The Neon Lawyer (10 page)

Twenty

The days quickly fell into a pattern as the trial approached. The mornings were spent hunting for the perfect expert for Amanda’s trial, and the nights were spent at Molly’s talking about Amanda’s case.

Molly told Brigham several times not to get so attached to one case. If he lost, it would embitter him. But he couldn’t help it—the case was the only thing he could think about.

He visited Amanda a couple of times a week, and each time she looked worse. She was losing weight and no longer taking care of herself. She wouldn’t talk during their meetings, but instead nodded or shook her head when he asked her something.

Brigham sat in his office a few weeks before the trial. Tommy had given him another case: a misdemeanor DUI. The client had been driving to an AA meeting and stopped at a liquor store on the way. She bought a bottle of whiskey and was drunk by the time she got to the meeting. They called the police before she was even in her seat.

Molly appeared at his door. “Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“About Amanda?”

“No, what?”

She hesitated. “Someone tried to kill her in jail.”

“How? Is she all right?”

“She’s at University Hospital right now.”

Brigham jumped up and was out the door. Molly followed behind him, saying, “They’re not going to let you see her. Brigham? Brigham . . . well, at least let me drive you.”

The hospital emergency room had valet parking and, as they rolled to a stop, a man in a red shirt gave them a claim check. Brigham pushed through the revolving doors and up to the front counter. Two receptionists were there doing paperwork.

“I need to see Amanda Pierce, please,” he said.

“I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.”

Brigham paced nervously. Molly had already sat down and was flipping through a magazine. It took nearly ten minutes for the receptionist to say, “Amanda Pierce is a prisoner, sir. She isn’t allowed visitors.”

“I’m her lawyer.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Pope. No visitors.”

Brigham nodded and said, “Let’s go, Molly.”

As they walked past the double doors leading to the patients’ rooms, Brigham glanced back to the receptionist. She’d already returned to whatever paperwork she was doing. A man in scrubs was coming out of the doors. Brigham said, “Wait in the car for me,” and pushed through the double doors before Molly could protest.

The linoleum squeaked underneath his shoes as he made his way to the police officer sitting outside a door at the end of the hall. Brigham pulled out his Utah State Bar card and flashed it at the police officer.

“I’m her attorney.”

He walked into the room without looking at the officer, as though he’d done it a thousand times and it was routine. His heart was pounding and he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be shot. But he made it into the room and shut the door behind him. The officer had stood up and was watching through the glass viewing window on the door.

Amanda looked like a skeleton. Brigham had seen her a few days ago. He wondered if he just hadn’t noticed or if she’d really deteriorated in that time. She was in a hospital gown and the side of her neck was bandaged. A dark red stain leaked through the white gauze. Brigham moved closer and sat in a chair next to the bed.

She stirred and her head rolled to the side. Her eyes were red with dark circles below them. Her nostrils flared as if she was having trouble breathing.

“I guess,” she rasped, “I just can’t stay out of trouble.”

“What happened?”

“It’s not her fault. She’s schizophrenic and shouldn’t be in there. She didn’t mean to do it.”

He shook his head. “It was the woman you were in the holding cells with, wasn’t it? I’m going to see if we can have you transferred.”

“No. The only place they can transfer me is administrative segregation. I don’t want to go there. You’re alone twenty-three hours a day.”

He exhaled. “I’m so sorry this happened.”

Amanda’s eyes welled up with tears. Whatever strength she had to hide her emotions from him had faded. She began to sob, and he let her.

“I couldn’t save her,” she cried. “My baby, my baby . . . That monster tore her apart and I couldn’t save her.”

Brigham put his hand over hers and let her cry.

Twenty-one

The University of Utah was nearly empty at this time of night. Brigham sat on the lawn of the law school. It was a place he’d come many times when he’d been studying for the Bar exam. When the stress got to be too much, he’d come there and stare at the traffic. Usually, he didn’t have the money for booze. But now he’d brought along a bottle of schnapps and he sipped at it as he watched the passing traffic.

Amanda Pierce was probably going to die. If not by the state, then in prison. It wasn’t that she was soft, but that she had given up.

Molly texted and asked where he was, and he told her. Within fifteen minutes, she had parked on the street and walked up the lawn. She sat down without saying anything and took a sip of his schnapps.

“I used to sit here and dream about what being a lawyer was like,” he said. “I thought it’d be so glamorous. That I’d be pounding a table for my clients and screaming about injustice.” He took a long drink. “But injustice is all it is. There’s nothing to scream about because there is nothing else.”

“That’s not true.”

“They don’t need a conviction—they’ve already ruined her life. She won’t have a job when she gets out, she’s lost her house . . . she’s lost her daughter. She’s down, and the government just won’t stop kicking.”

Molly placed her hand on his arm. “Then change that. Don’t let Vince get a victory because you laid down and felt sorry for yourself. And this is your first big case, Brigham. There’ll be other ones where justice does win out. In the end, I think it has to win out.”

Brigham took another swig and handed the bottle to her. “If I go down, I’ll go down swinging. But I’m not sure it matters in the end.”

She placed her fingers lightly on his chin and turned him toward her. “That’s all that matters—how well you can walk through flames.”

They kissed, and then rose and walked to her car.

The next day, Brigham met with the expert who had gone in to do an evaluation of Amanda. He’d gone through two dozen résumés to find her. She was overly qualified and personable. A jury, he guessed, would like her and be impressed by her.

The evaluation had been scheduled at the jail but had to be moved to University Hospital.

The psychiatrist, Christine Connors, specialized in post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans. She sat down across from him and placed several documents on the desk between them.

“So don’t sugarcoat it,” Brigham said. “What do you think?”

“Well, the problem with any diminished capacity type of defense is that I wasn’t there. Any interview with a mental health expert is almost always so far after the fact that it’s irrelevant, because we need to determine her mental state at the time of the crime. But given certain descriptions, I don’t think she understood the nature of her crime. She had a temporary psychotic break. I don’t think she was fully aware of what she was doing when she killed Mr. Moore.”

“There’s always a ‘but,’ I’m guessing.”

“But she immediately surrendered and didn’t try to shoot herself or any of the officers, which suggests she was consciously aware of the nature of her actions.”

Brigham swiveled his chair a little and saw Dr. Connors’s eyes drift down to it, so he stopped. Perhaps it looked unprofessional given how serious this case was. “So what are you going to testify to?”

“As a whole, I think she lacked the capacity to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law. But there is some evidence to the contrary, which I will have to reveal to the jury.”

He nodded. “And the evidence is that she didn’t shoot anybody else or do anything crazy.”

“Essentially, yes. I’ll write up a full report for you.”

He tapped his fingers against the desk.

“This is your first mental health defense case, isn’t it, Brigham?”

“How can you tell?”

“Because you sound hopeful. After you’ve done this for a while, you’ll see that it’s almost impossible to win on a mental health defense. Even if the defendant has a major psychiatric disorder at the time.”

Brigham rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d had a headache since the previous night that the ibuprofen wasn’t touching.

“I’ll send you a subpoena for the day of trial. The county’ll cut you a check after you testify.”

She nodded and left his office.

Brigham leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The headache grew in intensity until he could feel the throbbing, as though someone was tapping his head every half a second. He heard something that he thought was part of the headache, but was too loud. It was coming from outside.

He looked out the window to see a car screeching to a halt. Tommy was thrown out, bloody and bruised. He turned around, swearing in Russian, and managed to deck the guy sitting in the backseat who’d thrown him.

Tommy faced the men in the car as they stared back at him for a moment before driving away. Brigham ran out of the office just as Tommy was sitting down in front and wiping the blood from his lips.

“You okay? What the hell happened?”

“It was nothin’,” Tommy said, out of breath. “Just a little . . . disagreement was all.”

“Who were those guys?”

He took a moment to breathe and then shook his head. “Nothin’ you need to worry yourself about. Me and those gentlemen go way back. To the old country.” He looked up at him, one of his eyes swelling shut. “How’s the murder case going?”

Brigham stared at him. “Tommy, you need a hospital.”

He waved him off and rose. “For a few bumps? I’m fine. So how’s it going?”

“We have an expert. I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be for trial.”

He nodded. “Good. Good. I’ll be there with you sometimes and I told Molly to go, too. You’ll do fine.” He put his hand on Brigham’s shoulder. “You’ll do fine.”

Tommy limped away into the office, leaving Brigham staring at his back. Through the window, he saw Scotty watching everything through his thick glasses. Scotty began to twitch again and then turned away from the window.

Twenty-two

Brigham eventually settled his DUI case with one court appearance. The prosecutor was a slim man with red hair who was playing Angry Birds on his phone while they negotiated. The prosecutor agreed to let them plead to a reduced impaired driving charge instead of a misdemeanor DUI, with just a fine and alcohol treatment and counseling.

But when Brigham walked out of the courtroom to inform his client he’d worked out a deal, he could smell the alcohol on her from across the courthouse. She was attractive and middle-aged, wearing a skintight red dress. Even as she stood there, her body swayed in a circle.

“Tanya, are you drunk?” he whispered.

“No . . . no. Are you?”

“You are, aren’t you? I can’t believe you did that.”

“I had a little with breakfast. No big deal.”

Brigham glanced back at the courtroom to make sure no one could hear. “The judge will take you into custody if she thinks you’re drunk. Look, just stay here. Lemme see if I can get it continued. You can’t take a deal if you’re impaired.”

He casually strolled back into the courtroom like nothing was wrong and bent down near where the prosecutor was sitting. “You mind if we continue this?”

“Why?”

“Just want some more time.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care. Just clear it with the judge.”

Brigham stood and buttoned the top button on his suit coat. He went out and took Tanya’s arm, and let her lean against him as he sauntered back inside. He waited with her in the back of the courtroom while the other attorneys called their cases. When they were finishing up, he slowly helped her to the podium.

“Morning, Your Honor.”

The judge, an overweight woman with rosy cheeks, eyed him. Tanya’s arm was wrapped around his waist.

“The matter of Tanya Dreschel, Your Honor.”

She paused and then pulled out the file. “What are we doing today, Counsel?”

“Just a continuance, Your Honor. Two weeks should be plenty of time.”

“Does the City stipulate?”

“Sure,” the prosecutor said.

Tanya nearly toppled over and Brigham had to pull her body against his. He put his arm around her shoulders and the judge stared at him, then shook her head. “Fine, two weeks.”

He turned around and put his arm under hers as he led her out of the courtroom. When they were outside of the building, he took out his phone and called a cab.

“I can drive,” she said, her speech slurred.

“You’re not driving anywhere. I’ll stay with you until the cab gets here. Gimme your keys.”

The cab was there in less than five minutes. As they waited, Tanya spoke of her ex-husband and her new boyfriend, who she’d met on a dating website. Brigham helped her into the cab and gave the cabbie her address. He would call her tomorrow to arrange picking up her car. The key was for a BMW.

The car was black with silver rims. Brigham couldn’t just drive it straight to the office. He had to go up to the law school and do a few laps before coming back down into the city.

When he got to the office, Scotty came scuffling out, adjusting his glasses.

“Don’t tell me you bought that.”

“No, it’s one of our clients’. She showed up drunk to court.”

“Oh,” he said, turning around and heading back in. “That happens.”

I
n a three-day period, Brigham read two books on cross-examination and trial preparation for felonies. With his DUI continued, he didn’t have much else to do anyway.

The theories and techniques nearly contradicted each other. He went online and discovered that there were as many theories on how to successfully conduct a cross-examination as there were lawyers. The one thing they agreed on, though, was that he should never ask a question he didn’t know the answer to.

At midnight, two days before the trial, Brigham sat alone in Molly’s living room. She was asleep in the bedroom and the television was on, turned low. Brigham stared out the windows at the city. A light rain soaked the asphalt below. There were a few homeless men on the corner, splitting a bottle of beer and laughing. They were getting wet, but didn’t appear to ca
re.

“You okay?”

Brigham didn’t turn around to look at Molly. “Fine.”

“Come to bed.”

“I will.”

She appeared next to him and put her hands on his shoulders as the two of them took in the city. It had grown, even in just the short time Brigham had been there. It would become like every other major city soon enough: faceless. A place where people got lost and never found themselves again.

“I miss the country sometimes,” he said. “Life’s a lot simpler in a town of nine hundred.”

“Everywhere has its pros and cons.”

He turned and looked at her. “I’m going to visit her tomorrow again. What am I going to say, Molly?”

“Tell her the truth. That you don’t know how this will play out. You should probably see Vince again, too.”

“Why?”

“Prosecutors sometimes change their offers on major felonies right before trial. It’s not a fun experience for them, either.”

She kissed his cheek and went back into the bedroom. Brigham watched her. Then he turned back around, fixing his eyes on the street corner below. The homeless men were gone.