KATE
In the ladies' bathroom on the fourteenth floor of the building that housed Levy, Bernard and Groff, Kate tucked the collar of her blouse beneath the lapels of her jacket. It was coming up on two o'clock in the afternoon and she hadn't eaten since breakfast. She was hungry, but too focused to stop for food.
Checked her reflection.
She hit the faucet, washed and dried her hands.
Checked her reflection again. She touched up her lipstick. Breathed out,
nodded and left.
Kate made her way to the conference room, which had been commandeered
for the attorneys working on the Avellino case. Levy had described this as the 'war room' and sure enough a battle was raging when Kate opened the door.
A long table filled with open law books, case reports, laptops, coffee cups, legal pads and pencils took up the center of the room. The group had been working all morning, discussing the discovery and potential strategies. They had to be ready to present their ideas to Levy the next morning. Levy let it be known, none too subtly, that whoever had the best work would likely be awarded second chair at the trial. Kate wanted that seat more than anything. This was her moment, and she wasn't going to let it pass. All the shit that came with the job would be worth it if she was sitting beside Levy in that trial. It was all that she could think about. The group in the room already had a head start as Kate had missed the morning session. She had now read the discovery and was up to speed. It didn't pass her by that Levy had deliberately kept her out of the office by giving her the morning off to collect her thoughts. While this put her behind in terms of work, seeing Bloch and her dad that morning had been exactly what she'd needed.
Around the table sat Scott, an empty chair beside him to which Kate returned, and on the other side of the room were three attorneys from litigation who had previously worked in the criminal department. All of them were male, all wore expensive suits that looked too tight and ties that were way too thin. They had given their names to Kate as Chad, Brad and Anderson. They didn't offer to shake hands, but one of them, Brad, hit Scott with a fist bump. She didn't know if Anderson was a first name or last name. It didn't matter. Brad, Chad and
Anderson looked as though they shared the same bleached-blond personality. Jocks with rich parents and trust funds.
Kate returned to the stack of papers in front of her – a potted history of the Avellino family with more details on Alexandra and Sofia. The more Kate read, the more she was convinced that Alexandra was the functioning, organized sibling who had her shit together and her life on track from a young age. While Sofia was a disaster with bouts of drug addition, rehab stints, counseling and more than one intervention regarding her destructive behavior. It made Kate feel good to know that she was obviously representing the innocent sister, but with that knowledge came weight.
The burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt lay with the prosecution, but the burden of having an innocent client on trial for murder was a much heavier one.
Innocence weighs a ton.
'Let's blue-sky this case. Enough reading, already. We've got forty-one days and counting to lodge our motions with the court. We need discovery, motions for dismissal, and a severance motion. What've you got, dogs?' said one of the blond suits. With her focus on the case, Kate had forgotten which of them was which. She thought that might have been Anderson.
Scott said, 'Anderson, don't use that language here. We're not all dogs, there's a lady present.'
She was right, it was Anderson who had taken charge of the group and was asking for ideas. Anderson fixed Scott with an expression that said – really?
'Alright, alright,' said Anderson, 'dogs and bitch. Is that better?'
One of the suits high-fived Anderson, the other was laughing so hard he was doubled-over on his chair. Kate glanced to her side, saw Scott trying to hold in a laugh, and failing.
Kate felt the blood flooding the skin around the base of her neck like a heat rash. Her skin was prickly, and alive.
Anderson must've seen her reaction because he put both hands out in front of him, palms up, like he was trying to stop a speeding car coming toward him, 'Woah, I'm really sorry. I don't mean any kind of offence. It's just our sense of humor – absolutely nothing to do with you, personally.'
Chad, Brad and Scott calmed down and all of them apologized, with smiles on their faces – none with a single drop of sincerity. They apologized because they had to.
'He's really sorry,' said Scott.
'I am, too. So is Brad,' said the one who must've been Chad.
'Me too,' said Anderson fighting down another bout of laughter. Brad, who
looked to be a little quicker on the uptake than Chad, bit his finger in an effort to quell his mirth.
'Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I meant I'm sorry too. Not hashtag Me Too,' said Anderson, rolling his eyes and making air quotes when he said me too.
'Can we move on?' said Kate.
The men straightened up, now a little worried that they had offended Kate. She'd had enough of this shit. She just wanted out of the room so she could go somewhere and calm down before she said something she would come to regret. Brad, Chad and Anderson had seniority at this table, and she had kept that firmly in mind while she bit down hard in case a flurry of expletives should escape.
'By all means, you're right. Let's move on. Sorry, what's your name again?' said Anderson.
'Kate.'
'Sorry, Kate. Please, let's have your thoughts,' said Anderson.
There was a five-hundred-pound pause in the room. Thick and deep enough to
drown a man.
'I've been reading a lot about the family. It's a little messed up, maybe no
more than other families, but whatever went on in that house hit Sofia the worst. She's a wreck. Serious mental health problems, a history of suicide attempts, drug and alcohol addiction and an ongoing problem with self-harming. The prosecution will have an easier time convincing a jury that Sofia could flip out and murder her father.'
Taking a second, Kate looked around the table.
The sniggers and snide half-smiles had gone. Scott and the blond suits were listening – seriously listening. What Kate was about to say sounded crazy, but she believed it could work. She just needed to believe in herself enough to say it.
Scott said, 'After we sever the trials, we can't dictate which trial the DA will take first. Maybe they'll take Sofia's case first and if she's convicted, well that might be enough for Dreyer to have one scalp – maybe he won't risk going after Alexandra. But there's no way to make that happen. We can't dictate which trial goes first after our motion to sever the trials is granted.'
Brad, Chad and Anderson nodded approvingly at Scott, then began looking at their own notes.
'You don't understand. I'm proposing we don't sever the trials,' said Kate.
Scott looked as though he'd been struck. His head rocked back on his shoulders, he frowned and wrinkles appeared on his forehead.
'What do you mean, we don't separate the trials? If the defendants are accusing one another we have to try – they'll just destroy their own credibility by pointing the finger at each other. And what if Alexandra decides not to testify
and Sofia testifies against Alexandra – we'd be screwed,' said Scott.
'It could only work if Alexandra testified,' said Kate. 'Look at it this way. In a separate trial, we have to beat the evidence from the DA. In a joint trial we only have to beat Sofia – a mentally unstable drug addict with a history of violence. Alexandra is a professional young woman, with a clear record, who is totally convincing when she says she had nothing to do with the murder. She's a dream
witness. Articulate, credible, sincere.'
'It's risky as all hell,' said Anderson.
'You know the old joke about the wildlife photographers who startle a lion on
the African plain? The photographer closest to the lion changes out of his boots into a pair of Adidas running shoes. The other photographer says, You won't outrun a lion in those shoes. And the first photographer says, Fuck the lion. I just have to outrun YOU.'
The meeting lasted another hour. Legal theories and strategies fired back and forth across the table. Now they would each go away and prepare notes. Not only would they present their strategies to Levy, but they were expected to critique each other's strategies for any possible weaknesses. It was all riding on the paper that Kate would now write. The meeting with Levy tomorrow morning was her shot at second chair in the trial.
Kate ate dinner alone at her desk and typed furiously on her laptop, building her theory of proceeding with a joint trial. Every now and again she flipped between the memo she was writing for Levy, and the dossier their investigators had prepared on Alexandra.
If Kate could have Alexandra's lifestyle, she would take it in a heartbeat. Until the arrest, Alexandra had been a tall, blonde, rich socialite on the Manhattan scene. Parties, limos, dinners, and dresses that Kate could only dream of buying. Her real-estate business ran itself – she listed properties for the uber- rich. And the uber-rich bought them, sometimes without even so much as a viewing. A long list of celebrity boyfriends had been photographed in the gossip and social life pages of magazines – basketball players, actors, the sons of actors, TV hosts, and even shock-jock podcasters. And she was smart, too. Alexandra had it all. A great life and great clothes. Oh my god, the clothes, thought Kate.
A Park Avenue lifestyle. With money. Security and total luxury. Alexandra Avellino had absolutely no motive to kill her father. He had given her a dream life. Set her on that path. She was the last person on earth who would harm her father.
Six o'clock came and went. Nobody left the office. This law firm existed on billable hours. If you weren't billing your share, your ass hit the street fast. Kate
started punching in at six a.m., and usually punched out at nine. Four hours on a Saturday morning too. On Sunday she crashed.
It was past seven o'clock when the first associate left for the evening. Kate watched him go, and leaned back in her chair, thrusting her arms to the ceiling and stretching her back. That's when she heard Levy's office door open and hurried footsteps on the floor behind her. Scott came out of Levy's office. A spring in his step and a wide smile on his photogenic face. He got into the elevator and was gone.
Kate returned to the screen in front of her and read through her last sentence, careful to check for any typos. That's when she heard Levy's door again. He rarely left his office, usually only to go to meetings, or to go home. He had a private bathroom in there and a small army of secretarial staff to bring him lunch, dinner and endless glasses of chilled almond milk. She turned her head to see Levy coming toward her, hauling his pants up as he walked. He stopped behind her chair, and she resisted the urge to shudder as she felt his hand on her shoulder.
'Any response from the DA's office on my counter-offer?' asked Levy.
'No, not yet,' said Kate.
'Okay. Look, Katie, why don't you finish this up in the morning?' he said. She felt his index finger slid across her collar bone, and not wanting to scream
or turn and punch him in the balls, Kate simply swiveled her chair around to face him – forcing him to take his hand away.
'I can't, I need to write up my notes for tomorrow's strategy presentation. I should be finished soon,' said Kate.
'But you've got to eat. You should take a break. I know a great little Italian restaurant right around the corner from my apartment. And the best thing is it delivers. We could go back to my place, order in, open a bottle of wine and you can tell me all about your case theory.'
For a second – a full second – the thought of going back to Levy's apartment with him flashed through Kate's mind. She wanted second chair. She wanted it bad. But the moment passed, somehow leaving an unpleasant taste in her mouth which sure wasn't there before.
'I'm a little behind on my notes. Some more legal research to do before I can finish. Sorry, I just really want to finish this and make a good impression tomorrow. I have a strategy that's kind of unusual, but it could really pay off for Alexandra. I really think I deserve a shot at second chair in the trial.'
Levy stepped back, set his lips into an 'O' then cringed as he said, 'I just gave second chair to Scott. Sorry, I can't go back on that. I'm sure your strategy is bold, but it couldn't beat Scott's theory. It's kind of genius in a way. Ruthless,
which I like, but really thinking out of the box. At first I couldn't believe what he was saying, but he convinced me. We're not going to apply to the court to sever the trials. It's going to be a joint trial. We'll put Alexandra against Sofia, and Alexandra will beat her weird sister hands down. How did Scott put it? Putting on our Nike's when we see a tiger in the jungle. We won't beat the tiger in those shoes, but as long as we outrun the other guy we're home free. Funny, don't you think?'
Kate's heartbeat quickened – she could feel the pulse beating its way through a large vein that stretched across her chest.
'When did Scott tell you this?'
'Just now. It's brilliant. I didn't see any point in delaying the decision. Scott's got second chair. If we play along with the prosecution and get a joint trial I can pressure Dreyer into a deal for Alexandra. She'll accept a felony misdemeanor, no time. So look, you don't need to have this work done for the morning. Come and have some dinner with me. My apartment is really something, you know? It's spacious but at the same time it's ... intimate.'
Bile filled Kate's mouth. She felt dizzy, and turned away from Levy so she could hold onto the desk. She needed to hold onto something right then or she knew she would be sick all over the floor.
If she told Levy this was her idea all along the chances were he wouldn't believe her. Even with the notes she had made – Scott could say that he brought it up in the meeting and his bimbo buddies would back him up one hundred percent. From somewhere that felt far away, Kate was aware of Levy saying, 'Well, if you change your mind later you're welcome to drop by. I just got a jacuzzi tub installed. It's big enough for two. We could chill out with some champagne, discuss your case theory. You never know, I might need a third chair in this trial.'
She put her head in her hands.
A montage of possible actions flickered through her mind. None of them involved going back to Levy's apartment.
'No, thank you,' said Kate.
Levy backed away, perhaps conscious that he was pushing the envelope now. Kate wanted to push her laptop up Levy's ass.
Instead, she flicked her finger across the face of the mouse, brought her screen
back to life and checked her emails. She had received Brad, Chad and Anderson's notes for commentary. She printed them, and another two documents. These she collected from the copier, grabbed her coat and pushed the button for the elevators. While she stood there, she had second thoughts. What she was thinking of doing was dangerous, outrageous. It could kill her career
stone dead.
The elevator doors opened and Kate got in on her own. The floor below was
where Human Resources was based. She thought about hitting that button, going to the personnel supervisor and making a complaint of sexual harassment, and discrimination. The doors began to close.
She reminded herself she was Kate Brooks.
Kate hit the button for the ground floor. She'd had enough. It was time to take the nuclear option. No complaints against Levy would ever stand scrutiny. It's nigh on impossible to prove a person has done something wrong when you work in an office with that same person's name on the letterhead.
There would be no sexual harassment claims. What she had in mind was far more damaging.