ONE
With a briefcase in one hand and a half-eaten bagel in the other, Rachel raced up the courthouse steps. She hated to be late. Detested it. Knowing she’d drawn Judge Hatchet-Face Snyder for the morning hearing only made her more determined to be inside and at the defense table by 8:59. She had three minutes to spare, and would have had twice that if she hadn’t stopped by the office first.
How could she have known that her boss would be lying in wait with another case file?
Two years of working as a public defender, she reminded herself as she hit the doors at a run. That was how she should have known.
She scanned the elevators, gauged the waiting crowd and opted for the stairs. Cursing her heels, she took them two at a time and swallowed the rest of the bagel. There was no use fantasizing about the coffee she craved to wash it down with.
She screeched to a halt at the courtroom doors and took a precious ten seconds to straighten her blue serge jacket and smooth down her tousled, chin-length black hair. A quick check showed her that her earrings were still in place. She looked at her watch and let out a deep breath.
Right on time, Stanislaski, she told herself as she moved sedately through the doors and into the courtroom. Her client, a twenty-three-year-old hooker with a heart of flint, was being escorted in as Rachel took her place. The solicitation charges would probably have earned her no more than a light fine and time served, but stealing the john’s wallet had upped the ante.
As Rachel had explained to her bitter client, not all customers were too embarrassed to squawk when they lost two hundred in cash and a gold card.
“All rise!”
Hatchet-Face strode in, black robes flapping around all six-foot three and two hundred and eighty pounds of him. He had skin the color of a good cappuccino and a face as round and unfriendly as the pumpkins Rachel remembered carving with her siblings every Halloween.
Judge Snyder tolerated no tardiness, no sass and no excuses in his courtroom. Rachel glanced over at the assistant district attorney who would be the opposing counsel. They exchanged looks of sympathy and got to work.
Rachel got the hooker off with ninety days. Her client was hardly brimming with gratitude as the bailiff led her away. She had better luck with an assault case…. After all, Your Honor, my client paid for a hot meal in good faith. When the pizza arrived cold, he pointed out the problem by offering some to the delivery boy. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm had him offering it a bit too heartily, and during the ensuing scuffle said pizza was inadvertently dumped on the delivery boy’s head….
“Very amusing, Counselor. Fifty dollars, time served.”
Rachel wrangled her way through the morning session. A pickpocket, a drunk-and-disorderly, two more assaults and a petty larceny. They rounded things off at noon with a shoplifter, a two-time loser. It took all of Rachel’s skill and determination to convince the judge to agree to a psychiatric evaluation and counseling.
“Not too shabby.” The ADA was only a couple of years older than Rachel’s twenty-six, but he considered himself an old hand. “I figure we broke even.”
She smiled and shut her briefcase. “No way, Spelding. I edged you out with the shoplifter.”
“Maybe.” Spelding, who had been trying to wheedle his way into a date for weeks, walked out beside her. “Could be his psych will come back clean.”
“Sure. The guy’s seventy-two years old and steals disposable razors and greeting cards with flowers on them. Obviously he’s perfectly rational.”
“You PDs are such bleeding hearts.” But he said it lightly, because he greatly admired Rachel’s courtroom style. As well as her legs. “Tell you what, I’ll buy you lunch, and you can try to convince me why society should turn the other cheek.”
“Sorry.” She shot him a quick smile and opted for the stairs again. “I’ve got a client waiting for me.”
“In jail?”
She shrugged. “That’s where I find them. Better luck next time, Spelding.”
The precinct house was noisy and smelled strongly of stale coffee. Rachel entered with a little shiver. The weatherman had been a little off that day with his promise of Indian summer. A thick, nasty-looking cloud cover was moving in over Manhattan. Rachel was already regretting the fact that she’d grabbed neither coat nor umbrella on her dash out of her apartment that morning.
With any luck, she figured, she’d be back in her office within the hour, and out of the coming rain. She exchanged a few greetings with some of the cops she knew and picked up her visitor’s badge at the desk.
“Nicholas LeBeck,” she told the desk sergeant. “Attempted burglary.”
“Yeah, yeah…” The sergeant flipped through his papers. “Your brother brought him in.”
Rachel sighed. Having a brother who was a cop didn’t always make life easier. “So I hear. Did he make his phone call?”
“Nope.”
“Anyone come looking for him?”
“Nope.”
“Great.” Rachel shifted her briefcase. “I’d like him brought up.”
“You got it. Looks like they’ve given you another loser, Ray. Take conference room A.”
“Thanks.” She turned, dodging a swarthy-looking man in handcuffs and the uniformed cop behind him. She managed to snag a cup of coffee, and took it with her into a small room that boasted one barred window, a single long table and four scarred chairs. Taking a seat, she flipped open her briefcase and dug out the paperwork on Nicholas LeBeck.
It seemed her client was nineteen and unemployed and rented a room on the Lower East Side. She let out a little sigh at his list of priors. Nothing cataclysmic, she mused, but certainly enough to show a bent for trouble. The attempted burglary had taken him up a step, and it left her little hope of having him treated as a minor. There had been several thousand dollars’ worth of electronic goodies in his sack when Detective Alexi Stanislaski collared him.
She’d be hearing from Alex, no doubt, Rachel thought. There was nothing her brother liked better than to rub her nose in it.
When the door of the conference room opened, she continued to sip her coffee as she took stock of the man being led in by a bored-looking policeman.
Five-ten, she estimated. A hundred and forty. Needed some weight. Dark blond hair, shaggy and nearly shoulder-length. His lips were quirked in what looked like a permanent smirk. It might have been an attractive mouth otherwise. A tiny peridot stud that nearly matched his eyes gleamed in his earlobe. The eyes, too, would have been attractive if not for the bitter anger she read there.
“Thank you, Officer.” At her slight nod, the cop uncuffed her client and left them alone. “Mr. LeBeck, I’m Rachel Stanislaski, your lawyer.”
“Yeah?” He dropped into a chair, then tipped it back. “Last PD I had was short and skinny and had a bald spot. Looks like I got lucky this time.”
“On
