Page 5 of The Best Lawyer
I followed him into a break room across the hall. I wouldn’t sit. Eric knew better than to ask me to calm down.
“It’s pretty damning, Cass,” he said. “They’ve got an eyewitness.”
I felt the blood rush from my head. “They what? Who?”
“Her housekeeper. She walked in on it.”
“She actually saw Katy killing Tom Loomis?”
“She saw her holding the knife,” Eric continued. “It was grisly. His throat was slashed open. Deep enough, it nicked his spinal column. They’ve got the murder weapon. DePaul’s right about one thing. She has probable cause. You can argue about whether there was improper procedure, but Katy’s not getting out of here without a court order.”
“You know her dad was an undersheriff,” I said. “My dad considered him a mortal enemy. Not that I’m defending Joe Sr. He got what he had coming to him. But Sharon’s brothers made a sport out of picking fights with my brothers. This feels personal.”
I pulled my phone back out. I angrily punched in Joe’s number. Again, it went to voicemail. I shot off a text.
“Joe’s AWOL,” I said.
“It’s Friday,” Eric reminded me. “It’s nine a.m. Joe’s probably on some job site with heavy equipment running all around him.” My brother had finally formed his own construction company and it was starting to take off.
“Right,” I said. Then my heart sank. I hadn’t bothered to ask her. But if Katy had tried to call Joe this morning as well, either way, the cops would want to question him at some point. Though they’d been divorced for two years, he and Katy had hooked up again briefly last year.
As if he could read my thoughts, Eric’s face grew serious. “Cass, are you sure you should get involved with Katy’s side of this?”
“I’m not involved,” I said. “Not like that. Not yet. I’m just here to make sure she doesn’t get her rights trampled. Which seems like she has. I can help her find a defense lawyer. It looks like she’s going to need a good one.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Eric said. “You might want to stay hands-off here.”
“I’ve known Katy for over twenty years,” I said. “She’s guilty of a severe lack of judgment. And of adultery. But slashing someone’s throat?”
“We don’t know what was going on in their marriage,” Eric said. “That’s all I’m saying. I worked a lot of homicides. I’m no longer surprised at what people are capable of. Cass, she said some pretty disturbing things. Word is, at the hospital she was talking kind of crazy.”
“I need to see her statement. Eric, this is baloney. She asked for me. DePaul really wants to pretend she didn’t know what Katy meant when she asked for her sister-in-law?”
He didn’t answer me at first. His expression just became more strained.
“What?” I said. “What are you hearing that she said?”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“I want to talk to Joe before I get further involved,” I said. “The less she says to me or anyone else, the better.”
Eric shrugged. “That horse might already be out of the barn, Cass. First, she told DePaul that she didn’t do it. That she had just woken up and found him dead next to her. Then she started questioning herself. Asking herself if she had really killed him. Telling DePaul and anyone who would listen that she didn’t remember what happened. And she screamed ‘What have I done’ a few times.”
It was worse than I thought. Way worse.
“I can at least tell Katy what to expect,” I said. “Hopefully, I can get her a bail hearing. Lord, probably not until Monday. She’s going to have to spend the weekend in jail. Then she …”
“Then she what?” Eric asked. “Are you planning on putting up the money if it gets that far? They’ll charge her with at least second degree murder. As soon as any judge in the county seesthose crime scene photos, they’ll set her bail high. Katy likely won’t have access to Tom’s money. And, like you said, maybe you shouldn’t get involved any deeper just yet.”
Eric had good points. At the same time, I couldn’t shut off the lawyer in me. And if Joe ever answered his blasted phone, I knew what he’d want. Despite everything, he’d want me to help Katy any way I could.
“I’m assuming DePaul actually showed you the crime scene photos?”
Eric pulled out his phone. “I knew you were going to ask me.” He opened his camera roll. He had one photo of Sharon DePaul’s phone with a picture of the crime scene pulled up.
I too had worked on plenty of violent crimes and murder cases since becoming a defense attorney. But what Eric showed me made me gasp. Tom Loomis had sportscaster good looks. That’s exactly what he did for a living. But there was no trace of that in the man lying on the bed in this photo. His eyes were fixed open. The gaping wound in his neck made me gag. And as Katy said repeatedly, there was blood everywhere—Charles Manson crime-scene level.
“Eric,” I said, my voice gone hollow.
