Braving the Boneyard

Chapter 2-2

A few hours later I had my head down, jotting notes on a legal pad, when there was a knock on my office door.

“Come in,” I called out, still scribbling my thought before it escaped into the ether.

“What the hell happened to you?”

I jumped at the sound of my friend Ralph’s voice. “When’s the last time you set foot in my office?” I asked.

“What happened to your face?” he reiterated.

I set down my pen and tilted my head to give him a better look. “Believe it or not, self-defense class. You should see the other guy’s balls.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Ralph said, settling his bulk into a chair on the other side of my desk. “The last time I was here was O’Connor.”

No wonder I didn’t remember. I’d driven Ralph to Florida State Prison for the final visit with our client, James O’Connor, before his execution. We hadn’t spoken at all on the two-plus hour return trip. Then instead of going home, Ralph and I sat in my office and polished off a bottle of something amber and potent he’d pulled from a paper bag for the occasion. We’d drunk in the dark, mostly silent, until I finally called a cab for Ralph. Unable to drive, I’d slept at the office in my bathtub (one of the advantages of using a converted house for your place of business). It’s a claw foot tub and I had a pillow, plus it was conveniently close to the toilet.

“Still the only black man I ever met named O’Connor,” I said. James had joked about that toward the end, about good luck leprechauns and four-leafed clovers, but he’d done it for our benefit. His was not a case with false hope.

“How many black men you know named Abraham, besides me?”

“Good point. Although I don’t know any white men with Abraham for a last name either.” Ralph still hadn’t said why he’d stopped in, and my stomach flipped. He liked to say he was a semi-retired investigator, but Ralph always had one ear to the criminal justice ground. “Tell me they didn’t sign another death warrant.”

“No,” Ralph said. “It’s been pretty quiet at the Governor’s office. They must be distracted by the elections and pretending to run shit.” He leaned forward and knocked on my wooden desk. Superstition about executions runs deep.

“Want some coffee?” I asked, lifting the thermos I’d brought with me from home. As little sleep as I’d gotten the night before, I should have brought a second one.

“Pfft, what the hell is that? This isn’t a camping trip. Tell me again why you don’t have a coffee pot in your office.”

“Mostly because I like having a reason to leave my office. I just didn’t feel like leaving it today.” It had been hard enough to make myself leave my house.

He grunted, pushing his baseball cap back from his forehead a bit to take another good, long look at my face. “Self-defense class, huh? I take it you’re not the star pupil. How long you been going?”

“Not long. Guy runs a little dojo across town. Friend of Glenn’s. You know Glenn, the guy that owns Cooper’s bar?”

“Yes, I know Glenn,” Ralph said, in a carefully neutral voice.

“Anyway, things just got a little … out of hand last night.”

“I can see that,” Ralph said, folding his hands over his slightly bulging belly. “You have a flashback during class?”

Not much gets past Ralph. I nodded, for some reason unable to admit it out loud. “Ralph, do you think I’m messed up?”

“Other than your eye?” he asked.

Actually, the back of my head was pretty tender, too. “You know what I mean.”

“Sydney, you’re no more messed up than you were before. These things just take time. What’s it been, six months?”

“A little less,” I said. He should know; after a murderer turned my living room into a crime scene, I’d spent a few days with him and his wife until I was ready to go back to my house.

“And then all that s**t happened with Ben’s dad over by Panacea,” he continued. “It just takes time. So maybe you had a little setback last night. So what? Just don’t dwell on it.”

“It’s just …” I stared down at my coffee, trying to wrangle my thoughts so I could explain them to him. The nightmares weren’t so bad anymore. Or they hadn’t been, before last night. And I’d stopped jumping at every sound, every movement. “I thought I was over it.”

“Syd.” Ralph set his hand flat on the table next to my coffee cup and waited until I looked at him. I still couldn’t meet his eyes, so I focused on the graying stubble below his round cheeks, following it around his chin where it grew unevenly from a central dimple. “This isn’t the flu. It’ll get better, but you’re never going to be able to pretend you weren’t kidnapped, that the man didn’t try to kill you and Ben. It’s part of who you are now. But it’s not all you are.”

I nodded again and stood, unable to stay still. Ralph looked up at me. “You know what you need? You need to keep busy. And yes, that’s why I’m here. Come on—stop hiding in your office and let’s go get a decent cup of coffee.”

Exhausted as I was, a kind of antsy hum vibrated through my body, and I was beginning to think more caffeine wasn’t the wisest idea. But a walk would do me good, maybe take the edge off my agitation. I jammed my cell phone and wallet in my pockets.

“You taking your purse?” Ralph asked.

“You’re carrying one big enough for both of us,” I said, gesturing at the bag he’d hung over his chair.

Ralph headed toward my car while I fiddled with the screen door. He never drives, so his wife must have dropped him off. I shook my head. “It’ll take longer to find parking than it will for us to walk.”

Ralph humphed indignantly.

I ignored him and asked, “So what was your ulterior motive in dropping by today? Tell me how you’re going to keep me busy.”

At that moment, a man caught Ralph’s eye on the opposite sidewalk. “Hello, Representative Stubbs! Congratulations, sir!” Ralph yelled.

The man raised an arm and smiled, but continued on his way.

“Can you believe that bozo just got reelected?” Ralph asked. He vented about the elections for the rest of the short walk to the coffee shop, and continued until he had his caffeine in hand and we’d tucked into a table out front. Ralph is very politically engaged—he’s like the politics version of those sports fans who can give you stats on players and programs since time began—but I knew this time his polemic was a form of throat clearing, getting rid of mental phlegm before starting the task at hand. Which told me the task at hand was important to him, and was about to be important to me. My long-ago mentor at the Public Defender’s Office, Ralph had taught me everything I know about waiting people out. (Well, everything I hadn’t learned from my mother.) But I didn’t have all day, so I took advantage of one of his coffee-sipping, oratory lulls.

“So what is it you want me to help out on?” I asked.

“All about you, isn’t it?” Ralph asked, but he eventually cracked a grin. “Okay. There’s this case …”

I groaned. Ralph’s cases were never simple, and they often involved me being overworked and underpaid.

“No,” he said, reading my mind, “it’s not like that. The family has some money. And Roger’s on board to handle it.”

“Really?” I said, surprised. Roger Weber is a friend and an excellent attorney, but he does not come cheap.

“Well, he said he’s on board if you’re on board.”

Ralph had the good grace to almost blush. So Ralph must have called in some favors with Roger to get him to take the case.

“Okay, give me the thumbnail.”

“Robbery-shooting, but the victim got lucky and lived. Our guy’s looking at life without parole.”

“Looking at?” I asked. I’d assumed it was an appeal, since that’s what we usually worked together now. “Ralph, I don’t know if I feel up to doing a trial right now.”

“That’s exactly why you need to do one,” he said. “To be honest, I doubt there’s much to it guilt-wise, unless you can get something out of the two codefendants. Wheel man already pled out, got a deal for testifying. The other guy was found guilty earlier this year.”

“So the State Attorney’s lining them up like dominoes, and your guy was the trigger man.”

Ralph nodded. “Should have gone to trial long ago, but Jerome’s previous attorney had a heart attack. As soon as he was well enough to file a motion, he got off the case, and every other one he had. I think he moved to Arizona.”

Thus the age-old question is answered: where do people from Florida go to retire?

“Tell me about the client,” I said.

“Jerome Adams. Employed sporadically, and doesn’t have as many priors as you might expect for his age. But it cuts both ways—he’s old enough to start knowing better, if he were ever going to. I’m not asking for him. I go way back with his family. That’s why I can’t do the investigation myself. I can do records requests and help behind the scenes, but I’m afraid I’m a little too close to run the show.”

“Too close how?”

“His dad—Lewis Adams—and I did civil rights work together,” Ralph said, sipping at his dregs. “He was part of the NFJL, too.”

“The what?”

“The North Florida Justice League. And yes, I tried to tell them it made us sound like a comic book gang. I sure as hell used the abbreviation when I could. Anyway, Lewis was killed in 1974.”

“You know who did it?” I asked.

Ralph looked away. “Same old story—no one was ever charged.”

A trellis, overgrown with something green and gnarly, separated our entrance seating area from the adjacent sidewalk. Little bits of sunlight stabbed through the gaps between the leaves. I’d forgotten my sunglasses, so I closed my eyes, ignoring the face-bruise twinge. Ralph hadn’t actually answered my question, and the man had never met a politically sensitive case he didn’t have a theory about. He wasn’t telling me everything. Ralph had never done that before—that I knew of, at least—never held back on me. I wondered why he’d started now.

“We don’t have a trial date in Jerome’s case yet, but there’s a hearing on Monday.”

“Monday? Are you serious?” I asked, my voice squeaking a little.

“I know—short notice. The judge’ll probably set a trial date then, but you know Roger. He’ll get us plenty of time to prepare.”

My heart beat faster, and I tried not to flinch when a motorcycle went by on the street a few feet from where we sat, a little too fast and a little too loud. Sounds and sudden movements had been tough for me lately, and even more so today. But it was just a motorcycle. And Jerome’s case was just another trial. I could do this.

I opened my eyes, and Ralph was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

“Okay,” I said, “where do we start?”