I kicked out my tasseled loafer and braced it against the leg of my desk. My head snapped as my chair stopped spinning in an instant. I’d been going round and round and round for the last five minutes. Now the room spun as my eyes darted about. Gradually, slowly, my world came to a complete standstill.
That’s how it felt without Casey Cort in my life, like I’d gotten off a carousel seconds ago. Casey and her fiancé Ron Pinheiro and everyone else was still moving forward and I was doing nothing but watching the blur of life and laughter and love from my solitary perch.
In exactly two months, Casey was having a baby. A boy or girl I was quickly starting to believe had half of my DNA even if she’d decided to marry the other prospect. I could be there, right now, at her apartment, holding her hand. Taking her to birth classes or breathing classes or whatever classes pregnant women went to. Playing happy family. Instead, I was here, my life shoehorned into three hundred square feet of buttoned up office space.
A pit of emptiness opened in my stomach. I didn’t even know what hospital Casey was giving birth in. Cleveland Clinic was top flight, famous for flying in the King of Jordan, the emir of Kuwait, and president of the United Arab Emirates, not to mention professional athletes. University Hospital wasn’t a bad runner up either. Cleveland had more than enough doctors for her to have a safe birth. I had not one reason to worry. Anxiety gnawed at me anyway.
I shook my head trying not to dwell on the decision I’d made. It had been a sound one. Casey wanted love and marriage and kids and a white picket fence around a bright green lawn in front of an eastside brick Tudor. I was not that kind of guy. I would never be that kind of guy. I could never be that kind of guy.
Fortunately my phone’s intercom buzzed cutting my one man pity party short.
“Your client is here.”
“Thanks Ernie,” I said before pushing the off button.
I’m not sure what Casey had done with her half of our big money judgment, but with mine, I was giving back to the community.
Legal Aid was sending me working poor clients who needed a lawyer but were too well off to qualify for free services. The first few cases had made me feel good, better than I had in most of my years practicing. Helping the cancer stricken children of Brighthill had only been the beginning. I wanted to keep that feeling going.
I stepped outside my door. A woman was coming down the hall toward me. She emanated cold. As she got closer, I could see tiny crystalline snowflakes were turning to beads of water on her coat.
“Justin McPhee,” I said to her.
“I think you’re the lawyer I’m supposed to see.”
“Why don’t you step into my office.”
The woman was a little worse for wear. In her frazzled state, she undid the three buttons of her black wool double breasted coat revealing less than clean hospital scrubs. Then she was fishing through a blue paisley quilted bag as if the holy grail were hidden in there. Patiently, I waited. I’d learned that I had to give clients a moment to gather their bearings. For many, coming to an attorney was intimidating. They wouldn’t be here if something big like their children or freedom weren’t on the line.
In less than a minute, the woman had pulled a crumpled paper from the blue bag. Smoothed it on my desk. All the while standing and pacing on a small patch of industrial carpet. Her steps and turns were so tight that for the first time ever I worried a client could wear a hole through to the concrete subfloor.
“You’re Justin McPhee, I guess,” spilled from her. “This woman from over at Legal Aid on West Sixth Street put your name on this paper. Said you could help me because they couldn’t.”
“You know who I am.” I worked to make my voice calm, my speech slow in hopes that she’d mirror me. “Can I ask your name?”
“Libby. Libby Saldana.” She was speaking so rapidly it was as if I were billing her by the millisecond, when in reality it was a free consultation.
“Well, Ms. Saldana, please have a seat.”
“I don’t have any money.” She paced in an even tighter square. “This is a nice office you have here.” Saldana spun on a flowered clog. Pointed a gloved finger at me. “I can’t keep you in leather couches or yachts.”
“Fortunately, I already own this couch. I don’t much like the water.” My attempt at levity fell flat. I extended my hand in invitation again. “Have a seat in one of the chairs, please.”
Saldana didn’t seem like the kind of person who used chairs when otherwise wearing a path in the carpet would do. Ignoring me, she continued to pace. I didn’t make a third offer. To gain some semblance of authority, I went to stand behind my desk. Words kept spilling from her despite my movement.
“I’m in a lot of trouble, I think. I can’t go to jail. I have a little girl. I mean she’s at my mom’s house, but I’m almost ready to get her back.”
I nodded in understanding. Like many of the clients I’d served when I’d worked for practically nothing in Juvy, Saldana had what they called a ‘kaleidoscope’ of the usual client problems. Kid in foster or relative care under the watchful eye of children’s services. If I had to speculate, I’d add boyfriend with felonious tendencies, and some kind of substance abuse. Instead of guessing, I jumped right to her biggest issue—potential incarceration.
“Jail?” I asked. I meant prison. But that was a word that scared the shit out of people. I needed information. Saldana could not be in such a panic that she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
“Yeah. Some deputies came by with this.”
Saldana dug through her bag again. More papers emerged. She thrust them at me. I really wanted to sit down because I could think easier that way. It didn’t feel right in the face of her frenetic energy, though.
I gently pulled the documents from her hand. The bold black type at the top spelled out ‘indictment’ in bold and capital letters. Which meant a felony. Which had a much higher probability of jail, er, prison. Suddenly her nervous anxiety made a lot more sense.
“Sit, please.”
I needed her to stop moving so my mind could think instead of being occupied by the dizzying pattern of her swaying bag.
Finally she let herself plop into one of my chairs. So I did as well. It took a lot for me to look away from her bobbing leg and cuticle exploration and focus on the documents in front of me.
After I smoothed out the sheets, I took a look at what Lori Pope had in store for this woman. To say it wasn’t a walk in the park would be an understatement. It was, actually, a bramble filled path that could lead to a very long prison sentence.
“Have you read this?” I worked to meet her gaze.
“Yeah, a few times. I think there must be some mistake though—”
I interrupted her before she went down that well-trodden path. There were thousands of people in the care and custody of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction who’d started with the false belief that there’d been some kind of cosmic error.
The county prosecutor’s office didn’t make mistakes. And when they did, they acted as if they didn’t. Which in the end was the same result; a defendant trying to dodge a prison sentence. I used my thumb to flick at the papers. The rattle of processed tree pulp was the only sound in the room.
“It says here,” I started, “upon information and belief—”
“What’s that?” Saldana’s interruption was a question.
“Just legal jargon. Anyway, you’re charged with,” I read the sheet on the top, “involuntary manslaughter.” I flipped from one page to the next all the while trying to keep my eyebrows level. She was not the typical homicide defendant. “Corrupting another with drugs,” Flipped. “Possession of heroin.” Turned to the last. “And tampering with evidence.”
“Tampering?”
That wasn’t the headline, but we’d get back to that, I guessed. My index finger ran along some black and white text.
“It says here that you deleted some text messages.”
Saldana lifted a single shoulder in a shrug, then dropped. The unspoken message was clear. She was guilty of at least that much.
“Possession of heroin?”
“I’m guilty of that one, too.”
“Let’s go back. What happened that led up to these charges.”
“Do they have a case? Are you going to be my lawyer?”
“I can’t make a decision about that until I hear the story.”
“What would make you not take my case?”
Saldana had me there. Not being desperate meant that I could pick and choose what cases I was working on. When I’d agreed to be on the Legal Aid referral list, my first inclination was that I could help people who really needed it, not choose cases to line my pockets or burnish my reputation.
The rich could pay for legal services. Much of the middle class as well. There was a gap, though, between those people who could pay and those people the government deemed poor enough not to have to. Not to mention that the attorneys at Legal Aid or the public defender’s office were always overburdened. Often they couldn’t even adequately help those that qualified for their services.
“If I don’t think I can help you, I won’t waste your time,” I equivocated.
“Can you…help?”
“It’s not that simple. Can I call you Libby?”
That shrug again. I’d misinterpreted it as apathy the first time. Now I realized it was a nervous tick. Saldana was anxious she’d leave my office without a lawyer…without any bulwark between here and a cell block.
“Sure, call me whatever.” Her shoulder only twitched a little this time.
“I need to hear about what happened to make the prosecutor’s office indict you.”
Her head shake was incongruous.
“They indict everyone,” she said.
Saldana didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Unfortunately, her street-smart instinct to remain mum was at odds with her need for a lawyer.
“That may be true, but you’re the one who’s going to be on trial.” I pointed to the papers in my hand. “This here is your name on the indictment. Whatever happens to anyone else is their business. But this here means the county prosecutor’s office wants to put you in state lockup a good long time. I’m going to guess that you don’t want to go.”
“A long time? No. That makes no sense. Everyone knows that they’re not prosecuting nonviolent—”
“Nonviolent drug offenders,” I finished. “The prosecutor’s office has made diversion available to more defendants.”
“Can I get that…diversion? I need to be here for my baby.” Head shake. “I’m not innocent. No one is. But I’m not guilty either.”
The prisons were full of people in that gray area where the scales had tipped a little bit toward conviction. I didn’t tell her that either.
From my experience, all this would probably go away. She’d been overcharged. It was from page one of the prosecutorial playbook. Indict for everything. Plea the defendant for far less. That way a conviction for something was nearly guaranteed and Pope’s stats looked great come election time. Saldana didn’t need to know she’d probably skate on these charges, this time around. I needed her fear to keep her focused.
I scooted my chair closer to my desk and in turn closer to her.
“So, what happened?” I asked again.
“I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t. But I can do needles. I’m a certified phlebotomist.” Libby waved her hands at her scrubs in mute explanation. “She couldn’t poke herself. Grace needed to get straight. Really needed it.”
Phlebotomist. That was a new one.
“What did you do Libby?”
“I gave Grace…” she swallowed, hard. “Gracie McNeill. I gave her a shot. Her last one...”
“That favor is going to cost you…” I did quick math in my head. Roughed out her longest possible sentence. “Twenty years.”
“What are you saying? That I could be in prison until I’m fifty years old. My little girl would be almost thirty. She would have graduated from elementary and middle school and high school. She’d be married. Have kids. All without me. No, no, no. That can’t be right. Nobody gets charged with this. We all help each other out.”
The shrug-twitch again.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work out,” Saldana continued. “That’s the nature of it. It’s not like heroin comes in pretty packages on a drug store shelf all weighed and tested. Some of us have demons. This is the only way to chase them away. Most of the time it’s good. We get straight. Sometimes it’s cut with something bad.
“That’s what happened.” Suddenly her voice was full of emotion. “There was something else in there. Something that made her sick. Grace just had a seizure and od’d right there. I tried to save her. I tried CPR. I called the police. The paramedics, they couldn’t do a single thing. The cops, they took me to the hospital. Turned me over to the doctors there. I got into treatment right then. Some social worker found me a bed. I’ve been…sober ever since. Got a new job. Getting my girl back. I’m done with the life. Can you tell them that? The judge? The prosecutor? Let them know that I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again. I’m a solid citizen now?”
It was that last plea that got to me. She’d made it past the bad part, all on her own. Saldana deserved a fresh start. I could probably do that for her. I wanted to do that for her because a fresh start was something everyone deserved. I should know.
“I’ll take your case.” I used my most soothing voice. “I’ll represent you.”
“Good. When can we talk to the judge? Can you call there now?”
“There’s a process Libby. It’s not going to be that easy. I’m going to do everything in my power to convey your message to the other side, to the court. To a jury if necessary.”
“A jury. You mean like a trial? I don’t want to do that, having people judging me. I’ll do community service or whatever they need me to do. But I can’t go to jail.”
I wanted to promise her that she’d never go, but I’d made that mistake once before with a client who was still behind bars. Instead, I gave her my warmest and most reassuring smile before speaking the harsh truth.
“Unfortunately, neither you nor I get to decide that.”