was almost finished with his second beer. “There’s almost always a reason to kill someone. The reason we find serial killers so disturbing is because they kill for sport, for no real reason at all other than their own entertainment. Everyone else always has a reason.”
“That’s just it. Our guy wasn’t going to get any money. They were both very successful, had two kids. They’d had some marital problems a couple years before, but they’d gotten through it and everything seemed fine. It just doesn’t make any sense. This other guy had just had a heated argument with the wife a half hour before.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a real mess on your hands.”
“And like I said, everyone seems to be telling the truth. But they can’t be. Someone’s got to be lying.”
“Ha!” Jendrek slapped the bar harder than he had the first time. He ordered us another round and tossed some peanuts in his mouth from a small wicker basket that had magically appeared from nowhere. “Look, everyone lies. Witnesses, cops, family members — they all lie, all the time. Your clients will look you directly in the face and tell you a lie that they will swear in court is true. A good lawyer never believes anything anyone tells him.”
I stopped in the middle of a sip and squinted. “But how the hell can you ever get anything done?”
“You’ve got to ask the questions they all assume you won’t ask. The questions they never thought to prepare a lie for.” Jendrek tossed some more peanuts down the hatch and continued. “I once had a client that used the old I-was-home-all-night alibi and had his wife swear that was the case. He was a good Catholic boy and swore he didn’t commit the robbery he was accused of. But he’d been in trouble before and had been rounded up and placed in a line up. A witness ID’d him and that was that.”
“But he was lying.”
“You bet your ass he was.” Jendrek smiled.
“And he got his wife to lie?”
“Sure did.”
“So what?” I went for the peanuts. “So people lie. You’d expect them to in a case like that.”
“Yeah, but why did they lie?”
“Because he was guilty!” I laughed and leaned back, wondering what the point could be.
“Hardly.” Jendrek took another drink. “When I asked them what they did at home that night, they told me they watched television and went to bed after the news was over. When I asked them what they watched, they recounted the shows that were on that night. And then my client said he remembered that night well because it was hot and they had to sleep with the windows closed because of the smoke from a fire up in the hills. It was a good detail to add.”
I waited out his silence, watching him over the top of my beer. Jendrek had a flair for the dramatic.
But Jendrek just smiled, taking his time. “There was a fire that night alright. But if they went to bed after the news, there was no way they could have known about it, because it didn’t start until 11:30. It wouldn’t have been on the news and there wouldn’t have been any smoke yet where they lived. It was a dead giveaway. It was part of their lie they never thought about. It was also the thing that saved him because it was the exact same lie he told the police.”
I must have looked puzzled. Jendrek tossed back the last of the peanuts, washed them down with the last of his beer, and leaned back on his stool.
“Look,” he began, “people lie for all kinds of reasons. Accused people don’t lie just because they’re guilty. This guy was innocent and thought that it wouldn’t make a difference whether he told the truth or simply said he was home all night — either way, he knew he was never at the crime scene. So, he went down and told his story and then he got fucked because a witness picked him out of a lineup. That’s all the cops needed to conclude he was lying and his wife was covering for him.”
Jendrek ordered a fourth and ran his fingers through his colonial locks. I could see the salty trial lawyer coming out. His mannerisms, hand gestures, the facial expressions, pauses, it was all theater.
“You see,” he went on, “the reason he knew about the fire is because he and his wife were out that night. They were up in