Lethal Defense

by Michael Stagg

  Cyn held out her hand out. “Like I said, Nathan, you were the perfect lawyer for this case. My firm thanks you, Hank's family thanks you, and I thank you for everything you did. And went through.”

  Which, of course, wasn’t an answer.

  I was tempted to leave her hand out there but I didn't. When I shook it, she glanced down and said, “You should get that looked at.”

  It was my turn to shrug.

  “Hopefully next time won’t be so painful,” she said.

  “Next time?”

  “Careers are long and winding things, Nathan. You never know.” She checked her phone. “I have to catch my flight. Good-bye.”

  “Goodbye,” I said, and Cyn left. I decided that I was too charged up, too tired, and too happy to be angry about the way I’d been used. Instead, I picked up the phone and made a call. The woman answered and we arranged to meet. Then I turned off the lights to the office and left.

  I went to the Railcar. It was Friday after work so the place was busy, with more drinkers than eaters. I took a seat on the patio because I'd been inside too much for the last month. I found a table off to the corner, with a clear view of the river, ordered a beer, and waited for the woman.

  I sat there long enough to order a second beer and it arrived at the same time as a blonde woman in a black suit. When I caught her eye and raised my bottle, Maggie White waved and made her way over. “Congratulations,” she said as she sat down at the table across from me.

  “Thanks. Want a drink?”

  “I ordered one on my way in.” She pulled her phone out of her purse and set it on the table between us. “You caught me right as I was pulling into the airport.”

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “Are you kidding? I have so many questions about the case that I'd like for you to comment on. For example why—”

  “That's not what I want to talk to you about.”

  Maggie cocked her head. “What else would we talk about?”

  “Sarah.”

  I could see her clench up. “My stories were accurate.”

  “I know they were. About the last two years of her life. About the period after she blew out her knee playing volleyball and had surgery and was prescribed oxycodone and got hooked on it during her rehab. About the period when the pharmacies started keeping track of how many pills she got and so she had to go find heroin so that she could feed her addiction. About the period when her husband was so focused on working and so inattentive to her that he believed her when she said she was tired and believed her that she was trying to lose weight and didn't realize what was happening until she was dead.”

  Maggie was listening.

  “I want to tell you the rest of her story. About the all-state volleyball player for Carrefour South who was amazing on the piano. About the girl who got an environmental science degree from Michigan State and returned home to work in the woods and lakes of Carrefour. About the woman who saw her parents every week and volunteered as a reading tutor at the school. About the woman who did triathlons and loved the outdoors and never smoked pot or took any drugs until she dislocated her knee so badly that they were prescribed for her. About a woman who didn't deserve what happened to her because her husband failed her.”

  Maggie's drink came. It looked like some sort of pink vodka concoction. She stirred it with her straw. “If I listen to it, I’m going to write about it.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  “All of it.”

  “They’ve read the bad. I’d like them to read the good.”

  “It doesn’t change the ending.”

  “I’m very aware of that.”

  Maggie set her drink aside, hit record on her phone, and said, “Tell me about Sarah Shepherd.”

  So I did.

  The next day was Saturday and it was sunny and it was beautiful and I took a day off work for the first time in more than a month. I went to my parents’ cottage around lunchtime. When I arrived, my dad already had five of his grandkids out on the boat, which allowed me to hang out on the shore with my brothers and my sisters-in-law. Normally, there would have been something to do to help get dinner ready but that day there was a big, black smoker and a red and white striped tent and a scurrying staff that promised that all of that was going to be taken care of. Which my family appreciated because it gave Kate and Izzy time to mock me for having pale, inside-all-day lawyer skin and gave Tom and Mark the opportunity to wonder how a guy with a desk job could manage to break his hand. The splint on my right hand did allow for full movement of my fingers, which I utilized in response.

  Hank had insisted that he thank everyone and my mom and dad never minded having people over so, later in the day, Danny and his wife and their little daughter showed up, and Lindsey arrived with her boyfriend shortly after. Olivia and Cade walked up with Cade literally carrying a keg of beer on his giant back and it wasn’t long before Mom and Dad's friends from around the lake gravitated over so that by the time the pig was ready, there was a full-fledged celebration going on.

  Around seven, the pitmaster, a short guy with a flushed face and a full beard, pronounced that the feast tent was open and I elbowed my way along with my nieces and nephews to get some apple-stuffed pork.

  It was delicious. I mean it was melt in your mouth, eyes roll back in your head delicious.

  I ate my first helping and was thinking about going back for a second when my phone buzzed. I wiped the juice off my hands and took a look. It was a text from a number I didn't recognize. It said simply, I'm out front.

  I wasn't sure who that would be but I had a guess so I grabbed a couple of beers and went around to the front of the cottage. There was a decked-out black pick-up truck in the drive and, as I came up the walk, a large, bearded man stepped out.

  Hank.

  He grinned. “How's the pig?”

  “Hank, it's delicious.” I handed him a beer and he hesitated for a moment before he took it. I held out my left hand and he ignored it and gave me a big bear hug. “I'm glad. Is your family here too?”

  I smiled. “All of them. On their way to stuffing themselves into a food coma.”

  “Outstanding.”

  “Are you going to join us?”

  “No, no. I need to get out on the road.”

  “Will you be going back to the tour?”

  “I don't think so. Lizzy might have me but I can’t imagine that the label wants me around. Or that Smoke does.” A cloud passed over his face.

  “Is Lizzy still with him?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t want to voice my suspicions but Hank knew what I’d said at trial and he wasn’t stupid. “Will she be okay with him?” I asked.

  Hank drank his beer. “I don't know. But his absence was too convenient. And what you dug up about his former band.” He trailed off for a moment. “Seems like something a coward might try to control his singer. I'll keep an eye on them. From a distance.”

  “Hank,” I said my tone rising. “Have we learned from this experience?”

  “Yes,” he said in a tone that was as cold as his eyes. “Next time I’m protecting someone, I won't lose my temper.”

  “Jesus, Hank. Next time?”

  “Years can stretch longer than you think, Counselor. Never say never.” He smiled then and the joy came back to his face. “Oh, and, if I get in trouble, I’ll make sure it's in Carrefour so I can have the best lawyer in the world save my ass.” He put a massive hand on my shoulder. “I never would have survived the confinement, Counselor. Thank you.”

  I felt his gratitude and I felt his joy and, deep down, if I was being honest, I felt like Dillon Chase had it coming. “You're welcome. Hank, you have to join us. There's no way we're gonna finish all this pig and Cade literally just carried a keg of beer in here.”

  Hank smiled but his eyes were sad. “I don't think your family would appreciate having a murderer at the family barbecue.”

  “Is that him?” said a woman's voice. My mother stood on t
he front porch of the cottage, both hands on her hips.

  I turned. “Mom, this is Hank Braggi.”

  My mom glared at me. “Nathan Shepherd, why is this man standing in my front yard?”

  Hank raised a big hand. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Shepherd. I was just leaving.”

  My mom turned her stare on him. “You most certainly are not. You’re coming back right now and helping us eat this magnificent pig you bought for us. And if you weren’t a lawyer and an adult, Nathan, you'd be grounded for keeping a guest outside and away from the party without introducing him to your family.”

  Hank's gaze lightened.

  “You’re stuck now,” I said. “Neither of us are going to get her off this one.”

  Hank smiled and I swear to God he actually lowered his head in modest embarrassment as he climbed the porch and accepted a quick hug from my mother. “I'm warning you; my granddaughters are going to want to hear all about this Lizzy Saint person.”

  Hank paused on the steps. “Are you sure, Mrs. Shepherd?”

  My mom reached up and patted his bearded cheek. “Our family’s been down this road, Hank. We just wouldn’t have been as messy.”

  That actually seemed to get Hank, as if the acceptance and understanding was far more than he expected. He gave her a quick, quiet hug then straightened and said, “Do you think your granddaughters would like concert T-shirts? I have a whole box in the back.”

  My mom smiled. “Be quick about it.”

  Hank hustled back to his truck, pulled out a box, and then we followed my mother around back to meet the family.

  Epilogue

  Maggie White was as good as her word. The next day, Entertainment Buzz carried a long story about Sarah. Maggie painted a picture of the person Sarah was, of the great things she did, and of the joy she was to be around before she blew out her knee. Instead of a story filled with contempt for a junkie and scorn for an overdose, it painted the picture so many other people have faced—of a woman unknowingly addicted and then left with nowhere to turn once that addiction had truly taken hold. The ending was the same of course, as it had to be, and there was a section at the end about how it paralleled the Braggi case and what it was like for me to defend it but I didn't read that part. It was enough for me that Sarah's story was told.

  Sarah’s mom called me later that morning. She was crying and she thanked me and she told me that she missed her and I told her that I did too.

  There were things I didn't know yet that morning, things that wouldn’t happen for a while. It would be another month before the police would determine that Aaron Whitsel’s death was the result of operator error, a conclusion Olivia told me not to question because the cartel he had been selling for was nothing to mess with. I would have no desire to mess with it.

  It would be another year before Jared Smoke died of an accidental drug overdose, apparently from a tainted batch of heroin. An exhaustive, rumor-filled investigation would reveal no evidence of foul play. I would have no idea if Smoke had fallen in with the wrong group or the wrong man and would have no desire to find out.

  And of course at that time I didn't know that the album Lizzy Saint would release after Smoke’s death would be the biggest seller of her career or that I would drive my nieces Reed and Taylor to the Detroit stop of Lizzy Saint’s Runes tour and become their all-time favorite uncle by introducing them to Lizzy backstage afterwards. And when I heard the long, cracking drum solo of her new hit “Seventeen” and the a cappella wail of the preamble to “Protector,” well, I would decide not to dig to deep and would yell for an encore like everyone else.

  I didn't know any of those things, though, on the Sunday morning after the trial. What I knew that Sunday morning was that the world, at least that part of the world that read Entertainment Buzz, had a picture of what my Sarah was like. I checked the clock and saw that I had a couple of hours before I was due back at my parents’ cottage so I went to the garage and grabbed the hardware store bag that had sat on a shelf for more than a year. I took it to the kitchen, pulled out a tub of spackle and a putty knife, and began to fill the fist-sized hole in the wall.

  The spackle was rough and uneven and it didn’t match the existing drywall exactly, not the pattern or the depth or the color of the original.

  But it was a start.

  The Next Nate Shepherd Book

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  About the Author

  Michael Stagg has been a trial lawyer for more than twenty-five years. He has tried cases to juries and he’s won and he’s lost and he’s argued about it in the court of appeals after. He still practices law so he’s writing the Nate Shepherd series under a pen name.

  Michael and his wife live in the Midwest. Their sons are grown so time that used to be spent at football games and band concerts now goes to writing. He enjoys sports of all sorts, reading, and grilling, with the order depending on the day.

  You can contact him on Facebook or at mikestaggbooks@gmail.com.

  Also by Michael Stagg

  The Nate Shepherd Legal Thriller Series

  Lethal Defense

  True Intent