“Jason.”
I stopped. There was an icy calm to my wife’s voice.
“Emily and I are going now. You feel like you have to wait there, and I feel like I can’t wait any longer. I’ll call you when I get to my mother’s.”
I let out a long, sorrowful sigh. “Talia, baby, I swear that this won’t always be like this. I promise.”
There was a long pause. It sounded like my wife was crying. I wanted to fill the space with more promises, but I wasn’t sure they helped. A promise never made is better than a promise broken, and I’d fractured plenty of them since this trial started.
“Say good-bye to Em.” Talia’s voice had choked off; she barely got the words out with emotion filling her throat. I heard her away from the phone. “Daddy’s saying bye-bye, honey.”
“Bye, sweetheart,” I called into the phone. “Have fun with Grandma and Grandpa, Em. I love you, sweetie.”
“Okay.” Talia took the phone back. “Bye.”
“I love you,” I said, but the line had already gone dead.
And that was the last I heard from my wife. I spent the next four hours bouncing off the walls at my law office, cursing Ernesto Ramirez for the delay, making silent vows to Talia and Emily Jane, going online to investigate possible vacation spots for after the trial. Things would be better after this case. I would make it up to both of them. It wouldn’t always be like this. This trial was the exception, not the rule.
When the phone rang four hours after we spoke, I thought it might be Talia, safely at her parents’ house. Or I thought it might be Ramirez, finally agreeing to meet with me. In that brief flash of time as the phone rang, it didn’t occur to me that she always dialed my direct line or the cell, not the general line that was ringing, nor did it occur to me that Ramirez would have probably used the cell phone number I’d given him.
Mr. Kolarich, I’m Lieutenant Ryan with the State Troopers.
I’m afraid I have some bad news, sir.
I don’t remember with any specificity the next two hours. I remember my dumbfounded, illogical comments to the state trooper-she couldn’t be dead, I just spoke to her a few hours ago; are you sure it was my wife and child in the SUV bearing our license plate, on the route we always took to her parents’ house? I don’t remember driving until I got to the backup on that county road, at which time I pulled the car over and jogged over a mile to the scene, blocked off with cones and tape and squad cars. The story was easy enough to discern without explanation; no doubt the other drivers, sitting idle in the traffic jam behind us, could have figured out what happened, too. That tricky curve in the road, the incessant rain bringing a one-two combo of poor visibility and a slick driving surface: Some car had gone over the embankment.
Looks like they died on impact, another state trooper told me, as we stood at the curve in the road that Talia had missed, by the side railing that had a large piece torn out of it, down at the ravine out of which they had fished Talia’s SUV. I remember saying those words over and over for comfort, they died on impact, not believing them, trying to push out the image of Emily restrained in a car seat, underwater, struggling to breathe. No, they died on impact. Painless. No pain.
I remember rain, slapping unapologetically on my shoulders and hair. I don’t remember calling my brother, Pete, but I do remember him being there, gently pulling me away, smelling his damp, musty windbreaker as his arm went over my shoulder.
I remember my cell phone ringing, and I remember taking it out of my pocket and throwing it into the ravine.
Various snippets follow: Arguing with the mortician about the amount of makeup on Talia’s face as she lay in rest. The wake for my wife and daughter, surrounded by hordes of conservatively attired people, members of my law firm whom I didn’t even know, still being a relative newcomer, and deciding that I had no interest in ever knowing them. Paul Riley, in that laid-back style of his, mentioning offhand the acquittal of Senator Hector Almundo on all counts, all thanks to me, and telling me to take all the time I needed before returning to work. Paul cautioning me not to rush to judgment, after I told him that I’d never be returning to Shaker, Riley and Flemming at all. Talia’s father, indirectly reminding me, more than once, that I was supposed to be driving Talia and Emily Jane the night they died. Thinking that I should be crying when I wasn’t, and shouldn’t when I was. Being tired, exceptionally tired.
In hindsight, I was probably a ripe target for them, for everything that happened. After that phone call from the state trooper, after burying my wife and daughter, I had nothing left that I cared about in this world. I had nothing left to lose.
That, more than anything, is why I did what I did. And that, more than anything, is why they wanted me.
ADVICE OF COUNSEL
Six Months Later: December 2007
10
I stomped my shoes outside the door of my office to shake off some accumulated snow. The frosted glass on the door read, in the appropriate order, SHAUNA L. TASKER, ESQ. and JASON KOLARICH, ESQ. “Hey,” I said as I passed the administrative assistant whom we share, Marie, who has put her archaeology degree to fine use.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked. I didn’t feel the need to respond to her commentary on my attendance record. If this law office were a school, I’d have been expelled long ago for truancy. It’s not that I don’t like practicing law; I just don’t like clients very much. They are needy and ungrateful.
“Why don’t you go dig under your desk for some Incan deposition transcript or something,” I suggested.
After I had spent a few months in a funk, Shauna basically dragged me to this firm and demanded that I rekindle my romance with the legal profession. I have no idea how to be a solo practitioner. Since law school, I’d been a prosecutor-where the cases come to you, thanks to a reliable slew of criminal activity in our fair city-and then a junior partner at Shaker, Riley, where partners like Paul Riley reeled in the clientele and I just did the work. The pattern here is I got to focus on the work without having to stroke some idiot for business and tell him how honored I was to represent him.
Shauna, bless her heart, has thrown a few cases my way, and I have benefited from a few cases courtesy of our upset victory in United States v. Hector Almundo. Most of them are criminal cases, which is fine as long as you get the retainer up front, but few of them are particularly interesting. The heaters-murders or white-collar cases-typically go to larger firms where the lawyer has gray hair.
“Hey,” I said, popping my head into Shauna’s office. She had her feet up on her desk, reviewing some transactional document. She does courtroom work like me, but she has wisely broadened her practice to handle basically anything else-real estate transactions, start-ups, trusts and wills, any number of commercial transactions. I refuse to do any of that. Put me in a courtroom, in the battle, or leave me alone. She is also active in three different bar associations, which allows her to “network,” meaning she has to socialize with other attorneys, which is something else I detest with an intensity I normally reserve for brutal world dictators, or the Dixie Chicks.
So, to summarize: I don’t like clients. I don’t like transactional work. I don’t like small-caliber criminal cases. And I don’t like talking to other lawyers. I’m hoping to create a niche in the market for people under indictment for serious felonies who don’t require that I converse with them.
“Twice in one week,” Shauna observed upon my arrival. “Wow.”
“I’m looking to set a personal best,” I explained.
“That’s the spirit. Just don’t overextend yourself.”