’d better keep a low profile here. People are going to be upset,” Jack said rather seriously.

The three men were sitting in the living room of the condo. Ron jumped on the remark.

“Upset? That’s the understatement of the year, Jackie Boy. Some people are going to want your hide. Danni will be in the front of the line in that group, by the way. And don’t come into The Swamp either. I’ll have to close the place down if you do.”

Jack just looked at Ron for a second, not knowing how to take that last remark.

“I’m just kidding,” Ron told him when he saw the serious look on Jack’s face. “I don’t give a shit what people think. You know that.”

Then he was back to being a jokester again.

“Henry, I’d drop him now. No percentages in being a friend of this guy. You can pick him up again when he moves back down to Pigeon Creek or wherever it is that he lives.”

Henry laughed. Ron could make everybody laugh eventually.

“I’m just helping him decide not to take the case,” Henry said. “Then I’m outta here.”

“Everybody’s a jokester,” Jack said as Ron and Henry continued laughing. It was good for all of them because if Jack did take the case, they were all going to feel the pressure—Ron maybe worst of all.



When Ron left, Jack got down to business with Henry.

“I found something, something real substantial in Felton’s case files.”

“What is it?”

Jack went into his bedroom and came back with some papers.

“This is the coroner’s report. Take a look at the description of the knife wounds on the woman’s torso.”

Henry’s eyes scrolled down to where Jack was pointing. He read the description out loud. “The entry wound is approximately one-quarter inch wide at each entry point and extends into the body approximately three and a half inches again at each entry point.”

“It’s the same description for the man’s torso,” Jack said.

“So it was the same knife used on both.”

“Exactly. And what kind of knife does that entry wound describe to you, Henry?”

“Probably a stiletto. Maybe a dagger although a dagger might be in excess of a quarter of an inch wide.”

“And you know the murder weapon they used to convict Felton with?” Jack asked excitedly.

The light went on in Henry’s head. “A bowie knife. It couldn’t possibly have been a bowie knife. It’s at least an inch and a half or two inches wide. They convicted him with the wrong murder weapon.”

“That’s right.”

“Wait a minute, Jack. That just doesn’t make sense. Somebody would have had to figure this out on the way to trial. Somebody would have had to see that this evidence doesn’t add up. I mean the coroner would have had to blow the whistle.”

“You’d think that would be the case unless they were all in on it.”

“That’s kind of hard to believe: Everybody agreed to set this guy up. It’s crazy.”

“Not if you think it through and I’ve been thinking about nothing else for days now. Let’s say just one person believes Felton is the murderer and goes about setting him up.”

“Okay.”

“He’s got Felton’s fingerprints. The investigative file says that two officers on the task force surreptitiously obtained his prints from a cigarette case earlier in the investigation. By the way, one of those officers was Danni.”

“Okay.”

“And he knows the killer used a bowie knife with a gargoyle handle when he tried to kill that girl who got away, Stacey Kincaid.”

“You’re way ahead of me, Jack. I don’t know all these facts.”

“Trust me, Henry. They’re true. And a bowie knife meets the MO of some of the other murders as well.”

“Okay, I accept everything you’re telling me. Keep going.”

“So he searches and finds the exact knife and buys it. When he gets called to the next murder, he plants the knife in the bushes outside the apartment before he even goes in so he doesn’t know he’s planted the wrong murder weapon.”

“This is too much, Jack. You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. Nothing ever happens like this or at least I’ve never heard of it. What about the fingerprints? How does he get the fingerprints on the knife?”

“You can transfer fingerprints, Henry. You can do it with Scotch tape as long as you have the fingerprints you’re trying to plant. And the cops can do it another way: They can just say these are the prints we found on the knife. I don’t think that happened in this case because too many people would have had to be involved.”

“You already told me the whole damn criminal justice system was involved,” Henry said.

“Not at first. In the beginning it was perhaps only one man. Then the scenario changed. They had Felton in custody and the killings stopped. A couple of months passed. Everything was back to normal. What would you have done if you were the prosecutor and you suddenly discovered the evidence didn’t match up? Would you put somebody you were sure was a serial killer back on the streets to kill again? Would you put your community that had been living in terror for half a year in jeopardy again? Would you accuse a member of law enforcement of tampering with the evidence under these circumstances? Or would you just let it go—put Felton away and become a hero?

“You know the prosecutor just puts on a case. Of course, she’s supposed to do it ethically, but it’s up to the defense to challenge the evidence. The public defender was probably clueless—just going through the motions.”

“I still can’t believe this.”

“Let’s look at it the only other way you can look at it. There had been eight murders before these last two, and the police never found a trace of evidence. That excludes, of course, the evidence they obtained from Stacey, the girl who temporarily got away. Then all of a sudden this mastermind killer drops a bowie knife with his fingerprints on it outside the scene of a double homicide where he used another type of weapon to do his killing. Does that make any sense whatsoever to you?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Jack, who was already standing and walking around the living room as if it were a courtroom and he was pleading his case, went to the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the refrigerator, opened them, handed one to Henry, and waited. He could tell Henry was going over all of it in his head again, challenging every premise, filtering it through the mind of a criminal, until he arrived at the place Jack expected him to get to.

“So I assume you have a person in mind who did all this?” Henry asked.

“I do.”

“And who might that be?”

“Sam Jeffries.”

“The chief of police?”

“That’s the one.”

“I can’t wait to hear your rationale for this one, Jack.”

“It’s very simple. Sam Jeffries was the head of the task force back then. His wife had been murdered by the serial killer two weeks before this double murder. The man could not have been in his right mind. He knew about the bowie knife. He knew Felton was a suspect: Danni had tried to get a search warrant for Felton’s apartment. And let me show you something.”

Jack went in his bedroom and returned with a tape and popped it in the VCR. He and Henry watched a recording of Tom Felton’s arrest. It started out fine with Sam reading Felton his rights. Then it got ugly: Felton nodded, telling Sam he understood his rights, and Sam told him he had to respond verbally. Then came the part Jack wanted Henry to see.

“I understand what you said to me but I’m innocent,” Felton replied to Sam’s prompting. “I didn’t kill anybody. You’ve got the wrong man.”

“We’ll see about that, dickhead,” Sam answered. “You’re going down. And don’t be fooled: that cocktail they give you up in Raiford—it may be quick but it’s awful painful. They just paralyze you so nobody can tell.”

“Wow!” Henry said when Jack turned off the VCR. “I see what you mean. That was one angry man there. So what are you gonna do with all of this, Jack? Most of it is supposition.”

“I don’t think I have to do anything but prove that the weapon found with Felton’s fingerprints on it was not the murder weapon. At that point the court is going to have to set Felton free.”

“So what was all that other stuff about?”

“I had to convince myself that this is how it went down.”

“Why did you go over it with me?”

“Because if there were holes in my theory, you would see them.”

“Let me say this: I don’t know if your theory is totally accurate but you have convinced me that the bowie knife was a plant, and it certainly wasn’t the murder weapon. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. After all this, I still don’t know that Felton is innocent. I know that he was framed. I just don’t know that he’s innocent.”

“What happened when you went to see him?”

“He proclaimed his innocence. He seemed honest and straightforward. He looked me right in the eye. I didn’t detect any fidgeting, eye blinking, nothing. Of course, psychopaths don’t display the symptoms that normal liars do.”

“Well, if you don’t represent him, nobody is going to. And all this stuff that you just brought to my attention is going to die with him.”

“I know, Henry. I don’t think I can let that happen.”

“There’s something else that you need to at least consider. Actually, it’s someone else.”

“You’re talking about Danni.”

“I know it shouldn’t affect your decision, but—”

Jack cut him off. “It blew my mind when I read the file. She was a big part of this case. Besides obtaining the fingerprints, she’s the one who interviewed the girl who identified the murder weapon in the previous attempted murder.”

“The girl who was later killed?” Henry asked.

“Yes. Danni testified about that at trial. Do you remember Hannah and Danni telling us about Hannah going to Colorado when she was a young girl?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“She went there because the serial killer called Danni and intimated that he was going to kill Hannah.”

“Jesus, Jack, she’s going to be livid if you represent this guy.”

“I know, but what can I do? I can’t not represent him if I believe he’s innocent just because Danni is going to be angry.”

“No, you can’t,” Henry said. Then he started chuckling to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.

“I was just thinking that I’m glad I’m not you.”