In Defense of Guilt

by Benjamin Berkley

  A thought came to mind. Walking to her desk, she pushed the intercom, hoping more than believing her secretary hadn’t gone home for the evening without first telling her. Granted, it was just past five o’clock and Rose was under no moral obligation to stick around, but still. It was just a courtesy her paralegal had afforded her on days juries began deliberating.

  Unless pressing duties called for her immediate attention at home, Rose Keller usually continued intercepting incoming calls from both family and the courthouse, while performing various nominal duties and unfinished business. This wasn’t all out of the goodness of her heart, though. Rose was much more curious than Lauren to know once a jury had reached a verdict. Of course, there was no way of knowing exactly what the verdict would be, but at least she would be the first to know that a decision had been reached. Based upon the amount of time taken to deliberate, Rose always tried to guess the outcome.

  “Rose?”

  After an anxious beat, the light came on. “Yes, Ms. Hill.”

  Relief. “Quick, I need you to read me something.”

  Rose was devoted to her employer and shone in her position. She was Lauren’s Girl Friday, an invaluable, go-to office manager whom Lauren trusted implicitly. She had been making things run smoothly for over eight years. Swift of mind as well as foot, she effortlessly performed her duties, running circles around many in her profession half her age. She had learned shortcuts and worked smarter, not harder. It served her well. She had discovered a long time ago that being a paralegal in LA was a dog-eat-dog world, more like Darwin’s survival of the fittest. If she wanted to last long in the business, she knew she had to learn nearly as much about law as Lauren. When Lauren was looking for a paralegal at the time she was starting her own firm, she knew immediately Rose was exactly who she was looking for.

  Lauren did not have time for, nor would she ever stand for, someone sitting around, polishing her nails and trying to look pretty for male clientele. Lauren was all business and demanded professionalism on the highest level. Rose was that individual. During her first interview, Lauren had known the caliber of person she was. From that moment on, she much appreciated her hard work, long hours, and tireless dedication. Rose never disappointed.

  Although long past the point of dying her graying hair to impress the opposite sex, Rose was still a looker. She may have been past the prime of life, but still, she looked a great deal younger than her sixty-three years. Her makeup was always tasteful, her smile cheerful even on the most trying of days, Rose kept herself fit, and her attire was always business professional. She truly seemed to enjoy coming to work.

  “Yes, Ms. Hill, I’ll be right in.”

  “No, no! From there. From your desk.” Lauren stopped her, taking a large sip of her drink.

  “Whatever you say, Ms. Hill,” Rose said cordially. “What would you like read?”

  “Scripture.”

  “Excuse me, Ms. Hill? You mean Bible verse?”

  “Yes, pull it up on the computer or something. 6:16.”

  “6:16, Ms. Hill?” Rose didn’t understand much about the Bible, but she knew enough about it to understand her employer was being vague in what she was asking for.

  “Yeah, those sin things. The seven deadly ones! Read them for me.”

  “Yes, Ms. Hill, searching now.”

  In the background, Lauren could hear Rose’s nimble fingers deftly flying across the computer keys. After a brief pause, there was more typing.

  “Here you go, Ms. Hill.” Rose cleared her throat. “Excuse me. ‘There are six things the Lord hates, seven of which are detest—’”

  Suddenly, nothing but static.

  At first, Lauren thought something was wrong with the receiver. “Hello?” Nothing. Lauren gave the intercom a well-placed smack. “C’mon, stupid thing!”

  Then the familiar voice on the other end apologized for the interruption and announced Maze’s arrival. Lauren felt stupid for hitting the machine, but at least no one had been around to see it.

  Rain pattered against the windows as Lauren fumed. Why now? Why did her client have to show up at such an inopportune moment? Maze had said he was only stepping out just long enough to grab a bite to eat; Lauren couldn’t help thinking of the Last Supper. She had no idea so much time had elapsed. Why couldn’t God have slowed time now? she wondered. Lauren needed much more of it to herself.

  She sighed. Pressing the “speak” button, she told Rose to “hold the thought,” then giving it further thought, informed her to forget she had ever mentioned the reading. “Send him in.”

  “Right away. You may go . . . “

  Lauren pressed a button, and the intercom went dead. She slammed back the rest of her drink as the door opened. Maze entered alone.

  “Ms. Hill?” he said, more as a question than a statement. Timidly, he shut the door behind him.

  Lauren put on her best fake smile. “How are you feeling, Maze?”

  “How should I say it? More hopeful than scared. But scared nonetheless.”

  “But hopeful, no?”

  “Yes. I guess I’m confident enough.”

  Not particularly interested in his answer either way, Lauren crossed the office toward the wet bar. “What are you drinking?”

  “Water.”

  “Sparkling or flat?”

  “Water. Just plain water.”

  Lauren turned to get him a glass when, suddenly, the door to the office burst open. A soaking wet Ryan Thompson entered. Standing just inside the entrance, he gently shook the rainwater out of his hair and looked up to see his boss lady staring questioningly at him.

  “First time, I swear. First time I’ve ever been caught in the rain without an umbrella. Thought I was going to beat it.”

  “Well, looks like you were wrong. Now stop shaking like a wet poodle all over my office,” Lauren said with a short, sarcastic laugh.

  Ryan obeyed and stepped over to shake Maze’s hand. He asked how Maze was feeling, although he didn’t care in the least how the man felt. It was simply something to say in acknowledgment of Maze’s presence.

  “Already been established,” Lauren stated. More sarcasm. No laughter, this time. “Why don’t you fix us some drinks?”

  “Great,” he said, eagerly rubbing his hands together. “What are you having?”

  Simultaneously, Lauren said, “Vodka and tonic,” while Maze answered, “Water.”

  Ryan looked back and forth between the two of them. Lauren motioned with a quick nod toward the bar and Ryan went to work.

  Maze walked somberly in the opposite direction to the sofa and sat down, sinking deep into the plush material. Nervously, he began rubbing the arm of it, making random swirls on the two-tone pattern. He noticed that if he stroked in one direction, it was a deep, rich brown. When he stroked in the opposite direction, a golden color appeared.

  Lauren watched him with fascination. He seemed innocent, almost childlike. For the first time, he wasn’t acting like the excitable Maze she had seen seated beside her in court. From the time they had first met in her office, she hadn’t been able to read him, couldn’t tell whether he had committed that awful murder—and honestly didn’t care one way or the other. It wasn’t her job to care. If she wanted to care, she would have become a doctor. That’s what they do, care. Not her.

  Why, she wondered, didn’t he behave like this during the trial? The longer she studied the subdued individual sitting before her, the more she was beginning to believe the spindly Maze was incapable of committing murder.

  Distracting her from her observations, Ryan walked back and handed Maze an opened bottle of water, then turned to hand Lauren her deceptive concoction; it looked like water, but it was much dryer. Ryan sat on the sofa next to Maze, while Lauren walked to the window to watch the storm through the wavy rivulets of water streaming down the paned glass. An eerie silence permeated the room. It wasn’t a tense standoff type of silence, more a contemplative solemnity. Silence, nonetheless. Lauren relished it.


  Maze wanted to talk, needed to voice concerns, only he didn’t know how to start. Actually, he felt it out of place to speak. Maze knew that when it came to Lauren, he was a grating irritant, like fingernails scraping across a slate chalkboard. From day one, he had always felt uncomfortable around her. He felt Lauren’s piercing eyes upon him whenever he voiced an opinion or nervously fidgeted, as he was doing that moment. But he couldn’t help it. He was scared for his life. He looked down at his legs. They were going a mile a minute, bouncing uncontrollably. He squeezed his kneecaps, tight. His legs ceased their involuntary movement. Needing to do anything but watch the clock, he took a sip of water and went back to doodling on the sofa. It was mindless activity, but at least it passed the time.

  A low, alcohol-induced hum rang distantly in Lauren’s ears. She cleared her mind and just listened. Closing her eyes, she became enraptured by the unwavering reverberations within her inner ear. It was as if a strange force were tugging at her. She felt herself starting to spiral.

  “Well, we gave it to the jury.” Ryan clapped a hand against his knee.

  Both Lauren and Maze were startled back to reality. Lauren turned to face him, but neither one offered acknowledgment. For different reasons, both lawyer and client had an inexplicable feeling of impending doom.

  “Well,” Ryan continued, “I, for one, feel confident, very confident.”

  Nervously, Maze inquired, “How long does it usually take?”

  Ryan held his hands out from him, palms up. “Varies. You can never know.”

  “The longer, the better, right? That’s what I’ve heard, the longer, the better.”

  “I’d say,” Ryan offered.

  “Is that right, Miss Hill?”

  Looking out the window, Lauren emptied her glass in one long, final swig. “A storm is brewin’. A big, ugly storm.”

  Thunder roared, and lightning flashed, lighting up the evening sky. Maze and Ryan jumped up from their seats. Lauren calmly turned to face them.

  “Is that true, Miss Hill? Is it better if they take longer?” Maze stammered.

  Lauren studied Maze. Something about him seemed to have changed in the last few minutes, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. He just didn’t seem the same as when he was aimlessly finger-doodling in the pattern on her sofa. Maze lifted his gaze toward her. Yes, she was sure there was something: a flood of despair behind a crumbling dam, a distant rage welling up inside, perhaps. Lauren wasn’t sure which it was. All she knew was anxiety was brewing inside her. She would never want to be alone with him; that was certain.

  Unflinchingly, Lauren countered with her own question. “You been following your doctor’s instructions?”

  “I promised you I would,” he said with a touch of repressed hostility. “But I figured this afternoon, now that the trial is over, that my own decisions should be good enough. I’ve found something in God, Miss Hill, something that feels more stabilizing than what’s in those pills.”

  “Something on your mind, Maze? Something you wanna say?” she asked. Lauren saw some ugliness inside him, and she wanted nothing more than to have him spew that ugliness toward her.

  However, Maze was a trifle smarter than that. It was the main reason why he had chosen to have water instead of alcohol. He wanted to remain in complete control of his faculties. He didn’t want to say or do anything he would later regret. Maze took a long gulp of water. It did nothing to calm his nerves, but it gave him enough time to pull himself back in check. “No. Just asking about the average.”

  Lauren continued to study her client: his movements, his mannerisms. She purposely left Maze’s question unanswered. She could see his frustration building. Maze was on the verge of unraveling and possibly within a fraction of blurting something, something big, something life-altering. If she could just work him a few more minutes, she was sure she could make this happen.

  “I’d say it’s true,” Ryan blundered in. “They take the first vote. That takes but a few minutes. If it isn’t unanimous, they go and talk, and talk, and talk some more, until they either vote the same or can’t talk anymore. The longer they talk, the more likely they can’t vote the same.”

  Damn, she thought, shooting Ryan a look. I almost had him.

  Even though Maze hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, the fermented distillation known to lawyers the world over as truth serum, Lauren knew without a doubt he was on the verge of spilling his guts. Just at that moment, however, Maze’s countenance changed abruptly. Lauren could see the moment had slipped from her grasp.

  “But I don’t want a hung jury!” Maze snapped. “I want them to all vote the same—not guilty. A hung jury, they’ll just try me again. They’ll just try me all over again. I can’t go through this anymore.” Maze bowed his head in his hands, then pounded his fists against his forehead.

  Exasperated, Lauren jumped in. “They’re gonna vote the same.”

  “Yeah? How?” Maze was barely able to keep his rage in check.

  “Not guilty, Maze,” Lauren assured him.

  Hearing those beautiful words from her did reassure him, in a sense. Still, there was something he wanted to get off his chest, and Lauren knew it. She waited in cool anticipation. Maze looked at Lauren and the two locked horns until Maze could no longer hold it in.

  “I heard Amanda’s family—” Then he switched his direction. “Growing up, I ended up going to three different high schools. I used to play baseball. We didn’t move or anything, just incidents, always incidents that used to follow me. And hearing them, seeing them. They used to be my family, you know, like looking at old teammates across the field. Conflict in your heart, but I heard them talking about me.”

  Lauren was a bit confused. Maze was rambling, not making any sense: first talking about different schools, then playing ball, then people following him. He was hopping around too much. Still, she produced a kindly smile, sat back in her chair, and calmly folded her dainty hands over her knee.

  Maze looked down at his own hands and continued. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I couldn’t look at them throughout the trial. Looking at the judge, the jury, those lawyers was enough. More than I could handle. I couldn’t look at them, too. But I heard them whispering between sobs and tears, saying Amanda should never have married me because I’d already been divorced twice. And, and they’d murmur about trust, that you can’t trust a man with a background like mine. But that’s not true, I’m telling you. It just isn’t true.” He pounded a clenched fist on his leg.

  Lauren was taken aback. It was a hard blow. She was worried Maze had punched himself hard enough to cause injury. But Maze never missed a beat. Even without having a stiff drink, he kept talking.

  “The truth is, the first time I married young. Real young. I was eighteen and in the service. Our little boy was born premature, and he died in her arms. From then on, I swear she didn’t love me anymore. Like she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.”

  The longer Maze talked, the more distraught he became. Tears welled in the corner of his eyes as he revealed his painful relationship history. At least, for Lauren, it was painful to listen to and not in a compassionate way. She was hoping that all of this was leading somewhere, possibly to a confession of some sort.

  “Then when I was twenty-five, yeah, I admit we beat each other up a few times. Didn’t know no other way. It wasn’t meant to be, me and her. She always taunted, and I was always angry.” Maze looked up at Lauren. “I loved my wife. You know that, right? I loved her like I never loved anyone.”

  Lauren was surprised. She could sense imminent collapse. Leaning back so Maze could not see him, Ryan circled the air with his finger near his left ear to sign crazy. Lauren nodded slightly in acknowledgment and looked at Maze.

  Anxiety building, he stood. “I was never religious . . . never. I was the kid that used to hurt things—bugs, small animals—cut them up.” Maze’s voice seemed to elevate with excitement. “But then, I got older and stopped hurting them and believing in my own powers. I started f
inding ways to justify that what I was doing was okay. If I stole something, it was because it shouldn’ta been withheld from me in the first place. If I hurt something or someone, well I figured they deserved it.”

  Lauren locked eyes carefully with Ryan. She nodded purposefully in agreement that Maze was not all there. Lauren saw the gleam in Maze’s eye. He seemed almost to enjoy reliving his past destructive behavior.

  “And they probably did, right?”

  Lauren only nodded in false agreement.

  “But I didn’t have no God,” Maze continued. “My parents hated religion. They were social climbers, used to mock religion. They said it was only for the weak-minded, like superstitions, but organized into well-funded machines. What did talking to God or about God ever do for anyone, anyway?” Maze glanced at both Ryan and Lauren. “Right? Right? Just talkin’ ‘bout a higher power no one had ever seen. As I got older, I didn’t see the point, either. It didn’t make any sense to me that all the power in life was not in your own hands. If one’s life was a car, weren’t they also the driver? But I see something I never did before. I see order. I see the kind of order in God that clearly is. I don’t know. I can’t explain it, don’t know the words, I guess. But I find comfort in knowing I’m not alone, anymore. I know there’s a God.”

  Maze looked down at his hands, studying them. His tone lowered to nearly a whisper. “I never felt so alone with just my hands, like I have.”

  Clearly, Maze was ridden with guilt. Lauren crossed to him, taking his hands in hers. Touched, Maze looked up at her. It was the most warmth she had ever shown to him.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go. There’s no grave, no way to show remorse.” He looked into Lauren’s eyes. “They think I did it, too. They believed me at first, but now, now her whole family thinks I loved her. Now, I’m not only alone; I feel abandoned.”

  Lauren stepped away, feeling powerless. Maybe, like everyone else in his life, she had misjudged him. He did have a history of killing animals in gruesome ways she found disturbing, but that proved nothing. It didn’t make him a killer. She, too, had been misunderstood the past couple of days. She wasn’t crazy, either. She had seen God.