AllFreeNovel
Share Us
To my goddamn heart.
Like a spear has gone through it—direct hit, right through me and out the back.
It’s not just the suspicion that the bastard did it.
No, it’s something even worse.
It’s the fear he might get away with it.
Because of me.
Because I get him off.
You want the whole truth and nothing but?
There it is.
It’s something else killing me.
Literally.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do for a living, who I am—defense lawyer—even before I took this case. Feeling as if there are too many times,waytoo many times, when I feel like I’m the onereallyplaying defense. Precisely because of what I do and who I am. As complicated as the job can be, it all comes down to this simple fact, and no matter how noble we all tell ourselves we are:
Defense lawyers are scum buckets.
Weare scum buckets as a class, even though “class” is hardly a word the rest of the world generally uses in reference to us. We defend people the world has already decided are criminals and get looked at as criminals ourselves.
Often with good reason.
Barry Slotnick. Remember him? He went, what, eleven years without losing a case? He defended everybody from Joe Columbo, all the way to the Supreme Court, to the subway shooter, Bernhard Goetz. F. Lee Bailey helped O.J. get off and Dr. Sam Sheppard, even if he didn’t do nearly as well with a Jersey doctor, Carl Coppolino, accused of poisoning his wife to death.
I met Bailey a few times. Had drinks with him once. He told me there was a point in the Coppolino case when the good doctor said, “Lee, I didn’t kill my wife.”
And Bailey said, “But let’s face it, Carl, you didn’t do very much to keep her alive.”
I didn’t do it.
And guess what?
Sometimes they’re telling the truth.
Just not always.
Anne Bremner. Maybe you’ve seen her on television. She defended Michael Jackson, and Amanda Knox. Never lost a civil case in her life.
I’ve never lost a case. Me. Jane Smith.
Civil or otherwise.
And yet there’s still something wrong with this picture. Not the whole picture. Just too much of it. Because there is always the chance that we’re all using our not insubstantial skills to set a guilty person free.
I walk my private trail in the Springs and think these thoughts in the gathering darkness. What if my client really did kill three innocent people? By all accounts, it was a very nice family, even if the daughter was a bit of a wild child. What if he did take out the whole family?
What aboutthat?
So why did I take the Jacobson case? The obvious reason is because thatisour justice system. That’s the way it works. Everybody’s entitled to a defense. And even though it can make me sick sometimes along with just about everybody else, the system actually works most of the time.
And I do stand to make a boatload of money, and sorry for the boat reference, Nick Morelli. The stage does happen to be enormous. On top of that, the attention this is bringing to me is even more enormous. Even if I lose the case and Jacobson is convicted, my career will have changed forever. What do they talk about in the mob? Made men? I’m a madewomanalready just being in play with Rob Jacobson.
