I hugged him again and said, “You take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.”
As I walked down the line congratulating the other players and the coaches, I thought to myself, Things will be different at Julius’s house this year. I’ll make sure of it.
I enjoyed the satisfaction of having seen those young boys accomplish something together late into the night. Grace invited me over to spend the night and celebrate. I drank two glasses of wine and told Grace tall tales of the team’s heroics on the football field. She smiled and congratulated me and acted as though she was interested. She probably was, too. Grace was too genuine, too honest, to fake anything.
Around midnight, Grace put her head on my shoulder and yawned deeply. I was living with my mother, but I occasionally stayed with Grace. “Are you going home tonight or would you like to come to bed?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ll drive after drinking this wine.”
“It’s good to see you this way, Darren. I know you’re proud of the boys, but you seem proud of yourself, too. That makes me happy. It’s a good sign.”
I squeezed her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER 3
It had been eighteen months since I’d been released from prison. The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility had taken six months to have a hearing to reinstate my license after I was exonerated for a murder I hadn’t committed, and for which I’d served two years in jail. During the hearing, I had to prove by “clear and convincing evidence”—a very high standard of proof—that I was no longer “a danger to the community.” The entire thing was nothing but a charade. The feds should have apologized to me, written me a check for the two years of my life they’d taken and the torture they’d put me through, and been done with it. And the Board of Professional Responsibility should have simply recognized the federal court’s dismissal of my charge and reinstated me on the spot. But that would have made entirely too much sense. I guess I could have sued the feds, but it would have meant reliving the experience over and over, and I just wanted to move on.
It took another month for the opinion to come down that I was no longer dangerous and that my license to practice law should be reinstated. After that, I had to catch up on my continuing legal education hours—classes that lawyers are required to take each year. They’re usually held at a fancy resort or hotel somewhere, and most of the lawyers either duck out of the classes or sleep through them. But they’re required to take a certain amount of hours. Why? Because they have to pay for the hours. The CLE racket is a huge moneymaker for the elite few who organize and host the events. The whole thing reminded me of a prison hustle.
Once I’d been reinstated and caught up on my CLE, I had to set up shop all over again. Rachel, my secretary and paralegal before I went to jail, had taken a job with another lawyer. I still had some of the money I’d earned representing fellow inmates in prison, but I didn’t have enough to hire anyone, so I rented a small office in a rough building in a neighborhood known as the Old City, and hung out a shingle.
I was living with my mother on the west side of Knoxville. I made a down payment on a compact car with almost two hundred thousand miles on it and prayed it would start every morning. I was able to see my eight-year-old son, Sean, every other weekend, but his mother, my beloved ex-wife, Katie, had sued me for child support as soon as I was released from prison. She didn’t have to sue me. I would have paid child support, and I told her as much. I would have paid more than a court would have ordered me to pay, but she took such pleasure in dragging me into court that she couldn’t resist. I was making such a small amount of money at the time that she wound up getting only $400 a month. I knew as soon as I started making more money, she’d drag me back into court. It was something I could look forward to until he turned eighteen.
I was pleasantly surprised by one thing. As soon as I was reinstated, business started coming in the door. I’d built a good reputation as a criminal defense lawyer prior to going to prison, and I’d gotten a ton of free publicity over the past couple of years, both during my trial and after my exoneration. A reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story on me the day I opened for business in my new office, and by the end of the day I had eight appointments scheduled.
I also took on appointed cases. Rupert Lattimore was, by far, my most notorious case. Lattimore and three accomplices had carjacked and murdered two college kids. The Criminal Court judge who appointed me to Lattimore, a woman named Eleanor Montgomery, actually thought she was doing me a favor. She called me on the phone, was extremely courteous and complimentary, and asked me whether I would take on what she suspected would be a difficult case.
“It’ll do you good, Mr. Street,” she said. “Lots of free publicity, jumping headlong into a bad murder, representing your client zealously. It’ll get you all the way back into the game.”
She was right about getting all the way back into the game, but she was wrong about it doing me good. Because I’d never before felt genuine hatred for a client, and I hated Rupert Lattimore.
On the Sunday evening following the football championship, I sat in the interview room at the jail looking at him. For the first time in my career, I genuinely regarded my client as a miserable, worthless piece of garbage. Prior to representing this guy, I had nearly always been capable of maintaining a sense of indifference about my clients. It’s simply something defense lawyers have to learn to do—just part of the job. But I loathed Rupert Lattimore. I hated everything about him. I hated the way he looked. I hated the way he smelled. I hated his name, his tattoos, the constant sneer he wore on his face. But more than anything else, I hated what he had done, and by extension, I hated myself for being a part, albeit indirectly, of what he had done.