Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  ‘The prosecution’s made an offer, Amy. Now that the jury’s found you guilty of murder, the punishment range is five to ninety-nine years, or life. Any sentence of sixty years and up is treated as sixty years for parole purposes.’

  ‘Parole,’ Amy said flatly. Linda had joined them now, putting her hand on Amy’s arm and looking at Edward uncertainly.

  ‘Yes, parole. That’s what you’ve got to think about now, Amy. I’ve seen this happen lots of times, where you think you’ve caught a lucky break by being found guilty of the lower offense, but then getting a high sentence for that one.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Linda said, realizing her role. ‘It happens all the time.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll give me probation,’ Amy said wanly. ‘After all, I’m a perfect candidate. I still have a lot to offer—’

  ‘No Houston jury’s going to give probation for murder,’ Linda said as kindly as possible.

  ‘No,’ Edward said. ‘Doesn’t happen.’

  ‘So what are you asking me to do?’

  ‘If you get a sentence of sixty years or life, with a finding by the jury that you used a deadly weapon – and that’s a certainty – you wouldn’t be eligible for parole for thirty years.’

  ‘I understand. We had this discussion before. So what’s their offer?’

  ‘He’s reinstated his offer of thirty years.’

  ‘That means you’d be eligible for parole in half as long,’ Linda added quickly. ‘Fifteen years as opposed to thirty.’

  ‘Thirty years,’ Amy said flatly. ‘It’s still a thirty year sentence. I could have to be in prison that long.’

  Edward leaned over her and took her hands.

  ‘Not someone like you, Amy. You’d make parole the first time you came up for it. Almost positively. I mean, I did, and you’re much more likable.’

  His joke fell completely flat.

  ‘Do I have to decide right this second?’

  Edward shrugged. ‘The judge gave us fifteen minutes and we’ve used about half of it.’

  Amy went completely still, even her eyes didn’t blink. Edward could almost see her thoughts running across the screen of her forehead of the life she wouldn’t have: treating patients; new romance; children; being a neighborhood mom; leaving her children with her parents while Amy and her husband went out to nice dinners and concerts; her house; her furniture. All that life was disappearing a piece at a time, as if movers were coming in and emptying her cabinets, her silverware drawer, her closets. The other future, the one that was actually going to happen now, was just a blank stone wall. He knew Amy couldn’t imagine it at all.

  Edward thought harder than he ever had in his life, but there was no solution.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he said and returned to David Galindo.

  ‘Twenty,’ Edward said. ‘Give me twenty.’

  David was shaking his head before Edward’s second sentence. ‘No chance, man. I’d lose my job.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Call and run it by them.’

  ‘We only have a few—’

  ‘Fuck Cynthia, David. What can she do if we don’t start her precious trial on time? I’ll stall her if need be.’

  David hesitated. Edward felt sure David would make the offer on his own, but he doubted he could sell it to his powers that be.

  Edward started talking again. ‘I might be able to get probation from this jury, David. I know you said it couldn’t happen, but this is a very sympathetic defendant, with a victim who treated her and a bunch of other women like shit. I can hang them up if nothing else. I know, I know, you’re going to prove that Amy broke into people’s houses for years. And then did nothing. Didn’t destroy anything, didn’t take anything. You’re going to prove she’s a serial trespasser. Big deal. She’s a curious person. She cares about people. I’m going to parade in a bunch of children she’s cured and their grateful parents. In fact, screw your twenty years. I’m ready—’

  ‘I’ll call the office,’ David said, then gave Edward another look to say he hadn’t been fooled by Edward’s speech.

  But Edward had fooled himself, a little bit. Maybe he was giving away the future Amy could still have. Even if she’d killed her husband, she was still his sister. And she was an actual productive member of society, more so than this criminal courtroom had ever seen. Was it possible to get probation for murder? Even in Houston, with its traditionally hard-hearted juries? Edward was afraid now David’s superiors would say yes.

  He turned back to his family, including Linda. They gave him those damned hopeful stares, still expecting him to pull off a miracle, even after he had perfectly demonstrated he couldn’t.

  David, talking on his cell phone, shook his head at Edward, not finding whomever he needed. Edward looked at the clock. More than ten minutes had passed since the judge had given them fifteen.

  David clicked off and said, ‘Bobby said I have to run it by the D.A. herself and she’s at some conference. They’re trying to track her down.’

  They could tell the judge the circumstances; they were negotiating to try to spare her having to hold any more trial. But Edward could well imagine Cynthia making them start the punishment phase anyway, while they waited for an answer, just to show she could.

  Edward walked toward Amy and took her arm.

  ‘You have my cell number?’ he said to David. ‘Good. My sister and I are going for a walk.’

  They took those elevators all the way down to the ground. That would buy them time. No one had ever managed a return to the world above in less than twenty minutes. Edward could imagine Cynthia fuming as she was told Elvis had left the building.

  It was twenty minutes later when David called him. Edward and Amy had spent that time walking around the block. They were deep into November now. Downtown Houston was not the place to go to breathe in the crisp air, but even here they could feel the season and could smell the bright funk of decay. The breeze stirred their hair and reddened their cheeks.

  ‘How far do you think I’d get if I just made a run for it?’ Amy asked. She wasn’t looking at him; she was staring off at the long vista of another possible future. He couldn’t tell how serious she was. Before he could answer, Edward’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

  He barely had time to get out the word hello.

  ‘OK. Twenty,’ David Galindo said.

  ‘Thanks. Tell the nice judge we’re heading up.’

  He turned to Amy and she could see in his eyes what had happened. Her own widened. Now she had to make the most terrible decision of her life. Edward just looked at her. He could see her thoughts again. The movers had stopped packing her future into boxes. They looked up, interrupted at their job. Parole in ten years. Amy was thirty-two. Now a child became a possibility again. Practicing medicine, too. She was smart as hell, she could catch up on developments in ten years. She could stay in touch with the profession in prison. Ten years. It was an awful future, but ten years ago she had been twenty-two and she could remember that clearly. Ten years.

  ‘My God, Edward, what should I say?’

  Thirty minutes later they stood before the judge, alongside David Galindo.

  ‘So you’ve reached agreement?’ the judge said, looking from face to face and lingering on Edward’s, her dark eyes flat and unblinking.

  ‘Yes, Your Honor,’ they said in chorus and David Galindo handed her the short, simple, terrible agreement. ‘We’ve all signed it.’

  And Amy had dropped one tear on the page. Cynthia didn’t seem to notice as her eyes ran down the paper to the bottom line.

  ‘Twenty years?’ She looked up. ‘Twenty?’ she said to the prosecutor. David just nodded.

  ‘And you agree to this, Dr Shilling?’ This time Cynthia’s stare slid past Edward quickly.

  ‘Yes, Your Honor,’ Amy said meekly. Edward had explained to her what would happen next and she feared the reality of it. The transition was the worst part: the cold bite of handcuffs around your wrists; turning to see your family watching you taken into cu
stody; changing in that moment into someone other than the person they’d always known; transforming into a criminal just as if she stood and undressed in public.

  Cynthia seemed perturbed by the agreement. But whatever made her resist, the judge suddenly overcame it.

  ‘Very well. Is there any legal reason why I should not assess sentence now?’

  ‘No, Your Honor,’ Edward said, standing with his arm around Amy.

  Cynthia did so, saying the formal words that took away a big chunk of Amy’s life. When it was done she concluded, ‘Bailiff, take the defendant into custody.’

  The bailiff was already standing behind Amy and did it quickly, even with a hint of gentleness. Amy gave Edward one startled look and disappeared behind the metal door of the holding cell attached to the courtroom. It happened so fast Edward didn’t have a chance to say anything, though what he could have said he didn’t know. He felt exactly as if he had just betrayed his sister into slavery.

  Rustling began throughout the courtroom. The show was over. People in the audience were standing, raggedly rather than uniformly, like when the lights come up in a movie theater.

  But wait, there was an encore.

  ‘We will have to bring the jury out and dismiss them,’ Judge Cynthia said to the lawyers, who were the only people left standing in front of her.

  Edward started to turn away.

  ‘But first we have another order of business,’ the judge continued.

  Edward turned back to her. Now he was the sole recipient of her attention. She stared at him as if her eyes could devour him, as if she could pull him to her with only the force of her stare. It could have been lust in her expression as her stare consumed Edward, her lips shaping themselves into something like a leer.

  ‘Mr Hall, the court has been growing increasingly suspicious as you tried this case. How did you overcome so quickly the stigma of conviction and time in prison? How did you get back into the good graces of the state bar of Texas so easily?’

  Oh, shit. This was what she’d been saving up for. This explained some of her attention toward him. Edward stopped breathing.

  ‘Yes, I can see you know where I’m going with this. And where you’re going, I suspect, is back to prison. I checked with the state bar five days ago. I didn’t want to interrupt the trial, but I know the truth now. Your license to practice law hasn’t been reinstated, Mr Hall. You haven’t even applied for it.’

  Edward looked back at her, trying to read her. The only question was how long? How long had she been waiting to get him?

  ‘Which means,’ Cynthia said, standing up and motioning the other bailiff over, ‘that you have been practicing law without a license. In my court. That is a felony, Mr Hall. It is certainly a reason to revoke your parole. Bailiff, take him into custody.’

  And then it was all re-enacted: the handcuffs, the stares, the feeling of one’s identity circling the drain and gurgling down. Edward wondered fleetingly if being arrested would be easier this time, his second time.

  It wasn’t.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Well, this was all familiar. The holding cell, tiny and narrow. The way the bailiffs now treated him like furniture to be moved rather than a person. Ironically, Edward and Amy rode to jail on the same bus, but he couldn’t talk to her. She was up front with the couple of other women and he was in back with the men.

  Evening found him in his newly-assigned cell. Edward lay on the thin mattress of his metal bunk waiting for his cellmate to return, which was when the ordeal would begin. The guy would be pissed off at having a new roomie before anyone told him. Edward was taking up some of his precious space, so they would start off on bad terms. But the main question was who the cellmate would be. Maybe an embezzling accountant, that would be wonderful. But, much more likely, a weightlifter who was here because of anger management issues. Edward waited tensely for footfalls, not even thinking past the next few minutes. That was how one survived inside.

  But, as no one arrived, his thoughts began to drift. Eyes closed, he could have been at home on his own couch. He could disappear inside his head. What he saw in there was his brother-in-law’s face. He could imagine how happy Paul would have appeared in the last months of his life, occasionally arriving at work late with the smug smile of someone freshly glowing with sex. Even more occasionally with scratches, demonstrating the volatility of his relationships. Where was he finding these women? He wasn’t bringing them home, according to his neighbors. But no one had been keeping track of Paul’s whereabouts during his apparently wild bachelor nights. Had he been afraid of Amy finding out about that life, once they started seeing each other again? No, Paul hadn’t been thinking that way until shortly before his death. No, his behavior had been more the opposite, trying to rub his estranged wife’s face in his new lifestyle.

  Louise Fisher would have seen him in person, nearly every day. If she were the jealous type at all, that might have sent her over the edge. Edward should have had her investigated more thoroughly. Laura Martinelli too. She was the only person who’d said her relationship with Paul had ended. There was no way to prove the opposite, certainly not from inside this cell.

  When the footsteps did come, they were the measured stride of legs in uniform pants. Edward opened his eyes, all thoughts driven away as he stood on the razor blades of readiness for what came next.

  Sure enough, the same deputy who’d escorted him here was back, unlocking the cell and saying, ‘Come on.’

  Hoping he’d been reassigned to some white collar criminal section, Edward hurried after him. The deputy led him back toward the booking area, toward the exit, in other words.

  Edward mustered up the courage to say, ‘What’s happened?’

  The deputy said tersely, ‘Somebody made your bail, of course.’

  Edward actually stopped for a moment. ‘Bail?’

  It was Mike waiting for him, of course. Mike would know how to make a bond; Edward’s family would not. But who had set a bond anyway? Cynthia would never have—

  ‘Several people talked her into it, actually,’ Mike told him as they walked out thirty minutes later. ‘A little group of lawyers. They said they could go to any judge to have a bond granted and anybody would release you on personal recognizance. A whole group talked her into setting a bail amount. Guys you’ve known for a long time.’ Mike started naming names, of people Edward had tried cases against and drunk with.

  ‘Actually, I think David Galindo was the main one,’ Mike said casually. ‘That’s kind of what won her over.’

  But Edward didn’t have time to think about that. He turned around and looked back at the jail.

  ‘Do you think they’d let me visit Amy?’

  Mike looked at him as if he was crazy, but then shrugged. ‘You’re still her lawyer.’

  It took an hour. When she finally came to him on the other side of the thick plastic of the attorney visiting booth, she looked terrible. She’d obviously been crying, her hair was disheveled and orange was not her color.

  But she also carried herself well, shoulders and head high – already beginning, he could see, to steel herself for the years ahead.

  He wanted to say encouraging words to her, but it would be unfair. He didn’t want to give her hope. He hadn’t come to talk to her about legal matters. His questions were more of the opposite variety.

  ‘Amy? Listen to me. Here’s what I want to know. Do you still have your lock picks? If so, where are they?’

  ‘I need you to help me tomorrow. Can you do that, please?’ Edward held the phone tightly, listening to the silence.

  Finally Linda sighed. ‘Sure. What do you need me to do?’

  ‘I’ll pick you up in the morning, about ten. I’ll call when I’m on my way. It won’t take long, I hope. Linda.’

  ‘Yes.’ He tried to hear the shades of cool in her voice, couldn’t decipher them all. But maybe there was nothing layered to her tone. Maybe it was just the tone of a love that had cooled to room temperature over the course
of time.

  ‘This may not be entirely legal, what I need to do tomorrow.’

  Linda didn’t hesitate either. ‘It’s for Amy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right then. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Edward.’

  She hung up in the middle of his thanking her.

  It was a weekday morning in wintry, sunny Houston. Edward parked boldly in Paul’s driveway. He and Linda stood in the front yard, scanning as much of the neighborhood as they could see. It was a Wednesday morning, everyone should be at work or school. Both Edward and Linda ended up staring at the house next door. Valerie Linnett was a pharmacist, a job she said she’d taken because the hours were more regular than working in a hospital. The house looked empty, but they couldn’t see into the garage.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Nothing in particular. What are you?’

  ‘I wanted you to look over Paul’s house with me, look for any sign of a woman I might have missed. But I had a feeling we might end up over there.’

  ‘In the neighbor’s house?’

  ‘Yes. Instead of looking for signs of a woman in Paul’s house—’

  ‘Look for signs of him in hers.’

  Edward nodded. ‘I realize it’s a bad idea,’ he continued, ‘but I’m kind of at the end of my rope. I need something for a motion for new trial, some new evidence …’

  Linda stared at the house next door. ‘What made you think of Ms Linnett?’

  ‘She’s closest.’

  Still watching the house next door, her eyes rising, Linda mused, ‘Everyone said Paul was so secretive about his home address and wouldn’t bring women here, until Amy. But there was one he’d dated right next door.’

  ‘Yeah. That made me wonder if he was hiding his newer women from the early one.’

  ‘Well, here’s something. You said you checked Paul’s house all over looking for a place he might have made that recording. But his attic wasn’t it.’

  ‘No. It was just studs and insulation.’

  ‘Hers isn’t. Hers is finished out.’