Talon Winter Legal Thrillers Box Set

by Stephen Penner

  Curt grimaced and looked down. “I… I like you, Talon. A lot.” He looked up again, locking eyes with her. “I was really scared something bad had happened to you.”

  Talon appraised Curt’s eyes. The tinge of red at the corners, the slightly widened lids, the slight but discernable extra wetness.

  She reached over and set the gun on her dresser, then reached out to put a hand on his cheek. “I like you too, Curt,” she said. “But not like that. You can sleep on the couch.”

  Curt smiled weakly, a glint of hope still in those moist eyes. “Even though it’s the night before trial?”

  Talon grinned back and shook her head. “Especially because it’s the night before trial.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Three hours of restless sleep. Perfect way to start an aggravated murder in the first degree trial. Talon dragged herself out of her bed and into the shower. She washed away the previous night’s craziness and that morning’s sluggishness and steeled herself for the day. When she emerged from her bedroom, dressed to kill, she was actually startled to see Curt passed out on her couch. She was in trial mode and had forgotten he had spent the night.

  It was sweet of him—breaking and entering notwithstanding. And she couldn’t overlook that at least a portion of his motivation had been his hope, however small, to get lucky with her again. But last night was over. Trial day beckoned.

  “Get up!” She kicked the couch. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Curt jerked awake, covering his eyes with his forearm against the morning sun. “Wha—? Where? Oh. Right. Wow.” He squinted up at Talon. “Crazy night, huh?”

  “Get up,” Talon repeated. “And get out. Trial starts in an hour. I need you out of my condo before I leave.”

  Curt propped himself up on an elbow. “No, you need a ride.” He pointed over to the large trial briefcase and two full document boxes stacked near the door. “Unless you’re going to roll that all the way to the courthouse. It’s uphill, remember?”

  “How could I forget that hill after last night?” Talon grumbled. “Fine. I need a ride. Which means I need you up. Now. I can’t be late.”

  Curt nodded and swung his feet off the couch. He was still in his clothes from the night before. “Can I at least shower?”

  “Of course, you can shower,” Talon answered. “Right after you drop me off at the courthouse.”

  * * *

  Talon made her way to the courtroom, pulling her trial briefcase and rolling file boxes behind her. Earlier in the case, she had been hoping they might draw Gainsborough for the trial. After he shafted her on the discovery motions, she was relieved they didn’t get him after all. But they got Kirshner. Talon was going to need to be at the top of her game. But that was true anyway, she supposed.

  Cecilia was already in the courtroom, although Luke hadn’t been transported quite yet. Talon rolled down to the defense table and started unloading her materials. She didn’t much feel like greeting Cecilia, politeness and professionalism notwithstanding, but forced herself to do it anyway. Saying hello was normal and neutral—it didn’t mean anything. Declining to say hello meant something, and Talon didn’t want to telegraph any information at all to Cecilia.

  “Morning,” Talon greeted her opponent, albeit with the least possible amount of words.

  “Morning, Talon,” Cecilia replied. “Ready?”

  Talon nodded even as she continued to unload her briefcase. “Of course.” She didn’t reciprocate the inquiry.

  “Me too,” Cecilia volunteered anyway. “I think Kirshner is a good draw.”

  Talon shrugged. “Good enough.”

  Cecilia waited a moment for something more from Talon, but nothing was forthcoming. So, she stuck out her hand. “Good luck, Talon. May the best woman win.”

  Talon regarded Cecilia’s outstretched hand. She didn’t grasp it. “You know that’s not what this is about, right? This isn’t a game. It’s not some lawyer competition between you and me. You’re trying to put an eighteen-year-old kid in prison for the rest of his life and I’m trying to stop you. It’s not the fucking Olympics.”

  Cecilia let her hand drop. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  Talon shook her head. “That’s a start. I hope you feel sorry about a lot more than that by the time this trial is done.”

  “You won’t win, Talon,” Cecilia challenged. “The law’s on my side.”

  “Fine,” Talon responded. “You take the law. I’ll take justice. And we’ll see who wins.”

  “I think we both know who’ll win,” Cecilia said.

  “Then here’s hoping we’re both wrong,” Talon concluded. She turned her back on Cecilia then, not least because the side door of the courtroom opened and in marched her client, in an ill-fitting suit and flanked by armed corrections officers.

  “Luke,” Talon greeted him as he reached the defense table. The officers undid Luke’s handcuffs and leg chains. The only thing between him and the exit was the officers. But that would be enough. Luke wouldn’t make it five feet before being crushed under four hundred pounds of cop. “You ready?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke answered. “How do you get ready to sit still and let a bunch of other people decide the rest of your life?”

  Talon thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “You probably don’t. Just focus on today. Tomorrow focus on tomorrow. One day at a time. This is going to take weeks. I don’t need you to do much, but I do need you to pay attention. And I need you to look innocent.”

  Luke scoffed. “How do I do that?”

  “Are you innocent?” Talon asked him.

  “Of course,” Luke protested.

  “Good,” Talon answered. “Then just let yourself look how you feel inside. Innocent, and scared shitless.”

  Judge Kirshner made her entrance at that point. The bailiff called out the traditional demand to rise for the judge and a few moments later, Kirshner was seated above them. Blonde hair again in a bun, glasses on her nose, and an appropriately serious frown on her lips.

  “Are the parties ready for trial in the matter of The State of Washington versus Lucas James Zlotnik?” she inquired to formally begin the proceedings.

  “The State is ready,” Cecilia answered.

  “The defense is ready,” Talon confirmed as well.

  “Good.” Judge Kirshner nodded. “Are there any preliminary motions that need to be addressed before we select the jury?”

  Talon frowned. “I don’t believe so, Your Honor. All of the defense motions were already denied, er…addressed at previous hearings.”

  Kirshner narrowed her eyes at Talon. “I’m not going to tolerate any disrespect toward the bench, Ms. Talon.”

  “Understood, Your Honor,” Talon answered. “I’m sure we both hope there will be no reason for it.”

  Kirshner held her glare at Talon for a few more seconds. Talon thought she saw the faintest of smiles flicker in the corner of the judge’s mouth, but she couldn’t be sure. Still, Kirshner didn’t engage the argument further. “Ms. Thompson,” she addressed the prosecutor. “Are there any preliminary issues from the State?”

  Cecilia clasped her hands in front of her. “No, Your Honor. We’re ready to pick a jury.”

  Kirshner nodded again. “All right then. Let’s pick a jury. Bailiff, call for the panel.”

  * * *

  Jury selection was a misnomer. The jurors weren’t selected, exactly. Instead, a panel of potential jurors were questioned by the judge and the attorneys, and then each side could deselect potential jurors. The first twelve who were left became the jury.

  Talon and Cecilia alternated twenty-minute questioning sessions. Cecilia went first, of course. Like everything else in trial work, part of it was performance. And part of the performance was introducing the jurors to some of the themes in the case. The judge informed the jurors of the charge—“Murder in the First Degree with Aggravating Circumstances”—but otherwise the attorneys weren’t allowed to get into the specifics of t
he case. They had to tiptoe around it. Cecilia asked about being responsible for someone else’s actions. Talon asked about saying things that weren’t true. And the jurors answered the questions put to them. The ones who talked the most were the ones most likely to be stricken by one side or the other.

  Potential Juror Number 13 had been falsely accused (he claimed) of sexual assault by a step-niece. He’d fought it and won at trial. He thought prosecutors only cared about winning and cops would definitely lie on the stand. A great juror for Talon. So, of course, Cecilia used one of her six strikes against him.

  Potential Juror Number 7 had only ever had good experiences with the police. She’d even worked as a volunteer with them. When they put on that badge, they took an oath to be perfectly upstanding and ethical, and it would take a lot to convince her otherwise. Talon struck her.

  Potential Juror Number 24 kept raising his hand to answer questions, but his responses were off topic and somewhat incoherent. He didn’t trust cops, but he thought people charged with a crime were probably guilty. Cecilia struck him, but only because she beat Talon to it.

  When they were all done with the questioning, and both attorneys had used all of their strikes, they were left with a jury of twelve people who were not only too dumb to get out of jury duty, but too dull to have any interesting opinions on anything of import to the case.

  Those twelve took their spots in the jury box and Judge Kirshner swore them in, having them stand and raise their right hands to “swear or affirm you will well and truly try the case, and render a true verdict, according to the law and based on the evidence given to you at trial.”

  After receiving a dozen “I do”s, Judge Kirshner invited the jurors to be seated, then instructed them to, “Please give your attention to Ms. Thompson who will deliver the opening statement on behalf of the State of Washington.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Cecilia stood and nodded up to the judge. She began with the formalistic opening flourish only a prosecutor could get away with. “Thank you, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, counsel, may it please the Court, my name is Cecilia Thompson, and I represent the people of the State of Washington.”

  She stepped over and took a position in front of the jury box, the jurors facing her in two rows. Cecilia centered herself exactly between jurors three and four, the exact right distance from them to be heard without being too close. She paused, clasped her hands in front of her, then launched.

  “This is a case about choices,” she said. “This is a case about consequences. It’s a case about the law, and collective responsibility, and community safety. It’s a case about protecting those who put their lives on the line to protect the rest of us.”

  She paused for effect. The jury didn’t know anything about the case yet, except the charge. They were dying to know. And Cecilia was the one who got to tell them first. She used that advantage to pull them into the story she was going to tell. If she did it well enough, they wouldn’t want to leave her story to even consider Talon’s counter narrative. And Talon could see already, Cecilia was likely to do it very well indeed.

  “The judge told you,” Cecilia continued, “the defendant is charged with murder. Murder in the first degree. Murder in the first degree with aggravating circumstances.”

  Say ‘murder’ again, Talon thought to herself, but she kept her expression blank as she pretended to take notes.

  “I’m about to tell you a story,” Cecilia said. “A story about what happened that day. About what the evidence will show. But…”

  She raised a cautionary finger

  “—I will not tell you that the defendant actually killed anyone.”

  Now she really had the jurors’ attention. ‘Murder? But he didn’t kill anyone? How can that be?!’

  “And the reason I won’t tell you that,” Cecilia went on, “is because he didn’t kill anyone himself. He didn’t shoot anyone. He didn’t stab anyone. He didn’t strangle anyone. He didn’t bash anyone over the head with a candlestick in the library. But he still committed a murder. A murder in the first degree, with aggravating circumstances.”

  There we go, Talon thought. Two more ‘murder’s. Well done.

  “So, you may wonder,” Cecilia continued, “when I finish my opening statement, ‘Why is the defendant charged with murder if he didn’t actually kill anyone?’ You may wonder, ‘Did I miss something?’ ‘Did she leave something out?’ The answer to that will be, no, you didn’t miss anything.”

  Cecilia finally unclasped her hands and took a few slow steps to her right. Pacing was a common mistake of nervous trial attorneys, but a calm, thoughtful stroll from one side of the jury box to the other would allow the jury to see more of her body language and would communicate a quiet calm to reinforce her confident words.

  “But I can’t explain it all to you right now,” Cecilia told them. “Not because I couldn’t, but because I’m not allowed to. Only the judge can tell you what the law is, and she will do that, but not until the end of the trial. She will explain to you how someone can be guilty of murder even if they themselves didn’t kill anyone. But, again, she won’t do that until the very end.”

  Cecilia had reached the end of the jury box, so she turned back and continued her confident gait, hands extended slightly to emphasize her points.

  “So, don’t judge my opening statement now based on whether it meets what you thought murder was when you walked in here this morning. Judge it later based on what the judge tells you murder actually is, under the law. But I will tell you this: the law can hold you responsible for things you may not have intended but still knew might happen. And in this case, the defendant, Lucas Zlotnik, knew someone could end up dead when he agreed to be the getaway driver for an armed robbery.”

  And there it was. ‘Getaway driver.’ That label. Talon knew it was coming, but it still hurt when Cecilia finally whipped it out and plastered it on her client. It was pre-formed, one-size-fits-all, ready-to-go. It was the entire case. And if the label stuck, Luke was going to die in prison.

  “The story starts on an average afternoon, right here in Tacoma,” Cecilia finally launched into the facts of the case. Well, her facts, anyway. “The defendant, Lucas Zlotnik, was at his home, where he still lives with his parents. He got a text from his friend, Miguel Maldonado. They had plans that day. Plans they were smart enough not to put into detail in their texts. Miguel simply texted his buddy, Luke, to see if he was ready to go. And his buddy Luke texted back. Absolutely. He was ready.”

  By then, Cecilia had made her way back to the center of the jury box. She wouldn’t move from it again.

  “The defendant drove over to Miguel’s house,” she said. “Miguel lived at home with his parents too.”

  Talon wondered if the repeated digs at Luke and Miguel for living at home with their parents might be a bit too much, but a glance at the jury didn’t reveal any obviously disapproving expressions. Talon returned her gaze to the legal pad in front of her.

  “The defendant picked up his friend, Miguel,” Cecilia continued, “and they drove directly to the Cash-Town U.S.A. store on South Thirty-Eighth Street, right by the Tacoma Mall. Cash-Town U.S.A. is one of those payday loan stores. You write them a check for eight hundred dollars, postdated to your next payday, and they give you seven hundred dollars in cash right now. A hundred dollars pure profit for them, so long as your check clears. And they have ways of going after you if it doesn’t.”

  Cecilia raised a hand at the jurors. “Now, how Cash-Town U.S.A. conducts their business doesn’t matter when it comes to the crime of robbery. You can’t rob a payday loan store just because they charge really high interest on short-term loans. But it does matter when you’re planning a robbery. Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, and his answer was, ‘Because that’s where the money is.’”

  Cecilia nodded at the old story. “But not anymore. Banks are all digital now. Our paychecks and bank accounts and mortgage payments are all just
zeroes and ones in some big bank computer somewhere. No, where the money is, where the cash is, is places like Cash-Town U.S.A. If you spend the day handing out seven hundred dollars in cash to customer after customer, you’re going to have a lot of hundred dollar bills in your cash drawers. So, why did the defendant and Miguel choose to rob the Cash-Town U.S.A. on South Thirty-Eighth Street by the Tacoma Mall? Because that’s where the money was.”

  Talon noticed that Cecilia had skipped over the part where Luke was supposed to know Miguel planned a robbery. But Talon also knew it was coming. And she knew it was going to hurt.

  “So, the defendant drove his friend, Miguel, to the Cash-Town U.S.A. and waited outside in the car, engine running, while Miguel went inside to rob the place.”

  Cecilia paused and put a finger to her lips. “But how do we know all this? If they were smart enough not to put it in their texts, then how do we know what their plans were? How do we know that the defendant knew his friend planned on robbing the place, rather than maybe just going inside to get a payday loan?

  “How?” Cecilia repeated. “I’ll tell you how.”

  Cecilia turned around and pointed right at Luke. “He confessed.”

  Yep, that hurt.

  Cecilia turned back to the jurors. “That’s right. The defendant gave a full confession to the detectives after he was arrested. He admitted to going to the Cash-Town U.S.A. to rob it. He admitted knowing what Miguel was going to do inside. And he admitted to waiting outside to drive Miguel away when he came running out of the Cash-Town with thousands of dollars in untraceable cash in his hands.”

  Then, just in case they didn’t get it, “The defendant confessed to all that. He confessed to being an accomplice to robbery. He confessed to being the getaway driver.”

  That label again. It was looking pretty sticky.

  “That’s how we know.” Cecilia pointed at Luke again. “Because he told us.”

  Cecilia paused again. She seemed to be gathering herself up. Very dramatic. Very effective, Talon knew.