“You were lucky if it was seventy-two,” I remind him. “If we caught a case that was ongoing, we stayed on it. I was once on for six days straight on a kidnapping.”

Lightner sighs. “The point being, it’s all a blur to you.”

“Pretty much, yeah. And that’s just the bad news. Here’s the worse news,” I say. “Records. You think it’s hard to track down cases where I filed an appearance and prosecuted someone? Try finding Felony Review records. Forget computers. Back then? We’d be lucky if my name was scribbled at the top of a sworn statement, which would be clipped to a pressboard and thrown into some box. Who knows if those paper records even exist anymore? For closed cases? The appeals exhausted? I’m not sure they exist at all.”

That takes the air out of the room. Everyone looks fried. I’m sure I do, too.

“Still, it’s a start,” Joel says. “We started with the most logical step, remember? We looked at violent ex-cons who were released in the last year. We thought we struck out because you didn’t prosecute any of them. But now we can look at them again, right? Maybe you got a confession from one of them.”

He’s right. We have a fresh start. We’re in the game, at least.

“This guy has definitely pissed me off,” Joel says. “I’m not letting this go. I’m seeing it through.”

“Me, too,” says Linda.

The others join in, too.

“We’re going to catch this prick,” Linda says. “Nobody sends pizza to my house I didn’t ask for.”

69.

Shauna

Friday, July 19

Bradley is doing redirect on one of the architects, talking about exciting things like soil samples, and my mind wanders. The jurors’ minds are wandering, too. This is the ninth day of a trial about technicalities and specifications, and it’s been a long week for them. Judge Getty has made noise about getting us out early today to get a start on the weekend, and the reaction was positively celebratory.

I’ve instructed Bradley that every witness on our side, other than our clients, can be no more than thirty minutes on direct examination. I don’t want the jury to blame us for wasting their time, for being the stereotypical blowhard lawyers. Our evidence is concise, to the point, like our case.

Still, I am B-O-R-E-D and, knowing that this is the final witness of the day and I’m basically done, my mental machinery grinds to a halt. And my thoughts drift, as they have so often during this trial, to my law partner.

Under the table, I activate my cell phone, keeping the volume on silent. If Judge Getty saw me, he would string me up. I send a text message to Joel: WTF?

“WTF” stands for Pardon me, but I’m slightly miffed and require an explanation.

And I’m more than slightly miffed. Joel’s late on his assignment for me. He promised me yesterday and didn’t deliver. He comes back with a response right away: JUST FINISHED. YOU HAVE SOME FREE TIME? THIS REQUIRES FACE-TO-FACE.

“Hmph,” I mumble. That doesn’t sound good. I text him back that I expect to be back at my office by four, and I’ll make myself available anytime afterward. I consider asking for a hint, a little preview, but Joel, however boorish he may be, knows one thing, and that’s when to be discreet. He’s decided that this is one of those times.

Which is why I’m starting to worry.

70.

Jason

Friday, July 19

I put the finishing touches on an appeal I’m writing for a guy named Taylor Prince, who was caught up in a large seizure of heroin by a joint county-federal task force sixteen months ago. It was a big headline for law enforcement, the arrest of over twenty people on the city’s southwest side. Taylor wasn’t one of the ringleaders—this guy would have trouble leading his own shadow—but he was part of the muscle in the operation.

Last December, Taylor was convicted and got fifteen years, stiffer than some of his cohorts who took a plea and got single digits. Taylor opted for a trial, but it was against my advice, because no matter how much judges will deny it, they still fiercely impose the “trial tax” on those defendants who make them put twelve people in a box and clog up two or three days’ worth of court time. So the guys actually selling the dope got between seven and nine years; Taylor, who was little more than a security guard, a guy with a gun standing outside on watch, was guilty of the selling, too—thank you, laws of accountability—but then additionally had a gun charge tacked on. So now I’m asking the appellate court to do something they’ll never do—second-guess the trial judge on a sentence for convictions involving drugs and weapons.

Taylor is no genius and shouldn’t bother applying for sainthood, but he isn’t the worst guy who ever lived, either. He had an assault and battery conviction from three years ago, so he couldn’t get a decent job, and someone came along and said, Stand here all day with a gun and make sure nobody comes in, and we’ll pay you fifty bucks a day, and he took it. He took it because it seemed easy. He took it because fifty bucks a day was $350 a week, almost $18,000 a year, and because it put a roof over his wife and daughter’s heads and food on their table.

Though ten years my junior, Taylor grew up three blocks from where I lived in Leland Park, went to all the same schools, and started down the same route I was traveling. But Taylor didn’t have football to snatch him out of the quicksand like I did. I could have been that kid.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m still on my way to being that kid, if the last fifteen years of my life have just been an anomaly, an accident, I’ve been playing someone I’m not, and sooner than later I’ll surrender to the gravitational pull down to what I really am at heart, the son of a grifter and alcoholic, a directionless loser.

A knock at my door. Joel Lightner walks in.

“Hey.”

Then Shauna walks in.

“Hey.”

This doesn’t feel like a good thing. I smell a lecture. That’s if I’m lucky. If I’m not, it’s an intervention. We love you, Jason. We’re here for you. We want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Shauna closes the door, and I’m thinking, Intervention, not lecture.

“We’re going to talk,” says Shauna, “and you’re going to sit there and listen. When we’re done, you can tell us to go fuck off if that makes you happy. But you are going to listen.”

I swivel away from the computer and face them both. I don’t say anything, don’t accept her guidelines or reject them. Joel is fading back a bit, but is clearly with her on this.

“You know I’ve been concerned about you, and you know I think you have a painkiller addiction. We’ve sort of put that conversation on hold because I’ve been on trial. I don’t feel very good about that—in fact, if you want to know the truth, it tears me up inside—but it is what it is. But I think part of the problem is your girlfriend, Alexa. I think she’s enabling you. I think she’s scary, since I’m being honest. And that’s why I asked Joel to do me a personal favor and perform a background check on her.”

“You . . .” I look at her, then at Joel, with whom I recently spent a rather eventful evening, and yet I don’t recall this subject coming up.