Talon Winter Legal Thrillers Box Set

by Stephen Penner

  Talon sighed. She wasn’t surprised he didn’t remember every detail of what he said. It happened quickly and he was probably freaking out. And it didn’t really matter what he remembered right then. The cops wrote it all down, Talon knew. Every word. Whatever Luke said, it would be in the reports, whether or not Luke remembered ever saying it.

  “Did they read you your rights before they started asking questions?” She could hope.

  “Oh, yeah,” Luke remembered that. “The whole, ‘you have the right to remain silent’ thing? Yeah, they did that.”

  “But you talked to them anyway?” Hope dashed.

  “Well, yeah,” Luke answered. “I didn’t know I was in any trouble.”

  Talon surrendered a dark chuckle and she looked around their jailhouse conference room. “Yeah, you’re in trouble all right.”

  Luke didn’t laugh. He frowned. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Did they interview you just at the scene?” Talon followed up. “Or back at the station too?”

  “At the scene, in the car, back at the station. Everywhere,” Luke answered. “They asked me a lot of questions. I was trying to cooperate, you know? I didn’t think I did anything wrong.”

  “You didn’t,” Talon assured him. “Well, you did one thing wrong. You talked to the cops.”

  Luke lowered his head into his hands. “I didn’t know, man. I thought if I answered their questions, they’d let me go. I thought I’d get to go home. But now I’m charged with murder and I got a two-million-dollar bail.” He looked up at Talon. “When am I going to get out again?”

  Talon had to shake her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “But I am going to get out again, right?” Luke tried to confirm. “I am gonna go home again eventually, right?”

  Talon took a moment, then decided to go ahead and tell him the truth. “I don’t know that either.”

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time Talon left the jail, all but one of the news crews that had come to film her client’s arraignment had vacated the courthouse parking lot. But it only took one.

  “Hey, isn’t that the cop-killer’s lawyer?” Talon heard the reporter ask her cameraman. Followed by, “Grab that camera.” Then, to Talon, as the smallish woman rushed toward her, microphone in hand, “Excuse me! Excuse me, ma’am! Could we get a statement from you?”

  Talon thought for a moment. Her first instinct was to say, ‘No.’ She was tired. It had been a draining afternoon, unexpectedly so. She had planned to sit in her office and catch up on email, sipping a latte. She just wanted to be done.

  But there was no rest for the wicked. Or their lawyers.

  Talon switched on her smile and turned to the onrushing reporter. There was still work to be done. Potential jurors to taint.

  “Yes, I’m Talon Winter,” she answered. “I represent Luke Zlotnik.”

  Normally, Talon wasn’t one to talk with reporters. It was rare for the media to treat criminal defendants fairly. The reporting generally suggested guilt, the formulaic ‘alleged(ly)’ losing its effectiveness through overuse. But this was a case with such bad publicity—even Amy Koh had called her ‘the cop-killer’s lawyer’—that a big part of Talon’s job was going to be getting the jurors to see past labels like that and assess the case on the merits of what her client did, not his friend’s admittedly terrible actions. She didn’t know who those jurors would be, but she knew they would come from the greater community and at least one of them, whoever they ended up being, would probably be watching the news that night.

  “I’m Amy Koh with Channel Eight,” the reporter identified herself. She was noticeably short, less than five feet tall, with a stylish bob that didn’t seem to move even as she skidded to a stop in front of Talon. “Do you have time for a few questions, Ms. Winter?”

  Talon nodded, and resisted saying, ‘I just told you I did, didn’t I?’ Instead, she smiled warmly. “Of course.”

  The cameraman had made his way over to them. He was considerably larger than either Talon or Amy Koh, but he also had a heavy-looking camera on his shoulder, so he didn’t run over. Or introduce himself. He just took up his position behind Amy Koh and turned on the spotlight, momentarily blinding Talon and reminding her to look at Amy, not the lens.

  “Could you comment on the bail the judge set, Ms. Winter?” Amy Koh asked. “It seems like a higher bail than normal for a murder case. Is that because the victim was a police officer?”

  Talon wanted nothing more than to go off on Judge Portello. Oh, the stories she could tell. But there were limits on what she could say about judges. Specifically, the Rules of Professional Conduct, one of which was pretty clear in its edict that lawyers not disparage ‘the qualifications, integrity, or record of a judge.’ So, despite her desire to do so, Talon wasn’t going to attack Judge Portello.

  Instead, she’d attack the prosecutor. Always attack the prosecutor.

  Normally, she would have attacked the cops, too, but not when the murder victim was also a cop. Poor form. The potential jurors in her audience wouldn’t like that.

  “The issue in this case,” Talon answered carefully, but forcefully,“ is not the bail decision by the judge. The issue in this case is the charging decision by the prosecutor. By all accounts, my client, Mr. Zlotnik, remained outside of the business while an acquaintance of his went inside and, unknown to Mr. Zlotnik, attempted to commit a robbery. What followed was a tragedy. It was also a crime. But it was not a crime committed by Mr. Zlotnik.”

  “But doesn’t being the getaway driver make you part of the robbery?” Amy Koh followed up. It was exactly the sort of half-informed common knowledge Talon was going to be fighting against the entire way.

  “Only if you know you’re the getaway driver,” Talon explained. “If you drive someone to a store and wait outside knowing they are going inside to rob it, then yes, you are the getaway driver and you are guilty as an accomplice. But if you drive someone to a store and wait outside not knowing they plan to rob the store, then no, you are not the getaway driver. You’re just a friend who got tricked. And you’re not guilty of robbery or anything else that happens inside.”

  “Is that your defense, then?” Amy Koh asked. “Are you going to claim your client didn’t know his friend was going to rob the store and kill the police officer?”

  “It’s not my defense,” Talon clarified. “It’s the truth. My client had no idea what his friend had planned.”

  Up to that point, Talon had been facing the reporter to deliver her answers, but she turned and looked directly into the camera—at all those potential jurors watching at home.

  “Luke Zlotnik is one hundred percent innocent,” she declared. “And I should know. I’m his lawyer.”

  She was sort of right, but sort of wrong on both counts.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Oh, dear, I guess we can’t hire you after all,” Luke’s mother groaned after Talon slid the proposed fee agreement across the table to her and her husband. “We can’t afford that.”

  She looked to her husband. “I mean, maybe if we could make payments,” she suggested.

  “Thirty years of payments, maybe,” Paul Zlotnik put in, glancing at the proposed fee. “With a balloon at the end.”

  Talon stifled a sigh and pulled the fee agreement back slightly. It was a first degree murder case. There was a lot of work to be done, and she didn’t work for free.

  “The thing is,” she said, “I’m not a bank.”

  Discussing fees wasn’t the worst part of criminal defense, but it was one of the more awkward. Being a lawyer was supposed to be a profession, a calling, not just a job. It was supposed to be above base things like money. It was about justice and law, freedom and rights. But it was also about rent and food, clothes and more rent. Money was a necessary evil. It just felt especially evil when it was based on a person being shoved in a jail cell and needing a lawyer to protect those rights and save that freedom.

  “I hate banks,” Paul grumbled. “And ever
ybody hates lawyers.”

  Talon decided to just blink at that. She wanted the case. She’d already cut 25% off her fee. Any more and she would be losing money on it. She was a solo practitioner sharing office space and a receptionist. Her margins weren’t that fat. In fact, they were pretty damn thin.

  She was about to remind them that Luke could always get the public defender—not as a negotiating tactic, but as a reassurance that he would at least have some lawyer representing him—when Mary spoke up.

  “We can put the shop up as collateral for a loan,” she suggested. “There’s not a lot of equity, but there’s some.”

  “Not the whole amount. Maybe half.” Paul glanced again at the fee agreement. “Probably half.” He looked up at Talon. “If we can manage half up front, can we do payments on the rest?”

  Payments, Talon thought ruefully. When she started doing criminal cases, the first advice she got was: Don’t do payment plans. Criminal cases went fast, and when they were over, they were really over. If they lost, the defendant was hardly going to want to keep paying an outstanding balance from prison. And if they won, well, the client had no incentive to pay any more. It wasn’t like Talon could put the acquittal on hold until her balance was paid off.

  No, best to let Visa or MasterCard work out the payment plan. Full retainer, nonrefundable, paid up front. That’s how you ran a criminal practice.

  Then again, Luke was charged with first degree murder of a police officer.

  He was eighteen years old, looking at thirty years in prison.

  And he was innocent. That counted for a lot.

  “Sure,” Talon sighed. “We can do payments.”

  * * *

  After the Zlotniks left, Talon went to the break room she shared with the other attorneys in the office. It was too early for a drink, so she settled for a cup of coffee. But not the old stuff that had been thickening on the burner. She dumped it down the sink and started a fresh pot. As she was waiting, Greg Olsen joined her. He was another attorney in the office share, but he did civil work, a mix of personal injury, some family law, and occasionally a bankruptcy.

  “Was that the family of the cop killer?” he asked, tipping his bald head back toward the lobby. He still had a little hair above his ears and around the back of his head, but it mostly just served to frame the expanse of pink skin reflecting the fluorescent lights above them. He kept his tie loose around a thick neck and his belt even looser under an even thicker gut.

  “Accused cop killer,” Talon corrected. “And yeah, they just hired me. Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of?” Greg glanced approvingly at the freshly brewing pot, then pulled down a mug from one of the cabinets. What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m on the case,” Talon explained, “but they haven’t actually paid me yet. They need to get some financing in place. And I’m letting them make payments.”

  “Payments? On a murder case?” Olsen’s face screwed up into an incredulous scowl. “On that murder case?”

  Talon frowned. “Yeah,” she admitted. “That murder case.”

  Olsen shook his head at her. “You’re never going to get rich doing that.”

  “I’m never going to get rich doing criminal cases at all.” She reached around him to pour herself the first cup of coffee. “But that’s not why I do them.”

  “Just be careful,” Olsen warned, accepting the carafe from Talon when she’d finished pouring her coffee. “You can’t live on ‘not guilty’ verdicts.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t live without them.” Talon grinned. She took a large gulp of the too hot liquid and waited for the burn to subside. “Anyway, I’m hoping to avoid going all the way to a jury verdict. This case is way overcharged. Now that I’m officially hired, it’s time to talk with the prosecutor and tell her to dismiss the case.”

  Olson laughed. “Has that ever worked?”

  “No,” Talon admitted. “But who knows? Maybe I’ll be surprised.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “He confessed?” Talon exclaimed.

  It was her first sit-down with the prosecutor, in Cecilia Thompson’s office on the tenth floor of the courthouse building. Nice view. Terrible news.

  “Yes.” Cecilia pointed at the stack of police reports she had just handed to Talon as she dropped the bombshell about the confession.

  “To knowing it was a robbery?” Talon clarified.

  “Yes,” Cecilia repeated.

  “My guy confessed,” Talon wanted to make sure she fully understood, “to the police, that he knew, beforehand, that his friend was going to commit a robbery?”

  “Yes,” Cecilia confirmed. “All that.”

  Talon put a hand to her forehead. “Well, fuck.”

  “Yes,” Cecilia agreed one last time. “Did he forget to tell you that little detail?” she laughed. “I hope you got paid up front.”

  Talon suppressed a wince. She didn’t discuss fee arrangements with prosecutors. Instead, she fanned the edges of the police reports. “Where’s the confession?”

  Cecilia leaned forward and flipped the pages until she found the transcript of Luke’s statement to the police, about halfway down the stack. She set the pages above it to the side, and there were still several inches of paper beneath it. “Right here. It’s pretty detailed too. Not just that he knew what his friend was going to do, but he helped plan it, parked in front of a different business on purpose, and knew his friend had a gun when he went in.”

  That was all they needed. Luke was guilty.

  Talon looked down at the double-spaced transcription, formatted like a play script, each speaker identified by initials. Some detectives and ‘LZ’ for Lucas Zlotnik. Page one was just the formalities: date and time, identity of everyone in the room, Miranda rights. She couldn’t bring herself to read the rest of it just then. Not in front of the prosecutor. It was going to be bad enough assessing exactly how screwed her client was; she didn’t need Cecilia watching her facial expressions while she did it.

  Talon put the set-aside pages back on top of the stack. “I’ll read it later. Is this everything then?”

  “For now,” Cecilia answered. “But supplemental reports are still coming in. Autopsy. Ballistics. Follow-up witness interviews. They haven’t even finished processing the crime scene. Two bodies and a hell of a lot of blood. It was pretty messy, if the crime scene photos are anything to go by.”

  “Crime scene photos,” Talon repeated. She hesitated, but then went ahead and flipped to those. She was curious how bad they were.

  They were bad.

  The jury was going to hate those pictures. Or rather, those pictures were going to motivate the jury to hate whoever was responsible for what was in them. And the government was going to put her client in a big red chair with the word ‘Defendant’ flashing above it in neon lights, so the jury would know exactly whom to hate.

  “So, what’s the offer?” Talon asked, without looking up from the photos. “Murder Two, plus the gun enhancement?”

  “Offer?” Cecilia laughed again. “Oh, Talon. There is no offer. Not on this case. And certainly not Murder Two. He killed a cop.”

  “He sat in a car outside,” Talon raised her gaze to her opponent, “while someone else killed a cop.”

  “Yeah,” Cecilia replied. “His accomplice.”

  Talon pointed to the photo she was looking at. Miguel Maldonado in a pool of blood on the floor of the check-mart. “I’d say he paid for it.”

  “Your guy will too,” Cecilia returned.

  “He’s eighteen years old,” Talon tried. “He was sitting in the car outside. He didn’t know what was going to happen.”

  “He confessed,” Cecilia reminded her.

  “To robbery,” Talon pointed out. “Not murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cecilia answered. “You know that.”

  “Of course it matters,” Talon responded. “Everything matters.”

  “No, nothing matters,” Cecilia said. “Certainly not whether he knew it w
as murder or robbery. If he’s in for the robbery and somebody dies, that’s felony murder. I don’t have to prove he knew his friend was going to kill someone.”

  “But isn’t it different?” Talon insisted. “Isn’t it different if he agrees to help a murder, rather than just a robbery? Isn’t that worse?”

  “Not according to the law.” Cecilia crossed her arms. “Either way it’s Murder One. You premediate a murder, it’s Murder One. You commit a serious felony and somebody dies, it’s also Murder One. The Legislature made them the same crime.”

  “Okay, okay,” Talon conceded. “But what about you? What about prosecutorial discretion? Not every case that meets the elements of a crime deserves the same punishment. You have to admit that. Every case is different. My guy didn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t set out to kill a cop. Some people do that. Shouldn’t they be punished more than an eighteen-year-old kid who made a bad decision to help his friend do something stupid?”

  “Look, Talon.” Cecilia unfolded her arms and leaned forward. “The prosecutor exercising discretion in this case isn’t me. It isn’t even my boss. It’s my boss’s boss. The boss. This is big, Talon. Huge. The cops care about this one. Everyone does. The boss can’t cut any deals. That means I can’t either, even if I wanted to.”

  Talon took a moment. “Do you want to?”

  Cecilia paused, too, before answering. “That doesn’t matter either. Your guy knew it was a robbery. Somebody died. It all adds up to murder in the first degree. Twenty-five year minimum sentence. And I’ll be asking for the maximum, thirty-five years.”

  “Without any consideration for my guy’s personal situation?” Talon asked. “His lack of criminal history? Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Cecilia confirmed. “No deals. Maximum sentence.”

  Talon shook her head again. “That’s not justice.”

  “Maybe not,” Cecilia admitted. “But it’s the law.”