The Neon Lawyer

by Victor Methos

  He got a vanilla steamer and climbed the steps to the second floor, taking a seat at a table by the window looking down onto Main Street. He watched a few transients loitering around Trax, the inner city train. Buses didn’t run often down here anymore. Brigham took out his phone and dialed home.

  “Brigham!” His mother was probably beaming; he could tell just by the sound of her voice. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “How are you, Ma?”

  “I’m great. When you texted me and said you got sworn in, I told Claudia that you got sworn in to the Bar and you’re a lawyer now. She said to tell you she’s really proud of you.”

  “Tell her thanks.”

  “So how’s everything going?”

  “Fine. I guess. I got a job.”

  She gasped. “Already!”

  “It’s not a big deal, Ma. It’s kind of an eat-what-you-kill place.”

  “But still, they must have seen somethin’ in you to hire you so quick.” She paused. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. I just couldn’t swing the money.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Do you need anything? I don’t have much but I could send a few bucks.”

  “Don’t be silly, son. We’re fine.” She exhaled loudly. “I’m so proud of you, Brigham.”

  “Thanks, Ma. I just wanted to check in. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Molly came tramping up the stairs just as he was putting his phone down on the table. She sat across from him and folded her arms.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “I followed you. You’re not ready for a murder case.”

  “I’ve already agreed with you.”

  “Then why are you doing it?”

  He leaned forward on his elbow, staring into the foamy top of the steamer. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  He took a thin red straw from a dispenser on the table and swirled it in the drink. “When I was ten years old, my parents got into a huge fight. Don’t even remember what it was about. They don’t either. But my mom stormed outta the house, got on her bike, and took off. There was this park by our house and even though it was like ten at night, she went through there to clear her head . . . she remembers a white light, and a pain in the back of her head. When she woke up, she was naked and bleeding. She had, like, cigarette burns over her body. Two homeless guys had beaten and raped her.”

  He looked up and her eyes were glued to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know how Amanda Pierce felt. That hopelessness, the pain that no one else can feel. I was right there with her.”

  She sighed and rested her hands on the table. “You could let someone else handle it.”

  “What’ll happen to the case if I turn it down?”

  “Tommy will assign it to someone else.”

  “You?”

  “No.”

  “Is there anyone in that office who would care about it as much as I do?”

  She was silent a moment. “You’re going to need help.”

  “I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  Twelve

  Tommy’s investigator leased a space in downtown Salt Lake City next to an adult novelty shop. Brigham sat in the passenger seat of Molly’s Chrysler 300, impressed by how clean she kept it.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “Why am I with Tommy?” she guessed.

  “You seem like the big corporate lawyer type.”

  “And spend a hundred hours a week with bosses that just see me as a pair of tits? I’ll pass. Tommy respects me. He sends me enough work where I’m busy but this isn’t my life.”

  “What is your life then?”

  She glanced to him. “Triathlons.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. I’ve done twelve. My thirteenth is in a month in Saint George. You ever competed?”

  “No. I boxed for a little bit as a kid. Just some stuff my daddy taught me, and I competed in that. I run every day, though. How’d you get into triathlons?”

  “I wanted something challenging that I had to work on every day. You can’t fake your way through a triathlon. You have to put in the preparation or you’ll die out there. The building’s right here.”

  The building was red brick, right next to a neon palace. The adult store had dildos, mannequins dressed in lingerie, and boxes of pornography stacked behind thick glass. With the flashing lights, it looked like a circus.

  “The investigator’s here?”

  “The best investigators are the ones willing to get their hands dirty. And Kris is certainly willing to get his hands dirty.”

  They walked into the office of A Plus Investigators. The interiors of the office walls were brick, just like the outside. Leather furniture was crowded into the waiting room, with several magazines on the coffee table. Molly went up to the reception desk and asked for Kris, and moments later a man strolled out from the back. He wore a suit that seemed to shine underneath the lights, and gold lit his black skin wherever possible—gold bracelets, rings, necklace, and even golden-toed cowboy boots.

  “Molly, what’s up, baby? How you doin’?”

  “I’m good. This is Brigham, Tommy’s newest.”

  “Brigham, my man, how you doin’?”

  “Good, thanks.” They shook hands and Brigham smelled the overpowering scent of expensive cologne applied liberally.

  “Somethin’ to drink? Coffee, soda? Somethin’ harder?”

  “We’re good,” Molly said. “We just wanted to talk to you about a case you did the prep work on. Amanda Pierce.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah. Well, come on back.”

  They followed him down a hallway. On the walls hung posters of outlaws from the twenties and thirties, like Al Capone and John Dillinger. His office had the same décor with the addition of Kris posing with several celebrities in photos hanging behind his desk.

  “So what you wanna know?” he said, taking a seat in his leather chair.

  Brigham sat down and put his hands on the armrests. They were greasy. He hoped whoever had sat there before just had a lot of lotion on. “I read your report. I was just wondering if there was anything else we need to look into.”

  “Anything else like what?”

  “She shot someone in broad daylight. I think the only defense we’re going to have is a type of temporary insanity.”

  He nodded. “That’s something. Better than getting up in front of a jury with your dick in your hands, I guess.”

  “Only about one percent of insanity defenses work, Brigham,” Molly said. “I think we need to try using sympathy to get the prosecution to give us second-degree manslaughter.”

  “She could still serve fifteen years for that.”

  “It’s better than the death penalty.”

  Kris stared at Brigham a moment. Brigham presumed he was sizing him up for something, but couldn’t guess what. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “And how many felonies you handled?”

  “Um, none.”

  He shook his head. “Even the public defenders work a few years before gettin’ a homicide, man.”

  “I can handle it.”

  He shrugged. “Up to you. Just make sure Molly or Tommy is backin’ you every step. So what you wanna know about her mental health?”

  “I’d like to find any friends, neighbors, churchgoers, anyone that knows her, who can testify to her mental state after her daughter was killed.”

  Kris made a note on a legal pad. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it for now. I’m going to go visit her again so I’ll let you know if there’s anything else.”

  “All right, man.
I’ll keep you posted. You got balls, I’ll give you that.”

  “Thanks.”

  They rose and walked out. Once in the car, Molly put the keys in the ignition before she paused, turning and looking at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “I think we need to go for manslaughter.”

  “I’ll talk to her about it.”

  “I’m serious, Brigham.”

  “So am I. I’ll bring it up and if that’s what she wants us to do, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Molly dropped him off at the jail and left to attend a mediation on a divorce case. Brigham stood outside the jail and watched as several groups of people walked out: families visiting loved ones, a few of them crying. One little boy held a picture drawn in crayon that said, “I love you dad.”

  He walked inside and the same clerk was working. The line was so long that it took her a good twenty minutes to get to him and call down to the cells to get Amanda Pierce ready for a visit.

  Once through the metal detectors, Brigham walked more confidently down the hallway, ignoring the drawings on the wall. The first visit had been like landing on an alien planet. But the anxiety had diminished and he hoped with a few more visits he wouldn’t feel so out of place.

  Amanda was already sitting at a counter when he got there. Her hair was pulled back in a clip. When she saw him, a weak smile cracked her dry lips.

  “How are you holding up?” Brigham asked. He had read on one attorney’s blog he should never ask an inmate how they were doing because the answer was always “shitty.”

  “Okay. Thank you for seeing me again.”

  “It’s no problem. I wanted to go through some things with you.” She nodded. “First, I’ve reviewed everything in the case several times, Amanda. A colleague of mine who is helping with this case has reviewed it, too. She thinks we should try and negotiate a deal to get the charges reduced to second-degree manslaughter.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Manslaughter is where you kill somebody but you didn’t mean to.”

  “But I did mean to.”

  He paused, her bluntness taking him aback. “I know. But it’s what’s called a legal fiction. We’re all just going to assume you didn’t and you’ll enter a guilty plea to the manslaughter.”

  “So how long would I be in jail?”

  “You wouldn’t be in jail. Jail is only for people awaiting trial or serving misdemeanor sentences less than a year. You’d be transferred to the Utah State Prison. For a second-degree felony, you’d serve one to fifteen years. Manslaughter can also be a first-degree felony and that’d be six to life. But we’re shooting for a second. It’d be up to the parole board how much of that you actually served.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “The other option is we can fight it. We can go to trial and do everything we can to win.”

  “But if we lose, I could die?”

  He nodded. “Yes. The state has filed a notice saying they’re looking for the death penalty.”

  She sighed, running her hand over her forehead and into her hair. “I don’t care either way. I don’t . . . I don’t want to think about this anymore. So, I’ll take the manslaughter.”

  “Are you sure? Once you enter a plea to something like that you won’t be able to change your mind.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He nodded. He should have been excited. He had just earned his share of the ten thousand that the state was paying for her public defender and he didn’t even have to go to trial. But his gut was tight and anxiety ate at him—he didn’t want her to take this deal. Who knew how long the parole board would keep her? And once she was out, she would be a convicted felon.

  “I’ll set up a meeting with the prosecutor,” he said. “Do you need anything?”

  She smiled. “You’re sweet. No, but thanks.”

  Brigham rose. He watched as a guard took her arm and helped her out of the room. He could see into the cell block. Inmates were stacked on top of each other like chickens in a coop. A few of them were sleeping, some watching television. One woman looked at him and pulled up her shirt, exposing her breasts, before the metal door slid shut.

  Thirteen

  Another late night of reading and research, and Brigham’s nerves were on edge from all the coffee he was drinking. He decided he needed a break. He went out to a gas station nearby and got bottled water and a sandwich.

  Back at the office, he ate in the library as he read. Case law in Utah was notoriously sparse. Not much happened here that was worth the review of the Supreme Court, particularly in criminal cases.

  A few cases discussed mental health defenses against homicide. Molly had been right—the standard was that the defendant didn’t understand the nature of what they were doing because of some sort of permanent or temporary mental dysfunction. The defense would have to show that the defendant didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, then they’d need to have a psychiatrist testify that the defendant didn’t understand this as a direct result of their mental illness or dysfunction. It seemed like an impossible standard to meet.

  “Haven’t seen anyone read like that since law school.”

  Tommy came and sat across from him. He lit a cigar and put a foot up on the table. Brigham guessed Tommy’s Italian leather shoes cost more than his own apartment’s rent for a year.

  “We’re gonna try for manslaughter,” Brigham said.

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “I don’t know if she should get that.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t seem fair. The guy killed her daughter. Who wouldn’t do what she did?”

  “A lotta people.” He puffed out some smoke and then held the cigar low between two fingers. “What do you think justice is, Brigham?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nobody does. It’s all a guess. It may not even exist. But if it does, getting what you deserve is about as close to it as I can estimate. So you can’t think about justice. You’ll go crazy with how much injustice there is. You just gotta do your job and do whatever the client wants. Does she want to take manslaughter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, your job isn’t to contradict her wishes.” He raised the cigar and took a few puffs. “Then again, some of our clients are stupider than a dim-witted cow. You gotta do what’s good for ’em ’cause they won’t.”

  Tommy rose and placed his hand on Brigham’s shoulder. “You’ll get it done. Either way.”

  Brigham researched every possible case similar to his that Utah had ever had, which wasn’t as many as he had hoped. The sun was coming up by the time he was through. Every muscle ached and his vision was blurry. He had stopped drinking coffee. For the first time, he realized his hands were trembling and he was getting a headache.

  When he went home, his door was open a crack. He was always careful about locking it and would sometimes check it three or four times. Someone had been in there.

  He opened the door wide and looked inside. His futon cushion had been thrown on the floor. His small television was off-kilter, and several drawers in the kitchen were open. Twisting the doorknob, he saw that the lock had been bashed in.

  Moving quickly, he went through the apartment. The only thing he noticed missing was a pair of sneakers he’d had in the closet. Out of everything in his apartment, the only thing of worth they could find was a pair of old sneakers. He couldn’t tell whether that made him happy or depressed.

  Forgoing calling the police, he woke the landlord instead and asked for a new lock before collapsing into bed.

  When he woke, it was after midday. His head was pounding in a full-out migraine and pain shot through the left side of his back. He stood up and tried to stretch before he noticed he had a message on his phone. It was from Molly, letting him know that she had ca
lled the prosecutor and they had an appointment set for three o’clock this afternoon to see if they could resolve the case. The clock on his phone said it was 2:24.

  Brigham jumped into the shower and out again a few minutes later, threw on his suit, and ran a brush through his hair. He was out the door and on his bike before he remembered he couldn’t lock his door. He ran back inside. In the air vent in the bathroom was a wad of cash, his emergency stash to buy food or pay rent if he ever ran out of money. He stuffed it into his sock and headed back out toward the district attorney’s office downtown.

  Fourteen

  The DA’s office was in a tall glass-and-chrome building across the street from a Thai food restaurant and a gym. Kitty-corner from it was another office building filled with law firms and stock brokerages. Brigham rushed into the building. He’d gotten there with three minutes to spare. Molly was sitting in a lounge chair doing something on her phone. She saw him and rose.

  “Cutting it close.”

  “Sorry. My apartment was burglarized.”

  “Seriously?”

  “They only took some old sneakers. Not a big deal.”

  They strolled to the elevators and pressed the button. “You seem pretty calm.”

  “What’s done is done. Besides, if they’re willing to break into an apartment to steal some shoes, they needed them more than I did.”

  Molly pressed the button to the sixth floor and Brigham checked his hair in the mirror on the ceiling of the elevator. His top button was loose so he buttoned it and redid his tie.

  The DA’s office took up three floors. Brigham hung back as Molly talked to the receptionist, who hurried off, then returned and told them that they were free to go back. They passed through metal detectors, and a security guard double-checked Brigham with a wand for a minute before letting him through.

  Assistant District Attorney Vince Dale had the large corner office. Molly entered first.

  “Vince, how are you?”

  “Good, babe. How are you?”

  “Not bad.”

  She sat down and Brigham followed suit. Vince’s desk was huge, too large to reach across and shake hands. He was chewing gum loudly and popped it. His suit was immaculate and his shirt and bow tie combination could have come from the pages of GQ. His hair was slicked back and the watch on his wrist glimmered in the sunlight coming through the windows.