States of Grace

by Mandy Miller

  Table of Contents

  PRAISE FOR STATES OF GRACE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  STATES OF GRACE

  Mandy Miller

  Literary Wanderlust | Denver, Colorado

  PRAISE FOR STATES OF GRACE

  “States of Grace is engrossing, unpredictable, and fast-paced. So grab yourself a drink, settle into your easy chair, open the book, and begin. You’re home for the evening. You are about to be carried away to a world more vivid and, in this case, a hell of a lot scarier, than the one you’re living in.”

  —John Dufresne, Author of New York Times Notable Books of the Year—Louisiana Power and Light and Love Warps the Mind A Little; Storyville; The Lie That Tells the Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

  "The dialog zings, the plot races, the Florida setting is richly detailed, the characters are 3-D, intriguing and fresh, and the prose is muscular and witty. Oh, yes, then there's Grace, the star, a full-bodied, complicated and fascinating woman. The pages flew by in a happy blur. What more can one ask for in a legal thriller? Even more amazing is that this well-crafted story is a debut novel. Mandy Miller is the real thing, a writer of consequence who I'm certain will have a long and distinguished career."

  —James W. Hall, Edgar and Shamus Award Winning Author of the Thorn series

  “Miller’s debut, States of Grace, about a weary war veteran and lawyer working her way back to redemption, is a twisting, dark and gritty mystery set in South Florida that takes you on a harrowing ride until its final, shocking ending. You'll love Grace Locke and you’ll love this book.”

  —Jamie Freveletti, internationally bestselling and award winning author of the Emma Caldridge series and Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal and The Geneva Strategy.

  "Miller’s States of Grace takes us on a tense and wholly entertaining romp across the Florida landscape of pain clinics, jail innards, and snooty posh schools populated with a mélange of edgy characters from Vinnie, her former mobster landlord to her aptly-named tripod dog Miranda. Watch out, Iraq vet lawyer Grace Locke, a woman beaten but not broken, will win your heart as fast as she wins her court cases."

  —Christine Kling author of the Seychelle Sullivan series

  A down on her luck former prosecutor, Grace Locke has been given a second chance—as a criminal defense attorney for a young woman who appears a slam dunk for a life sentence for murder. Mandy Miller’s legal thriller, States of Grace, grabs you from the first page and doesn’t let go until the last page. Full of twists and turns, this book sets a new bar for authors in the legal thriller genre. Well done!

  —Chris Goff, award-winning author of Red Sky and Dark Waters

  States of Grace

  States of Grace is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2021 by Mandy Miller

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Published in the United States by Literary Wanderlust LLC, Denver, Colorado.

  www.LiteraryWanderlust.com

  ISBN Print: 978-1-942856-71-9

  ISBN Digital: 978-1-942856-74-0

  Cover design: Pozo Mitsuma

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To the defenders everywhere who keep the faith, and to the prosecutors who thwart the guilty.

  Chapter 1

  August 2009

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Innocence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. A truly innocent client, one who didn’t do it, that’s the rare, unfortunate soul that will keep you up nights and hijack your brain like a catchy song. And if lady luck forsakes him, that’s the client who will haunt you forever. Innocence is funny that way. Seems like a good thing on the surface, but at its core, it’s a burden.

  I don’t have to worry about innocence today, or almost any other day for that matter. Defendants are in the habit of being guilty of something, even if it’s not what they’re charged with—at least that’s what I used to say. Winning’s important but, thankfully, I’m going home a loser today for sure. And right now, that’s all I want—to go home, assuming you can call The Hurricane Hotel a home.

  The jury will be back in soon to announce the inevitable— “We find the defendant guilty.” How do I know he’s guilty? Because my client, the accused, the one slumped down in the chair to my right, his bony frame swamped by the funeral-director suit I bought for him at Goodwill, he did it, no questions asked. Told me so himself. Said he beat the crap out of his girlfriend because she smoked his last crack rock. Said the only thing she had the sense not to do was call the cops, at least until some do-gooder counselor convinced her to file a report. But, lucky for him, by that time, the bruises were gone.

  “She had it coming, and that bitch counselor at the shelter will get it too, if I ever see her again,” was what he told me in the holding cell this morning. Then, for good measure, as what I can only assume he saw as added incentive for me to do my job, he added, “Grace, you get me out of this hole, and I’ll show you what a real man can do for your bad attitude.”

  Willing my face to be as devoid of emotion as his hollow eyes, I told him he wouldn’t have to trouble himself with my happiness or lack thereof, because the moment the jury heard his story, the well-worn yarn about girlfriend falling in bathtub, the outcome was as predictable as another steamy day in Florida. And that’s how it went, his lies echoing off the courtroom walls like prayers from a non-believer who’s found his way into a church in a last-ditch effort to save himself.

  For some ungodly reason, and in spite of my client’s stomach-turning lack of remorse, I’m still a believer—not in innocence, maybe not in even in fairness anymore, but in the system. Making sure his rights are protected is my duty and I intend to fulfill it, even if he is an unrepentant wife beater. I learned the hard way that everyone deserves a defense and the right to look your accuser in the eye and question his version of the truth.

  “Sit up straight,” I say, poking him in the ribs as the jury files back into the courtroom, his response to which is to lean his head, bald and shiny like a cue ball, atop elbows resting on the defense table as if his neck can’t support its weight. I poke him again, harder this time. Jurors deserve respect. Most folk
s dodge jury duty like a well-thrown punch.

  Things aren’t looking good for our side, however, and the jaw-grinding grimace on my client’s face tells me knows it too. The jury was only out for fifty-three minutes. Hardly enough time for me to guzzle a cup of putrid cafeteria coffee and pick up my court-appointed counsel’s check, a pittance for my trouble.

  I count off each member of the six pack as they enter—two men and four women. Even if every single eye weren’t cast down, I’d still know what they decided back in the windowless jury room, sustained by stale bagels and the desire to get home by dinner time. It’s all in the sound. A quick shuffle of feet, like a foxtrot—not guilty. A dragging sound, like a slow waltz performed by a drunk—guilty. And what I’m hearing is one hair stylist, one teacher, a mail carrier, two unemployed realtors, and a retired fisherman waltzing.

  “I understand you have a verdict, Madame Foreperson,” Judge Grant says, peering over his half-rim tortoise shell glasses at a world-weary forty-something woman. I knew she’d be the foreperson from the jump. With her slit-eyed scowl she’d scare the others into submission quickly so she could get home to reality TV to escape her own.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  During jury selection, she said she was a hair stylist at a salon in Pompano Beach and she delivered her answers during voir dire with a certitude of one desirous of being seen as a good citizen, the type we can trust with momentous decisions like whether or not to lock someone up. Yet her bird’s nest of fried blonde hair and too-short skirt revealing a tattoo of a thorny rose belie another truth, also known as a lie. She’s no hair stylist.

  If I have a superpower, it’s the ability to spot a lie—from clients’ excuses for their bad choices to cops’ flimsy explanations for how an accused developed a raging shiner after the cuffs went on. I’ve even become good at telling myself a few lies, such as the one about how I can keep defending the types I used to lock up. What is true is that I’ll keep doing this work, defending the guilty. I have no choice. I need to be gainfully employed throughout my probationary period. It’s either serve as court-appointed counsel or forfeit my law license again when I go back in front of the Florida Bar Disciplinary Committee a few months from now.

  What else can I do? Lawyering is all I’ve ever done, if you don’t count my stint in the Army as a military police officer which, come to think of it, paid better than defending criminals who can’t afford a “real lawyer.” But that misadventure cost me a limb. Besides, it’s not like I’m in any kind of position to attract the upper echelon of criminals at this point. It’s the bottom feeders for me, for now—until I figure out a plan, a way out of this dead-end gig.

  My client’s pitiful victim is seated in the first row of the gallery. Tiny, like a malnourished bird, all sharp edges and jumpy. I wonder if he sensed she’d be an easy mark. Wife beaters tell me that. That they can smell which ones will put up a fight and which will bend to their will again and again, grateful to have something to rely on.

  Madame Foreperson steps down from the jury box and hands the verdict form to the judge’s clerk. On the way back to her seat, she glances in my direction and shrugs. I sigh in relief. She was his one hope. A woman who’d taken more than a few hard knocks and gotten up. But then, hope is not a substitute for an actual defense.

  Truth is, it’s an advantage knowing they’re guilty. It simplifies things. It means I don’t have to worry about screwing up. Prosecutors need to win over all six jurors. No room for error. All I need is to make one gullible soul believe in reasonable doubt. I find it an unnerving thought. Even so, there are no prosecutors with losing records, proof that accused and guilty are as good as synonymous. Although, odds are I put away the rare innocent back when I was Assistant State’s Attorney Grace Kelly Locke, back when I considered that possibility a cost of doing the business of justice. Another unnerving thought.

  Judge Grant scans the verdict form, stone-faced, and returns it to the clerk between thumb and forefinger like a smelly sock. “The defendant shall rise.”

  I get to my feet but stay more than an arm’s length away from my client. I notice I’m holding my breath, but why? Habit? Or maybe it’s the haunting clank of the shackles as the accused stands. Will it be guilty or not guilty, actual innocence being out of the question? In my mind, there’s no suspense.

  The clerk holds the verdict form like a town crier and clears his throat before pronouncing, “We the jury in the above-entitled action, find the defendant not guilty.”

  “Hot damn! Yes!” my client yells, his fists pummeling the air as if he’s hitting a heavy bag.

  A refrigerator lands on my chest and I struggle to catch my breath. I pivot to the jury box. Maybe they filled in the form wrong? Maybe the clerk read it wrong? But not one of them flinches, every one of their faces marked with the satisfaction of one whose work is done.

  Judge Grant stands, arms wide in benediction, face expressionless, in keeping with the black robe. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service. You are hereby excused.” Before exiting through a door behind the bench, he stabs a finger at my client and says, “Sir, once you are booked out of the county jail, you are free to go. Good luck to you.”

  Sir? Who’s he calling sir? This guy’s not a sir.

  “Thank you,” my now-acquitted client mumbles. Before a sheriff’s deputy leads him away, he faces his victim and winks. A chill slithers down my spine. A feeling that my mother, Faith, would attribute to someone walking across your grave, an odd analogy given she’s still alive and kicking butt at bridge twice a week at the Palm Beach Country Club and pruning her beloved rose bushes herself despite a gaggle of gardeners at her beck and call.

  I flop back into my chair, bile rising in my throat. An older woman I assume to be the victim’s mother, ushers her sobbing daughter from the courtroom, an arm shielding the desperate waif from behind. As if anything other than the eradication of my client from the face of the earth could do anything to protect her now.

  My adversary, a baby-faced Assistant State’s Attorney, approaches, features twisted in confusion. “Aren’t you supposed to be happy when you win?” he asks, eyebrows hunched over clear eyes, eyes that that will grow dark when he understands bearing witness to human suffering is his chosen profession.

  I plaster on a smile. I wish I could blame him, tell him he didn’t do his job, that it’s his fault a guilty man’s walking free. But I can’t. He did what he had to do We both did. It’s just that I, apparently, did it better. Without a doubt, the most unnerving thought I’ve had today.

  “Have a good night,” he says, shambling off, dragging a wheelie file cart identical to the one I used to pull back when I believed getting justice and winning were the same thing.

  My phone vibrates, skittering across the table like a roach on the run.

  A text from Manny. “Our Starbucks. 9 a.m. tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

  “There is no more our,” I mutter, sweeping a stack of files into my tattered briefcase, a gift from my parents for my law school graduation.

  I double check to make sure I’m alone, then retake my position in front of the empty jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen, you would have no way of knowing this, but less than a year ago, I would have been physiologically unable to convince you of anything other than the guilt of the man that sat beside me today. But now…”

  I avert my gaze to a bronze statue of blindfolded Lady Justice behind the bench. “But now, please, forgive me. I had no idea I’d be good at this.”

  Chapter 2

  I get off the bus and walk across State Road A1A to The Hurricane Hotel, a two-story, L-shaped, 1950s structure, parking lot in front. The rusty catwalk fronting the upper floor looks to have been repurposed from a penitentiary. Some might call the architectural style mid-century modern. Others, no-tell motel. Me, I call it one storm away from condemned. But for now, I also call it home. It is what the broke and broken can afford within earshot of the ocean, my one true love.

 
; No question about it, The Hurricane’s a far cry from the mansion I used to share with my soon to be ex-husband Manny on Idlewyld Isle, a peninsula that juts into the Intracoastal Waterway like a big middle finger to the have-nots, the types I used to prosecute. That was back when I believed in lily-white innocence, that black hats cover black souls, and that we all get what we deserve.

  Truth is, life’s simple at The Hurricane and I like it that way. For now.

  And then there is Vinnie, my landlord. Vinnie’s good at keeping secrets, and I’ve got plenty of those.

  And there he is, Vinnie, manhandling two gigantic trash cans across the rutted asphalt, like a Greco-Roman wrestler fighting way above his weight class.

  “You need some help?” I ask.

  “Nah, I got it.”

  Cans lined up on the curb, he wipes his hands on a pair of dungarees that make him look like a farmer, albeit a swarthy one with a long rap sheet and a last name ending in a vowel to complete the stereotype.

  “Buonasera, signorina,” he says, with a deep bow.

  I curtsy. “Good evening to you, Vincenzo.”

  I point at two blue plastic bins overflowing with newspapers, liquor bottles, soda cans, and all manner of recyclable detritus. “Sure you don’t want help with those?”

  “Them ones for recycling. Still gotta sort all that,” he says with a tortured scowl, which makes the task seem less desirable than an enema. “Separate the whatevers I’m supposed to separate from the other whatevers.” He raises his arms to the heavens. “Per l’amor di Dio. Don’t you remember when garbage was just garbage?”

  “I might think about wearing gloves to do that if I were you. Might not be safe. You never know what your clientele might think is recyclable.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Like you’re one to talk about clientele.”

  “Girl’s gotta make a living,” I say, keeping my tone light, although his comment stings.