“I didn’t kill anyone,” Javier whispered. “I wanted to, but I didn’t.”
Hunter drummed his fingers on the table. “When you were arrested, did you say anything?”
“I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. But they said something to me… this conversation is covered by the attorney-client privilege, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Hunter waited. “Go on.”
“Chief Richardson said he didn’t care if I was innocent. It didn’t matter to him. He said someone had to go down for Chad’s murder and it might as well be me. That’s bad, isn’t it? He can’t say that, can he? He’s a cop.”
Javier didn’t have the presence of a killer. He wasn’t egotistical, heartless, or hostile. He wasn’t vengeful, nasty, or vile. He was wearing his heart on his sleeve, and his nervousness and confusion were real.
“It might help us negotiate down to a different charge,” Hunter said. “Part of my role as a criminal defense attorney is to work to achieve the best outcome for you.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I’m innocent.”
A long silent pause spread over the room.
“I think that’ll do for this discussion.” Hunter closed the files and placed them inside his briefcase. “Javier, you can’t talk about this case to anyone else here. Don’t talk about your trial to anyone but me, especially not behind bars. Not your cellmates, not the people in the prison yard, and not even the guards. You can’t trust anyone back there. Understood?”
“So, does this mean you’ll get me out of here?” Javier was almost begging. “Please?”
“We’ll be in touch soon.” Hunter stood and walked to the door. “Keep out of trouble and try to survive back there.”
Hunter tapped on the door, and it was a few moments before the guard opened it. He stepped out without looking back, leaving the meeting feeling unconvinced about his ability to win the case. He wanted to help Javier, he wanted to help a vulnerable young man in a bad situation, but there was also something else driving Hunter, another powerful reason why he needed to win the case.
And he was sure it would be exposed soon.
Chapter 5
Hunter and Carol walked along the wide sidewalk of Main St, towards City Hall. The walk took them through the central business district of Longford, highlighting a day in the life of the town. Trucks parked outside diners, a drugstore owner stood at the entrance to his shop, eager to talk with anyone that passed, and housewives filled the hairdresser, circulating gossip to whoever would listen. The summer heat was baking the streets, and even by mid-morning, the air was oppressive, hot with the promise that the day would soon be under the spell of a glaring blue sky and a relentless golden sun.
The Longford City Hall was the centerpiece of the small city, placed right in the heart of the business district. Built in the late 1920s, the Classic Revival style building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The entrance was covered by a portico extending from the roof; supported by four large red brick columns spanning the height of the building, and the exterior was well-maintained. One of the tallest buildings in the city, it housed Longford's city government, the center of power in the region.
As Hunter and Carol walked towards the City Hall from their office a block away, a passing male spotted them. The man parked his truck, crossed the wide road, wiped his brow, and waited for them to reach the City Hall’s steps.
“Hello, Carol.”
“Mike.” Carol was short with her tone. “I’m surprised you’re not running the other direction right now.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I mean, I’ll be there this Friday to fix the fence. It’s just… I ran into some money trouble and couldn’t afford the lumber. But I’ll be there on Friday with all new lumber for the fence.”
“I paid you upfront to fix it. There shouldn’t be any money trouble.”
“Of course.” The older man took off his hat and bowed his head. “I’m sorry. You’re right. As always. It’ll be done by Friday night. I promise. I’ll get my boys over there to help me. We’ll be there at 7am. No later. You have my word.”
“It’d better be done by Friday night because I have people coming over on Saturday.” Carol stepped onto the bottom step of the City Hall, standing over Mike. “Run along, Mike. I’ve got work to do.”
The man turned and looked at Hunter’s tall figure—he was wearing a fitted Italian suit, seemed to be the only man in the city wearing a tie, and was well-groomed with thick black hair. “What does Hollywood want with our city?” the man leaned closer to Carol and then indicated towards Hunter.
“He’s a lawyer, Mike. He’s here to defend Javier Mitchell.”
The look on the man’s face changed to a snarl as he turned back. “I hope you’re not helping him, Carol.”
“What I do for work is my business.”
Mike remained silent as he stared at Hunter. He then cleared his throat and spat on the ground near Hunter’s feet, before he began his walk back to his truck. Carol watched as Mike entered his truck and then turned back to Hunter. “You can expect that a lot in this city. Everyone adored Chad Townsend, even if he wasn’t a very nice boy. He was the sports star; someone everyone could be proud of. Had a rocket of an arm, and there was talk a few Major League teams could be interested, and I even heard some scouts came out here looking for him. People around here had hopes that Chad was going to put Longford on the map.”
“I’m used to being hated.”
“Hate is a sign of the weak,” Carol said. “It’s the fire that fuels the evils of this world.”
Hunter paused for a moment, her words were the same ones his mother told him many years ago. Carol didn’t stop to ponder her words of wisdom, continuing up the ten steps to the entrance. Hunter followed a few feet behind.
Inside, the entrance to City Hall was heavy with the musty smell of wet carpet. The walls were covered in 1980s wallpaper, which had seen better days, and several of the pictures that hung on the walls were crooked. The foyer was large and open, although dim, and the carpet was worn. There were five brown plastic seats near the side wall, next to one of the plastic plants, and the receptionist desk that separated the foyer from the offices was long and bland. There seemed to be little happening.
“Hello Carol,” the young brunette receptionist greeted her. “How can I help you?”
“This is Mr. Hunter.” She turned to Hunter. “And he has an appointment with the Mayor.”
“You’re the big city lawyer?” The younger lady quipped before looking him up and down. She smiled and turned back to Carol and whispered. “He’s cute and—”
“Now, now, his heart belongs to someone else,” Carol interrupted. “Can we please see Bob?”
The receptionist held her gaze on Hunter for a long moment, nodded her approval of his looks, and then leaned over the desk to face the hallway.
“Bob!” She shouted down the corridor. “The big city lawyer is here to see you!”
She sat back down and looked at Hunter. “The phone’s broken.” She explained, pointing at the phone on the desk, before twirling her hair. “It’s been broken for a month now. Perhaps you know how to fix it? You could take me out to dinner and tell me how to do it.”
Before Hunter could answer, the door to one of the meeting rooms swung open.
“Mr. Hunter. My name is Mayor Bob West. I’ve been the Mayor out here for fifteen years.” The Mayor stood at the entrance to the room ten feet away. He turned his gaze to Carol. “Hello Carol. Always a pleasure.”
“Hello Bob.” Carol’s voice was curt.
Bob West filled out his white shirt, his stomach hanging over his belt. He was a touch over six-foot-tall, his hair was gray and balding through the middle, and his eyes looked weary and tired. His shoes were polished, but his black trousers weren’t ironed. “It’s nice to see you here, Carol, as always, but the thing is, I need to have a private chat with Mr. Hunter first. Man to man.”
“Reall
y?” Carol raised her eyebrows. “We’re going to be that sexist, are we? We’re going to travel back to the 1970s and pretend it’s ok?”
“Come on, Carol. I didn’t mean to offend you,” West groaned. “But this will be quite a robust conversation and I might say some things that are quite distasteful. I don’t want you to hear what I’m going to say.”
“Now you listen to me.” She pointed her finger at the Mayor. “I’ve heard more ‘robust’ conversations than you’ve had nights at the bar. And I know, that’s a lot.”
He dropped his head and closed his eyes, before drawing a long breath. “Carol. Please. I’d like to talk to the city lawyer one on one. Give him a lay out of the land.”
Carol looked to Hunter.
“Carol’s experience is extensive,” Hunter stepped forward and defended his new employee. “There’s nothing you can say to me that you can’t say to her.”
Bob West didn’t know what to say, standing at the door with a confused look on his face.
Carol stood a little taller. “No, it’s ok.” She reached out and touched Hunter on the arm. “Thank you for defending me, but Bob’s right—it would be good for the two of you to talk alone. It’ll give you an idea of how corrupt the people in this building are.” Carol sat down on one of the brown chairs to the side of the room. “I’ll wait here for you to finish.”
The Mayor groaned at Carol’s remarks, and then opened the door wider. Hunter strode forward and stepped inside the meeting room. The meeting room matched the blandness of the foyer. There was one large window at the end of the room, looking out to Main St, and a long white Formica table in the middle. Five office chairs, each of various age and quality, were placed around the outside. There were five small abstract paintings on the wall, and Hunter couldn’t tell if they were painted by someone with years of experience, or by students in elementary school.
“You’ve got a winner there, Mr. Hunter.” West closed the door behind him and pointed to the seat at the end of the table for Hunter to sit on. “If Carol sets her sights on something, you can guarantee nothing will stand in her way. One of the smartest women in this city, but also one of the strongest. There’s no way you can tell her what to do.”
“She’s very experienced.” Hunter took the offer to sit down. “And she seems to know everyone and everything that happens around here.”
“She’s friends with all three of my ex-wives. That’s why you’ll never see me at a dinner at her house.” West smiled as he sat down opposite Hunter. His smile was uneasy, shrewd. He leaned his thick arms on the table and then nodded to the window at the end of the room. “You’ve chosen a tough time to arrive in Longford. Everyone is a bit wound up with this heatwave. It’s worse than I’ve seen in decades. Are you sure you can handle this type of heat?”
“I’m doing fine.”
“Good. My office is upstairs,” West paused for a moment to watch Hunter’s reaction. “I wanted to meet you in this meeting room because I didn’t want to let the son of a serial killer into my office. I didn’t want the evil stench of crime soaking into my walls.”
Hunter didn’t respond, keeping his glare on the Mayor. He’d been painted with that brush so often that he found silence was the best way to keep the conversation from continuing. He knew West was poking him, trying to see if he could elicit a reaction, trying to see how much fire and fight was within Hunter.
West waited for him to respond, but when Hunter didn’t, he nodded. “Right, it’s like that. I understand.” He sat up a little straighter. “I called you because I needed to talk to you, off the record, before you jumped too far into this case with the Mexican kid. But I need this chat to be off-the-record.” West leaned back in his chair. The chair struggled under his weight. “Agreed?”
Hunter nodded.
“I’ll start with the big question then—are you sure you want to do this, Mr. Hunter? There’s a world of hurt and pain in this city, and being an outsider, the local folk are going to take it out on you. We’ve seen a lot of economic pain over the last two generations, and I should know, my family has been in the area for over a hundred years. The city’s population has been cut in half since its heyday, and we had a big drug problem up until ten years ago. Chief Richardson cleaned up the streets. I know it’s a sob story, but we’re talking about people’s homes and their hearts. There’s not a lot of hope in a place like this, and Chad, well,” He sighed. “Chad was the biggest light this city had in years. The whole city used to go to his high school football games and he excelled in baseball. He had the best arm I’d ever seen. His success gave us all hope.”
“That shouldn’t influence a court case.”
“I’m sure it won’t.” He scoffed. “But I need you to remember we’re surrounded by farms. Everyone here owns a weapon.”
“Is that a threat?” Hunter squinted.
“Not a threat, but a warning. I wouldn’t want you to go back to Chicago in a box.” West stood and walked towards the window. He leaned against the frame and looked to the street. “We don’t like outsiders, especially not ones that want to ride into our city and let murderers walk free.”
“Javier is claiming he’s innocent.”
“I’m sure they all say that to you. I bet most of the murderers you defend say they’re innocent. And Javier’s Mexican.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can’t trust a single word that comes out of his stinking mouth.” He growled. “They’re all like that. They kill each other all the time down there. Haven’t you seen the movies? They’re all liars, drug dealers, and scum. We had a group of Mexicans move into the city a decade ago, and all they brought with them were drugs and violence. Lying little tacos.”
“Your racial prejudice has no place in the legal system.”
“The legal system?” He laughed. “You think this is about the legal system? Mr. Hunter, you’re in deeper than you know. Do you really think we have the same laws as they do in Chicago? We have our own laws here. We’re outside your ‘system.’ We have a system that works. Not like Chicago, where you guys can’t even put away a murderer. What did I read the other day? Fifty percent of murders aren’t solved in Chicago. Fifty percent! So, if I shoot someone, there’s a fifty-fifty chance I walk away from it. How can you talk about crime and justice when you come from a city like that?”
“Policing isn’t my job.”
“No, your job is to destroy the real America by letting criminals walk the streets. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Destroy our great country. You’re a traitor to the flag.” He waited for Hunter to respond with anger, but when he didn’t, he continued. “My job is to protect America. The real America. The little people. My job is to make sure that people like Javier Mitchell don’t bring their drugs, crime, and illegal behavior into my city. Can you imagine what this city will be like if we don’t punish him for what he did? The city would be overrun with drug-dealing Mexicans within a month. You can keep them in Chicago. We don’t need them here.”
Hunter held his gaze on the Mayor, remaining calm.
“All Chicago does is drain the resources from the rest of the state,” West continued. “You take our taxes and our resources and our money, and you fund your drug-fuelled, murderous, violent city. It’s filth! We shouldn’t have to pay for your sins. We should be our own state in Southern Illinois.” West walked back to his chair but didn’t sit down. He leaned against the back of the chair, staring at Hunter. “Tell me, do you vote red or blue?”
“I vote for policies, not parties.”
“A true fence-sitter, of course.” West scoffed and waved his hand in the air. “Too scared to commit to a cause. I say choose a side—right or left. Don’t sit in the middle. Commit to a side.”
“The middle of politics is where commonsense lies,” Hunter said. “We need the left to advance ideas and keep society moving forward, and we need the right to make sure we hold onto traditions and don’t change with every new idea. But in the mi
ddle of those two sides, in the middle of politics, lies the majority of people. The middle is where people are able to look at both sides of the argument and make well-informed decisions.”
“What a load of bull. You need passion in politics, not people who change ideas on a whim. You can’t trust people who keep changing sides. People need trust. They need commitment to an ideal. You can’t flip and flop between positions and policy. Choose a cause—”
“And follow it blindly?”
“How dare you.” West slapped his heavy hand on the table. “In this city, we have passion in our choices. We have faith in our decisions. We have faith in the Lord. In this city, we do things by the book. We have confidence in our choices. We punish murderers. We respect each other. We don’t shoot each other over parking disagreement like they do in Chicago. Longford is a city of respect.”
Hunter waited a moment, before he sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “And it’s a city full of corruption.”
“Corruption?! How dare you!” The Mayor slapped the table again and pointed his finger at Hunter. “I need to make myself clear so there’s no confusion. Everyone in this city hated the Mexican kid. The only friends he had were those young kids with the woke ideals. These woke folk will wake up one day and find out how bad their decisions were.”
Hunter drew a breath. “Was there something you needed to tell me, or did you just need someone to listen to your racist speech?”
“I’m not racist.” He shook his head and began to pace the floor again. “I believe all people are the same, the color of their skin doesn’t matter. But if one group of people consistently bring drugs and violence into my city, then I need to protect the residents. That’s not racist; that’s a rational policy. There’s not a racist bone in my body.”
“Judging people on their race is racist.”
“Don’t be pedantic. I called you here because I know you’re heading to court this afternoon to file a motion to move the case to another county. I’m telling you that you don’t want to go to the court appointment. Make up an excuse and then skip out of the city. Nobody will think any less of you. In fact, we’d never even think of you again. Leave before you get in too deep.”
Natural Justice: A Legal Thriller (Tex Hunter Legal Thriller Series Book 6) Page 3
