An Unequal Defense (David Adams)

by Chad Zunker

  PRAISE FOR CHAD ZUNKER

  AN EQUAL JUSTICE

  “A thriller with a message. A pleasure to read. Twists I didn’t see coming. I read it in one sitting.”

  —Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon bestselling author of My Sister’s Grave

  “Taut, suspenseful, and action-packed with a hero you can root for, Zunker has hit it out of the park with this one.”

  —Victor Methos, bestselling author of The Neon Lawyer

  “A gripping thriller with a heart, An Equal Justice hits the ground running . . . The chapters flew by, with surprises aplenty and taut writing. A highly recommended read that introduces a lawyer with legs.”

  —Crime Thriller Hound

  THE TRACKER

  “A gritty, compelling, and altogether engrossing novel that reads as if ripped from the headlines. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Chad Zunker is the real deal.”

  —Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author of Numbered Account and Rules of Deception

  “Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity.”

  —Fred Burton, New York Times bestselling author of Under Fire

  OTHER TITLES BY CHAD ZUNKER

  DAVID ADAMS SERIES

  An Equal Justice

  SAM CALLAHAN SERIES

  The Tracker

  The Shadow Shepherd

  Hunt the Lion

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Chad Zunker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542000055

  ISBN-10: 154200005X

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  To Katie, my wife, whose compassion for the vulnerable first pulled us into a world that has changed our lives for the better.

  To my brothers and sisters on the streets, who are struggling to survive and to be known. I see you.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Rebel opened his eyes, blinked several times, and tried to focus. Where was he? The area in front of him was dark; the only light came from a lamppost down the alleyway. A few feet ahead sat two dingy metal dumpsters stuffed full of boxes and trash bags. Beneath him was cold and dirty concrete—which was not unusual. As a thirty-seven-year-old drifter who’d lived on the streets for the past five years, Rebel was used to finding himself sitting on concrete with his back pressed against the brick of a random building.

  He felt disoriented. Had he had a spell?

  Putting a hand on his head, Rebel noticed he was wearing a knit cap. That didn’t make any sense to him. He never wore hats of any kind. He yanked it off, stared at it, confused. A black ski cap? Where had he gotten it? Then his eyes drifted down to his chest, where he discovered he was also wearing an army-green jacket. It had some kind of unfamiliar military stitching on the front left breast pocket. This was not his jacket, either. Had he taken it from someone?

  Pushing himself up off the concrete, Rebel squinted, peered down the alley in both directions. He noticed two men sleeping on top of cardboard boxes in another doorway of the same building ten feet over from him. They were wrapped in dirty blankets, and both looked asleep—or passed out. Rebel thought he recognized the older guy with the scraggly gray beard but couldn’t place his name at the moment. Turning around, Rebel could hear rock music pumping from inside the building behind him.

  Was he back in Moscow? How long had he been there?

  He put both of his hands in the front pockets of the green jacket, searching for answers. His left hand came up empty. But his right hand gripped a familiar metal object. What the hell?

  He pulled out a gun, his eyes shooting wide-open. Startled, he flexed his fingers involuntarily, squeezing the trigger, suddenly setting the gun off. A loud gunshot rang out, a bullet ricocheting off the concrete just inches from his foot, scaring the hell out of him.

  Rebel stared at the gun in his shaky hand. Why did he have a gun? He hated guns and never used them anymore. Not since he’d bolted from the program.

  Glancing over to his left, Rebel made out a guy lying facedown on the concrete in the middle of the alley about twenty feet from him. The man wasn’t moving. He wore a white button-down, slacks, nice black dress shoes. There was something familiar about him. Then Rebel noticed smoke lingering in the air a few feet to the left of the man—like someone had just exhaled a puff from a cigarette. Beneath the smoke, Rebel spotted a face staring right at him from another back doorway of the building.

  Rebel felt a charge go through him. Was the guy a Russian agent? Had they finally found him? The guy in the doorway stepped out a bit, a pool of light now washing over his face. He didn’t look like Russian intelligence. Was he CIA? A phone was pressed to his ear. Was he calling for backup? Were more spooks about to be all over the alley?

  Rebel cursed, felt his heart racing. Getting taken in by the CIA might be worse for him than being captured by the Russians. He had to get the hell out of there right now before it was too late. He could never let the CIA take him back to the dragon’s lair.

  TWO

  David Adams was startled awake when a light popped on down the office hallway. It took him a moment to clear the fog from his brain. What time was it? He knew it was past midnight, since that was around the time he’d finally dozed off. Sitting up from the cheap sofa, David pulled earplugs from his ears—something he wore each night to block out the noise from the Speakeasy, a 1920s-style cocktail bar next door that shared rickety walls with his run-down office building. He could still hear the music pumping, which meant it was not yet two in the morning, when the place f
inally closed down for the night. The law firm he’d started with Thomas Gray, his mentor, leased a tiny office space on the second floor of a three-story redbrick building that just happened to sit directly across the street from his former legal home—the pristine Frost Bank Tower, with all its shiny glass, metal, and steel.

  He rubbed his eyes, glanced around the back room. There was an old wooden desk shoved into one corner, a cheap fold-out table that held a coffee maker against a side wall, a mini fridge beside it, and a metal bookcase loaded down with stacks of legal books. The back room was their library, kitchen, and lounge, all rolled into one cramped space. Lately, the back room had also doubled as David’s bedroom. Thomas knew he’d been sleeping at the office lately to save money on rent—a clear violation of their lease agreement. But David had insisted it would be only until he could find a more affordable living situation. That was eight weeks ago. David had been showering and getting dressed at the Gold’s Gym around the corner most mornings before work. He was grateful for the reasonable thirty-nine-dollar-a-month membership. In many ways, he was now living only a few short rungs up the ladder from his clients these days.

  A noise came from the entry room. Was he being robbed? He felt certain he’d locked the office, so the only way inside was with a key—or someone breaking and entering. That was always a possibility with the type of clients he now represented. He found he could be their best friend one moment, their worst enemy the next. It just came with the territory as a street lawyer. David had been learning that the hard way the past six months, ever since he’d walked out the golden doors of Hunter & Kellerman, the richest law firm in Austin, to help form Gray & Adams, LLP.

  David’s clients were no longer billion-dollar tech companies who promptly paid his $475-per-hour associate rate to shuffle around a mind-numbing amount of nonsensical paperwork. His client list had been swiftly replaced by a growing group of ragtag characters who wore dirty, mismatched clothes and spent most nights in shelters or alleys, under bridges, or in the woods. Most of his new friends could barely pay him a dime—if that. Which was why David had given up his luxury condo a few blocks away and had been sleeping on this stiff sofa the past couple of months.

  Another bang in the entry room. Someone was definitely out there. Thomas? David reached into the sofa cushions for his cell phone. No missed calls or texts from his partner. Standing, he grabbed a wooden baseball bat leaning against the wall next to the mini fridge—one that he sometimes swung around a bit to help him think better. David stepped cautiously down the hallway, wearing only a gray Stanford Law T-shirt and blue boxer shorts. Whoever was in the entry room—a space that doubled as their conference room—made no attempt to be quiet.

  David was damn near ready to take a swing when he spotted a friendly face sitting at the round table, eating a sandwich from a white sack.

  “Doc?” David said. “What the hell? I almost clubbed you.”

  “Sorry to wake you, Shep,” Doc said. “But we need to talk.”

  David dropped the bat to his side, his shoulders relaxing. Everyone on the streets called him Shep, the nickname a homeless street preacher named Benny had given him last year before the old man had tragically died.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” David stated.

  “It’s important.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Doc assured him. “But someone else is in big trouble.”

  “All right, gimme a second. Let me at least get my pants on.”

  Doc was a tall, slender man in his late fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. David had first met him last summer when Benny had walked David deep into the woods for his first visit to the Camp—a secret tent community for a group of homeless men. Doc had been one of the founders of the Camp before it had burned to the ground last year. After partnering with Thomas, David had hired Doc to do part-time legal research for him. Turned out the man was one hell of a paralegal. Doc had taught high school history for a lot of years down near Galveston before he spiraled into alcoholism, separated from his family, then fell into his long bout with homelessness.

  After putting on his jeans, David returned to the front room.

  “What is it?” David asked. “Who’s in trouble?”

  “You know Rebel?”

  David pondered the name, shook his head.

  “You’ve probably seen him around town,” Doc said. “A bit of a hell-raiser but harmless, if you ask me.”

  “Okay. What about him?”

  “He got arrested a couple of hours ago.”

  “For what?”

  “Murder.”

  David felt his shoulders tense up again. He wasn’t used to hearing the word murder associated with any of his street associates. Most of their legal troubles revolved around topics like petty theft, being drunk and disorderly, and disturbing the peace.

  David pulled out a second chair, sat across from Doc. “Who did he kill?”

  “He’s being accused of killing a county prosecutor earlier tonight in an alley near Sixth and Trinity.”

  David felt the tension now race up to his neck. A prosecutor? He’d expected Doc to say Rebel had killed another homeless guy. Not an attorney. David had gotten to know quite a few prosecutors over the past few months. He also had two good friends and former Stanford classmates who worked inside the DA’s office—which gave him sudden pause.

  “Do you know the name of the prosecutor?” David asked.

  “A guy named Luke Murphy is what they’re saying.”

  “No,” David gasped, feeling a hard punch to the gut. He slumped in his chair as a sudden wave of emotion pressed in on him and took his breath away. Murphy had grown up in small-town West Texas, like David, which was how they’d first connected while at Stanford. David also knew Murphy’s wife, Michelle, who had worked full-time as a middle school teacher back in Palo Alto while her husband had finished law school. The Murphys had two small children, a boy and a girl, and David couldn’t imagine the feeling of devastation inside that household right now.

  “I guess you know him?” Doc asked.

  David nodded. “What happened?”

  “They say Rebel shot him.”

  “Are you suggesting you don’t believe Rebel actually did it?”

  Doc shook his head. “It’s hard for me to see it. I mean, the man’s a bit of a wild card and certainly a crazy talker—constantly spouting off these conspiracies about men who he says are always out to get him, telling us about all these dangerous fights he’s been involved in over the years—but I just have a difficult time believing he’d do something like this.”

  “Are there any witnesses?”

  “I haven’t been able to confirm anything yet. It’s not like the cops will talk to me. I was hoping you might get involved.”

  “Involved how?”

  “He’ll need a lawyer.”

  David tilted his head. “You want me to represent the guy?”

  “I just want you to go talk to him. Get the truth.”

  “No way. The truth is, I don’t want any part of this. Luke Murphy was my friend. I know his wife and kids. And we’re talking about a case where the victim is a county prosecutor, not just some guy off the street. Whoever stupidly takes this on will feel the full weight of the DA’s office. Not to mention when the media finds out, this will probably be a three-ring circus.”

  “The media already has it,” Doc said.

  David walked into his front office, which had a view over Congress Avenue, and flipped on the small TV he had set up on a credenza against the wall. He switched channels from ESPN to a local twenty-four-hour news channel. He immediately saw a photo of Luke Murphy on the screen, with his full head of dark hair and strong jaw, the words Assistant District Attorney Shot Dead in big bold letters at the bottom, sending another jolt through him. The female reporter said Murphy had been with the DA’s office for the past two years and was respected by all. The screen then cut away to police cars surrounding the corner of Sixth an
d Trinity. The reporter mentioned the police already had a suspect in custody, but the identity had not yet been released.

  “What do you think?” Doc asked, watching the TV from behind David.

  “Sorry, Doc, but I don’t want to touch this thing with a ten-foot pole.”

  “You should know something first before you make that decision.”

  “What?”

  “Benny and Rebel were friends.”

  David turned to Doc with a wrinkled brow.

  Doc explained. “Benny brought Rebel out to the Camp two years ago. While most guys on the streets steered clear of Rebel, Benny moved in even closer.”

  “That does not surprise me.”

  “Yeah, well, Benny really got to know Rebel and began to peel away at his hard outer layer. I’ll admit I was skeptical because of Rebel’s erratic behavior, but I really started to believe Benny might make a breakthrough with him. You could tell Rebel was starting to embrace our community at the Camp.”

  “So what happened?” David had not met the man during his visit to the Camp last year.

  Doc sighed, shrugged. “Too many strange voices in the man’s head, I think. Rebel just upped and vanished one night, and we didn’t see him again for more than six months. When he finally showed back up in Austin, he seemed even worse off than before. More paranoid, more frantic. Benny tried again but just couldn’t get anywhere with him. But he never stopped trying. You know Benny; he would never give up on people. All the way up to the day Benny died, he still believed Rebel could be saved.”

  David thought about that for a moment. Benny had meant the world to him. The old man had entered his life last year like a divine tornado and had turned everything upside down in a meaningful way. If Benny had once tried to save Rebel, shouldn’t he at least go talk to the guy? Did he owe the old man that much?

  “Damn it, Doc.” He sighed. “Maybe you should be the lawyer and not me. You sure as hell know how to make your case.”

  “You’ll go talk to him?”

  “I’ll go talk to him, but that’s all.”

  THREE

  After slipping on his brown leather jacket and running shoes, David walked the four blocks from his office building over to the chaotic crime scene at the corner of Sixth and Trinity. He wanted to get a look for himself before heading to the county jail to talk to Rebel. A half dozen police cars were parked up and down the street, along with other emergency vehicles, red-and-blue lights still flashing, barricades up everywhere. Since the shooting had occurred near the city’s popular bar-and-entertainment district, a big crowd of people had gathered around the perimeter. Most looked like drunk fraternity guys who just wanted to get on TV. Several reporters with cameras seemed happy to oblige, shoving microphones in faces, while overzealous buddies hooted and hollered behind them like they were at a sporting event.