John Lescroart - The Second Chair

When she finished her description of Andrew's mistreatment, Johnson sighed with resignation. "My bailiffs. I call them my two rays of sunshine. It's a very little bit of a joke."

He leaned to pick up his ball. Pocketing it, replacing his putter in the golf bag next to his desk, he turned back to her and was all business. "Ms. Wu," he said, "I realize you must be a bit disappointed at my ruling in there, although I don't know what else you could have possibly expected. But given what you just told me- that Mr. Bartlett himself admitted that he got off-balance and fell- what do you expect me to do? The bailiffs are there to keep order in the courtroom. Sometimes- right after a prosecution verdict, for example, or a ruling like today- that takes some physical restraint. You'd be surprised. I've seen kids turn on their lawyers, even rush the bench. It happens. The bailiffs have to be, if not primed for action, then at least in a perpetually aggressive state of mind. You said your client was getting up, turning to get in physical contact with his mother. That can't be allowed to occur."

"Your honor, did you see Mrs. North? She was coming up to hug her son. She wasn't going to slip him a weapon."

"Maybe not, but you sure can't treat people differently depending on what they look like, can you? It sounded to me like Officer Nelson applied a little force and your client lost his balance. And Cottrell? If anything, it sounds like he took your side."

Wu shrugged. "I don't know if I'd go that far. It wasn't like what had happened bothered him. He just wanted to avoid the hassle getting any bigger."

"Right." Johnson raised a finger. "That's because Officer Cottrell knows how to keep things under control up here. You know why? 'Cause he's been on the other side." At Wu's questioning look, Johnson nodded. "This isn't a secret. He's been featured in several articles. When he was a kid, he was at that same table as your client, next to a defense attorney very much like you. He's spent time in the cottages, so he knows how it works up there."

"The bailiff's done time?"

He nodded. "Juvenile time. He slid from a bad foster care situation into the juvie system. But he's the success story- why we do this complicated fandango around rehabbing kids as opposed to punishing them. Sometimes it works. Often enough to make the effort worthwhile."

Wu thought back to the courtroom, to the look she'd gotten at Cottrell's eyes, with their strange flat affect. She'd attributed it to a boredom with the bureaucratic routines of his job. But Johnson's remarks struck a deeper chord. The long-term denizens of the legal system had learned, out of a sense of self-preservation, to live below the radar.

Johnson, reading her mind, said, "Most of these guys, they know how to get by here. You'd be surprised how many juvenile veterans of the system get out and then when they grow up want to work in it. It's where they're comfortable. They know how things work. So if somebody like Cottrell goes proactive around a situation like today in the courtroom, my bet is it's because he wants to keep things on an even keel between Nelson and your client. Not because he's some super-aggressive sociopath."

"I didn't say that, your honor. I didn't even imply it. But the one bailiff- the other one, Nelson- it wasn't as innocent as all that. I thought you'd just want to know."

"I do want to know," Johnson said. "Of course I want to know. And I'm grateful that you thought to come and tell me."

This time, Wu got to the attorney visiting room before Andrew and so had a moment to take in some of its admittedly unpleasant flavor. It reminded her of nothing so much as the dean's office at her old high school- linoleum floor, pitted green metal table in the center of the room, cork bulletin boards on both sides, a gray filing cabinet, that one window by the old-fashioned one-piece desk that Andrew had used earlier, a faint smell of disinfectant and sweat.

Andrew came to the door, escorted by a bailiff Wu didn't recognize. He wasn't handcuffed, though, and after he'd taken a step inside the small room, he stopped, his head turning quickly from side to side. "Where's my mom?" he asked.

"Not here." Wu kept the explanation unadorned.

He let out some sort of disaffected grunt, shook his head, shrugged, and slouched over to his desk, throwing an arm over the back of it. Wu was aware that the bailiff had closed the door, leaving them alone. She looked back down to Andrew, who was busy barely acknowledging her. He tossed the brown hair that hung over his forehead, swiped at it with his hand. When he'd been in the courtroom, he'd appeared to be truly vulnerable and harmless. Here Wu saw him in a different, perhaps a truer, light. He was an angry young adult- tall, well-proportioned, muscular. Traces of acne and a few days' worth of stubble added to the picture.

Wu asked about his head, if it hurt where he'd cracked it against the floor. He told her it was fine. Staring down at his fingers, he scratched at the desk, the noise like a mouse scampering in drywall. She continued to stare down and across at him until eventually he looked up, brushed back his forelock again, crossed his arms over his chest.

They held each other's gaze.

"So?" he said.

Wu wasn't about to put herself through the same discussion she'd just had with his parents. Neither was she inclined to start out on the defensive, so she took a deep breath and came right back at him. "So here's the thing, Andrew. With what just happened down there, you might be starting to get the picture that you're in a world of hurt. This isn't some situation where you pay the fine and do community service like last time and it's all over. This is murder. This is as serious as it gets."

Andrew started to open his mouth, "But I didn't-"

She cut him off. "Do it? Not the point right now. I heard you say it in court. Then I heard it again from your mother just now. Maybe we'll get to it sometime, what you did or didn't do. For the moment, though, we need to talk about the evidence they've got. You know what discovery is?"

"Yeah. It's when somebody finds something for the first time, like Columbus and America, that kind of thing."

The little shithead was being wise with her. She flared, her voice harsh. "Yeah, that's right. Good guess." She stood up, grabbed her briefcase, went to the locked door and knocked on it. "Guard!"

Andrew tipped his desk over getting out of it. "What are you doing?"

She ignored him, knocked again. "Guard!"

"Wait a minute!"

This time the bailiff Cottrell came to the door, his face in the barred window. Wu said, "Open up," and the sound of the key turning filled the room.

"Where are you going? Wait a minute."

She whirled on him. "I don't have a minute. Not for games. You don't want to help me, fine, I'll do it alone."

The guard stood waiting behind her, the door now ajar.

"No, wait, please…"

Wu motioned to the guard. The door closed. She turned around. "Get wise with me again, good-bye," she said. She pulled a chair to the center table, hoisted her briefcase, sat down, stared at her client for a long moment. Eventually, he righted his own desk, squeezed into the seat, waited.

An uneasy truce.

"First," she said, "let's talk about what you've admitted and see where we are after that. You were in fact at Mr. Mooney's the night it happened, practicing for a play. Then, sometime around nine o'clock, you left to walk around the neighborhood and memorize some lines you were having trouble with. You were gone for about a half hour."

"I was."

"Okay. Then when you got back, you saw what had happened and called nine one one."

"Right."

Wu came forward, elbows on the table between them. "But you didn't wait for the police to come? Even though the dispatcher asked you to stay at the scene?"