“You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
Dance saw they had a visitor. Distinguished defense attorney George Sheedy rose and stepped forward, shaking Dance’s hand and saying hello in his basso profundo voice. A briefcase was open on the coffee table in the sitting area of the suite, and yellow pads and printouts sat in cluttered stacks. The lawyer said hello to the children. He was courteous, but from his posture and expression Dance could tell immediately that the conversation she’d interrupted was a hard one. Wes regarded Sheedy suspiciously.
After Edie dispensed treats to the children, they headed outside to a playground.
“Stay with your sister,” Dance commanded.
“Okay. Come on,” the boy said to Maggie and, juggling juice boxes and cookies, they left. Dance glanced out the window and noted that she could see the playground from here. The pool was behind a locked gate. With children, you could never be too vigilant.
Edie and Stuart returned to the couch. Three cups of coffee rested, largely untouched, on a low driftwood table. Her mother would have instinctively prepared them the moment Sheedy arrived.
The lawyer asked about the case and the hunt for Travis Brigham.
Dance gave sketchy answers — which, in fact, were the best she could offer.
“And that girl, Kelley Morgan?”
“Still unconscious, it seems.”
Stuart shook his head.
The subject of the Roadside Cross attacks was tucked away and Sheedy glanced at Edie and Stuart, eyebrow raised. Dance’s father said, “You can tell her. Go ahead. Everything.”
Sheedy explained, “We’re tipping to what Harper’s game plan seems to be. He’s very conservative, he’s very religious and he’s on record as opposing the Death with Dignity Act.”
The proposal cropped up every so often in California; it was a statute, like Oregon’s, that would allow physicians to assist people who wished to end their lives. Like abortion, it was a controversial topic and the pros and cons were highly polarized. Presently in California if somebody helped a person commit suicide, that assistance was considered a felony.
“So he wants to make an example of Edie. The case isn’t about assisted suicide — your mother tells me that Juan was too badly injured to administer the drugs to himself. But Harper wants to send a message that the state will seek tough penalties against anybody who helps with a suicide. His meaning: Don’t support the law because DAs will be looking real closely at each case. One step out of line and doctors or anybody helping someone die will get prosecuted. Hard.”
The distinguished voice continued grimly, speaking to Dance, “That means he’s not interested in plea bargains. He wants to go to trial and run a big, splashy, public relations–driven contest. Now, in this instance, because somebody killed Juan, that makes it murder.”
“First degree,” Dance said. She knew the penal code the way some people knew the Joy of Cooking.
Sheedy nodded. “Because it’s premeditated and Millar was a law enforcement officer.”
“But not special circumstances,” Dance said, looking at her mother’s pale face. Special circumstances would allow for the death penalty. But for that punishment to apply, Millar would have had to’ve been on duty at the time he was killed.
But Sheedy said, scoffing, “Believe it or not, he’s considering that.”
“How? How can he possibly be?” Dance asked heatedly.
“Because Millar was never officially signed out of his tour.”
“He’s playing a technicality like that?” Dance snapped in disgust.
“Is Harper mad?” Stuart muttered.
“No, he’s driven and he’s self-righteous. Which is scarier than being mad. He’ll get better publicity with a capital case. And that’s what he wants. Don’t worry, there is no way you’d be convicted of special circumstance murder,” he said, turning toward Edie. “But I think he’s going to start there.”
Still, Murder One was harrowing enough. That could mean twenty-five years in prison for Edie.
The lawyer continued, “Now, for our defense, justification doesn’t apply, or mistake or self-defense. Ending the man’s pain and suffering would be relevant at sentencing. But if the jury believed you intended to end his life, however merciful your motive, they would have to find you guilty of first-degree murder.”
“The defense, then,” Dance said, “is on the facts.”
“Exactly. First, we attack the autopsy and the cause of death. The coroner’s conclusion was that Millar died because the morphine drip was open too far and that an antihistamine had been added to the solution. That led to respiratory, and then cardiac, failure. We’ll get experts to say that this was wrong. He died of natural causes as a result of the fire. The drugs were irrelevant.
“Second, we assert that Edie didn’t do it at all. Somebody else administered the drugs either intentionally to kill him, or by mistake. We want to try to find people who might’ve been around — somebody who might’ve seen the killer. Or somebody who might be the killer. What about it, Edie? Was anybody near ICU around the time Juan died?”
The woman replied, “There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors.”
“Well, I’ll keep looking into it.” Sheedy’s face was growing grave. “Now, we come to the big problem. The medication that was added to the IV was diphenhydramine.”
“The antihistamine,” Edie said.
“In the police raid on your house, they recovered a bottle of a brand-name version of diphenhydramine. The bottle was empty.”
“What?” Stuart gasped.
“It was found in the garage, hidden under some rags.”
“Impossible.”
“And a syringe with a small bit of dried morphine on it. The same brand of morphine that was in Juan Millar’s IV drip.”
Edie muttered, “I didn’t put it there. Of course I didn’t.”
“We know that, Mom.”