Mercy (A Neon Lawyer Novel Book 2) Read online

  “I’d like to go now.”

  “Sure.”

  He pulled away. She kept her eyes on the road ahead of them. The neighborhood grew more decrepit. She saw a car taken apart completely, the pieces strewn on the lawn like decorations. Children were playing on the engine block as if it were a playground.

  “I can’t believe you showed me that,” she said.

  “You would’ve found out eventually.”

  “You did it just to get what you want. Brigham was right about you.”

  He smiled. “And what did Boy Wonder say about me?”

  “He said all you care about is power.”

  “He’s more perceptive than I thought. I do care about power. But it’s power for a greater good. There’s a wave of evil just out under the surface of society, Molly. It’s under us, around us. It’s closing in and growing more frightening every second. It doesn’t care about wealth or if you’re a good person or if you stay out of trouble or not. It affects everybody. And the only line of defense we have is our cops and prosecutors. We’re holding it back. But without good people, the wave will crash through us. What I do, I do for the greater good. I do it so mothers will feel comfortable letting their kids play outside and so people don’t have to carry guns everywhere they go because they’re scared they’re gonna get shot or robbed. I want the world to be a better place, and I’m making that happen the only way I know how.”

  He pulled the car over to the side of the road. She couldn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on a fire hydrant and the way the sun shining down through the trees speckled it gold.

  “Are you ready to hear my offer now? Or do you want to wait until the next Michael Olsen?”

  Molly swallowed. “No,” she said softly. “I’ll hear it.”

  15

  Brigham stood outside the courtroom, waiting in line at the metal detectors. Sometimes the lines were short, usually when he wasn’t running late. Other times it took half an hour just to get through the detectors and onto the elevators.

  In the past month, he had investigated every part of the Montgomery case. He’d interviewed everyone at the hospital, every officer who’d had anything to do with the case, and had gone through everything with Ted. He felt prepared, though once he got people on the stand, he was never really sure what they were going to say.

  A woman in a tight skirt was giving the bailiffs trouble because they were insisting she take her heels off, as they were setting off the detectors. She was arguing, waving her hands wildly. Brigham had seen it before. The bailiff dealing with her, a man with scars on the left side of his face, was the least patient of them. He frequently badgered people and was even rumored to have once punched a drunk trying to get through. Brigham thought he would have been fired if that were true, but then again cops stuck together, and when one was in trouble, they tended to back each other up.

  The woman was pulled aside and handcuffed. Most of the people in line breathed a sigh of relief. She sat in a chair and yelled a little more, then gave up and stared down at the floor. When Brigham got through the metal detectors and wanding, he took out one of his business cards and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

  “Call me after they write your ticket. It’ll be for disorderly conduct. I’ll take care of it for free.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t want to take my heels off. I have a prosthetic. I tried to tell them I didn’t want to take it off.”

  “It’s okay. Just call me,” he said, hurrying to the elevators.

  When he stepped out onto his floor, he received a text from Molly. Need to have lunch with you today.

  In Ted Montgomery’s prelim right now. Don’t know if I can make lunch

  Dinner?

  Sure

  The courtroom was packed with press. Some judges allowed cameras and others didn’t. Judge Lawrence, a slim woman who liked to drink a Big Gulp while on the bench, allowed them. Brigham guessed she liked seeing herself on the news.

  At the prosecution table, the lead detective on Ted’s case, Henry Sean, sat with Debra Flynn. The detective was wearing a shirt and tie, but the tattoos that covered his arms poked out of his shirtsleeves. He looked at Brigham and then away again.

  Brigham sat down and put his satchel on the table. This was when most of the plea bargaining in criminal cases really happened. He swiveled his chair around to face Debra, and she did the same.

  “Manslaughter as a second,” he said. “One to fifteen.”

  “No way. If it weren’t in front of his kids, maybe.”

  “He wanted them to say goodbye to her.”

  “He wanted to be selfish and scarred them for the rest of their lives.”

  “Debra, this guy is well respected and doesn’t have a traffic ticket on his record. It isn’t worth the waste of money it’d be to stick him in prison for the rest of his life.”

  “Maybe you can get the board to sympathize with him and let him out after the minimum.”

  He shook his head. There was only one person on the Board of Pardons that Brigham considered softhearted enough to recommend early release for someone convicted of a homicide. A former social worker. But he was the least vocal member, and the other four, from what he’d heard, routinely bullied him out of positions. The other four were prior prosecutors, cops or defense attorneys. All careers that tended to leave people jaded.

  “Attempted homicide as a second.”

  “No, I’m not giving him anything that gets him one to fifteen. I want life as my upper boundary.”

  “Why? He’s, like, fifty. You want him to die in prison?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but then her face contorted a moment. The two of them held each other’s gaze.

  “Seriously?” Brigham said. “You want him to die in prison?”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to. Look, if that’s your stance, just be up front with me right now so we don’t waste months trying to plead him to something. For the sake of your future self and mine, just be honest with me.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t like what he did or how he did it. That woman may have wanted to live the next day.”

  Brigham leaned back in his seat and stared at the judge’s empty bench. Nothing he could say was going to persuade her. Many times, if plea bargaining had failed before prelim, he was able to work something out right before a trial. But he was usually more aggressive than that. He’d call the prosecutor and harass them until they had a deal in place or show up at their office. Somehow, he knew that wouldn’t work with her. He had to find another way.

  “All rise,” the bailiff called. “Third District Court is now in session. The Honorable Kameron J. Lawrence presiding.”

  “Be seated,” the judge said as she flipped open her computer. “Any summary matters?”

  Three other attorneys had settled their cases, so they stood at the lectern one by one, waived their preliminary hearings, and asked for the cases to be set before the assigned judge. The preliminary hearing judge was different from the assigned judge, so she couldn’t take pleas. This was a safety precaution, since preliminary hearing judges heard most of the evidence, and it could affect them during trial. But it was a practice Brigham had seen only in the Third District. Everywhere else in Utah, it was the same judge, and forget objectivity.

  “All right,” the judge said after the pleas. “How are we looking on the Montgomery matter?”

  Debra stood up. “The State is ready to proceed in that matter, Your Honor.”

  Brigham rose. He’d been so shocked by Debra’s stance that his client should die in prison that he’d forgotten to check the courtroom for Ted. He turned around and scanned the room. Of the twenty or so people there, none of them were Ted. He had bailed out a while ago and should have been there. “The defense will be ready as soon as my client gets here.”

  “He’s twenty minutes late, Mr. Theodore.”

  “Just ten more minutes, Your Honor. I’m sure he’ll be here.”

>   “Okay, court is in recess for ten minutes. Please have the bailiffs notify me when your client shows up.”

  “All rise,” the bailiff said as the judge left.

  Brigham went over to the bailiff. “Do you have Ted in custody?”

  The bailiff scanned a sheet in front of him. “No, I’m showing he bailed out two weeks ago.”

  Brigham scanned the audience again. Then he hurried out of the courtroom and looked down both sides of the hallway. It was possible Ted was in the wrong courtroom. They were in front of a different judge from last time, and he could just be sitting in the other courtroom.

  He took the elevators one floor higher and stepped off into a crowd of people trying to get on. He pushed his way through and jogged down the long corridor until he came to Judge Macdow’s courtroom. The doors were locked: court wasn’t in session. He searched the rest of the hallways and then went back to his floor and searched. Ted wasn’t there.

  Brigham went back to the courtroom and got Ted’s file. He dialed the cell number they had for him, and it went to voicemail.

  “Ted, this is your lawyer. You’re supposed to be in court right now. Please call me back.”

  As he was slipping the phone into his pocket, he caught a glimpse of Debra staring at him.

  “You seem amused,” he said.

  “I told you. He knows what he did. He’s gone.”

  “No way. Why would he hire me and then take off?”

  “He hired you because he knew he was more likely to be released with an attorney. Probably to have you try to lower the bail, too.”

  Brigham shook his head. He had a sense for when clients were going to run. One of his was from a wealthy family from Mexico, and he was charged with aggravated robbery, looking at fourteen to life. Brigham knew he would run at some point. But Ted… no way. She was wrong.

  “I think he forgot or something happened. Car trouble or something.”

  “Yeah,” she scoffed. “Car trouble.”

  The ten minutes turned to twenty before the judge came out. Brigham had spent the entire time trying Ted’s cell phone, calling the office to ask if he’d come by there, and calling the emergency contact they had listed for him—a brother in Oregon, who never picked up.

  “Well?” the judge asked.

  “Your Honor, I don’t know where my client is.”

  She nodded. “What’s the State’s position? I’m inclined to issue a warrant.”

  “I would ask for a no-bail warrant, Your Honor.”

  “Your Honor, we have no idea what happened. He could be in the hospital right now because he was in an accident.”

  Debra said, “Then let’s hope no one decides to put him out of his misery.”

  This drew a few chuckles. Brigham didn’t find it funny. “Judge, give me twenty-four hours. If I can’t find him, issue the warrant then.”

  “A reasonable request. You’ve got twenty-four hours to get him before me. The warrant issues automatically at ten tomorrow morning. Anything else?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Debra said.

  “No, Your Honor. And thank you.”

  “Court is adjourned. Thank you both.”

  16

  Brigham hurried back to the office. He checked with his paralegals, hoping he’d received a message from Ted while he was out, but no message was waiting for him. Scotty hadn’t heard from him either.

  He ran to Molly’s office and said, “You haven’t heard from Ted Montgomery, have you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He wasn’t in court. He’s got twenty-four hours to make an appearance or a warrant issues.”

  “Huh. Well, maybe he’s on a beach in Mexico somewhere?”

  “He paid us a bunch of money. He wouldn’t have done that if he knew he wasn’t going to fight the case. I think something happened.”

  Molly hesitated. “I need to talk to you, Brigham. I’ve been thinking about something the past few weeks. It’s important.”

  “Can it wait? I’ve lost a client.”

  She nodded. “Sure. Dinner then?”

  “Yeah, dinner.”

  He dashed to his office and called his private investigator.

  Private investigators were a defense attorney’s right hand. The prosecutors had the police department, and defense attorneys had their investigators, who were usually just former cops anyway.

  Brigham had found the perfect investigator for his particular style: Jennifer Vest, a former homicide detective with a master’s in criminal justice. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, Brigham,” she said. “I was just thinking about you, actually.”

  “I would normally be flattered, but I’m in a little bit of a rush, Jen.”

  “I was curious what happened with that Mendoza case we had.”

  “Settled with a misdemeanor and no jail.”

  “That’s great. That’s what you guys were shooting for. So what’s up?”

  “I have a client who didn’t show up to court, and I need to find him in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “All right. What’s his name?”

  “Ted Montgomery.”

  “The guy in the news?”

  “That’s him. I’m going to transfer you to Lexi, and she’ll give you all the information we have. I’m afraid he may have fled the country.”

  “I’ll do my best. No guarantees.”

  “None needed. Thanks. Oh, actually, I did have one more thing. Lower priority, so do it later.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “I have a client named Jessica Padilla charged with a DUI in Salt Lake City. The chief prosecutor, Gwen Henries, won’t allow any deals on it. She never gets involved with deals unless there’s media attention. I think there’s some other connection between the two, but Jessica says she’s never met her.”

  “Gotcha. Okay, I’ll hurry with the Montgomery thing.”

  “Thanks. And if he is fleeing the country, I don’t want TSA alerted because of us.”

  “Understood. I should have something soon.”

  “Thanks again.”

  Brigham hung up and then paced his office for a few minutes. He wasn’t sure what else to do right now. He’d blocked himself out on the office calendar so he could just work on the Montgomery case today, and now that he had the time, he wished he had something to occupy him.

  Scotty came into the office and sat down without being asked. “I lose clients all the time.”

  “I know. I kinda hope he took off. But his kids—”

  Brigham froze. Then he dashed out of the office without explanation.

  By the time Brigham arrived at the Montgomery home, it was well past lunch, and he’d skipped breakfast. His stomach was growling, but he pushed the thought of food out of his mind and ran up to the porch. He knocked and waited. Then he rang the doorbell and knocked again. No answer. He realized he didn’t even know what the children did during the day. He guessed they were all in school and felt foolish that he’d run all the way down here. He’d have to try to find out where the local schools were and see if the children were there. If they weren’t, he had no doubt that Ted was gone.

  As he was stepping off the porch, he glanced back through the window. He could see all the way through the living room into the kitchen and the back door. Light came through. He turned around and glared through the window. The back door was open.

  Brigham raced around the house, hoping one of the neighbors wouldn’t mistakenly shoot him as a prowler. The back door was wide open, probably from the wind, which was pushing it against the wall periodically.

  He stepped into the house. The kitchen appeared about the same. As he went through to the living room, something was different, but he couldn’t tell what. He scanned from one side of the room to the other.

  A noise startled him. A crash—something falling and hitting a bare floor. Brigham’s heart raced, and he turned in the direction of the noise, somewhere deeper in the house.

  “Hello?” he said. “Anyon
e home?”

  Taking a few steps into the corridor linking the living room with the rest of the house, he paused and listened. He could hear wind chimes outside and some children yelling up the street. The sunshine was pouring through the windows, and he watched the swirling dust in the beams. Farther down the hallway, past what he guessed was a bathroom and a bedroom, was a set of stairs leading down. He walked cautiously down the hallway and stopped at the top of the stairs.

  It was dark down in the basement, no lights on. The stairs took a sharp left about six steps down, and he couldn’t see what was around that corner. The thought of three kids here by themselves wasn’t comforting, and his immediate thought was that someone had broken in. He didn’t carry a gun, so he searched for a weapon. In one of the boys’ rooms was an aluminum baseball bat. He grabbed it and headed down the stairs.

  After every step, he paused and listened. No more noises came, and he wondered if he’d just heard something random in the house. But it had sounded like pots or something else made of metal falling onto cement.

  He took the corner, ready to swing with the bat if someone rushed him. A few more steps, and he was on the basement level. He found the light switch and flipped it on.

  The basement was unfinished. The floors were bare cement, and dangling lightbulbs lit the space. Rows of steel shelves were lined with tools and boxes.

  In the center of the room was a pile of tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, hammers, pliers. It looked as though it’d fallen from a shelf that was oddly placed about five feet from the nearest wall and in the most inconvenient location if anyone tried to walk through.

  Brigham approached the tools in the center of the floor. His eyes darted around the room, his fingers clenched around the bat. He stared at every dark corner until he was certain there was nothing there.

  When he got to the tools, he bent down and went through them. Nothing interesting there. He rose and caught sight of a door on the far end of the basement that led to the next room. It was open about six inches.