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Bad Timing

Paul Spencer

    Mick Ward leaned against the doorway to Casey Raife’s office and gazed at the late afternoon blue sky through the window behind her. Today was Monday, and a rare sunny day in Portland. He had been on his way to the Migration Brewing beer garden when Raife called and told him she needed him to come in and meet a new client.
    “This had better be good,” he said.
    “You’re not going to like this guy, Mick.”
    Ward shrugged. “We do criminal defense. I don’t like any of our clients.”
    Raife raised her eyebrows at him, but Ward didn’t say any more.
    “We need the money, you know,” she said.
    “You mean you need the money. It’s your firm. Makes no difference to me.”
    “Would it make a difference if I couldn’t pay your wages?”
    Ward was one paycheck from eviction, and he hadn’t paid his alimony in a year. “I’d find something else,” he said.
    “Yeah, with your reputation, every lawyer in town will be lining up to hire you.”
    That one stung. Ward still burned with shame at the memory of the spectacular meltdown that had ended his own legal career and left him scraping for a living as a part-time investigator at Casey Raife’s law firm. He tried to keep his face impassive, but something must have showed how deep the barb cut, because Raife’s expression softened.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
    “I’ll live. What’s the story with this guy?”
    “He used his one phone call to call me from the Detention Center around 11 this morning. Said he got arrested late yesterday and he wanted to hire me to defend him. Like I said, we need money, so I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I told him I’d need a ten thousand dollar retainer and he didn’t bat an eye, just told me to be at his bail hearing at 2pm. That should have been my first clue.
    “Anyway, at the hearing, it turns out that an African American guy named James Arthur was kicked half to death in the parking lot behind Kell’s in downtown early Sunday morning. Witnesses said three guys shouting neo-Nazi slogans did the deed. The cops got there in time to arrest two of them, but the third one ran away. Didn’t matter though, because one of the brave race warriors lasted about five seconds into police questioning before he gave up a name. Our client. The cops arrested him at his home later that day.
    “James Arthur is in a coma, and it’s not looking good. As you can imagine, the charges are serious. Aggravated assault, attempted murder, and that will get upgraded if Mr. Arthur goes the way the doctors think he will. Judge Kendall set bail at a half million dollars. The ten percent surety meant it would cost our guy fifty grand to walk free. He wrote the check on the spot. Smiled at the judge, told me he needed to swing by his house, and said he’d meet me at my office at four.”
    “So, he’s rich and he’s a racist,” Ward said. “I can see why you think I won’t like him.”
    “It gets worse.”
    “Don’t tell me he’s a lawyer.”
    Raife smiled, knowing Ward’s disdain for most members of his former profession. “No. But he is head of the Oregon chapter of Patriot Prayer.”
    Ward tensed, forcing himself not to respond. Patriot Prayer was a far-right white supremacist group that hid its extremism behind a thin veneer of religion and patriotism. They had been tied to a series of increasingly violent racist attacks in recent years. But to Ward it went deeper, and Raife knew it. His last case as an attorney had been defending one of Patriot Prayer’s founders on an arson attack against a Latino family. Many factors in his life had driven Ward to the edge of the abyss, and the prospect of setting such a sick man free had pushed him over.
    He took a deep breath, trying to release the tension gripping his body. Raife looked him up and down.
    “If I let you into the same room as him,” she said, “will you promise not to strangle him with your bare hands?”
    Ward was six three and two forty, and prior to working for Raife he’d spent two years doing heavy lifting in a streetcar factory. He savored the thought of wrapping his hands around their new client’s throat. But he appreciated Raife’s need to defuse the situation.
    “I’ll try not to,” he said, and gave her a wry smile.
    “Okay, let’s do this. He’s in the small conference room. Bring your laptop, would you? He said something about showing us a video.”
    “Wait, one more thing,” Ward said.
    “What?”
    “Why did you call me? You don’t normally need me for new client meetings. And given what you know about my past, I wouldn’t think you’d want me within a mile of this guy.”
    Raife paused. “There’s something not right about him, Mick. Apart from the obvious, I mean. I can’t put my finger on it, and it’s driving me nuts. I need you to help me figure it out.”
    Ward shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
    Raife stood up and squeezed past Ward. She was tall and athletic herself, so there was barely room for the two of them in the doorway. Ward stepped aside to let her by, then stopped by the copy room to grab his laptop off the folding table he used as an occasional desk. When he arrived in the conference room, Raife was talking to a tall, pale man with slicked-back blond hair and thick pink lips. The man wore khaki pants and a black silk shirt, and his leather slip-on shoes looked like they cost more than Ward made in a month.
    “Mick, this is our new client Timothy Quint,” she said. “Timothy, this is my investigator Mick Ward.”
    Ward forced himself to remain expressionless as he shook Quint’s limp, moist hand.
    “Let’s get started, shall we?” Raife said, and gestured to the conference table. The three of them sat down, and Raife jotted the date on her notepad.
    “I’ve told Mr. Ward what I know about your case from the bail hearing today. We’ll need to go into more detail, but first I’d like to get some background information. Let’s start with your date of birth.”
    “April second, 1988,” Quint replied.
    “And where do you live?”
    “Lake Oswego.”
    Ward wasn’t surprised by that answer. Situated amidst rolling hills on a beautiful lake shore, Lake Oswego was one of Portland’s wealthiest neighborhoods. It was also one of the least diverse. Decades of real estate restrictions and overt racism had earned it the nickname of Lake No Negro.
    “What do you do for a living?” Raife said.
    “I’m an investor.”
    “In what?”
    Quint sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m sure this is very interesting, but let me save us all some time.”
    He reached over and grabbed Ward’s laptop without asking, then took a USB drive out of his pocked and plugged it in. Biting his lower lip, he stared at the screen intently as he worked at the keyboard and trackpad. After a couple of moments, he turned the laptop around so that Ward and Raife could see the screen.
    Quint gestured at the computer. “Watch this.”
    The screen showed a video clearly taken at night, from above the front door of a house. As the video played, a dark-colored Mercedes SUV pulled up. Quint got out of the car, approached the door, then disappeared from the screen as he went inside.
    “Do you see the date and time in the lower left corner?” Quint said. “That’s me arriving home at 1:20am yesterday morning. As you no doubt recall from the hearing, the 911 call reporting the alleged attack on James Arthur was made at 1:24am. Lake Oswego is a half-hour drive from downtown. It’s simply not possible for me to have been there.”
    Ward bristled at Quint’s use of “alleged,” and the implied sneer in his tone. “That video could have been altered,” he said.
    Quint looked at Ward as though he was a child. “Putting aside the fact that it would be very difficult to doctor up a video in the short time between my release and this meeting, I can prove that it’s genuine. Because of my political beliefs, I am frequently the target of unwanted attention. As a result, I have installed a state-of-the-art home security system. Each day’s surveillance footage is stored in a discrete file, which is backed up to a secure cloud-based storage system. I will happily consent to the police obtaining a copy of today’s file from the cloud storage provider, so that they can compare it to this one and verify that it has not been altered.”
    “Then why did one of the other attackers give the police your name?” Ward said.
    “I suspect he was coerced,” Quint replied. “After all, Portland Police have a reputation for that sort of thing. And I’m an easy target.”
    “Even if he was coerced, how did he know your name?”
    “He is a member of our organization. Unfortunately, some of them can become overzealous in expressing their views.” Quint nodded at Raife. “Anyway, I’ve made arrangements for one of your fellow defense attorneys to take his case. I suspect that once he is freed from the police’s grip, he will state that I was nowhere near the scene.”
    “With you paying for his lawyer, I’ll bet he will,” Ward said.
    Quint didn’t say anything. He just raised his eyebrows and smiled.
    “What do you want from me, Mr. Quint?” Raife said.
    Quint closed the laptop, pulled the USB drive out, and slid it across the table to her. “I want you to deliver that file to the DA. I want all charges against me dropped immediately. And I want a public apology. After which, you can sue the police for unlawful arrest.”
    “I don’t do civil cases,” Raife said, “but I can assure you that any attempt to sue the police for arresting you when an eyewitness gave them your name would be a complete waste of time.”
    “Not if it were properly publicized. It is time for the people of this country to realize that it is the white race that is persecuted, that we are under attack.” Quint pressed his palms on the table and stood. “Anyway, that is all I have time for now. I shall expect to hear from you shortly about the dismissal of the charges.”
    He turned and walked out, leaving Raife and Ward still sitting at the table.
    “I admire your restraint, Mick,” Raife said. “I wanted to choke him out myself.”
    “We can’t take his case. No way I’m setting an asshole like him free.”
    “With that video, he’s going free anyway. Let’s at least get something out of it. All we have to do is turn the file over to the DA, sign off on a couple of subpoenas, and that’s it. We never have to see smug little Mr. Quint again. Easiest ten grand we ever make. Keeps you employed, and funds our next case. Hopefully someone more deserving.”
    “I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about my job. We can’t take this guy’s case. Tell him to shove his retainer up his ass. Let some schmuck just out of law school be his errand boy.”
    “I agreed to represent him,” Raife said. “I have an ethical duty to do so. I can’t drop his case without good cause.”
    Ward slammed a hand down on the table. “Don’t give me that crap! We both know you can come up with something that will pass scrutiny. You said it yourself. There’s something not right about this guy. I felt it too. Let’s get out before whatever it is comes back to bite us on the ass.”
    “I can’t do that. Not on a hunch.” Raife put her face in her hands. “Look, go home. Meet me back here in the morning, and we’ll get that file over to the DA.”
    “I’m going home, all right,” Ward said. “But I’m not sure whether I’m coming back.”
    He stood up and walked out.
    It was getting dark as Ward drove home. So much for a beer in the sun. He hated how short the days were at this time of year. Dark when he started work and dark when he finished. Here it was, barely past 5, and the sun had already set. Daylight saving time was great in summer, but it sucked when it ended. Why couldn’t they keep it all year round? That way at least he’d have a chance of seeing daylight after work.
    Then a thought hit him. He pulled over into a hotel loading zone and took out his phone. Ignoring the uniformed concierge’s furious gestures, he called Raife.
    “Are you still at the office?”
    “I was just about to leave. Why?”
    “That security video Quint gave us today. How much of it have you watched?”
    “Just what he showed us. Him coming home, maybe a couple of minutes after that. Same as you. Why?”
    “Don’t leave. I’m coming back in.”
    Ward pulled a sharp U turn and sped back to the office. He grabbed his laptop and headed into Raife’s office.
    “Where’s that USB drive?” he said.
    Raife handed it to him. He plugged it in and fired up the video. At first, he wound it to the point when Quint came home. He placed the laptop so they could both see it.
    “Now watch this,” he said.
    He wound the video back until the timer showed 1:01:00 am, then set it to rewind slowly. The seconds ticked backward. When the timer reached 1:00:00am, it suddenly jumped to 1:59:59.
    “What the hell?” Raife said. “Is the video doctored after all?”
    “No,” Ward said. “Look at the date.”
    “November 4th, 2018. Yesterday, like he told us. So what?” Raife still looked puzzled.
    “What else happened yesterday?”
    “I don’t know. It was a Sunday, so I worked on my court appearances for the week. Mick, what are you getting at here?” Raife looked at him, a mixture of anger and confusion on her face. Ward stared back calmly, waiting for realization to hit. After a moment, Raife rolled her eyes.
    “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
    “I’m not. Daylight saving time ended at 2am yesterday.”
    “At which time the clock in the security system automatically rolled back an hour.”
    “Exactly. Quint got home at what would have been 2:20am. Almost an hour after the attack. Plenty of time to ditch the clothes he was wearing when he kicked James Arthur into a coma and cruise on down to good old Lake No Negro.”
    “He planned the attack, didn’t he? The timing, the security footage, the whole damn thing.”
    “You know he did.”
    “Then why did he give us the whole day’s security footage? Why not just a few minutes around him getting home?”
    “Like he said. So the DA can compare the file to the backup, to prove that it hasn’t been doctored.”
    “The arrogant bastard thought he was too clever for us. He thought nobody would work it out.” Raife slapped a palm on her desk. “Damn it. I knew there was something wrong about that guy.”
    “I suppose we still have to give the DA the file,” Ward said.
    Raife nodded.
    “What if they don’t figure it out? Can we tell them to wind it back the way we just did?”
    “You know better than that, Mick. A defense attorney telling the DA how to convict her client? My malpractice insurance doesn’t go that high.”
    Ward sighed. “Yeah, I know. I hate this goddamn game.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Raife said. “Look, go home. Take tomorrow off. I’ll run the USB drive over to the DA myself. Who knows? Maybe while I’m there I’ll ask him how he’s coping with the end of daylight saving time.”

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