Kolarich threw the slip of paper on his table, looking exasperated and disappointed, and turned around to face the witness. “But you’re sure you were in the driver’s seat, having just pumped gas, when the shooting occurred. Isn’t it possible you remember that wrong?”
“No, I’m sure about it,” said the witness, with renewed animation.
“And you were staring straight forward, looking south at the street where the shooting occurred. You’re sure you weren’t facing north?”
“I’m sure, Jason,” she said, smiling. She really was a cute young lady.
“And you’re still sure you were positioned at the farthest-west end of the gas station, the last row of gas pumps, and on the west side of that last row?”
“Yeah.” She was feeling better now, having recovered nicely from a brief slipup.
“So from your position in the driver’s seat of the car, if you looked to your left, there was the gas pump you were using. Forward was the street where the shooting occurred. And to the right were no gas pumps, just open space and the restaurant next door?”
“Yeah, that’s right. See, I never thought about it from, like, which car ’cause I drove away as soon as I seen the shooting and that part about which car, it didn’t matter. Grand Prix or Mercedes, I wasn’t thinking, y’know.”
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” said Kolarich. “Because the shooting would have stuck out in your mind more than the car you were driving.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Mercedes, Grand Prix, they’re roughly the same size-you just slipped up in your memory.”
“Right, yeah.”
“Okay.” The lawyer sighed. “But just for the record, you’re sure now that it was your boyfriend’s car, the 2006 Mercedes C280 4matic, that you were driving. Not the Pontiac Grand Prix.”
“Yeah, I mean, now that you say it and all. Yeah, I’m sure.”
The lawyer let out an audible sigh and shook his head, seemingly defeated. Maybe beneath the impressive surface, Deidre thought to herself, he wasn’t that great a lawyer, after all.
The judge said, “Anything further, Mr. Kolarich?”
“Oh, just one more thing, Judge,” he said. “Alicia, how did you pump the gas?”
“How did I-what?”
“How did you pump the gas?”
“I-same way you always do, I guess…”
The lawyer moved away from the table, back toward the witness. “No,” he said. “What I mean is, if you pulled the driver’s side of the car up to the gas pump, as you’ve repeatedly testified, how did you fill the tank? When the gas tank for a 2006 Mercedes C280 is on the passenger side?”
The witness froze.
Jason Kolarich smiled.
And so did Deidre Maley.
2
My client, Ronaldo Dayton, looked better than I’d ever seen him as the sheriff’s deputy escorted him from the defense table to the county lockup. I promised him I’d stop by later to review the case before tomorrow, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to put on a defense. We would rest, and closing arguments would follow. I didn’t want to give the prosecution any time to try to rehabilitate their star witness, who hadn’t turned out to be such a star, after all.
“Mr… Kolarich?”
I turned around and saw a woman standing with her hands clasped together, as if in prayer. She was on the high side of middle-aged, gray and weathered, wearing a troubled expression. That wasn’t exactly surprising. There weren’t a lot of happy faces in the criminal courts building.
“My name is Deidre Maley,” she said.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said. My mother raised a polite boy. His name is Pete, my brother. But I have my moments, too.
“That was… impressive,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask: How did you know she wasn’t driving the Pontiac?”
The courtroom had filtered out. The jury was long gone, and the prosecutors had left, too.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I just knew she was lying.”
She considered me. She probably couldn’t decide if she was impressed or disgusted.
“My nephew needs your help,” she said.
Okay, put her down for impressed.
“He’s been charged with… felony murder, they call it. He has a public defender for a lawyer, but I’d like someone else.”
I asked, “Who’s the P.D.?”
“Bryan Childress.”
“Sure. He’s good.” I knew Chilly back from law school. He’d been with the P.D.’s office since graduation. But he was about to leave. I wondered if she knew that.
“He’s good, but he’s about to leave,” she said.
Check.
“And I think… I’d like you to represent him, Mr. Kolarich.”
The P.D.’s office gets a bad rap. Most of them are actually quite good. But they’re overworked, so sometimes clients feel like they’re not getting special treatment.
“I don’t have very much money,” she said. “But if you could be patient-I promise I’d find a way to pay you.”
She was probably in her sixties, so her earning potential wasn’t exactly at its peak.
“Tom is a sweet boy. He’s sick. He came back from Iraq a different person. I tried to keep an eye on him, but I just couldn’t. My husband, you see, suffers from multiple sclerosis, and I couldn’t take care of Tom like I should have. I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.”
And I couldn’t help but feel like I was being played. Aunt Deidre was laying it on pretty thick. I was waiting for her to collapse so I could catch her in my arms.
“His parents are deceased,” she added. “I’m all he has for family.”
Did he rescue drowning orphans, too? But lucky for her, she caught me in a good mood.
“I’ll meet him,” I said. “After that, no promises.”
3
Don’t ask me why I do the things I do.
But I was bored. And this one sounded interesting.
The Madelyn R. Boyd Center was two blocks south of the criminal courts building. I finished a preliminary hearing I had before Judge Basham on a B-and-E and met Bryan Childress in front of Boyd at eleven sharp. We were both surprised that I was on time.
Childress wore a gray suit and black tie. Cheap stuff. Chilly never cared much for clothes. Back in law school, he never cared much for anything at all except which bar we’d hit that night.
“So, Ronaldo Dayton,” he said to me. “Well done. I heard the jury came back in four hours?”
Three, actually. Rondo was probably still celebrating as we spoke.
Chilly whistled. The state had really wanted that one. It wasn’t that they cared so much about one gangbanger killing another, but Ronaldo Dayton was a chief with the Black Posse, and they wanted him bad.
We went through the doors up to the front desk. “Hey, Chilly,” said one of the guards, a younger guy, meaning my age. Looked familiar.
“Jimmy, you remember Jason Kolarich? From the gym.”
He nodded at me. “Sure. I caught one or two of his elbows.”
Right. Now I placed him. We played hoops together a couple weeks back. “I was trying to teach you the three-second rule,” I said.
He seemed to like that. “You guys going up to the penthouse?”
Childress nodded. I showed my bar card. Jimmy the guard took down my information and handed me a piece of paper with instructions. I knew the drill. I’d been here a couple times when I was a prosecutor and was trying to flip a gangbanger.
Jimmy followed us into the elevator and slipped a key card into a slot, the only way you could punch a button for the penthouse. Nobody was supposed to go up there by accident.
I looked over the instructions on the sheet of paper.
DO NOT:
• Touch the glass partition
• Pass the inmate anything that has not been placed in the visitor’s container at the guard station
• Accept anything the inmate tries to pass to you
• Pass anything through the speaking holes
• Turn off any lights
THE TRANSFER OF CONTRABAND TO AN INMATE IS A VIOLATION OF SECTION 2-16 OF THE CODE OF CORRECTIONS AND IS PUNISHABLE BY UP TO 6 YEARS IN PRISON.