Scott Pratt - An Innocent Client

“Hush. Do you know why there’s nobody in this world I’d rather have on my side than you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because you’re a good man, Joe. It’s as simple as that. That’s why I married you and why I’ve loved you for all these years. That’s why your children adore you. It’s why you’ve stuck by Sarah all this time and why you went up there and sat with your mother. It’s why you’ve spent your life trying to help people. I hope you’re always just like you are now.”

Her words humbled me. I didn’t know what to say.

“When did Angel tell you what really happened?” she said.

“Not long before I came home.”

“That’s what I thought. That’s what set this off. It put you back in that house with your sister. When you add it to everything else that’s been going on with you lately, it isn’t surprising. I’m just glad you didn’t hurt yourself.”

So was I.

“You’re going to get through this,” Caroline said. “You’re a survivor. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever met.”

Caroline got up and walked over to the door that led to the garage. She opened it.

“And here’s someone else that loves you,” she said.

Rio trotted into the room, saw me, and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Come here, big boy,” I said. His ears perked and his tail began to wag. “Come over here and take a leak on my shoe.”

July 25

11:00 a.m.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, I slept well. There were no ambushes in the jungle to haunt me, no rapes or murders or flashes of dead children in the jungle, no raging rivers or deadly waterfalls.

I woke to the smell of coffee brewing and the sound of rain tapping steadily on the roof. I walked into the kitchen and looked outside. The sky was low and slate gray. A thin mist hung above the lake, and I knew it would be a long day of summer rain, the kind of rain that seems to cleanse the whole world.

Caroline was in the kitchen, wearing only a sports bra and a pair of biker shorts. When she hugged me, I lifted her off the floor and carried her to the bedroom. A half-hour later, we were lying in bed, pleasantly exhausted.

“What are you going to do today?” she said.

“Think,” I said. “I have to figure out what to do about Angel.”

“What are your options?”

“The first one would be to go to Deacon and tell him we’ve reconsidered and we want to make a deal. But as soon as I do that he’ll know she killed Tester and he’ll go hard-line on me. He’ll offer twenty years. The second option is to go back to trial on Monday and put Angel on the witness stand. If she tells the truth, I can argue self-defense or voluntary manslaughter because he sodomized her.”

“What’s the worst case if you go that way?”

“Worst case is they don’t believe her and find her guilty of first-degree murder. That means life. I don’t think there’s any way she gets the death penalty under these circumstances. They could find her guilty of second-degree murder. That would mean a minimum of fifteen years. If they go with voluntary manslaughter she’d be eligible for probation, but I doubt if Judge Green would grant it.

“The problem I have with putting her on the stand now is that I can’t get any medical testimony in. Tom Short would have helped us out if she’d told me about this on the front end, but there’s no way Judge Green will let me use medical testimony this late. The prosecution has the right to have her examined by their own shrink, and they’re entitled to all of Tom Short’s reports. I didn’t give them anything because I didn’t intend to use him.”

“What are the other options?”

“She might get on the stand and tell them she didn’t do it. If she does that, I have to decide whether to tank her. The rules say that if she gets on a witness stand and lies, and I know she’s lying, I can’t question her and can’t present a closing argument on her behalf. The jury will figure that out pretty quickly. If she lies and I don’t tank her, then I’m suborning perjury and I could wind up in jail.”

“You can’t do that,” Caroline said.

“I can’t and I won’t. But I swear I think I’d do it if I knew I’d get away with it. The guy sodomized her. Punched her in the head, almost knocked her out, then rolled her over and sodomized her. A man of God. I don’t feel the least bit of sympathy for him. None. She should walk on this, Caroline. She should walk right out the door.”

“I guess we both know where that comes from. Finally.”

“I should have told you about Sarah a long time ago,” I said. “I’m sorry. I was ashamed.”

“It’s out in the open now, and I don’t think any less of you.”

I kissed her on the forehead.

“This is so unfair,” I said. “The right thing would be for her to go home. Erlene set up the whole situation. She apparently intended to rob the preacher. It wasn’t Angel’s fault. She didn’t even have a weapon with her. She killed him with his own knife.”

“She didn’t have to kill him,” Caroline said.

“Yeah? What would you have done if a drunken redneck punched you and sodomized you?”

“I’d have killed him and cut his dick off.”

“Exactly. There’s really only one other thing I can do. I can try to fix things with Sarah. If I can get her to talk to me, I think I can make this turn out all right.”

“What would you say to her?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know that she and I never talked about it after it happened? I guess we were both so scared and humiliated we didn’t want to go near it. I really think it’s the reason she’s struggled all of her life.”

I sat up on the side of the bed and took a deep breath.

“I’m going,” I said. “I’m going down to the jail. They can’t keep me from talking to her. The worst thing that can happen is that things will stay the same.”

“Are you going to try to talk to her about the rape?”

“I have to. I have to tell her I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Joe.”

“I know that now, but I still feel like I should apologize to her. I’ve handled this almost as badly as she has, and I wasn’t the one who was raped.”

“Don’t expect too much,” Caroline said.

I got dressed and gulped down a cup of coffee.

“Joe?” Caroline said as I was about to walk out.

“Make sure you tell her you love her.”

July 25

Noon

Jail inmates hate a lot of things. They hate the guards, they hate the food, they hate the tedium. But there are two things they hate most of all. One is a child molester, and the other is a snitch.

The administration had moved Sarah to the jail’s protective custody unit in case the word got out that she was snitching on Angel. Protective custody is just like maximum security. The inmates held there are completely isolated. It’s an unrelenting, punitive, miserable existence.

Lawyers who want to see inmates being held in protective custody have to go to them. The guards won’t bring the protective custody inmates out to the attorneys’ interview room, because it would mean exposing them to other inmates along the way. It took me almost an hour of wrangling to get in to see Sarah. The guards knew she was a witness against my client, and they didn’t want me talking to her. But as an attorney, I had as much right to interview witnesses as the police, even star witnesses, and I wasn’t going to let them keep me out. They tried to get Deacon Baker on the phone but were told he was “unavailable.” Frankie Martin had taken the day off and was fishing somewhere. Finally, after I threatened to haul every one of them in front of the nearest judge, they relented.