AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“OK, shoot,” Yuki said.
And then the laughs were over and the real interview began. Zac Jordan asked about her first job in corporate law and her reasons for going to the DA’s Office, and then he started drilling down on the cases she’d worked from the beginning of her time with the DA.
Yuki had lost nearly all the cases she’d prosecuted in her first three years, and Zac Jordan seemed to know each case as well as if he’d been sitting in the courtroom. He questioned her on every soft opening statement, every missed opportunity, every time opposing counsel had trampled her with superior litigation experience.
Well, yeah, she’d been outgunned in several cases, but there were usually contributing factors: faulty police work, a witness who changed her testimony, a defendant who committed suicide before Yuki made her closing argument. Depressing, deflating “not guilty” verdicts had made her even more determined to sharpen her game. Which she had done.
Meanwhile, here she sat, having to defend her fairly pathetic win/loss ratio to a man she didn’t know, who might or might not offer her a job she didn’t necessarily want.
When Zac Jordan dug into the infamous Del Norte ferry shooter’s trial, in which the defendant had killed four people and had been found legally insane, Yuki really had had enough.
By definition, the shooter was crazy.
But she had to try him for multiple homicides. That was her job.
So she forced a smile and said to the hotshot across the desk from her, “Well, gee, Zac. I have always done my best, and I’
ve been promoted several times. I really don’t understand why you asked to see me. Did you just bring me in so you could stick it to me?”
“Not at all. I needed to hear your side of these cases because we’re always the underdogs. How would you feel about defending the poor, the hapless, and the hopeless?”
“I don’t know,” Yuki said, abandoning her plan to get the job offer knowing that if she didn’t want it, she could turn it down.
“See if this is of interest to you, Yuki,” Zac said, handing her a file. “I have a case that desperately needs to be tried. The victim was arrested outside a crack house where some dope slingers had been shot. He was running. He had a gun. The cops had probable cause to arrest him, but this kid was fifteen and had a low IQ and for some damned reason, his parents weren’t there. Although he maintained that he only found the gun, that it wasn’t his, the cops muscled him into waiving his rights, and then he was squeezed until he gave a confession.
“While this poor schnook was awaiting trial, maybe a week after his arrest, he was murdered in jail. If he’d had a trial, he might have proven his innocence, and I do believe he was innocent. I believe he was victimized by the cops who interrogated him and that he should never have gone to jail at all.
“I’m going to have to ask something of you, Yuki. Think about this overnight and see how you feel tomorrow morning. You’re my first choice for this job, but I’m talking to someone else, too, and I have to make a hire right away.
“Give me a call either way, OK?”
CHAPTER 14
YUKI HAD BEEN lying awake in bed since Brady got up at four and started bumping into things as he tried to dress in the dark.
“You can turn on the light,” she said.
“I’m good. My socks. I can’t tell if they’re blue or black even when the light is on.”
He came to the side of the bed, sat on the edge of it, and kissed his wife.
“Why are you up?” she asked him.
“A drug lab was shot to shit. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”
Yuki thought, Later might be too late. He was checking his gun, strapping on his shoulder holster.
“Brady?”
“Hmm?”
“C’mere a sec.”
He came back to the bed and stood above her in the dark, zipping up his Windbreaker.
“I have to tell you something big,” she said. “I’m going to leave the DA’s Office.”
“What? Yuki, what are you talking about?”
