The Neon Lawyer

by Victor Methos

  “Counsel,” the judge said, “I’ve gone through the jury instructions and they seem pretty run-of-the-mill to me. Any objections to any instructions that weren’t covered?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Vince said.

  “No,” Brigham said.

  He had wanted to include every jury instruction he could think of, but Molly had told him that would confuse the jury. While that may not have been bad for some cases, like complex white-collar fraud where it was better the jury didn’t understand exactly what had occurred, this was a simple case, and they needed simple instructions. In the end, the only one Brigham had insisted on said that if the jury didn’t want to acquit because they felt like Amanda had done it, but they also didn’t want to convict and potentially sentence her to death, they could agree that she committed manslaughter instead of murder. It was called a lesser-included offense instruction.

  “All right then,” the judge said, “break for lunch. Be back at two thirty, gentlemen.”

  Brigham watched as the bailiff took Amanda away. He turned to see Molly and Scotty staring at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “That opening was great work,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s enough.” He rubbed his nose, hoping to alleviate, however slightly, the coming headache. “Let’s grab something to eat. I’m starving.”

  Twenty-six

  After lunch, the trial resumed. Vince questioned the medical examiner for almost four hours. Charts and graphs and computer printouts were presented. A laptop presentation had a computer-animated re-creation of the shooting, charting the trajectory of each bullet.

  By the time the ME was through, the jury looked exhausted and the judge had to stop and ask if they needed anything. No one raised a hand, so the judge said, “It’s now six in the evening, I think we’re going to have to break today and continue with the defense’s cross-examination tomorrow.”

  “I only have a couple of questions,” Brigham said. “I’m happy to do them now so that we don’t need to bring Dr. Jacobs back, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Dale?”

  “That’s fine, Your Honor.”

  Brigham rose. “Dr. Jacobs, did you do the autopsy on Tabitha Pierce as well?”

  Vince rose. “Objection. Approach, Your Honor.”

  The two attorneys went up to the bench. The judge, who also appeared ready for bed, had red-rimmed eyes and his hair looked puffier than it had earlier that morning.

  “Tabitha’s death was tragic,” Vince said, “but is not the subject of this trial. Frankly, I shouldn’t have even allowed him to bring it up in opening.”

  “But you did,” Brigham said. “And now I get to talk about it. It’s relevant because the only question in this case is what Amanda’s mindset was when she pulled that trigger. What happened to her daughter caused that mindset.”

  The judge thought for a moment. “I’ll allow it. But if you veer too far off course, I have to shut you down, Mr. Theodore.”

  “Understood.”

  Brigham returned to the podium. “Please answer the question, Doctor. Did you do the autopsy?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How did she die?”

  The doctor hesitated. “Exsanguination . . . she bled to death.”

  “Bled to death from what?”

  Vince casually got up from his seat again. “Your Honor, I have to renew my objection to this entire line of questioning. What happened has no relevance—”

  “How can you say that?” Brigham said, louder than he would’ve liked. “It’s relevant. Her daughter’s murder is relevant.”

  “Your Honor, this is a ridiculous waste of—”

  The judge sighed. “Everybody, calm down. Mr. Dale, I think defense counsel is right. It’s relevant to her state of mind. If you don’t think so, you’re free to question that. Now let’s get this over.”

  Brigham turned back to the witness. Anger had flared inside him and he hadn’t meant for it to. He hadn’t even known it was there. “Bled to death from what?”

  “She was . . . cut repeatedly.”

  “Cut how, Doctor? Please be specific.”

  “Vaginal walls were cut with a precision instrument. A hunting knife or possibly a scalpel. As was her rectum.”

  “So in layman’s terms, he tried to cut out her genitals, didn’t he?”

  “That would be my best guess, yes.”

  “And she was alive during this, correct?”

  The doctor glanced to the jury. “Yes. My understanding is that he stated he wanted to hear her screaming.”

  Amanda’s head fell. Her eyes glazed over in a way that indicated she wasn’t there anymore. At the same time, Vince jumped up.

  “Your Honor! This is far more prejudicial than probative.”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Theodore.”

  “That’s all I had. Thank you.”

  The judge instructed the jury that they were done for the day but were not to speak to anyone about the case. Vince’s assistant leaned over and said to him that they should have the jury sequestered so they couldn’t read about the things that had happened to Tabitha online. Vince looked to Brigham. Brigham knew Vince didn’t want to be the one to suggest the jury be put up in a cheap motel the four days this trial was scheduled for. He wanted Brigham to do it. But there was no way he was about to. He rose, and waited a few moments to see if Vince would actually have the guts to suggest the jury be locked away from their families.

  Vince turned a light pink, glaring at Brigham, but didn’t say anything. The bailiff helped Amanda out of the courtroom and Molly and Scotty rose to leave as well.

  Brigham winked at Vince and left the courtroom.

  Brigham tried to spend the evening preparing his cross-examinations of the witnesses to the shootings, but there was nothing there. Just like with the medical examiner, everything they were going to say was true and accurate. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t trying to cast doubt on whether the shooting took place, only what Amanda’s mind was like when she did it. He decided he wasn’t going to cross any of the witnesses unless they said something truly outrageous. Tommy had told him it was better not to cross at all than to cross and look like an idiot, or worse, bolster the other side’s case.

  Though it was late, Brigham decided to leave his apartment and go to the office. Molly was there working some divorce cases and he could use her company. And Tommy had a certain way about him that made him feel more comfortable with this whole thing than he should have been.

  When he got to the office, he found Tommy there, already drunk. A bottle of scotch was on his desk and he poured a drink for Brigham in a tumbler and pushed it toward him. “Drink.” It didn’t sound like a request.

  The scotch was so strong, Brigham began to cough, amusing Tommy to no end.

  “So,” he said, pouring them both another drink, “how’s the trial going?”

  “Terrible. Everything they say is true.”

  “Don’t matter. See, they wanna acquit her. But they need something to tell their relatives. When they go home, if they acquit, their wife or husband is gonna be saying, ‘what the hell were you thinking?’ And we gotta give that next line that they’re gonna give them. We have to give them something that will make their spouse back off. Maybe even understand. That’s your job. Give them that.”

  “Well, hopefully the psychiatrist can do that.”

  Tommy lifted his glass. “Here’s to hopefully.”

  Twenty-seven

  The next day, Brigham got to court early. Molly was in a mediation on a custody case all day, so she wasn’t sitting behind him. Scotty had his own things going on as well. The only people there were the reporters.

  When the judge finally came out, he didn’t waste any time and just said, “First witness, Mr. Dale.”

  The witnesses were two deputie
s and three bystanders. Two of them were convicted felons who were going into the courthouse on pending charges. But Brigham didn’t bring any of that up. It didn’t matter, as far as he was concerned.

  He watched Amanda. She had a distant stare, like she wasn’t even in the courtroom. It made Brigham think of his father, who had fought in Vietnam before marrying his mother. He’d had that same look, as if he’d lost something that he knew he’d never get back.

  The deputies testified first, followed by the three bystanders. Their testimony should have been quick, but Vince took his time, as though savoring the fact that the shooting was played out to the jury five times in a single day.

  They took only a half hour for lunch, but Brigham couldn’t eat. He went down to the cafeteria of the courthouse and bought some apple juice. He sat alone at a table in the corner and watched people. He didn’t even notice when Vince Dale sat down across from him.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Vince said.

  Brigham was silent a moment. “What is?”

  “The people coming in here. Doctors, politicians, lawyers, priests . . . you’d never even suspect the things they did behind closed doors. And yet, here they are. Having to give their pound of flesh. You never know what people are capable of ’cause they don’t show you. They don’t show anyone.”

  “I don’t see it that way. I think everyone makes mistakes because we’re human. There’s no handbook on life. We make blunders along the way.”

  Vince laughed. “You’re an idealist, aren’t you?”

  Brigham shook his head, staring out the window. “Right now, it’s Amanda Pierce sitting in front of a jury for one of her mistakes. But it could just as easily be you.”

  Vince stopped laughing. “I’m still willing to give you the offer. Call off the jury right now and save your client’s life, Counselor. She’ll hate you for it now, but thank you later.”

  “She doesn’t deserve to spend her life in prison.”

  “Deserve doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he said, motioning to the courthouse around them.

  “Do you even know what’s right anymore, Vince?”

  “Up yours, you little shit. I’m trying to do your client a favor.”

  “You’re scared you might lose. The jury was crying in opening and your own detective said he didn’t blame her for what she did. And you’re not going to execute the mother of a murder victim anyway, so don’t bullshit me. If we lose, you’ll have a press conference where you’ll graciously decline to pursue the death penalty against her, due to her service to the country or something. This is about PR to you . . . But this is her life, Vince. Her life.”

  Vince adjusted his tie, as though he hadn’t heard him. He rose. “Have it your way. Helluva gamble to take, though. If you’re wrong, and I do pursue the death penalty, she’s going to die.”

  Brigham watched him walk away. A woman was trying to push herself through the door with a baby on her hip and a stroller in front of her. Vince saw her, and continued down the hall without getting the door.

  When they got back from lunch, everyone seemed lethargic. The jury was slouching in their seats and even the judge looked like he might pass out. Vince, though, seemed full of energy and smiles. A consummate professional.

  Amanda looked worse. She wasn’t speaking, wasn’t asking questions. She didn’t even seem interested in what happened there. Brigham knew now what it looked like when someone gave up, totally and completely.

  The fourth witness was a man who looked like he’d just come off a long drinking binge, with torn jeans and a T-shirt. He went through what he had seen, the same thing as all the others, and it took a half hour to get the same testimony. But at the very end, he said something no one else had said.

  “She looked like she didn’t know where she was.”

  Vince ignored it and continued with his questioning. When he was done, the judge looked to Brigham. He stood up and walked to the podium.

  “What did you mean when you said that she looked like she didn’t know where she was?”

  “After she shot him, I got a good look at her face. I wasn’t that far away. She looked confused, like she’d just woken up from a dream or something.”

  “Would you say she looked like it had just dawned on her what she had done?”

  “I guess so.”

  “But before that, she didn’t appear to know what she was doing?”

  “She looked . . . on autopilot, if that makes sense. Like she shot him, and then woke up. That’s the best I can explain it.”

  “Nothing further. Thank you.”

  The final witness went through the same testimony. When Vince was through with the direct examination, Brigham got up and said, “What did she look like after she had shot the man?”

  “What’dya mean?”

  “Did she seem happy, elated, sad, confused . . .”

  “Confused. Definitely confused.”

  “Like she’d just woken up from a dream?”

  “I guess.”

  “Thank you. Nothing further.”

  After that witness, Vince called another detective who had been on the witness list. It was his sixth witness and Brigham guessed he only called him to throw Brigham off, since he’d told everyone he would only be calling five.

  The detective was a portly man with a thick mustache who had transported Amanda to jail. He took the stand and went through his qualifications, then talked about what Amanda had looked like that day and how he’d felt about it. Apparently she had remained quiet the entire drive, and this was somehow suspicious.

  Brigham watched the jury. One man was actually asleep. His eyes would close for a few seconds and then snap open, then close again. One woman was staring at the reporters. The trial was no longer the center of the jury’s attention. The witness was irrelevant—it was the first mistake Brigham had seen Vince make.

  The day finished at the same grindingly slow pace. Before leaving the courtroom, Brigham asked Amanda how she was holding up. She looked detached, staring blankly at the table as she nodded and said, “Fine.”

  “Do you need anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head. The bailiff came and got her and took her into the back to change and be transported to the jail.

  Brigham sat in the empty courtroom for a while. The space was still and lifeless. A replica of the Constitution hung in a glass case on the wall. It was dusty and appeared like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

  Twenty-eight

  As he left the courthouse, Brigham turned on his phone. He’d kept it off because as an intern, he’d once seen a judge take an attorney’s phone away when it rang during a trial. The attorney was required to come back the next day, pay a fine, and then retrieve his phone.

  He had six missed calls and two messages. The first message was from Molly. When he heard it, he nearly dropped his phone. His knees felt weak and a gnawing sickness gripped his guts. He stood still a moment on the courthouse steps and stared out into the parking lot.

  Then, he sprinted for his bike.

  He got down to the office in a few minutes. Two fire trucks were there plus an ambulance and several police cruisers. Brigham left his bike on the curb and ran over. A uniformed officer wouldn’t let him through. He saw a body on a stretcher, covered with a white sheet.

  Molly came up behind him. “I can’t believe it,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “He was just walking out of the office. Two men in a black sedan shot him from the street.”

  The stretcher was loaded onto the ambulance. The EMT hauling it in from the front lost his grip and it tumbled down about a foot. The sheet slipped off from the top, revealing Tommy’s bloated face.

  Brigham heard one of the cops behind him say, “Fuck him.”

  Brigham looked back, giving him a hard stare. He made as i
f to move over to the cop and Molly placed her hand on Brigham’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” she said softly.

  Cahoots Bar, near the courthouse, was a place for lawyers and staff to come and get drunk after work. Occasionally you’d see a judge, but that was rare. News in Salt Lake was intermittently slow and reporters would come there looking for tidbits of stories. The last thing the judges wanted was a reporter snapping a photo of them getting drunk in a seedy bar.

  Molly sat across from Brigham at the table. She was nursing a beer and flicking some peanuts from a bowl. The bar encouraged you to throw the peanut shells on the floor.

  “I don’t understand what happened,” Molly said. “Could it be a client?”

  Brigham shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “What the hell are we gonna do? Am I going to have to be a drone at some firm?”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  She rubbed her face with her hands and inhaled deeply. “He took me in when I needed somewhere else to go. I hope he’s found some peace.”

  Brigham didn’t respond. Instead, he took a sip of beer, staring at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

  Brigham was restless that night. He tried to watch television but couldn’t because the noise aggravated him. He’d gotten used to Molly’s nice condo, and being back at his own place was disheartening. But he had sensed that she wanted to be alone right then and had told her that he needed to prepare for the next day. Vince declared he had one more witness, making seven rather than the five he promised at the outset of the trial, and then the prosecution would rest.

  Molly had tried to convince Brigham to give the case over to someone else on the public defender contract list, but he refused. This had always been his case. It didn’t matter whose letterhead it was on.

  Brigham changed into sweats and then lay in his bed. The mattress was lumpy and dipped in spots. He tossed and turned for several hours before getting up and putting on his shoes. He left the apartment and walked through the neighborhood. The streetlights were spaced too far apart, so for long periods, he’d be in complete darkness and he’d look up at the moon.