Undue Influence

Chapter 19

Laurel has had a friend, a woman from work, assemble these things, a few more outfits from her closet, and put them into a hanging valise for me.

Tonight, on the eve of trial, I deliver them to the county jail, where they will be stored in a wardrobe warehouse on the main level, a thousand automated hooks like a mechanical snake on the ceiling that moves with the press of a button to produce the exact outfit for the right inmate. One of the many assembly lines of justice.

It is all in the inane belief that the defendant, who has been locked in this hellhole for months, labeled with the scarlet letter of crime and told to scrap for her very existence among the castoffs of this world, will look like you and me when the guards drop the shackles and waltz her into court in the morning. One of the fictions of our system.

I drop the valise with a matron on the bottom floor. They rifle my briefcase and search me, pat-down and metal detector, hand me a clip-on badge, and lead me by the nose upstairs, all without a single word that could be called civil, to the pods, to see Laurel.

I wait in one of the little booths, behind glass. She has not yet arrived. I kill time tapping my fingers on the metal shelf in front of me. Pretrial jitters.

When I see her, it is on the floor down below, coming this way. A group of women heading for the day room. Laurel’s talking and milling, jousting in the body language of this place with another woman. Laurel seems to lose more weight each time I see her, replaced by muscle mass, hours on the treadmill and weight machine downstairs. She could author a book, Forced Fitness.

She exudes a lot of sexual energy, but in a package like a female gyrene. As I watch her climb the stairs, I wonder if in this place, Laurel has not in fact found her own element. Like so many locked away here, my sister-in-law is one of the scrappy underdogs of life.

I am reminded of something that Nikki once told me, when the two were girls in high school. They had attended a party out in one of the rural areas of the county. Nikki had wandered off with some guy, who under the influence of a few too many beers, wanted to force the issue. He’d managed to get her into a small gardening shed on the pretext of a walk in the moonlight, and was intent on having his way. She was struggling, fighting him off, hands all the way to her crotch, sprawled on some sacks of potting soil, when Laurel went looking and found them. Without a word, little sister picked up a lawn rake, a dozen sharp metal teeth, and spiked the kid’s ass in ways that no doubt he is still explaining to this day.

In a tight situation, most women I have known are talkers. They will, if allowed, rely on their wits to deal. Laurel is the exception. She is merciless in protecting her own, and to Laurel, Nikki was very much one of her own.

For this reason I was taken back when Nikki asked me to look after her. Through all the years that I have known her, Laurel never seemed like one who needed much looking after, much protection, except perhaps from herself.

She is one of those people who through force of character you take for granted, that you think you know. Lately I’ve been spending increasing amounts of time wondering just how well I really do know her.

Through the door, she looks at me and smiles.

‘If you ever need any referrals,’ she says, ‘I’ve got a lot of friends with hard-luck stories,’ she tells me.

No doubt most of these are dealing with the public defender. Laurel is a client of status in this hotel, private counsel, and the subject of more than a few news stories.

‘They said you wanted to talk to me. More instructions for tomorrow?’ she says.

I shake my head. She has weathered Cassidy’s opening statement well. Laurel did not blanch or break contact, but stared Morgan in the eye, going toe-to-toe when Cassidy pointed and called her a killer. No glimmer of guilt, no psychic confessions from this woman.

‘We need to talk,’ I tell her.

Ominous eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

It is something I do with most clients on the eve of trial, one last shakedown cruise to explore all the available courses and headings before sailing into heavy seas.

‘Tomorrow we go toe-to-toe,’ I tell her. ‘Where possible we try to tear up their witnesses, shred their evidence. In a capital case there is no choice but to get nasty.’

The women who do what I do for a living are uniformly called bitches by the men who try cases against them. This is not only a measure of the double standard in life, it is solid barometer of the air of animus that blows through most criminal courts. In the inferno of a trial, egos get attached to arguments in the same way that patriotism and national pride are fired in warfare. A few angry exchanges, and compromise becomes a four-letter word.

‘I need to know if you’re comfortable with our case,’ I tell her.

This sets her back on her stool. ‘Brother, I don’t know if you mean to, but you’re scaring the hell out of me,’ she says.

‘That’s not my objective. But we need to explore the options.’

‘The option I’d like to explore is the one where we nail Jack’s ass to the wall.’

‘It may not be that easy,’ I tell her.

‘Day of reckoning,’ she says.

I give her a nod. A theory is just that. Proving it is something else.

‘What are my chances?’ she says.

To this point we have never discussed this. We have dealt with the details, the bits and pieces of evidence, the calculations on credibility as to each witness, including Laurel. So far the high point was the coup de grâce delivered to Mrs. Miller in pretrial motions. That evening when I carried the news, Laurel was for an instant, the flicker of an eye, almost giddy. The first time, I think, since she was jailed, that Laurel has entertained seriously the thought that she might actually beat this thing. From the dark pit that is her cell, her kids gone, her life a shambles, it is hard to see any solid ray of hope.

‘They’ve got physical evidence that links you, Jack’s testimony, a solid motive in a domestic vendetta, endless circumstances that appear to paint you in the colors of incrimination, your trip to Reno, your visit to the house earlier that night. You want it straight, no sugar?’ I ask.

She nods.

‘Something less than fifty-fifty.

‘Right now they’re wounded,’ I say. ‘Smarting a little with the loss of Mrs. Miller. An eyewitness who put you at the scene near the time of the murder. That would have been a lock,’ I tell her. ‘Still, they’re licking their wounds. Not a bad time if we want to talk a deal.’

‘Is that what you’re recommending?’

The lawyer’s toughest call. What you can’t always say with words. A pregnant pause.

‘No. I don’t think so. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are no guarantees.’ At this moment I am a big sigh.

‘And you’re not just any client,’ I tell her. ‘Not to me. Not to Sarah. Not to your kids. I’d have an awfully large audience waiting for explanations if you go down hard,’ I say. ‘Not least of all myself.’

‘You’ve done everything you can,’ she says. ‘I got myself into this mess.’

‘Circumstances got you into this mess,’ I say. ‘And at this point the only sure way out with your life,’ I tell her, ‘might be a deal with the prosecutors.’

She mulls this behind the shield of glass. Downcast eyes, for what seems like an eternity. The decision of a lifetime.

‘How long would I get?’ she says.

‘It depends on what they’re willing to offer. If I can get them down to second degree, it’s fifteen years to life. You might get out in ten.’

‘What happens to my kids?’ she says.

‘What happens to them if you’re executed?’

‘I mean, would Jack take custody?’ she says.

We’re back to this. My guess is that Jack might end up doing his own stretch in the slammer, once I finish with him here and feds get a glimmer of the way he was trying to play them for sympathy. But I don’t tell Laurel this. There’s no sense lighting up her day.

‘He could,’ I say. ‘What difference?’

‘I don’t want him to raise my children. Besides, ten years is a long time.’ Suddenly, to Laurel, it’s an eternity.

‘Your kids would still be around.’

‘They’d be grown.’

‘So you’d have grandchildren.’

‘You really want me to do this?’ she says. ‘Enter a plea?’

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘What I want is for us to make the right decision.’

What I really want, but I don’t tell her, is for someone else to make the decision, to take this cup from my lips, to lift the trial from my shoulders.

‘You sound like you’re afraid to try the case,’ she says. ‘Is it that bad?’

‘Not if you were anybody else.’ As the words leave my lips I see this for what it is: the ultimate admission of a wrung-out lawyer. For more than a decade I’ve taken the money of a thousand strangers and thrown the dice, always wondering, always worrying, but never looking back. I have dodged my share of bullets. No client has ever died in the little green room. I have known lawyers who have suffered this fate, quivering wrecks, some of whom have spent years seeking absolution in the bottom of a bottle. Harry in a past life.

‘It’s not the trial that I’m afraid of,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the result.’

‘Then I will make the decision for both of us. I want my life back. I want my children back. I don’t want any deals. I don’t want any plea bargains,’ she says. ‘I want to go to trial. I want to plead my case. My decision,’ she says. ‘I will live or die with the consequences.’

For the moment we are both silent, not running over each other’s lines. Then Laurel fills the void.

‘She put an awful lot on you,’ she says.

‘Who?’

‘Nikki. I know you’re doing this for Nikki.’

‘I’m doing it for all of us.’

She makes a face like it’s nice of me to say this.

She sits and looks for a long second in silence, then gives me the universal gesture of affection for all those who sit on that side, the flat palm of her hand pressed against the glass that separates us. I match it like we are touching fingers, on my side. And without another word Laurel stands, turns, and is gone.