A Gambler's Jury

by Victor Methos

  “We were referred to you by someone in our church. Billy Nielson. He said you helped him out once.”

  I remembered Billy. He had been accused of sexual battery after misreading some signals and groping a girl he had been on a Tinder date with. In addition to the ass whooping the girl gave him—she was an MMA fighter—he was also arrested. I got him released with a fine and a few sessions of therapy.

  My gut twisted into knots as I stared at Teddy. I had no concrete ideas why, just that something about this case was already sending off signals to stay away. “What county did this happen in?”

  “Hoover.”

  “Hang on one sec.”

  I knew one of the screening prosecutors at the Hoover County District Attorney’s Office, Lauren Hailey. I hadn’t talked to her in months, and I couldn’t remember why. I called her cell, and she answered within a couple of rings.

  “Danielle Rollins,” she said. “As I live and breathe.”

  “I don’t know what that expression means, but I take it that you’re happy to hear from me.”

  “You calling to set up a time to make out with my boyfriend again?”

  That’s right. That’s why I hadn’t talked to her in so long.

  “I told you,” I whispered, hoping the Thornes wouldn’t hear. “He kissed me before I could push him away.” We were awkwardly silent for a second. “Anyway, I didn’t take you as the type to hold grudges.”

  “Oh, I got over it. You’re not that important. And I dumped his ass.”

  “I agree with that. Guy was a scumbag. But hey, I need a quick favor and please don’t hang up. I’ve got a young kid in my office named Teddy—”

  “Theodore,” his mother whispered.

  “Theodore Thorne. He was busted a couple nights ago for distribution. I just wanted to see if that’s in the pipeline yet.”

  “Hang on,” she sighed. I heard her punching keys on the computer. Then she said, “Yeah, we got the detectives’ reports today.”

  “And?”

  “And we should be filing on it this week.”

  “Filing on it? Did the detectives mention Teddy’s . . . condition . . . in their reports?”

  “Yeah, they put that he has some possible mental issues. So what?”

  “I got him here right now, Lauren, and it’s pretty severe. No way he knew what he was doing.”

  “I don’t know what to tell ya. People fake mental health issues all the time to get out of criminal charges. Work it out with the line prosecutor once it’s filed.”

  “You won’t do me a solid and hold on to the case for a while so I can look into it?”

  “It’s a lot of coke, and we have three witnesses saying Teddy was the one who did the deal.”

  I put my head back on my chair. Now it was making sense. “They pointed the finger at him, huh?”

  “All four of them are charged with distribution, but yes, they said that it was Theodore’s coke and his deal.”

  That was Utah law for you. The “constructive possession statute” said if someone knew drugs were in the vicinity, the drugs officially belonged to them. Four guys in a car with some weed in the console? If all four knew the weed was there, it didn’t matter whose it actually was; even if none of them wanted to smoke it, all four would be charged. Teddy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Can you give me a few days to try to convince you not to file this?”

  “Sorry, Dani, it’s already approved by Sandy.”

  “That quick?”

  “I told you, it was a lotta coke.”

  “How much?”

  “Eight.”

  “Eight kilos? You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  I looked at Teddy, who was absorbed by the iPad again. “Well, I appreciate you telling me. I’ll let them know.”

  I hung up the phone and turned to Riley and her husband. The husband stared out the window with a look that told me he didn’t want to be here. Only Riley showed any real concern.

  “He was busted with eight kilos. Street value, that’s almost two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of coke. I have a feeling the other boys pointed the finger at Teddy hoping they wouldn’t get in trouble. Still, that’s a lot of coke for just some ordinary teenagers.”

  “Of course they blamed him. That’s why we need your help.”

  I stared at her a second. Teddy’s case would be in juvenile court. Most judges didn’t like sending kids to detention unless they had to, and certainly not for drug offenses. The likelihood was that even if Teddy pled straight guilty, he would get community service. It wouldn’t even be on his record when he turned eighteen since we could get it expunged when he came of age.

  Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  “To be honest, Riley, I’m not sure you need me. He won’t go to jail because he’s a juvenile, and you can ask them for a court-appointed attorney if you like.”

  “But we want you.”

  “I’m not sure you need me.”

  She hesitated a second. “Why don’t you want this case?”

  I couldn’t answer that question honestly. How would I explain to a mother that I thought her child was innocent and I didn’t need that kind of pressure in my life? True, he probably would get a slap on the wrist, but maybe not. Hoover County had the most aggressive prosecutors, police, and judges in the entire state—the type who thought breaking the law in order to enforce it was just good policy. They could try to land him in detention, and a kid like Teddy wasn’t equipped to handle even a short stay.

  “Can I think about it for a night?” I said.

  “If this is about the money, we have a little nest egg. It’s the least we can do for Teddy before . . . before he turns eighteen.”

  “It’s not the money. Just let me think about it for a day and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

  I shook hands with them as they left. Teddy kept his head down over the iPad, and when his mother removed the headphones, he said, “Are we gonna ride the elevator?”

  “Yes, sweetie.”

  He whooped like he’d won the lottery and sprinted out of my office.

  5

  That night, I sat in my house and tried to watch a rerun of Alf. The show brought back good feelings from childhood, what few there were. I watched two episodes and then turned the TV off. I kept thinking about Teddy. I told myself that I didn’t want the case, but I knew that something interesting was up. The case had run through the prosecutorial gamut too quickly. A detective actually finalizing and submitting a report in a couple of days was amazing, and then a screening prosecutor getting the go-ahead to file on a case a day or two after that was incredible, and the fact that this was a juvenile case . . . it just didn’t make sense. Why go through all this trouble for a case that would end in community service, if that?

  I had no delusions about the mentally disabled in the criminal justice system. They got no breaks. If the disability wasn’t directly responsible—and how the hell could anyone prove it was?—for the crime committed, they were held to the same standard as everyone else. Teddy’s disability would be a point of sympathy, a mitigating circumstance for the judge to consider, but it likely wouldn’t negate the intent to commit the crime. He would be judged by the same standard as any other kid his age.

  I didn’t feel like being alone, so I got into my car and drove up the hill to the ritzy-shmitzy Federal Heights neighborhood. I turned my lights off as I rolled to a stop in front of Peyton the Pheasant Assassin’s house. Stefan had moved in with her six months ago, about a year after our divorce. By the time the divorce was finalized, I was a mess and we both agreed that Jack would be best served living with his father. But I had no idea they’d be shacking up with a woman I despised.

  Parking across the street at the curb, I saw a few lights on in the house but couldn’t see anyone in the windows. Even though it was twenty different kinds of creepy to sit out here and stare at your ex-husband’s new house, it brought me a level of calm th
at I couldn’t get anywhere else.

  Someone knocked on the window and I jumped.

  “Holy shit!” I said, seeing my son’s sweet face through the glass. I rolled it down. “I think you owe me new underwear.”

  “Gross, Mom.”

  “Don’t hate the truth.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  I put an unlit cigarette in my mouth, then took it out and got some gum instead. “Just being a stalker. What are you doing out?”

  “I was over at a friend’s house.”

  “What friend?”

  “Just a friend. You don’t know her.”

  “Her?”

  “Don’t be a dork.” Jack put his forearms on the door and rested his chin on them. “How was work?”

  “Crappy.”

  “Why?”

  “Just a client who needs defending that I don’t want to defend.”

  “How come you don’t want to defend them?”

  “You are a nosy little bugger, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. “How come? You always told me criminal defense lawyers either defend everybody or they defend nobody, because you’re really fighting for the Constitution and not people.”

  “I said that?”

  He nodded.

  Shit.

  “Hmm. I don’t know. This one . . . I don’t know. Kid’s got a disability, and I don’t think he’s guilty.”

  “So? That should make your job easy, right?”

  “I wish.” I looked at the house. “Your dad home?”

  “No. Come inside.”

  I didn’t really think Peyton and Stefan would approve, but my curiosity overwhelmed me. I followed my son into Peyton’s house. I’d been inside several times, but never without Peyton or Stefan right there with me. Now, I could actually look at things—assess my competition.

  The photos on the mantel were worse than I thought. There were easily twenty of them. Stefan laughing or smiling in each one. A particular photo sent a nasty chill up my back: Peyton kissing him at sunset on some faraway beach I could never have afforded to take him to. The psycho used her money like a weapon.

  I didn’t know all the details, but from what Jack had told me, the two of them met when Stefan gave a talk at a fund-raiser about the importance of history to modern lives. Peyton didn’t strike me as the type to give a crap about history, so I wondered if she just saw him as a trophy. A good-looking intellectual she could take to galas and charity balls to hang on her arm like a decoration.

  “How’s your dad doing?” I asked.

  “You mean is he happy?”

  He was perceptive, this one. Or maybe I was too obvious. People seemed to grow more obvious as they got older. “Is he?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Does he ever ask about me?”

  “Not really. Hey, you want something to eat?” he said.

  “No, but I’ll take juice if you’ve got it.”

  “Orange okay?”

  “Sure.”

  I moved from the mantel to the stairs leading to the basement. I’d never been downstairs.

  “All of Peyton’s stuff is down there,” Jack said. “Guests aren’t allowed.”

  Oh, now I was definitely going down there.

  I took the stairs quickly and turned on the light. It was a man cave/woman cave of epic proportions. Bar, flat-screen television on the wall, pool table, video-game systems, and the heads of about twenty animals mounted along opposite walls. Deer, antelope, bear, mountain lion, moose, and a tiger. A mother-freaking tiger. Who had a tiger’s head mounted on their wall?

  I scanned the bar and grabbed a bottle of beer. As I sipped it, I spotted another collection of photos. These were Peyton in all her pseudo-manly glory. Peyton holding up the head of a dead buck, Peyton holding up a dead fish, Peyton next to the carcass of a shark, Peyton standing over the body of an elephant with one boot on its prodigious head . . . It was like looking at the internal thoughts of a serial killer. “Yeah, she loved to kill animals,” a neighbor would later say, “but we had no idea she’d go on to make furniture out of people’s bones. That just came out of left field.”

  “Mom?”

  “In the basement.”

  He came down the stairs and shoved a glass of orange juice into my free hand. I sat on the couch in front of the television and put my feet up on the coffee table made out of some fancy wood. Probably a sapling tree she chopped down and made its parents watch.

  “Mom, can I ask you something?”

  “You sure can, my half pint of sugar.”

  “How come you don’t have a boyfriend? I mean, I know you date, men love you, but, like, how come you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  “Men love me? Where’d you get that from?”

  “Please. Every one of my friends’ dads that sees you falls in love. And I see some of the texts you get from people. But, like, how come you don’t have a boyfriend?”

  I exhaled through my nose and took another sip. “Sometimes, babe, you love someone so much that even when it’s over, that love sticks to your ribs and won’t let go. Not until the last moment, when hope finally goes out forever, or you find someone else to take their place. Until then, you’re stuck.”

  I remembered the first time I met Stefan. A goofy nerd who fell off the back of a motorcycle and broke his arm. His girlfriend at the time, a girl not so much unlike Peyton, was too put out to take him to the hospital and told him to drive himself. I happened to be in the quad of the college where it happened and overheard her say that. Disgusted, I took him instead. He broke up with her the next day, and we were an item a week later, and married two years after that.

  “Mom . . . Dad’s not going back to you. He’s not going to let himself go through that again.”

  “Your father and I were going through a rough patch and I was alone. I felt . . . No, that’s an excuse. There are no excuses for what I did. I cheated on him and he was loyal to me. I deserve what I’m getting. Still doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

  The door opened and I heard the deep bass laughter of Peyton the Tiger Sniper.

  “Jacky?” Stefan yelled.

  “Down here, Dad, with Mom.”

  The laughter stopped. There was a brief pause, and then two sets of footsteps came rushing down the stairs. Peyton stood there in a stunning black gown and gleaming watch, and Stefan wore a suit and tie. His blond hair cropped short and his glasses some new, sleek model I’d never seen him wear.

  “Hello, Danielle,” Peyton said through what I thought were clenched teeth.

  “Peytony girl, what’s shaking?”

  “Please,” she said, tapping my feet off the coffee table, “make yourself at home.”

  “What are you doing here?” Stefan asked.

  “Just wanted to see Jacky. I’ll be going now.”

  “Nonsense,” Peyton said. “Finish your drink.”

  Stefan looked at her and said, “Well I’m gonna get ready for bed. You too, Jack.”

  Jack wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you, pumpkin pie.”

  He smiled as though he felt bad for me. I watched him go upstairs, but I didn’t see the teenager in front of me. I saw the six-year-old boy who would run to me every morning and jump on my stomach. He’d tried so hard to impress me with things he knew back then, only a small portion of which were actually true, and then at night when he was in bed, he’d throw his arms around my neck and tell me he loved me. It felt as if those moments would never end, that he’d never grow up, but they were just a flash. A spark in a fire that glimmered for a second and was gone before I even knew what I had.

  When the boys went upstairs, I was left alone in a basement with a woman who loved guns and killing. She smiled at me something wicked and then went to the bar to fix herself something.

  “You’re still in love with him,” she said.

  “With who?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”
<
br />   She sat down next to me and crossed her legs. “You can never have him again, Danielle. I’m the better woman, and he’ll always see that.”

  “Wealth doesn’t make you better than anyone, Shake-and-Bake. It just amplifies what’s already there. If you were an asshole before you had money, you’ll be ten times the asshole after you get it. Hence the assholiness you see in the mirror now.”

  She chuckled. “It’s all a big joke to you, isn’t it? Well, here’s a funny joke: I’m going to go upstairs, wait for Stefan in bed, and then I’m going to ride him until—”

  “You better shut your mouth right now.”

  She laughed. “What’s the matter? Can’t handle the imagery?” She guzzled her drink and went to set the glass down on the bar. “Good night, Danielle. I’m sure you can find your way out.”

  I was left alone. I stood up, my guts in a tight knot, and scanned the basement. I ran over to the tiger’s head, ripped it off the wall, and then sprinted out of the house with it like an NFL star running from a giant linebacker.

  I was halfway to the car when I heard, “Mom?”

  I turned around, trying to hide the massive tiger’s head behind my back, and saw Jack looking down at me from his second-floor bedroom window. “Yeah, honey?”

  “I want you to take that case.”

  “What case, baby?”

  “The boy that you think is innocent.”

  “Oh. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Well, I think you should. It’d be good for you.” He paused. “What are you gonna do with the head?”

  “What? This?” I held it up. “I shall return it to the wild whence it came.”

  “’Night, Mom.”

  “Good night, honey.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t be lonely.”

  “Who says I’m lonely?”

  I walked to my car and tossed the head into the trunk. As I was getting into the driver’s seat, I glanced toward the house and saw Stefan looking at me through the window upstairs. I waved to him, and he turned away.

  Once in the car, I sat there a few minutes. I looked back at the house, at Jack’s window, then took out my phone and put a reminder in my calendar: Call Riley Thorne and tell her I accept the case.