The Furthest City Light

by Jeanne Winer

  Of course I knew I had my work cut out for me. Emily had been hibernating for almost ten years—if not longer—and had no real desire to ever wake up. She’d seen what was out there and figured she wasn’t missing a thing; the prince had already kissed her and it had been a disaster. The vision I was offering her, of hacking through the forest on her own in a world without princes, wasn’t an appealing one. But neither was snoozing on a lumpy cot in a ten-by-twelve foot prison cell for the rest of her life.

  I left the courtroom and caught up to Jeff in the hallway.

  “Hi Rachel,” he said. “You ready to talk?”

  “Nice suit,” I said, fingering the buttery soft fabric on his sleeve.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking embarrassed.

  “Hey, you can’t help it if you were born independently wealthy. It’s to your credit that you work when you don’t have to.”

  Now he was actually blushing. Unfortunately for the defense bar, Jeff Taylor was not only rich and handsome he was genuinely nice. A young, self-effacing Cary Grant who’d gone into law instead of acting. Juries invariably loved him. “So what do you want, Rachel?”

  “Felony menacing with probation,” I said with a straight face. Sometimes the difference between lawyering and acting is too subtle for ordinary laymen to distinguish.

  “On the Emily Watkins case? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a dead body.”

  “Oh yeah, that.”

  “Yeah, that,” he said.

  “Look, how about reckless manslaughter with community corrections? That’s as high as I can go.” I stroked the sleeve of his jacket. For my clients, I was shameless.

  “You’re dreaming, Rachel. I’m offering second-degree murder, but we can talk about the number. I’m thinking somewhere in the thirties, maybe even the low thirties.”

  “I don’t want her to go to prison,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I know you think she acted in self-defense, but the evidence doesn’t support it. She seems like a nice lady, everyone at the jail likes her. If you can come up with anything, you know I’ll listen. That’s the best I can do.” He patted the shoulder of my fifty-dollar blazer.

  “I wish you were an asshole,” I said.

  He looked surprised. “Why?”

  “So I could hate you.”

  He looked incredulous. “Why would you want to do that?”

  And there you had it, I thought as I hurried to my next court appearance in division four, the reason it was so difficult to practice law in the 20th Judicial District: everyone was so goddamned nice. The judge, the prosecutor, the guards, the defense attorney, even the client. The tragedy of Emily’s life would get lost in all that pleasant backslapping congeniality. It would slip, unnoticed, like a suicide off the side of a ship during a wild and happy party. A quick slight splash, and she’d be gone.

  “Ah, Ms. Stein,” Judge Thomas would say at Emily’s final hearing. “How nice to see you again.”

  “Nice to see you too, Judge.”

  “And Mr. Taylor, what a nice suit jacket. Is it cashmere?”

  “I’m not sure, Judge, but thank you. Your Honor, Ms. Stein’s client has agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder and we’ll be stipulating to a sentence of only thirty years in the state penitentiary.”

  “Well, that sounds like a nice disposition. I will accept it and sentence the defendant to the Department of Corrections for a mere thirty years.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” Emily would say. “You’ve all been very nice to me.”

  “Well, you’ve been a very nice defendant. And now, is there anything else?”

  “Nothing from the defendant, Your Honor. Thank you.”

  “Nothing from the people either. Thank you.”

  “Well, thank you all for appearing. The best of luck to you, Ms. Watkins.”

  “Thank you, Judge.”

  ***

  I was still thinking about Emily’s case as I drove downtown to meet Donald at Tom’s Tavern for a working lunch. I was hoping he’d uncovered a few more witnesses to prove Emily’s husband had been abusing her for years. It was the kind of testimony that was crucial in a self-defense case.

  I found my investigator sitting at the bar, talking to a man I’d represented a few years ago for his eighth DUI. The place stank of hamburger grease and cigarette smoke. It was Donald’s favorite restaurant and in another fruitless effort to be nice, I’d stupidly agreed to meet him there.

  “Come on,” I said to Donald, “let’s get a booth.”

  As we groped our way through the smoke to an empty booth, Donald said, “The guy I was talking to said you used to be his lawyer. Said you couldn’t do much for him, and that he had to spend a year in the Boulder County Jail. Seemed like a nice guy.”

  I glanced back at the bar. “One of these days he’s going to get drunk and smash into a car full of unsuspecting people and kill them. But other than that, I guess he’s all right.” I picked up a sticky menu and began studying it. “Let’s order quickly and get to work.”

  “Well, he seemed like a nice guy,” Donald said, pulling out a cigarette.

  “Well, he’s not. And please don’t smoke.”

  “Okay fine, he’s not,” Donald said, putting his cigarette away. He muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t hear.

  Rachel, I warned myself, the man sitting across from you is your only ally in the case. Don’t alienate him. It was a sobering thought. “I’m sorry, Donald. I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning. I think I just need to eat as soon as possible.”

  Donald looked around until he spotted our waitress. “She’s coming,” he assured me, as if I were a two-year-old who’d been separated from my mother and was on the verge of losing it.

  The waitress arrived and Donald went first, ordering a hamburger and three glasses of Coke.

  “Three?” I asked, attempting at the very last moment to sound curious instead of judgmental. Your only ally, I reminded myself.

  “I’m trying to cut down on coffee.”

  “Oh,” I nodded. “Good idea.”

  “What’ll it be, sweetie?” the waitress asked me. She was a scrawny blonde with a tired face and improbably large breasts.

  “Could you possibly make me a large garden salad with a few pieces of grilled chicken in it? I didn’t see anything like it on the menu.”

  “That’s because this is a hamburger joint,” she said. “Nobody orders salad here.”

  “I see. Well, okay, I’ll have a hamburger without the bun and could I have something on the side besides french fries?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “I’ll eat them,” Donald offered. Chivalry, I was glad to discover, wasn’t dead.

  While we waited for our food, Donald summarized his latest interviews. Of all the neighbors he’d contacted, only one had observed any act of violence between Emily and her husband. A few years ago, she’d seen Emily and Hal arguing in a parked car in front of their house. Hal got out of the car first and went around to Emily’s side as if to open the door, but Emily was already climbing out. Hal said something and then slammed the door on her foot. At that point, the neighbor said she closed her curtains and stopped watching.

  “It might have been an accident,” she told Donald. When he asked how it could have been anything but intentional, she said she didn’t know.

  “Great,” I said. “Another lackluster witness for the defense. What else do we have?”

  Donald placed his pack of cigarettes on the table. “How about I smoke just one and blow it in the other direction?”

  I hesitated. “How about half of one and you blow it in the other direction?”

  “Deal,” he said, lighting up. Wreathed in smoke, his face looked gray and unhealthy. I hoped he didn’t have a heart attack before the case was over. Me and Donald: like my childhood TV heroine, Emma Peel, and her equally dashing compatriot, we had it all—adventure, witty repartee and a strong understated physical attraction for
each other. Right.

  Miraculously, Donald had found all of the local doctors who’d treated Emily in the last ten years. Each of them was willing to come to court and describe her injuries, but none could say her explanation was implausible. Only one had had any doubt (about a cracked rib), but it was certainly possible she’d fallen on it.

  “Well, it’s something,” I said. “At least they want to help.”

  Finally our food arrived. After a couple of bites, I asked about Emily’s friends.

  Donald licked some ketchup off his fingers. “She doesn’t have any, just the lady in New York, Alice Timmerman, who says she’ll do whatever she can. Problem is, she didn’t see anything. A couple of times she called to speak with Emily, Hal hung up on her, but that don’t exactly prove he’s an abuser.”

  “No, just an asshole. Did you talk to the officer who busted Hal for domestic violence?”

  Donald nodded. “It ain’t much. The cop said he mostly took him in ’cause he was drunk. At first, Emily claimed Hal slugged her, then immediately changed her story to a light slap. Later, she tried to recant the whole thing. I subpoenaed him while I was there.”

  “Brick by brick,” I said, finishing my burger. “You might as well start with Hal now, see if you can find anyone who will say anything bad about him, especially about his temper or his drinking.”

  Donald downed the last of his three Cokes. “Did they find any alcohol in the vic’s body?”

  “Some,” I said. “Over a point one. Legally drunk but just barely.”

  Donald looked pensive. “It’s too bad she didn’t wait until he’d hit her at least once.”

  “I know.” I stood up and grabbed the check off the table. “It’s on me, Donald. We’re never coming here again.”

  On the way out, I reminded him that we still had Emily as our star witness, and that she was smart, likeable, and attractive, someone the jury would be inclined to acquit if they had any reasonable doubt.

  He shook his head. “Yeah, but there’s something about her. I don’t know what it is. I don’t mean she’s loony, but she ain’t all there.”

  As we walked to my car, I said, “That’s what happens when you’re a battered woman. A part of you checks out. It’s a survival mechanism.”

  He shrugged. “Well, you’re gonna have to hang on to the rest of her. I once had this helium balloon when I was a kid, but I got distracted. I think some guys were chasing me with switchblades. Anyway, I let go of it for just a second and it was gone.”

  For a moment, I was dumbstruck. Donald as a little kid? No, I simply couldn’t imagine it—nor did I want to—but his analogy was apt and I wondered, not for the first time, whether I’d underestimated him. “Don’t worry,” I finally said, rummaging through my briefcase for my keys. “No matter how bad it gets, I won’t let go.”

  ***

  Although I promised Emily I’d see her soon, I had to spend the rest of the week dealing with a rape case where the victim kept waffling about whether she’d originally agreed to have sex with my client and then changed her mind, or been forced from the very beginning. I hated those kinds of cases, but of course I did them.

  On Sunday, I drove to the jail and spent the afternoon and evening visiting all the new clients I’d picked up the week before. Finally, at around quarter to nine, I asked to be escorted to the women’s module. When I arrived, I looked through the glass and saw Emily seated in the day room addressing a group of women, all of them younger than her. Two were obviously pregnant. Like most inmates, they were hungry for a break in their routine. Any kind of break.

  “What’s she doing?” I asked the guard.

  “Emily? She wants to start a book reading group. This is their first meeting. I’m surprised how many of the inmates were interested.”

  A book reading group? My stomach lurched again. “Look, tell her I’m here but I’m too tired to wait. Tell her I’ve only got about twenty lucid minutes left.” The guard unlocked the steel door, slid it open, and went inside. A few minutes later, Emily hurried out to meet me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as we sat down in the interview room. “I had no idea you’d come so late. I know your time is extremely valuable.”

  “A book group?” I said.

  Her face lit up. “Why not? Most criminals can read. I used to lead a group at the library. The surroundings here are seedier, but the discussions might turn out to be quite interesting.”

  I stared at her. “You’re scaring me, Emily.”

  “What? How? Tell me and I’ll stop it.”

  Behind her, I could see various AA slogans taped to the wall: Easy Does It. One Day At A Time. Fine, if you were an alcoholic.

  “Look, this might sound funny,” I said, “but you’re adjusting too well to the environment. Either that, or you’ve convinced yourself that you’re here as a social worker, not as an inmate.”

  Emily understood immediately. “I see. You’re worried that if I get too comfortable, too institutionalized, I might not fight as hard to get out.”

  “Exactly. And you’re too smart to spend the rest of your life in prison. It would be a terrible waste.”

  She shook her head in wonder. “You genuinely care what happens to me, don’t you?” As if I were someone who’d been courting her for months but she still couldn’t quite believe it.

  “I do. And I don’t want you thinking this is even tolerable. I want you to claw your way out of here.”

  Emily gazed down at her hands, and then back up at me, her blue eyes as impenetrable as ever. “What if my nails aren’t sharp enough?”

  “Uh-uh. You’ve already done it once, you can do it again.”

  And then, without any warning, my client disappeared. We were still facing each other, but she wasn’t there; it was as if I were sitting across from a hologram. She’d left like this before and I never tried to stop her. After three or four minutes, she always came back looking calm and somewhat resigned, as if she’d considered the possibility of remaining where she was and decided, once again, to return.

  “Hey,” was all I said when I knew she was back.

  We sat quietly for a while, listening to the sounds of the jail, of too many people living against their will in tiny inhospitable quarters originally meant to house less than half of them. Eventually, Emily broke the silence. “You want me to make a decision, don’t you?”

  It never ceased to amaze me how well she could read my mind. There was no point waffling. “Yes, it’s time.”

  Somewhere outside the room, a female inmate began yelling. A few seconds later, we heard the sound of running feet and a couple of guards ordering her back into the day room.

  “No!” the inmate screamed. “I have to see the nurse tonight!”

  “About what, Maria?” one of the guards demanded.

  “None of your fucking business. Let go of me! Fuck you!”

  “Okay, calm down, Maria. You can see a nurse tomorrow.”

  “No! You’re a bunch of fucking liars!”

  “All right, Maria, that’s it. Let’s go.”

  We heard them dragging her down the hall, still screaming and cursing. When they reached the steel door, it sounded as if she was kicking it. One of the guards yelled at her to cut it out. Finally we heard the door open and then clang shut. After that, it was quiet again.

  “So what’s it going to be?” I asked.

  Emily sighed. “You know, it’s not the food or the tedious routine that gets to me. It’s not even the violence or the palpable unhappiness of the place. It’s the noise.” She paused. “What are my chances at trial?”

  I looked at her soft, kind face. She was as pale now as all the other inmates. “It’ll depend on you. If you do well on the stand, they’re better than fifty-fifty.”

  “And if I don’t do well?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Have you talked to the district attorney?”

  I nodded, keeping my face impassive. “He’ll offer second-degree murder and he’s wi
lling to stipulate to a number in the low thirties.”

  “What’s the range for second?” she asked, sounding like a seasoned pro, which broke my heart. She’d been talking to the other inmates, of course.

  “In your case, twenty-four to forty-eight.”

  Emily stood up and began to pace in front of me. “Will he go below thirty?”

  “I don’t think so. Not now, anyway.”

  “How much time would I really do if I was sentenced to thirty years?”

  “I’m not going to plead you to thirty years.”

  “But let’s just say I was.”

  Her pacing was beginning to annoy me. “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “It’s hard to predict. You’d be parole eligible after twelve or thirteen years, but you could do closer to twenty.”

  She was nodding to herself. “So, worst-case scenario, I’d be fifty-seven when I got out.”

  I kicked at her empty chair. “Okay, that’s it, Emily. Stop pretending to be some kind of gun moll. This isn’t a movie. It’s your real life. Sit down.”

  She stopped pacing, put her hands on her hips, and tried to look indignant. “I thought I was being very tough, very...Barbara Stanwyck.”

  “More like Judy Holliday,” I said, patting her chair. “Try to imagine getting out of prison after eighteen years. You think you’re institutionalized now?”

  Finally she sat down. “Don’t worry, Rachel. I’m not going to take the plea agreement. I was just trying it on for size.”

  “Well it’s too big.” By then, I had a headache and wanted to leave.

  “Okay,” Emily said, recognizing as usual when the interview was over, “you’re the one with the eye.”

  I stood up to go. This one has to turn out right, I told myself.

  Emily smiled reassuringly. “I have complete confidence in you.”

  Although I rarely drank, that night I was tempted to stop at one of the liquor stores on 28th Street and buy a bottle of something with a high alcohol content. But then I remembered it was Sunday and decided to go home and eat some leftover tofu and vegetables instead. When I finally crawled into bed, Vickie spooned me until she fell asleep. After that, I was on my own, just me and my worried mind.