2 Sisters Detective Agency(3)
Thad’s charges were laid out vaguely on my list, but I’d heard the story from other lawyers in the courthouse halls. Thad’s arrest related to an incident six months earlier, in which a local college sophomore had been found lying half-naked in bushes outside a frat-house party in the early hours of the morning. The girl hadn’t reported a sexual assault, probably because she couldn’t remember it, but pictures of her involved in sexual activity while obviously unconscious had circulated on the phones of some young men on campus in the following weeks. The girl had made an attempt on her own life, which had brought the whole tragedy to the attention of the police. The police had acquired the photographs and identified a scar on the wrist of her assailant as identical to that on Thad Forrester.
“You don’t need a pricey lawyer for this stage of the legal process,” I told Thad. “No rulings will be made on your case today.”
“How about you let me decide what I need,” the kid snapped, with the practiced tone of someone used to giving commands. “I’ve had friends wrapped up in this kind of bullshit before. Every second I’m in the courtroom is being analyzed, and the last thing I want is to be associated with some freaky fat clown for my very first hearing.”
I smiled and leaned in. “Mr. Forrester, from the brief of evidence attached to your file, these charges don’t look like bullshit at all. That’s your wrist in those pictures. Even this ‘fat clown’ can see that.”
“It won’t matter,” he said with a smile. “We have a plan.”
I backed up. I could see the rest of the case playing out as others had so many times before. There would be a large financial offer from the Forrester family to the girl’s in exchange for a withdrawal of the charges. If her family didn’t bite, Thad’s expensive legal team would invade the girl’s life like a disease, going after her sexual history, her grades, her family life, and her friends. Every slipup she’d had since she was in grade school would be exposed and examined under hot lights.
I’d dealt with scumbags like Thad a hundred times across my career as a juvenile public defender. I had to defend them, but that didn’t mean I had to stop them from digging their own graves. I matched Thad’s smile with my own.
Because I also had a plan. I would have the advisement hearing postponed, as he’d demanded, then I’d bring him to an interview room at the back of the courthouse under the guise of having him sign some release papers. There, while he relaxed, already mentally detached from the fat clown with the pink hair and the threat she posed to his courtroom reputation, I’d get Thad chatting about the night he assaulted the girl at the frat party, challenge his manhood, poke and prod him until he snapped. Little boys with big mouths like Thad didn’t want to listen—especially to women. They wanted to talk. They wanted to be listened to. Obeyed. That’s why witnesses had heard him bragging, why he’d taken and shared the pictures of the girl’s assault. Boys like Thad couldn’t keep quiet, and I knew the recording light on the front of the camera in interview room 3 wasn’t working.
“Wait here while I go get a coffee, little boy,” I said as the next client and her defender shuffled their way up to the tables before the judge. I gave Thad one last look as I turned to walk out of the courtroom.
That’s when I saw his attacker approaching.
Chapter 3
I’d seen the brief of evidence against Thad Forrester, including the photographs of his victim he’d taken with his phone. Constance Jones’s wide mouth and heart-shaped face were obviously a product of her father, a man I recognized now striding toward me up the courtroom’s center aisle. At first I thought that, like the parents of so many victims over the years, he was coming for me. It’s not uncommon for me to get berated for providing assistance of counsel to the young killers, rapists, thugs, and creeps of the Watkins region outside Denver. But one look in Mr. Jones’s cold, hard eyes told me exactly where he was going. Constance’s father was heading for Thad, and as I let my eyes fall from his face, I noticed a bulge at his hip.
Most people think you can’t get a gun into a courtroom in the US unless you’re a cop, a bailiff, or a US Marshal. Anyone who’s spent enough time in courthouses, however, knows there are a thousand ways to do it if you’re determined enough, if something has inspired you with enough icy fury to get the job done. You could sneak the gun in through the air-conditioning vents on the rooftop or mix it with equipment used by the thousands of workers who service the building throughout the year—plumbers, electricians, cleaners, painters, audio technicians, and repair crews. Hell, you could send it in on a coffee-and-sandwich cart while the vendor is out taking a leak. However Mr. Jones had done it, I realized I was the only thing standing between him and his vengeance. He was about to barge past me, his shoulder connecting with mine, when—
Freeze-frame.
Time locked in place.
It was only a fragment of a second, yet I spent incalculable moments suspended between two places. Was it ever all right to let violence go on unchecked, no matter who was committing the act or why? I knew Thad was guilty of inhumane acts. It hadn’t been art. It hadn’t been a protest. It hadn’t been youthful foolishness. In some ways there was only one true punishment for it, and if I just let events proceed, I would be allowing that punishment to take place.