Chapter 24 Everyone is pissed off
Everyone is pissed off
Gage
The county courthouse occupied a corner on Main Street in downtown Dominion.
Outside, it was an impressive classic revival brick building topped with a louvered belfry and clock tower.
Visitors passed a large metal sculpture of the scales of justice to get to the front doors.
Inside, however, it was a run-down warren of offices with cigarette smoke–stained ceilings, peeling floor tiles, and creaky furniture that had been around longer than I’d been alive.
It was a prime example of what was wrong with our neighboring nemesis. Dominion was flashy on the outside and falling apart on the inside.
Declan’s face was, as always, impassive, but he kept rolling onto the balls of his feet as we waited next to the elevator outside the courtroom.
“Nervous?” I asked him.
“This is my first time in court. Do they disinfect all surfaces every night?” he asked, squeezing himself up against the wall as two deputies half dragged, half carried a man in cuffs past us. The guy looked green around the gills.
“Do not puke again until we get outside,” the female deputy instructed him sternly.
“I’m never drinking Fireball again,” he responded, dry heaving as they disappeared around the corner.
“Court’s an adventure,” I told Declan, who was now facing the wall and had a hand clamped over his mouth.
Great. This was like discovering your surgical intern had fainting spells.
The elevator doors opened, and a nervous-looking Valerie exited with two people.
“You’re not going to vomit, are you?” Declan asked her. “I’m a sympathetic vomiter.”
“I’m going to try not to. These are my parents,” she said, introducing the older couple behind her.
Her father, a burly, bearded man who looked as if he was being strangled by his necktie or some kind of emotion, gave me a tight nod.
“Thank you so much for taking Valerie’s case. You have no idea what it means to our family,” her mother said, laying a hand on my jacket sleeve. She was small and matronly with big red glasses and a no-nonsense chin-length haircut. Both of them were eyeing me warily.
They looked like any other parents, any other grandparents. And right now, they were depending on me, the man who’d tried to make sure their daughter served jail time. I couldn’t blame them for being worried.
I had conflicting feelings about the case.
But I’d leave all that at the courtroom door.
The only thing I had to do right now was be the lawyer I’d be for any other client.
There was a structure, a process to it, and that was what I would rely on to balance my personal crisis and my professional responsibilities. Or die trying.
“I’m going to do my best for your daughter,” I assured them. “Declan, why don’t you show Valerie’s parents where they can sit in the courtroom?”
“I’ll choose a spot away from the vomit,” he announced before leading them away.
“Vomit?” the mother asked nervously.
“How are you doing?” I asked Valerie as she held the strap of her purse in a stranglehold.
“Fine. Totally fine.” She was nodding like a bobblehead on a dirt road. “I’m lying. I don’t think I can do this, Gage. I think I just need to plead guilty.”
“Okay, come over here.” I led her over to a pea-soup-green vinyl upholstered bench along the wall and sat with her.
“Look. This is just a formality. You’re not going to enter a plea.
You’re not going to be found guilty or marched out in handcuffs in front of your parents.
The prosecutor is just going to present their evidence to support the case.
I’ll cross-examine if I think we can push an advantage, but we aren’t here to try your case.
It’s going to move forward. The judge will find that the district attorney’s office has a strong enough case to proceed, and then we’ll get on the docket for a trial.
That’s it. That’s all that’s going to happen in there. ”
“But the evidence,” she whispered.
“What about it?”
“I–I know this is selfish, but I don’t know if I can live through it again. The pictures, witnesses telling the world what I already know. That I killed someone. That someone’s husband, someone’s father, didn’t go home ever again because of me.”
She looked so young, so lost. If she’d been anyone else, I’d say the right words to make her feel strong enough to walk in there. But a small ugly part of me wanted to know that she suffered. And that filled me with shame.
Fuck.
“Valerie, look at me.”
She turned watery eyes my way.
“Your feelings of guilt don’t matter. My feelings of…
whatever don’t matter. It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.
The only thing that matters today is that this is what Laura wants.
You and I are doing what she wants, and we’re going to do it to the best of our abilities because she asked us to.
So you are going to go in there, and you are going to survive.
And I’m going to go in there and provide the best damn defense possible. ”
Valerie closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. “For Laura.”
“For Laura,” I repeated.
“Let’s get this shitty party started.”
We both looked up to find Laura wheeling off the elevator toward us.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Laura.” Valerie looked aghast.
“Showing my support, dummies,” my sister announced. “I can’t believe you guys thought I’d sit this one out.”
“This isn’t a good idea,” I insisted.
“He’s right,” Valerie agreed.
Laura held up a hand. “Really? You think the victim showing up in support of the defendant in open court is a bad look for your case? Are you going to be Valerie’s lawyer or my overprotective stupid brother?”
“Both. Minus the stupid part.”
“Laura, they’re going to go over every detail of the accident report. You shouldn’t have to sit through that,” Valerie said, her voice a full octave higher. Her knuckles were white on the purse strap.
This wasn’t just fear of losing face, I realized. This was fear of losing Laura. Of all the things they’d both lost that day, they’d found each other. And a good lawyer would use that. I just hoped to God I could be that lawyer.
My sister reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re in this together. I’m going in that courtroom with or without your permission, so suck it up and deal with it. Both of you.”
“Laura?”
Another familiar voice, the concern and confusion in it, had my gut turning to ice.
Fucking fuck.
Laura and I shared a deer-in-headlights stare for a moment, but she recovered faster. “Fuck. I forgot how it feels to be in trouble with them. I’ve had a free pass for a while,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Mom? Dad? What are you guys doing—”
“Gage?” Dad said my name like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
I jumped to my feet as guilt drilled a hole in the pit of my stomach.
“What’s going on?” Mom looked back and forth between me, Laura, and Valerie. “Is this—”
“Valerie,” Laura said, her voice too bright, too forced.
Valerie looked like she was trying her hardest to be absorbed into the bench. I couldn’t blame her. I’d give just about anything for a hedge to disappear into. Apparently the humbling fear of disappointing your parents could haunt adults well into their thirties.
“You didn’t tell them?” I said to Laura without moving my lips.
“I was going to wait until after today,” she murmured back.
“Since I can hear everything you think you’re whispering, I think you’d better catch us up,” Mom said coolly.
“Okay, but you’re forbidden from freaking out. This is what I want,” Laura preempted.
I knew it wasn’t particularly brave of me, but I was relieved as hell that she was taking the lead on this one.
“Explain,” Dad demanded.
“What the hell, Bishop?” I turned and found the district attorney steaming toward me like she was a bull and I was waving a red flag.
Weighing my options, I felt like the angry prosecutor was a safer bet than my pissed-off parents. “I’m gonna go talk to opposing counsel way over there. Nobody commit any crimes,” I told my family. “Valerie, I’ll be back to walk you in.”
“Don’t think this is getting you out of a serious conversation,” Mom called after me.
I was absolutely going to run out of the courtroom and hide from my mother for the foreseeable future.
“Is that your mother?” Tarini was the county’s youngest district attorney.
I’d known her since law school where she’d repeatedly kicked my ass in con law.
She wore her long black hair in a sleek ponytail, her sleeve tattoos were hidden under a tailored suit jacket in a classy navy, but the ink on her fingers was still visible.
Tough but cool as hell was how nearly everyone described her.
“Yeah and she’s pretty pissed right now, so let’s go over here,” I said, guiding her around the corner.
“What the fuck?” she said, crossing her arms once I could no longer feel my parents’ disapproving gazes.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I started.
“Then let me say it. You pushed for these charges. You practically built my argument for me.”
“I know.”
“And now you’re representing her? I repeat. What the fuck, Bishop?”
“Laura asked me to.”
“If Laura asked you to hurl yourself off the top of the water tower into a pool of Jell-O, would you?”
“Probably. Look, Tarini, you don’t know what she went through.”
“Yes, I do. Thanks to your landslide of emails and phone calls. To your constant pressure on the investigating team. I think I have a damn good idea of what Laura went through because you told me.”
“Okay fine. But here’s the situation. Laura forgave Valerie. And she asked me to represent her. This is the only thing she’s asked of me since it happened.”
“Well, you should have said no, you colossal jackass. How the hell are you going to defend a woman you spent nearly two years trying to get my office to charge? I could have you removed from the case. I should have you removed from the case.”