Her Kind of Case

by Jeanne Winer

  Lee snorted. Somewhere in the Milky Way, it might be true, but not on Lee’s planet.

  “Have you always been this competitive?”

  Lee sat down and nodded.

  In the distance, they could hear the sound of traffic. Suddenly, a lone owl hooted, a low-pitched hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Probably a Great Horned Owl, Lee thought. She smiled and stretched her legs out. A number of stars were visible now, including the seven that made up Orion, one of the few constellations Lee could reliably identify. When he was lost in Alaska, Paul had used the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia to locate the North Star and find his way back to camp.

  “So tell me about your childhood,” Carla said, wrapping her red wool scarf tight around her throat.

  “Why?” She hated small talk.

  “Jesus Christ, Lee. It’s called conversation. What two people do when they’re sitting on a bench in the middle of nowhere freezing their asses off.”

  “Why not just enjoy the silence?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because we’ve worked together for years and I hardly know anything about you?”

  “So what? We’re a great team and we work really well together. That’s all that matters. Why gum it up with nonessential details?”

  “Well, if that’s how you think, fine. By all means, let’s just enjoy the silence.”

  Lee began counting: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three …

  “Okay, so maybe you don’t need to talk, but I do. I visited my mother last night and I’m still having feelings.”

  “Uh-oh. Has she gotten worse?”

  “Are you sure it won’t gum things up to tell you?”

  “You can always talk about your mother, Carla.”

  “Well, all right then. So for the last few months, she’s been living in a home that specializes in ‘memory care.’ I visit every other day, which is a lot, but I’m only there for an hour. Anyway, last night I walk into her room and she’s cowering near the doorway. So I ask what’s wrong and she points toward the window on the opposite side of the room. ‘I’m afraid,’ she says. ‘Of what?’ I ask, wondering what in the hell she’s talking about. She points toward the window again. ‘I’m afraid I’ll fall out.’ So I walk to the window and check to see that it’s locked. Her bedroom is on the third floor. ‘The window is locked,’ I tell her. ‘You can’t fall out of it.’ She shakes her head. ‘It could break,’ she says. I thump the windowpane to show her how sturdy it is. ‘No, it can’t.’ So then she begins to wail. ‘Anything can break,’ she says.

  “And for a moment, my heart stops because it seems as if she’s actually talking about herself, about her mind. I have to control myself because I don’t want to cry in front of her. She finds it very distressing. So I thump the window again and decide to be honest. ‘Okay, you’re right. Anything can break. In the extremely unlikely event the window breaks and you somehow fall out of it, the worst thing that could happen is you’d die.’ She immediately stops wailing and stares at me. ‘I’d die?’ she asks. And I nod. ‘Yeah, that would be the very worst thing.’ So then she smiles and says, ‘Oh, I can live with that.’ And then, there’s this familiar twinkle in her eyes and I know she’s back for a moment. We both start laughing and we laugh so hard, I almost pee in my pants. After a while, she drifts away again and I leave. On the way home, I sob, but I’m also grateful that for ten or fifteen minutes, I had her.” Carla stopped. “I miss her every day.”

  “I’m very sorry, Carla.”

  “Yeah, me too. It’s called ‘The Long Good-bye.’ It’s excruciating. I wouldn’t wish it on Hitler. Well, maybe on Hitler.” She leaned forward to adjust her knee-high boots. “I don’t suppose you’d like to talk about your mother? I know she died a while ago, but other than—”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t.”

  “Hey, just thought I’d ask.” Suddenly, Carla pointed down the path. “Oh look, two guys just emerged from the bushes. Should we approach them?”

  “Might as well. It’ll be our last interview for the night. Then we’ll go get some pizza.”

  Neither of the men recognized Jeremy, but finally the taller one—who reminded Lee of Michael Perlman, one of her closest friends in high school and in retrospect, a closet gay—admitted hooking up with Sam the previous summer. The other, shorter man looked aghast.

  “A skinhead! Are you crazy?”

  The taller man waved his arms as if to ward off the memory.

  “I know. I know. I know. But it was dark and I was somewhat inebriated.”

  The shorter man was shaking his head.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. Urban guerrilla chic?”

  Both men started to laugh.

  “So what happened?” Lee asked, smiling in spite of herself.

  “Well, as you might have guessed, it was a disaster. When we finished, he stuck out his hand and demanded a hundred dollars. I told him I didn’t pay for sex and he said, ‘Well, you are now.’ I looked around and it was pretty deserted. Suddenly, my head cleared and I realized the situation, how dangerous it was. I pulled out my wallet and gave him everything I had: sixty-seven dollars. He took it and left. My hands were shaking so hard, I dropped my wallet twice before putting it away.”

  “Christ,” Carla told him, “I thought I took chances. Maybe you should find somewhere else to meet people.”

  “Yep. Looking for love in all the wrong places.”

  Lee pulled out Jeremy’s picture again and showed it to him.

  “Are you sure you didn’t see this boy as well?”

  “No. He’s very cute. I’d remember.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Lee said, holding one of her business cards out to him. “Here’s my card. Maybe you could ask your friends if they’ve ever seen two skinheads in the park together.”

  Both men agreed they would ask around and then started to walk away.

  “And be more careful!” Carla called.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “It’s not fair,” Carla said. “All the nicest, best-looking men are gay.”

  Lee smiled to herself. Not always, she thought. Sometimes, if you were lucky, they were bisexual instead.

  The wind picked up and snowflakes began swirling around them.

  “Too cold for love,” Carla announced. “Time to go.”

  Lee agreed. They switched on their flashlights and headed for Lee’s Toyota, which they’d left on the other side of the park. It was cold and dark. They were halfway across the grass when Lee heard a sound. She quickly twirled around. Two strange men wearing gray hoodies were following them. Lee shined her light into their faces and assessed them: white, mid to late thirties, not gay, probably drunk. Both men lifted their hands to shield their eyes, which were bloodshot.

  “We’re not looking for trouble,” she told them.

  “But we are,” one of them said. His words were slightly slurred.

  “Just kidding,” the other one said. “We’re looking for some company, that’s all.”

  “Not interested,” Lee told them, removing her gloves and tucking them into her pocket.

  “Definitely not interested,” Carla added redundantly.

  The first one tried to grab Lee’s arm.

  “Oh come on. Don’t be a frigid bitch.”

  Lee easily evaded him. She could have knocked him out with her flashlight, but decided to hold off.

  “If you reach for me again, I’ll hurt you.”

  “Dude,” the other man said. “I don’t think they’re interested.”

  “Course they are. They’re just playing hard to get.”

  “Let’s go,” Lee whispered, moving closer to Carla. “Walk quickly but don’t run.”

  As they started walking away, the first man staggered toward them, pawing the back of Lee’s wool coat. It didn’t hurt, but she’d warned him. So she spun around and punched him in the face. Bright red blood immediately spurted from his nose. He clutched his face and screamed.

  “Fuck me! I’m
bleeding!”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” Lee was feeling tired and crabby now. “It’s just a broken nose. Come on, Carla.”

  “Hey, man, do something,” the injured one cried. He was rocking back and forth, smearing blood on his sweatshirt. Making it look worse than it was.

  “Like what, dude?”

  “Get her. She fucking broke my nose.”

  “Leave it, dude.” He turned to the two women. “Sorry for bothering you.”

  “He needs some ice,” Lee replied. “Let’s go, Carla.”

  “Fucking dykes!” the first one called. “They’re fucking dykes, man!”

  “Sure, dude. Whatever you say.”

  Carla giggled as they crossed the grass.

  “Well, that was exciting.”

  “I should have pulled it more,” Lee confessed, “but he was very irritating.”

  “The other one was actually kind of cute.”

  Lee glanced at her investigator and said, “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Dude, you’ll never know.”

  It took them half an hour to find a pizza place that was still open. Lee and Carla were the only customers. The woman behind the counter was painfully thin and had sores on her face. Lee guessed she was a meth addict. Hard to look at, but it was none of her business.

  At Carla’s insistence, they ordered a whole pizza and then sat down at a booth to wait. The light from a plastic, low-hanging fixture made their skin look green. The woman turned up the volume on the radio and asked if they minded. Neither of them did.

  A few minutes later, they heard Chaka Khan singing “Ain’t Nobody Loves Me Better,” which became an instant hit in 1983. At the annual public defender conference that year, Lee and her colleagues danced to the song, all of them singing along at the top of their lungs. By then, Lee was a seven-year veteran handling the most serious cases and had recently represented a mentally ill client whose husband had tortured and killed their baby while the client lay awake a few feet away from them.

  It was the first time Lee had received death threats. At the conference, Lee got drunk and spent the night with a lawyer from the Denver office who was representing a serial killer. After making love, they stayed up till dawn telling each other the worst facts of their cases. They’d alternated between hysterical laughter and sudden fits of crying. Lee had never felt more alive.

  When their pizza was set down in front of them, Carla announced she was famished. Suddenly, Lee was too. Without a word, they tore into the pie like lions ripping at the carcass of a freshly killed zebra. Whatever else it was, defending a murder case was still hard work, requiring copious amounts of fat and protein. When they were finished, Carla checked her watch.

  “Four minutes, fifty-three seconds,” she said.

  “Is that a personal best?” Lee asked, licking some cheese off her fingers.

  “Not even close.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was April Fools’ Day when Phil Hartman called and asked to see Lee in her office. For the first time in months, her caseload was under control and she’d been thinking about leaving early and wandering the Pearl Street Mall. Perhaps ending up at the Boulder Bookstore, where she could spend hours reading indiscriminately before rousing herself to stumble back out into the daylight. But maybe not today.

  “I’m free after three o’clock,” she told him. “What’s this about?”

  “A friend of mine who doesn’t qualify for the Public Defender needs your services.”

  “Great. Just tell him to call me.”

  “Well, he wants me to come see you first, explain the case, and make sure you’ll take it.”

  “This isn’t an April Fools’ joke, is it?” she asked.

  “Definitely not. I’ll see you at three.”

  A few minutes past three o’clock, Phil was sitting in her office, eyeing the art on the walls and studying her fake silk tree.

  “I’ve never been here before,” he said. “The tree’s not real, is it?”

  “No, but most people think it is. How did you guess?”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson. The tree is too perfect—not even one yellow leaf. You’re a workaholic like I am, which means you wouldn’t purchase anything requiring maintenance, and to be honest, you don’t strike me as at all domestic.”

  “I have a cat,” she reminded him.

  “Except for the cat.”

  They were both smiling. Phil wore loose faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and old, scuffed cowboy boots. Lee had never seen him in anything but court clothes.

  “Tell me about your friend,” she said.

  “What can I say? He really fucked up.”

  “All our clients have fucked up. That’s why they’re our clients.”

  Phil looked around the office again, pointing at her faceless purple horse.

  “Who painted that?”

  “An artist named Fritz Scholder. Do you like it?”

  “I do, but I can’t say why.”

  “I know. Like most art, it either sings to you or it doesn’t.” She waited a couple of seconds. “So, how did your friend fuck up?”

  “I brought the police report, but I’ll summarize it first.”

  “Great.” Lee put her own boots up on her desk, leaned back, and closed her eyes. It would take a while; she could tell. “Just start from the beginning.”

  Phil cleared his throat and said, “It’s a rather predictable story.”

  “They almost always are, but only in retrospect. When they’re happening, each one seems unique and mysteriously unavoidable.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. No wonder your clients like you.”

  Lee waited. Stories came when the teller was good and ready. After clearing his throat again and commenting on the details in one of Paul’s rare urban photographs, a street scene in Katmandu, he finally began.

  “Let’s see, my friend and his wife have been separated for more than a year. They own a large two-story home in Longmont, anticipating children they never got around to having. At the present time, only the wife lives there, but each pays half the mortgage.”

  “Excuse me,” Lee interrupted, “but does your friend have a key?” A relevant fact if things went the way she guessed.

  “I knew you’d ask that, and yes, he still has a key. Occasionally, he drives over to feed their St. Bernard, whose name is Eleanor.”

  “After Eleanor Roosevelt?”

  “No, Eleanor Rigby. My friend and his wife both love The Beatles.”

  “Okay,” Lee said, her eyes still closed. “Go on.” She’d laced her hands behind her neck and made herself comfortable.

  “So in the past few months, my friend and his wife have considered reconciling. They’ve made love on a number of occasions, twice in a bathroom at the public library where his wife works, but mostly in their home. As far as my friend was concerned, things were looking up. Then, about a week ago, his wife calls with bad news. She’s changed her mind and is finally clear about wanting to get a divorce. She’s sorry for any confusion, but sometimes you have to go back to go forward, blah, blah, blah. Understandably, my friend is distraught. He stops eating and sleeping. All he can think about is how he’ll end up alone and miserable in someone’s dreary basement apartment while everyone else lives happily ever after.”

  “So then what?”

  “So then a couple of days ago, after finishing work, my friend drives to the house in Longmont and sits in his car just staring at it.”

  “Does he bring alcohol?”

  “Of course, but he doesn’t start drinking until he’s parked the car and put the keys in his pocket.”

  “Better than leaving them in the ignition.” She nodded approvingly. “So what happens next? I assume this is worse than a defensible DUI?”

  “How did you know?”

  Lee smiled with her eyes closed.

  “A lawyer’s intuition. So then what?”

  “So then a man named Bob Wheeler shows up in a brand new Land Ro
ver, parks it directly in front of the house, walks up to the door, presses the buzzer, and is let in as if he’s expected.”

  “And this upsets your friend?”

  “Inordinately. Bob Wheeler had once been their couples counselor, albeit a few years ago. Whether it’s unethical or not, it’s certainly—”

  “Cheesy?”

  “Yeah, that’s just what my friend thought. So, after flinging his wedding band into some bushes, he decides to confront his wife and her visitor.”

  “Your friend is somewhat drunk by this time?”

  “Oh, he’s FUBAR.” As a criminal defense attorney, the acronym for “fucked up beyond all recognition” was very familiar to Lee.

  “Unfortunate but not surprising. Go on.”

  “So my friend staggers up the stairs, pounds on the door, and waits. When his wife opens the door, she looks surprised and uncomfortable. My friend begins shouting, so she slams the door shut, but of course he still has a key. When he gets the door open, he pushes his wife aside, and immediately lunges for Bob, who flees to the bedroom. Which is just what you’d expect from a therapist who throws up his hands and advises his clients to quit. Frustrated and heartsick, my friend threatens to kill Bob and then kicks a few holes in the door.”

  Lee opened her eyes and sat up.

  “Okay, so we have burglary, harassment, criminal mischief, menacing, and trespass. Does it get any worse?”

  “Legally, not much. Since Bob is in hiding, my friend joins his wife in the kitchen, where he notices that the table is set for dinner. There’s a loaf of bread on the cutting board, two glasses of Chianti, and a pot full of hot bubbling water. Pasta, bread, and wine: his favorite. He feels like crying, but his wife has just found her cell phone and is about to call the police. So he grabs for the phone, which accidentally falls into the pot.”

  Lee picked a yellow pad off the credenza and began writing.

  “Accidentally falls into the pot,” she murmured, scratching the words onto a page already full of notes. When she was finished, she looked up. “So another count of criminal mischief, and tampering. Anything else?”

  “Well, it sounds a bit weird, but since his wife won’t stop yelling, he gets the brilliant idea they should dance. In his head, he’s thinking ‘Hey Jude’ because his wife’s name is Judith.”