Her Kind of Case

by Jeanne Winer

  “Asshole,” Carla muttered.

  They waited until their eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was cooler now.

  “What if Henry shows up again?” Carla asked, looking nervously around her.

  “Don’t worry. If he comes at us, I’ll kill him.”

  “Good.”

  They started walking slowly. When they reached the gate, they pushed it open and then marched across the road. They stopped in front of the 4Runner.

  “Well, that was fun,” Carla said.

  “Yup.”

  “Like eating ground glass.”

  “But funner.” As she unlocked her car, Lee asked, “How many more days will you be working down here?”

  “Maybe one or two. I’ve interviewed most of Jeremy’s teachers, friends, and neighbors. I doubt anyone in their church will talk to me, but I’ll try anyway.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Nada. It’s really weird. Everyone says Jeremy was just a nice, average kid. They’re all shocked. His best friend, a kid named Ethan Mitchell, said Jeremy had been acting more aloof than usual. But that’s about it. Most people blame his father.”

  Lee climbed into the 4Runner but left the door open.

  “Well, if I were going to blame anyone, I’d blame his mother.”

  “His mother? Why? I felt really sorry for her.”

  “She chose Leonard over her son. That must have really broken his heart.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “But,” Lee smiled brightly, “millions of people have broken hearts and most of them don’t go around kicking gay people to death.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I need to speak with Mary.”

  “No way. Leonard will never let her.”

  Lee was anxious to get going. Carla was staying in a nearby hotel, but Lee had a hundred mile drive ahead of her. Charlie would be hungry. And she wanted to call her dad.

  “Listen, even if you have to stick around for another day or two, I want you to follow Mary, and when she’s alone, give her my card. Tell her that it’s critical I speak with her about Jeremy, that he really needs her help. Tell her I’ll keep anything she says confidential.”

  Carla looked doubtful but nodded.

  “I’ll do my best.” She started walking toward her car but then stopped and turned around. She looked tired and deflated. “Lee, just out of curiosity, does anything scare you?”

  Lee shook her head. If she were the kind of person who admitted things out loud, she might have said losing this case, what it would mean. But she wasn’t and never had been. Paul was the same way; if climbing ever scared him, he never let on. Which was just as well, she thought. In some realms, the truth might set you free, but in others it just made the people around you uncomfortable.

  “Are you heading back to the hotel?” she asked Carla.

  “As fast as I can. There’s a nice dark bar on the roof with lots of single men. I’ll probably have a couple of drinks, see what develops.”

  Lee tried to think of something encouraging.

  “Well, don’t pick up the wrong guy.”

  Carla started walking again.

  “Don’t worry, I always pick up the wrong guy.”

  Lee dialed her father’s number and waited. It always took him a while to hear the phone over the television. Sometimes she had to call two or three times. She’d pulled off her boots and was lying on the couch in her living room. Charlie was curled up next to her, his head resting on her thigh. For background music, she’d chosen Highway 61 Revisited, an old Bob Dylan album released in 1965 when Lee was thirteen. It was still great.

  The room was dark and peaceful: introvert heaven. When she thought about her clients doing life in prison, it wasn’t the confinement per se that horrified her. It was the inability to control her environment, to be alone when she wanted, to make the room dark or light, to decide whether it should be quiet or filled with sound. Introvert hell: a world where strangers made all those decisions for you.

  She hung up and dialed again. This time, he picked up the phone immediately.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said.

  “Hi, Dad. Were you watching television?”

  “No, actually I was on the internet watching music videos. Did you know you could watch performances by dead singers?”

  “And live ones too. Who were you watching?”

  “Amy Winehouse.”

  “Amy Winehouse?” Lee was flabbergasted. “How come? How did you even know about her?” Sometimes her father was a mystery. Actually, most of the time.

  “Well, I read this article about her in the Boston Globe. She died last summer from too much alcohol. She was only twenty-seven. Can you imagine?”

  Unfortunately, Lee could. More than half her clients were alcoholics or drug addicts.

  “Did you like her music?” her father asked.

  Lee frowned, idly running her fingers through Charlie’s thick black fur.

  “Well, I liked a few of her songs and I think she had talent. But she seemed so sad and lost. I guess she reminded me too much of my female clients.”

  “Exactly. I can’t get over it. Here was this pretty, very talented girl who turns herself into a skinny, tattooed addict and then publicly self-destructs before she’s thirty. At eighty-four, I find it offensive. And yet, I can’t stop watching her sing.”

  Lee pictured him sitting in his overly bright kitchen holding an ancient white wall phone, the long rubber cord almost reaching the floor. He’d be wearing what he always wore at night, a thin blue flannel bathrobe she’d bought him years ago. It was probably time to buy him a new one. She’d long since given up asking whether he needed anything because he’d always say no. Periodically, she went shopping in Boulder and sent him pants, shirts, and underwear. When she visited, usually twice a year, she made him go shopping with her at the Braintree Mall.

  “You know what, Dad? There are thousands of great singers featured on YouTube. Maybe it’s time to branch out a little.”

  “I think you’re right. Tonight, I was watching her sing ‘Back to Black’—there’s one really good version—and felt tears running down my cheek. In a funny way, she reminds me of a dark, skinny Marilyn Monroe.”

  Lee frowned again. Her father’s occasional bouts of melancholy were occurring more frequently as he aged. Something else, she guessed, to look forward to.

  “Hey,” she said, “remember how you’re always telling me to lighten up?”

  “And you should. You’re only sixty.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Okay, not quite. But one of the joys of being eight-four: You don’t even have to try to lighten up.”

  She shook her head, decided to change the subject.

  “So, how was bridge today?”

  “Good. Freddie and I came in second.”

  “That’s wonderful. Don’t you usually play with Hal on Fridays?”

  “Hal had to go back into the hospital. His diabetes is eating him alive. I think they’re going to have to cut more of his toes off.”

  “Yikes,” she said.

  “Yikes is right. So, how’s your new murder case?”

  “Challenging.”

  “Not so good, huh? Well, you’ll find a way. You always do.”

  Not always, she thought. Suddenly, she heard the unmistakable sound of a match being lit.

  “Dad, you’re not smoking again, are you?”

  “Kiddo, I’m eighty-four. I have to die of something. If the mosquitoes don’t get you, then the gators will.”

  “Only if you live in the Everglades.”

  “The Everglades.” He started to chuckle. “Do you remember when we took you there? I think you were twelve. It was hotter than hell. Your mother almost fell out of the canoe.”

  “I was eighteen. I remember some guy wrestling with an alligator that had obviously been drugged.” They were both laughing now.

  “Oh, that’s right! It was awful. We wanted to rescue him, but your mother co
nvinced us it would be futile. That the alligator wouldn’t last more than a day on his own if he were free.” He paused. “She was very practical, your mother.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  They were silent for a while. Her mother had died of breast cancer when Lee was twenty-eight. For more than thirty years, it had just been Lee and Aaron holding down the fort, as if her mother, whom they’d both loved, had taken a trip to Paris and simply hadn’t returned; she was happy there, which was all that mattered. Their grief, which must have been enormous, had gradually subsided. Lee wasn’t sure if she remembered her mother’s face, or if the images that came to mind of an intelligent, handsome woman with a mischievous smile were all based on photographs. No matter.

  “Dad, I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

  “I gotta be me,” he sang.

  “You’ve already had one stroke.”

  “No lasting damage.”

  Lee glanced at the clock on her wall. It was close to eleven, one o’clock on the east coast. Time to go to sleep. She’d promised to work out with Michael in the morning. Her left thumb still hurt but it probably would for months. No sense coddling it.

  “Okay,” she announced, “I give up. You can smoke.”

  “Thanks, kiddo. You’re a real sport.”

  “But would you at least quit watching the Amy Winehouse videos?”

  “Yes, I’ll move on.”

  “Good.” She yawned. “I need to go to bed now. Don’t die before I call you again.” It was the way she ended every phone call since Paul had abruptly disappeared from her life.

  “Okay, but call soon.” What he always said back to her.

  “Good night, Dad.”

  “Good night, kiddo.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In Colorado, a preliminary hearing is the first major step in a prosecution for murder. The DA’s burden is ridiculously low: to convince the judge there’s probable cause to believe that a murder was committed and that the defendant helped to commit it. In rare instances, the DA can’t prove probable cause and the case is dismissed.

  In Lee’s new murder case, the DA could have wheeled in his senile grandfather to argue probable cause and the judge would have been convinced. At this point, the evidence against Jeremy was overwhelming. But it was still early in the game. Things change, she reminded herself. There were always surprises, especially with numerous co-defendants. Soldiers defected from the ranks. In most of her cases, the surprises felt as if she were being slammed in the back of her head with a two-by-four, but every now and then the surprise would be sweet and unexpected, like manna from heaven. In this case, though, if waiting for manna was even a small part of her strategy, her client was in serious trouble.

  Lee was sitting by herself at the defendant’s table in a courtroom on the second floor of the Boulder County Justice Center. It was a few minutes past noon. Jeremy’s preliminary hearing was set for one o’clock. In forty-five minutes, the room, which wasn’t large, would be jammed with onlookers, some of them from various newspapers and television stations. Their first chance to see the boy, whom local reporters had dubbed “the little savage.”

  Lee felt like growling. Although she wasn’t happy about the level of cooperation from Jeremy, she’d already stepped into the role of guard dog. She, Carla, and Peggy were all that stood between him and the hordes that wanted to lynch him. And they would make it as hard as possible. Her other longtime legal hero besides Perry Mason was Atticus Finch—both lawyers, now that she thought about it, figments of someone’s imagination.

  For the past few years, Lee had started showing up for major hearings at least an hour beforehand. She wanted a chunk of quiet time to arrange the table exactly the way she wanted and then to simply think. And no, she didn’t have to do that when she was younger. At forty, her brain worked better. Faster. Information zipped through it without any interference, heading without hesitation to the right processing center. Nowadays, there were stops along the way, missed turns, bathroom breaks, moments of indecision. What most irked her, however, was that her perfectionism seemed to be inversely proportional to her declining powers, although it made complete sense.

  She glanced at the neat stacks of manila folders on her left and her two legal bibles arranged on either side of her: the Colorado Rules of Evidence, and a book containing various sections of the Colorado Revised Statutes pertaining to criminal law. Satisfied, she set a fresh blank writing pad and three new pens directly in front of her. Lee owned a laptop but, unlike most of the younger lawyers, never took it to court. She preferred to take notes in longhand. Lately, she felt like one of the last dinosaurs roaming the earth before they’d all gone extinct. At trial, if she saw that the DA would be relying extensively on his computer, she’d intentionally pick older jurors who might identify with her and the old-fashioned legal pad she made a big show of using.

  Finally, she closed her eyes and imagined the hearing—how it would go and how it would end, with the case getting bound over for arraignment on the charge of first-degree murder. The DA was calling only two witnesses, a salesclerk who worked at a north Boulder liquor store, and the lead detective in the case. The first witness had identified Rab, the skinhead with the distinctive animal tattoo on his neck, as the person who bought four bottles of Southern Comfort and five six-packs of beer from his store on the night of the murder. The clerk had helped carry the booze out to a white Chevy Nova containing four more skinheads, including a juvenile. The following morning, two CU students taking an early morning hike on Flagstaff Mountain found a body. That evening, after reading a description of the victim in The Camera, the witness contacted the sheriff’s department. A few days later, after everyone had been arrested, the witness identified both Rab and the car. In the legal world, these were known as bad facts.

  The DA’s lead detective would fill in the rest. How an intoxicated skinhead named Johnny was bragging at the Sapphire Lounge about a boot party where they’d all kicked a “faggot” and left him in the mountains, how someone overhearing the conversation called the police, how Johnny, Rab, and Casey were arrested at the bar, how a warrant was immediately obtained to search their house, which was only a few blocks away, and how Jeremy was found sleeping in his attic bedroom during the execution of the search warrant.

  The lead detective would also no doubt mention the bottles of Southern Comfort and beer they’d found at the crime scene, the bloody boots recovered from Casey’s room at the house, and the sweatshirt with some blood on the sleeve that was found among Jeremy’s clothes. All items had been sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for DNA testing, which in this case seemed like overkill but had to be done.

  And finally, the coup de grace: Jeremy’s confession. Even without it, the judge would have bound the case over. To set up her later motion to suppress, Lee had subpoenaed the detective who’d actually interrogated Jeremy. She wouldn’t get too far with her questioning because the DA would correctly argue that it wasn’t relevant to a preliminary hearing. Lee would argue that it was. She would lose, but maybe she’d learn a few more facts. And then, each side would make their closing arguments. During hers, Lee would ask the court to find probable cause for second-degree murder, not first, because there was no evidence of premeditation—a specious argument at best. The judge would ignore her, and her client would once again return to his horizontal position in his cell at the juvenile detention facility.

  Lee checked her watch. There was still plenty of time. Carla and Peggy would be arriving soon. Peggy had come by her office yesterday morning with a note from Jeremy. Every week since his arrest, his aunt had tried to visit him. Each time she showed up, Jeremy refused to see her and she was turned away. A few days ago, she tried again and this time Jeremy sent her a note written on a scrap of paper. Lee pulled out the note, unfolded it, and read it for the fifth or sixth time.

  Dear Aunt Peggy,

  I wish you’d stop trying to visit me. I don’t want to see anyone. It’s for the best. Thank you for
trying to help but don’t come again. We live in different worlds now.

  Your nephew,

  Jeremy

  Different worlds? Lee shook her head, sliding the note back into her briefcase. As if Jeremy were in the underworld now and, unlike Persephone, had eaten way more than just a few pomegranate seeds and wasn’t coming back. Ever. Still, it was Lee’s job to try and drag him out of there. The problem was how. Jeremy was still a mystery to her.

  Last night, she’d gone to see him and asked what had happened to him in Denver, hoping to find out how he’d metamorphosed from a nice, average kid in Colorado Springs to “the little savage” in Boulder.

  “It’s not relevant,” he told her.

  “It might be.”

  He shook his head, which was now covered with an inch of soft brown hair, like that of a little duckling.

  “No, the only thing that matters is what we did. And I’m cool with that.”

  He didn’t look cool—he looked sad and miserable, a duckling paddling around in circles, completely lost—but she didn’t want to argue.

  “Just tell me how you ended up living with Rab and the others. I’m curious, that’s all.”

  “You’re hoping I’ll tell you some horrible story about being kidnapped by the bad guys, how they made me do what I did. But it simply isn’t true. Rab actually saved my life.”

  “No kidding,” she said and waited. She could be cool too.

  “Yeah.”

  She waited some more.

  “Okay, so I was like surrounded by these three guys who wanted to rob me. I was in an alley where I’d been dumpster diving. At that point, I was staying in a hostel, but my money was running out. The guys had knives and looked like they wanted to hurt me. I was cool but figured I was done for, which was fine with me. I-I was kind of depressed and lonely. Suddenly, this big skinhead shows up and kicks the shit out of the three guys. ‘Go pick on someone your own size,’ he yelled. He hurt them pretty bad. And then he said if I wanted, I could stay with him and a couple of his buddies. I said, ‘sure.’ And that’s how I ended up with my brothers.” He shrugged. “Satisfied?”