We haven’t much time to chat. He’s heading for the Seligmann trial, he’s going to be a witness. The Harpers have already gone through the system; they’re sitting in different prisons now, waiting for fifteen years to pass. Attempted murder, resisting arrest. They’re in a mainstream prison, where we can’t get at them anymore. Seligmann, we’ve been saving.
I can’t go to the trial. The Ellaway case, my guilty client, has been scheduled to take place at the same time, and I have to present a case. I’m safely out of the way. A very tactful piece of scheduling.
“I heard you got the bastard,” Marty says. The story is all around DORLA now, how I bravely confronted the desperate Seligmann, brought him in single-handed. This is the man who tore Marty’s throat out, and there’s a burning satisfaction in Marty’s face as he speaks. Marty thinks I’m a heroine. I haven’t the heart to disillusion him.
Ellaway has told Franklin what happened in his captivity. Franklin asked me if it was true, and I didn’t deny it. I told him, when he asked me, that I was a DORLA lawyer, not much worse than most, that there but for the grace of God went he. I suppose he expected me to say something like that, and I had to give him some way of dealing with having such an unconscionable colleague. To his credit, Franklin actually thought about it. It’s too bad. I’d rather liked him.
When I first met Ellaway, he was insisting that he’d been trying to get to a shelter during moonrise, that his car had broken down on his way home. A simple defense, a classic. Since then, I discovered how much he had lied.
I tell Ellaway the truth will make things worse, that faking evidence is a more serious crime than prowling. Of course, it’s not concern for my client that makes me say this. If Ellaway tells the truth, he’ll drag other people down with him, Albin, Sarah, Carla, people who’ve helped me. Paul.
Ellaway told me a lie the first time he met me, and expected me to build a case out of it. He can damn well stick to it now.
I look around the courtroom as I go in. This is a room I’ve worked in dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of times. I’d like to work in a grand court, oak panels and carved docks, crests behind the robed judge, but this is just another room in our building, with chipped ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights, scuffed blue carpets wearing away around the door. I look around for the Marcos family, before I remember. They’ll be at the murder trial next door. Whatever Ellaway did to him, it’s all the same now.
It startles me to see Bride sitting on the benches. She hadn’t told me she was coming back, but now Seligmann is in jail, no threat to her, I guess she figured it was safe. She sees me, gives me a grin and a wink. For a moment, I stay blank-faced, wondering at her. Gone without a word, back without a word, convinced that we can pick up just where we left off. Then I let it go. She has her sick husband to think of, her own life, her own fear of dying. And the more I think about it, the more of a relief it is. No scenes, no awkward apologies either way. I did one thing, she did another, and we can get on with our lives without looking back. I smile back at her. I need all the friends I can get.
Looking farther down the bench, I see Becca. She doesn’t know much about this trial, even now. She’s just come to see me work. I could wish she’d come to watch a better trial, but I guess she’s seen the worst of me now.
After she sat with me in Parkinson’s office, we went home together. We walked in silence, block after block. My hands shook. It was a long time before I could say to her, “Are you still speaking to me?”
She looked down at Leo. I could see her thinking of what to say, ways to make peace, ways to hurt me, ways to free herself of me for the rest of her life.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked at me. Her face was pretty in the daylight. “I’m really not happy about it,” she said. There was a pause. “Was it true what you said about that man? Did he really shoot someone?”
“Yes, he did.”
Her hand rested against her son’s chest. “It was all true, what you said?”
“Yes. I didn’t make anything up.”
She looked away from me, looked back. “I’m really not happy about it,” she said again. “But I guess you know your own business best.”
I reached out and touched her hand, and she didn’t move away.
Some days she calls me and talks for hours, pouring out words about her son, her marriage, details and intimacies I’d never heard before and would never have expected. Some days when I go to see her she’s distant, looking at Leo as he sits up and grins, not meeting my eyes. I don’t know quite what to make of her. I guess she feels the same way about me. It’s a queer kind of fresh start, but someday soon I’ll start talking back, I’ll tell her things about me. Maybe we’ll find better things to say to each other.
Sitting on another bench, near the back, is a dark-haired man, on his own, speaking to no one. His face is turned away from me, but I know it’s Paul.
Becca sees me first. She gives me a little wave. It’s an odd gesture, strangely encouraging. My schools never went in for concerts or recitals, and my mother never attended a trial of mine, but there’s something in Becca’s salute that makes me think of a mother—not mine, someone else’s mother, someone better—watching her child perform, applauding from the backseat. It’s so strange that I don’t know how to respond, but in the end I just raise my eyebrows and try to smile at her.
Then Paul turns his head and sees me. My arms are full of documents, hugged to my chest, and I can’t gesture. Paul looks at me and I look back, we hold each other’s gaze for long seconds.
It’s only when someone brushes past me that I turn my head. I go over to the table where I sit with my client, lay down my papers, pull my chair up to the desk, tidy my hands on the surface. I sit and wait for the judge to come in, ready to be a lawyer.
Nick Jarrold takes the stand. Sitting there, he tells the story of how he and Johnny came upon Ellaway, tried to arrest him, how Ellaway brought Johnny down and tore his hand away. Nick holds a pack of cigarettes he’s not allowed to smoke, not while the trial is in session. He turns it over in his lap, tapping it against his knee, so that the logo on the front upends and rights itself again and again. He tells the prosecution everything he remembers about that night. I don’t cross-examine him. He coughs and rasps in the stand, and I wonder how long he’ll have before cancer finally comes to claim him.
Lisa Rahman, one of our expert witnesses, takes the stand. A map of the city is placed on an easel next to her. Distance Assessment is a small department; she testifies in dozens of trials every month. She studies locations, assesses how fast you could walk them, how far someone could travel over this terrain or that in any given time. People often say they were trying to get to a shelter when the moon rose. She calculates whether, if they’d been trying, they could have. In this case, she concludes that Ellaway probably could. I stand up, ask her if she’s a hundred percent certain, she says no. The redirect asks her if she’s convinced herself; she says yes.
Even though I knew it was coming, I still feel an ugly little twist in my chest when I see Ally come into the room and walk up to the witness stand. He was there, the night Johnny brought Ellaway in. He has to testify. He doesn’t look at me when he comes into the room; I see the back of his head, and for a moment I don’t recognize him. His ragged hair has been cut short, shaped to his skull. I remember, as if it was a long time ago, the bet we once had, that he’d shave his head the day I spoke to a lyco lawyer who didn’t mention that public opinion is against us. We used to bet each other a lot, when we got too old to dare each other. I guess all our bets are off now.
He turns his head and sees Paul sitting in the benches. Paul looks back at him, implacable, untouchable. It’s only a moment before Ally reaches the stand and sits down. His eyes flick over the tables, and when he sees me, his fidgeting stops, he sits still.
Under oath, he tells the judge how Ellaway was brought in with Johnny bleeding almost to death from a mutilated arm. That Ellaway was tranquilized
and unconscious, and that he was still luning, but clean, there were no brambles or leaves in his hair, there was no mud on him, that he didn’t look like a man who’d got lost and wandered into a park.
I stand up, straighten my jacket, to cross-examine him.
“Did you keep any samples of this hair?” I ask. From my tone, you wouldn’t know I’d ever met Ally before.
“No. There was blood all over the floor, and we had to sterilize everything. The hair was incinerated.”
“So we have no concrete evidence for this claim of yours. We’re just going to take your word?”
He looks at me, dark-eyed. “I remember what happened.”
I know he’s telling the truth, and he knows I know. “What time was my client brought into your shelter?”
“About one thirty.”
“Had you been on duty all night?”
“Yes.”
“What time was sunset that day?”
Ally shrugs, his shoulders roll. The familiarity of the gesture cuts at my heart. “About four fifteen, I think.”
“So you’d been on duty for over nine hours?”
“Yes.”
“Was he the only arrest you’d had?”
“No, there were five others in the shelter.”
“You must have been tired.”
Ally looks at me when I say this. A year ago, in another room, it would have been a stupid thing to say. He would have laughed at me, or with me. My voice is almost sympathetic, and even after everything, I still feel a tug of pain at the thought of Ally, my old friend, nine hours into the night, trying to keep awake and work through it.
“When John Marcos was brought in,” I continue, “would you describe his condition as serious?”
“His hand was taken off, of course it was serious,” Ally snaps. I’ve heard myself snap the same way, many times.
“You must have been concerned about him.”
Tired, concerned, desperate. Ally must have been all these things. I know everything he must have felt that night. He doesn’t hear any fellow-feeling in my voice, though, because he knows where I’m going with this. Everything he has to say about the night Ellaway was captured is fair and accurate, but easy to raise doubts about, and that’s what I’m doing. It’s terrible, really, that of all the people in this trial, I’ll probably do the best job discrediting Ally. If things hadn’t happened the way they did, he wouldn’t hold it against me, but I have a feeling he will now. It can’t be helped. It’s over. He won’t owe me a thing anymore. I’ve set him loose.
They raise the issue of the car, its damaged engine. No conclusive proof. I’m able to get the witness—Kevin White, the garage owner who was finally told to stop just storing Ellaway’s Maserati and look under the hood—to admit he can’t say for sure it was tampered with, not a hundred percent. It’s still a big point for the prosecution. I discovered it, this damaging point. I disclosed it to my opposite number a week before the trial, just as the law says I must.
The free-rangers, I did not disclose. I didn’t have to: everyone in DORLA knew about them, all that time they were down in the cells. I could raise them, make them an exonerating circumstance, or at least a chance to spread the blame. I don’t. I could call my client to the stand, too, have him tell his story. For a whole day, I was tempted. It would have given him the opportunity to add perjury to his crimes, a couple of years to his sentence. I wanted to, but I didn’t.
As a result, the case I make is a thin one. Franklin works with me, calls up witnesses to refute the engine-tampering charge, finds other cases where people with similar stories were found innocent. He’s very good. While he’s speaking, even I’m half convinced by what he says. When he stops talking, though, and it’s quiet, after all the speeches are over, everyone knows what’s going to happen.
In the pause while the judge deliberates, people stand up and walk around the room. Paul looks at me, and I take one step toward him, my whole body yearning, as if I were nothing but a hand reaching out. Something checks me, though, and I nod instead to Becca, point at my watch and raise five fingers, five minutes. She understands, nods back to me. I look at Paul, he looks at me. Then I turn and slip out of the room.
Out in the corridor, I lean my hands flat against a wall, breathing in and out. The air reflecting back off the painted surface is warm against my face. I lean for a few seconds, then I walk down the hall.
The other trial is still not finished, the Seligmann case. There’s a little square of glass in the door, and I peer through it. Seligmann himself sits in the dock, a crutch beside him, bandages on his wounded leg showing thick through his clothes. His posture has changed from when I first saw him. The hunched shoulders and lupine, pulled-back neck are still there, but off to one side, curved around the place where I shot him, as if that silver bullet were the new center point of his body.
Johnny’s family sit on the benches. Peter and Julio sit side by side. Julio’s face is blank; he’s sitting upright and brave, keeping his eyes dry and his mouth still, not giving his pain away to anyone. Peter has one leg crossed into his lap, and it jiggles, almost too fast to see, until Sue reaches out a round, loose arm and stills it. She lays her hand on his foot, and doesn’t let go. Sue is a sphere by now, the baby will be born any day. You can almost see it moving through her clothes. Her free arm rests around her daughter, who lies with her head against her mother’s shoulder, a thumb in her mouth. They don’t look at Seligmann much. The four of them hang close together, huddled on the narrow bench, waiting for it all to be over.
Sooner than I expect, I’m tapped on the shoulder and sent back in to my own trial. Ellaway looks at Franklin, grips his fists together as the judge prepares to announce his verdict, but I feel no tension or anticipation. There are no doubts about what’s coming. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way.
I thought I’d be happy to lose this case. I thought it would be a blow for our side, vengeance for Johnny, for something. When the judge sentences Ellaway to twelve years’ imprisonment, though, there’s no joy, no righteous anger. His face goes white, he stares at the judge, unable to believe that this is real, and then people come and put his hands in cuffs and take him away.
I don’t feel like hanging around to discuss the verdict. I take off, go out into a quiet corridor and light a cigarette. I’ll talk to Bride later. I’ll talk to Becca later.
I’m leaning against the wall, watching the smoke coil around my hands, when I hear a voice. It’s hoarse and damaged, but I recognize the polite greeting. Marty still sounds like himself.
“How’s it going?” I say to him.
He smiles, baring his teeth. The scars on his neck don’t move. “Bastard’s going down,” he says. “No question about it. The judge has to give him life, doesn’t he?” The question isn’t savage. It’s more hopeful than anything else.
I tap ash into a tray on the wall. “Yes. It’s mandatory in cases of murder. It would be the same however many murders, whatever kind he committed.” I clear my throat. “How long he actually serves depends on how he acts in prison.”
“I thought the judge could recommend a minimum?” He still wants to know things, he hasn’t stopped learning.
I nod. “He can. Don’t know how much they’ll listen to it in a lyco prison, though.”
Marty looks at the floor.
“What’s wrong, kiddo?” I say.
He looks back at me, shrugs. “I don’t know.” He doesn’t touch his throat, his hands stay by his side. It’s just a little dip of his head, his chin shielding the damaged skin. “I just don’t get it. There’s all that evidence that he did it, that’s all they’re talking about. I—guess I want to know why. What he was thinking. I don’t know.” His eyes are on the floor again, as if he was hanging his head. But it’s not a stupid question.
I inhale smoke, exhale. Gray dust rises slowly to the ceiling. “It’s worth asking,” I say. There’s only a moment’s pause before I go on. “I don’t know, really. I know someone yo
u can ask, though.” I take a notepad out of my pocket, write down a number. There’s no need to look it up. I remember it perfectly. “Give this guy a call. His name’s Paul Kelsey.”
Marty gives me a quick look.
I shake my head. “Never mind what you’ve heard about him,” I say. “He’s okay. I think he might be able to tell you a bit about it. Tell him it was me suggested you call.”
Marty looks doubtful. “I don’t want to just call him…”
“It’s okay, he won’t mind,” I say. I’m almost sure he won’t. “You should call him. He’s a pretty decent guy.”
Later that day, I wander back through the building. As I pass by the trial rooms, I hear a noise. The door opens, and two tall men come out. Between them, hands chained together, is a dark-haired man, limping, one leg dragging under him. He looks up. Seligmann. He looks at me. I look back at him. He doesn’t snarl, he doesn’t pull a face, he just looks at me, his eyes stay on me until the guards walk him past me, their strong hands clasped under his arms to hold him up.
The trial room empties. Sue Marcos walks out, her arms around her children. There are too many people around her for me to be able to get to her, but she sees me, raises her hand. I sign, I’ll call you, and she nods. Debbie clings to her hand as they walk down the corridor.
The crowd clears, until there’s no one left in the room. I walk in. It’s very quiet, the air still warm from so many bodies. It doesn’t look like much, this room it ended in. Just walls, chairs, benches. Very likely, Seligmann never entered this room before today. I know he’ll never see it again in his life.
I look at the chair he was sitting in. It’s gray plastic, the legs shining black, splaying backward and forward to support the structure. There are thousands like it, but somehow it holds my attention, as if I’ll never forget the sight of it.
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