The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [142]
Kloska watched a kid throw a rock at the house as another guy leapt up and down, hands over his head, egging the first dude on. No cops in sight. He scanned the screen, trying to figure out what had instigated all this anger. The helicopter rotated and then he saw it.
Rich bastard had turned on his lawn sprinklers.
53
“I FIGURED YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE my defense to some second stringer,” Derek Liu said. They were in an unadorned conference room more often used by the kind of jurors who would take hours to deliver their guilty verdict just so they could prolong their service through lunch.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Derek smiled. “I knew you’d come. You’re scared.”
“Right now I’m more interested in knowing your side of what happened.”
“This cop wouldn’t let up. I told him, ‘Don’t you have better stuff to do?’ But he wouldn’t let up and he kept saying I knew what my father must have done with that gun, but I wouldn’t say nothin’, and then he got in my face and I just gave him a little shove. Or maybe a big shove. I got a temper.”
Reggie looked at the complaint. “Had you ever seen Officer Borkowski before?”
“We got a little history.”
“What have you told them?”
“Nothing. Not a word, not a peep.”
“I need the truth if I’m going to defend you.”
“I told you if it came to it I could always trade my freedom for everything I know about that gun. It hasn’t come to that yet. And now you’re here.”
“Okay.” Reggie stretched his back, pulling his bent arms behind him like wings. “We’ll get it dismissed.”
“How?”
“I know the judge. I know the assistant state’s attorney. I know this court. In a few minutes they’ll be forced either to knock it down to a misdemeanor or let you go. Right now I suspect the court will be disinclined to put any more stress on the population of the county jail. If they believe you don’t know where that gun is, they’ll let you out on bond. I just need to convince them of that.”
Derek Liu shifted his weight hard to the back of his chair. “Good. But you realize that if at any time I’m ever dissatisfied with my representation, I’m holding cards here. What I know …”
“You don’t know anything,” Reggie said.
“Really?” He snorted his contempt.
Reggie lifted his thick briefcase and set it on the table. With his left hand, he removed a brown envelope and then a black high-heeled shoe. One at a time he placed six grisly black-and-white evidence photos on the table, producing each with a snap, like cards in a magic trick. “Solomon Gold did not kill your sister.”
The tendons in Derek Liu’s neck tightened and his face stiffened into a mask, disguising the pain and shock and horror these photographs could still deliver. Reggie wondered if Derek Liu could hear ten years of false justification and self-delusion collapsing like an imploded building inside the attorney’s mind. Reggie wondered if, through his grief, Derek Liu even noticed that these photos represented not only Solomon Gold’s innocence but also Reggie Vallentine’s guilt.
As the photos imparted the truth of one murder, Reggie recalled the true story of another.
A story he could never tell.
THE REST OF THE TRUTH
THE NIGHT Solomon Gold was murdered, he gave a loving glance at his violin, the Guarneri, before turning to face Reggie, his feet on springs. “That whole ‘Solomon Gold is also a victim here’ crap. I was skeptical. I was skeptical. You hardly even discussed whether or not I was guilty.”
Without looking up, Reggie said, “A defense attorney isn’t supposed to care whether his client is guilty.”
Gold rubbed his jaw and said something under a low chuckle.
“The prosecutor is the one who’s supposed to care about guilt,” Reggie said. “He has the power to bring charges. But you were a political opportunity for Brad Spelling. He didn’t care whether you were guilty or innocent, only that you were convicted.” Reggie raised his chin and tried to find Gold’s eyes in the poor light. “That offended me.” He had motivated himself throughout the trial with the