Excerpt of One False Move by Alex Kava

PART 1

Blind Man’s Bluff

Friday, August 27
1:13 p.m.
Nebraska State Penitentiary -- Lincoln, Nebraska

Max Kramer wore his lucky red tie with his blue power
suit. While he waited for the guard to unlock the door, he
admired his reflection in the glass security window behind
them.That Grecian hair formula really worked. He could
barely see any of the gray.

His wife kept telling him the salt and pepper made him
look more distinguished. Of course she would say that. She
always said stuff like that when she was suspicious, when
she knew he was hunting for someone new. God, she knew him
well, better than she realized.

“Big day,” the hulk of a guard said to him. But he was
scowling instead of smiling.

Max had heard the nicknames the guards had given him in
the last several weeks. He knew he wasn’t a popular guy
here on death row. But that was to the guards. To the
inmates he had reached hero status. And they were the ones
he cared about; they were the ones who counted. They
needed him to right their wrongs, to tell their stories,
or rather their versions of their stories. Yes, they were
the ones who mattered, but not because he was a bleeding
heart liberal like the Omaha World Herald or the Lincoln
Journal Star seemed pleased to label him. It was nothing
quite as admirable as all that. Quite simply, all his hard
work, all his efforts were for a day like today. A day
when he could watch a client of his walk out of this
concrete hellhole .A day when he could save his client
from the electric chair and walk alongside him out the
front doors and into the sunlight. The sunlight and the
spotlight of about two dozen TV cameras from across the
country. CNN’s Larry King had already booked Max and Jared
on his show for tomorrow night. And his red tie would show
up wonderfully tonight when NBC aired his interview with
Brian Williams.

Yes, this was what he had waited for his entire career.
All the shitty pay and long hours would be worth it, and
the local media attacks would come to an end.

He stopped at the doorway to the holding room, pretending
to show some respect for his client’s privacy. Pretending.
He didn’t want to spend any more time alone with Jared
Barnett than necessary. So he watched from the doorway.
Barnett was wearing the same faded jeans and red T-shirt
he had surrendered that first day at the penitentiary five
years ago, only now the T-shirt bulged from the muscles
Barnett had built up during his days of incarceration.
Since Barnett had traded in his orange jumpsuit for street
clothes, Max couldn’t help thinking how ordinary the man
looked. Even his short dark hair had that disheveled but
cool look, that just-got-out-of-bed look that Max could
never pull off, but that Barnett would probably make
trendy after his media appearances.

Max had already made his client out to be the poor
misunderstood bad boy who had been framed and then abused
by a justice system that had stolen five years of his
life. Now Barnett just needed to play the role. He
certainly looked it.

The guard at the door stepped aside.

“Paperwork’s coming,” he said. “You want, you can wait
inside.”

Max nodded as if grateful for the invitation -- for what
the guard seemed to consider a courtesy -- even though Max
preferred that the asshole let him wait in the hall. Too
late. Jared saw him and waved him into the holding room.
He stood up when Max entered, another courtesy. Jesus!
What was this world coming to when convicted murderers
started being courteous?

“Relax. Take a load off.” Max shoved one of the metal
folding chairs in Barnett’s direction, scraping it against
the floor, the noise grating on his nerves. Only now did
he realize he was nervous, nervous that Barnett would
screw this up for him.

“Man, I never thought you’d actually be able to pull this
off,” Barnett said, taking the seat, seemingly not
bothered that Max remained standing. It was a trick Max
had learned long ago in his early years as a defense
attorney. Get the client to sit down while you stand over
him, instant authority. At five feet seven inches Max
Kramer had to use every trick he could.

“So how does this work?” Barnett asked, even though Max
had explained it several times during the appeal. His
client sounded as if he believed there was still a
catch. “I’m really free to go?”

“Without Danny Ramerez as a witness the prosecution has no
case. The rest of the evidence was all circumstantial. As
long as there’s no eyewitness testimony from Ramerez,
there’s nothing to connect you to Rebecca Moore.” Max
watched Barnett, measuring his response, or rather his
lack of one. “It was quite admirable of Mr. Ramerez to
come forward and finally tell the truth, that he wasn’t
even there that afternoon.”

Barnett smiled up at him, but there was something about
his smile that creeped Max out. Never once during the
appeal process had he asked how Barnett had managed to get
Ramerez to recant his original testimony, but he suspected
Barnett had, indeed, made it happen, despite being locked
up.

“What about the others?” Barnett asked.

“Excuse me?”

Max waited, but Barnett sat cleaning his fingernails,
using his teeth to scrape them out and then bite off the
cuticles. He had seen him do this in court -- a nervous
habit, probably an unconscious one. And now Max wondered
if he had heard him correctly. Jesus! What others was he
talking about?

Max hadn’t handled Barnett’s original case, only the
appeal. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew there had been
others. Other women, all murdered with the same M.O. and
the signature gunshot wound up through the jaw as if the
killer had hoped to remove the victim’s identity by
shattering her teeth. It didn’t matter. Barnett had only
been charged with Rebecca Moore’s murder. Why the hell
would Barnett even be asking about the others?

“What others?” Max finally asked, though he didn’t want to
know.

“Never mind,” Barnett said as he spat out a piece of
fingernail then crossed his arms, tucking his hands under
his armpits. “You know I don’t have a fucking dime to my
name, man,” he said, changing the subject. “I know you
said I don’t have to pay you anything, but I feel like I
owe you.”

Max almost let out a sigh of relief. This was a much safer
topic. If there had been others, he didn’t want to know
about them. As far as Max was concerned there had been
only one case, one eyewitness. And now there was no
eyewitness and no case. If Barnett wanted to get something
off his chest he could find a fucking priest. Yes, he
preferred that Barnett worry, instead, about paying his
debt.

Max knew Jared Barnett was the kind of man who wouldn’t
like feeling that he owed anyone. He also knew it was a
big deal for Barnett to even admit that he might owe him.
And that’s what he wanted his client to focus on. Max had
heard rumors that, after Barnett had been read his
sentence of death by the electric chair, he turned to his
court-appointed attorney, poor James Pritchard, and told
him that it appeared he didn’t owe him anything more for
his help than a hole in the head. Max liked the idea that
Barnett thought he might feel indebted to him. In fact, he
was counting on it. “I think we can work something out,”
he said.

“Sure. Whatever you decide.”

“But first I have to warn you. There’s a media circus
outside waiting for us.”

“Cool,” Barnett said, standing up. And that’s exactly what
he looked like -- cool and collected, that same lack of
emotion that had carried him through the trial and
sentencing and every aspect of the appeal process. “So
what’s the going rate?”

“Excuse me?”

“What are these media blood-suckers willing to pay for an
interview?”

Max scratched his head, his own nervous habit which he
immediately caught and turned into a smoothing of his
hair. Though he wanted to rip his hair out, instead.
Christ! He couldn’t believe this. The son of a bitch was
going to fuck everything up. Money? He expected to be paid
for being interviewed?

Max had to watch his temper. He couldn’t make it sound as
if he even cared whether or not they did the interviews.
He couldn’t make it seem as though Barnett was doing him a
favor. He didn’t want Barnett thinking these interviews
would be his payback. He needed to think quickly. He
needed to appeal to Barnett’s core values, to those few
essentials that made him tick. One of which, certainly,
was not money.

“You’re going to be a celebrity overnight, my friend,” Max
told him, smiling and shaking his head as if he could
hardly believe it. “I’ve got messages from NBC News, 60
Minutes, Larry King and even Bill O’Reilly’s The Factor.
You’re going to have something money can’t buy. But I can
understand if you’d rather tell them all to go screw
themselves. Whatever you want to do. It’s entirely up to
you.”

He watched as Barnett thought it over, forcing himself to
keep quiet, to pretend it didn’t matter. He concentrated
on breathing, on not thinking about how much he wanted
this, how much he needed this. He tried to keep his fists
from balling up. And in his mind he couldn’t stop
repeating, almost like a mantra, “Don’t you dare fuck it
up.”

“Bill O’Reilly actually wants me on his show?”

Max swallowed another sigh and calmly managed to
say, “Yep, tomorrow night. It’s up to you, though. I can
tell him . . . hell, I can tell them all you don’t want to
put up with the whole lot of them. Whatever you want to
do.”

“That O’Reilly guy always thinks he’s so tough.” And now
Barnett was smiling again. “I wouldn’t mind telling a few
of those assholes what I think.”

This time Max smiled, too. Perhaps he could control
Barnett, after all, but he’d need some sort of insurance.
For the first time since he’d met Jared Barnett, Max
allowed himself to look deep into those dark, vacant eyes,
and now he allowed himself to admit the truth. He knew
Jared Barnett had, indeed, killed that poor girl seven
years ago. Not only did Max know it, he was counting on
it.