Mercy (A Neon Lawyer Novel Book 2) Read online

  “Debbie, we got something for you: murder of a cancer patient at the U of U Hospital. Killed by her husband. Juicy stuff. Vince wants full bore on this one. The guy killed her in the hospital in front of her children.”

  “Shit,” someone said.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said without looking up from the iPad. “Fry his ass, Deb.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The meeting consisted of a few other items. The frontline prosecutors were expected to “staff” cases, meaning discuss them with everyone, where they were considering making a plea deal that might be too good for the defense. Several people brought up their cases, but Debra didn’t have any of those.

  When the meeting was over, she went back to her office. On the way, Colby came up to her. “That case sounds fun.”

  “Which one?”

  “Yours. The murder.”

  “Oh. Sounds like a lotta work actually. I’ll trade you if you want.”

  He shook his head. “No way. DUI where I get to roast a mayor’s son? Any day. Plus it’ll be almost no work on my part.”

  She stopped in front of her office. “They wouldn’t let me trade anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  She shook her head. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “Well, kick ass. Son of a bitch doesn’t deserve any compassion if he did that in front of his kids.”

  “Don’t worry, he won’t get any from me.”

  Debra’s shift, if you could call it that, consisted of half a day of paperwork and half a day of courtroom time. The courtroom, at least for her, was a place to relax. The office was where she felt the most stress and pressure. Court was her realm. She sat in the jury box as cases were called and read a trashy romance novel—something about a pirate kidnapping the daughter of a governor and the two falling in love.

  Only one of her eight cases that day was set for trial. Few defense attorneys liked trial, in her experience. The reasons were probably that some were scared and didn’t like losing, and some thought it wasn’t profitable. For the prep time and then two or three days, or worse, weeks, of trial when they couldn’t do anything else, they were losing money. If most solo defense attorneys were barely making it as it was, a long trial could bankrupt them if they didn’t charge enough for it.

  Of all the cases she had, the one that was set for trial was the one with the youngest attorney—a kid who looked like he had just graduated from high school. The case was a theft in which his client—the husband of a CEO with ties to the state Democratic party—was accused of stealing another man’s wallet while at the customer service counter at Walmart. After the attorney had set it for trial, Debra followed him out into the hall.

  “Excuse me. Can we talk for a sec?”

  The attorney said to his client, “Call me if you have any questions,” and then walked over. “You ready to offer us that deal?” the attorney asked.

  “The opposite. You’re going to go back into that courtroom, cancel the trial, and set it for disposition so your client can plead guilty. Doesn’t matter what the sentence is going to be. That’s just what you’re going to do.”

  He snorted. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because your client’s sister is here illegally. My next call is to ICE, and they’re going to happen to pop into her work to pay her a visit. If he pleads guilty, no deportation for the sister. If he makes me do the trial, she’s getting deported whether I win or lose.”

  The attorney’s face contorted in anger, and a flush painted his cheeks. Debra didn’t move her eyes; she kept them fixed on him and stayed cool, almost passive. She had learned that people who lost their tempers seemed to grow angrier when she kept her emotions in check.

  “Why would you be such a bitch?”

  She took a step closer to him. “You just added a thousand dollars to his fine. Keep talking and I’ll add more.”

  “You can’t punish him for what I said!”

  “I can and will. And then guess what? Maybe I’ll talk to the other prosecutors at the DA’s office about what you just called me. Maybe you’ll find that you just can’t get a good deal for any of your clients in Salt Lake County anymore.”

  He shook his head and didn’t move for a while then finally brushed past her and went back into the courtroom.

  She grinned and headed back to the office to pick up her things.

  7

  Brigham stood by the windows in his office, staring down at the street. It was late in the evening, and his day had been packed with client meetings and court hearings. He’d lost a motion to suppress on a drug case but won a sentencing argument, keeping his client out of jail on an assault case. He should have felt good, but instead he had a tight knot in his gut.

  Molly knocked on his open door. He glanced back at her and gave her a melancholy grin before turning back to the window.

  “Heard you signed up Ted Montgomery. That’s a great case. It’s all over the news.”

  He shook his head but didn’t turn around. “I don’t know if I’m going to take it.”

  She was silent for a moment. “May I ask why?”

  “He killed this woman in front of her children.”

  “That’s one interpretation. The other is that he saved her from months of pain that would have left them motherless anyway.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  She crossed the room and stood next to him. “Well, whatever you decide is fine by me. I just came to tell you your interview’s here.”

  “What interview?”

  “For another attorney. I’ll send her back.”

  When Molly left, Brigham watched a bicyclist rush across the intersection and nearly get clipped by a car.

  The office seemed claustrophobic today, as if it were closing in around him. He wanted to go for a walk, but just as he was about to head out and tell Scotty to do the interview, Molly was back with the applicant.

  The young woman wore glasses and a black suit with a Tibetan flag pin on her lapel.

  “Brigham, this is Rebecca Cruz. Rebecca, Brigham.”

  “Good to meet you,” she said, pushing up her glasses. She sat down and Brigham sat across from her.

  “Do you have your resumé?” he asked.

  “You don’t care about my resumé.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. All your ad said was that you had to be comfortable in court, so I didn’t think you would care about what my grades were and stuff like that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “So I brought something else instead. An argument. It’s the closing I gave in my trial ad class.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s see it.”

  “It’s a prostitution case. They gave me an impossible case to win because my client, the prostitute, was caught in the act.”

  Rebecca stood up and adjusted her suit. She closed her eyes a moment and then took a deep breath. “Nasreen Boyce is not guilty of this crime. She’s not a pimp. Because that’s what they’re accusing her of—being a pimp. The government wants you to believe that Nasreen posts ads for her and her friends online and then meets men for sex. Well, look at that ad. Tell me where on that ad it says anything about sex. It says that they give massages. And I get that some of you may be thinking, ‘well, that’s just a cover.’ But it’s not a cover. It’s what they do. These are girls who come from horrific backgrounds and have very few ways to support themselves.

  “My client has been on her own since she was thirteen. Her stepfather was abusive and threw her into the street when she would no longer succumb to his advances. She had to find a way to survive. But even though she starved, she never once prostituted herself. Not once. I introduced her criminal record to you when she took the stand. From the age of thirteen until now, there were never, ever any charges for prostitution or pimping. Why? Because that’s not what she does. She discovered early that you didn’t need sex to make money. A massage was enough. And that’s how she makes her living. Unlike these
Vice detectives.

  “Did you notice that they got naked, came into the room, talked dirty to her, and then let her massage them? You listened to them testify about what happened. Well, I disagree with what they say happened, as does my client. An easy way to prove who’s right would be to record these encounters. They transmitted the sound through cell phones they left on, which other detectives were listening to, but they stopped recording them.

  “Why did they stop recording them? Because they don’t want you to hear what happened. They want you to take their word for it. Well, that’s not good enough. This is the United States of America in the twenty-first century. We are not Salem five hundred years ago, where we’re burning witches at the stake because some people are pointing the finger. And ask yourselves, other than finger-pointing from these two detectives who refused to record the encounter, what other evidence is there? What great proof do they have that my client is a pimp and a prostitute? Nothing. They don’t have anything. And that’s the magic act the prosecution is trying to pull: making something from nothing. Don’t let them. Don’t let them burn people who they think are witches. Tell them if they want a conviction, then they need real proof… which they just don’t have in this case.”

  Rebecca adjusted her glasses and sat back down.

  Brigham grinned at her. “You’re hired.”

  8

  After setting Rebecca up with one of the paralegals to get her new-hire paperwork started, Brigham headed out. The girl was decent—some rough edges, but she hit on the right points. She brought up the United States of America—which tapped a patriotic nerve—she kept saying the prosecution was accusing her client of being a pimp, forcing the jury to think in her terms rather than the government’s—not a tactic Brigham totally agreed with, as he thought a jury could see through misdirection from a mile away, but clever nonetheless—and she lambasted them for not recording the incident. With a little experience, she was going to be really good.

  The sun was fading by the time he stepped out of the building. The sunset here had a different flavor than in his native Louisiana. It had a more sweeping grandeur, as though the mountains bounced the light and lit everything up, not just the sky.

  He took the inner-city train, Trax, back to his apartment, trying to make up his mind. Even the thought of another murder case tired him. The preparation hours were brutal. The trial would only be a handful of days, a week or two at the most, but the prep time could be enormous. It would suck up all of his time. And he didn’t know if he wanted to defend Ted.

  The Trax stopped near his building and he got off. In his old place, rent had been cheaper than groceries, but now he could afford somewhere a little better. At least better enough that there weren’t cockroaches, and he didn’t worry about people breaking in and robbing him.

  He opened his door on the second floor and flopped on his couch then slipped his shoes off, staring at the ceiling. Hunger pangs pounded in his stomach, but eating was too much effort; all his strength was going to blocking some memories he didn’t want brought back.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out. It was the office. “This is Brigham.”

  “Hey, this is Rebecca. You just hired me.”

  “I remember. What can I do for you?”

  “I just wanted to say thanks. You took off before I could, so I called.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll do great.”

  “I heard you’re doing the Ted Montgomery case—I just saw a clip about it on KSL.”

  “Well, I don’t know if we’re taking it, actually.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. A bunch of reasons, I guess.”

  “I feel bad for those kids. They just lost their mom and now they might lose their dad, too. If you can do anything for him, I would be happy to help.”

  Brigham knew she was right; they had already lost one parent only to see the other one hauled away in handcuffs. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Brigham hung up and tapped the phone against his palm. He rose, got his shoes, and headed out the door again.

  The address Ted Montgomery had listed as his home on the new-client paperwork was only a thirty-minute train ride away. Brigham got there just after dark. The lights were on inside the home, and he stood on the sidewalk for a second and just watched. A television spread flickering blue light inside. He took a deep breath, crossed the lawn to the front porch, and knocked.

  Monica, the oldest, answered.

  “Hi,” Brigham said.

  “Hi,” she said shyly. “You’re Dad’s lawyer, right?”

  “Um, yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to come check on you guys.”

  “You can come in.”

  Brigham hesitated. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing here or why he had come, but going inside hadn’t been his plan. Regardless, he followed her in.

  The front room was cluttered, mostly toys and children’s books, but it wasn’t dirty. Devan, the middle child, sat on the couch and stared blankly at the television. David was off somewhere else, but Brigham could hear him making car or airplane noises.

  “No one’s staying with you guys?” Brigham asked.

  She shook her head. “We don’t have anyone else. We’re from Oregon and don’t have any family here.” She crossed her arms, looking over at her brother. “I wish we’d stayed in Oregon.”

  “Why’d you move?”

  “My dad got a new job. We were only here, like, a couple of months before my mom got sick.”

  Brigham saw David run through the kitchen, a toy airplane in his hand. “How are you paying the bills?”

  “My dad left an account for me. It should last a year. And then I guess I have to get a job.”

  Brigham looked around the house. He knew that the Department of Child and Family Services would be notified. They would likely take all three of them and place them in foster care—temporary at first, but then permanently if Ted was convicted and sent to prison. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that yet.

  She stared at her brother a moment and then said, “Do you want to see my mom?”

  Brigham nodded, unsure what she meant. Monica walked into the kitchen, and he followed her. She took her cell phone and then connected it to a desktop in the corner, and an image came up.

  It was clearly taken on a phone poking around the corner, facing a hospital bed. Standing next to the bed was Ted Montgomery. In the bed was a woman.

  She was nearly bald, with sporadic puffs of hair on her head and strands on the pillow. The woman was pale, colorless and white, and thin as a pole. She was crying, and Ted was crying, too, holding her hand.

  “Please,” she said quietly, “I can’t anymore… I just can’t. It hurts so much… It hurts so much.”

  Ted kissed her on the forehead. “I know. You just have to hang on.”

  “No,” she said, sobbing. “Please, Ted, do something. Do something!”

  “I… I can’t.”

  The two of them held each other, weeping into each other’s arms. The phone was pulled out of the room and the video ended.

  “That was a month before she died,” Monica said solemnly. “I took it. I took a lot of videos of her in the hospital. Dad said I should, so I could remember her when she was gone.”

  Brigham swallowed. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing for a long time. Monica’s eyes were glued to the screen as she rewound the video and stopped on an image of her mother and father hugging.

  “I’m sorry, Monica. I’m so sorry you had to go through this.”

  “Can you help my dad?”

  Brigham hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  She looked back at the screen. “My mom always told me that people suffer for a reason. God has a plan for them. What’s the reason He did this to us? Devan’s nine years old. He doesn’t eat or sleep. In school, he just sits there and doesn’t do any work or tal
k to anybody.” She looked back at him again. “Why would God do this to him? He’s never hurt anybody in his life.”

  Brigham shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I know my dad doesn’t mean anything to you. But he was there for my mom for a year while she died. He gave up everything he had to take care of her. He doesn’t have anyone to take care of him now. Except you. Please take care of him.”

  Brigham nodded as David ran by them, sliding the airplane against the wall. “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

  9

  Jury selection, or voir dire, had gone quickly. Molly didn’t put much stock in it. A little more than Brigham did, but still not much. She asked a few broad questions and made certain no one on the jury panel had been a victim of sexual abuse or had relatives or friends that had been. Other than that, she tried to strike those who went to church frequently and registered as Republicans. Liberals, in her view, tended to acquit more frequently.

  In the end, the eight-person jury consisted of three women and five men. All except two had gone to college, and none of them had any criminal charges. In her estimation, it was about as good as she was going to get in Salt Lake County.

  The case was before Judge Veasman, a pudgy man who seemed to be asleep most of the time during trials. He looked to the prosecutor after the jury was impaneled and said, “All yours.”

  The prosecutor was a man Molly knew well—Kevin Renteria. They had even dated briefly. Kevin buttoned his top jacket button as he rose and sauntered toward the jury. He stood with his hands behind his back and looked at each juror before speaking.

  “On September the fifth of last year, Lee Olsen”—he turned and pointed to Lee, who was seated next to Molly—“did something so horrific that it’s difficult to wrap your mind around. He walked into his sister’s house on Fourth West and Twenty-First South in Salt Lake and saw that no one was home except his little nephew, Michael Olsen. Michael was watching television, not paying attention to his uncle. Lee had been over so often that there was no reason to be alarmed that he was there by himself. Even if Michael was just ten years old, it wasn’t unusual.”