Chapter 382

Garrison’s closing statement was convincing and damning. He was eloquent without being flowery, and you realised that running through the case with you and the other interns had been a practice, bullet-point run of what he said to the judge. Still, it lasted almost two hours and by the time he was finishing up everyone in the courtroom needed a bit of a break. The judge called it for the day rather than pushing through with the Defense’s closing, who would get to pick up in the morning.

Almost as soon as the judge was out of the room, the Defense lead went to Garrison again and started talking. Garrison held up his hand to stop the man, then left his associates and came back to speak with you.

“Head home,” he said. “We’ll have a long night tonight and you can’t be around for it.”

“You’re going to settle?” you asked. “After it’s all pretty much over?”

“We have the most leverage now,” Garrison said. “That’s when it’s best to settle. In this case, the defence knows we have them over a barrel, and a judge’s verdict would just open them up to potential criminal charges that some ADA could file for an easy slam dunk. If they offer our client a good enough deal, none of that needs to happen.”

“So we should head to the office tomorrow?” Gemma guessed.

“Correct. You’ll be back to regular work and hours as of tomorrow,” Garrison said. “And I hope you’ve been putting in the hours on the Mock Trial; after giving you a reward like three paid days sitting around in court there aren’t many excuses I’d accept for poor performance.”

“I’m on top of it, sir,” Sabrina said. “We’ll be ready.”

“Good,” Garrison nodded in dismissal and turned to head back to the waiting lawyers, but hesitated. “Oh, and don’t be surprised when Andy doesn’t show up. He was fired yesterday. I appreciate that you all felt like a team, but don’t let yourselves be dragged down by an anchor in your career.”

That left all four of you stunned as Garrison went back to his burgeoning negotiations.

“Well, shit,” Eric said.

“Oh, Andy,” Gemma sighed.

“Did he text anyone?” you asked.

“Not a word,” Sabrina shook her head.

“He texted me but didn’t mention it at all,” Eric said. “He just asked if I had a weed guy in the city, which I don’t, and which was weird because I mean...”

“Yeah, that’s weird,” you said, shaking your head. “What do we- I mean, do we reach out to him?”

“This is a little cut-throat but ... do we care that he’s gone?” Gemma asked. “Garrison was right, we were constantly covering for him. If we hadn’t he’d have been fired a couple of months ago.”

The four of you all clearly felt uncomfortable with that question.

“I’ll text him, see if he says anything,” Eric said. “I mean, I like the guy but...”

The weird news settled on you as you left the courtroom and headed out of the building. Thankfully there were no interruptions, ambushes or other shocking events, but that made you feel like the whole thing with the courthouse had kind of ended in a whimper. Maybe that wasn’t true for the case, as Garrison was embroiled in a multi-million dollar negotiation, but for you and the others, you stepped out to no fanfare and no victory or defeat. Just ... another day done.