They all knew this wasn’t about the money.
Rusty said, “I just need a few days to get back on my feet, then I can jump into the case. It’s a deep dive, my girl. There’s a lot going on there. What say you help your old daddy make sure the big wheels keep on turnin’?”
Sam shook her head, though she knew that Rusty was probably Kelly Wilson’s only chance at a zealous defense. Even if the standard was lowered to an obligatory defense, it would likely be impossible to find someone to take the job on short notice, especially given that her current lawyer had been stabbed.
Still, that was a Rusty problem.
Sam said, “I have work to do back in New York. I’ve got my own cases. Very important cases. We’ll be at trial within the next three weeks.”
Neither of them spoke. They both stared at her.
“What?”
Charlie said, quietly, “Sam, sit down.”
“I don’t need to sit down.”
“You’re slurring your words.”
Sam knew that she was right. She also knew that she would be damned if she sat down over a simple case of exhaustion-induced dysarthria.
She just needed a moment.
She took off her glasses. She pulled a tissue from the box by Rusty’s bed. She cleaned the lenses, as if the problem was a spot that could be easily wiped away.
Rusty said, “Baby, why don’t you go downstairs with your sister, let her get some food in you, then we can talk about it when you feel better.”
Sam shook her head. “I’m—”
“Nuh-uh,” Charlie interrupted. “Not my job, mister. You tell her about your unicorn.”
“Come on,” he tutted. “She doesn’t need to know that part right now.”
“She’s not an idiot, Rusty. She’s going to ask eventually, and I’m not going to be the one to tell her.”
“I’m right here.” Sam put on her glasses. “Could you both stop talking as if I’m in another room?”
Charlie slumped against the wall. Her arms were crossed again. “If you do the arraignment, you’re going to have to enter a plea of not guilty.”
“And?” Sam asked. Seldom was a plea of guilty entered at an arraignment.
“I don’t mean pro forma. Dad really thinks Kelly Wilson is not guilty.”
“Not guilty?” Now Sam’s auditory processing was shot. They had finally managed to short-circuit the last meaningful parts of her brain. “Of course she’s guilty.”
Charlie said, “Tell that to Foghorn Leghorn, JD, over there. He thinks Kelly is innocent.”
“But—”
Charlie held up her hands in surrender. “Preacher/choir.”
Sam turned to Rusty. If she was unable to ask the obvious question, it wasn’t because of her injury. Her father had finally lost his mind.
He said, “Talk to Kelly Wilson yourself. Go to the police station after you eat. Tell them you’re my co-counsel. Get Kelly alone in a room and talk with her. Five minutes, tops. You’ll see what I mean.”
“See what?” Charlie asked. “She murdered a grown man and a little girl in cold blood. You want to talk about seeing? I was there less than a minute after it happened. I saw Kelly literally—literally—holding the smoking gun. I watched that little girl die. But Ironside over here thinks that she’s innocent.”
Sam had to take a moment to let the shock of Charlie’s involvement sink in before she could ask her sister, “What were you doing there? At the shooting? How did you—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Charlie kept her focus on Rusty. “Think about what you’re asking, Dad. What it means for her to get involved in this. You want Sam to get attacked by some revenge-driven maniac, too?” She snorted a derisive laugh. “Again?”
Rusty was immune to low blows. “Sammy-Sam, lookit, just talk to the girl. It’d help me to get a second opinion anyway. Even the great man you see before you is not infallible. I’d value your input as a colleague.”
His flattery only annoyed her. “Do mass shootings fall under the purview of intellectual property?” she asked. “Or have you forgotten the kind of law that I practice?”
Rusty winked at her. “The Portland district attorney’s office was a hotbed of patent infringement, was it?”
“Portland was a long time ago.”
“And now you’re too busy helping Bullshit, Incorporated, sue Bullshit, Limited, over some bullshit?”
“Everyone is entitled to their own bullshit.” Sam did not let him move her off the point. “I’m not the sort of lawyer Kelly Wilson needs. Not anymore. Actually, not ever. I could be of more service to the prosecution, because that’s the side on which I have always stood.”
“Prosecution, defense—what matters is understanding the beats of a courtroom, and you’ve got that in your blood.” Rusty pushed himself up again. He coughed into his hand. “Honey, I know you came all the way down here expecting to find me on my deathbed, and I promise you, on my life, that it’ll get to that point eventually, but for now, I’m gonna say something to you that I have never said to you in your forty-four beautiful years on this earth: I need you to do this for me.”
Sam shook her head, more out of frustration than disagreement. She did not want to be here. Her brain was exhausted. She could hear the sibilant slithering out of her mouth like a snake.
She said, “I’m going to leave.”
“Sure, but tomorrow,” Rusty said. “Baby, no one else is going to take care of Kelly Wilson. She’s alone in the world. Her parents don’t have the capacity to understand the trouble that she’s in. She cannot help herself. She cannot aid in her own defense, and no one cares. Not the police. Not the investigators. Not Ken Coin.” Rusty reached out to Sam. His nicotine-stained fingertips brushed the sleeve of her blouse. “They’re going to kill her. They are going to jam a needle in her arm, and they are going to end that eighteen-year-old girl’s life.”
Sam said, “Her life was over the minute she decided to take a loaded gun to school and murder two people.”
“Samantha, I do not disagree with you,” Rusty said. “But, please, will you just listen to the girl? Give her a chance to be heard. Be her voice. With me laid up like this, you’re the only person on earth I trust to serve as her counsel.”
Sam closed her eyes. Her head was throbbing. The sound of machines grated. The lights overhead were too intense.
“Talk to her,” Rusty begged. “I mean it when I say that I trust you to be her counsel. If you don’t agree with the not-guilty plea, then go into the arraignment and throw down a flag for diminished capacity. That, at least, we can all agree on.”
Charlie said, “That’s a false choice, Sam. Either way, he gets you in court.”
“Yes, Charlie, I am familiar with rhetological fallacies.” Sam’s stomach churned. She had not eaten in fifteen hours. She had not slept for longer than that. She was slurring her words—that is, when she could speak in complete sentences. She could not move without her cane. She felt angry, really angry, like she had not felt in years. And she was listening to Rusty as if he was her father rather than a man who would do anything, sacrifice anyone, for a client.
Even his family.