Thomas Prescott Superpack (105 page)
Read Thomas Prescott Superpack Online
Authors: Nick Pirog
Tags: #Fiction, #Retail, #Suspense, #Thrillers
⠔
The woman clicked her stopwatch, then took up her seat at the desk at the front of the room. The exam was being held at the university downtown. I was one of about sixty people scattered throughout the large auditorium. I read the first question on the computer screen. I only got a third of the way through. I took a deep breath. Concentrated. Swallowed. It passed. I let out a long exhale. Read the question again. This time I got halfway through the first question before I had to stop. This time it did not pass.
I jumped to my feet.
I could feel the stares on my back as I bounded down the stairs. Everyone thinking the same thing:
AGAIN?
As I neared the woman at the front she looked up and shook her head.
I said, “I’m sorry.”
“You know, we have a scheduled fifteen minute break when this section is done. Can’t you hold it?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Okay then. But this is the last time.”
This of course, is what she’d said the last two times.
I nodded my thanks and double-timed it to the nearest exit. I didn’t make it to the bathroom. I didn’t even make it to the trashcan that I made it to the last time. I did, however, make it to a large fern nestled up to the corner of the window.
After I’d watered the plant—my throw up was mostly water by this point—I took a seat on the bench and rested my elbows on my knees.
Six years ago, fresh out of undergrad, three buddies and I had taken a trip to the Bahamas. We drank heavily each night, but on the fifth night we partied until the sun came up. Unfortunately, when the sun did come up, we were supposed to go SCUBA diving and since I’d put down a three-hundred dollar nonrefundable deposit, there was nothing that was going to stop me from going. While everyone else was being SCUBA certified in the small hotel pool, I was on all fours in my wetsuit throwing up my small intestine. Over the course of the next five hours, I would throw up on the boat, throw up fifty feet under water, throw up on a rare sea turtle, barter with God to kill me, and barter with a sea turtle to kill me. That was the single worst hangover of my life.
Today was a close second.
After Perry had bought a round of shots. The girls—I couldn’t remember their names—had bought a round of shots. And then I bought a round of shots. And then the girls. And then Perry. This is when things start to get fuzzy.
Fast-forward six hours to my waking up under my dining room table, clad in nothing but Perry’s bright green soccer jersey.
Go figure.
I walked to the drinking fountain and took a long drink. There was a vending machine and I stuck my ID card in and got a
Snicket
bar. I didn’t think I was going to be able to stomach it. But I did. So I got another.
When I returned to my seat, I had about twenty-five minutes to complete the section. I was starting to feel a little better and I was able to complete most of the questions. The next four hours weren’t nearly as bad as the previous four and I was surprised at how many of the questions I knew the answer to. But I had probably scored close to a zero for the first four sections, and even if I got every question correct in the remaining sections, I still wouldn’t even come close to passing.
When I got home, Darrel was sitting on my front step. We walked to a burger joint a couple blocks up the street and I replayed my night at the bar and the nightmare that followed. He couldn’t stop laughing when I told him about having to leave the test on four separate occasions to vomit. We headed home early. He’d gotten the job with the Denver Police Department and he started tomorrow morning and I was plain exhausted.
I took another shower, then put on some sweat pants and a hoody. I opened the refrigerator to get a glass of orange juice and saw that my jeans and the sweatshirt I’d been wearing the night before were neatly folded and tucked away in the vegetable drawer.
I shook my head.
I pulled the clothes out. I vaguely remembered one of the girls giving me her number and I reached my hand into the front pocket. There were two folded napkins.
I must have gotten both their numbers.
Player.
I unfolded the first napkin. Inside was a phone number. I unfolded the second napkin. Inside was not a phone number, but a message. My breath caught in my throat. When had he put it in my pocket? When he had hugged me good-bye? Had he slipped it in my pocket when I was leaning against the cab?
I walked into the bathroom and flushed the napkin down the toilet. That had been written at the top of the napkin with stars around it:
*FLUSH THIS DOWN THE TOILET IMMEDIATELY*.
As strange as this was, the following messages were far stranger. I stared at myself in the mirror. Could it be? Could it be true? But how?
Scribbled on the napkin had been three short, cryptic messages. The first message read:
IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE HERE, NEVER SPEAK OF THE BORNS AGAIN
.
The second:
YOU MUST NEVER TRUST ANYONE.
As crazy as these first two were, it was the third that got me.
It was those last three words that I couldn't shake. At the bottom of the napkin, were the words:
YOU DIDN'T DIE.
Law and Order-taker
It’d been exactly a week since what I like to refer to as, “Awesome Saturday.”
If you don’t remember, let me refresh your memory. I woke up with the second worst hangover of my life, attempted to take the Bar Exam between vomit breaks, then found out in a cryptic message written on the back of a napkin that everything I’d been told for the last month had been one big, fat, juicy, lie.
For obvious reasons, I had a couple choice questions I wanted to ask Mr. Perry Whitcomb. I’ll give you a hint; the questions did not concern soccer. I’ll give you a second hint: the questions did concern the napkin he’d shoved into my pocket when leaving the bar.
Over the course of the past week, I’d tried unsuccessfully to contact Perry. Messages on Deadbook, calls to the
Denver Chronicle
, and even stopping by the downtown
DC
office on two separate occasions. Both times I was told, “Perry isn’t around.”
I’d kept the messages on Deadbook brief and ambiguous. I had little doubt the machine that was Two would have no trouble watching the influx of messages on the world-wide-web. I simply wrote that it was great to see him and to hit me back so we could do it again.
He never responded.
So, I was left to agonize about those three words. Those three words on the billboard that hovered six inches from my face. The three words fluorescent, orange, and blinking.
You didn’t die.
And agonize I did. If I didn’t die, then how did I get here? And where was here? And why was I being lied to? And how did he know this? And was I alone on this or had he not died either. And what about everyone else? What about all the people I knew who had died; Perry, Dr. Raleigh, Dr. JeAnn, Darrel, Berlin, all the people from my orientation class, all the people from the Adjustment House? Was he telling me that none of these people had died? Or was it just me? Was that why I felt like the square block? Was I the only person in
Two that hadn’t died? And did this have anything to do with the Borns?
The answers to all my questions would come. But not today. And not tomorrow. In fact, they wouldn’t come for a great while.
⠔
The coffee shop was inside the twenty-four hour bookstore. I was waiting for the café down the
street to open for brunch, but I had a half hour to kill. I ordered an apple cider from the young woman behind the register and sat down at a small table with the book I’d just bought.
It’d been awhile since I’d read a good legal thriller—John Grisham’s last couple hadn’t been his best—and a couple days earlier, I’d Goggled, “Best legal thriller writer.”
The overall consensus was a guy named Jackson Hall.
I cracked open
The Ghost Appellate
and started in on the first page. I was about twenty pages into the book and three inches into my cider, when two guys took up the table right next to me.
The guys were lawyers, for that much I was certain. Both were young, early thirties. Both wore suits. One cheap, the other snazzy. One from Men’s Wearhouse. The other Brooks Brothers or the
Two equivalent. Both were working on a Saturday. Something I might have looked forward to if I’d gotten more than just my name correct on last Saturday’s Bar Exam.
From what I could gather, both men worked for the District Attorney’s Office. I got the impression one of the gentlemen, the one seated closest to me, the one who “Liked the way he looked,” was a paralegal. A grunt. A peon. The other guy, the one wearing the fifteen hundred dollar suit had that swagger about him. Probably an assistant DA. A big shot on the rise.
The grunt had a legal pad out in front of him and was tearing apart a piece of coffee cake between scribbles. The other guy had two large lattes in front of him. Not one latte. Two lattes.
They were discussing a case. Specifically, the grunt was discussing a case he was working on.
The defendant in the case—he kept referring to him as Hord—was being tried for the attempted murder of his wife. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but it was impossible not to.
Grunt: …their whole case is built around a self-defense plea. It’s weak, but the wife’s statement that the stabbing wasn’t in self-defense is inadmissible because she wouldn’t testify.
Big Shot: Marital privilege.
G: So get this, Hord stabs his wife with a meat cleaver six times, tries to kill her, she somehow makes it into a room with a lock and calls the police. Police come, guy gets arrested, wife goes to the ER, records her statement two days later when she’s out of surgery.
BS: Right.
G: Then during discovery, we find out the wife won’t testify against her husband, they had a ‘reconciliation’, and the Judge throws her statement out.
BS: Who is the
judge. Ranker?
G: Worse, Glasky.
BS: No wonder. He’s hard on evidence. I had a case with him about six months back. He threw out two DNA tests that had the wrong date on them. I objected on twelve different grounds until the old coot said he would hold me in contempt if I didn’t shut up. Anyhow, what was the basis, Sixth Amendment?
G:
( Nodding.) Yep, said the evidence violated the defendant’s right to be confronted with the witnesses against him.
BS: So without her statement, you have nothing.
G: Zip. But here’s the rub, even the defendant’s statement is vague about whether the wife pulled out a weapon before he stabbed her. But when they put him on the stand, he starts making some shit up about her having a knife of her own and self-defense this and self-defense that.
BS: Whose case is it?
G: McClessens.
BS: That asshole still have a stick up his ass for me?
G: Yep. He thinks he should have gotten the assistant DA position.
BS: Fuck him.
G: He’s not so bad. But he’s acting like it’s my fault the wife’s statement was thrown out. Like I personally talked these two lovebirds into reconciling.
BS: What about Johnson V. Mathers?
G: Doesn’t work. Wife died. Changes everything. If the wife croaks in the next 48 hours we could use it. What would you do if it were your case?
BS: It would never be my case. They save the big ones for me.
G: Right, I forgot.
The conversation slowly moved from law to one of Big Shot's friends, “Ridiculous Vegas Bachelor Party.”
Gag.
Luckily for my newly digested apple cider, I stopped listening. I had flipped back to the opening chapter of
The Ghost Appellate
. The chapter was set in a courtroom. A witness was testifying when a bomb exploded killing the witness, the judge, and a handful of jurors. Great scene. Sucked me right in. But that wasn’t what concerned me. Before the bomb exploded, there had been five pages recounting the trial. And get this; the trial was of a husband charged with the attempted murder of his wife.
I found the paragraph I was looking for. After I’d memorized it, I leaned over and said to the Grunt, “Excuse me.”
Big Shot was in the middle of a sentence, “…girl is loving me. Starts given me a lap dance—” They both turned. Big Shot glared at me.
I smiled and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.”
They looked at each other.
I said, “Your case, I mean.”
Big Shot’s face dropped. I think he was worried I was the youngest member in the history of the
American Bar Association Professional Conduct Committee
and I was going to disbar him on the spot, then drink one of his prized lattes.
Before he could jump up and run, I said, “I think there might be a way the wife’s statement would be admissible.”
Big Shot was about to say something, probably tell me to mind my own business, when Grunt leaned over and said, “I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Under Michigan v. Glower, you can’t bar the admission of a witness's statement against a criminal defendant if the statement bears an ‘adequate indication of reliability.’”
Grunt looked at Big Shot.
Big Shot said, “Who the fuck is this guy?”
I stuck out my hand, “Madison Young. But you can call me Maddy.”
He didn’t take it. He did stand and say, “I gotta run Chuck. You can listen to this idiot if you want.”
He walked out.
Chuck said, “Sorry about him. “
I shrugged, then said, “So you go to the judge and argue that he has to deem the wife’s statement reliable because it was nearly identical to the defendant’s own statement to the police, in that both were unclear as to whether the victim had drawn a weapon before the defendant assaulted her.”
Chuck said, “Where the hell did you pull that from?”
“
The Ghost Appellate
. Page five, paragraph three.”
“Ghost what?”
I lifted up the book and showed it to him. He laughed. I showed him the paragraph. He laughed again.
He asked, “You think it’s true. Glow V. Michigan, or whatever?”
“Probably. Most of the stuff these guys use is fact-based. I was reading up on the author a couple days ago. He was a lawyer for like fifteen years, so I’d guess that it is. But it’s easy enough to confirm.”
He nodded.
We made small talk for another ten minutes. He asked about law school and I ended up telling him my whole life story. Or at least my whole month long story, ending with my tragic failing of the Bar Exam seven days earlier.
Chuck said, “Yeah, I had to take it twice.”
Chuck had been here eight years. Boating accident. He asked, “What kind of law do you want to practice?”
“I always saw myself as a court appointed defender.” I explained how I’d heard too many stories about the poor getting the short end of the stick because they couldn’t afford a decent lawyer. But I think it had more to do with my growing up rich. Elite. By defending the poor, I would somehow purge the remaining blue blood cells from my system.
Chuck found this admirable. But he did ask, “You don’t want to be one of the good guys?”
“You mean like your friend there. No thanks.”
He laughed. “You mean Jeremy Palace. The golden child. Yeah, he pretty much sucks. He grew up like seven houses down from me.”
“The word
tool
comes to mind.”
After a good laugh, Chuck said, “As good as Jeremy is at being a tool, and he’s amazing at
that, he’s an even better lawyer. And that’s hard for me to say. The guy’s never lost a case. He’ll probably be DA by the time he’s thirty.”
“At least he’s ugly.” Jeremy looked like a Hugo Boss model. Probably another reason why I immediately disliked him.
After another good laugh, Chuck said, “I gotta get going. What’s the name of that case again?”
I ripped out the page and handed it to him.
He thanked me, then said, “If you’re looking for a job, I might be able to help.”
“Yeah?”
“I can put you in touch with a guy at the Public Defender’s Office.”
“That would be great.”
He took his phone out and rattled off a number. I wrote it on the inside back cover of the book. I asked, “What’s his name?”
“Jeremy Palace. He’s the deputy director over there.”
“Jeremy Palace? As in the aforementioned tool softener Jeremy Palace?”
“Jeremy Palace
Sr
." He threw a mischievous grin. "He's Jeremy's father.”
⠔
“Any good?”
I looked up. A petite, brunette, in a gray button down, blue jeans, and a white apron was leaning over the metal railing, trying to read the title of the book. I surmised she was my waitress. I was seated at one of two tables on the small patio of the restaurant, the other table occupied by two women and two golden retrievers. A tan umbrella shielded me from the early morning sun.
When I first looked up, I had to do a double-take. For a moment I thought it was her. But that was impossible. Still, the resemblance was uncanny.
Shaking off the thought, I said, “The first thirty pages were pretty good.”
She smiled twice. Once with her big brown eyes. A second time with small even lips and perfect teeth. She leaned down and picked up the book. Turned it over a couple times. Read the back synopsis.
It was the nose that reminded me of her. The small, perfect, nose.
After a long minute, she looked up and said, “Sounds boring, there aren’t even any vampires.”
I laughed. I thought about asking her if she was more of a
Twilight
girl, but she probably wouldn’t understand the reference. I did ask, “How do you know there aren’t any vampires? Maybe the judge is secretly a vampire?”
She read the back again. Looked up. “No mention of a judge vampire. Sorry.” She handed the book back to me.