Missing Witness: A Novel

By Gordon Campbell

1973, Phoenix, Arizona. A beautiful woman with a gun enters a house with her twelve-year-old daughter. When they leave, the man inside is dead.

Though the only witness to the fatal shooting is in a catatonic state and unable to testify, the police, the attorney general's office, and the media have already declared the woman guilty. But the best trial lawyer in Phoenix, Dan Morgan, has been hired to prove her innocent.

For Morgan and his idealistic young protégé, Doug McKenzie, the goal is to win at any cost. But there are no easy answers, only shocks and mysteries, as the question of guilt versus innocence takes on a profound and disturbing new meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061842191

Book preview

PROLOGUE

DAN MORGAN had a tattoo. How is it that, after all these years, that’s the first thing that always comes to mind when I think back to the whole mess? It certainly isn’t that I can’t remember all the rest of it—every last detail. And it isn’t that I don’t think about the whole thing. I seem to do that more and more these days. It’s just that when I do return to it all, it’s the tattoo, that ugly stain that had branded him since the war, his war, that always comes back first.

OCTOBER 21, 1973. It was just after sunrise that they rode the horses to the house. They dismounted. They tied the horses to the fence. They walked up the dusty little path. They climbed the two small steps. They went inside. And then they closed the door. Juan saw all that. He saw them ride up. He saw them go inside. He saw them close the door. And, in time, he heard the shots. He saw them come outside. And when he went to them, after the gun had hit the ground, he saw on the ragged rug beyond the open door the hand he knew so well and the blood beginning to pool.

About the event, the shooting itself, that is all we knew, what the old sheep man, Juan Menchaka, my lifelong friend, had said he saw and heard. Juan told the truth. There never was any real question about that. But then he only heard the shots; he didn’t see which one of them fired the gun. I look back to that day and I wonder how much differently my life might have gone if only Juan had seen who pulled the trigger. If only there had been a bigger window. If only they had not closed the door.

1

THE PRESIDENT OF the Arizona Golf Association carried a battery-powered megaphone. He didn’t need it. At the hour we were starting, there were only a handful of people around the tee. Still, he raised it to his mouth, and his voice carried all the way across the San Marcos Country Club.

Ladies and gentlemen, the final match of the 1973 Arizona Golf Association Men’s Amateur Championship. On the tee the defending champion, Dr. Winthrop North.

Winthrop North stood confidently beside his caddie and his huge, hand-tooled golf bag. Harvard educated and, at least by any Arizona standard, patrician, he seemed almost to pose in his madras pants and wing-tipped golf shoes. He wore a white shirt with a crocodile on it and over that a white cashmere cardigan. It all could have been a scene from the cover of Golf Digest, save for the old flat course whose Bermuda fairways were beginning to turn yellow with the coming of winter. After announcing his name, the president rapidly cataloged the doctor’s biggest golf accomplishments: the United States Amateur, the British Amateur; his years on the Walker Cup team, multiple state championships. I fiddled with my head cover and wondered how on earth he’d managed all that while conducting a medical practice.

Dr. North.

The president lowered his megaphone, and my opponent took two precise steps to where he had already teed his ball. He hit a driver, a low, controlled fade to the right side of the fairway. He couldn’t have walked out and placed it any better.

Could I beat him? Sure I could. I had as many clubs in my bag as he had in his. We played the same course under the same conditions and the same rules. Besides, when you’ve joined a law firm to work for one partner and that partner hasn’t shown up for work in the two months you’ve been there, and you’ve spent almost every afternoon with another partner entertaining insurance adjusters at various country clubs around the valley, your golf game tends to sharpen dramatically. Why shouldn’t I beat him? I commend those sorts of thoughts to anyone who might find himself in the situation I was in that morning. A more realistic question dominated my consciousness, however: It was to be a thirty-six-hole match; could I take him to twenty-seven?

On the tee. Mr. Douglas McKenzie. Phoenix City Junior Champion, 1959.

I hooked it. I did all the things they tell you to do to get rid of the butterflies. An extra practice swing, an extra deep breath, a long and focused look at my target. Then I swung, and I watched the ball go left and held my breath as it rolled close by a small barrel cactus that used to be on the left side of the first fairway at San Marcos. Winthrop North and his caddie and his enormous golf bag started quickly up the fairway. Berating myself at not having shelled out for a caddie, I turned and picked up my little bag that had BEN HOGAN printed on the side.

That’ll play! I swung around just in time to see a golf cart careen off the path in front of the pro shop and plow through a bed of flowers. I saw beer splash out of a can and all over the passenger, and I heard the passenger yell, Jesus H. Christ, Tom! The cart took a dive through a sprinkler, and as it emerged, I could make out the two occupants. Uncombed and grizzled, they both wore suit pants and white dress shirts that looked like they’d been slept in. A big swing to the right, and the cart skidded sideways to a stop directly in front of me. I looked down into the bulging eyes and the unshaven face of Tom Gallagher, the man for whom I’d been working, the one with whom I’d been entertaining insurance adjusters. I knew instantly that he was more than just a little drunk. That’ll play, he said for a second time. You didn’t hit it very well, but you’ve got a shot at the pin.

I hope I do, I said with my mouth hanging open.

Doug McKenzie, Gallagher announced, Dan Morgan. My gaze jumped to the other side of the cart. He looked worse than Gallagher. He hadn’t shaved for days. His eyes were veined with red. His shirt was splashed with beer. You say you want to work for him, Douglas. Well, here he is. Back from two months in the country.

Dan Morgan put the cigarette he was holding in his hand into his mouth and squinted from the smoke. He shifted a can of beer to the left and put out his right hand. He nodded one time, not saying a word. I managed to get my golf bag around on my shoulder so I could shake his hand. And there it was, on the third Sunday in October, on the first tee at the San Marcos Country Club, that I finally met him.

Throw your clubs on here, Gallagher ordered. We’ll caddie for you. I strapped my bag onto the back of the cart, and as I did, I saw a tub full of ice and beer. Then they were gone, bouncing up the fairway with their beer and my clubs, and I was walking far behind them shaking my head in disbelief.

That may have been the first time I met Dan Morgan, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him. I had indeed been forewarned, back on a day in August when I sat, for the first time, in the lobby of the offices of Butler and Menendez. Paul Butler had insisted that I let the firm fly me down to Phoenix so he could propose a substantially larger salary than I’d been offered in San Francisco. I sat there that August morning, waiting for Butler, sensing the onslaught of a summer day in Arizona, and feeling the fresh press go out of my brand-new Brooks Brothers suit. I watched Josephine, the octogenarian receptionist whose skin resembled the onionskin paper upon which she typed. I surveyed the room. I saw on the only wall not covered with bookshelves the single piece of art the firm owned in those days, the oil portrait of the great Apache, Geronimo.

And I saw the aged Indian sitting beneath the painting, huge and silent. He sat so still that for a moment I thought he might have been another piece of artwork, a sculpture made of space-age material looking so real that you could see each graying hair in the bun tied behind his head and the fibers of felt in the big, flat-brimmed Stetson hat and the weave of the denim in his Levi’s. Perhaps, I thought, he, too, was Geronimo, Geronimo when he was old. But then I heard a sound from his direction, a low, round, mellifluous sound. Then I heard it again. And then I sniffed the air. In some astonishment I turned to Josephine, and she leaned in my direction.

A client, she whispered across our end of the room. All we may do is pray for olfactory fatigue.

I turned the pages of a year-old issue of Arizona Highways, resenting the cold shoulder I was receiving from the man named Paul Butler who had implored me to come but had kept me waiting for more than an hour. The day had seemed to hold only one pleasant promise: I would at last meet the legendary Daniel Morgan. After all, he was the real reason I’d accepted the invitation to return to Phoenix for the interview, and I had decided to make the trip not because he was a folk hero among law students and professors but because the judge had spoken of him with such admiration. Daniel Morgan is a trial man, the judge had told me. The real thing. Paul Butler had promised that I would meet him. I turned the pages, looking at the pretty pictures of the blooming saguaros and ocotillos, and almost went to sleep. Suddenly I was wrenched from the doldrums by a harsh, flat Arizona drawl.

Jesus H. Christ. Who in hell has been fart— I looked up just in time to see Josephine put her finger to her lips, then slowly turn it in the direction of the old Indian. The man standing before me had thick brown hair shot with gray that stood up as though he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes were a reddish brown, the color of a fox, and when he narrowed them down, they looked like a fox’s eyes. He widened them, and they flashed all over the room, then at me in a way that made me flinch. He wore a striped shirt unbuttoned at the top, with a loosened tie. Chest hair showed above the tie. He carried a file folder and had a plaid jacket draped over his arm. Wiry and very thin at the waist, he stood stock-still, yet some hidden energy gave the impression that he was moving. He looked over at the old man, then leaned his head way back, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and very softly, in some great despair, he let escape, Oh, Lord. He lowered his eyes, and the fierce glare that had been in them seemed to dissolve. Shaking his head, he chuckled without mirth, and then he spoke again. Come on, Mr. Apadaka, the man said, we’ve got to go talk to that judge.

The old man rose and slowly followed toward the elevator. You gonna take care me, lawyer? the old man asked in language as abrupt and broken as his wind.

I’m going to do my best, sir, answered the younger man.

That sonabitch had a asskick’n com’n.

That’s what we have to make that judge understand.

The elevator doors closed upon the two. I turned to Josephine. Is that man a lawyer here? I asked.

Yes.

What’s his name?

Morgan.

That’s Daniel Morgan?

That’s Danny. Josephine gave me a searching look. You seem disappointed.

I guess I’d been expecting something else, I finally said.

I guess I’d been expecting Orson Welles or José Ferrer or Gregory Peck. Well, what I saw was Dan Morgan with his flat drawl and his uncombed hair and his wild eyes and some strange electricity that made me nervous. I never got to talk to him that day, but I did see him. And I saw the offices of Butler and Menendez, the old, tattered offices in the Luhrs Building. And I saw their rude manners in the form of one Paul Butler. And I saw a sample of their clientele in the form of the flatulent Native American. And still I had come home to Arizona. My God, what had I done? I guess the answer to that question was fairly simple. I had rejected an offer of employment from a great big blue-chip law firm in San Francisco in favor of what I saw slumped and splattered with beer on the right side of that golf cart. I had turned up my nose at sophisticated legal work in elegant offices filled with great art. All that and a promise of membership in one of the finest golf clubs in the world. Oh, God! What had I done? No. I knew what I’d done. The question was, Why had I done it?

Over the years I’ve thought about that question more than I care to remember, and still I don’t have an answer. Perhaps it was that I knew I was just an Arizona boy who’d be out of his depth in the big city. Or perhaps I knew, given what it had done to Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer, what the Olympic Country Club would do to me. Then again, it might have been something else. Maybe, just maybe, it was the kindness in the voice of the man with eyes like a fox when finally, just before the elevator doors closed, he softened completely and put his arm around the old Indian and said, Don’t worry, Mr. Apadaka, I think everything’s going to be all right. Well, whatever my unfathomable reasons, I was back in Arizona, and I was following Dan Morgan up the first fairway at the San Marcos Country Club. And I was having profound second thoughts about my decision.

When I reached my ball, Gallagher stood beside it. He motioned the president of the golf association to his side. Hey, Red, he slurred unsteadily, under the rules, so long as I’m caddying for McKenzie, I can give him advice. That’s right, isn’t it?

That’s right, Tom. A contestant may accept advice from his caddie, but only from his caddie.

All right, Gallagher said, keeping his bleary eyes on Red Atkinson. I waited, expecting advice on yardage or club choice. Gallagher rocked back and forth unsteadily for a time, then turned in my direction. Knock that son of a bitch close. Slowly he lowered himself onto the cart and backed it away to give me room to swing.

Strangely, I do believe that Gallagher’s advice helped. As I watched him stare at me and then heard him bark his order, I felt the butterflies leave. And when I hit the shot, I struck it pretty well, and when the ball found the green, it danced a couple of steps and stopped twenty feet below the hole. The trouble was, Winthrop North followed Gallagher’s mandate precisely. He knocked it four feet from the pin, then drilled it through the light dew that was still on the green into the center of the cup. One down. My fear of slaughter was already coming to fruition.

Our entourage moved on. Neither Gallagher nor Morgan bothered to tell me why they were there or where they’d been. Tom would just drive along, then pull the cart close to my ball, and once I had taken a club, he would move away a respectful distance so I could hit my shot. Then I would follow them along, hole after hole, as the cart bounced and they drank their beer.

I tried not to think about Gallagher and Morgan. I kept telling myself that I should be thinking about my golf game, not about my need to go and prostrate myself before the hiring committee at 111 Sutter Street in San Francisco. But Gallagher and Morgan were there, and it is very difficult not to think about what you’re trying not to think about, and at last, as I was standing next to their cart just off the fifth tee, I let my curiosity get away from me. How did you guys get in this condition? I asked, trying to make the question sound lighthearted.

What condition? Gallagher demanded. He smiled. Then he just left me wriggling there, feeling like I was pinned to the little saguaro cactus behind me. I believe that for all the years I’ve known him now, it was the only time Tom Gallagher ever did anything to me that was even remotely unkind. But unkind he was at that moment, when his fixed smile became almost treacherous and sustained his demand to know what I thought his condition was. What condition? Gallagher asked again. He smiled again, too. I squirmed, knowing I had to move to the tee and hit my shot and knowing also that I could not move until something was said.

It was there, as I had my back to the cactus and I was squirming, that Dan Morgan spoke the first words he ever said to me. It was my birthday yesterday, he said. Some friends threw a party for me. He said it in a level, matter-of-fact way, but when I turned and looked at him, I saw him nod. Then he winked at me and by doing so let me off the hook.

I said, Oh, and I hit my shot. I didn’t ask Morgan how old he was that day. Nor did I ask where that party had been thrown. I know those things now, though. That’s because there came a time when finally I had the courage again to ask Tom Gallagher how the two of them had gotten in that condition. That was just last night, after a firm dinner, after everyone but Tom and I had left the Arizona Club, and the two of us remained with the crumbs on the linen and the dregs in the bottom of the last bottle of wine.

Tom, I said to him, do you remember that day you and Dan showed up drunk at San Marcos, when I was playing in the State Amateur?

Of course I do.

How did you guys get that way?

This time he neither asked embarrassing questions nor smiled disquieting smiles. He just got a faraway look and told me what happened. That was the day he came home from Europe, Tom said. "It was when he’d been over there giving that series of lectures on habeas corpus to all those English barristers and French avocats. It was his fiftieth birthday. And, for God knows what reason, he wanted to spend it in Arizona. The memory touched something. Tom’s words began to catch in his throat, and he had to look out to South Mountain. I think he heard that Katherine was looking for him in France. I think he ran away from her. I picked him up at the airport, and we had a couple of drinks here. Tom was looking around the room we were in. Then Danny said he wondered if they still had a Saturday-night poker game at the Baseline Tavern. They did, and we went, and when we left, the sun was up."

You spent the whole night in the Baseline Tavern? Tom paid no attention to my small exclamation of incredulity; he seemed lost in his memory. He called that a birthday party?

We were out in the parking lot, Tom continued. I was going to drive him home. Up to the house in Paradise Valley. But as I was unlocking the car, he said, ‘Tom,’ and I looked across the top of the car, and he said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

I remember every shot I hit during that round and every shot Winthrop North hit as well. Lamentably, after seven holes, he had hit three fewer than I. And I wasn’t playing badly either. After the first hole, I’d hit every fairway, and I’d hit every green. It was just that North had made that birdie at one and then stroked a forty-foot putt at five that broke my heart when it rattled to the bottom of the cup. I three-putted seven. One over par. Three down.

But then at eight, the par three, there came a small turnaround. I hit a high six iron that covered the flag right from the time it left the tee. The ball landed six feet past the hole, and it backed up, and for a moment I thought it was going in. It stopped a foot from the cup.

Gallagher yelled, Great shot, Doug! And I heard Dan Morgan whisper, I’ll be damned. And the little gallery, which by then had begun to grow, applauded quietly and politely. North conceded my putt. Two down. As I was walking off the green, I heard Dan Morgan whisper to Gallagher, I never knew that this goddamned stupid game could be interesting.

As I took the club back on the ninth tee, I got my weight all the way to my right side, and I could feel my hands high, and I could tell that the shaft of my driver was parallel to the earth and pointed right up the middle of the fairway. Then I started down with my left hip, and I could feel my left side clear and the club head strike the ball flush and then my shoulders go all the way around. The ball exploded off the tee. Holy shit! Morgan exclaimed. And when we finished the front side, I was only one down.

Douglas! Gallagher yelled as I walked off the ninth green. Come over here. I walked to where he stood apart from the rest of the gallery. I have some real advice.

Yes? I said.

You just keep showing off for Danny.

What?

Make him react.

I’m not showing off. What does he mean, showing off? For that guy? In his condition?

Sure you are. And you just keep it up. You spend the rest of this day teaching Dan Morgan what this game is all about, and you may just have a chance against Winthrop North. You start making that goddamned ball talk. Now, get on it.

Winthrop North and I exchanged birdies for the next four holes, leaving me one down.

Then I heard something that made me realize that neither Tom Gallagher nor Dan Morgan was paying as close attention to the match as I’d thought. At the fourteenth tee, I went to the cart for my driver only to catch Gallagher speaking to Morgan with remarkable sobriety. Make no mistake about it, Danny. That asshole’s got you right in his crosshairs.

Oh, come on, Tom. He can’t pull that off.

The hell he can’t. I’m telling you the little son of a bitch is Machiavellian.

I need a case, Tom. I need a good case.

That’s right, Gallagher said. One that’s got some money in it.

Gallagher didn’t say who it was that was taking aim at Morgan, but then he didn’t have to. I knew instantly that he was talking about Paul Butler, managing partner at Butler and Menendez, the small firm with the tattered offices in a crumbling old building in Phoenix, Arizona, the law firm for which I’d left San Francisco. What should I say about Paul Butler? That he was short? That he was going prematurely bald? That he had a voice like a chain saw and breath that made me think he used the saw to cut something really rotten? I didn’t dislike him in those days. Feared him, perhaps, which I now realize was silly. He was only three years older than I, but he had risen to managing partner in the firm, and that caused me to be just a little afraid of him. But I didn’t bear him any ill will. It was Tom Gallagher who did that. Tom hated him, and he was in no way afraid of him.

Not long before Morgan returned from Europe, I endured a very uncomfortable coffee break during which I learned a number of things about Paul Butler. The lawyers’ lounge had filled that morning, with lawyers carrying chairs from their own offices so they could crowd in for coffee while they read their mail. Paul Butler showed up, the only time I ever saw him in the lounge. He hadn’t come for coffee or for mail, however. He’d come to make a simple announcement. You should all be aware that Elias will be out of the office until the first of November, Paul Butler advised us.

Tom Gallagher, who had not found a chair, slowly bent down and put his mail on the low-slung coffee table. He stood back up and cleared his throat. You know, Paul, Tom said, I’ve always wondered why you call your father by his first name. I mean, why is it that you don’t call him ‘Dad’ or ‘Pop’ or ‘Father’ or something like that?

I don’t know, Tom. I just always have.

I guess I just wondered if you hoped that we’d forget you came in here as the son of the boss.

Butler took off his glasses and rubbed his balding head.

Gallagher put his hands on his hips and bent forward at the waist in a way that always made him appear slightly dislocated. He stood on the balls of his feet, and, looking very much the graying, aging athlete that he was, he fixed Paul Butler with his bulging eyes. (In those days I suspected a thyroid condition.) Let me ask you this, Paul. Did you leave orders for Josephine to route all Elias’s calls to you while he’s away this time? Gallagher’s bulging eyes pulsated, almost like a fire-control radar.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Paul Butler said.

The hell you don’t, Gallagher shot back. Gallagher maintained his virulent glare for a time. Finally he turned to Walter Smith. Did you know he does that, Walter? Did you know he makes Josephine forward all his father’s calls to him when Elias is in Palm Springs?

Walter Smith pulled his pipe from his mouth. His red face became a little redder. Maybe we should save this for the management committee, Tom, said the senior litigator.

To hell with the management committee, Gallagher said. Then he looked at me. How about it, Doug? How would you like to be able to take all Elias Butler’s calls when he’s away on these extended trips?

I don’t get it, I said. I don’t know what you mean.

Just think a minute, Gallagher pressed. "Just put yourself in the place of some corporate counsel in New York or Chicago whose company needs a lawyer in Arizona. And you get referred to this firm. Or you look up Phoenix in Martindale & Hubble and you like the cut of our résumé. Who at this firm are you going to call to talk about sending us your company’s business?"

I was about to tell him that I got it, but before I could get the words out, something made me look up, and I saw that many of the lawyers had stood in preparation to leave but that they had not left. Instead they’d formed something close to a circle. Suddenly I had the feeling I was back at Mesa High School and a fight had broken out behind the boys’ gym, and I was about to be pushed from the circle that always formed at those times into the middle where the dust and the fists were flying and the kicking was about to start. I looked at Paul Butler. He put his glasses back on and used them to look at me. I felt my teeth grip together.

You get it, Doug, Gallagher assured me. The guy in New York calls the senior partner, the top man. He wants to know he’ll get attention. He does it damned near every time. So if we let you field Elias’s calls for about six months, you know what would happen? My teeth remained clenched. I’ll tell you, Doug. If you could handle yourself with a modicum of finesse, you’d have so much new business at the end of your six months, so much client control, that we’d have to make you a partner. Then, if you wanted to be a real prick, we’d have to set your draw above the rest of ours. And then, if you really wanted to be an asshole, we’d have to put you on the management committee.

With that he turned his fierce glare back upon Paul Butler, who immediately walked out of the room. Gallagher shouted after him, You can have my vote on your latest proposal right now if you want it, Paul!

The lounge cleared. Only Chet Johnson and I remained. Jesus, my fellow associate breathed through his droopy mustache. They usually save that kind of stuff for partners’ meetings.

That scared me, I said.

There are a lot of skeletons in these closets.

Do you know what Gallagher was talking about when he said he would vote on Butler’s proposal? I asked him.

Yeah, Chet allowed.

I waited. Well, how about telling me? I said.

Butler circulated a memorandum, Chet revealed tentatively, a memorandum to all the partners, proposing that they change the way they give origination of business credit.

What’s that? I asked him.

Chet explained what he’d learned about how the firm divided up the money, how partners were given credit for bringing business to the firm. It was such that if a lawyer had origination for a given client, it didn’t matter whether he did work for that client. He still got half of every fee paid. So somebody like Elias Butler who has developed such a large clientele over time can spend half the year in California, while other lawyers do all the work for his clients, and still be paid a handsome salary.

What would Butler’s proposal do?

Up until now whenever a partner has died or left the firm, his clients, the ones for whom he had origination credit, have just gone to the firm, and no individual partner gets credit for them. Butler wants it changed so that when someone leaves, the lawyer controlling the work for each of that lawyer’s clients will get origination credit for them.

So, I reasoned, when Elias Butler retires, Paul Butler will get credit for his father’s clients.

Those whose work he’s doing, Chet advised. But that won’t make much difference. It’s something else.

What is it?

Frank Menendez has a client named Ferris Eddington. He’s the biggest cattleman in Arizona. He’s a very important client.

Yes, I know that, I told him.

Frank is sick. They had him at Mayo Brothers, then at some fancy cancer clinic in Pasadena. Nobody talks about it, but I heard he came home the other day.

Yes?

Under Butler’s new proposal, if Frank dies, Paul Butler gets the Eddington Ranch.

What? Why?

The writing’s on the wall. The ranch will have to be sold.

Why?

The land is worth too much as a potential residential development. Someone will come along and turn it into another McCormick Ranch. You know, one of those developments with lakes and golf courses and quaint shopping centers and condos and patio homes. When that happens, if we can hold on to Ferris Eddington, this firm will be drafting condominium agreements and trust deeds and ground leases and restrictive covenants into the next century. And the lawyer who has origination credit for all that work will never have to do a thing he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his professional life. And that lawyer, under his proposal, would be Paul Butler, since he heads the real estate section.

I sat back in my chair, and certain things began to come a little clearer, things to do with the anxiety in Paul Butler’s voice the day he called and begged me to fly down from San Francisco for an interview. I had certainly wondered why he so readily outbid the Sutter Street salary. Ferris Eddington must have mentioned my name.

When Frank Menendez dies, Chet Johnson informed me, there’s going to be a war around here.

Is Dan Morgan going to be in the fight? I asked.

Dan Morgan is in deep trouble in the firm.

Why? I demanded. "That seems crazy to me. Someone with his reputation. I mean, he’s the architect of the Martinez decision. That case is read in every law school in the country. Morgan expanded the law of federal habeas corpus more than any lawyer in the history of American jurisprudence."

That’s true, said Chet. Ironic that it’s probably one of Dan’s lesser accomplishments.

Then how can he be in trouble around here?

First, Butler is out to get him. Second, Morgan’s vulnerable.

Why?

Why is he vulnerable? He has no permanent clientele. No origination-of-business credit.

I guess that stands to reason.

You bet it does, Chet said. When State Farm or Allstate sends business to Tom Gallagher, he can look forward to more business from them in the future, growing business for lots of us, not just for himself. It’s the same when the hospital retains Walter Smith or when Westinghouse comes to Elias Butler. And it’s especially true when Ferris Eddington stays with Frank Menendez. It isn’t the same with Morgan’s clients. A good murder case or a juicy contested divorce is usually a onetime piece of legal business for a client. The whole idea is that the client never returns. Because of that, Morgan has no meaningful origination-of-business points.

Why does Paul Butler have it in for him?

Trust me, Doug. They ain’t the same kind of men. Butler wants money, lots of it. Hell, Morgan gives away more legal work every year than most lawyers in this town live on. Chet pointed to one of the many photographs that hung on the walls of the lounge. And then there’s that, he said. Maybe it’s just a matter of personal style. The picture showed Dan Morgan at a formal firm dinner party thrown years before. He wore a tuxedo and slouched at a table after dinner with a brandy snifter in his hand. He gazed approvingly at a pretty young woman with a beehive hairdo who sat next to him. The woman extended a fist toward the camera. From her fist she extended upward her middle finger.

That’s Morgan’s second wife.

I know, I said. I think her name is Frankie.

That’s right, said Chet. I met her once. I can tell you she’s still a very foxy lady. But I’ll tell you this, too. If Frankie walked into a bar and started talking, sailors would run out. Paul Butler tried to take that picture down when he first came here, and his father told him if he tried it again, he was out of the firm. Elias really liked her.

What do you think of Morgan?

I love him. I’d carry his briefcase to the end of the world. He’ll treat you like a mushroom occasionally, but he’ll take the time to teach you things, and he’s the best guy I’ve ever worked for. Be advised, though, that there are people around here who won’t work for him.

What do you mean, ‘he’ll treat you like a mushroom’?

Sometimes he keeps you in the dark and feeds you shit.

Who won’t work for him?

Ann Hastings, for one.

Why?

She doesn’t like being treated like a mushroom. Lee Goodman for another. They held up his partnership for a year because Morgan couldn’t collect for a bunch of his work. Hell, Morgan taught Lee everything he knows. He even let him have his manual on cross-examination. Now Goodman won’t even speak to him.

What’s Morgan’s manual on cross-examination?

He wrote a book. It catalogs everything Arizona law allows you to do on cross. West Publishing Company wants to publish it, but Morgan won’t let anybody see it.

Why won’t he publish it?

Who knows? But he let Lee have it for a while. Now Lee won’t give him the time of day, and that’s after Morgan made him into one of the best young trial lawyers in the state. All because Dan let a little money get away. Shit, as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather learn what Morgan can teach me than make partner in this place any day.

I sat sipping from the bottom of my coffee cup, letting the realities of law-firm economics soak in. I guess I knew that Dan Morgan needed a good case even before he did.

Back at the golf course, while we waited for a ruling on whether Winthrop North could move his ball from a cart path, I came once again within surreptitious earshot of the cart. This time it was Morgan who spoke first, and he spoke very tentatively. How’s Frank? he said.

Gallagher didn’t look at him. He reached forward and picked up a golf ball from the cart. He turned the ball in his hand. He’s dying, Danny.

No.

Yes. You’d better get used to it. This time it’s for real. They sent him home to die.

North and I both parred fourteen and fifteen, and I remained one down. At sixteen he left himself six feet for birdie. He lined the putt up from all sides while I braced myself to lose another hole. Then, as the doctor stood over the ball about to draw the putter back, I heard a pop and then a hiss. I turned and saw Dan Morgan, out of the cart for the first time, leaning against a palm tree. He had just opened another can of beer. North stepped away from his ball. He glared at Morgan. Morgan stared straight back at him without a hint of embarrassment. Then Morgan did something I hadn’t seen done since I got out of the United States Navy. He bent down, raised his pant leg, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his sock. He shook one up, clenched it between his teeth, and flipped open a Zippo lighter. He lit the cigarette and let it dangle from his lips. Smoke rose, and his eyes flashed as he studied my opponent. At last North moved back over the ball. He left the putt two inches short. He stood in the same spot looking down at his putter. That’s good, I said, and his caddie picked up the ball.

After a few more seconds, North began to walk off the green. As he moved by, he spoke the only words he had for me that day. Whoever he is, Winthrop North said, why don’t you ask him to be quiet?

A few minutes later, I was standing in the middle of the seventeenth fairway. I’d hit a good drive about ten yards past North’s, long enough that I knew I could reach the green on that par-five hole in two. North unfortunately had already hit his second shot to the

Reviews for Missing Witness

[mikedraper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Doug McKenzie joins his law firm just to get a chance to work with one of the greats in questioning witnesses at a trial. Dan Morgan knows everyone in the legal area in Pheonix.One of the firm's clients, Ferris Eddington hires Dan when his daughter-in-law is arrested for killing his only son, Travis.Dan accepts and Doug assists. This is a benefit for Dan since, Doug's father and Eddington were friends and Doug almost grew up at the ranch.Rita and her 12 year old daughter, Miranda went into a ranch house, shots were fired and a ranch hand saw them leave with Rita holding the gun.Rita and Miranda are brought to jail and Maranda becomes catonic.The trial begins. The prosecutor is a sterertypical bungler, Maximilan Hauser who is cold hearted and out to make a name for himself.The preperation for the trial and the trial itself were dramatically done. With the murder taking place on a ranch and the trial in the west, it is reminiscent of "Lonesome Dove" where Blue Duck meets his end at the courtroom.The writing style is precise and in tune with the characters who are well drawn and likable. It is a story that will win your heart and then choke you. The author provides some excellent and totally unexpected plot twists and the courtroom drama is well done.

[kingsportlibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a great first book for Gordon Campbell. It is full of twists and turns, but it stays totally believable. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a legal mystery.

[bkladyatl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

While this book started off slow, it was a very clever legal drama about a young lawyer who walks off an amatuer golf championship to try a case with a lawyer he admires. The case seems open and shut. A woman and her daughter visit her husband, shots are fired and a witness watches mother and daughter emerge. There are some twists and although it was a long book it was worth the time

[unreachableshelf · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A man's wife and daughter walk into his house. Shots are fired. They leave. The man is seen to be dead. The daughter lapses into a catatonic state before she can give her version of events. The same defense attorney is hired to defend them both, the daughter's trial following the mother's acquital.I read all 428 pages of this book in one day. That was largely because I was waiting while a family member was having surgery, but I can also say that it's the only uncorrected proof which I got at this year's American Library Association annual conference which I am keeping.This is an uncorrected proof. The publication date for this book is October of 2007.