He knocked on the door and could immediately hear a buzzer go off somewhere. He pushed open the door and walked in.
A young woman sat at a desk in the small foyer. The desk held a sleek computer along with neat stacks of files. The woman was in her late twenties, Robie estimated, and had long red hair, a face covered with freckles, and beautiful green eyes. She rose and came forward.
“Can I help you?”
“I was looking for Toni Moses?”
“Can I say who’s askin’?”
“Will Robie. I’m here to see about her representing my father.”
Her look told Robie that she knew exactly who his father was.
“Just give me a minute, Mr. Robie.”
She disappeared into an internal office. About ten seconds had passed when the door opened and Robie saw her.
Toni Moses was barely five feet tall, but as wide as she was tall with a massive bosom. Her kinky dark hair fell over her shoulders. She wore glasses tethered to a cord. Her pantsuit was a bit small for her stout frame, and her thick feet were wedged into open-toed heels.
Her brow was full and furrowed, and her eyes enormous and darker than her hair. Her mouth was wide, the lips painted a muted red. The nails were long and manicured.
But when she spoke Robie forgot all about what she looked like.
“Where have you been?” she demanded in a quiet voice that nonetheless seemed to have the impact of a clap of thunder.
“Excuse me?” said Robie. He stepped back as she charged forward.
“Where have you been? Simple question.”
“I just came from the jail.”
“Uh-huh. Your butt hadn’t eased across the county line for ten seconds when I knew all there was to know. Come on in. We have things to talk about.”
She turned and walked back into her office. Over her shoulder she called out, “Your daddy could be a dead man walkin’. So time is definitely of the essence.”
The young woman had eased out of Moses’s office and was looking sympathetically at Robie. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
“No. And don’t get her any. Or any more.”
“Robie!” cried out Moses. “Get your butt in here.”
Robie hurried into her office, and the young woman quickly closed the door behind him.
He looked around the small space that was dominated by, in addition to Moses, a huge desk piled high with paper.
“Sit,” said Moses, indicating a chair piled high with paper files. “Just move those, honey. No, over there to the right on the floor,” she said, when Robie attempted to put them on another chair. “Have to keep organized.”
He sat and looked at her. She stared back at him.
“Well?” she said. “Are you here to retain me on behalf of your daddy?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here. But we talked.”
She pointed to the fresh bruise on his cheek. “I can see you talked all right. How many shots on him did you get?”
“He needs a lawyer.”
“Damn right he does. Representin’ himself? Damn fool. And he’s told that to quite a few folks in his own courtroom. I can say his spiel word for word: ‘Tryin’ to be your own lawyer is like playin’ Russian roulette with a full chamber of bullets. You got no chance ’cept to die.’”
“You come highly recommended.”
She inclined her head. “I was wonderin’ when you were goin’ to get around to askin’ Sheila Taggert ’bout hirin’ a lawyer.”
“She speaks highly of you.”
Moses nodded. “My terms are nonnegotiable. You pay my hourly fee, which isn’t cheap, but compared to New York or DC I’m basically free. I work my butt off on the case, leavin’ no stone unturned. If I win I get nothin’ extra.”
“And if you lose?”
“I get my fees paid in full. No hard feelin’s.”
“I hear you have a lot of experience with capital cases.”
“In Mississippi they have lots of laws where they can kill you if you break ’em. Now, they don’t execute folks on the level of say a Texas or Florida, but not for lack of tryin’. The main reason they don’t put more folks to death is because poor counties, of which there is an abundance here, can’t afford to provide defense counsel to indigent defendants, of which there is also an abundance here. And without that you’re not goin’ to survive an appellate challenge. So courts just give the defendant life in prison instead. And everybody’s happy,” she tacked on in a sarcastic tone.
“Sorry state of affairs,” said Robie.
“Just the way it is. Now one big thing your daddy’s got goin’ for him is he’s white. Mississippi doesn’t execute many white folks, particularly those with money or a position of respect, both of which he’s got. Mississippi has executed about eight hundred people over the last two centuries, and eighty percent of them were black men, so you can see the odds favor your daddy.”
“Okay,” said Robie slowly.
“Now, capital cases involve two parts. First, the trial to determine guilt or innocence. If guilt is found you enter the second part, which is the sentencin’ phase. That’s when both aggravatin’ and mitigatin’ circumstances are raised. The only aggravatin’ circumstance I see with your daddy is the catchall in the statute, namely, that the crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel. Slittin’ a man’s throat? Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t. But they also may hold your daddy, since he’s a judge, to a higher standard, I don’t know. But on the plus side, he has lots of mitigatin’ circumstances to his credit. So odds are he won’t get the needle. But they can still lock him up for a long damn time, and he’s no spring chicken. So twenty years is like a death sentence.”
“And if he’s guilty?”
“That question doesn’t interest me not even one little bit.”
“Why?”
“It’s Aubrey Davis’s job to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, so says the Constitution and the United States Supreme Court. He’s got the full resources of Cantrell and the mighty State of Mississippi behind him. All your daddy will have is me, but let me just say that I am a damn handful in any court in which I set foot. My job is to make sure Aubrey doesn’t get to where he wants to go, which is a conviction. He gets that, he’s the next congressman or maybe even senator from our great state, and I might have to slash my wrists and bleed out right here at my desk if that ever happens.”
“I take it you two don’t get along?”
“I hate his guts, as he does mine. If that fits your definition of not gettin’ along, then, no, we do not get along.”
“You’re not from Mississippi, are you?”
“No. But I am here now, which is fortunate for your daddy.”
“Where are you from?”
“The three H’s.”
“Excuse me?”
“My life can be defined as Howard, Harvard, and Hard Knocks, and not necessarily in that order.”
“You went to Harvard?”
“For law school. Howard University for undergrad, and Hard Knocks for everythin’ else.”
“How’d you end up here?”
“I like to think I go where I’m needed. My caseload tells me I was right.”
“So you’ll represent my father?”
“I’ve been waitin’ all mornin’ for you to get your butt here. Been callin’ Sheila Taggert every twenty minutes.”
“So you two are tight?”
“We’re both in law enforcement, so to speak. She carries out the laws and I make sure the laws are carried out fairly and impartially, and not based in any way, shape, or form on personal prejudices of a litany of persuasions, the dominant one havin’ to do with skin pigment the same as mine. And let me tell you I have seen most of these prejudices here in Cantrell as well as other places in this fine country, north, south, east, and west. And they can be uh-uh-ugly.”