by Jay Brandon
Edward gathered up his clothes and stepped out into the interior hall that ran through the offices. Cynthia reached for him, but he shook her off. He shot one last glance back over his shoulder and saw her pleading eyes, enormous in the dimness. Then he turned and ran.
Luckily, the bailiff had stepped into another office, the court coordinator’s, so Edward was able to run past him. He got to the hallway door and bolted out. He ran down this dim back corridor with the guard’s shouts in his ears. Edward made noise himself, wanting to make sure he was pursued. He turned the corner and made it to the door out into the main, public hallway. Edward had hope then. He might actually get away, hide in a men’s room, finish getting dressed, walk out coolly. But the bailiff was close behind him and he had a radio. Edward got to the junction, looked around for an emergency exit, couldn’t find one. Frantically he pressed the elevator buttons, but that was silly. The bailiff came around the corner at a walk.
So those damned slow elevators got him.
FIVE
By the time Edward and the security guard had gotten back to the court offices they were empty. So Edward’s plan had worked: Cynthia got away.
He and she were never alone together again. Or almost never. As Edward’s criminal case worked its way through the system, Cynthia stayed in the D.A.’s office. She didn’t prosecute him herself, but she didn’t intervene, either. He didn’t blame her. If she implicated herself now, his sacrifice would have been useless. Edward stayed away from her at least as much as she avoided him.
One day, though, they found themselves walking toward each other down that narrow back corridor. Cynthia stopped, her face going toward pale. Her hands began to tremble. Edward kept walking, planning just to pass her by. But as he did Cynthia grabbed his hand, holding him in place. Edward turned to her, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t look at him.
Eyes closed, shoulders shaking, she said in a fierce whisper, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘It was my decision,’ he said, and walked on down the hall.
The justice system couldn’t quite decide what to do with him. The detective of course found the missing cocaine the next day, but they couldn’t charge him with possession of cocaine, since he’d never taken it out of the room where it started.
So they ended up charging him with burglary of a building, punishable by up to twenty years in prison. Normally a lawyer with Edward’s completely clean record would have gotten probation. Two unique aspects of his crime stopped that. The first was the target of the crime – not only the Justice Center but the justice system itself – and the fact that Edward had taken advantage of his position as an officer of the court to steal evidence from the system. The second was that the judge, whose court offices he’d romped in with Cynthia, made it known he wouldn’t tolerate a lighter sentence and anyone who offered Edward one or any judge who assessed it, would have an enemy for life. The judge had held office for twenty years and was thought to have some power over voters, so his threat carried weight.
And Edward couldn’t afford to take the case to trial. Jurors given the chance to sentence a lawyer would probably give him worse than probation.
So he accepted a plea bargain offer of three years in prison, did two, had been out for a year, and had now seen Cynthia Miles in a judge’s robe for the second time. As he’d stood in her courtroom looking up at her, Edward had hardly felt the irony. The courtroom was too formal a setting in the daylight, full of people. And Cynthia hadn’t given him a wink or a kind word or any sort of secret signal. Not even a sympathetic gaze. She’d only looked directly at him for a second or two and that had been more a look of assessment. Probably wondering how Edward felt toward her.
He hadn’t heard anything from her for more than three years. By the time he was sentenced, Cynthia had moved higher in the office and had kept her distance from him for months. Not a note, not crossed paths. If she was arguing for leniency for him behind the scenes, he didn’t hear about it. And, of course, there was nothing from her during his time in prison and since. He had suspected that the only way Cynthia could deal with what had happened to him would be by forgetting he existed. How could she have gotten through even one of the seven hundred plus nights he’d spent on a prison bunk if she thought of him there?
Now that he’d returned, walking right into her courtroom, Cynthia was in a delicate position. If she recused herself from his sister’s case, people would ask why. No one knew of her being any closer to Edward than any of the other judges were. Of course she couldn’t explain, not even some fake explanation about a secret friendship they’d shared, because she’d need Edward to back her up on that and they shouldn’t even communicate right now.
On the other hand, if she stayed on the case and Edward involved himself in the defense, she had to worry about what she would do if he tried to blackmail her, either overtly or just by his appearance in the case. It was a very delicate position and, oddly enough, Edward felt sympathetic. She hadn’t done one thing for him in spite of his sacrificing his career and two years of his life for her, but he still felt a trace of that protective urge that had driven him half-naked out into the hallway in the first place.
One ironic aspect of the whole debacle was that Edward’s client, the one charged with possession of all that cocaine, was found not guilty by the jury the next morning while Edward was bonding out of jail. So he was on a winning streak as a trial lawyer. He’d beaten Cynthia in court.
Edward’s thoughts were back on his sister the next day when his phone rang.
‘Hi,’ Edward said familiarly.
‘Hi,’ Linda answered. ‘I haven’t called because I didn’t know—’
‘I know.’
She didn’t know what to say about his sister’s arrest. Amy’s troubles, of course, had been splashed all over the front page and even the TV stations had covered it.
‘You going to come see me soon, Teddy?’
Linda was one of the very few other people from whom he’d tolerate a nickname, mainly because she’d made it up herself and she didn’t let anyone else know about it.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about you. I just need … I’m kind of caught up in all this mess.’
There was a brief silence, after which she said, ‘I figured.’
‘I’ll call you tonight,’ he said.
‘If you have time. I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.’
‘Thanks. I’m thinking of you too, Linda.’
And she clicked off. Edward dropped his phone in the cup holder beside him. Sometimes he hated phones. The conversations that gave the illusion of contact but really just emphasized the distance between the talkers.
The next call was worse in some ways, from Amy. After very brief greetings she said, ‘Mom and Dad would like to see you.’
‘So what are you, their social secretary?’
‘Edward—’
‘Sorry, Amy, sorry. I just … If they’re going to issue a summons, it could at least be a little more personal.’
‘It’s not like that, Eddie. They just knew I’d be talking to you anyway. Mom says she came by to see you, but you weren’t home.’
That could be true. He was out a lot. But they have these things now called phones. His mother didn’t like them. She communicated in the old-fashioned ways of southern women, with little touches and expressions, in which a sentence could have an entirely different meaning if her head was cocked one direction rather than the other.
‘OK. When?’
‘Tonight at eight? Dinner at their house?’
Edward shook his head. ‘I’ll come at seven for drinks. Y’all can have dinner afterwards and talk about me. The family tradition.’
‘Eddie,’ she said reprovingly.
‘Sorry, Amy. It’s not your fault. It’s just … you know how it is.’
‘I do.’
A little while later, he was driving into River Oaks; the most exclusive neighborhood in Houston, old
brick or stone mansions on large lots. Edward had been eight when they’d moved here. His younger sister remembered only the River Oaks place as their family home. Edward could remember living in a much smaller house when it was only him and his parents, when his father was doing his residency. Edward had loved that little neighborhood: kids in every house, spilling out into the front yards at any given time, mongrel dogs in the backyards, pick-up soccer and basketball games, playing hide and seek, tag, sometimes running into the street without looking. A girl two houses down had kissed him and the boy across the street had punched him, unrelated events but he could still feel both physical sensations.
Edward pulled up to the address. Amy thought of this place as home, Edward felt sure, but for him it still seemed new and not quite permanent. Edward, as the oldest, felt more transient.
He stood on the front porch and rang the bell. In moments his mother opened the door and looked at him with her head tilted and puzzlement creasing her forehead.
‘Edward! What are you doing ringing the bell? Why didn’t you just come in?’
‘Hi, Mom.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘How have you been?’
‘Well fine, until all this business with Amy, of course. Come in, come in. Everybody’s here.’
Edward looked at his mother for a few seconds. Beverly Hall was a thin fifty-eight-year-old, but looking as much younger as weekly massages, a personal trainer and regular spas could accomplish – except in her neck and her hands, which showed her age in spite of everything. Edward inhaled.
As they stepped into the living room his mother said, ‘Would you like a drink?’
God, yes. ‘No, thanks. Maybe later.’ The convicted coke fiend needed to display some control.
The rest of his family was in the living room, a high-ceilinged room twenty feet wide and thirty deep, with tall windows on the far side. Marshall Hall stood in the center of the room with a drink in his hand. Dr Hall, like his wife, gave the appearance of being tall by maintaining an erect posture at all times. He looked the same as ever, his weight kept down, his gray hair mostly still in place. Dr Hall had a straight nose that he could peer down when necessary, a broad forehead and a thin-lipped mouth.
His distinguished, slightly forbidding appearance suited his place in the world. Dr Hall was a specialist, an internist who had become the leading diagnostician in the city, possibly the state. Patients came to him from as far as Saudi Arabia. Awards and pictures with celebrity clients lined his office walls in his medical building.
He was beloved in his world, but in private let leak to his family his true opinions. Very quiet, cutting remarks about everyone he knew. At first the children felt special because he let them in on these observations. But Edward later realized that his father probably did the same thing with other people about his children. Secretly criticizing is an addiction; you can’t restrict it.
Dr Hall said, ‘Hello, son,’ and came toward him. They didn’t shake hands and they weren’t huggers, but Dr Hall clasped Edward’s shoulder for a moment.
‘Hello, Dad. How have you been?’
‘Good, good. Well enough. Worried about Amy, of course. Do they make these false arrests very often? Now I doubt every criminal case I’ve ever read about, where I just presumed the arrested people were guilty. Now I wonder.’
So innocence was the prevailing theory in the Hall household. Good, he supposed, except it didn’t prepare the family for what usually followed an arrest: trial and conviction.
‘Well, cops are no more competent than doctors, Dad. Probably less so.’
Nobody laughed. On the other hand, nobody looked shocked, either. They’d ‘put up with Edward’s sense of humor for years,’ as his mother put it.
Edward went to Amy and gave her a brief hug. In this setting she looked younger than when he’d seen her recently and rather embarrassed at being the occasion for the occasion. Amy didn’t have a drink either. The only two people in the family who’d ever been arrested had to keep their hands clean.
Dr Hall said, ‘Amy tells us she wants you to represent her, Edward. Can you even do that?’
So they were going to get right to it.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Eddie—’
‘I can’t, Amy. I don’t even know why you want me to. It’s suicidal.’
‘Is it?’ their mother asked. ‘You always had a good trial record, Edward.’
He couldn’t believe everyone wanted him to do this.
‘She needs a real lawyer, Mom. I’m not that anymore.’
‘Well, you have the same skills you had,’ his father said. ‘I’m not advocating one way or another, I’m just getting the facts straight,’ his father answered his son’s surprised expression.
‘Would you recommend a surgeon who hadn’t performed a surgery in three years and had spent most of that time in prison?’ Edward asked him.
‘I don’t think I can give a blanket answer to that,’ Dr Hall said slowly. ‘It would depend on what I knew about the surgeon, what kind of skills he’d demonstrated before the hiatus.’
Edward couldn’t think of anything else to say. This wasn’t how he’d expected this meeting to go. This was probably the most flattering his father had ever been about Edward’s legal career.
Mrs Hall said, ‘I just want what’s best for Amy.’ She sounded more forceful than she usually did. ‘And this family, of course,’ she trailed off.
‘I want what’s best for Amy too,’ Edward said quietly. ‘Why don’t we talk about her?’
Edward’s father was still looking at him. ‘All right, tell us about her, Edward. Her legal situation, I mean.’
‘In a way, it’s too soon to tell. She was arrested because she was at the scene with the victim’s blood all over her and she’s his estranged wife. In that situation that person is going to get arrested nine times out of nine. That doesn’t automatically—’
‘Really? Police just make these assumptions, so an innocent person has to spend a night in jail?’
‘Mom, please. I’m not defending the investigation. I’m just telling you how things happen. The problem is not that that’s how the investigation started, it’s if—’
‘That’s where it stops,’ his father said. ‘Yes. Once you’ve made one diagnosis you stop checking for anything else. Amy passed on your analogy. Which is quite good. So what do we do?’
Amy said, ‘If the cops aren’t doing their job—’
‘Then you hire a private investigator,’ Mrs Hall said. ‘Right? We have to.’
Edward was struck more forcefully than he ever had been that this was a smart family. They were discussing a specialized subject unfamiliar to them, but he didn’t have to explain at much length.
‘Yes. We have to hire private investigators. Amy and I have already talked about that. The problem with that is that prosecutors have relationships with police officers, it’s the natural course of things for a police investigation—’
‘To lead directly into the District Attorney’s Office,’ Amy said. ‘And they don’t give the same weight to something a private detective brings them.’
‘Not nearly,’ Edward affirmed. ‘But if the investigators uncover solid evidence, something you can put in front of the D.A., it’s hard to ignore that.’
There was a time when Edward, at the height of his cowboy chutzpah as a trial lawyer, would have kept such evidence to himself until trial, when he could spring it and hope for a win. But that was too risky here. The goal was to avert trial altogether.
‘Sounds like a process that needs to start right away,’ Dr Hall said judiciously. ‘But we have one other advantage. Your relationships with these people: the prosecutors, even the judge. You know them from before, don’t you? They’ll listen to you.’
‘There are other lawyers with equally good relationships in the system. Even better ones, because they’ve kept them up for the last three years. And they’d have the advantage of sounding more objective, talking about a client who’s not a relative.
’
‘Yes, but who had paid them a great deal to defend her,’ his mother said. She had come even closer, until she put her hand on Edward’s arm and held it there. ‘You sound more sincere because you know her.’
They were all looking at him. Edward felt those stares like summer sun beginning to burn his skin, but he continued to look only at Amy. He felt he knew everything she’d been thinking, but she’d barely spoken. He wanted to ask her to say something, but he could tell from her expression that’s exactly what she didn’t want. Amy had reverse-aged since he’d seen her last. Here in her family she was no longer the smart, accomplished professional. She looked more like a girl. A frightened girl.
What struck Edward, as he drove away from this family meeting, was what they hadn’t discussed. The facts of Amy’s case, for one. Everyone had just assumed, or at least seemed to assume, that she was innocent and that Edward could prove that if he exerted himself to the full extent of his ability.
The other un-broached topic – the elephant in the room so big they were all inside it – was that he was not a lawyer anymore. He didn’t have a law license and wasn’t legally entitled to appear in a courtroom on behalf of a client.
As Edward drove he tried to think his way around that problem. He could do the early stuff for Amy certainly: talk to the prosecutors, oversee the defense’s private investigation, spin legal theories. If the case came to trial, he could talk her into hiring an actual lawyer, while Edward sat in on the defense as an advisor.
Or he could just continue to fake it, pretend to be the lawyer he used to be and let everyone think he still was. That way led to disaster for Edward himself, but that didn’t matter. It was also crazy, but that was irrelevant for the moment too. He wondered suddenly why he hadn’t just said, I can’t do it. It’s not legal?