3 - Lane
Lane
I’d nearly made it to the courtroom while trying to juggle my overflowing briefcase, additional folders and a lukewarm cup of coffee when Nance intercepted me.
She gently pulled me aside, swiftly taking my cup of coffee and replacing it with a steaming disposable one, before slipping me a piece of paper. I squinted, tilting my head to read. It was a stamped pharmacy record, and if I wasn’t mistaken…
“Nance, is this..?” I asked breathlessly.
“It is,” she confirmed, sounding proud of herself and goddammit, she should be. “You were right, Lane. The client had a valid prescription for his meds six months ago, it just lapsed. I got the pharmacy manager to fax over the records ten minutes ago.”
“You are absolutely brilliant,” I said, immediately redirecting my steps to the Assistant State’s Attorney. This was the smoking gun I needed to dismiss the Class 4 felony and I had no time to even celebrate. “I still owe you a drink!”
“I don’t know what made you think I ever forgot, Counselor,” Nance replied, shooing me off.
I must’ve looked like a fool, hurrying into the courtroom with a grin on my face as I looked for the prosecutor whose day I was just about to ruin.
*
“If it isn’t my ever-capable paralegal without whose boundless wisdom I would be half the lawyer I am,” I announced as I entered the bullpen on the fourth floor. She looked up from her laptop, smiling at me.
“That might just be a tad excessive,” she said, resting her chin on her steepled fingers.
“Not in the slightest,” I said. “We got the State to drop it to a misdemeanor with supervision. Which means that Mr. Murdock will be able to stay out of jail.”
Which in turn, meant that his future career prospects wouldn’t be tainted by a record of possessing a controlled substance. And the chronic pain he was suffering wouldn’t be an even greater liability to an already tough life. But, I kept that bit to myself. I knew that Nance got it, anyway.
“You did it, Lane,” she said, her grin widening.
“We did it, Nance. I wouldn’t have been able to swing this case if you didn’t find that prescription,” I told her, then paused. “In fact, it’s because of your excellent sleuthing skills that I’d like to make a personal inquiry.”
“Oh?” Nance raised both eyebrows, intrigued.
I nodded. I’d thought about this ever since she’d slid that prescription into my hand. Nancy could sniff a paper trail through a lake. And those were skills I could really make use of right now.
“I’ve mentioned Sandy Manning before, right?” I asked.
“Maybe once or twice. Or a dozen, I can’t quite recall,” she answered.
“Well, I’d like you to look into him.”
“Anything specific you’re hoping to find?” she said.
“Anything you can. I’d also appreciate it if you could look into municipal building codes and city permit records. I want to make sure I’m prepared for whatever the old bastard has to throw at me,” I told her.
She nodded her head in understanding, her eyes glinting with the challenge. “I can do that. Speaking of the renovation project, how is that going? I’m assuming if you’re needing me on this ‘case’ of yours, things are probably a bit more complicated than you’ve let on.”
Ah yes, the double-edged sword of asking Nancy for help with personal matters.
But she’d proven not only her competency, but her discretion.
And she was doing this as a favor for me…
icing her out completely just felt cruel.
And yet, hearing her question only let loose an army of butterflies in my stomach.
Ever since Tuesday night's basement flood, my house had been a revolving door of heavy boots and tool belts. Between yesterday's kitchen planning and the frantic subfloor repairs, I'd spent the last few days constantly tripping over Bear, Silas, and Dax.
“It’s…it’s going,” I said cagily.
“It’s going,” Nancy repeated. She picked up her pen from the desk and clicked it once. “That’s pretty self-explanatory, Lane. I was kinda thinking of more details around the progress. You know, especially since you started by telling me you were dealing with, what was it again, hot jerks on bikes?”
My throat went dry. I pulled at the neckline of my blouse. “Well. I mean, I just mentioned one hot jerk on a bike. The rest of them aren’t as bad as I thought. I could actually like them. I mean, one of them, anyway.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Don’t look at me like that, Nance.”
“If that’s your guilty conscience burning under my stare, feel free to confess and lighten the burden,” she said.
“You really are the queen of melodrama,” I muttered, tossing my folders onto the desk and shrugging out of my jacket. “We have a client meeting in ten. Let’s focus on that, huh?”
“It’s called multitasking,” she singsonged, but followed my lead and jumped back into work.
*
“I’m telling you, the son of a bitch kept eyeballing me the whole night. He deserved it, he was looking for trouble.”
My eyes flitted quickly over to Nance beside me, her face fixed to the notepad she was using to scribble pertinent details. She didn’t look at me but I knew her well enough to recognize the tense lines around her mouth. We both knew this one was going to be a tough nut to crack.
I leaned forward in my chair, one arm spread out in front of me and tapping my pen on the desk surface.
Our client, a belligerent barely-twenty year old bar-hopper from Pilsen, was sitting with his legs spread wide, one bouncing up and down in a way that betrayed the nerves his brittle arrogance failed to cover.
“I’m going to need a bit more detail about what happened that night, Mr. Jones. We can get to why Mr. Roberts deserved it afterwards, but I need to know exactly what it was that he deserved in the first place,” I explained, my voice calm and level.
His brown eyes regarded me with suspicion. “You weren’t there, Miss. With all due respect, you have no idea how it is in places like that.”
“Maybe that’s true,” I admitted. “So teach me. Tell me how it is.”
He hesitated, shifting in his seat.
“Look, Terry, can I call you Terry?” I asked. He nodded, avoiding my eyes. “Terry, I work for you, okay? Not the judge, and definitely not the cops. But if I’m going to help you, I’m going to need the full version of the truth.”
“I was clocking out of my shift. They got in my face, Those types always do, punks who think they’re tough shit.
He blocked me when I tried to leave, started throwing his weight around and shoving his arm into my chest. That’s when I grabbed the ashtray off the closest table and popped him in the jaw. ”
His tone was borderline aggressive, but I recognized he was trying to mask the fact that he was practically pissing himself.
Ian Roberts was still currently in the hospital and Terry Jones was the one sitting with an aggravated battery charge.
He gave me a look when he mentioned the ashtray, one that seemed to dare me to find what he did repugnant.
But when I simply nodded slowly without flinching, his body seemed to deflate slightly.
“Got it. He was up in your face, challenging you and you knew that you had a window to defend yourself,” I said.
Terry blinked in surprise, as though he couldn’t quite process what I’d just said to him. “Yeah…yeah that’s it. That’s exactly it, he got in my way.”
“I want to go back to something you said. You said ‘they’ got in your face. But it was Ian who you hit with the ashtray, correct? Was there anyone else involved?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Terry answered, sounding relieved. “His cousin. The big guy was waiting in the back the entire time until Roberts decided to square up at the bar. Then he started moving closer.”
My eyes sharpened and Nance looked up at me, as though she could feel that I’d zeroed in on our angle.
“So there were two of them?” I confirmed.
“Yes,” Terry said.
Bingo. This sounded like an Affirmative Defense claim based on “reasonable apprehension of imminent battery”.
If we spun this right, I could get him off the hook, provided he was being honest. And if my discernment was correct, beneath all that posturing and hot air, this was just a kid who was scared and made a dumb decision.
“Okay. I’m going to send an investigator to that bar tomorrow to pull the security footage before they loop over it. If we can prove you were boxed in, that ‘aggravated’ felony charge becomes much easier to fight.”
Terry actually slumped in his seat, exhaling softly. “You…you really think so?”
“Yeah. I really do. But you need to stay off social media and don’t talk to anyone else but me, alright?” I told him.
He nodded eagerly, thanking me profusely as I ended the meeting and dismissed him.
“What are the chances of the charge being dropped to Battery?” asked Nance as we packed up for the day.
“Pretty good if his response is anything to go by. I’m sure that footage is going to give us what we need to prove he was just defending himself. Not in the best way, sure, but he wasn’t out there looking to break anyone’s jaw,” I answered.
“Good spotting the mention of the cousin, by the way,” Nance said as we walked out of the building, shoulders brushing. “I didn’t even pick up on it.”
“Comes with time,” I said with a shrug. “You eventually start hyperfixating on little details.”
I felt good about the upcoming trial. This was the sort of case I loved covering. Terry Jones did an idiotic thing, but he wasn’t a bad kid. And if he was left to the wolves, I knew the system would tear him apart. This was why I did what I did and why I enjoyed it.
Nance and I eventually parted at the station where I boarded the L train that would take me home.
Sitting inside the blue line car at the end of the day had become a ritual over the course of the past few years since I started working at the Daley Center.
The fluorescent, flickering lights overhead, scratched plastic seating and metallic screech of wheels on tracks had melded together into a sort of lullaby.
The air was thick with the smell of damp coats and ozone and worn-in rain and there was something oddly comforting about it all.
Something homey and personal. I honestly enjoyed the commute, as stressful as it could be at times.
I knew that certain people couldn’t understand why I, as a lawyer, chose to go into the least lucrative field possible because of course a Maserati or G-Wagon was the ultimate marker of success and happiness and if I didn’t have either of those, was I even really a lawyer?
Or something like that.
My phone buzzed with a new message and I had to silently chuckle at the irony. It was none other than Mommy Dearest herself. Speak of the devil and she will appear.
Rose: How could you? I’m so disappointed at the disrespect you’ve shown me. How could you take the house when you know better, Lane?
And delete. I was just tired, too tired to reply and too tired to block her.
Just like that, all the happiness and contentment I’d felt from the day’s wins evaporated into thin air.
I was over this. I’d been over this for years already.
Maybe this was a sign that I needed to start manifesting.
My thoughts seemed powerful enough to conjure up whatever they drifted to.
I walked the final stretch from the station to the house with a newfound heaviness that I tried hard to shed.
But my eyes snagged on Dax outside, in a heated exchange with another man and what looked like an older woman.
The closer I got, the more hostile the conversation seemed to be until eventually, Dax shoved a stuffed envelope into the guy’s hands before climbing on his bike and tearing away from the curb.
The two people he left behind didn’t wait for very long before getting into their shared car and driving off themselves.
I frowned, watching the car disappear around the bend.
I started thinking about Bear’s words, his apology over Dax’s attitude and insistence that despite his past, he was still a good guy.
But I didn’t know that, and I didn’t know Dax. I didn’t even know Bear, really, as much as I was starting to like him. There it was again, that feeling of being completely out of control on my own turf. I trudged the rest of the way home, my mood now entirely soured.
What the hell was Dax up to?