Chapter 1

"Mr. Mason, one moment of your time, please, at the bench."

I grimaced. I had been trying to turn invisible and make my way out of the courtroom before His Honor got to this point. Ironic, because there was a time in my life when I was subsisting on court-appointed cases, and getting handed one out of rotation would have been a nice perk. But those days were long gone, and I had traded my noble-but-poor defender of the underclass gig for a ridiculously overpaid defender of the wealthy one. In actual point of fact, it was probably better characterized as "Defender of the sons and daughters of the wealthy who do something stupid and wish to be spared the consequences thereof," but that doesn't really fit well on a business card.

So it was with something less that eagerness in my heart and a spring in my step that I made my way back towards the bench. I had been in court to handle the final details on my latest spoiled rich kid: Jeremy Saunders had been arrested after a police pursuit reaching speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour, and after being taken into custody at the conclusion of that chase he was found to be in possession of approximately six grams of powdered cocaine and three vials of Georgia Home Boy, gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid — better known as the date-rape drug GHB. But Jeremy was also the son of F. Jubal Saunders, the current heir to the Saunders & Smithson consumer goods empire. Because Jubal personally brings my firm over $3 million worth of billable hours annually, I was immediately dispatched to ensure that young Jeremy's youthful indiscretions did not translate to any serious legal consequences. Today was the submission of the final nolle pross on the case; the Commonwealth had dropped its last charge after Jeremy agreed to a private rehab. And I had nearly escaped, free to broil outside in the hot August air, when Judge Hollings spotted me and asked me to approach.

"Your Honor?" I asked as I stepped up.

"Mr. Mason. I trust all is well with you? Staying cool in the midst of this heat?"

"Yes, thank you, Judge. Cooler than the folks in New York, anyway." I chuckled a bit at the joke; the papers and news channels were still full of talk over last week's massive power outage that hit the northeastern US and apparently parts of Canada as well. It was apparently the largest blackout in history and they were saying that overload of the power grid from massive air conditioner use had been the cause.

"Indeed. Well, Mr. Mason, we have a small problem here that perhaps you could assist us with. As you know, Clyde Kovic is no longer with the Office of the Public Defender."

I nodded. I had worked with Clyde before the PD's office had existed, when indigent defendants were assigned to lawyers on a first-come, first-served basis. He had remained in the business of defending the poor until just recently, when he had been appointed as a federal judge. Although this gave criminal defendants in the Eastern District of Virginia a relatively friendly ear, it left the PD's office without its boss and most seasoned trial lawyer.

"Yes, Your Honor," I replied cautiously.

"Mr. Kovic's departure has left the Public Defender's office seriously undermanned in attorneys that have worked serious felony cases. And as it happens, I'm just about to conduct a prelim for a defendant that is charged with a serious felony. She is without counsel at the present, and the PD's office has not provided representation suitable to the task." He gestured, and I looked behind me at a skinny kid with an ill-fitting suit at the defense table. He was staring a large pile of manila folders with a barely-concealed look of panic.

"Mr. Ludlow over there was supposed to have been supervised by Ms. Oulette, but I am told that she is ill this morning." I nodded cautiously; I knew Shelia Oulette by reputation; she was good at run of the mill stuff, although I had never heard of her handling anything in the way of serious felonies, either. Judge Hollings continued, "For reasons that are, I trust, clear to you, I am reluctant to permit young Mr. Ludlow to proceed in this matter alone."

"Judge," I said, "I don't have the time to take on a pro bono case. My schedule is..."

"Meaning," he interrupted, "you would have the time if this were a paying client."

"Your Honor," I replied, "I don't work for myself. I have to answer to my..."

"I am sure, Mr. Mason," Judge Hollings interposed pleasantly, "that the powers that be at your firm understand the important of pro bono publico work, as well as the importance of cooperating with those of us that sit on this bench. I am sure that they realize that they must appear in front of me and my colleagues on many different matters, and that maintaining a healthy respect for the smooth functioning of the wheels of justice is a wise idea. Right?"

I sighed. Judge Hollings was telling me plain as day that there would be consequences for me and for the firm if I balked at this. It wasn't precisely unethical, and more to the point, there wasn't much I could do about it even if it were. Like many judges, Hollings viewed the smooth operation of the docket as the greatest good. An obstacle to that smooth operation had now been handled, and he was more than willing to overlook a little strong-arming in the pursuit of that goal.

"Of course, Your Honor," I replied resignedly.

"I knew I could count on you," Judge Hollings beamed.

"What are we looking to accomplish on disposition, Judge?" I asked, still clinging to a hope that I could wrap this up quickly, without putting a crimp in my schedule.

Hollings raised a finger. "Tsk, tsk," he wagged at me. "Ex parte. And some unusual circumstances, besides. Go talk to the Commonwealth Attorney."

I sighed. Ex parte conversations, communication between the judge and only one side in a case, are almost always improper. Now that I was representing a client in a criminal case pending before Judge Hollings, he was reminding me that I could not talk to him about it unless the other side, the Commonwealth of Virginia, was present also.

I stopped by the unfortunate Ludlow and relieved him of the sparse file at issue. Flipping through it quickly, I discovered that the Commonwealth of Virginia was charging a Lauren Tremont with aggravated malicious wounding, a class 2 felony punishable by imprisonment for 20 years to life. The genesis for this charge appeared to be the fact that Lauren was discovered by a sheriff's deputy in a shopping mall parking lot covered in blood. The blood was not her own, and preliminary tests suggested it had come from a single human being in a quantity that suggested that the human being in question was either no longer with us, or pretty damn pale if he was.

Ken Castle was the assistant Commonwealth Attorney in the courtroom. I had worked several cases against him, including one trial. He was not exactly a shining beacon of legal brilliance. I waved the file folder to catch his eye and mouthed "Tremont."

He waved me over. "This is an interesting one," he said to me. "Your new client didn't say a word in response to our repeated request to explain her appearance. In fact, other than supplying her name, she hasn't said anything at all. Normally I'd think that means she's been through the system a time or two, but..."

"What?"

"Well, there's no hit on her prints at all. Nothing local and nothing back from AFIS. She could be a teenager, although who knows, the way they look nowadays, and there's no one matching her name or description showing as missing. She gave a phony Social and a birth date that makes her just 18 if it's legit." He paused. "She didn't ask for a lawyer."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," he agreed, even though I hadn't said anything. "Usually if they clam up, it's after they ask for a lawyer, which is why I'd think she'd be in the system already. Usually they don't learn that until they've been through a few times." If then, I added silently. He continued, "But she didn't. She asked where she was and what the date was. That was it. She doesn't look strung out. She just seemed... disconnected."