Atty at Law Page 5

  I immediately thought of Frankie. A tangle-haired mutt I’d played with that morning. He looked like Benji, the dog from that old movie, but skinnier, with a dirty, mangy look that no amount of care and brushing seemed to fix. But his eyes were wise and sad and patient. When I looked into those eyes, I pictured an old family dog who was good with toddlers.

  His cage had a pink tag.

  I didn’t stop to think. I ran out of the room to Frankie’s cage. I turned to face Megg, and laced my fingers in the wire of the cage door. “I won’t let you.”

  Megg wiped away a tear. “You may not believe it, Atty, but I hate it as much as you do. It’s just something we have to do.”

  I could feel Frankie’s warm tongue licking my fingers.

  “You don’t have to do it to this dog. This dog is adoptable. This dog, all these dogs and cats, they need someone to speak up for them. Individually. They need a lawyer. How can you kill a dog like this, without even giving him a hearing?”

  Megg didn’t say anything. She just gave me a sad, anguished look that reminded me of the hallway in her house, full of photos of dead pets and relatives.

  “Megg,” I said. “Let me be the lawyer for these animals. Every one of them needs an advocate. Somebody to make their case before you do this.”

  Megg snatched the pink tag off Frankie’s cage. “Here,” she said. “You want to save Frankie? Then pick another dog to take his place. Go ahead.”

  I looked up and down the rows of cages. Bert the beagle. Harriet the sheepdog. Every one a dog we knew, all of them completely unaware that I had the power of life or death over them.

  “These dogs do need an advocate,” Megg said. “But I’m not the judge you need to make your case with. There are enough homes out there for all of these animals, even in a poor county like Strudwick. There are people who sell puppies at fruit stands by the road. At flea markets, at pet stores. There are people who want a dog and never got around to getting one. Those are the people who need to hear Frankie’s case. The people who could come in here and adopt Frankie, but haven’t.”

  All was grim and silent for a moment. Megg and I stared at each other. Martinez, as he often does in moments of stress, stared at his phone.

  “Cat videos,” he said calmly.

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “Cat videos. They’re the most popular thing on the Internet. People post little kitten videos all the time on their sites just to get people to visit, even if it’s a site about bridges or trains or something. We could make cute videos about each animal. And post them, and invite people to come adopt them.”

  Megg nodded. “I’ve considered that before. Honestly, I don’t know that it would work here. There are a lot of people in Strudwick County who still don’t have the Internet.”

  “Why do we care where the kittens and puppies go?” Martinez said. “If somebody in Montgomery wants to drive down to Houmahatchee and adopt a kitten, the kitten’s still adopted. Tell the whole world about our pets.”

  Megg grinned. “That’s pretty brilliant,” she said. “You know, the Herald used to have a column where they’d show one of our animals in the paper every week, with a little write-up. But then they cut back on staff and they stopped doing it. Maybe if you and Atty write a column and send it to them every week, they’ll publish it again. So there we get the local audience, too.”

  My fingers relaxed on the cage, just a bit. “All this doesn’t save Frankie.”

  “Maybe it saves the next Frankie, though,” Megg said.

  Frankie licked my fingers again. I let go of the wire. “I need to say goodbye,” I said.

  Megg opened the cage. I kneeled. Frankie came up to me with expectant eyes, as if he was sure I held a treat in my hand. I hugged him.

  “Goodbye, Frankie,” I said. “We love you, and we will always love you. I hope there’s some way you can know that.”

  We heard a honk outside. Megg wiped away more tears.

  “Caring for others is the cure for all sadness,” she said. “The truck is here. Let’s get back to work.”

  6

  By the time Dad pulled up, Martinez and I had it all worked out. We’d set up an online video channel called Strudwick Puppy and Kitten Rescue. We’d start with the cutest, smallest animals, playing with fuzzy balls. Every video would have the address and phone number of the county animal shelter at the end, with directions on how to get there from Atlanta, Montgomery, and Panama City. A Twitter feed and Facebook page with links to the videos. If it caught on, we’d start posting videos of the older, scruffier-looking dogs, too.

  “What if we put up a video of a dog and he doesn’t get adopted?” Martinez asked. “What if he, you know, turns out like Frankie? Do we keep the video up? That would be creepy.”

  “Take it down,” I said. “If people want cute puppy videos, they need to support cute puppies. And if people ask, we’ll tell them that.”

  I’d forgotten all about my other troubles until Dad walked into the animal shelter.

  “Come on, Atty, Martinez,” he said. “We’re going to jail.”

  I should have told Dad right then and there about the visit from the sheriff’s deputy. I didn’t.

  As it turns out, we weren’t going to jail because of me. Dad had a new case, a big one, and he needed to meet his client at the jail.

  “Capital murder,” Dad said. “You know what capital murder is?”

  I couldn’t say anything. The idea that I too could go to jail for something filled me with a kind of icy fear. What was this feeling, exactly? Shame?

  “So he shot someone in Montgomery?” Martinez asked. “That’s the capital.”

  “Capital murder is the most severe murder charge you can face,” Dad said. “If convicted, you could face the death penalty. And you won’t believe who the defendant is. The last person you’d suspect of murder.”

  “Mom? You?” Martinez asked. “Atty?”

  “Shut up, Martinez,” I snapped.

  Dad shook his head.

  “Jethro Gersham,” he said. “You know. Mister Jethro from the Speedy Queen. What was it you used to call him? Matterfike?”

  Jethro Gersham lived in a peeling-paint house near the Speedy Queen milkshake place on Galvez Road. Nobody knew exactly how old he was, but he sure seemed old. He’d been on Social Security for as long as anybody could remember, and he’d worked for decades as a farmhand harvesting shade tobacco in Florida. Dad said he must have been retired a while, because the tobacco farms in the Panhandle died out years ago. Yet Jethro was tall and slim and nimble and could be seen walking down the highway—always in tennis shoes and jeans and a windbreaker—on the coldest of nights and the hottest of days. When people asked Jethro how old he actually was, he’d just laugh and say that black don’t crack. But to me he seemed totally cracked. With his cloudy right eye, close-shaved white hair, and the deep grooves in his cheeks, he seemed to me like he was made out of wood or rock, cracked again and again by the hot sun until nothing could really hurt him.

  If you stopped for a cone at the Speedy Queen, there was a good chance you’d run into him in the parking lot. He’d ask where you’re headed. You’d tell him, and ask if he needed a ride.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he always said. He said “matter of fact” a lot. Thus the nickname Martinez and I always used behind his back. Matterfike this and matterfike that.

  Strudwick County fathers always lectured their daughters about how you never, ever, ever pick up a hitchhiker, because they’re dangerous. They had to preach extra hard, because in reality everybody made an exception for Mr. Jethro. So the notion of Jethro actually killing somebody really was a shocker. I could remember him sitting beside me in the car when I was seven, holding Nutter McNutters between his thumb and forefinger and examining the toy squirrel with his good eye, before smiling and handing him back to me.

 
“Jeez, Dad,” I said. “Who did he kill? How?”

  “Well, he’s alleged to have killed J. D. Ambrose, the guy who owns—well, owned—the pawnshop at the corner of Iberville and Galvez,” Dad said. “They found Jethro with a gun, and with a $225,000 lottery ticket that apparently belonged to Ambrose. Which makes for a tough case.”

  In case you’ve never been to a pawnshop, here’s how it works. If you’re short on money, you take some of your stuff—maybe a TV or radio—and sort of sell it to the pawnshop. The shop gives you a little money, say $15 for a TV, and they put your TV out on the shelves for other people to buy, for maybe $30 or $40. If you can scrape up the money to buy your TV from the pawnshop before someone else buys it, you can get it back. Otherwise, you’ve lost your TV. It’s kind of like taking out a loan, but easier, and I guess sadder sometimes. I know about pawnshops because sometimes stolen stuff turns up there, and the pawnshop owner winds up calling my dad to defend him on a stolen property charge.

  “The police say Jethro hocked his pistol at Ambrose’s shop a while ago,” Dad said. “It was looking like he wouldn’t get it back. Early last week, other customers saw him arguing loudly with Ambrose at the pawnshop, saying God would punish Ambrose for being a crook. A couple of days later, a customer comes in and finds Ambrose dead in the back office, shot with a .38 pistol. The police look through Ambrose’s cell phone and find that Jethro’s the last person Ambrose called. They pick up Jethro to talk to him, and Jethro admits he was there, and that he picked up the pistol, and that Ambrose simply gave him back the pistol because he was feeling generous because he’d just won the lottery.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I thought you said they caught Jethro with a lottery ticket in his pocket.”

  “Yep. That’s the problem,” Dad said. “The bullet in Ambrose is from the gun Jethro was carrying. The ticket is a winner—$225,000 in Florida’s Fantasy Five.”

  I shook my head. “So he’s guilty, then. He just shot Ambrose and took the ticket.” For a while I watched the landscape roll by and tried to imagine how the man who held Nutter McNutters in his hand could also be a killer.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said finally. “He sat right in this car with us, and he’s a killer, I can’t believe it.”

  “Put a pin in that thought, Atty,” Dad said. “Keep that thought hanging there, where you can see it. Because nobody’s guilty until they’re proven guilty. And I’m going to be the one arguing that he’s not guilty.”

  I could feel Martinez kicking the back of the car seat, the way he does when he wants attention.

  “I just realized something, Dad,” he said. “If you’re a lawyer for people who are accused of crimes, if that’s all you do, then there are times when you’re going to defend people who have really done the crime. I mean, somebody killed Ambrose, and whoever did it, they’re going to have a lawyer. How can you defend someone who killed someone?”

  “Easy,” Dad said. “Because I believe that everybody deserves to have an advocate. Every human being, no matter what they’ve done, needs one person on their side, to tell the story from their point of view. To make sure that justice is really done.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Martinez said. “Even a murderer?”

  “Even a guilty person deserves a day in court,” he said. “Suppose you got into a fight at school. Somebody came up to you and threw the first punch, and you punched back. What would happen to you?”

  “Well, sheesh,” Martinez said. “I’d get kicked out of school. Everybody knows that.”

  “Even if you didn’t start it?” Dad said.

  “Of course,” Martinez said, as if Dad was a complete dummy. “It’s zero tolerance. The teachers talk about it all the time.”

  “But what if somebody was there to speak for you?” Dad asked. “To say, Martinez is actually the victim, and the other guy attacked him?”

  Martinez shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t get in fights. I’ve never even thought about it. You know that.”

  “That’s good,” Dad said. “But I think you see what I mean. Think of some other thing. Talking in class, passing notes, running in the hall. Haven’t you ever gotten into trouble in school?”

  I put my hand up, so quickly that Dad flinched.

  “Don’t answer that, Martinez,” I said. “Dad, I don’t see how this is relevant to the conversation.”

  My dad looked at me with a smile.

  “You’re a born lawyer, Atty.”

  The Strudwick County Jail creeps me out. It’s not creepy the way jails are creepy on TV. There are no bars on any of the doors. It’s not a dimly lit row of cells where the light of the setting sun climbs across the wall and some guy plays the harmonica.

  Think instead of a big flat building like some old high school. Inside, bright fluorescent light like a convenience store. Tan cinder-block walls and clerks who talk to you through a thick glass window. Sit in the waiting room, and you hear big steel doors opening and closing, and radios squawking about “B Pod open” and “B Pod closed” and so on. Outside, behind a tall fence with barbed wire at the top, guys in orange jumpsuits lounge around on picnic tables and stroll around a basketball court. Most of them look sad and tired. A few of them look scary. It’s like a giant version of the principal’s office at school, except people stay there for months.

  I’d been here a couple of times before, with Dad, just to pick up paperwork. One time I held a baby for a woman who was waiting to visit her husband. She had two other kids, toddlers, running all over the waiting room. She had baby-barf stains all over her shirt and looked like she could use some sleep.

  Martinez, however, had never been to the jail. He was excited.

  “The slammer,” he whispered. “I always wondered what it looks like in here.”

  The waiting room was empty this time. We went up to the little thick-glass window and Dad talked to the woman on the other side.

  “I’m here to see Jethro Gersham. I’ve been appointed to represent him,” Dad said. “And if it’s okay, my kids are going to wait here in the lobby.”

  As he spoke, one of the big metal doors opened, and out came two sheriff’s deputies in their tan uniforms. My heart almost stopped. Neither of them was Troy Butler—but what if Troy Butler was here? What if he came through the lobby while we were waiting for Dad? What if he ran into Dad in the jail and told him how he’d come to talk to me earlier today? The thought made me feel sick. I tugged on Dad’s sleeve.

  “Dad, we need to go in with you,” I said.

  “What?” he said. “No way. This is a jail, and I’m having a conference with a client. It’s confidential.”

  “We’re not staying alone here at the jail,” I said. “It’s creepy. And we’re just kids. I’d feel safer with you.”

  All lies. Except there was a real chance Dad would run into Troy Butler here, and if that happened, I wanted to be there, too. Maybe I could steer Dad away from talking to the deputy. Maybe I could . . . I don’t know. When you decide you feel guilty about something, when you decide to hide something, all logic goes out the window.

  “What about you, Martinez?” Dad said. “Are you nervous here in the lobby?”

  “Oh, Dad, I’m so scared here in the lobby,” he said. “I’d rather be with you.”

  When Dad turned back to the woman in the window, Martinez looked at me with an openmouthed face of joy.

  “You’re such a bad actor,” I whispered.

  “He bought it,” Martinez whispered back.

  And so we went in. Radio squawks, a buzz, and the sound of a big metal door opening. Into a little windowless room with one bare table. A deputy—thank goodness, not Troy Butler—walked in with Jethro.

  He didn’t look like the same person we knew. He wasn’t just handcuffed; he had chains on his arms, chains that attached to a set of chains on his legs, so he could walk only in a shuffle. Later I realize
d that his orange jail jumpsuit was way too big for him; they probably didn’t have the right size for a tall, skinny guy, so he was wearing a prison suit big enough for a football player. He almost tripped himself up, waving at us excitedly.

  “Hey!” he said to me. “I know you! You the girl with the squirrel toy.”

  I laughed. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

  “Matter of fact, a guy don’t forget a white girl with a black brother,” he said. “You don’t see that every day in Houmahatchee, matter of fact.”

  Dad motioned to the deputy. “Before you go, can you take the chains off? He’s got some things to sign.”

  “No sir,” the deputy said. “He’s a capital murder suspect. And there are children here.”

  “He’s my friend, and he’s innocent. And anyway, you’ll be just outside the door,” Dad said.

  “We’ll scream in agony if we need you,” Martinez said. Dad glared at him; I punched Martinez on the arm.

  “He can sign with the chains on,” the deputy said. “I’ll be right outside.”

  We all sat down at the table. Dad took a bunch of papers out of his briefcase and spread them out.

  “Here’s some paperwork you’ll need to sign so I can take you on as attorney,” he said. “We’ll need to do this before we get started. Normally, I’d talk to you about the circumstances of the case, but we’re not alone and we need confidentiality when we discuss those matters.”

  “I got nothing to hide. I told the cops. He give me back my gun, and he even give me a ticket for it, and that’s all I know,” Jethro said. “I didn’t kill nobody. Matter of fact.”

  Dad held up a hand. “That’s fine, we can talk about all of that later.”

  But it wasn’t fine with me. “You’re saying he gave you a lottery ticket? He just gave it to you?”

  “Atty, hush,” Dad said. “You’re not supposed to—“

  “He give me a ticket, just like you get at the store when you buy something,” Jethro said. “I always take the ticket so they can’t say I shoplifted.”