was an ex-con, and no one in that type of bar has decent eyesight or much of a memory when it's the police asking the questions.
The mention of violence made Amanda flash on Mary Sandowski's tearstained face. She felt a little dizzy and squeezed her eyes shut. Frank noticed that Amanda's face was drained of color.
Are you okay? he asked.
I was just thinking about that poor woman.
I' m sorry you had to see that.
Amanda grew thoughtful. When I was a little girl, you never took me to court when you tried the really bad cases, did you?
You were too young.
You didn't even do it when I was in high school. I remember asking you about the Fong case and the one where the two girls were tortured, but you never seemed to have the time.
You didn't need to hear about stuff like that at that age.
You always did shelter me when I was growing up.
You think it was easy for me raising a little girl by myself? Frank answered defensively. I always tried to figure out what your mother would have done, and I could never see Samantha letting me take an eleven-year-old to a rape trial.
No, I don't suppose she would have, Amanda answered with a brief smile. Then she thought about the videotape again and grew somber.
I guess it doesn't get much worse than what I just saw, she said.
No, it doesn' t.
I never really understood what you did, until now. I mean I knew intellectually, but...
There's nothing intellectual about criminal law, Amanda. There are no ivory towers, just tragedy and human beings at their worst.
Why do you do it?
Good question. Maybe because it is real. I' d be bored silly closing real-estate deals or drawing up contracts. And every once in a while you do make a difference in some poor bastard's life. I've represented a lot of very bad people, but I've also freed two people from prison who were sentenced to death for crimes they didn't commit, and I've kept people out of jail who didn't deserve to be there. I guess you can say that I spend a lot of my time in the shit, but every so often I come up with a pearl, and that makes the bad stuff worthwhile.
You don't have to take every case, though. You can turn some away.
Frank glanced at his daughter. Like this one, you mean?
What if he's guilty?
We don't know that.
What if you knew beyond any doubt that Cardoni tortured that woman? How could you help a person who could do what we saw on that tape?
Frank sighed. That's the question every criminal lawyer asks at some point in his or her career. I expect you'll be mulling it over while we work on this case. Those who decide they can't do it switch to some more refined type of law.
Are there enough pearls to justify working for someone like Cardoni?
Do you remember the McNab boy?
Vaguely. I was in junior high school, wasn't I?
Frank nodded. I fought that case and fought that case. He was convicted in the first trial. I cried after the verdict because I knew he was innocent. I wasn't experienced in handling death cases. I truly believed that the verdict was my fault. Guilt drove me, and I didn't stop until I' d won the appeal and a new trial.
The jury hung at the retrial. I couldn't sleep, I lost weight and I charged every moment that poor boy spent in jail to my soul. Then my investigator talked to Mario Rossi's mother.
The snitch?
Frank nodded. Rossi's testimony kept Terry McNab on death row for four years, but he confessed to his mother that he lied to get a deal for himself. When Rossi recanted, the prosecutor had to dismiss.
Frank was silent for a moment. Amanda saw the color rise in his cheeks and his eyes water. When he spoke again, Amanda heard his voice catch.
I can still remember that afternoon. We ended the hearing around four, and Terry's father and mother and I had to wait another hour for Terry to be processed out of jail. Terry looked stunned when he stepped outside. It was February and the sun had gone down, but the air was clear and crisp. When he stood on the steps of the jail Terry looked up at the stars. He just stood there, looking up. Then he took a deep breath.
My plane didn't leave until the morning, so I was staying at a motel on the edge of town. Terry's folks invited me to dinner, but I begged off. I knew they were just being polite and that the family would much rather be alone. Besides, I was wrecked. I' d left everything in the courtroom.
Frank paused again.
Do you know the thing I remember most about that day? It was the way I felt when I entered my motel room. I hadn't been alone until then, and the enormousness of what I had done had not sunk in. Four and a half years of fighting to do the right thing, the lost sleep, the tears and the frustration ... I closed the door behind me and I stood in the middle of my motel room. I suddenly understood that it was over: I had won, and Terry would never have to spend another moment caged up.
Amanda, I swear my soul rose out of my body at that moment. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back and felt my soul rise right up to the ceiling. It was only a moment, and then I was back on earth, but that feeling made every moment of those horrible four years worthwhile. You don't get that feeling doing anything else.
Amanda remembered how she had felt when she heard Not guilty in LaTricia Sweet's case. It had been so heady to win, especially when she hadn't thought she would. Then Amanda remembered what she had seen on the tape, and she realized that there was no comparison between LaTricia Sweet's case and the murder of Mary Sandowski. LaTricia wasn't hurting anyone but herself. No one had to fear her after she was set free. It would be totally different to help free the person who tortured Mary Sandowski.
Amanda had no doubt that her father meant what he had said. What she didn't know was whether she believed that the chance to save a few deserving people would ever be enough compensation for representing a monster who could coldly and cruelly cut the nipple off a screaming human being.
Chapter 14
Bobby Vasquez parked in his assigned spot in the lot of his low-rent garden apartment. On one side of the complex was the interstate and on the other a strip mall. Truth was, between the IRS and his child support payments, this was the best he could afford. There were two rows of mailboxes near the parking spot. Vasquez collected his mail and thumbed through it while he climbed the stairs to his second-floor apartment. Ads and bills. What did he expect? Who would write him?
Vasquez opened his door and flipped on the light. The furniture in the living room was secondhand and covered by a thin layer of dust. Sections of a three-day-old Oregonian littered the floor, the threadbare couch and one end of a low plywood coffee table. Each weekend Vasquez vowed to clean up, but he made an effort only when the dirt and debris overwhelmed him. He was rarely home, anyway. Undercover work kept him out at odd hours. When he wasn't working he kept company with Yvette Stewart, a cocktail waitress at the cop bar where he did his serious drinking. His wife had left him because he was never around, and he had continued the tradition after moving to this shithole.
Vasquez tossed his mail onto the coffee table and walked into the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator but a six-pack, a carton of spoiled milk and a half-eaten loaf of stale bread. Vasquez didn't care. He was too exhausted to be hungry, anyway. Too exhausted to sleep, too.
Vasquez flopped onto the couch, popped the top on a beer can and flipped channels until he found ESPN. He closed his eyes and ran the cold can across his forehead. Everything was going just fine so far. Cardoni was in jail, and everyone seemed to have bought his story about the search. It felt good on those rare occasions when things went right for a change. Another thing that cheered Vasquez was Cardoni's claim that he did not own the Milton County house. Something like that was easy to check.
Vasquez turned off the set and pushed himself off the couch. He crumpled the sections of the newspaper and the beer can and threw them in the trash. Then he dragged himself into the bathroom. While he brushed his teeth
