CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mid-September days in San Diego are mild and soft and wrap around you like the arms of a lover, Sarah Knight reflected on the third Monday of the month as she got out of her car in the UCSD parking lot in Hillcrest at ten o’clock. August’s fiery blasts were gone, and the breeze was light and crisp with the promise of fall. She wished she could escape work for the day and sit on one of the craggy bluffs overlooking the Pacific, thinking of nothing but the steady rhythm of the tide rolling in. She wanted to escape her life, and Jim, and Alexa Reed with every fiber of her being.
But Jim was already in Alexa’s room waiting for her because their client had finally recovered her voice enough to talk to them. Since Alexa had come out of her coma a week ago, Sarah had let Jim take the laboring oar at the hospital. She told herself she sent Jim without her because she needed to focus on pulling together the evidence that would keep Alexa from going back to jail. But in reality her overwhelming guilt kept her away. She had not slept a night through since the dark small hours of that Saturday when she’d called Alexa back in the name of her children. And now she was wracked with guilt because she had drawn Alexa’s spirit away from the threshold of eternity with a promise she could never keep: reunion with Meggie and Sam.
Sarah took a deep breath before pushing open the door to Alexa’s room. She seemed to grow smaller every time Sarah saw her. Her client was sitting up, propped against a number of large pillows; Jim occupied the chair next to her bed. He was entertaining her with small talk about Georgetown. Sarah saw the first-ever smile on Alexa’s face and felt that familiar unwanted pang of jealousy. Alexa and Jim had gone to the same law school, and they’d naturally become friends in the last week while Sarah had stayed away.
They both looked up as the door opened, slightly startled by her interruption. But Jim recovered impeccably, quickly standing to offer her the chair closest to the bed and pulling up another for himself some distance away.
Sarah looked over at the tiny figure watching her expectantly and suddenly felt awkward and unsure of how to begin. “I’m Sarah Knight, your attorney.”
Alexa nodded. “Yes.” Not surprisingly her voice was low and raspy. She took a sip of water from the covered plastic cup in her hands.
“I thought we’d start with the police report. You told Officer McColly Meggie phoned you at 11:15, upset because her father was in an argument with a woman.”
Alexa nodded.
“And you drove to the house to find Michael dead and the children crying.”
She nodded again.
“But you didn’t tell the police you had arrived at Ronald Brigman’s earlier that night at 9:00 p.m.?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember being at Dr. Brigman’s.”
“He had a surveillance camera focused on his front door. It shows you going in at 9:00 p.m. It doesn’t show you leaving.”
She looked upset and confused. “Then I must have been there. But I don’t remember it.”
Jim looked up from his notes and gave Alexa a sympathetic smile that registered in Sarah’s midsection as an acute pang of jealousy. “We’ve talked this week when she’s felt like it,” Jim sid. “There’s a lot she can’t remember. The doctor warned us about memory loss.”
Sarah nodded politely, trying not to show her irritation over his obvious bond with their client. “Well, then, let’s work with what you do remember. Tell me about that night.”
Alexa fixed her beautiful blue eyes on Jim as if Sara hadn’t asked the question. “I was driving in the car. I remember that. It was dark, and it was late. I don’t know why I was driving in the car. My cell phone rang, and it was Meggie. She was crying. She said Michael was arguing with a woman, and she and Sam were scared. She wanted me to come and get them.”
“Is that all you remember?”
“I remember walking into Michael’s house and seeing him lying in a pool of blood. Meggie and Sam were hiding in the closet in Meggie’s bedroom. I took them home, and called the police.”
“So you don’t remember being at Ronald Brigman’s at all?”
“No.”
“What about seeing Brigman dead on his living room floor?”
“No.” She frowned as she struggled to remember. “It feels as if there is something I should remember. But I can’t. I must have been very upset to have been driving around in the car alone at night.”
“In the vicinity of Michael’s and Brigman’s, too.”
Her lovely blue eyes seemed to have a mist over them. “Yes, right. I don’t know why I was there before Meggie called. I think I used to know. But I don’t remember now.”
“Do you remember having your gun with you that night?”
“No. I know I didn’t have the gun then.”
“Why?”
“Because it had been stolen.”
“When?”
“In March. Or maybe it was April. It was not long after Brigman announced he was going to give Michael eighty per cent custody of the children on June 1.”
“Did you remember why you had the gun?”
“Bob told me to get it. Michael kept threatening to kill me, and Bob said I had to take the threats seriously.”
“Were any of the threats in writing or in front of witnesses?
“No. Michael always bragged he was too clever to get caught. But Bob said even if we couldn’t prove them, the threats were real, and I needed to protect myself.”
“Where did you keep the gun?”
“I kept it locked in the trunk of the car. I was afraid to have it in the house because of the children.”
“How did you find out the gun was missing?”
“I checked on it several times a week to make sure it was secure. One Sunday afternoon, I opened the trunk and it was gone.”
“Did you make a police report?”
“Yes. I called Bob, and that’s what he said to do.”
“Did you know Trevor Martin says there was no police report?”
“He told me that. But I did talk to an officer that same afternoon, and he said he was going to write a report.”
“Do you remember his name?”
Alexa shook her head. “No. I’m pretty sure I didn’t write it down. It never occurred to me anyone would think I would lie about contacting the police.”
“Michael filed for divorce in January 2009?”
“Yes.”
“Were you surprised?”
Alexa sighed. “That’s not a simple yes or no answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I found out early in our marriage Michael was unfaithful. By now you’ve heard about the paralegal he got pregnant during our first year at the firm. After I realized what was going on, I tried to get him to go to counseling with me. That’s when he started to hit me.”
Alexa focused on the blank wall opposite and went on as if reciting from a book. “Michael enjoyed his affairs, but what he enjoyed even more was humiliating me with them. He made sure I knew about every one. He liked to hit me while he bragged about them.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“I going to, but then I found out I was pregnant with Meggie. Michael stopped hitting me while I pregnant, and I thought he wanted to save our marriage. But I was wrong. He just didn’t want to take any chances my doctor would see bruises and ask questions.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he told me. He started hitting me again when Meggie was six weeks old, when I had finished my post partum visits. I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go. My grandmother was my only family; and she died in 2005, the year I married Michael.
“I figured if I were pregnant again, Michael would stop hitting me, so I got pregnant with Sam when Meggie was six months old. And I was right; he did stop until after Sam was born.”
“Did anyone at Warrick, Thompson know?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I missed a lot of days of work because I didn’t want anyone to see the bruises. Michael stepped up the beatings after I went back to work after Sam was born. I didn’t want to leave the firm because I didn’t want to be isolated with Michael. But coping with two babies and never knowing when Michael would come at me again was very hard. It was almost a relief when Alan Warrick let me go because my billable hours were too low. The firm wasn’t making any money off of me.”
“When did you leave the firm?”
“October 2008. Alan called it a ‘leave of absence.” In theory I would come back when Sam was a year old.” Her voice cracked, and she took a sip of water from her cup.
“Did things get better after you stayed home with the children?”
“I wish I could say yes; but no, they didn’t. Michael wasn’t afraid of anyone seeing the bruises.”
“Why didn’t you leave Michael, then?”
“I was planning to. I saw a divorce attorney in November. I put my resume together to try to get a teaching job at one of the law schools in town. I talked to Alan about it, and he offered to be a reference. He had some connections at Cal Western, and he thought he might be able to get me a job teaching Constitutional Law.”
“But you didn’t file for divorce.”
“No, the family law attorney told me the court would not order supervised visits with the children for Michael even though he’d been violent with me. He wasn’t with them much, and he wasn’t patient, and they were so little. I was afraid for them to be alone with them, so I decided I’d better stick it out until they were older and could speak for themselves if Michael went after them.”
“So what led Michael to file for divorce?”
“I don’t know when Michael found out that I had seen the family law attorney. I never told him. But he confronted me about it when we got home from the big Warrick, Thompson Christmas party. He hit me so hard, he broke my left arm. He took me to the emergency room; but on the way he said I if I told the truth about how I’d been hurt, he’d file for divorce, and I would never see the children again. So I told the ER doctor I slipped and fell.”
“Did the doctor believe you?”
“I’m not sure. He seemed suspicious because Michael wouldn’t leave the room when he was talking to me. But if you pull those hospital records, you’ll see I didn’t tell the truth.”
“Are you sure no one else ever witnessed what Michael did to you?”
“There was someone, but she’s been deported.”
“Who?”
“I had a nanny named Guadalupe Caballero who helped out with Meggie and then later with Sam, so I could go back to work. She lived with us, so she not only saw the bruises, she heard Michael hitting me, too.”
“Where is she now?”
“She was undocumented, and Michael had her deported when he filed for divorce.”
“Did Bob Metcalf ever try to find her?”
“No. He didn’t know how to, and honestly, I don’t think she would have cooperated anyway. She was terrified when the INS came to get her.”
“What happened after Michael broke your arm in December?”
“Coleman got involved. He’d been unfaithful to Myrna for years and had been physically abusive, so he thought nothing of what Michael was doing to me. But he knew I had options to leave that Myrna didn’t have, and he didn’t want the world to know his or Michael’s secrets. He called me the day after they put the cast on and offered to pay me what amounted to a monthly income if I wouldn’t leave Michael.”
“A bribe?”
“Yes.”
“And you said?”
“No, of course. I was insulted.”
“How did Coleman react?”
“He was very angry. He told me that was the best offer I’d ever get, and I’d rue the day I turned it down. Then he helped Michael hide all of the community property in offshore accounts, so I wouldn’t get any.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s an educated guess. Just before Michael filed for divorce, all our bank accounts suddenly went down almost to zero. Coleman liked to use offshore accounts for his various clients, so I think he used his expertise to help Michael hide the community property.”
“Was Coleman involved in money laundering?”
“You’d have to ask Alan Warrick since he was the one who monitored client finds in the firm’s trust account. But if Coleman was up to anything illegal, I doubt he would have let Alan know because Alan is very by-the book-follow-the rules, no exceptions.”
“Still, Alan might have known,” Sarah insisted.
“A pretty slim possibility,” Alexa whispered as she sipped from her cup, her eyes on Jim.
Her voice had dropped to a deep whisper, and her face was gray with fatigue. Sarah needed to ask a lot more, but she wanted out of that room at that moment more than anything else on earth. She wanted to be away from Jim’s steady quiet eyes on Alexa and his encouraging smiles as she answered Sarah’s questions.
“We’ve covered a lot of ground, and I think you’re too tired to go on right now. I’ll come another day when you’ve had a chance to rest.”
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