by Mandy Miller
Bucknell pushes some papers across the table. “That’s wonderful, dear. I’ll ask Ms. Knight to prepare the final divorce decree based on Mr. Martinez’s offer. If you could please sign these copies of the offer already signed by Mr. Martinez, one for each of you, that would be good. The divorce will be final one week from today.”
Signed paperwork in hand, Bucknell sprints from the room, leaving me staring at Manny’s signature on my copy, a signature I’ve seen so many times alongside my own, on mortgages, loans, checks. It looks alien to me now, like a commonplace word that appears to be misspelled.
***
I find Manny staring out a window by the elevator bank.
“Grace,” he says, the sharp edges of his features softened by the fading light of day. He holds out a single key, strung on a red ribbon. “I hope you’ll find happiness.”
I stand mute, searching his face for any vestige of anger or regret, but all I see is peace, a peace of which I am envious.
He takes my hand and sets the key in my palm. “It needs some work, but it’s all yours.”
“I don’t get it,” I say, a quaver in my voice.
“Don’t get what?”
I turn away to look out the window, over the city, a steel-and-glass skyline of towers filled with dreamers and hustlers, all looking for their piece of the American dream. Just like we had been. “Why are you caving?”
“It’s not caving. Marital property rules are rules. No sense arguing for the sake of it. It’s time, time for both of us to forgive and move on.”
I curl my fingers around the key, the steel cold in my sweaty palm. My father loved to say, “Nostalgia is a seductive liar” as justification for leaving the past behind, for not gilding memories made fond only by the healing passage of time. I’m quick to heap scorn on people who indulge their regrets, wish for the roads not taken, loves not found, who think the good old days were always brighter, instead of getting on with the now. Is my sudden reticence to walk away simply that? Nostalgia?
Or maybe I am getting soft.
I pocket the key.
“You might not believe it, Gracie, but I want the best for you. We’re just not the best for each other, anymore.”
When the elevator arrives, he steps aside for me to get in.
“Thanks, I’ll take the next one.”
He leans his back against the doors. “For what it’s worth, you’re doing a great job on Zoe’s case.”
I feel my chin tremble. “I’m putting up a fight. It’s all I can do.”
“Take care of yourself, Ms. Locke.”
“You too, Mr. Martinez.”
He points outside. “And stay out of the storm. I know how you hate thunder and lightning.”
“And change,” I mumble, as the doors slide together, the words painful given the lump in my throat.
A hand on my shoulder. “Ms. Locke, how unusual to see you here, back in my neck of the woods.”
Hackles spike on the back of my neck and I wheel around, fists balled, hyper-aware of being unarmed.
“Whoa, there!” A man’s voice, one I know all too well.
I blink hard and find myself staring into the face of Robert Britt, my former boss and the State’s Attorney, the guy who had my possessions dropped on our doorstep with a letter of termination taped to the box mere minutes after my mug shot hit the news.
“Jesus, you scared the crap out of me!”
“I come in peace,” Britt says, hands up.
He may be skinny, bald, and as pale as a sheet, a seemingly benign force, but Britt’s a two-headed snake. He tolerated me when I was a winner, a foot soldier in his war against crime—his bread-and-butter platform come election time. He was the one who nicknamed me “Locked and Loaded,” but he never much appreciated what he called my “gunslinger” ways of prosecuting cases. He hired me because, like him, I went to Ivy League schools, but what he got was a law-and-order zealot with a bum leg and the use of dubious judgment in her personal life.
I pick up my briefcase and walk away, the potential for an altercation a risk I cannot afford.
“You’re one lucky lawyer, Grace.”
I freeze.
“Getting hired on the Slim case, I mean.”
I resist the urge to turn around.
“That’s the kind of case you would have been champing at the bit to handle back when you were working for me. A high-profile murder. Funny thing, isn’t it? You must have pulled a few strings to get on that gravy train.” He clucks his tongue. He’s closer now, right behind me. “Bet there’s one helluva good story there. The register of his voice drops, his tone conspiratorial. “One you surely don’t want getting out, would you?”
I hammer down on the emergency bar and step into the stairwell, acid rushing up my gullet from my churning gut. After the door slams, I grab onto the handrail to steady myself.
It was Reilly taught me you’re not paranoid if they actually are out to get you.
Chapter 17
The bus driver is straight out of central casting for a zombie apocalypse flick. A razor-edged beak for a nose. Black stringy hair. A reflection of the windshield wipers slapping back and forth in his glassy stare. He turns on the radio and the Bob Marley classic “I Shot the Sheriff” comes on. I chomp hard on my gum when it gets to the part about a capital offense.
The air conditioning’s on full blast which, given the ambient air temperature outside of ninety-five degrees and ninety percent humidity, has fogged up the windows. I clear a porthole with my sleeve and survey the aftermath of the deluge. A few diligent homeowners are sweeping detritus from the patios of their beach-front mansions. Palm fronds, coconuts, empty beer cans, mangled beach chairs, all coated in sand. No matter how rich you are, Mother Nature is always in charge and she treats everyone equally.
The only vehicles on the road are cops and Florida Power & Light trucks, except for one optimistic hooker trolling her turf in a too-tight miniskirt and ripped fishnet stockings. Normally I wouldn’t venture out so soon after a storm, but the endless wind and rain have jangled my nerves and have me searching for relief. A reprieve from the four walls of #7 after mowing through the two-hundred-plus pages of discovery on Zoe’s heretofore defenseless case wouldn’t be bad, either. Then again, maybe I’m riding the bus on a Sunday morning in the wake of a storm because Jake the bartender is not so hard on the eyes.
Miranda’s seated at my feet, ears pricked up as if I’ve said something to her.
“What? Those words were all in my head. No way you know what I’m thinking.”
I pull the cord above my head to signal the driver one stop before the jail complex and the Star. The walk will do my head good. Every visit up here since my release has given me nightmares. Given I’ll be spending a lot more time behind bars seeing clients, I need to inoculate myself against the debilitating fear in my gut every time I hear iron gates clanking shut.
We get off at the intersection of Powerline Road and Martin Luther King Boulevard under a bruised slate sky. The streets are deserted. The metal grates on Fancy’s Pawnshop are closed up tight. Mr. Prince, the owner, a Jehovah’s Witness, never opens on the Sabbath. Otherwise business is twenty-four seven, no matter the weather. Downed tree limbs litter the rutted sidewalks. The only people around are a couple of women smoking at the side door of Garnet Girls, a strip joint, wobbling like baby birds on skyscraper heels, their skeletal bodies trussed into black bustiers. When the back door opens and a hand beckons, they stamp out their cigarettes and disappear inside.
Miranda tripodding along at my side, I construct a mental map of the junkyards, auto body shops, and abandoned lots strewn with trash, to familiarize myself with the geography of the area, to render it less like Fallujah. All war zones freak me out, even if the only ones I see now are on TV, or in my dreams. I wonder if Miranda is equally anxious in this domestic wasteland, one also marred by violence and death, albeit one devastated by homegrown poverty and despair, not war and jihad. Probably not. The dogs with us
in Fallujah thought sniffing out explosives and chasing bad guys was a game, not their job, even though the consequences for them could be fatal, a fact about which they were blissfully unaware.
I catch Oscar’s toe on a bulbous tree root that has erupted through the sidewalk and stumble forward, catching myself on a lamppost. Reflexively embarrassed, I look around, but no need. No one out here but us girls.
I stop outside the Star to free my hair from the ponytail holder, slip inside, and hop onto my stool.
“Counselor Locke, people are going to talk. If you keep coming in here, they may think it’s not the booze that keeps bringing you back.”
I feel myself blush for the first time in I have no idea how long.
“And who do we have here?” Jake asks, peering over the bar.
“This would be Miranda.”
“Of course it is. What else would a dog of yours be called?”
“I think it’s a perfect name.”
Jake circles Miranda. “Well, she is a beauty.” He freezes. “Wait, she’s got only one back leg.”
“That makes two of us. Two old war dogs. Not a good set of legs between us.”
“Can I pet her?”
“Her vest says no, but I’ll make an exception for you. She deserves a little spoiling.”
“What service?”
“Marines.”
“Semper Fi,” he says, smoothing the fur along the length of her back in one long stroke.
“What? You were a Marine?”
He slings a towel over his shoulder and slips back behind the bar. “That’s a story for another day, Counselor. But for now, what can I get you? The usual?”
“Roger that and make it a double.”
Jake wags a finger at the ease with which the words roll off my tongue.
“I still like to say that. Even if double nothing boozy is just that, nothing.”
“And I’ll get some water for the little lady, too,” he says. “Hey, quit that, would you? Thing’s unplugged,” Jake shouts to a shaggy looking guy poking at the buttons on the jukebox.
The man pulls a cigarette from behind his ear, looks at it as if he’s surprised such a thing would be there, and shuffles outside.
Jake places the keg-sized mug of Coke in front of me and waits for the espresso machine to sputter to life.
I jerk my head at the jukebox. “Who is that?”
“That would be Moose.”
He places two steaming shots of espresso in front of me and then places a water bowl on the floor by my feet. I drop both shots into the Coke one at a time and take a sip.
“What brings you up here on a Sunday?”
“Change of scenery. The walls in my tiny hole of a place are closing in on me.”
“And you came all the way up here from the beach for this?” he asks, the note of suspicion in his voice well-deserved. If I were a betting woman, one vice I’ve not acquired despite my love for playing poker, I’d wager Jake has had an unprofessional thought or two about me too, based on the fact that I’m the only customer he allows to run a tab when I don’t have cash. And I can’t deny it, he has what the French would call je ne sais quoi, what I call danger. And while I have a history of being just fine with danger—dangerous men, dangerous places, dangerous habits—Jake’s one of the good guys, and good guys don’t need a gimp with recurring nightmares and a bad habit of flirting with disaster.
I pat my laptop. “The discovery on Zoe Slim’s case that needs reviewing. I needed a homey place to face the brutal facts and not make me wanna drown my sorrows.”
“So, you chose a bar? My bar?”
I shrug.
“Should I be worried?” he says, which I take as a reference to my frequently patronizing a bar.
“You’re the one barkeep in this town who won’t serve me. Besides, it would take more than a few months in the pokey and a trashed career to take me down again. Just too damn stubborn to crawl into a hole and die. So, here I am. In a bar. Your bar. Where the company’s good, even if the case sucks.”
Unconsciously, I rub the hot spot on my right thigh where the shrapnel is buried.
“You doing okay?” he asks, his warm smile replaced by concern.
“Yep, all good,” I say, although my mind is full of my old boss, State Attorney Britt, and the havoc he could wreak for me if he had any inkling about how I maneuvered my way onto Zoe’s case.
Jake leans against the back bar, his broad shoulders reflected in the mirror behind the rows of liquor bottles and waits until I look up from the screen.
“I’m good. I am,” I say, conscious that my tone rings less confident than intended. “I’ve been going to meetings every day, got me a sponsor, and—”
“The case, I mean.” He snaps the towel at me. “Are you doing okay with your new case?”
“Since you asked…” I jab at the power button on my laptop, imagining it as Britt’s eye. “The cops found the murder weapon in Zoe’s locker with her prints on it. And it turns out the gun is registered to her father.”
His face contorts into a scowl. “Not good at all.”
“You’re the master of the obvious, Jacko. But since you’re so nosy, another reason I’m up here is to do a meet and greet across the street with two new court-appointed clients. Figured I wouldn’t have to waste my very valuable time waiting to get in.”
“Yeah, what idiot has nothing better to do than to shoot the shit with a couple of criminals the morning after a storm?”
“Just me, I guess, but I need the chump change.” I poke my tongue in my cheek. “And they are accused, Jake, accused.”
“Now you think they’re all innocent.”
I bark out a laugh. “Shoe on the other foot is what I’ve been told.”
“And how does it fit?”
I tip my head from side to side. “Jury’s still out.”
“I’ll leave you to get on with it. I’ve got paperwork to do in the back. If you need me, holler. Or if some unrepentant drunk, other than Moose, wanders in here looking for his next drink, holler louder.”
“Roger that.”
***
Serial killer or petty thief, the format of the State’s discovery packet never varies, but given how big this computer file is, Hightower appears to be covering all the bases and then some.
The first page is the case identifier: State of Florida v. Zoe S. Slim, case number 09-007878CF10A, Division FB/Judge Twietmeyer. Next, the bones of the State’s case―a list of witnesses, along with physical and other evidence, including exculpatory evidence, if any exists, but I can’t remember even one time I handed over anything that might have let a criminal walk. I’m sure Hightower has also left a few things out accidentally on purpose.
Law enforcement witnesses: Detectives Sorenson and Reilly, Officers Lynch and Bond, and a long list of uniforms on scene at St. Paul’s. Next: Wendy Struppe and Jason Oliver, crime scene technicians; Vincent Owen, M.D., the medical examiner; Albert Simpson, fingerprint technician. Civilians: Elaine Bannister and Serena Price. No alibi witness. No surprises.
“She’s screwed.”
“What?” Jake yells from the back.
I ignore him and get back to reading.
A big fat blank space under the heading Williams Rule/Exculpatory Evidence.
“No surprise there, I guess.”
As much as it used to pain me, the prosecution is required by law to turn over anything that might suggest the defendant might not have done what he or she is charged with. But no such luck for Zoe, the omission of any good news further cementing the hopelessness of my first big case back.
Dr. Owen’s grisly autopsy report follows: “Conclusion—cause of death was two gunshot wounds, one to each of the head and groin. Manner of death—homicide.” To the point. No need to say more.
The crime scene photos, some of which I saw at the bail hearing, are horrific to the point of being pornographic. Sinclair’s body sprawled back in his chair, knees wide. Sinclair’s exploded head, clumps
of brain tissue on the chair and splattered on the bookshelf. His once white button-down saturated with so much blood that the polo man on the chest is now a gruesome shadow. Sinclair’s pants bunched around his ankles, the white rubber toes of his Converse high tops frosted with crimson, topped off with boxers, a repeating pattern of cupid and his bow. I’ll say they’re too prejudicial, but that won’t fly with Twietmeyer. He’ll admit them into evidence.
I expel a sigh strong enough to blow several cocktail napkins off a pile and along the bar.
“What’s wrong?” Jake says, between swipes at the array of bottles with his squirrel-like feather duster.
I turn the laptop around.
“Nice skivvies,” he says.
“You guys always go for the low hanging fruit first,” I say, the pun sending Jake into paroxysms of laughter.
“Hey, pay attention here. This is important. What else do you see in the picture?”
He leans in. After a few seconds his eyes widen. “What a creep! The way the papers talk about him, he was the next coming of Jesus Christ.”
I turn the computer back around and hone in on the simple gold wedding band on Sinclair’s left ring finger. “Exactly. Maybe our Mr. Sinclair was a regular guy after all, just one who got caught with his pants down.”
“So to speak.”
“Could be I’ve got something to work with there,” I mumble to myself as I click through the pictures of the Glock 19. A close-up of the serial number. Anton’s firearms registration. A grid of shadowy black-and-white images of fingerprints lifted from the gun accompanied by Simpson’s conclusion that the prints match Zoe’s. I plug earbuds into the headphone jack and click on a file labeled Zoe Slim/Video and hold my breath.
Zoe appears, dressed in her school uniform, a white polo shirt and pleated plaid skirt, seated at a table at the FLPD. Reilly reads her the Miranda warnings and sets a written waiver in front of her, telling her to sign. Zoe ignores him. He makes several more attempts to get her to talk and sign, his efforts ranging from the good cop line, “It’ll all be okay if you tell me what happened,” to the more heavy-handed version, “You better tell me what happened, why you killed Brandon Sinclair. I’m going to find out anyway.” Nothing worked, praise the Lord. She didn’t say one word in response to any question during the two-hour interrogation. Didn’t ask for her parents, to go home, for a lawyer. It was if she wasn’t there at all.