Playing out in stark contrast, a white satin dinner jacket lay sprawled in a pool of congealing, crimson blood. Craig Chastain, face down and lifeless, had just made his last fashion statement. As soon as the Weston murder detectives made a positive identification, District Attorney Paul Lomax was called to the scene.
Carefully absorbing every detail of the carnage, a satisfied smile crept along the DA’s pock-marked face. He hummed contentedly. “Well now, isn’t this fascinating? One of Weston’s most renowned citizens viciously murdered in the sanctity of his own home—and I know just who I’m going after.”
* * *
The barely seasoned public defender, sitting at an undersized, gunmetal desk, snugged up the elastic band holding her long, ash-blond hair and prepared to dive into the stack of files that threatened to spill onto the floor. After passing the Bar, she had worked for a year as a clerk for Judge Alton Powers, then applied for a public defender position in the county court system. Now, less than six months on the job, twenty-five year old Kaitlin Rand was barely treading water, her gray eyes surveying the files that seemed to breed overnight.
Not quite certain how she had gotten here, she sipped on her first coffee of the day, riding its quick boost of caffeine while questioning the wisdom of her career choice. After all, in the legal arena public defending wasn’t where the big bucks were. But I’m not in this for the money, she reminded herself, pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen loose. Polishing off her coffee, she walked across the room to coax another cup from the aging, recalcitrant machine. The pot had an ongoing argument with the coffee grounds as to whether or not it would cooperate.
Returning to her desk, she answered her own question, knowing her career choice had everything to do with her father. Having lost his wife to breast cancer when Kaitlin was barely ten, Lieutenant James Rand had stepped up to be the best single parent he knew how to be to both Kaitlin and her then four-year-old sister, Lexie. While raising his precocious daughters and serving as a police officer for the small town of Weston a few suburbs north of New Your City, he managed to make his way through law school at NYU. The day he was handed his law degree was the day he handed in his badge. He was thankful that after years of working the streets, he’d gotten Kaitlin into law school and Lexie into college without his being shot, stabbed, or maimed.
Without a backward glance, he set up practice in Weston as a private attorney—a darned good one. Even so, he catered mostly to those who couldn’t afford high-priced representation. He didn’t make a lot of money, little more than he’d made on the force, but he relished the satisfaction he gained while doing it.
James Rand was what Kaitlin thought of as an honorable man. Over the years he had taught her and Lexie about the sanctity of justice and, too often, about its miscarriages. “The legal system can be both brilliant and downright shoddy,” he said. “If you’re going to be part of it you have to remember that the DA doesn’t always get it right. District Attorneys are all about convictions; keeping criminals off the street is how they keep their jobs. So if the cops bring them enough evidence, they’ll prosecute the bejesus out of the defendant, guilt or innocence be damned. They just want to win…have to win to stay ahead of the game.”
Kaitlin could hardly wait to join her father in his law practice as soon as she passed the Bar. But the ugly hand that had ravaged her mother’s body with cancer returned to ravage her father’s mind with Alzheimer’s. Unprepared to take over her father’s law practice and needing a steady paycheck to support the three of them, Kaitlin worked hard to become a public defender, both to stand up for the underprivileged and because she knew it would please her father.
Today, sitting in her cramped office, thoughts of her father and his warnings about shoddy justice brought Joey Sanchez to mind. Joey had accepted a ride from a school mate, Ricky Romero, only to learn when pulled over by flashing lights and blaring sirens, that Ricky’s shiny yellow Camaro had been stolen the night before. Even though Joey had no previous convictions and was not yet eighteen the DA, Paul Lomax decided to push the case to its limits and try Joey as an adult. After meeting with Joey, Kaitlin surmised that he was being railroaded into what looked like an easy conviction for the DA. It was this kind of unfairness that kept her working as a public defender, the sense that someone had to level the playing field.
The DA underestimated Kaitlin and the effort she was willing to put into a case where the defendant had no financial resources. When Joey’s case came to trial she handed the Judge a number of sworn statements. After looking them over, he bellowed, “Mr. Lomax, were you aware that there is a host of people who can account for Mr. Sanchez’s time during the occurrence of the theft and none of them put him in the vicinity of the crime?” He thrust the statements at Lomax and said, “These are overwhelmingly in support of the boy’s innocence, wouldn’t you agree?” Lomax nodded bleakly. “The next time you bring a case into my court, you darn well better be sure you get it right! Now, I believe you owe this young man an apology!”
Lomax stammered through the apology while glaring at Kaitlin. She had just made an enemy of the DA and she didn’t utter a word. She knew there was a time to speak and a time to remain silent. Now was the time for silence.