Trial and Terror (6 page)

She could hear Levi yawn. “That’s a load off my mind. Meet me—”

“Tomorrow, nine, one, circus, I’ll be there.”

Summer hung up.

* * *

Summer had left Rosie passed out on her couch and was outside, gulping night air and trying to clear her head. She was walking along the beach in front of her home, the sand cold and itchy on her feet, wearing shorts and an oversized t-shirt. She looked to the horizon, a charcoal canvas striated with clouds. Her mouth was puffy and dry. Summer could feel the edge of a headache. She cursed Rosie and whoever invented gin.

She walked to the surf’s lip and let the water wash over her feet. She moved forward, toward the clouds speeding across the horizon, toward the light in the distance, the ship.

SK, she thought. She was going to be defending SK. Even before having met her, Summer was reeling under the pressure. She didn’t know if she was up to the challenge. She should have stood up to Jon, turned him down. She didn’t know if she could cope with all this.

A wave kicked at her knees. She continued treading toward that ship’s light. She thought about booking passage, taking it to wherever it was going, to places covered in rainforest flora and fauna, to dark continents and mysterious cultures, to any place she could feel safe, as far away from here as possible.

The water lapped at her chest. Her t-shirt was heavy on her shoulders.

Summer was overwhelmed by sadness. Not just because her whole life had been turned upside down by Gundy. She was alone. Wib, her father, had died of a heart attack four years before, weeks after Summer graduated from law school—the last time she ever saw her parents together. He and Sonia had separated a couple of years before that, Wib moving to a desert condo while Sonia kept the house. Sonia was the one who’d found Wib’s body, two days a corpse. He had died alone.

After that, Sonia began a descent into madness. She refused to go outside or let anyone in. After a lifetime of primping and pandering to her looks, she stopped taking care of herself. All of a sudden, Summer found herself in the role of parent, the child taking care of the adult.

She could hear her mother’s plaintive wails. It was my fault. I should have never left him. If I had been there, I could have called the paramedics.

Shhh
, Summer would say.
The doctor says there was nothing you could have done, even if you had been there.

I abandoned him. I’m to blame.

After years of wishing that her mother would accept responsibility for something, anything, Summer had found herself trying to convince her that she wasn’t responsible.

Eight months ago, when Sonia found out she had incurable melanoma, Summer noticed that a calmness had settled over her mother. She disappeared days later. Summer hadn’t seen or heard from her since.

Summer looked out at the ship one last time, then dove deep under the water until her ears popped.

When she felt her lungs were about to burst, she bobbed up to the surface, greedily sucking in air, choosing life.

She swam to shore.

After changing into a dry tank top and gym shorts, Summer lay on the floor, gazing at her ceiling. Three a.m. had slipped into four. Rosie was still curled up on her couch, snoring softly.

Summer was startled by the phone. Rosie shifted but didn’t wake.

She picked up. “Jon?”

“No.”

“Who is this?”

“Your favorite client.”

Summer shut her eyes. She wished that when she opened them, this wouldn’t be happening. “I’m not your attorney anymore.”

“Nevertheless, congratulations. You escaped the conspiracy. This time.”

Marsalis had tracked down her unlisted number. Hanging up would accomplish nothing; she had to play this out. “What conspiracy?”

“Raines charging you with aiding and abetting.”

“How did you—” she cut herself off. “So you read the papers.”

“Did Bragg include ‘Vee have vays ov making you talk’ in his article?”

Summer swallowed hard.

Marsalis continued. “Cruz will get his sweetheart deal, as promised. But the D.A. will swear Levi to secrecy, keep it out of the press. And Levi will agree.”

His predictions were the product of craft, logic, and surveillance. Summer figured Marsalis had gained access to the hearing’s transcript by cracking the courthouse computer network. As for the rest, that was just a matter of connecting the dots. In fact, Summer had arrived at much the same conclusions.

But she decided to test the waters. “How do you know?”

“Like I know everything. Like I know all about Sonia—where she is and what she did. Like I know everything about you, things you don’t even know.”

Summer’s heart pounded. “Where is my mother?”

“First, this important information from our sponsor. Turn on your television. You won’t be sorry.”

Summer knew she would be but picked up the remote anyway. “What channel?”

Marsalis chuckled softly. “It doesn’t matter.”

Summer clicked on the set and Rosie appeared. She was in deep sleep but in real time, her hand cupped under her breast, her thumb in her mouth. The picture peeled away to reveal Summer, clenching the remote. The camera zoomed in and her face haunted the whole screen.

She placed the phone back in its cradle and stared at herself staring at herself.

Chapter 6

As far as Summer
was concerned, arraignment court was one big fat Freudian id. Angiers’s courtroom was chock-a-block with the usual post-weekend crime crush, the air stale and used up, recycled though hundreds of lungs. Mothers, girlfriends, and brothers (rarely fathers in this age of single-parent households) cried over the perps detained in the cage. Crime-chasing lawyers, their ties loose around their necks, swept the room and the hallway outside, looking for anybody with a grand salted away.

While Angiers heard a case at one end of the courtroom, Summer stood at the other, her back grilled against the arraignment cage, facing the local news media—cameramen, photographers, TV and print reporters—all angling for a shot of SK, who, along with five dozen other prisoners, was cuffed inside.

There was a continuous clamor from inside the cage, obscenities directed at the bailiffs and at SK, the lone woman, who kept her eyes shut, either in silent prayer, Summer thought, or trying to maintain composure.

A Channel Six camerawoman juked left then right, but Summer blocked her shot. The woman didn’t dare step out of the press box. Angiers had already warned the swarm: no questions, no missteps, or they would all be booted.

Where the hell was Levi? Summer needed another body. She saw Rosie, racing from client to client, most of whom she had never met—they were merely names at this point, files, allegations—and caught her eye. But Rosie ignored her. Summer gave a mental shrug.

“Looking good, Summer,” Eddie Brockton, one of the lawyers shagging clients, called over to her. “You always did have more bounce to the ounce.”

Summer imagined throwing up in her mouth. There went her fantasy of moving to a private law firm. She couldn’t believe she had been so desperate to escape her life that she’d considered working for him.

Brockton was a one-time D.A. poster boy who’d been axed when cocaine assumed more importance in his life than his career. One night, after Summer had just started work as a public defender and Brockton still worked for the D.A., Summer went out with him and downed too many margaritas, an escapade she since regretted. Not sex, since that hadn’t happened. Just the drunken closeness and the sober avoidance that followed.

Brockton swaggered closer. “Free tonight?”

Summer yawned. “Sure, Brockton, after I visit my shrink, refill my Prozac prescription, and slit my wrists.”

Brockton laughed. “Ooh. Bitchy women make me hard.” He peered through the bars at SK. “But don’t you think you should save it for the prosecution?”

Summer pretended to ignore him until she spotted Levi pushing through the unruly media. Brockton said, “Later,” winked, and wandered off.

“Where were you?” Summer asked.

“Sorry. I overslept,” Levi whispered, cramming his shoulder against hers. “My daughter was up all night with the flu. Didn’t you get my text?”

Summer lied. “I forgot my phone,” she said. Actually she had left it home to prevent Marsalis from tracking her. “I’m just glad you’re here. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep the hounds at bay.”

“Do you mean that guy you were talking to—or the press?” came a tart drawl from behind.

Summer turned to see SK eyeballing her. She was wearing a tank top that displayed freckled, muscular arms. Her hair, rust-colored and dirty, hung to her nape. “Let them take their video. I want everyone to see this.”

“I would strongly advise against that,” Levi said. “People see this on the six o’clock news, it’ll stick in their minds. Could taint a jury pool, plus damage public perception.”

“Who the hell are you?” SK asked. “My lawyer?”

“She is,” Levi pointed to Summer. “I’m her boss.”

“Public defenders?”

“Yup.”

“You’re fired.”

It took Summer a few seconds to realize SK wasn’t kidding.

Levi shrugged and, reluctantly, slid to the side. Then, media delirium: popping flashes, the whir of advancing cameras, the press hollering questions.

From across the room there was the urgent thwack of a gavel. Angiers hustled over from the bench. “Bailiffs! Get this horde out of here. Now!”

The bailiffs moved quickly, rounding up the protesting news hawkers and bullying them to the exit.

Angiers stood alone in the press box. “Freedom of the press does not mean you can come in here and disrupt my court. If any of you step inside these doors ever again, I’ll hold you in contempt!”

After the last journalist funneled out the door, the judge calmed. “I believe it is time for the Stephanie Killington case.”

He took his place on the bench, a bailiff unlatched the cage door, and Summer followed Levi to a section of the visitors’ gallery roped off for attorneys. The bailiff led SK by the elbow, maneuvered her to a spot in front of the judge. Raines, whom Summer hadn’t seen come in, planted himself a few steps away.

Angiers flipped open SK’s file and skimmed the evidence, the police and medical examiner reports. He looked up. “Ms. Killington. Have you hired an attorney?”

SK glowered at Angiers. “No.”

“Can you afford a private attorney?”

“All my money is tied up in the Women’s Center. I have no savings of my own.”

Angiers nodded. “If you are willing to sign an affidavit stating this to be the case, the court will provide you with representation.”

“No way, Judge. No public defender.”

Summer looked to Levi for answers. He didn’t have any.

Angiers massaged his neck. “Let me get this straight. You do not have funds available for a private attorney, yet you refuse a free one?”

“You got it.”

“Please tell me you’re not thinking of representing yourself.”

“I’m not thinking of representing myself.”

“Good,” Angiers said. “Better to leave it to the professionals. So, what do you plan on doing for a defense?”

“Before I answer that, Judge, I have to inform the court that I’m being held in a cell a cockroach wouldn’t call home. There’s no sink, the toilet doesn’t flush, it smells bad, real bad, Your Honor, and there isn’t any light. I haven’t even had a shower.”

Raines interrupted. “Your accommodations have nothing to do with—”

The judge hammered down his gavel. “Raines! In my court lawyers have fewer rights than fraternity pledges. Don’t talk unless I tell you to.”

Raines looked sideways. “I apologize to the court.”

“I don’t think he means it, Your Honor,” SK said.

“I don’t either,” Angiers said, cracking a smile. Summer couldn’t remember the last time he had done that. “Anyway, I can sympathize with your plight, Ms. Killington. But I have no powers outside this court. Take it up with your congressman. I can’t even get the jails to provide medical care to prisoners with open wounds.”

“I’m being treated like I’m guilty when the law states I’m innocent until—”

“Spare me Civics 101,” Angiers roared, suddenly out of patience, “and save me the hassle of reading your mind:
Who
is going to represent you?”

SK shook her chains. “No, Your Honor. This is wrong. I refuse to participate until—”

Angiers slapped the bench with his palms. “Participate?”

“Yes. Participate. Until I’m moved to a decent—”

“Where you are incarcerated while awaiting trial is not my problem. Look behind you, to those gentlemen waiting politely for us to conclude our business so that they may find out if they will have to stand trial.
That
is my problem.”

“I’m innocent.”

“Claiming you are innocent is irrelevant, Ms. Killington.” Angiers peered over his eyeglasses at the file. “I have no choice but to find that there is ample evidence to charge you with the murder of Harold Gundy. Now, for the record, who will be your attorney?”