The Christmas Wedding - James Patterson [5]
Run, Emily, run.
And Emily became a senior associate at Dale, Hardy, Dunwoodie, a law firm responsible for defending major British oil companies against stringent American environmental regulations that weren’t consistently or uniformly enforced.
Run, Emily, run.
And she was certain that this was the year she would be made partner. She was only twenty-nine years old. Partner before thirty was practically unheard of. But Emily felt she was perfectly capable of achieving the unheard-of.
So at precisely 5 a.m., she was on the 6 train hurtling down Lexington Avenue to the Financial District. At five thirty-five, fortified with only a no-foam skim latte, she was at her desk.
Oh, it was early, all right.
But when you worked at Dale, Hardy, one of the toughest law firms in New York, you had to play it tough and fierce yourself. As her first boss had told her, “If you don’t play tough here, we won’t just chew you up and spit you out. We’ll chew you up and then we’ll shit you out.” And that was from one of the nicer bosses, a woman.
Emily took a gulp of her latte, then checked her BlackBerry for the e-mails she had missed during the subway ride downtown.
One in particular jumped out.
Emily, sweets,
I’m assuming your silence since my last video means you’re swamped with work. So I assume that you’re deliriously happy about my marriage news. I’ll also assume that you and Bart will be coming up with sleigh bells on for Christmas. You wouldn’t let your mom down and miss her wedding? See you and Dr. Bart on Christmas, when all will be revealed. I love you. Both of you!
Well, Mom was right about one thing: Emily was definitely swamped. The fact that she billed six hundred dollars per hour for that swamping made it feel more overwhelming, not less. In the next few days her team was trying to land a huge oil monopoly in Edinburgh. She was personally researching a British Petroleum violation of a New Mexican desert preserve. And, finally, she was appearing in the New York Court of Appeals in less than four hours for one of Dale, Hardy’s rare pro bono cases.
She suddenly heard her mother’s voice in her head reciting the Summerhill family motto: “Be a giver, not a taker.” And the thing was, Emily believed in that philosophy. She just wasn’t living it very well.
Emily clicked on the file labeled “Eduardo Lopez.” Lopez was a forty-six-year-old father of four. He was accused of raping a woman in an elevator in the Sara Roosevelt housing project. He’d been convicted and had already served four years in prison. Now, even though there was new DNA evidence, supplied by the Innocence Project, that could probably exonerate him, the state prosecutors were fighting it. Why was that? Because it would embarrass the hell out of their department.
As for fighting? The attorney general’s office had no idea…Wait until they met Emily Summerhill in court.
Run, Emily, run.
Chapter 6
“I AM LIVING WITH human pigs, Señora Summerhill. And murderers. I miss my kids like the sunlight,” Eduardo Lopez told Emily as they held their brief visit in a hallway outside Judge Geraldine DeResta’s courtroom down at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan.
Eduardo, a small, frail man to begin with, seemed smaller and frailer than ever to Emily. The orange jumpsuit he wore made him look like an airless balloon. Three correctional police guarded him, as if this tiny would-be criminal had a shot at escaping, or harming Emily, which made no sense at all.
When they entered the courtroom, Judge DeResta was already seated. Emily knew her as a brusque, no-nonsense sort.
She also knew Assistant District Attorney Michael Petrillo as a fast-talking, street-smart attorney, almost as tenacious as Emily herself. Petrillo’s case was blatantly unjust and unfair, but sometimes that didn’t make a difference in a Manhattan courtroom.
“I’d like to make this as brief as possible,” Judge DeResta began. “Mr. Lopez is here on court visitation from Sullivan Correctional. Defense counsel claims new DNA evidence to enter in appeal. Please begin, Counselor,