The Last Alibi

21

Jason

After Shauna cross-examines Officer Garvin, Judge Bialek bangs a gavel and we are done for the day. Shauna didn’t spend a lot of time on the cross. Garvin was just the first responder to the scene; his testimony didn’t do much damage. Shauna only covered two topics. First, my demeanor, which Garvin had suggested was unreasonably calm-which would be translated by Roger Ogren in closing argument as “icy” or “cold-blooded.” “In your three years on the beat, you’ve encountered a number of people in stressful, upsetting situations, haven’t you?” Shauna asked the officer. “And people show grief in different ways, do they not? Some cry, some scream, some remain quiet, some have already cried before you arrived and appear calm by the time you see them.” Yes, yes, and yes, the cop agreed.

And second, the fact that I lawyered up right away, invoking my right to counsel at the first question Officer Garvin posed. The law says that you are entitled to counsel before interrogation by the police. Every American who has watched one evening of television knows that. But many, and maybe most, of those same Americans would infer guilt from someone who immediately invoked. So Shauna couldn’t let it go. “My client, Jason Kolarich, is a criminal defense attorney, is he not? And a criminal defense attorney would be expected to be very much aware of his rights, wouldn’t you agree? Does it seem unusual to you that a criminal defense attorney would follow the same advice that he gives to every single one of his clients, which is to confer with an attorney before talking to the police?” The last question drew an objection from Roger Ogren, which Judge Bialek sustained. That was fine by us. We just wanted the jury to hear the question.

“Meet you back at the Palace,” I say to my lawyers. “Get some decent food first.”

“What would you like?” Bradley asks me.

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

A sheriff’s deputy named Floyd takes me by the elbow and walks me out of the courtroom. Once in the waiting area behind the court, he handcuffs me, hands in front, and perp-walks me to an elevator, then to a bus waiting underground. I’m joined by seven other men, also standing trial today and headed to the Palace for the night. I’m one of only two white guys; the others are African-American or Latino. I’m the only one in a suit. Most of them are wearing expressions that tell me they have a pretty good idea how their cases are going to turn out.

The Alejandro Morales Detention Center was named after a congressman who represented this area in the eighties, one of the first Latinos ever to serve in Congress. The “Morales Palace,” less than a mile from the criminal courts, looks like an ordinary twenty-story concrete structure, save for the bars on the windows. It’s used these days primarily as a youth detention facility, but with our state and county governments in their ever-present state of fiscal Armageddon, and real estate at a premium, the segregated prisoners sometimes overflow here from the county jail.

Segregation is typically reserved for gangbangers and either cops or prosecutors who run afoul of the law and, for various reasons, might not fare so well in general population. I’m a two-time winner because I’ve prosecuted and defended some of the people inside, thus my private cell. For this last week, when I’m expected to need lots of time to prepare for trial, I’ve been granted liberal privileges with the meeting rooms to confer with my attorneys. And because these meetings could interfere with the regimented timing for meals, they even let my lawyers bring me something to eat, as long as it’s something the guards can open and inspect freely. Soup is out; sub sandwiches very much in. Every time I bite into a hoagie that Shauna brings me, I know that a correctional employee has already worked over every slice of turkey, lifted every tomato and pickle, searching for razors, needles, drug packets. I assume the guard is wearing a plastic glove while doing so. I prefer to imagine it that way, at least.

This evening, Shauna, Bradley, and I will go over the witnesses for tomorrow and finalize cross-examination questions. We will probably discuss, once again, whether I should testify, though I am certain I will.

Until then, I’m left alone in my deluxe penthouse, a ten-by-ten cell of concrete and bars, a stained and scuffed-up floor, a toilet with a broken seat, and a bed with a cushion an inch thick. Left alone with my thoughts, I’m taken these days to self-abuse. I don’t kid myself. I have nobody to blame for my predicament but myself.

Dr. Evans warned me about the dangers of taking OxyContin, and I assured him I was prepared for it. He asked me if there was a history of alcohol or chemical dependency in my family, and for some reason I lied and said no, said nothing about my father or my brother, Pete. He vigilantly monitored me over those first few months after the surgery, when the pain was sometimes teeth-gnashing, often searing needle-stabs, but again I assured him that I was sticking with the proper dosing regimen. “Yes,” I told him, “I’m taking them four hours apart. No,” I lied, “I don’t chew them up, I let them dissolve in my stomach.” I was cocky. I was a tough guy, and I could take as many pills as I wanted, as often as I wanted, without it becoming a problem.

Before I knew it, four pills a day was six, then eight, then a dozen. Even after the pain in my knee subsided-maybe mid-March, definitely by April-I gradually needed more and more to feel okay, whatever okay meant. Then I found myself in Dr. Evans’s office on April 1-that’s right, let’s all say it together, April Fools’ Day-with my crutches, even though I no longer needed them, even though I was essentially pain-free, lying to him, telling him the pain was excruciating. “That’s. . odd,” he said. “The healing has been remarkable. To still have this much pain. .”

Then, wisely-and diplomatically, too, with that practiced bedside manner, never outright accusing me of lying-Dr. Evans switched medication on me, moving from the immediate-release oxycodone tablets to the ones you can’t chew up, the controlled-release tablets that dissolve into your bloodstream over hours, not minutes, before he took me off Oxy altogether a few weeks later. Suddenly, a guy who had never taken pain medication in his life before the knee surgery was scoring sheets of Oxy from a street merchant, a drug dealer named Billy Braden, one of my clients, no less. And still I needed more and more, building up a tolerance and never once considering stopping.

Funny, I can’t even remember how or when it happened, when the dam broke, when I crossed that line from patient to addict. I can’t identify a date or event or even a sensation, any moment when I said to myself, You have a problem, these pills are controlling you, not the other way around. But somehow it happened. In the blink of an eye, I went from taking OxyContin because it made my knee feel good to taking OxyContin because it made me feel good.

None of this would have happened otherwise. I would have handled differently that redheaded client who walked into my office and said he didn’t kill two young women. I wouldn’t have stayed with Alexa so long and allowed everything to happen. Shauna was right about her all along, but I was too high and too stubborn to listen. There were plenty of warning signs, not the least of which was the day that Alexa offered to be my alibi.

Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, did it? I sure could use an alibi now. But I’ve never offered one. The murder happened in my house, with my gun, and with no sign of forced entry.

I shudder out of my funk. Look forward, not backward, they told me in rehab, the lanky brunette named Mara who smelled of cigarette smoke and made you look her in the eye. Fix the problem.

It’s too late to fix most of the damage I caused. I hope it’s not too late to keep myself out of prison.