Chapter 1

This is ridiculous. I'm not sure what bullshit excuse the firm came up with to justify giving me this level of caseload, but it's un-fucking-ethical, and I'm about to snap. I've got a capital murder trial coming up in 2 more long and treacherous months, and a full load of other various -- and tedious -- cases that don't seem like they should be as difficult as they are. I'm working all hours of the day every day of the week, and I just feel like treading water isn't cutting it anymore. I'm sinking the quicksand of my career, chasing the dangling carrot of being promoted to senior partner. Yea, they gave me a capital murder trial, and I'm not even a senior partner. How's that for getting the shaft on a promotion while doing the same amount of work?

There's the Barnes case -- that one is just a headache, really. This guy got the idea that he was going to make the world a better place by forcing his father, who was homeless, to get "help" for his homelessness and for what Junior perceives to be his father's mental illness, even though no psychiatrist will corroborate it. He completely disregarded his father's wishes and tried to force him into an institution so that he'd have shelter and full-time care, but his father refused to go.

So what does the son do? He shoots his father up with heroin against his will so that there is a justifiable reason to force him into rehab, and then he tries to take control of his father's estate by petitioning for a power of attorney -- yes, his homeless father has an estate, even though he's homeless. He prefers it that way. I didn't say the man wasn't a little loose in the noggin.

But having a few screws loose doesn't really justify forcing an addictive narcotic into someone's body without their consent or trying to steer the situation in a self-promoting direction. The kid is just fucking nuts, far more than his father is, and you'd never even know it just looking at him. He seems so reasonable, so "together". He's got a college degree and everything. Psychology with a minor in anthropology if I remember right. It makes me wonder just what else this guy would do to get his way. He's probably raped or killed dozens of women we'll never know about. He just strikes me as "that type" who would seem perfectly normal to the outside world but live a completely secret life with a torture chamber in his dungeon basement. He has no conscience, but he acts as though he does, just as convincingly as you or I. My skin crawls when I think about it.

Anyway, I represent Barnes Sr. Old coot is a little rough around the edges, but all in all a sweet man. He'd give you the shirt off his back if he had one. He doesn't talk a lot, but it's kinda like hearing a voice from a whole 'nother time and place when he finally opens his mouth. He keeps to himself, sometimes just dropping to the floor, sitting and crying, in a fetal position, rocking back and forth. I once asked him what caused this, alarmed at first, and then concerned that it might happen in court. He just kept telling me that "it hurts", and that was all he could say. The ambulance came and checked him out, and he was fine. The shrink had a chat with him, and she told me afterward that he was completely stable but that he has some kind of "connection" -- a real one, not just like a crazy paranoid sort -- with other people. It all seemed like a bunch of bull to me, but no one can seem to get a single one of the shrinks he's seen to testify that he's a nut job. That makes my end of things a little easier, so I'm not gonna question it too much.

Why give a damn about the Barnes case, with all the others I've got flooding the docket and a capital murder case in progress? Because Junior won't leave me the fuck alone. And he's not doing anything wrong that I can do a damn thing about. He's not stalking me (that I know of), not showing up at work with a dozen roses or bibles or anything. He's just calling to "see how Dad is doing" because he's "really concerned about him", or he's calling to see if we can reschedule such-and-such, or his "attorney wanted" him to call me to find out about something. I know it's crap. That attorney and I have drinks every first Friday of the month and sing karaoke in the bar, drunk off our asses together. If he wanted to know somethin', he'd damn well call me himself.

But it's just annoying -- the flood of messages, the wasted carbon copy paper my secretary uses to leave them, the voicemails when I get to the office in the morning -- all about related things that don't constitute harassing communications, stalking, or even criminal trespass, but you bet your ass I'd file those charges just as soon as I got the chance, if he'd ever give me the chance. He just keeps filing extra motions and then dropping them, over and over and fucking over again.

I need a drink. Would you like a scotch? I'll pour two. It's gonna be a long evening if you wanna hear about the rest of my week.

So, the Appleman Case. It's sort of a long story too, but it seems like everyone wants to hear about it. The one thing that eats me inside the most and keeps me from sleeping at night, the one thing that rots my soul like none other, is the same damn thing I can't tell anyone about. It's a high-profile case, to say the least. We just got done with round one, and now we're heading to appellate court for another shot. For the sake of brevity (which is a joke, given the 4,285-page case brief on the situation), let's suffice to say that I'm defending this guy who absolutely deserves to die in more painful ways than are legally permitted in this country. Or the entire world, to the best of my knowledge. He kidnapped 83 children -- 72 girls and 11 boys -- and he turned them into play toys for himself for various uses, some sexual but some not. I'm not gonna disgust you with the details of the things that happened there; I'll just leave it at "it's a 4,285-page brief." That's 4,285 pages more than I care to read about a disgusting pervert who brutalized and destroyed the lives of 83 kids, all under the age of 10, and then "accidentally" killed about half of them in the presence of the others due to basic negligence and carelessness during his brutality.

And you know what I'm doing for him? I'm arguing manslaughter. Ha! Manslaughter because it was an accident that they died. He didn't mean to kill them while he was abusing them and making them perform acts no grown adult should endure, even in Guantanamo. It was gross negligence. Endangering the Welfare of a Minor. Kidnapping. All the various child sex statues available, not excluding the ones regarding bestiality. The list of charges I'm pushing for goes on and on, and it'll get him a couple lives in prison by the time you add them all up, but it'll keep that needle out of his arm, which is my job to make happen. I'm arguing that he didn't intend to kill anyone -- at least not the humans, though the evidence for cruelty to animals is staunchly irrefutable -- and that he's not a cold-blooded murderer. I'm convincing people that it's true. And it's fucking sick. This man deserves to be put on IV drip so that he can't starve or dehydrate while he's mercilessly tortured by the parents of these children for years and years in constant and unforgiving pain. After all, what goes around comes around, right? Maybe we could even hire a counselor to sit in on the torture to help the families work through their feelings. I think it's a fair way to help these parents cope with the loss of their children, not to mention the knowledge of what has happened to them for the last 3-5 years since their abductions. The fucker's been at this a while now.