He wasn’t there.
Charlie let out a long breath as she walked toward her office. She had purposefully staked her claim on the opposite side of the building, which in its previous life had housed the back offices of a chain of stationery supply stores. The architecture of the one-story structure was similar in higgledy-pigglediness to the farmhouse. She shared the reception area with her father, but her practice was completely separate from his. Other lawyers came and went, renting space by the month. UGA, Georgia State, Morehouse and Emory sporadically sent interns who needed desks and phones. Rusty’s investigator, Jimmy Jack Little, had set up shop in a former supply closet. As far as Charlie could tell, Jimmy Jack used it to store his files, possibly hoping that the police would think twice before raiding an office inside a building filled with lawyers.
The carpet was thicker, the décor nicer, on Charlie’s side. Rusty had hung a sign over her door that read “Dewey, Pleadem & Howe,” a joke on the fact that she kept most of her clients out of the courtroom. Charlie didn’t mind arguing a case, but the majority of her clients were too poor to afford a trial, and too familiar with the Pikeville judges to waste their time fighting the system.
Rusty, on the other hand, would argue a parking ticket in front of the United States Supreme Court if they’d let him get that far.
Charlie searched her purse for her office keys. The bag slipped off her shoulder. The mouth gaped open. Kelly Wilson’s yearbook had a cartoon General Lee on the front because the school mascot was the Rebel.
Defense counsel who possesses a physical item under circumstances implicating a client in criminal conduct should disclose the location of or should deliver that item to law enforcement authorities.
It wasn’t lost on Charlie that she had lectured Huck about concealing evidence while she had Kelly Wilson’s yearbook tucked under her arm.
Though, arguably, Charlie was caught in the legal equivalent of Schr?dinger’s Cat. She wouldn’t know if there was evidence inside the yearbook until she opened the yearbook. She looked for her keys again. The easiest thing to do was to dump the book onto Rusty’s desk and let him deal with it.
“Let’s go.” Lenore was back, and clearly ready to say her piece.
Charlie indicated the bathroom across the hall. She couldn’t do this on a full bladder.
Lenore followed her inside and shut the door. “Half of me wonders if it’s even worth laying into you, because you’re too dumb to know how stupid you are.”
“Please listen to that half.”
Lenore jabbed her finger at Charlie. “Don’t give me your smart mouth.”
A cornucopia of smartass responses filled her head, but Charlie held back. She unbuttoned her jeans and sat on the toilet. Lenore had bathed Charlie when she was too grief-stricken to take care of herself. She could watch her pee.
“You never think, Charlotte. You just do.” Lenore paced the tight room.
“You’re right,” Charlie said. “And I know you’re right, just like I know you can’t make me feel any worse than I already do.”
“You’re not getting out of it that easy.”
“Does this look easy?” Charlie held her arms out wide to show off the damage. “I got caught up in a war zone this morning. I antagonized a cop into making this happen.” She indicated her face. “I humiliated my husband. Again. I fucked a guy who is either a martyr, a pedophile or a psychopath. I broke down in front of you. And you don’t even want to know what I was doing when the SWAT team came in. I mean, seriously, you do not want to know because you need plausible deniability.”
Lenore’s nostrils flared. “I saw their guns pointed at your chest, Charlotte. Six men, all with their rifles up, all a trigger’s width from murdering you while I stood outside wringing my hands like a helpless old woman.”
Charlie realized that Lenore wasn’t angry. She was frightened.
“What on earth were you thinking?” Lenore demanded. “Why would you risk your life like that? What was so important?”
“Nothing was that important.” Charlie’s shame was amplified by the sight of the tears rolling down Lenore’s face. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. Any of it. I’m an idiot and a fool.”
“You sure as hell are.” Lenore grabbed the toilet paper and rolled out enough to blow her nose.
“Please yell at me,” Charlie begged. “I can’t take it when you’re upset.”
Lenore looked away, and Charlie wanted to disappear into a pool of self-hate. How many times had she had this same discussion with Ben? The time at the grocery store that Charlie had shoved a man who’d slapped his wife. The time she’d almost got clipped by a car trying to help a stranded motorist. Antagonizing the Culpeppers when she saw them downtown. Going to the Holler during the middle of the night. Spending her days defending sleazy meth heads and violent felons. Ben claimed that Charlie would sprint head-first into a buzz saw if given the right set of circumstances.
Lenore said, “We can’t both cry.”
“I’m not crying,” Charlie lied.
Lenore handed her the toilet-paper roll. “Why do you think the guy’s a psychopath?”
“I can’t tell you.” Charlie buttoned her jeans, then went to the sink to wash her hands.
“Do I need to worry about you going back to before?”
Charlie didn’t want to think about before. “There’s a blind spot in the security cameras.”
“Did Ben tell you that?”
“You know Ben and I don’t talk about cases.” Charlie cleaned under her arms with a wet paper towel. “The psychopath has my phone. I need to get it turned off and replaced with a new one. I missed two hearings today.”
“The courthouse locked down the minute news broke about the shooting.”
Charlie remembered this was procedure. There had been a false alarm once before. Like Ava Wilson, she was having a hard time believing that any of this was real.
Lenore said, “There’s two sandwiches in a Tupperware bowl on your desk. I’ll go to the phone store for you if you eat them.”
“Deal,” Charlie agreed. “Listen, I’m sorry about today. I’ll try to be better.”
Lenore rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Charlie waited until the door was closed to finish her whore’s bath. She studied her face in the mirror as she cleaned herself. She was looking worse by the hour. There were two bruises, one under each eye, that made her look like a domestic violence victim. The bridge of her nose was dark red and had a bump on top of the other bump from the last time her nose had been broken.
She told her reflection, “You’re going to stop being an idiot.”