ODD SOCKS 9

by Rob Lopresti

I just spent some time on Vashon Island, a lovely little zone nestled in the midst of Puget Sound, not all that far from Seattle. That reminded me to tell you about this tidbit. The obituary you see above appeared in the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber. In case you don’t recognize that illustration, it is the famous sketch of D.B. Cooper, the (incorrect) name given to the original skyjacker-for-profit. “Dan Cooper” collected $400,000 and a parachute and bailed out over the forests of Washington state on Thanksgiving eve in 1971.

There is no reason to believe Michael Layhon really was Cooper. There is, however, ample evidence that his brother Alex has an odd sense of humor. The local motto is “Keep Vashon Weird,” and Alex believed his brother would approve.

Amazing stories

We all know that private eye novels are essentially fantasy literature. Real life private detectives don’t get to investigate murder or other serious crimes and their cases are mostly humdrum collections of facts for accident cases and the like. Nothing much to see here, folks.

Except.

My daughter recently sent me a link to an amazing article from Vanity Fair and, as she said, it reads like a piece of terrific fiction, but it’s all true. It takes part in Leigh’s part of the world, but he has given me his blessing to tell you about it.

One day in 2005 a twenty-one year old blond woman was found raped and beaten nearly to death in the weeds outside of Miami, eight miles from her hotel. The cops could not figure out who did it, how she got out of the hotel without being seen on security cameras, or even whether she was somehow a party to a crime (her first words in the hospital were to ask for a lawyer). (And if you want to know why they were suspicious, compare her case to this one, which Leigh pointed out to me.

Enter Ken Brennan, a former cop and DEA agent, now P.I. He was hired not by the victim (as you might expect from detective fiction) but by the hotel, which was being sued by the victim. The management hoped he would find evidence she was a prostitute who had been roughed up by a customer, which would get them off the hook.

The truth turned out to be quite different – and so astonishing that Brennan had a hard time convincing his employers it was true. What he learned, and the incredible lengths he went to to catch the serial rapist involved, are too long to cover here. Read the article. It will be the best mystery story you read today.

A word from the north

Ever hear of William Deverell? I hadn’t until recently, although he apparently lives approximately fifty miles from me. Canadian authors and U.S. authors don’t seem to mix as much as you might expect. My local library has none of his books, even though he won the Hammett Award.

I recently heard good things about his 2009 title Snow Job and I can report that I enjoyed it a lot. It is part of a series about an attorney Arthur Beauchamp (pronounce it Beechum, please). I can’t tell from Deverell’s webpage how many of his books are about Arthur. So I don’t know exactly how much of the story I have missed.

Beauchamp is a successful lawyer with an embarrassingly flamboyant alcoholic past. At this point, Beauchamp is old enough to retire, except that he had been “unable to win a divorce from the law, that soul-destroying bitch.” He has a more pleasant wife as well, the younger Margaret Blake, who is the only member of parliament from the Green Party, which forces Arthur into politics, which he loathes more than the law.

And speaking of Parliament, as this book opens Canada’s conservative government has decided for political/economic reasons, to embrace a nasty East European dictatorship. When an act of terrorism on Canadian soil follows that country’s Ultimate Leader For Life declares war on Canada and what follows is a hilarious example of what the military call “unsymmetrical warfare.” Arthur winds up the lawyer of record for the presumed assassin, who may or may not have been a subject of extraordinary rendition out of the country.

What follows includes a sudden election, three Canadian tourists on the run in the enemy territory, and a British Columbian entrepreneur who declares “Unpossible ain’t in my dictionary.” A very funny and enjoyable book.

Slip decision

Here is a handy tip for all you future attorneys out there. When you seek to impeach the opposition’s expert witness, be careful what source you choose for your evidence. According to Hugh Pickens, “The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports on a recent case where the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) lost an appeal after seeking to impeach the testimony of a defendant’s expert witness by citing an article from Wikipedia.”