Free Silent Witness by Michael Norman Page A

Salt Lake P.D. that Arnold Ginsberg’s murder might be connected to the case had created a feeding frenzy. It hadn’t helped that Rodney Plow was talking to the press and making similar assertions. The judge had wisely decided to ban cameras, but reporters and sketch artists still occupied the entire first two rows of the courtroom.
    Burnham glanced up, spotted me, and walked over. “You seem to be enjoying tormenting those media people. I thought you were going to make that last guy drop trou before you let him pass,” I said.
    He laughed. “I almost did. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to hassle these self-important SOBs.”
    â€œHow was the trip in?” I asked.
    â€œIn a word, uneventful. Those special ops guys are about as anal a group as I’ve ever seen. They wouldn’t even tell Everest and me the route until we showed up at their little briefing. And that was ten minutes before we left the prison.”
    â€œAnd you won’t be told the route they plan to take back to the prison until right before you leave. How many personnel did they assign?”
    â€œTry Bradshaw in the backseat of a Suburban surrounded by four special ops guys. I led the procession and Marcy brought up the rear.”
    At a preliminary hearing, the prosecutor’s job was to put on just enough evidence to convince the judge that probable cause existed to hold the defendant for trial. The trick was not to put on more of the case than was necessary to get a favorable ruling from the judge. In this instance I wasn’t sure who the DA intended to call as witnesses. But I knew the names of two witnesses who wouldn’t be testifying: Arnold Ginsberg because he was dead, and Robin Joiner because she was hiding, kidnapped, or possibly dead herself.
    As much as I wanted to stay and watch the preliminary hearing, I was focused on a more important priority—becoming better acquainted with lawyer Gordon Dixon.

Chapter Twelve
    Have you ever tried looking up the name of a lawyer in the yellow pages of the phone book? In a small community, that’s probably exactly what you should do. But in a big city, like Salt Lake City, it’s an exercise in futility. Gordon Dixon wasn’t in the yellow pages. I know because I spent the better part of half-an-hour standing at a public counter in the district court clerk’s office scouring the pages trying to find him, growing more and more frustrated by the minute. I used my cell phone and called the Salt Lake County Lawyer Referral service. Nothing there either.
    In the end I was left with two less than magnanimous thoughts. The first was that in any large city the yellow pages were a living testimonial to the excessive number of graduates being produced by American law schools. The second was that there was more than one way to locate a missing lawyer.
    I left the court house and drove a few short blocks to the Utah Secretary of State’s Office. In the business licensing division I discovered an LLC registered to Gordon Dixon & Associates, 5140 South Main Street, Murray, Utah. The only other member of the LLC was an individual identified as Joan Dixon. Maybe Joan Dixon was Mrs. Gordon Dixon. Maybe Joan Dixon was the same woman I saw seated at the defense table next to the defendant and Gordon Dixon. I drove to the Murray office for a look-see.
    Dixon’s office was located in an older one-story brick building that, at one time, must have been a bank. One side of the building had a covered canopy with a drive-through window. The bank had obviously moved on to fancier digs. Dixon shared the building with a title insurance company. The outside sign simply read Law Office.
    When I entered the lobby it became clear that the title company occupied most of the building. Dixon’s law practice leased space only slightly larger than a broom closet. The lights were off and the curtains drawn. I peeked in through the glass door. The space consisted of