A Matter of Life and Death

if I didn’t do what I was told. He gave me a cell phone and said I’d get a call about a job. If I did good, I’d be paid, and no one would see the video. He said they were watching me. If I tried to run, they would hurt Maria and the baby. Then he took us to the motel where I was arrested.”
“Did they call you?”
Joe nodded. “Friday night, the driver called. He was outside the motel. He drove me to the house where the woman was killed. He said that no one was home and there was no alarm. He gave me a combination that was supposed to be for a safe in the living room. He wanted the jewels in the safe and said I could keep any cash. When I went into the entryway, I saw a body in the living room. It was a woman. I put on the lights to see if she was okay. One look at her face and I knew I couldn’t help her. So, I ran.”
Joe shook his head. “I’m so stupid. I should have seen it coming. The driver was gone. Then another car came around the corner and lit me up with its headlights. I took off and went back to the motel to get Maria and Conchita. We were going to run, but the cops came before we could go. They must have called the cops and told them where I was.”
“Do you know the location of the fight or how to find any of the people you think set you up?” Robin asked.
Joe shook his head. “The back of the van had no windows, and no one but Sal used names.”
“What about the phone? Do you have the one they gave you?”
“No. The driver took it back.”
“Can you describe any of the people involved in organizing the fight?”
“The driver who took me to the barn was a giant, over six feet tall—six five maybe—and three hundred pounds or more. He was bald, and his head was twice the size of a normal human’s.”
“Race?”
“White, and he had a cauliflower ear and gang tattoos.”
“Can you tell me the gang?”
“No.”
“What about the people who were running the fight?”
After Joe described the man who seemed in charge, the doctor, and Sal, Robin sat back and thought. Joe watched her, knowing that his best chance for surviving his ordeal was weighing the pros and cons of taking his case.
Robin stood up and rang for the guard.
“Will you help me?” Joe asked. He sounded desperate, and Robin wished that she could give him an answer.
“I don’t know. I have to think about this.”
“Yeah, I get it. But can you do one thing for me? Can you find out where Maria and Conchita are? No one will tell me. If I know they’re safe…”
“I’ll see what I can do. And I won’t make you wait long for my decision.”
On the way to her office, Robin realized that she could be plunged into a defense attorney’s worst nightmare if she accepted Joseph Lattimore as a client. On television, every client is innocent, and every defense attorney is excited to represent an innocent man. In the real world, there were two cases a criminal defense attorney took on with great trepidation: a case where her client faced the death penalty, and a case where her client was innocent.
Most people who are arrested are guilty. If you represented a guilty person, you tried your very best to get your client out of his scrape with the least wear and tear. If he pleaded guilty or was found guilty at trial and you had tried your hardest, you slept soundly knowing that your client had done the crime with which he’d been charged.
Then there was the rare case where your client had been arrested for something he had not done. No attorney wanted to carry that weight. An acquittal only brought a sigh of relief, and a conviction brought endless, sleepless nights and agonizing days filled with the nagging thought that you had failed to do something that would have kept your client out of a cage.
Robin knew that she could avoid the anxiety and constant stress she would feel by leaving Joe’s case with the public defender’s office. But her conscience would not let her do that. If Joe were innocent and facing death, she had a duty to help him. How could she look herself in the mirror if she walked away?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Robin called the public defender who had represented Lattimore at the arraignment and got a briefing on everything she knew about the case. Then she called Jeff and Mark to her office and told them what Joe had told her and what she’d learned from the public defender.
“What should I do?” Robin asked.
“Do you believe him?” Mark asked.
“I do. If he’s making up his story, he should be writing bestselling fiction. It’s the details. He sounds like he’s describing things that happened. And he did ask me about his culpability when he met me outside McGill’s. I believe that illegal fight really happened.”
“Oh, they hold them,” Jeff said. “When I was a cop, we heard rumors.”
“Did you ever do anything about them?” Mark asked.
“No. It was all very shadowy. It’s not unusual for the promoters to move the location every time they hold a fight, so we weren’t even certain that they were being held in our jurisdiction. Plus, the word was that some pretty important people attended the fights—people who make big contributions to the people who decide what cases should be pursued.”
“If the fight was real, it makes Lattimore’s story more believable,” Mark said.
Robin looked troubled. “A thought just occurred to me.”
“And that is?” Jeff asked.
“If Joe is telling the truth, he was set up to take the blame for Mrs. Carasco’s murder. Who is the first person the police look at when a wife is killed?”
“Carasco has a cast-iron alibi,” Mark said. “He