Against the Law

by Jay Brandon

  Edward nodded. Alternatives. That’s one thing a good lawyer offered a client. The client makes the choices.

  Don smiled for the first time that hour. ‘It’s a shame you can’t handle it yourself, Edward. Or can you? Did you fix that little problem with the bar?’

  ‘Yeah, I paid my tab.’

  Don chuckled. ‘Well, you’re a damned good lawyer. Look forward to running into you in the courthouse again really soon.’

  Edward took the obligatory compliment in stride and repressed the little shudder the thought of re-entering that building produced in him.

  Over coffee a block away, Amy said, ‘Isn’t it strange how this thing has dispossessed me from my life already? Normally I’d want to go to my office to talk about this, or even home, but I still feel stalked by the press at the house and in the office I’d imagine my staff listening at the door. God, I hate this.’

  On the other hand, you’re alive, he thought, but didn’t say it.

  ‘So what do you think? I didn’t see your other interviews, but Don is damned good, not just in court but behind the scenes. I’m a little surprised you didn’t want to go with Michelle right away.’

  Amy stopped him with a little hand gesture. She closed her eyes, showing how tired she was. She’d dressed up nicely for this interview, in a business-ready dress, no jewelry, but enough makeup to hide the redness around her eyes. But not their puffiness. He suddenly saw that she was exhausted and that she’d been crying. None of that had come across in the lawyer’s office, where she’d been stiff and formal and apparently unfeeling: the perfect defendant, from a prosecutor’s perspective. The cold-blooded killer, sitting there coldly staring.

  ‘No, I didn’t hire Michelle,’ Amy said slowly. ‘And I wasn’t that crazy about your friend just now, either.’

  He wondered if Amy’s problem was what he had suggested to Don, that she was reluctant to hire a lawyer because that would signal that her prosecution was beginning for real. She couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger, so to speak.

  ‘Look, Amy, you’re going to have to—’

  ‘I know. I’m not in denial, Edward. This is a reality I have to confront. You know what weird thing I keep thinking? I have to do this for Paul, too. Someone killed him. It wasn’t me. Who’s looking for that murderer? Not the police. They’ve decided on me. I know that. I’ve never had to think about it before, but I see how they work. They settle like flies on the closest piece of dropped sandwich and don’t go looking for something else.’

  Good metaphor, Edward thought. Amy, at only the beginning of her first exposure to the justice system, had seen what it had taken him a long time to learn.

  ‘It’s just like doctors,’ she continued. ‘If you go to one with a cough and he discovers you have bronchitis, he doesn’t check for lung cancer, too. Take the easiest, most obvious diagnosis and move on. So I have to be free to find that killer. I have to prove I didn’t kill Paul so police or someone will start looking for the person who did.’

  ‘But you need a good lawyer to help you do that, Amy. I can’t—’

  ‘I know, Eddie.’ She put her hand over his. Hers was warm and a little moist. ‘You’ve been wonderful. More than I could have asked for. I love you.’

  He turned his hand to squeeze hers, reflecting how different it was when Amy called him by a nickname than when other people did. He had never introduced himself as anything other than Edward. When an acquaintance called him something else, it was embracing a shared intimate past that had never existed. But Amy had called him Eddie when they were children, especially when she was very young. Her voice changed when she said it. He heard her inquisitive, questioning, vulnerable past calling to him.

  ‘Love you too, baby girl.’

  ‘So of course you know I’m going to ask you one more favor. I’ll pick a lawyer, very soon, but can you go to the first court setting with me? Just show me around. I’m sorry, Edward, but I need you.’

  He started to say no automatically, to tell her she needed her lawyer chosen by then, so that lawyer could start representing her right away, in the first discussion with the prosecutor. But that wasn’t really true. Nothing happened at the first setting. It was doubtful even that the prosecutor who responded to that docket call would be the eventual trial prosecutor. The first setting had very little significance.

  He just nodded. Didn’t bother to reiterate that she had to accept the reality of what she was facing. Court would do that for her soon enough.

  She looked so happy when she smiled at him. An observer might have thought they’d just gotten engaged. And he wondered if it was because she was innocent or because she thought she’d convinced her brother she was.

  ‘When is it?’ he asked.

  THREE

  The Harris County Criminal Justice Center was maybe twenty years old, built in the middle of downtown Houston to take the criminal cases out of the civil courthouse. The volume of criminal cases in Texas’ largest city seemed to have lifted the building from the ground, inflating it further and further until it was a twenty story glass and steel skyscraper. The staircases weren’t easily accessible and the building’s elevators were so overwhelmed by the traffic that there were bailiffs who did nothing else but point out available cars and sometimes push people into them. The wait to get to an upper floor could be half an hour. Once you got up there you felt trapped. The Criminal Justice Center, the joke among lawyers went, only twenty minutes from downtown Houston.

  The courtrooms were all interior rooms with no views. They had the same view: pews, the railing, counsel tables, the judge’s bench, the jury box. There was no central aisle to the front, as in traditional courtrooms. The aisles were on the sides. And every room the same. They were interchangeable, subtly conveying to the defendants that they were too. Soon your case would be done, those cold rooms said, and a hundred more would take your place.

  Edward had told Amy to come an hour before her nine o’clock docket call. He met her in the parking lot and guided her through the melee of people getting onto the elevators, which was still much, much less crowded than it would be as the hour came closer. Defendants were notoriously late arrivals. If they could follow rules, they wouldn’t be here in the first place.

  Edward no longer had the ID that would get him special treatment, but one bailiff, an older, oddly cheerful black woman, gave him attorney’s privileges and pushed him ahead of people into an elevator anyway. Edward nodded his thanks and pulled Amy in with him just as the doors were closing.

  It was unusual to have the luxury of sitting with Amy in the courtroom, helping her ease into the system and giving much longer explanations than usual of the process. Normally, even if he only had one setting, he would have been up there looking at the case file and trying to create a rapport with the prosecutor, maybe even joking with the judge over coffee back in chambers. No client had ever gotten such undivided attention from him. He continued to hold her hand and so could feel her tension building. It jumped a couple of levels when they brought in the prisoners in their orange jumpsuits, their shackles making them shuffle their way into the jury box, where they sat and waited for their lawyers. Some looked out at the audience, seeking family members or friends. Others tried very hard to pretend they weren’t there. Edward remembered being taken into custody in a courtroom identical to this one, just after his no contest plea, sitting in that jury box with his hands cuffed, waiting for the bailiff to take him back to the holdover cell. He remembered the anger, regret and resentment but, most of all, the embarrassment. Seeing normal life – the life he’d just had – going on without him. The shame at having been demoted from player in the criminal justice system to its product. Just that quickly.

  For Amy it would be much more than the three years Edward had gotten, if things took the course they usually did in these courts. Her grip on his hand was becoming painful. He didn’t even try to reassure her.

  When the judge emerged Edward was surprised, then mad at himself for h
is surprise. He’d heard about Cynthia’s appointment, about the same time he’d been released on parole. Cynthia Miles, thirty-four, had been a prosecutor with a reputation for preparing a case so tightly it seldom went to trial. She would have been an attractive appointment for the governor when this bench came open: a tough prosecutor, African-American, poised, pretty, with a great smile, but also the coldest stare in the building if someone overstepped. She had a wide forehead, prominent brown eyes and rounded cheeks over an expressive mouth.

  Judge Miles took her seat on the high bench without looking out, immediately turning her attention to the docket sheet in front of her, scanning for names of lawyers she knew or defendants whose names had become familiar because they’d spent too long on her docket.

  ‘You know her?’ Amy whispered.

  ‘Little bit.’

  Time moved in jerks and starts after that, seeming to crawl as other defendants’ names were called and their lawyers made brief responses to the judge or longer explanations of why the case wasn’t ready to be resolved. Judge Miles showed no emotion other than mild irritation and that was when greeting a lawyer like an old friend. Edward saw that was the best one could hope for when she was dealing with her cases, just as when she’d been a prosecutor.

  Abruptly, Amy’s name was called. It was clear from Cynthia’s neutral tone that ‘Amy Shilling’ meant nothing to her. Amy jumped to her feet, still holding her brother’s hand.

  ‘Here, Your Honor.’

  ‘Ms Shilling, do you have an attorney?’

  ‘Yes, Your Honor.’ She pulled Edward’s hand upward and he, startled, quickly obeyed the implied command, standing next to her. Then he turned his attention forward, to where the judge had set down her docket sheet and leveled a steady gaze at him.

  ‘Mr Hall.’

  ‘Good morning, Your Honor.’

  ‘Good morning. You’re here with Ms Shilling?’

  ‘She’s my sister, Your Honor.’

  ‘Ah. Well, approach the bench after the docket, please.’

  ‘Yes, Your Honor.’

  He sat back down, bemused by how quickly he’d fallen back into the habit of automatically saying yes and using the honorific to everything a judge said. Are you ready for trial, Mr Hall? Yes, Your Honor. Are you going to help me move this docket, Mr Hall? Yes, Your Honor. I’m going to have my bailiff punch you in the face now, Mr Hall. Is that acceptable to you? Yes, Your Honor.

  But he quickly turned his stare on his sister.

  ‘Amy, what the hell—?’

  ‘Please, Edward. Just today, OK? We’ll talk after, OK?’

  ‘We damned sure will.’

  He sat next to her, wondering what the hell she was thinking, wanting to take her out into the hall to talk to her, or slap her, but also anchored to the spot by the life of the courtroom. It moved around him, the court clerk swearing defendants in, to ask if they were indigent and so deserved a free lawyer, and the bailiffs watchful, checking their lists, because usually one or another of the defendants had picked up a new charge and an arrest warrant since their last setting. Most of all Edward, watched the judge, Cynthia Miles, who never looked up from her paperwork and certainly never in his direction.

  ‘Amy,’ he said urgently under his breath. ‘You have to make a decision about who you’re going to hire.’

  She didn’t say anything. Her hand remained in his, squeezing hard. It seemed a small hand, almost as small as when she’d put it into his when they went to the zoo or a museum, or when they heard a sudden noise at home.

  ‘Amy—’

  ‘Shh. Tell me what’s going on.’

  Edward looked around. He could tell almost immediately. The lawyer talking earnestly to his client, who sat cuffed in the jury box, was probably on the hook to go to trial today if he couldn’t talk his guy into taking whatever deal had been offered. Edward could tell from their postures, the lawyer leaning in more and more urgently, the defendant answering back, looking reasonable from this distance but probably spouting crazy like worms slithering out of his mouth. It was always a bad sign when the client talked back. They should just listen and nod.

  One of the prosecutors was talking to a defense lawyer, the young prosecutor nodding but not paying much attention. The other prosecutor, older than the other, sat at ease, leaning back. The prosecutor didn’t know yet which case he’d be trying and didn’t much care, since all trials went mostly the same way, with the prosecution winning. It made those kids think they were good lawyers, that winning.

  Edward whispered some of this to Amy.

  ‘What makes you think they must be going to trial?’

  ‘Because they do every week. There are too many cases not to. Don’t try things and the caseload just gets unmanageable. Besides, from the way the judge is—’

  Edward looked at Cynthia on the bench. And the judge raised her eyes to him. He remembered she’d told him to approach after the docket call.

  ‘Oh, sorry, wait here, Amy.’

  He jumped up and hurried down the aisle. He put one hand on the swinging gate and went through it easily. Nothing happened. Only lawyers were supposed to come into this part of the courtroom, but there was no alarm system. Edward walked into the lawyers’ realm as easily as he had for ten years. He hurried up to the bench. Cynthia Miles’ face was only a few inches higher than his, but the distance seemed huge. It was his first time to see her in a robe.

  No, second. For a moment he was back in a memory, but he erased it quickly, hoping it hadn’t shown on his face. It was impossible to tell from Cynthia’s calm, nearly blank expression whether she’d read anything from him.

  ‘Mr Hall.’

  ‘Judge.’

  ‘It’s good to see you. How long have you been back practicing?’

  ‘I’m not really, Your Honor. I have a job. Non-legal. But my sister needs some help and she asked me—’

  ‘Yes, she does. I see that.’ The judge glanced down again at her docket sheet, which told her what Amy was charged with. Cynthia returned her calm gaze to Edward. ‘Some kind of mistake?’

  ‘Yes, Judge. She’s a doctor. So was her husband. She was the one to find his body, so police – you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Edward looked for nuances in Cynthia’s expression, maybe in the way she turned her head or tilted her shoulders. But she gave nothing away. She seemed so placid no one would have thought there might be another layer to their relationship.

  ‘I guess I’ll be seeing some of you then, eh?’ she added.

  ‘I suppose so, Your Honor.’

  She smiled ever so slightly, a dismissal. Edward bowed his head minutely and turned away. The older prosecutor glanced at him, but with very little interest. Edward didn’t know either of these two. He’d been gone three years, which could be a generation in the D.A.’s office with its revolving door. Edward stopped and said to him, ‘Amy Shilling. First appearance.’

  The prosecutor nodded. ‘Not indicted yet. Out on bond. Just get another setting from the clerk.’ Just as Edward was about to step away, he added, ‘So she’s your sister?’

  Edward nodded. The prosecutor shrugged one shoulder and made a small clicking noise with his tongue. Edward knew what he was saying. Stupid idea, representing a relative. Having skin in the game made for some bad lawyering. Edward nodded back.

  ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Amy asked once they were outside. ‘The hardest part was getting up to the courtroom and then back down again.’

  Yes, Edward thought, getting out again could be the hardest part of going to the courthouse. But he didn’t say anything. Amy was scared enough. She looked lighthearted now, though. He understood her relief.

  She asked him to get coffee, but after they’d walked for a block they realized it was a beautiful spring day. Trees were budding out in flowers and the grass was that thick, lush green of Houston, before the summer heat had singed or wilted any of it. So they just continued to walk.

  ‘Amy, look. I understand th
is smiling you’re doing. I understand you’re almost skipping along the sidewalk. You just stepped into the belly of the beast and managed to walk out again. Believe me, I know exactly how you’re feeling. It seems easy. But it gets harder and harder. A good lawyer can do some of his best work here at the front end of the case. You need to hire—’

  ‘What would a good lawyer do now?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Do you think I’m that stupid?’ Edward stopped walking, taking her elbow to stop her too. ‘You think I’m going to start talking to you about how I’d represent you and I’ll get excited and think “I can do this” and you’ll look up to me with your big blue eyes and say, “Help me, Edward,” and we’ll be off on our big adventure? You think that’s how it’s going to work? No, Amy. I cannot practice law. I wouldn’t represent you if I could. It’s a terrible idea.’

  ‘Edward.’

  ‘What is the matter with you, Amy? If someone came to you with a lump somewhere would you advise them to ignore it? So why won’t you hire a lawyer? Is it money? Because I could probably—’

  ‘It’s not money. It’s this, Edward. You were there for my last lawyer interview. What did he start telling me immediately after I’d finished telling him my story?’

  ‘The steps in defending you. What he’d do. Which was excellent advice, by the way. You need—’

  ‘Edward.’ She stopped him again and looked very seriously at him from those pleading blue eyes. ‘He started talking to me about plea bargains. Reducing my sentence. Talking about my inevitable conviction.’

  ‘You have to deal with those—’

  ‘They were all like that, Edward. He was the best of the lot, actually. He seemed to pay some slight attention to my defense. But they all think I’m guilty, Edward, from before I come in. And nothing I say makes them doubt that conclusion for an instant. They’re used to representing guilty people, that’s what they assume I am, and that’s how they deal with their cases. They give very little or no thought to planning an actual defense. They don’t know how.’