A Gambler's Jury

by Victor Methos

  She went inside and came back with two tumblers of a brown fluid. We tapped glasses before she sat down and had a mouthful. I sipped mine. The liquor, probably brandy, felt warm and smooth going down. It had that quality that good liquor sometimes did when it warmed your stomach instantly.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  “The problem is that this is not where I pictured my life at this age.”

  “I think anyone can say that at pretty much any age, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. You seem pretty happy.”

  “I am happy. But that’s because I’ve chosen to be happy. I’ve chosen to make my life what it is.”

  “You’re a Jim Morrison.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Google him. I think you’d dig his music.” I took another sip. “It’s hard to choose to be happy about your man marrying someone you despise.”

  “If he really does it, he was never yours to begin with.”

  “Ouch. That’s harsh.”

  “You don’t have time to spare feelings when you get older. Danielle, you need to move on. He’s not yours anymore. He’s hers.”

  “No, there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to be. I can feel it. I hurt him really bad, and he thinks this is what he wants, but it’s just the pain doing the thinking for him. He always hated girls like her.”

  She took my hand and gave it a squeeze before finishing her drink. She grabbed my glass and finished that, too, before she rose. “You know what they say: you gotta get under to get over.”

  I chuckled. “What?”

  “Go out and find some beautiful man, and make a memory with him tonight. Don’t sit by and wait for someone who isn’t coming back to you.”

  I watched as the little sage walked back to her house, humming. Though she was alone, and I never saw anyone over there, she was about the happiest person I knew. Maybe that was the key—solitude. No companionship, but no chance for others to hurt you either.

  My phone buzzed. It was Stefan. I answered, thinking I’d hear Peyton again, and instead heard him. “You there?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Saw you called. What’s up?”

  “Just wanted to chat. You’re not busy, are you?”

  “No, not really. Just at book club.”

  Relief poured out of me. “Did Peyton have your phone?”

  “Yeah, she dropped me off. I forgot it in the car but she brought it back. Did you need something, Dani?”

  “No. I mean, yes. Kind of. No, no I just wanted to talk. When I felt shitty, you were the one I always went to to feel better. You and Will, I guess.”

  “You need to find someone else to do that now.”

  “So I’ve been told.” I sighed. “Sorry to bug you. I’ll let you get back to your manly book club. What are you guys reading, by the way?”

  “Some detective novel. I don’t know, I didn’t read it. We usually just end up watching a game.”

  I grinned. “Have fun.”

  I hung up and stared at the passing traffic in front of my home, the headlights piercing the darkness like glowing eyes, the streetlamps lighting up patches of sidewalk and asphalt, and the moonlight raining down on it all. It was beautiful, if I stepped back and looked at it. People vaunted the beauty of nature, but I thought cities were just as beautiful. No one bothered to look at them in the same way because they saw them all the time. We took whatever we saw every day for granted, including people.

  Will called me just then.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I said.

  “Something naughty I hope.”

  “Will . . .”

  “I know. Sorry. Why were you thinking about me?”

  “Just that when I feel shitty, you and Stefan are the only two people I go to so I can feel better.”

  “Hey, wait a second, what do you mean ‘Will’? I’ll have you know, missy, that I’m quite the hit with the opposite gender. A shitload of money in the bank will do that, I guess.”

  “No, you’re sweet. That’s more important and rarer in men.”

  “Wow. You must still be drunk to compliment me without sarcasm.”

  “Just in that type of mood I guess.” I looked up at the sky. “What’re you doing right now?”

  “Mm,” he said, clearly putting some food in his mouth. “Following up on a case. Nothing interesting, husband cheating on wife. Oldest story in the book. What’re you doing?”

  “Just sitting here on my porch. Thinking about moving back to LA.”

  A silence on the other end. “Still think that’s a mistake.”

  “I told you I don’t think I can handle seeing Stefan everywhere as a married man.”

  He chuckled. “Please. You know how many divorces I’ve seen happen because of my work? Everyone gets over it. It stings for a bit, but you get over it. You’ll find someone else, and Stefan’ll be a part of your past. Doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about him, but he won’t be the center of your life anymore.” He paused. “Never know. Maybe a rich best friend might do the trick?”

  “Shit. You are my best friend. How messed up is that?”

  “I’m happy about it. I’ve never had a better one.”

  “You’re a little charmer.” I sighed.

  “Indeed. Anyway, I just wanted to check up on you. Do you need me to come over?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “You sure? You’re sounding awful lonesome right now.”

  “I just want to sleep for two years. I appreciate you checking up on me, though.”

  “Anytime, m’lady. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I will.”

  I stared at my phone for a moment before slipping it into my pocket and going back inside.

  31

  Leverage. That was the only thing I could think about. After I woke up and helped Teddy dress in some clothes I’d bought him, I dropped him off at the school Kelly had found. Medicaid hadn’t officially agreed to pay, but the school said as long as the application was in, they would take him for now.

  His teacher was a woman with coal-black hair and she was wearing a plaid suit. She smiled and hugged him as a welcome. Teddy took a seat in front. His desk had a name plate with his name scrawled in marker.

  “Tough gig,” I said to the teacher. “I don’t envy you.”

  “This is nothing. Attending here is optional, so I get to actually teach them things that matter. Like how to pay bills and balance checking accounts. When I taught special needs children in public school, I would have to teach them standard curriculum. Some of my kids didn’t know the alphabet, and I had to have them write reports on For Whom the Bell Tolls. It was . . .”

  “Soul crushing?”

  She nodded. “I think that’s the right phrase. But I got to see some of them flourish despite the system, and that made up for it.”

  “Is Teddy going to flourish?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll interview him and get a sense of where we are. I’m Rosalyn by the way. Um, and are you the mother?”

  “No, no. I’m his lawyer, actually.”

  “His lawyer?”

  I shrugged. “Long story.”

  I glanced at Teddy. A boy with Down syndrome behind him was speaking softly and then Teddy laughed at something he said, which caused him to start laughing, too. Both of them saw me noticing and then held it back as though it were a secret. He looked . . . perfectly normal. Like a teenager in a high school class. Kelly had been right: I didn’t give him the credit he deserved.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I said. “If Teddy ever mentions anything about the case he has pending right now, would you mind telling me? I can’t get him to talk about it.”

  She nodded. “I guess I could do that. As long as he’s okay with it. What type of case?”

  “Oh, nothing big.” I checked my watch. “I gotta run, but here.” I handed her one of my cards. “Let me know if you need anything, if there’s an emergency or something. His parent
s won’t respond, so just call me.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks again.”

  On the way out of school, I checked to make sure I had given her the right card. Every defense lawyer had at least two different business cards: one without their cell number, to be given to the run-of-the-mill clients, and one with the cell number to be given to the clients who you were billing hourly, or who had given you a sizeable flat fee.

  I had five different cards: one with the cell number, one without, one that said I was a DUI specialist, one that said I was a violent crime specialist, and one that proclaimed me “Utah’s Number One Drug-Defense Lawyer.” I had given Rosalyn the plain one with my cell number that I always kept near the back of my card wallet . . . I hoped.

  The Hoover County District Attorney’s Office was about as ugly as I expected and gave off a real jail vibe. It made me uncomfortable walking inside, and the lighting immediately put me on edge—brighter than Walmart. I told the secretary I had an appointment with Sandy, then sat down and glanced at the magazines spread on the coffee table. Guns, hunting, fishing, guns, hunting, sports, guns, and bigger guns. It was like Peyton’s Christmas reading list.

  The conversation I was about to have kept running through my mind. Sandy Tiles had been the first woman elected to the position of Hoover County District Attorney. The county had a serious, macho, gun-culture, police-are-always-right attitude, so for a woman to climb over those types of men for the top spot meant she had to be tough as nails. I would probably only get one shot at a pitch, and I had to make it a good one.

  I thought about going with the straight legal arguments, about how ridiculously illegal Teddy’s entire prosecution was, but I had to believe she already knew all that. Trying to change the law by ignoring it, even in a county that cared as little about civil liberties as Hoover, was a big deal, and there was no way any of the line prosecutors would attempt it without running it by the big cheese. Especially Double D, who struck me as a bit of a coward.

  “She’ll see you now,” the receptionist said.

  I headed back to the large corner office. It was sparse and neat, only a few framed photos up on the walls: Sandy with cops at the shooting range or training sessions.

  She didn’t act as though she was doing something else, and she didn’t feign inconvenience. She sat quietly at her desk with her hands neatly folded in front of her and stared directly at me.

  “Dani Rollins,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Sandy Tiles. Nice to meet you. I don’t shake hands.” I lowered my hand. “I’ve heard about you.”

  I sat down. “All good, I hope.”

  She leaned back in the seat, but kept her spine entirely straight. “You know, it’s customary to be invited to sit, and I didn’t invite you.”

  “Would you prefer I stand in front of you? You would be vagina level with me, which really is my best angle.”

  Her lip curled slightly. This wasn’t going as I had planned.

  “Look, I’m sure your line guys have told you I’m shady and whatever other nonsense you guys tell yourselves to pretend you’re the good guys, but I’m here about one case and that’s all I want to talk about. Teddy Thorne.”

  “I know the case,” she said with a sigh, as though we’d discussed it dozens of times before. “What about it?”

  “I want you to meet him.”

  “Why would I even consider that?”

  “Because if you met him, you would see that there is no chance in hell he committed this crime.”

  She smiled, and it was creepy, like a vampire smiling at a victim. “If I were to meet every defendant, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. It would take up all of my time. The prosecution seems fair to me.”

  “It’s not. Aside from the fact that it’s blatantly illegal, which I’m sure you’re already well aware of, he’s not guilty. He can’t be.”

  “We treat every defendant equally. You’re free, of course, to pursue a not-guilty-by-reason-of-mental-defect defense, but every defendant is treated the same by this office.”

  “That’s bullshit. Every person is different. The circumstances of each case are different. A blanket policy would lead to unequal outcomes.”

  She laughed. “Unequal? Are you basically telling me it’s not fair? Are we twelve years old, Ms. Rollins?”

  “Fairness is laughable in our criminal justice system, isn’t it? I completely forgot, silly me.”

  “Mr. Diamond has made a reasonable offer on this matter. If you don’t wish to take it—”

  “Prison on a first offense is not reasonable. There is no other county in this state that does that.”

  “There is no other county in the state that has our unique crime problems.”

  “Every county everywhere has your crime problems. You just think you need to break the law in order to enforce it. It’s the oldest belief in law enforcement, ever since the Sheriff of Nottingham tortured Merry Men to find Robin Hood.”

  “You’re quite witty. I’ve heard that about you. I advise you to use it sparingly in front of a jury.”

  So much anger and frustration coursed through me that I didn’t know how to contain it. I’d seen injustice before and I’d taken it in stride, but seeing it up close, seeing the face behind it, was monstrous. And the worst part was that this injustice thought it was justice.

  “You guys suck,” I blurted out as I rose and stormed out of the office like a teenage emo whose parents told her she can’t go to the Morrissey concert.

  32

  “You said that?” Will asked as we sat in a café back in Salt Lake.

  “I did.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “I mean, it’s childish and not creative, but that took some balls.”

  “It wasn’t balls, it was just anger. You shoulda seen this sanctimonious tyrant. She had self-righteousness dripping off of her. I lost it, though. I got too pissed too quickly. If I’d kept my cool, maybe I could’ve convinced her.”

  He shrugged. “I doubt you could’ve convinced her of anything. She feels this case is worth fighting for. It’s her right.”

  “I don’t think this woman has feelings. I’m not kidding. She might be a block of ice in human skin. Maybe she’s an alien. Isn’t there some conspiracy theory about lizards taking the place of various leaders?”

  “Lizard or no, you still got one helluva case on your hands. I hold to my suggestion to get out of it.”

  I shook my head. “Screw that. Now it’s personal.”

  “Why? Because your charms didn’t work on her and make her do what you wanted?”

  “Hey, my charms are nothing to sneeze at.”

  “I’m not saying they are, but look at it from their perspective. They got a policy, they don’t think your client is disabled enough to not be culpable, and, you know, there it is.”

  “You agree with them?”

  He shook his head as he popped a clam into his mouth. “You don’t have to agree with someone to see things from their side. I’m just saying, I’m worried about you. This case will pass, and you’ll get others. The one thing I know for sure about life is that it always moves on.”

  “This is wrong, Will. This is so damn wrong. I can feel it in my guts.”

  “Wrong or no, it’s just one case. And it’s a case that a couple months ago you would’ve dropped like a hot potato. Let it go. There is no reason for all this aggravation.”

  I sat staring out the windows at the people passing by. There was something I was missing. I had to go back into the files. “I’m gonna head to the office.”

  “Now? We just sat down.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He grabbed my hand, preventing me from leaving. “Danielle, I’ve known you a long time. Do you trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  “So take my advice. We can find another great lawyer and make sure Teddy’s taken care of. Don’t let this case e
at you up.”

  Lost causes. I thought about that phrase as I drove back to the office and rode up the elevator. Was this a lost cause? Was I bashing my head against a wall, and the change in the statute was inevitable? I didn’t know. But I had a feeling the answer was buried deep in the files, somewhere.

  I told Kelly I didn’t want to be disturbed, and took out the Teddy Thorne file. Not just the stuff I got from the prosecution, but the stuff Will had gotten me as well: the disciplinary records of the officers, dispatch call logs, video interviews of the witnesses—I was particularly interested in watching Freddy’s interview—and all the other stuff the prosecution didn’t think was relevant and didn’t always send along to the defense attorneys. I opened the first file and began to read.

  I read for over two hours, every page, several times. I read carefully, one word at a time, as though the misspelled grammatical nightmares that were police reports were the deepest of poetry and each syllable needed to be contemplated. I learned absolutely nothing I hadn’t known before.

  I leaned back in my chair and my head hit the headrest. From this angle, I had a good view of the ceiling, made of wood that had faded from old water leaks, cracked and dotted with rusty nails. I hated bland rooms with no character.

  I lifted Will’s additions to the file and flipped through them again. Nothing there either.

  As I was about to toss it back on the desk, I noticed something in the dispatch logs. It was just a feeling in my guts, a slight tick. If I hadn’t been so desperate for anything I could use, I would’ve completely missed the feeling.

  The dispatch logs went through all the calls to 911 and the police dispatch in a case. Here, the detectives had called into dispatch, logging the times they did certain things—when people showed up to the scene, time of the deal, time of the handoff, time of the takedown. I hadn’t noticed before that a patrol officer had called in, offering to assist. Detective Bo Steed had refused his help and said they had all the men they needed. Two other patrol officers in the area had responded after this, however, and they weren’t called off.

  Nothing ground shaking. The detective might have thought they had enough men at the time and then changed his mind, or just didn’t pay attention to the other officers coming to the scene. Still . . . he’d turned one cop away and allowed two others onto the scene. I had nothing else to go on, so I might as well look at it.