Page 68 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“What you have been doing. Sit tight, be careful and stay safe.”

“Safe?”

“I know. But as soon as I have something, you will know about it. I’m trying to get you out of here, Jesus, but it might take a little while.”

“You were the one who tol’ me to come here.”

“At the time I didn’t think there was a choice.”

“How come you never ask me, did you murder this girl? You my lawyer, man. You din’t care. You din’t listen.”

I stood up and loudly called for the guard. Then I answered his question.

“To legally defend you I didn’t need to know the answer to that question. If I asked my clients if they were guilty of the crimes theywere charged with, very few would tell me the truth. And if they did, I might not be able to defend them to the best of my ability.”

The guard opened the door and looked in at me.

“I’m ready to go,” I said.

I checked my watch and figured that if I was lucky in traffic I might be able to catch the five o’clock shuttle back to Burbank. The six o’clock at the latest. I dropped the photos into my briefcase and closed it. I looked back at Menendez, who was still in his chair on the other side of the glass.

“Can I just put my hand on the glass?” I asked the guard.

“Hurry up.”

I leaned across the counter and put my hand on the glass, fingers spread. I waited for Menendez to do the same, creating a jailhouse handshake.

Menendez stood, leaned forward and spit on the glass where my hand was.

“You never shake my hand,” he said. “I don’t shake yours.”

I nodded. I thought I understood just where he was coming from.

The guard smirked and told me to step through the door. In ten minutes I was out of the prison and crunching across the gravel to my rental car.

I had come four hundred miles for five minutes but those minutes were devastating. I think the lowest point of my life and professional career came an hour later when I was on the rent-a-car train being delivered back to the United terminal. No longer concentrating on the driving and making it back in time, I had only the case to think about. Cases, actually.

I leaned down, elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. My greatest fear had been realized, realized for two years but I hadn’t known it. Not until now. I had been presented with innocence but I had not seen it or grasped it. Instead, I had thrown it into the maw of the machine like everything else. Now it was a cold, gray innocence, as dead as gravel and hidden in a fortress of stone and steel. And I had to live with it.

There was no solace to be found in the alternative, the knowledge that had we rolled the dice and gone to trial, Jesus would likely be on death row right now. There could be no comfort in knowing that fate was avoided, because I knew as sure as I knew anything else in the world that Jesus Menendez had been innocent. Something as rare as a true miracle—an innocent man—had come to me and I hadn’t recognized it. I had turned away.

“Bad day?”

I looked up. There was a man across from me and a little bit further down the train car. We were the only ones on this link. He looked to be a decade older and had receding hair that made him look wise. Maybe he was even a lawyer, but I wasn’t interested.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

And I held up a hand, palm out, a signal that I did not want conversation. I usually travel with a set of earbuds like Earl uses. I put them in and run the wire into a jacket pocket. It connects with nothing but it keeps people from talking to me. I had been in too much of a hurry this morning to think about them. Too much of a hurry to reach this point of desolation.

The man across the train got the message and said nothing else. I went back to my dark thoughts about Jesus Menendez. The bottom line was that I believed that I had one client who was guilty of the murder another client was serving a life sentence for. I could not help one without hurting the other. I needed an answer. I needed a plan. I needed proof. But for the moment on the train, I could only think of Jesus Menendez’s dead eyes, because I knew I was the one who had killed the light in them.

Twenty

As soon as I got off the shuttle at Burbank I turned on my cell. I had not come up with a plan but I had come up with my next step and that started with a call to Raul Levin. The phone buzzed in my hand, which meant I had messages. I decided I would get them after I set Levin in motion.

He answered my call and the first thing he asked was whether I had gotten his message.

“I just got off a plane,” I said. “I missed it.”