The Furthest City Light Read Free Page B

to see another client, I’d drop by the women’s section and visit Emily as well. Each time I gleaned a little more information, but after a while, I mostly came to keep her company.
    Each week I checked her inmate sheet. No one else ever visited her. We talked poetry, politics, theories about battered women, co-dependency and addiction. One day, I described rock climbing (my other passion besides saving people) and promised to take her up an easy pitch after we won her case.
    From those hours we spent together, I learned a few surprising things. Despite never finishing college, my client was fluent in both French and German, she knew how to ride a unicycle, and the only time she’d ever cried was at her mother’s funeral. And though I revealed some personal information too—that I wished I were closer to my mother, that I was ethnically Jewish but thought all religions were irrational—I never told her the most important thing: that my partner was a woman and that we’d been together for eight and a half years. I knew it wouldn’t matter to her, but keeping it to myself was a way of maintaining the attorney-client relationship with someone I was already beginning to care too much about.
    A preliminary hearing is just that, a hearing to determine preliminarily whether there’s probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and that the defendant committed it. A few days before Emily’s hearing, Jeff Taylor, the prosecutor, called me.
    “What do you need on this one, Rachel?” he asked. Jeff had been a prosecutor in the Boulder County District Attorney’s office for as long as I’d been a public defender, almost twelve years. We’d actually gone to law school together and even went out a few times during our first year when I was still dating men. We had a good working relationship and generally trusted each other.
    “I need you to dismiss it,” I said.
    “Right,” he laughed. “It’s fine if you need to do the prelim. I understand. Let me know when you want to talk. This case could be a little sticky, though, because the victim was an ex-cop. His buddies have been calling every week. They want me to hang tough.”
    “He was an abusive bastard,” I said.
    “Can you prove it?”
    I hesitated. So far, Donald had located a few hospital records that established Emily had sought medical attention for a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder and a torn ligament in her knee. These were significant injuries, but she’d always lied about how they happened. None of the neighbors were helpful. Hal’s mother wouldn’t rat on her son (she’d seen a number of bruises on her daughter-in-law, but claimed not to know where they’d come from), and none of Emily’s acquaintances had suspected a thing. My client’s best friend had moved to New York about eight years earlier and had visited only twice. For years, she’d wondered if Hal was an abuser, but Emily would never confirm it.
    “There wasn’t a scratch on her when she was arrested,” Jeff reminded me.
    “So what?” I said, a shoo-in for Miss Bravado of 1985. “It doesn’t mean she wasn’t acting in self-defense.”
    “You’re a great lawyer, Rachel, but I don’t think even you can pull this one off. Anyway, you know I’ll eventually offer second-degree murder. Maybe we’ll find a number she can live with.”
    “That’s not good enough.”
    “It’s the best I can do. See you on Wednesday.”
    I stared out the window at a bluebird roosting in the branches of a naked tree. The wind was blowing steadily, ruffling his short feathers. He looked cold, but resolute. The rest of his clan had long since headed south. I tapped hard on the windowpane and wondered for a moment if he’d frozen to death, but then saw his head move slightly in my direction.
    “Hey,” I shouted, “it’s almost winter, you idiot. Get the hell out of here.”
    On Wednesday, I let Donald sit with Emily and me at the preliminary hearing. At trial, however, I would try to