The Neon Lawyer Read online

  “So you must be Brigham,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, Brigham, you’re in the big leagues now. How does it feel?”

  “It’s fine, sir.”

  Vince grinned and they stared at each other a moment. “Well, I’ll teach you the ropes. See, ask Molly here or your boss Tommy—I don’t file capital cases unless I’m gonna get a conviction. You understand? If there’s any chance of me losing, I wouldn’t file it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Just so we’re both on the same page. Now, what is it I can do for you?”

  Molly said, “We’ve reviewed the evidence. Given the mitigating circumstances, we were hoping you’d be willing to offer manslaughter.”

  “Hm. I had thought about that. But babe, I just don’t see why I should. I got her cold. I could get a conviction in my sleep. So I don’t see why she should get a slap on the wrist for killing a man.”

  “That man,” Brigham said, “raped and killed her six-year-old daughter.”

  “It’s not her place to determine what happens to him.” His head tilted oddly to the side, a glimmer in his eye as he said, “It’s mine. So she can plead to agg murder, and I won’t seek the death penalty.”

  “We’ll take manslaughter,” Brigham said. “Nothing else.”

  Vince made a clicking sound through his teeth. “See, now you’re new at this so I’ll try and educate you some, son. I could have her killed. I’m offering not to have her killed. So you just gotta ask your client, ‘Do you want to live, or don’t you?’ ”

  Brigham rose. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Vince leaned back in his seat, one leg coming over the other. “You’re a fiery little bastard, aren’t you?”

  Brigham strode out of the office, leaving the door open behind him. Molly followed. They didn’t speak until they were by the elevators.

  “He’s trying to help,” she said.

  “He’s a prick.”

  “He’s offering to spare her life. That’s not worthless. You need to calm down and look at this case objectively.”

  Brigham shook his head as he stepped on the elevator. “He doesn’t give a shit about her.”

  She sighed. “No, he doesn’t. But it’s not his job to care. It’s ours.”

  “I’m going to tell her not to take it.”

  “That’s not up to you, Brigham. You take her the offer and let her make up her own mind. Life in prison, or death at the hands of the state.”

  “She doesn’t deserve this, Molly.”

  “Deserve has nothing to do with the law. You can’t think like that.”

  He shook his head again. The elevator doors opened and he stepped out and headed for the front doors. By the time he was standing on the sidewalk, he had calmed down and felt stupid for showing his anger in front of Molly and Vince.

  In law school, when he pictured himself as a lawyer, he always saw himself as cool and collected. The type of lawyer that judges would value input from, because they knew it came from an objective person. Now he felt like a child, throwing a tantrum because he wasn’t getting his way.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right. I can tell this is important to you. But this is your first big case. You’ll have dozens of others in your career. Are you going to storm out of every prosecutor’s office when they don’t see a case your way?”

  “She . . .”

  “I know. But you’re going to work with Vince again. A lot. He’s probably going to be the next DA. You need a good working relationship with him. Never blow your relationship with a prosecutor over one case.”

  He nodded. “I better go. I wanna get the offer to her before dinner.”

  On his third visit to the jail, Brigham began noticing the little things—the grinding sound the door made when it slid open, the way the gray paint on the cement floors was peeling off, how dirty the glass partitions, separating visitors from inmates, were.

  This time, he was the first one in the cell block, and waited for the guard to bring Amanda out. When she came in, she smiled at him while looking him in the eyes: a first. She sat across from him and he smiled back.

  “Are you doing okay?”

  She nodded. “I’m okay. They have some classes here through the community college. I’ve been taking some. It keeps me busy.”

  “Well, that’s good. Stay as busy as you can.” He glanced down to a fingerprint smear on his side of the glass. It was about the size of a child’s. “I’m obligated to relay to you any offers made by the prosecution. The lead prosecutor on this case offered to remove the death penalty option if you plead guilty to homicide. You would get life in prison instead—fifteen to life.”

  The smile faded from her face. She looked like someone had just punched her in the gut and all the wind had left her.

  “Fifteen to life?” she repeated.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  She was silent a moment. “What do you think I should do?”

  “I think . . . I think you should fight it. The chances of us winning are slim. If we lose, there is a very real possibility that you could be sentenced to death. The way it works is, after you’re convicted of homicide, the jury would then have to decide if you should get the death penalty. It’s like another trial. But no woman has ever been executed in Utah. I think the prosecutor is bluffing.”

  “But I killed him. How can we win?”

  “It’s a specialized defense. We’re going to say you were so distraught that it caused a type of temporary insanity. It would negate the intent of this crime.”

  She stared down at the metal counter in front of her, running her finger along the corner where it met the glass. The muscles in her jaw flexed. “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”

  They held each other’s gaze a moment, and then she rose without a word and left him alone again, staring at his reflection in the glass.

  Fifteen

  Brigham stopped at the office that night but had so little energy, he couldn’t bring himself to open another book in the library. Scotty was still working and asked a quick question about criminal restitution: whether a store could sue someone and ask for criminal restitution if the person shoplifted something. Brigham looked up the answer for him in Lexis and then left.

  The night was much colder than the day had led him to expect it would be. Riding his bike, the frosty air stung his cheeks and made his nose run. He got to his apartment and noticed a familiar car parked by the curb. Molly was sitting in the driver’s seat. She stepped out with a six-pack of Heineken in her hand.

  “Thought you could use some company,” she said.

  “I can. My apartment isn’t much.”

  “I’m fine with it, Brigham. No need to show how macho and rich you are.”

  He grinned as he walked his bike inside and held the door open for her. Somebody’s front door suddenly opened. June stood there, a surprised look on her face when she saw Molly.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” Brigham replied. “Molly, this is June.”

  June said, “Call me later.”

  She went back inside and closed the door, leaving Brigham wondering what had just happened.

  Brigham took Molly down the steps to his apartment. He watched her face, but there was no reaction of disgust. In fact, she flopped on the couch and opened a beer like she had been coming there for months.

  “So, not to talk about work,” she said, “but did you visit her?”

  Brigham walked into the kitchen to get two glasses and some ice. “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “She says she’ll do whatever I want her to do.”

  “Seriously? She barely knows you. Must just have that kind of face.”

  He came back and placed the glasses down on the worn coffee table
he’d bought at a garage sale. The remote was still there—the burglars hadn’t taken that—and he flipped on the television, which had a crack in the center of the screen.

  “What’re you going to tell her?” she asked.

  He poured the beer in a glass half-filled with ice and took a sip. “I don’t know.”

  “Beer with ice, huh?”

  “I can’t drink warm beer,” he said. “Reminds me of this time when I was a kid and I drank my own piss on a dare.”

  “Ech. Must’ve been some dare.”

  “Not really. I didn’t even like the kid or care what he thought about me. I just didn’t like that he thought I couldn’t do it.”

  She shook her head as she stared at the television. “Little boys are so weird.”

  He leaned back on the beanbag he had in place of a chair and brought the glass to his lips. The beer was still lukewarm, and he felt like gagging. “So what should I tell her?”

  “Tell her to take the deal and save her life.”

  The television flipped to a game show. He and his neighbor had the same type of remote and they occasionally crossed signals.

  “I don’t want to tell her that.”

  “This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what’s best for your client. You always have to remember that. It’s about them. You’re not the one that has to live with the repercussions.”

  He exhaled and then took another drink. “I didn’t think being a lawyer would be like this. When I was interning with the public defenders, it was all DUIs and drug charges. You’d get them a fine and some classes and move on to the next case.”

  “I was a corporate lawyer at my first job. Our firm’s business was sixty percent from one client. We just had to do whatever the client wanted. No gray areas, no soul searching. I thought all law practice was like that—you’d look up a case or a statute and it’d have all the answers you were looking for. But when you deal with people instead of corporations, it’s not like that.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “The firm?” she replied.

  “Yeah. You must’ve been pulling down some serious cash.”

  “One eighty a year.”

  He whistled. “It’d take a lot for me to leave a paycheck like that. More than getting groped by a few bosses.”

  “I saw the people who had been there for ten or twenty years. On their third marriages, bogged down with fancy cars and jewelry to show each other how much money they make . . . and the worst part was that they lived there. They didn’t even have the chance to really enjoy their money. Their vacations were always filled with work, so they started going places they couldn’t be reached, like jungles and mountains. They were miserable and they couldn’t face it. I didn’t want that life.”

  “So how’d you meet Tommy?”

  She sipped her beer out of the bottle, foregoing the ice. “I went up against him in a divorce case. I liked him. He was gaudy; don’t get me wrong. But he was unique. We had lunch, and he told me that if I was ever sick of working for assholes I should come work with him. One day, I just took him up on it.” She paused. “What about you?”

  “I needed a job.”

  “You’d eventually find something if you kept trying.”

  He shrugged. “I liked him, too.”

  She finished her beer in a few gulps and rose. “You better get to bed. Tomorrow’s her arraignment. You know where the Matheson Courthouse is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t be late. Judge Ganche, eight thirty.”

  She took another beer from the six-pack on her way out. As she was leaving, she tapped it against his glass. “To living in the gray.”

  Brigham watched her go. As she turned toward her car, she glanced back at him. The television switched to an adult channel and began ordering a porno.

  “Jim?” Brigham shouted.

  “Yeah, man,” a voice came from next door.

  “I can see your porn.”

  “Cool, man. You wanna pay for half, then?”

  Sixteen

  The Matheson Courthouse was named after a former US Attorney and current federal judge for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. It was rumored he had never actually seen it.

  The building was square and consisted of blue glass with a few white pillars thrown in to remind people it was actually a court.

  Brigham waited in line at the metal detectors. He looked at the fresco on the ceiling five stories above him, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

  The bailiffs made him take off his belt and shoes. He still set off the machine and they checked him with the wand before he could put his belt back on.

  The directory past the metal detectors said that Judge Ganche was on the third floor. Brigham took the elevators up with a group of attorneys. They were discussing buying distressed properties from the Catholic Church. Apparently the Church was selling off prime real estate for pennies to pay off all the settlements for sexual abuse at the hands of priests.

  The third floor was packed with attorneys and defendants rushing to courtrooms and the clerk’s office. Judge Ganche’s room was down the west hallway, and a group of defendants were sitting outside on benches. The courtroom was overflowing; people were lined up outside the door. Brigham slipped between them, muttering, “Excuse me,” several times before he actually made it in.

  The courtroom was windowless, as most were, and cold. He walked to the front. A line of attorneys sat there. The three prosecutors had stacks of files on the table in front of them, in alphabetical order. Vince wasn’t there.

  Brigham got in line. Molly came in a few minutes later. She stood next to him. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  “So address bail, but I don’t think Ganche is going to release.”

  “How much is reasonable?”

  “She killed a man in front of witnesses and didn’t care. I don’t think any amount is reasonable, so you might as well go for broke and ask for her to be released on her own recognizance.”

  The bailiff bellowed, “All rise. Third District Court is now in session. The Honorable Thomas Ganche now presiding.”

  “Be seated,” the judge said.

  He was an older man, perhaps sixty-five or sixty-six, and had a droopy, bloodhound face. He looked unhappy to be there and his position meant he didn’t have to hide it.

  “Any private counsel ready to go?”

  An attorney jumped up, cutting off an older woman who needed help getting to her feet. He called his case as the woman glared at him from behind.

  Brigham didn’t want to cut anybody off and he didn’t want to fight with old ladies, so he waited. Besides, he had nowhere else to be.

  When his turn did come, he meandered to the podium. This courtroom was much larger than the ones he’d been in before. At least a hundred people were packed in like sardines. Suddenly he felt nervous, and his voice cracked when he said, “The matter of Amanda Pierce, please, Your Honor.”

  The bailiff opened the door to the holding cells and shouted, “Pierce, you’re up.”

  Another bailiff escorted her out. She was in her orange jumpsuit with a white laceless slipper. Thick handcuffs around her wrists were linked by a chain to her one ankle. The chains rattled as she walked with her crutch, and were so large that they looked like they could slip off her hands at any second. She gave him a melancholy smile and then faced the judge.

  “We’d like to enter ‘not guilty’ pleas, Your Honor.”

  The judge scowled at him. “First state your appearance.”

  “Oh, sorry. Brigham Theodore for the defense.”

  “Rob Heil for the state, filling in for Mr. Dale.”

  The judge quickly flipped through a file. “Mr. Theodore, this is a felony. You don’t need to plead not guilty, it’s just assumed it’s not guilty and we set i
t out for another date.”

  Brigham cleared his throat. He needed to take some action, make some movement, and couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Yes, Your Honor. Just wanted to be clear. I would like to address bail, however.”

  “So address it.”

  Brigham took out his phone and glanced at the bullet-point list he’d made and read over twenty times. He had it memorized, but now couldn’t remember a single item on it.

  The only two things the judge looked at in setting bail were flight risk and a threat to the community. If the defendants were at risk of driving to Mexico, the judge would keep them. And if they were going to go out and hurt somebody while released, he’d keep them as well.

  Years ago when Brigham had first learned that, it had shocked him to his core. What it said essentially was that the government didn’t need to convict a person of a crime to lock someone up and ruin the person’s life. All they needed to do was accuse that person. And if accused of something serious enough, they would lock the person up until it was resolved. Even if found innocent later, the person could easily have served a year or two in jail already.

  “Your Honor, Ms. Pierce is a veteran with no criminal history. She has ties to the community through her work and her church and has never done anything to make this court think that she is a flight risk. She doesn’t even have a passport or a car anymore. As far as threat to the community, this was an isolated incident, something that could only have affected one person, and that person is no longer with us. She had a disposition to—”

  “Bail is denied, Counsel.”

  “Your Honor, if I might be heard, I’d like to point out that—”

  “She killed someone in broad daylight. Sorry, but I’m not letting her roam free. Bail denied. I’m guessing you want a roll call hearing, right?”

  “Um, Your Honor, I would like to finish addressing bail.”