It started with her coming to my office for a paid legal consultation session. A girl dressed as a woman, barely old enough to drink.
“I’m going to kill my father. And I want to know will happen after that.” The consultation opened with her blunt words.
Her impassive tone made it doesn’t sound like a joke, but even if it was a joke, I would treat it as serious as possible, for the sake of the generous amount of cash she brought along.
I explained that she would most likely be arrested, with a probable cause since the victim is her own father, her rights would be read to her before the interrogation and she can consult an attorney before speaking with the police or have an attorney present during the questioning.
“How much should I pay if I hire you?” She then asked.
“A lot,” I replied. “Murder cases are serious charges so the price naturally goes up. I can’t tell you the exact amount since I do not know the details of your condition. As a defense attorney, I may accept your case, but that will only happen after your arrest. And also, I need to remind you that as a citizen, I am obligated to report a crime that is going to be committed.”
In this case, had she hired me before the murder, I could be charged as an abettor, for I knew about her plan and offered my legal assistance.
“Do as you want, they won’t take me seriously.” She smiled as if she already knew what will happen. They never took me seriously.
“You’re implying that you have encountered the police before,” I said.
“There’s no need to pretend you haven’t figure out my job, mister. And in this line of work, yes, I have met police, multiple times.” She raised her hand to pull the bra strap that has been falling from her shoulder and let the rubber band snapped against her skin.
This girl has no manner. I made a mental comment. I was never fond of such inappropriateness, but yes, I do figure out her job from observing the way she dresses and behave, plus the mere fact that she was holding a large amount of cash. The evidence screamed to me that this girl is a prostitute and if this assumption holds, the father would be very likely to be her pimp.
“Then what can I do to make sure it will be you.” She asked.
“After arrest, you will be entitled to a phone call and you can call me if you have my number. Or, you can call someone you trust and ask them to make the phone call. As a suspect, you won’t have much opportunity to contact the outside, which means that the conversation between us can be limited. My suggestion is to ask someone you trust to do this job so that I can gather information from them and the time will not be wasted on the travails when we actually talk.”
“But, isn’t it weird?” She laughed a little. “People like me knowing a defense attorney’s number. And you’re not even a charity lawyer, you’re a fancy one, way outside my league.”
I remembered I also laughed a little to her description of me. “In some sense, yes,” I said. “But people do not pay me for the fanciness. I am, after all, quite good at dealing with difficult cases. It won’t sound too strange for you to call me, for the same reason you found my address and came to me today.”
“I was looking for the best murder defense attorney in town.” She muttered. “I guess you’re right.”
The clock on my office table beeped.
“This ends surprisingly fast.” She was trying to make some bad joke about the length of the session in comparison with, well, her usual “services”, but soon gave up because she cannot find the right punchline. I appreciated that silence.
Then she got up and left the cash on my table. “Can I come next week, same time?”
I looked at my calendar and replied. “Yes, I hold regular office hours for legal inquires, but please, remember you should not talk anything about your plan to me or to anyone.”
(Or just don’t do it. Don’t go out and kill people, especially it’s someone you’re closed to. )
“Nah.” She waved her hands. “We’re just talking about hypothetical situations, they were nothing but some mental gymnastics.” As if that impassive voice never existed, she left with a rather joyful tone.
With her visit became somehow regular, the story naturally unfolds.
Her past was like a train of worse case scenarios, father raped daughter, mother left the family after finding out, the family went bankrupt, daughter started doing compensated dating to afford cellphone and accessories, father found out and became the pimp, at first no sex involved, then non-penetrative sex, eventually the full-course. It all happened within a few months and up to now, it has been going on for almost three years.
“It begins with him, so it will end with him.” And there she was, talking nonchalantly about murdering her own father.
I was in no position to judge her, and I was painfully aware of that. From what she said, I did feel that her father was the one to blame and he deserve every bit of the punishment. Still, it was the murder of a family member. Legally speaking or not, this was different from murdering someone else. I cannot personally think of how would it feel differently, though I do have parents and a younger brother and the latter gave me the urge from time to time. But, there is a difference between toying about the thoughts and carrying them out, and, even now, I doubt she had thoroughly thought about it.
“It doesn’t have to end in this way,” I remembered the last time I tried to persuade her out of that plan, for I have known too much about the details to clear myself from the suspicion.
“I know, but I don’t want any of those ways. Think of a vase, once broken, it will never be the same. No matter how hard you try to put the pieces together, the vase has been broken and people could tell, they can always tell. Heck, you can fix the crack with gold and make it pretty and fancy, but it is still a broken vase and nothing can change that fact.”
“Murder cannot change that fact, too,” I said.
She let her words out before choked on tears. “I know, and because I know that there’s nothing that anyone can do to make it all disappear, I choose to murder him as the second-best option.”
She rolled up her sleeve to show me those scars from cutting, layers and layers of scar tissue had made that small piece of skin looked more like leather. “My friend told me this trick, and I can also use it to wave off some clients that I dislike.”
“He said nothing about it as long as I earn the same amount of money and clear out the bloodstains.” In an instant, her voice dropped. “It hurts, you know, see, all healed, but sometimes it still hurts.”
I can only say that I felt vaguely related, as I do have a scar on my hand. A valuable lesson for the young of the safety when using scissors and not playing with dirt with an open wound. My hand got seriously infected and it left me with a big scar and some missing tissue. Whenever I saw that scar, I also felt hurt, though not physically.
The clock beeped. That was when I decided further persuasion would be fruitless.
From a retrospect, the conversation between her and me has gradually become less and less professional. We spent less time talking about the legal consequences of her action and more on the past. I had to admit that I was expecting the development of this relationship and had actively gained her trust little by little, to push the topic forward, to dig more information about her “clients”.
It turned out that her father was quite influential and he had hooked her up with several “elites”. I found this out when she pointed to the old news and said she knew about that person and the person being said was the local police chief who was accused of rape by a prostitute he arrested. It was a false charge, I handled that case several months ago.
“I see.” I gave her a nod for acknowledgment of that information, which was reasonable since she was also a prostitute.
“No. I mean, I know him as a client.” She gave me one of those smiles, luring me to press further for the information. “And I know that he did not rape her, or, in other sense, he could not do it.”
“You’re right.” I nodded. I did not want to reveal too much information about my past cases for the sake of privacy, but she was correct and I believed that such information was not a secret to her anyway. If the chief was her client, then she must know about his condition, which was a piece of decisive evidence that contradicted the victim’s testimony.
“I bet you get him off-hook by saying he had some dysfunction down there.” There was a certain look on her face, a certain degree of triumph as if she finally outwitted me in some contest.
“But I bet you don’t know that she cannot be his target from the very beginning. He was not interested in grown-up women. That man is a pedophile.”
“How does it feel? To defend a monster like him?” She then asked.
“I did my job. I was hired for that particular case, and I fulfilled my duty.” To my defense, I was not aware of his abnormal sexual preference beforehand, nor did I have any solid proof during that period. I did sense something was off about that man, but again, it was unrelated to the case and I refrained myself from thinking too much about it.
“I’m not accusing you. I mean, even the bad guys have the right to ask for an attorney. I’ll contradict myself if I blame you for defending the guilty. After all, if my case is brought up to the court, I am guilty for sure.”
Then she kept on talking about the details for him as her client. I remained silent for the rest of the conversation while taking mental notes of the pieces of information. I could make some research after she left, and that would give me some material for asking favors from that certain man.
Then the clock beeped. She left with cash and a promise of coming at the same time next week.
She eventually managed to buy a pistol. It was our last meeting, on a rainy afternoon, and I hated the weather.
At least she learned something from our conversation, she only mentioned she had acquired it but did not say where it was and whether she was carrying it right then.
“It’s so hard to get those things, but I got lucky, I had the right contact.” She seemed unusually delightful, which I could understand, it would probably end today.
“Should I ask about it?” I questioned. I have to admit that I have been avoiding this topic, of why I accept her money and allowed the weekly consultation. The reason was simple, I made her payment untraceable and used the cash to make “influences”. That was not saying that I’m directly bribing the prosecution or the judge or anyone. It was just about building connections and being on good terms.
I asked her about the pistols because I want her contacts. I have no interest in buying a gun myself, but this contact of hers was surely resourceful. Perhaps, one day, I will need information or evidence that can be only acquired in unconventional ways and when that happens, I need to know who should I ask for.
“I sold a lot of stuff to her before.” She put her hand into her bag and I could only assume that she was trying to find the pistol. “Clients with sensitive identity sometimes pay with stuff other than cash, like, jewelry, cards, and other stuff. So I need to cash them out and she was the one I go to. He only has a loose concept of how much that stuff worth so I can save some money for myself. In fact, I paid my visit and the fee for hiring you with that money.”
To my surprise, she took out an envelope and placed it on my table.
“Your payment.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “And a letter of request.”
“I shall not accept it beforehand.”
“Then open it after you hear the news.”
The clock beeped. She stood up and reached out her hand to find mine.
“It’s a pleasure.” She said.
She left before I could bid my goodbye.
I woke up with the news of a murder.
The daughter attempted to murder her father, missed the shot, father arrested for killing daughter in self-defense.
I came to the office to retrieve the envelope and left right away. In the envelope, there was a letter of request and a locker key. The address on the envelope pointed to a nearby train station.
I drove to the station, opened the locker, and I was surprised, not by the amount of money that she made as an underage prostitute for merely three years, but by the fact that there were men paying that amount of money to rape a girl of their daughter’s age.
Did I mention that I have explained the alternatives to her? All the alternatives I could think of. Report it to the police, report it to the child protect services, have them arrested, you don’t need to worry about the next, the state will press charges against them.
I certainly did, because I remembered her standing there, gently shaking her head, cutting me off with a sad smile.
“I’ll not have it in any other way.” She said. “The only thing I want is him to be dead.”
Perhaps I should’ve reported her for planning to murder her own father after her first visit for legal consultation. Or I could report her for possession of a prohibited weapon when she told me about the pistol she bought that night.
Or I should at least warn her that the knockback from firing a pistol would very likely dislocate her arm and that she only has one chance to do the deed.
But all that would require me to be involved, and that would be too risky for my career, for my reputation. Not that I was not confident in my skills as a defense attorney, quite the contrary, I was certain that I would be able to plea for a lesser charge or make her case as self-defense. Given enough time and the right prosecutor, I can even “prove” her innocence.
At that time, I decided not to intervene, as my agreement with her would only take effect after she was arrested.
Now she’s dead.
The money and the letter of request have lost their purpose.
Later, I heard from a friend that the father was trying to find the best murder defense attorney in town, but failed to do so because he bargained with every one of them for a lower price. Friend complained to me about just how crazy the father’s obsession with money. I wasn’t surprised since I knew from a long time ago that that poor excuse of a human refused to call the escorts and decided to make his own daughter the victim of his sexual desire, all just for saving the dimes.
And here I am, in my car, driving to the suburb, with the letter of request from a failed murderer and a bag of money from a dead prostitute. I burned them in the fireplace at an abandoned campsite and let the river take away the ashes as if I was some murderer trying to get rid of the evidence.
That money burned just like everything else. There was the heat, there was smoke, and the unpleasant sight of fire so bright that my eyes watered when I looked directly into it. It hurt more when I can it see it clearly through glasses, so I took them off, and the smoke irritated my eyes.
At what stage does a lawyer sell their soul? I cannot pinpoint the exact time, but one thing is certain, that at this point, mine was already sold.
I am, a bad attorney.
End notes:
* I got the inspiration from the Ace Attorney series. So I decided to compose a similar lawyer story, but with a darker (or realistic) theme. I have been wondering if such case happens in the AA universe, what will they do. So it’s not a 100% original work.
* I was thinking about Kristoph Gavin when writing this attorney, and you can probably find some references (the scar and glasses, and an egocentric attitude, that is). The attorney in this story was not entirely based on him. But if you stretch it hard enough, this work could be interpreted as a Kris/reader story told from Kris’s perspective and was set at around the beginning of his career (when he was not that twisted). But I doubt anyone would make this connection and it was not my intention to make this a character/reader fic.
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