The Furthest City Light Read Free

Criminal defense is like trying to fit your station wagon into an impossibly small parking space—there’s no way you’ll ever make it. But you position yourself as close as you can and begin inching back and forth, back and forth, creasing a few edges if you must. You tap the car in front, tap the car in back, then bump the car in front, and bump the car in back. And then, after you’ve created as much room as possible, you take a deep breath, hold it, and with great finesse, you squeeze yourself in. Voila !
    The next day, I asked Donald to meet with me at noon. Donald was an excellent investigator, but so physically unappealing that none of the lawyers in the office used him unless they had to. As far as anyone knew, Donald lived in a battered VW van, which he parked behind our office. He was somewhere between thirty-five and sixty, with dark ferret eyes, a bad complexion and long greasy hair. His belly strained ominously against the one shirt he always seemed to wear, which was always stained with whatever food he’d eaten in the last month. Worse, he smoked Marlboros nonstop and reeked like an overflowing ashtray.
    In a town like Boulder, where everyone jogged, meditated and made their own granola, it was hard to believe a guy like Donald would be successful, but almost everyone he tried to interview was willing to talk to him. They let him into their homes and answered his questions not, as you might think, because they felt sorry for him, but because he made them feel better about themselves; no matter how bad off they were, here was a loser in much worse shape. I imagined potential witnesses thinking, What harm could there be if I talk to someone like him?
    At exactly noon, Donald clumped into my office without knocking and sat down on one of the two client chairs that faced my desk. Without looking up from my reports, I asked him to put out his cigarette.
    “I’m not smoking.”
    I looked up. He wasn’t. He just smelled like he was.
    “Oh,” I said.
    I gave him a copy of the police reports and quickly filled him in on what I knew, then handed him a sheet of paper. “Here’s a preliminary list of witnesses I’d like you to start interviewing today.”
    “This the lady that killed the ex-cop?”
    “Her husband was an ex-cop?” Shit. Emily hadn’t bothered to tell me. “How did you know?” But Donald always knew things the rest of us didn’t.
    “A guy I know from Greeley told me. The vic used to be a cop up there about ten years ago, got shot in the leg and had to go on disability. I’m sure the police down here know all about it by now.”
    “That’s a bad fact,” I said.
    “It ain’t good,” he agreed. “Accident or self-defense?”
    “Self-defense.”
    Donald nodded. We talked strategy for another thirty minutes, and then he stood up to go. “When you see her,” he said, “ask if she’s ever gone to the doctor or a hospital. Maybe we can get some records to show he’s hurt her in the past.”
    “I will.”
    “In the meantime,” he said, “I’ll nose around, see if anyone in the neighborhood has ever seen her with any bruises.”
    “Great. I’ll get the names and addresses of all her friends, relatives and acquaintances. Let’s meet again on Friday.”
    “Okay,” he said. There was a huge red smear across the front of his shirt. Normally, I refrained from commenting on his appearance, but this time I couldn’t help it.
    “That’s not blood, is it?”
    Donald had no sense of humor. He looked down at his shirt and considered the stain. “Unlikely. Probably ketchup.”
    ***
     
    The next time I saw Emily Watkins, she had a black eye.
    “What happened?” I asked as a female guard was escorting us into another tiny interview room.
    The guard grinned and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Last night, this one here got in between Alicia and one of the other inmates. The first one who ever stood up to Alicia. If it wasn’t for her, that other lady would have been hurting