Legally Wasted (17 page)

Kincaid nodded.

“So what happens next?”

Larkin had been in the holding cell perhaps a
hundred times. The stale smell of unwashed men, the unknown
reddish-brown stains on the wall. A stainless steel toilet with no
seat. These were familiar. But this was the first time that the
door had been shut and locked behind him. He had never considered
the room as particularly conducive of claustrophobia until that
moment. To ease his mind, he began reading some of the graffiti.
The dim light coupled with a night of terrible sleep in a similar
cell forced him to lean close. F-bombs, misspelled racial epithets,
a few swastikas and prayers to Jesus seemed to make up the majority
of the scribbling. One phrase in particular caught his eye. “Who’s
going to rep Big Lick?” the wall asked.

“Who indeed?” questioned Larkin.

He was wondering how the inmates had ever
smuggled pens into the room when the door opened. The deputy led
another man into the room and shut the door.

“Mr. Monroe!” shouted Terry Woolwine. His
piercing mountain twang echoed painfully off of the cinder block
walls.

“Jesus, save my soul,” Larkin read aloud from
the wall.

“What’d they get you for?” Though the room
was very small, Terry positioned himself as close as possible to
his former attorney. Larkin could smell blue ribbon winning Pabst
on his breath. “I heard one of those deputies talking about you
this morning. What’d you get? A DUI?” He pronounced this last word
just as one would pronounce the name of one of Donald Duck’s
nephews.

“Murder.”

“Come again?”

How could he not have heard? “Murder,” he
spat. This time, Larkin’s word bounced around the room. For a
moment, he considered how many times the walls had heard that
word.

Terry shook his head. “Nope. That don’t cut
the mustard.”

“Afraid so.”

Terry whistled. “I heard someone mention your
name and the word, ‘homicide,’ last night in the drunk tank. I
thought they was talking about someone you was defending. I also
kinda thought I was hallucinatin’ too. Go figure.”

Larkin merely shook his head. The air in the
room had become saturated with the pungent aroma of beer still
lingering on Terry’s tongue. It smelled yeasty, as if a loaf of
bread had been shoved behind the toilet last month and forgotten.
“Weren’t you supposed to have surgery?”

Terry shook his head. He stared at the far
wall, if one could call it that, with a distant expression. “Faked
the whole thing,” he said just before belching. “Wanted some pills.
New doctor saw right through me. Said I was just a Blue Ridge pill
popper. Got discharged, went home, and got tanked.”

“Sorry to hear that, Terry.”

“S’alright. How’d they ever stick you with
killing somebody? The devil’s collecting someone’s due.”

Larkin studied Terry for a moment. He looked
a little diminished without his trademark CAT ball cap. But his
hair seemed permanently molded in place as if he wore an invisible
CAT ball cap in the cell. “You don’t think I did it,” confirmed
Larkin.

“Hell, naw,” said Terry. He shook his head
vigorously and squinted. Not a single strand of hair moved. “You
wouldn’t kill nobody, Mr. Monroe. If you asked me, someone stuck
you with this.”

“Wow,” said Larkin. He was stunned. “You
know, Terry, I never thought you’d ever - -”

“Wait a minute,” said Terry as he smacked
Larkin’s shoulder lightly. He shot Larkin a serious bloodshot look.
“It wasn’t your wife who done ended up killed was it?”

Larkin shook his head.

Terry’s expression eased. “Naw, you didn’t do
it, Mr. Monroe.”

“Right.”

“So how’d they get you?”

Larkin leaned back on the concrete bench and
rested his left foot on the rim of the toilet. “Some coincidences,
random acts from strangers.” He opened his hands and raised them a
bit. There was no point in getting overly exasperated. “But the
kicker, was that the smoking gun wasn’t even a smoking gun. It was
the flimsiest, fakest . . . I can’t even believe Kincaid fell for
it. It just doesn’t make sense. Reasonable doubt is on my side. In
spades.”

“What was it?”

“An e-mail. A stupid, cooked up e-mail. Not
my address. Never typed it. Just enough to maybe throw some heat
off the right guy temporarily and focus on me.”

“Hacked your computer is what they did.”

“No. They didn’t. It was just a made up
account. A dummy account. Someone got online and created an e-mail
account. Larkin dot Monroe at something or other dot com. Anyone on
the planet could have written it. It just had my name in the
address.”

“What did it say?”

“What does it matter? Motive. It said I had a
motive, that, and some other coincidences might have made me a
suspect, I suppose. But that insufficient evidence shouldn’t have
led to this. This case will never survive a preliminary hearing.
There’s absolutely not enough evidence to convict.”

Terry nodded. “Yeah, but if they done played
these cards, who knows what’s coming down the pipe.”

It was Larkin’s turn to nod. Terry was right.
It was foolish to believe that if a conspiracy in fact existed,
that it had played itself out to completion.

“So either you got yourself one dirty cop,”
said Terry, “or someone the cop really trusts gave him that
e-mail.”

“Jesus, Terry. When the hell did you turn
into trailer park Columbo?”

Terry laughed. “I don’t know,” he said and
flashed a smile that at one time had more teeth. “I guess I’m still
drunk.”

“They should keep you drunk all the time,
boy.”

“They just about do!”

Both men laughed. Larkin even slapped his
knee. “Shit, Terry.” He wiped the moisture from the corner of his
eye. “What did they arrest you for, anyway?”

“It’s a DIP, of course. But I think they got
me on an A and B too. I didn’t mean it or nothing. I might have
somehow hit my sister while she was trying to grab the keys to my
truck out of my hand. I don’t think I really did it. But she was
the only one that I can remember who went for the keys.”

“You didn’t hit your sister.”

“You sure?”

Larkin nodded.

“Now you tell me how it is you know
that.”

“We’re in the holding cell for General
District Court. If you had smacked your sister, you would’ve been
charged with assault and battery of a family member. That sends you
to juvenile and domestic relations court. Different floor of the
building.”

“Hmmm. I wonder . . . just who in the hell
did I hit?” Terry coughed up some phlegm and launched it at the
toilet. Larkin watched the spit sail less than half an inch over
his ankle before smacking the back of the rim.

“Don’t worry,” said Larkin. “They’ll tell
you. And give me a warning next time you try that.”

“Oh. Pardon.”

Larkin shook his head. Both men waited in
silence for a few moments as they considered their respective
criminal charges. The alcohol in Terry’s system must have been
rapidly breaking down because his head leaned against a
questionable stain on the wall behind him. His eyelids soon drooped
and his mouth opened. Larkin recalled a previous charge in which he
had represented Terry. Larkin had gripped his Swingline and
threatened to staple Terry’s lips together. Now that Terry quietly
snored, Larkin strangely wished he was still conscious. But after a
while, the snoring was somehow soothing. The sound was not too far
removed from Rusty’s snores. Larkin was glad that Madeline had
demanded possession of the cat. He might not be eating much at
Madeline’s house, but at least he would be cared for.

Without warning, the door opened. Three men
were led into the cell. One wore the green and white striped
uniform given to all the inmates in the Big Lick jail. Larkin
surmised that the man must have picked up another charge while
pulling his time. Though the room was now more cramped than even
Larkin had ever seen it, all of the men gave the jailbird some
space. The sour smell of the jail enveloped all of them. It even
overpowered Terry’s beer breath. It smelled like the fat kid’s gym
suit from the ninth grade, the one that he never took home and
washed.

“What was that kid’s name?” asked Larkin to
himself. The jailbird shot him a questionable glance, but Larkin
could not care less. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught one of
the new men mouth the word “convict” to the other. In the prison
system, a convict was a different breed of prisoner than an inmate.
An inmate did his time. A convict collected time. Larkin studied
the convict’s heavily tattooed knuckles. Most had the grayish-blue
appearance of prison crafted skin art. He momentarily considered
his own hands covered with the same markings. As a murderer, he’d
have the right to place a single teardrop at the corner of his eye.
Early in Larkin’s career he learned that a majority of jailed men
with the teardrop tattoo never really killed anyone, they just
wanted to look tough. Larkin wondered if he would look tough with
prison tats. “Probably not.”

“What’s that?” asked the convict. “You
talking to yourself, loco?”

“I’m talking to you, sweet cheeks,” said
Larkin.

The convict gritted his teeth and cocked his
head.

The door swung open. “The first two,” said
the husky female deputy. Larkin had probably made small talk with
her two dozen times. She refused to look directly at him. That
could have meant respect or shame. He turned and punched Terry
lightly in the shoulder. He awoke with a belch.

“Come on,” said Larkin.

Terry stood and rubbed his eyes. “Got crowded
in here.” He looked to the deputy. “Maybe you should put up the no
vacancy.”

“I remember your face, man,” yelled the
convict.

“I remember your smell,” said Larkin.

Lawyer and client were led by the deputy down
a hallway that both men had walked many times. They paused before
the brown steel door that opened into one of the courtrooms. The
deputy waited for some indiscernible cue. Larkin turned to face
her. She repositioned her badge and smoothed a wrinkle in her
pants.

“You look good,” said Larkin. “Professional.
Tough.”

The deputy looked up and met his gaze. She
smiled briefly before her cheeks flushed pink. She placed her key
in the lock.

“Is it court yearbook picture day or
something?” Larkin quipped as the door swung open. “Oh, Jesus,” he
said as he glimpsed the packed courtroom.

“No talking,” said the deputy. She had raised
her voice so that the dozen or so news reporters in the first two
rows could hear her command her celebrity prisoner.

Typically the courtroom was nearly full
during arraignments as they appeared early on the docket. But this
crowd differed from the typical. The individuals lining the benches
reserved for the public were only interested in one arraignment
that day. At the sight of Larkin, journalists began furiously
scribbling on notepads. It was as if his first footsteps on
courtroom carpet made the biggest scoop of the year. As he and
Terry proceeded into the courtroom, the large glass eye of a
television camera trailed their movement. Terry attempted to
straighten a ball cap that was not there.

Judge Leopold Wallace, a semi-retired judge
who now only filled in as a substitute judge eyed paperwork from
behind a thin pair of gold rimmed spectacles. Big Lick’s first
black judge, Judge Wallace had first taken the bench nearly thirty
years earlier. In fairly short order, he had drawn the ire of most
of the local police and all of the prosecutors. Not only did Judge
Wallace apply the correct rule of law when it came to illegal
searches and seizures, but he had no qualms about putting an
overzealous policeman in his place. Larkin nodded. This might work
out, he thought. Surely Judge Wallace wasn’t wrapped up in the
massive corporate conspiracy.

“Why did everyone stop talking?” Judge
Wallace baritoned. Everyone was of course supposed to refrain from
talking in the courtroom, but in General District Court, that
rarely occurred. The spectacles trained on Larkin. “Oh,” he said
and made a note on a sheet of paper.

The deputy directed Larkin and Terry to sit
at the defendants’ table. Terry sat, but Larkin remained standing.
The deputy stepped forward and cocked her head. Larkin had bucked
her authority a bit and her feathers had certainly been
ruffled.

“He’s going to make me stand anyway,” said
Larkin just as Judge Wallace cleared his throat. The deputy
retreated.

“Mr. Lawrence Monroe,” the Judge read from a
sheet of paper. “I do believe that you are the person listed
here.”

“I’m certainly here, your Honor” said Larkin.
He used his best courtroom voice.

“You have been charged with first degree
murder, manslaughter, aggravated malicious wounding, and
obstruction of justice,” the Judge read. He looked at Larkin. “All
felonies.” Larkin nodded. “You may choose to represent yourself,
hire your own attorney or you may see if you qualify for court
appointed counsel. How do you wish to proceed?”

“I would like to represent myself at this
time, your Honor.”

The courtroom stirred. The slightest smirk
crept over Judge Wallace’s face but swiftly disappeared as the
camera panned in his direction. “All right then,” he said as he
made another notation. “I’m assuming that you are familiar with the
procedure on scheduling a bond hearing?”

“Yes, sir,” said Larkin. He stepped back from
the table and began walking toward the center of the court room.
The deputy lunged for his arm, but Judge Wallace raised his
hand.

“Your Honor, may I - -”

“I’m assuming you’re acting as advocate?”

Larkin nodded.

“Proceed.”

“Thank you, your Honor.” The deputy released
her grip on Larkin’s arm. Larkin circled the table. As he made his
way to the podium near the witness box, situated as an oak island
in the center of the gray muted carpet, he glanced toward the back
of the courtroom. Wendy McAdams and her crinkly blonde hair watched
him with wide eyes. It was Larkin’s turn to smirk. He hoped Judge
Wallace would give him a long enough leash.