Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  After studying him briefly, Cynthia simply nodded. Edward and David went up to the bench right in front of her. Edward kept his head turned from the jury and his voice low but urgent.

  ‘This is invading attorney-client privilege, Your Honor. I believe the prosecutor is suggesting I helped her plan this, which is outrageous to begin with. But if I gave any advice to my client, that subject is untouchable in court.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m suggesting.’ David glanced at Edward as if that suggestion itself was out of line. ‘Helping a client plan a crime is beyond a lawyer’s duties and not protected by attorney-client privilege, which is not what I’m suggesting.’ He held up his hands as Edward turned toward him furiously.

  ‘He’s trying to use against her the fact that she has a lawyer in the family, which isn’t a crime. I object, Your Honor.’

  The judge looked back at him blandly, apparently unfazed by either lawyer’s emotions.

  ‘I don’t see any sign of an attorney-client relationship being established before a crime was committed and there was occasion for her to hire a lawyer. Overruled.’ She made a brushing away motion as Edward stared at her.

  He continued to stare in that direction as he took his seat. The prosecutor was going on about how having a lawyer in the family had probably given her an insight into planning crimes, plans that worked and plans that failed. But Edward watched the judge. She wouldn’t look at him, though once Cynthia did shoot him a sharp sideways glance. It might have been a questioning look, it might have been sullen. It was too quick to tell. It certainly hadn’t said Come hither.

  But what Edward thought he’d seen in that brief glimpse was fear.

  David continued. ‘Well-planned crimes have a lot of ways to fail and, when they do, the perpetrator looks obviously guilty for having come up with such an elaborate scheme. While criminals get away with spur-of-the-moment, poorly-thought-out crimes of passion.

  ‘Mr Hall has suggested that the defendant knew where Dr Shilling kept his gun. Probably the same place he’d kept it at the family home, in the nightstand. Who knows what might have set her off when she went into his house, the house he’d left her to find freedom in? Maybe, when she went to get her evening gown, she saw the other dress in the closet, the one obviously not her size. So she ran to his room, grabbed his gun and shot him in a murderous rage. Then, as so often happens with murderers, she instantly regretted it and tried futilely to revive him. Which doesn’t mean …’

  Edward continued to watch the judge. When all this had started, he had hoped Cynthia would do him some hidden favors, at least give him a break in her trial rulings, given the huge, secret debt she owed him. Instead she had ruled against him at every turn. What was in her mind?

  Maybe she was saving up for one big favor for him. Then she’d be able to point to the record to say she’d shown him no favoritism. But what would that big favor be?

  Boy, he was really looking for the pony in the room.

  Edward felt a slight pressure on his hand that took him by surprise. He looked down to see that Amy had slipped her hand into his. Looking aside, he saw it was because she was scared to death. The skin of her face was tight and very pale. Her lips invisible as she tried to keep her chin from trembling. She gave him a little smile when she felt his stare, but there were tears in the corners of her eyes.

  He’d never had to sympathize with a client before. They were just defendants. Almost always guilty, usually deserving whatever was going to happen to them. But this was Amy. For the first time in his life Edward felt his life bound up with his client’s. If he lost this trial, Amy’s life would be over and his would be too. He would never stop blaming himself.

  ‘Finally I want to return to something my partner talked to you about,’ David Galindo said quietly. ‘The evidence shows planning on the part of the defendant. In spite of what I said about something inside setting her off, the more probable, almost certain fact is that she went into that house with the intention of murdering her husband. There just wasn’t time for any other interpretation. She must have already been furious when she went in.

  ‘Which means she didn’t stop to ring the doorbell or knock. She just went up on the porch and went in, which means she entered the victim’s home without his consent. Do you think he would ever have let her in if he knew what she was planning? No, she just went in. She entered a habitation without the consent of the owner, with the intention of committing a felony. The felony she then committed. Murder. But because it was in the course of burglary it was capital murder.

  ‘And her victim knew how furious she was. Don’t forget Dr Shilling’s recording. He knew. He knew his wife was catching on to him. He knew her simmering rage. He’d felt it before. He did his best to protect himself from her. Please don’t let his effort have been in vain.’

  David set down the DVD he’d been holding up and slowly sat down, watching the jurors. Those twelve, though, wouldn’t look at the lawyers at all. Almost in unison they turned toward the judge.

  ‘The bailiff will now escort you to the jury room to begin your deliberations. All rise for the jury, please.’

  Edward stood up and took his sister’s arm. She leaned against him so heavily he knew she’d fall over if he weren’t there. Amy held up her chin and smiled bravely at the jurors, who all kept their faces resolutely turned away from her – except one of those women from the front row who shot a quick glance at her. Very good sign, that, or at least Edward tried to think so.

  Then they were gone and the courtroom had that strange empty feeling actors must feel, as the last audience members troupe out while the actors are still left on the stage. Edward and David Galindo blinked at each other. Edward saw David’s impulse to reach across the distance between their tables and shake his hand, also saw him decide the gesture wouldn’t be appropriate this time.

  Then they both turned to see the judge still sitting on her high bench. This was uncharacteristic of Cynthia, who usually darted out of the room as quickly as she could. She stared at Edward. Again, like an actress who could show her true emotions now that the audience was gone. Cynthia looked at Edward with her lips pressed into a tight, straight line.

  Then she rose and did leave the room, quickly, not looking back.

  ‘Man, what did you do to her?’ David asked Edward, as he gathered up his papers, not waiting for an answer.

  Edward wondered himself. He turned to Amy. ‘It could be hours, Amy. Go with Mom and Dad. Leave the building if you want. I’ll get word to you when they have a verdict.’

  ‘Where should we go?’ she asked wonderingly, as if surprised still to be free.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ a voice said and Linda reached to take Amy’s hand. Linda smiled at Edward and it seemed to him he’d been waiting a long time for someone to do that, give him a warm smile.

  ‘Good job,’ she murmured, softly enough for only him to hear.

  He mouthed thanks.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’ll meet you.’ He headed for those damned elevators and downstairs to the clerk’s office. They had the DVD he’d ordered and allowed him to check it out with only his signature and the number from his bar card, which the clerk couldn’t tell was just ornamental by this time.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The jury took hours. They were out for the rest of the day. Later, Edward couldn’t believe what they’d been arguing about.

  The Halls spent an uncomfortable couple of hours in a coffee shop near the courthouse, then, when it became clear the verdict wasn’t going to happen any time soon, retired to Dr and Mrs Hall’s house. Linda joined them. Amy clung to her hand so tightly Linda didn’t have much choice. They drove their separate cars to the house, but as soon as Linda entered the hall, Amy walked quickly to her, wrapped her arms around and touched foreheads with Linda, as if they could communicate telepathically.

  They had picked up takeout Chinese on the way. The warm noodles felt like worms in Edward’s mouth. He put down his fork
and didn’t pick it up again. When he looked up they were all looking at him, his parents quizzically, Amy nodding her approval, Linda – Linda placed her hand over his briefly and he realized he’d felt terribly cold until then. Her warmth traveled up his arm into his chest.

  He stood up, suddenly needing to pace, and for a moment saw them all looking at him; his parents questioningly, as if there were anything more he could tell them. As if he had the one secret about the justice system he’d saved until now, the one that could save Amy from all this. Amy looked encouragingly, which was ironic, and Linda – What was her expression? Affectionate, he thought, but also with some sort of question.

  ‘I need to make a call,’ he said and went to call Mike.

  Linda thought Amy shouldn’t be alone, so offered to spend the night with her, which Amy gratefully accepted. Edward volunteered to go pick up clothes for Linda. Before he left, he managed to get Linda alone for a few seconds, and hugged her tightly.

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Linda answered, smiling.

  Edward’s errand was legitimate, he needed clothes, but mainly he wanted some time to himself, to try to think and to be alone with a DVD player. He picked up clothes from Linda’s. It felt strange for him to be in the house where he used to more or less live, intimately choosing her blouse and underwear and shoes. For moments he felt so much like the man of the house, but it wasn’t his house. He could have been a burglar, one with fetishes.

  He went on to Mike’s to get clothes for himself. Mike was there, on the phone, with very little to report. Edward would have preferred to watch the DVD alone, but he could hardly ask his landlord to leave, so the two of them watched it. It was a copy of the security footage from the courthouse that had been part of the case against Edward. The prosecution had clearly only requested a certain time period, the one coinciding with the security guard’s report.

  The camera showed a long shot down the back hallway behind the courtroom. After a minute of nothing happening there was movement and the security guard appeared. He walked up to the door of the judge’s chambers, jiggled the doorknob, appeared to listen to something within, then opened the door and went in. A few seconds later Edward appeared, darting out the door and down the hall, carrying most of his clothes. He ran fast – ‘like a thief,’ was the appropriate expression – disappearing down the hall. It looked like he was going to get away.

  Then the security guard came out and ran down the hall himself. There was no audio on the security footage, so they couldn’t hear the sounds of pursuit, and the chase never returned this direction. In Edward’s mind, he could picture how it went, through the courtroom, out another way, rapidly getting partly dressed while on the run, out into the nighttime corridor again, then almost, almost free, standing there in front of those damned intractable elevator doors.

  He realized now that even if he’d gotten away, he probably would have gotten caught by this recording itself, showing him running out of the supposedly empty offices with its much diminished store of cocaine evidence.

  Mike reached for the control to stop it, but Edward shook his head. They kept watching, fast forwarding.

  It was possible no one had ever watched this DVD. The prosecution had preserved it for trial, but there hadn’t been a trial, Edward had ended up pleading guilty. If anyone had watched it, it would have been in a desultory way, just to see the part Edward and Mike had just watched, the part showing the defendant’s guilt. Almost undoubtedly, no one had watched the whole thing. It would have been incredibly tedious, staring at three or four hours of mostly empty corridor or of people coming and going on legitimate business before the courthouse closed for the night. No one would have put in that effort until the case was going to trial and it never did.

  Certainly no one before now had watched the recording to the end. That became very apparent as Edward and Mike kept watching.

  ‘Hmmh,’ Mike said when it happened. He stared intently at the screen.

  ‘Yep.’ Edward nodded, took out the DVD very carefully and left it in Mike’s keeping, as he headed back to Amy’s house, carrying his domestic burden of clothes.

  Amy drank wine at her house until she was very sleepy and Linda took her off to bed. Linda was going to stay in the guest room. There was no hint of an invitation for Edward to join her. She did give him a hug and a kiss before she left, but it just felt like encouragement.

  Edward wanted to stay up by himself for a while anyway, thinking. He fell asleep on the sofa, but was still the first one up in the morning, making coffee then getting in the shower. When he emerged Linda was standing there, his cell phone in her hand. ‘The court called,’ she said. ‘The jury’s back.’

  ‘Have you reached a verdict?’ the judge was saying to the presiding juror an hour later.

  ‘We have, Your Honor,’ said the woman standing at the corner of the jury box nearest the judge. She wasn’t one of the two women Linda had said were on Amy’s side.

  Wait, wait, wait! Edward wanted to shout. This should take more time, there should be more build-up. If nothing else, this should be delayed. Someone should come running in with a surprise announcement, something should slow this process, halt this screaming engine bound for—

  ‘And is that verdict unanimous?’

  ‘It is, Your Honor.’

  ‘Hand it to the bailiff, please.’

  Cynthia was one of those judges – Edward would have bet on this – who wanted to see the verdict before anyone else except the jurors. The bailiff formally took the jury verdict and carried it to the judge still folded over, so no one but the judge could see. Cynthia opened the page, looked at it, paused, shot a look at Edward he couldn’t decipher and handed the pages back to her bailiff, who returned them to the juror.

  The juror opened the pages to the verdict form. She read out the verdict in a strong voice.

  ‘On the charge of capital murder, we find the defendant not guilty.’

  The presiding juror looked up briefly at Amy, who grabbed her brother’s arm with both hands, a strong grip.

  ‘Wait,’ Edward whispered. ‘Just wait.’

  The juror looked down again. ‘On the charge of murder in the first degree, we find the defendant guilty.’

  Amy’s grip continued cutting off the blood flow in Edward’s arm, as if her hands had frozen in place. He couldn’t look at her. He kept watching the juror, who closed the pages and stared sympathetically across the room. Edward studied all the jurors now. Most of them looked this way, with almost hopeful expressions on their faces, as if asking whether they’d gotten it right. They wanted their work graded.

  Finally Edward turned to look at his sister. Amy stood frozen, her expression trapped between that hopeful joy – that was there when she’d heard the words ‘not guilty’ – and the expression that would come next but wasn’t quite here yet. One of horror would appear as she saw her future hurtling toward her, like a monster coming to consume the rest of her life.

  Behind him, the sounds of the courtroom came into focus, the murmurs of a room full of people, one sob, the rising babble of voices. Up on the bench, Cynthia banged the gavel.

  Then she turned to the jurors and said formally, ‘Thank you for your work in reaching a verdict, jurors. I’ll ask you to retire back to the jury room now. We will call you out soon.’

  They filed out in the silence that had filled the courtroom now, so the rustle of their clothes as they moved was the only sound. As soon as the door closed behind them, the judge looked coolly at the lawyers.

  ‘Are you ready to begin the punishment phase, Mr Galindo?’

  ‘Your Honor, in light of these developments, may I have a few minutes to confer with defense counsel?’

  ‘Very well. We will take a fifteen minute break.’

  She departed in her usual hurried fashion, while Edward turned curiously to the prosecutor. David started to speak, glanced at Amy, and gestured Edward aside. They went and stood in front of the now
-empty jury box, affording them some privacy. Edward saw his mother emerge from the audience and put her arms around Amy, who sobbed on her shoulder. In the audience, Linda stared at Edward. He had no gesture to give back to her.

  The prosecutor said, ‘Now that the death penalty and life without parole are off the table, I’m reinstating my offer, Edward. Thirty years.’

  ‘I think I can do better than that with the jury,’ Edward said by rote, negotiating on autopilot.

  ‘Not after I put on that army of witnesses about the burglaries your sister has committed over the years. The jury’ll be wishing they had the option of capital murder again.’

  After a moment of silence while he thought, Edward said, ‘Let me talk to her.’

  ‘You know how a jury feels betrayed, once they learn the defendant isn’t who she pretended to be in the first phase of trial. Once they find out sweet little Amy is actually a serial criminal …’

  ‘I said I’ll talk to her.’

  The prosecutor was right about that, Edward thought as he walked toward his sister. He had seen it lots of times, a jury give a defendant a break by finding him guilty of the lesser offense, then in punishment giving the maximum sentence for that lesser. Especially, as David had said, when the State had good punishment evidence.

  ‘Amy.’

  His saying her name had no effect. Amy was still crying, still hugging their mother. Dr Hall had joined them now, although he just stood staring at his son, obviously having no idea what to do. Edward gave him a curious look. It seemed his father was about to speak, but he didn’t. Linda hovered out in the audience. Edward waved her forward.

  ‘Amy, I have to talk to you. We don’t have much time.’

  ‘Apparently I’m going to have a lot of time.’

  Edward pulled her aside. He didn’t want to make this sales pitch to his whole family. From the corner of his eye, he saw Linda stop just outside the gate in the bar, but he motioned her forward.