The Furthest City Light Page 6

  And I said, “I thought I was kissing a tabby cat.” Which we thought was hilarious.

  I can’t recall if we kissed again, but an hour or so before dawn I remember following her down a narrow hallway into an overly bright kitchen. As I stood there shielding my eyes, I saw a table covered with various foods, all of it alive and wriggling. I watched Leslie reach for the chicken wings and stopped her just in time.

  “Watch out, Les,” I warned, “they’re alive!”

  She dropped the wing in horror. “Oh my God, you’re right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We stumbled down some streets in the dark and ended up at the Charles River where we bushwhacked for a while until we found a secluded bench overlooking the water. The neon lights from the Cambridge side of the river turned our watery view into a shimmering pink and purple tapestry. We listened to the ancient sound of frogs and to the leaves rustling in the wind.

  When we finally woke up, we were lying on the bench with our arms wrapped around each other. Leslie’s face was pressed against my neck. The sun was high in the sky and I guessed it was almost noon.

  “Wow,” Leslie whispered, “wasn’t that the most amazing night?”

  I thought of all the terrible things that might have befallen us. But hadn’t. “We were very lucky.”

  She nodded happily. “I know. I can’t wait to do it again.”

  My first and only foray into the mind-altering world of hallucinogens. After that, I decided I liked being in control of myself and as much of my environment as possible. And so, unlike Leslie, I passed up spending the next six years doing drugs, continued my education, and became a criminal defense attorney instead. The last time I saw Leslie she was heading off to join a commune somewhere in Tennessee. Although I never tripped again, I still carry a permanent souvenir from the adventure. Whenever I’ve been under prolonged stress, I suffer flashbacks from the drug: the atoms in the air begin to dance and everything around me seems to be alive and breathing.

  “How lucky can you get?” Vickie joked when I first told her about it. “Yogis spend years in silent meditation in order to experience the same thing.”

  ***

  The night before the pretrial motions hearing in Emily’s case, I lay in bed with Vickie, holding her for a couple of minutes before she went to sleep. Her strong lean body never failed to astonish me. How could just yoga, walking and gardening make anyone so fit? I was even more fit, of course, but I worked at least ten times harder. Since I was feeling wide-awake and antsy, I figured I would read a few more chapters from The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (a book I’d started in college and was determined to finish before I died) and then slip into unconsciousness.

  Vickie sighed in my arms. “You’ve been working so hard, sweetheart.”

  “Doctors and lawyers,” I murmured.

  “Yes, but I control the number of hours I work and you don’t.”

  My body stiffened slightly. “I try but—unlike you—I don’t have the luxury of turning down a client.”

  “Exactly.” But then she sighed again, a lovely sound that meant she didn’t want to argue.

  Thank God, I thought, then snuggled closer, rubbing my nose against hers the way my parents always used to rub theirs together. Once, when I was seven, I asked what they were doing. “It’s an Eskimo kiss,” my father explained. I was confused. “But aren’t we Jewish?” My father nodded. “This is the special Jewish Eskimo kiss.” My mother giggled. “Very rare,” she added. And then both of them were laughing. When I told Vickie the story, she clapped her hands delightedly. “Let’s be as happy as they were!” I didn’t remind her that later on my father died and that after that, my mother was never very happy again.

  I brushed my hand across my girlfriend’s breasts, considered making love but decided there wasn’t enough time. “Go to sleep,” I murmured.

  Vickie began tracing the worry lines along my forehead. “I just wish you could do your job without it taking so much out of you.”

  “I can’t,” I said simply.

  “I know.” She made a face. “Will it go all right tomorrow?”

  “I hope so,” I said, ignoring the rest of her concerns. For the past year and a half, she’d worried that the stress of public defending was taking too much of a toll on me. I disagreed but pretended to consider the idea of going into private practice where I’d have a normal caseload, normal hours, and a much less interesting job. You’d think being married to a doctor would be great, but in many ways it wasn’t. She was an internist, not an oracle, but try telling her that.

  Vickie hesitated. “Is anything in the room moving?”

  I knew what she meant. “The drapes are breathing a little.”

  She looked like she might start lecturing me again but didn’t. “When you finish Emily’s case, after you’ve won it, I’ll take you on vacation.”

  “That sounds lovely. I’d like to go somewhere peaceful and quiet where there isn’t any crime.”

  Vickie laughed. “I know it’s hard to believe, but the vast majority of people right here in Boulder don’t even think of committing crimes.”

  “Really?” I asked, like a wide-eyed child who’s just been told that fairies and elves are always around us ready to help in any way they can.

  “Really,” she promised, and kissed my forehead like my mother used to when she was young and my father was alive and she was carelessly happy.

  “I’m a little tired,” I admitted.

  “I know.” She paused. “You genuinely love this client, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I do. And I feel sorry for her as well. I want her to have a life.”

  “Well I hope you win, for both your sakes.”

  “Me too.” I sensed her next question before she could speak it and shook my head. “Defeat is inconceivable.”

  “Yes sir,” she saluted.

  “A little louder please.”

  “YES SIR.”

  “Good. Now pass me that thick heavy novel and go to sleep.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You know,” I said, “except when we make love, I’d like you to act this way all the time.”

  She snorted. “In your dreams, baby.”

  ***

  Earlier in the week, Donald had located Hal’s ex-fiancée, who lived in Littleton, a suburb of Denver only thirty miles away. He’d simply looked through Hal’s high school yearbook and found her. In 1956, she’d been Janet Roberts. Now she was Janet Ellers. When Donald told her why he was calling, she asked if she could talk to me in person. I met her the following day at a trendy new vegetarian restaurant in Denver.

  When I first saw her in front of the restaurant I was so shocked I stopped walking and simply stared, my jaw dropping open the way an amateur actress might register a bad surprise. That bastard, I thought. Janet lifted a tentative hand to acknowledge me.

  “I know,” she said as I approached. “I look just like her. I saw her picture in the paper when she was arrested. Let’s go inside.” She ushered me through the door and found us a table by the window.

  “It’s uncanny,” I said.

  “Yes.” Even her eyes were a similar blue, but less opaque. It was like looking at the Emily that got away, the one who finished college, pursued a career, got married and had children. The Emily who never learned to flinch. My stomach hurt just looking at her.

  A young energetic waitress appeared with a pitcher of water and filled our glasses. Immediately, I drained my glass and asked for more. Janet picked up her menu, dropped it, and picked it up again.

  “I felt so bad when I read about the murder,” she said. “The reporter quoted you as saying that you would rely on self-defense.”

  “That’s correct,” I said, waiting to find out if she was the ally I hoped she was.

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Why?”

  She took a deep breath and then let it out. “Because I believe she’s telling the truth, that she
killed him in self-defense.”

  “Did he hit you, too?” I asked.

  She drummed her fingers on the table. “I think I’ve been waiting thirty years to tell this to someone.”

  I nodded but said nothing. Every criminal defense lawyer learns how to act like a therapist, or they find another profession.

  “Only once,” she finally said. “Actually, he just shoved me really hard and I fell against a table. Immediately, he was apologetic and assured me it would never happen again, he was so sorry. I wanted to believe him, but I’d seen something in his eyes just before he pushed me, something cold, almost reptilian, which scared the hell out of me. I knew I had to break it off with him, but I also knew I shouldn’t tell him why.”

  The waitress returned and we ordered a few dishes off the menu. Neither of us was hungry. While we waited for our food, which we wouldn’t eat, she told me the rest of her story—how she managed to sidestep Emily’s fate. She’d held off for more than three months. Finally, when the Weld County Sheriff’s Department hired him, she found her way.

  “For as long as I’d known Hal, he’d always wanted to be in law enforcement. While other boys fantasized about becoming an astronaut or a doctor who discovers the cure for cancer, Hal always dreamed about arresting the bad guys and locking them up.”

  Janet went to her parents and told them she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life worrying whether her husband would come home at the end of each day. She asked them to break the news to Hal and his family. Although Hal’s mother, Louise, assured her parents that Hal was willing to choose another career, Janet refused to hear of it; her husband, she said, would always hold it against her. And so she managed to extricate herself.

  “Did your parents suspect anything?” I asked.

  “You know, I think they knew it wasn’t the real reason, but they didn’t ask. They just supported my decision. I’ve always been grateful, especially now.”

  We picked at our food and wondered out loud why Emily hadn’t seen the writing on the wall the way Janet had.

  “She probably did,” I said. “She just didn’t run.”

  Janet pushed her plate away, and then dropped her napkin on top of it. Outside our window, a river of people flowed down Colfax Avenue on their way back to work. “I know this sounds ridiculous,” she said, “but I actually feel a little guilty.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “It sounds ridiculous because it is, but I understand what you’re saying. Because you managed to get away, your look-alike had to suffer in your place. Emily on the cross.”

  She laughed. “Something like that. It truly took my breath away when I saw her picture.” She paused. “Do you think it would be too painful for her to meet me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, giving up on my food as well. “I’ll think about it. I wish there were some way you could testify at her trial.”

  Janet pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the table. “Please, let me pay. I’d be happy to testify, but would it be admissible? I’m a paralegal, but I mostly work on civil cases.”

  I made a face. “No, probably not. It was a minor incident compared to the abuse we’re alleging Emily suffered and it happened thirty years ago. I’ll file the motion, but I can’t imagine Judge Thomas letting it in.”

  We stood up to go. “Well,” she said, “I’m willing to help in whatever way I can. I want to support her.”

  We hugged and I watched her walk down the avenue, tall and straight, back to the law firm where she worked, the Emily that might have been. And then I thought of my real client snug in her cell at the Boulder County Jail, dreaming her life away.

  ***

  In a murder case, you can’t file too many pretrial motions. Twenty-five is good, fifty is better. If nothing else, you might set up some error that could later be appealed if your client gets convicted. Compared to most murder cases, however, Emily’s was pretty straightforward. She’d either acted in self-defense or she hadn’t. There were no snitches in the case, no codefendant confessions, no critical scientific evidence or procedures to litigate. The blood was Hal’s, the confession Emily’s. The victim was dead and the only other eyewitness was my client.

  Still, I’d managed to draft thirty-seven motions, some of them demanding additional information, some moving to suppress various searches and statements, and the rest requesting the court to rule favorably on the admissibility of “crucial” defense evidence—Dr. Midman’s and Janet’s testimony—and unfavorably on the admissibility of “highly inflammatory and prejudicial” prosecution evidence—photos of the autopsy, Hal’s life insurance policy, et cetera.

  My strategy was to fight hard on every single motion as if any adverse ruling would be a major violation of my client’s constitutional rights. Because the judge would rule against me on every substantive motion, I was hoping he’d feel guilty enough to give me what I really needed: Dr. Midman’s testimony. If he did, it would be a first. I knew Jeff would strenuously oppose it, but I had the advantage of being in a jurisdiction where it wasn’t nice to make the defense lawyer cry. I needed my expert. I had to have her. If it meant lying down on the courtroom floor, kicking my pumps off and screaming, then so be it. Later, I could always change my name and practice law somewhere else.

  There was only one case, a probation revocation hearing, scheduled before ours. Emily and I sat in the jury box and watched Ellen Silver—the new baby lawyer in our office—cross-examine the defendant’s probation officer. I tried to pay attention so that I could give Ellen some helpful feedback, but I was feeling too distracted. Dr. Midman hadn’t arrived yet and I was getting a little nervous.

  Emily patted my hand. “She’ll be here, Rachel. She’s very reliable.”

  “How do you know?”

  My client smiled. “Because except for my intimate partners, I’m an excellent judge of character.”

  I turned to look at her. “So Hal wasn’t your first lover?”

  Emily blushed. I loved that about her. “No, I had one other boyfriend—lover—in college.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell. It lasted about nine months and then I received a letter informing me it was over. C’est la vie. So, what’s the game plan today?”

  “Wait a minute. You’re changing the subject too fast. Did you love him, and why did he break it off?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.” One of the other inmates had trimmed her hair in a very becoming way. Emily was always pretty but unlike most of my long-term clients who typically gained ten to fifteen pounds eating the starchy jail food, Emily was losing weight. I wondered if she was secretly worrying about the case but didn’t want to tell me. She hated, as she put it, “to distress” me.

  I waited patiently.

  “Don’t be so nosy. How could this possibly be relevant?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know whether it’s relevant or not. Maybe I am just being nosy, but I represent you on a charge of first-degree murder. Your life is in my hands.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Yes, I loved him and he didn’t tell me the reason he wanted to end it. I felt hurt and then I got over it. Satisfied?”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Speaking of past lovers, I had lunch a few days ago with a woman named Janet Ellers.”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, Hal’s ex.”

  “Right. How did you know her name?”

  Emily smiled mysteriously. “I have my ways. Actually, Hal and I used to talk about her. We didn’t keep any secrets.”

  I wondered if I should tell her what Janet looked like. I doubted he’d told her that. If it helped cut some of Emily’s loyalty toward him, I was all for it, but what if it backfired and simply caused more pain, more caving in?

  “One day,” Emily said, reading my mind as usual, “I was looking through Hal’s wallet trying to find a ticket from the dry cleaners, and I found an old photo tucked behind some other pictures. It was Janet’s.”

  “
Oh,” I said. “So you know what she looked like?”

  “She looked like me when I first headed off to college.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? Oh Rachel, sometimes you’re so young and idealistic, so sure of yourself. I put it back in his wallet. I knew how it felt to be rejected.”

  When would I ever learn? Like all of the favorite people in my life, Emily refused to be pigeonholed. Sometimes she acted according to my invisible script, but just as often, she ignored it. How unfair, I thought: to be the best possible defense attorney I had to be a control freak, and at the same time I had to understand and even anticipate that nothing would ever go the way I expected. No wonder I was confused.

  By the middle of the afternoon we’d resolved every motion except the one concerning Dr. Midman, who’d shown up on time looking sleek and elegant (a babe, Vickie would have said). There had been no surprises. As I’d predicted, Judge Thomas granted most of my discovery motions and denied everything else. Janet would not be allowed to testify, whereas the crime scene video, autopsy photos and Hal’s insurance policy were all coming in. Since each of the searches in the case as well as Emily’s statements to the police passed constitutional muster, they were also admissible.

  “All right now,” Judge Thomas announced. “Shall we deal with Ms. Stein’s final motion concerning Dr. Midman?”

  Jeff and I both nodded. I hoped he was as tired as I was.

  “I’ve read your briefs,” the judge said, “as well as an offer of proof from the defense. I understand, however, that Ms. Stein would like Dr. Midman to take the stand and summarize her proposed trial testimony. I will allow a short presentation.”

  I stood up. “Thank you, Judge. As you know, the only issue in this case is self-defense. Without Dr. Midman’s expert testimony concerning the battered woman syndrome, a jury can’t be expected to understand why my client reacted the way she did. Unless Dr. Midman is allowed to educate them concerning the syndrome and to give her opinion as to whether Ms. Watkins exhibits all of the characteristics of a battered woman, my client won’t receive a fair trial. I can’t stress how pivotal this testimony is to our case—”