by Alan Lee
Dad.
“Kix.”
Please return my bottle. I’m growing hoarse.
“Do not throw it again or it’s gone for good,” I said. I picked the bottle up and set it on his tray.
He forehand smashed it across the room. Farther this time.
A woman was waiting outside my office door when I arrived at 9:20am. She wore expensive red slip-ons with petite wedge heels, black slacks, and a beige double-breasted peacoat. Underneath, a red turtleneck. Her hair was brown and long and soft, and when she saw me she smiled and it created multiple laugh lines around her eyes and the corners of her lips. A genuine leather satchel was slung over her shoulder. All in all, it was a good look.
“You have to be Mr. August,” she said and she shivered. “I recognize the photo.”
“Did you not for a moment wonder if I was Tom Hardy?”
“The guy who played Mad Max?” she asked. “I see the resemblance, I suppose.”
“I knew it.”
“You’re late. Your office is scheduled to open at nine.”
“I almost didn’t come in today. How long would you have waited? It’s chilly,” I said, keen weatherman that I was.
“I have a thermos. And you haven’t answered any of my messages. So, a while,” she said. “Can we chat?”
I unlocked the stairwell door for her and we went up. She followed me into the office. The area wasn’t especially cold but I turned on the space heater.
“I make a mean cup of Keurig,” I offered.
“So can most recent law school grads and they’re idiots. I brought my own, thanks. Help yourself though. I don’t mind.”
I pulled out a Yeti rambler from my own satchel. “I am as prepared as thou.”
“You look exhausted.”
“It was a harrowing night.”
“Your office has an odor.” She settled into my client chair, still wearing her peacoat and shivering inside it. “Smells like…a zoo, maybe?”
“Thank you. It’s potpourri. I purchase masculine scents.”
“Men should smell like zoos?”
I nodded. “The good ones.”
“Is that a Bible on your shelf?”
I nodded again. “Read it?”
“Sure. We studied the greats in law school, which included Paul. He was a genius, you know. On the level with Plato.”
“You’ll have to enlighten me. His run-on sentences are cumbersome. You’re an attorney?”
“I am. Candice Hamilton.” She crossed her legs but her hands remained in the pockets of her coat. In the corner, the space heater made some noise. “I’m the girl who’s been pestering you about Grady Huff.”
“Grady Huff. Trust fund kid living at the lake, killed his cleaning lady,” I said.
“That’s the guy.”
“Grady Huff is gonna swing.”
“I’ll have a heck of a time picking jurors who don’t agree with you,” she said. “In fact, that’s why I had the trial moved to Roanoke. Extreme prejudice due to notoriety at the lake. We had no shot at twelve disinterested jurors.”
I said, “Trial is in twenty-one days? Twenty-eight, something like that. Isn’t it a little late to be hiring guys like me?”
“According to my local contacts, you’re the only guy worth trusting. And I’m new to the case too. My client fired his entire defense team a week ago. He filed motion to withdraw counsel and they couldn’t sign it fast enough.”
“He’s rough on his attorneys?”
“He’s a deplorable, despicable, and irredeemable ass.”
“Wow,” I said. “Count me in.”
“However, I recently sank fifty thousand dollars into a slam-dunk medical malpractice case and whiffed. Mr. Huff’s deep pockets come at a good time.”
“You motioned to get a later trial date?”
“My client refuses to waive his right to a speedy trail,” said Candice Hamilton. “He’s out of time. The trial is happening.”
“Why won’t he waive—”
“I told you. Because he’s a deplorable, despicable—”
“And irredeemable ass. Got it.”
“He cannot imagine losing. So why delay the victory,” she said. “His words.”
“Why did he hire you, a med mal lawyer?”
Her chin tilted upwards with a bit of defiance. “I am primarily defense. Some big wins under my belt. I once worked with Kenneth Starr on a death row case,” she said.
“The Kenneth Starr?”
“After retiring from government work, Mr. Starr worked pro bono in Virginia on the Robin Lovitt case. I was part of local counsel. We lost. But still.”
I said, “Grady Huff is gonna swing. All you do is lose.”
“Those are two of my only losses. My record is quite good. And yes, he probably will.”
“I don’t want to help an irredeemable ass avoid the noose.”
“It’ll be a life sentence, not a noose. I can triple your daily rate,” she said.
“Meh.”
“Fine, quintuple. As I said, his pockets are deep.”
I picked up my coffee and drank some. The space heater began to make its presence felt. “Didn’t Grady Huff admit his guilt?”
She smiled. Despite it being a grim and exasperated smile, I enjoyed it. The laugh lines and dimples gave her face character. “Yes he did. Being a trust fund kid has a way of atrophying one’s brain. I’m not trying to prove his innocence; he absolutely killed Juanita Yates, the young cleaning lady. I’m working on the motive and mindset angle.”
“Mens rea,” I said, displaying the uttermost limits of my defense knowledge.
She looked pleased I knew the term. “Precisely.”
I used to be a police officer, I wanted to say.
Oh really? she would ask.
In Los Angeles, I would say.
Tell me more.
The homicide division, I would say.
And then she would swoon.
Almost certainly. Everyone knows defense lawyers love cops.
Instead I said, “No deal forthcoming from the DA?”
“The case has recently taken an unexpected turn. The federal government has gotten involved,” she said.
“The heck you say.”
“A big shot federal prosecutor arrived from Washington to be co-counsel. Any hope we had of a deal is off.”
I replaced the Yeti mug onto the desk and laced my fingers across my stomach, which now felt hollow and queasy. “A federal prosecutor has inexplicably decided to sit in on this open-and-shut homicide case in Roanoke,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Would his name by chance be Darren Robbins?”
Her right leg, which had been kind of bouncing on top of her left, stopped. “In fact it is.”
“He’s on this case pro hac vice?”
“Right. Do you know him?”
Darren Robbins.
Corrupt prosecutor in the pocket of the District Kings.
Fiancé of Veronica Summers.
He pimped Ronnie out to his buddies. Trafficking her sexual services via blackmail.
Number one enemy of Mackenzie August.
I said, “I know of him.”
“And?”
“A notable coward, an infinite and endless liar.”
Candice Hamilton sat up straighter, hope springing eternal. “You’re quoting something but I can’t place it. So you’ll help?”
“Help stick it to Darren Robbins? Absolutely.”
“Considering it’s known Grady killed her, we put his criminal intent on trial. Our goal is to reduce it from first-degree murder to voluntary manslaughter, or crime of passion. We do that, Darren Robbins goes home embarrassed, tail between his legs.”
“Do you know where Darren is staying?”
“Hotel Roanoke, same as me,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll go beat him up until he leaves.”
She laughed. A little hesitant. Probably to hide her arousal at my tough-guy act. “That wouldn
’t help my client much.”
“Oh right, him. I forgot.”
“I’m reading motions and briefs and deposition transcripts twelve hours a day. I need you to dig up something new. Anything. On either Grady Huff or the victim.”
“Something that will indicate a crime of passion.”
“Precisely.”
I said, “How big is your crew?”
“Just me and a paralegal. My partners are bitter about losing the medical malpractice money, so I’m temporarily forsaken. Most likely until I cash Mr. Huff’s final check.”
“Well then. We’ve not a moment to lose.”
9
I skipped lunch in favor of an hour nap in my chair.
In China it’s a cultural right to nap during work. Keeps the brain healthy. And those people seem really well adjusted and friendly.
I slept fitfully with disorienting dreams and I woke feeling no better. Maybe grouchier.
The Chinese know nothing, those communists.
The drive to the Western Virginia Regional Jail was not a pleasant one. First one must suffer through the worst part of Salem, clotted with stoplights and chain restaurants and car washes and loan shops on Route 11. After that the population thins out but it’s ugly country, even more so in the rain. The jail is hidden by scrubby woods off an unmarked country lane. Closer up to the ugly brick rupture of a building, the landscape is uneven grass and broken pavement. I parked and watched the drizzle and wondered if it was too late for my dream of playing centerfield in the majors.
Probably.
I went inside. One of the deputies at the first security point recognized me but he made me check my gun anyway.
The beefy deputy leered. “Hey Mack. I heard you was dating the Sheriff.”
“Never listen to gossip. It’ll rot your ears.”
“So, are you?”
I asked, “Would it make you respect me more if I was?”
“Hell yeah. She’s grade A, you know it.”
I debated admitting she was dating my father and not me. Not sure that would help business.
I said, “I am not romantically intertwined with your boss. But if you think Stackhouse is lovely, you should see my babysitter.”
His mouth dropped an inch and he scrutinized me with one eye half-closed. “Oh?”
I said, “She’s the goddess on whom these airs attend.”
He buzzed open the security door.
“God, I forgot how stupid you talk,” he said.
The conference room was concrete and cinderblock and body odor. An attorney fidgeting in the corner, rearranging his cheap suit and tie, waiting for a client to appear. He had the look of a man fresh off an online law degree, making a go at being an attorney in his late forties and regretting his life choices.
A second beefy deputy walked in. This guy looked even angrier than the cop at the security checkpoint. Buzzcut, swollen neck, perpetual frowny-face. As long as we have prisons, there will be abuse. You cannot give angry men on steroids with superiority complexes power over helpless men in shackles and expect harmony. I liked most cops, but jails had a way of souring even the most valiant heart.
Grady Huff slouched in behind the guy. Grady could have been thirty, he could have been fifty. Balding with a bad combover. Untidy facial hair that highlighted his fat jowls instead of camouflaging them. Big head, small face, lazy expression. Walked like he had flat duck feet.
“Ah Christ, he’s not a girl,” said Grady. Then he laughed, a forced croak. “I thought you brought me some ass.”
The deputy didn’t bother looking at him. He left.
Grady held up his hands, which were cuffed.
“Hey, Goliath. How about you request these be taken off, huh?”
“Nah,” I said. “Better safe than sorry.”
“What, you’re scared? First time in a prison, fatty?”
“Terrified. Petrified. Of you. And your apparent ability to eat anything.”
“Are you poor? You look poor.” He sat at the table with me. But he sat on the opposite side, two seats down. The act of moving made him wheeze. “Where’s Candice?”
“Your attorney will not be joining us today.”
“God, the mouth on that bitch. Right? I told her I’ll give her ten grand for a conjugal visit.” He winked at me because we were both studs and knew the secret code of how to talk about women. Just us two guys, shooting the breeze, we were. “She said no. Like she’s Mother Teresa or some shit.”
“I’m Mackenzie. I’m helping get your sentence reduced.”
“Try again, fatty. You mean you’re getting the charges dropped,” he said. He issued flecks of spittle when he pronounced the F in fatty.
“You confessed to murder. And confessed it to half a dozen people. Including the police.”
“So what. Bitch deserved it. Do you know where I went to school?” he said.
“My guess, a culinary school. But you were the taste tester.”
“Episcopal High, in Alexandria. You probably never heard of it, buried in some sweaty city school. It’s elite.” He laughed again, the same contrived croak.
“Wow,” I said.
“That’s right, wow. Episcopal High. Private boarding school.”
“We’ll tell the jury that. Case dismissed.”
“Don’t be an ass. I can’t go in front of a jury,” he said with a scoff.
“They’d love you, Grady. A real winner.”
“Jurors are poor. They’d hate me because I got money. Why the hell do we let people like them judge people like me.”
“You mean, dropouts.”
He wiped his mouth. “Huh?”
“You didn’t finish high school. I read your file.”
“I own a stake in Pepsi. Pepsi. Fatties like you making me rich. I don’t need a high school diploma.”
“Do you like your cell?” I asked.
“What do you think, jackass.” Another laugh.
I super hated that sound.
“You’re going to be in it for the next forty years. Maybe longer,” I said.
“Don’t be an ass. I hired Candice.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? The internet says she’s a big deal.”
“You could hire Gandhi, but with two weeks to go you’d still get life in prison.”
“Do you know how much money gets deposited into my checking account? Every month?”
“Tell me about the girl you murdered,” I said.
“Two hundred thousand dollars, motherfucker. Fatties at Taco Bell drinking Pepsi.”
“Juanita Yates.”
He stopped. Leaned backwards on the bench. Set his hands on the table with a clink. “Yeah? So?”
“Tell me about her.”
“I shot her with a gun,” he said.
“What kind?”
“What?” he said.
“The gun, what kind of gun, you nincompoop.”
“I dunno. The wild west kind.”
“A revolver,” I guessed.
“The kind with the spinning wheel thing.”
“How’d you get a gun?”
“Anyone can get a gun. Took me four whole minutes.”
“Why’d you shoot Juanita Yates?”
“Bitch deserved it,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just did, fatty.”
“How long had she been working for you?”
“Who cares,” he said.
“The jury will.”
“I’m not talking to a jury.”
I said, “You were in love with Juanita?”
He paused, half a second. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“I found her photo. She was kinda cute.”
“Kinda? Fatty like you wishes, kinda.”
“She was more than kinda cute?” I asked.
“Who cares. She was the cleaning lady.”
“So?”
“God you’re dumb. She’s a maid.”
“So?” I said again
. “A cute one.”
“I called her Nita. Couldn’t pronounce her real name. One of those stupid Mexican names.”
“You and Nita were in love.”
“Stop…seriously, you’re a stupid idiot, know that? Maybe she was in love with me.”
“I bet she was.”
“Of course she was. But it wasn’t the other way round.”
“You didn’t reciprocate her affection,” I said.
“Exactly, genius. Genius fatty.”
“Did Nita have a family?”
“No, she was alone, like me. I mean, I guess. I have no idea.”
“Which is it? She was alone? Or you have no idea?” I asked.
“I said I have no idea if she had family, fatty.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“How much…I don’t know. One eighty.”
“Grady Huff,” I said. “Your left leg weighs more than one eighty.”
“I wasn’t screwing the maid,” he said. “She wanted to screw me, that’s a different story. Guys like me, guys with money, we got friends and girls forever. I didn’t need her.”
The attorney in the corner was packing up, realizing his client didn’t want to see him. Poor guys, both of them. He was openly eavesdropping into our conversation. My nonpareil Socratic questioning poleaxed him. I assumed.
“Did you let her?” I said.
Grady asked, “Let her what?”
“Juanita wanted to screw you; did you let her?”
“I guess, maybe, I dunno.”
“Of course you did. Rich guy like you, cute girl like her, why not? No harm in that.”
He nodded, like this made sense. “Yeah. No harm. I let her. For months I let her.”
“What’d her mom think of you?” I asked.
“Her mom’s dead.”
“You said you didn’t know—”
“I think her mom’s dead. I forget. I have no idea.”
“Nowhere on any police report I read this afternoon does it mention you and Nita were romantically entangled. But I think you were,” I said.
“I didn’t say romance. I said, I let her screw me. Cause I’m a nice guy. Fatty.”
“Why didn’t you admit this to the police?”
“I got a reputation, you know? Guys like me, we’re rich. We kill people whenever we want. That’s what my friends do. Might look bad, me and the cleaning lady screwing. You can’t tell anyone, right? This is confidential?”
