When he opened his eyes again to look at his reflection, half of it was missing. That half had formed a wet, clumpy pink mound a few inches away from the puddle. He felt something sharp dig into the nape of his neck and as he lost consciousness, he couldn’t help but think of the victim list that he’d had Don Smith working so hard on.
Nathan Summers sat in the office of Mayer, Summers and Soul; his head buried into his short, silvery hair as he fought back the urge to vomit. Sniffing, he wiped down his face with the cuff of his grey pinstripe suit as he forced himself to turn away from the picture that stared at him from the corner of the desk.
Natasha and her daughter stared back at him, the sun behind them giving their hair a shimmering, halo-like quality.
He took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, then repeated several times as he tried to compose himself. Gathering his will, he reached up and lay his hand on the top of the silver frame that he’d given her for her birthday and pushed it down so that it faced downward. Their happy, contented eyes no longer haunting him, he turned his attention to the box between his legs and the pile of papers surrounding it.
“Loved that girl,” he thought to himself, grabbing a handful of papers and shoving them down into the box. “But it wouldn’t have killed her to be organized.”
He reached over with both arms, spreading them to gather one sweeping armful and throw it into the box. It nearly buckled under the weight of the faxes and printouts, so much that he had to force it down with the heel of his shoe. Three pieces fell out when he pulled back his foot, their crumpled remains falling and rolling along the floor. He sighed, bending over despite the cries from his back and picking them up. On the one that had been closest to him, he saw a familiar name in dark printers ink: Natasha Mayer.
He paused, staring down at the paper in his hand for a moment before unfolding it and reading down through the document.
Kind representative of Mayer, Summers and Soul;
It has come to my attention recently that a person/ persons at your firm has come into contact with my case file after my information was sent to you via the District Attorney.
Lavish as it is for me to have a fan, I feel it necessary to inform you that I have plead guilty to the majority of the crimes to which I am accused.
Likewise I am sure you are aware that I am expected to spend the remainder of my short life in a maximum security upstate while awaiting execution.
You above anyone understand how unacceptable this is. I have grown to regard Coral Beach and this place with fondness and do not wish to leave any more than I wish for my life to end.
Ordinarily I would be appalled at admitting this, but I find myself overcome with fear at the idea of my death. I do not want to die, sir or madame. I wish to live and to learn of the world around me, albeit through the bars of a gilded cage. I wish to fight the death penalty sentence as well as my conviction. As such, I will require the services of a lawyer.
Understand that despite all accounts, I do have the means with which to compensate you handsomely.
Sincerely, Adam Genblade.
He stared at it for a moment, his eyebrows getting lower and lower as something in the back of his mind ached at him. His lower lip quivering, he lay the letter flat against Natasha’s desk and grabbed a blank sheet of paper, laying it over the top so that it covered all but the first letter of every paragraph and then read it again.
“KILL YOU.
Sincerely, Adam Genblade.”
Balking, he stepped back from the desk and grabbed the box by both sides, getting his head back over it just in time before he started to vomit again.
Megan Greene sat in her office, head buried in her hands. She’d been a lawyer for a long time and had come up against some of the hardest killers in this country. She had taken pride in the fact that she had put them all behind bars, without remorse or a second thought.
Now she sat at her desk wringing her hair between her fingers, questioning the innocence and guilt of them all. Questioning a promise she had made nearly a decade ago.
There’s a school of thought you learn in law school. It’s an emotional void that each lawyer must find to defend a client that you may not believe is completely innocent, or maybe even just flat-out guilty. Or in Megan’s case, accusing someone she’d believed innocent. She’d made a promise to her best friend ten years ago that she would never let the ‘emotional void’ consume her. She kept reliving the conversation she’d had with her friend, one of their last. He’d told her to live life with ‘no regrets’. To never look back, and to always approach the future with a positive spin on the past. Come to think of it, that was the
