She plucked a Walkman and a small can of pepper spray from under the driver’s seat before slamming her door shut. The echo went far and wide. The guilty verdict had been announced with similar effect: Ama Chaplin just lost.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so unlucky in the courtroom. Denied motions, barred evidence, a star witness who never showed, and the heel on her black patent Louboutin that broke in the middle of her closing argument. She didn’t want to think that had something to do with the guilty verdict, but it was impossible to be sure what affected a jury more: proof or presentation.
She knelt to thread a shoelace through the lid of the pepper spray as the memory of the foreman’s voice announcing her client’s guilt replayed in her mind. Of course, this latest client had been guilty. Most of them were. Ama could count on her fingers the number of innocent defendants she’d represented. Determining guilt or innocence wasn’t her job. Her job was to provide the most thorough defense money could buy so if the defendant was found guilty, there would be no room or cause for an appeal. In reality, she was doing a public service. If a guilty person walked, it was on the prosecution’s hands, not hers.
Failure washed over her in a wave of heat. She yanked the knot secure, then stood and brought the heels of her hands down on the hood of her car, light-headed and furious. She hadn’t been sleeping as of late. The night before, she’d tried to drown her insomnia in a bottle of top-shelf gin. All she got for her efforts was a splitting headache and a forgettable night with the young executive who lived in the penthouse opposite hers. They’d exchanged casual banter in the elevator, and instead of returning to her apartment, she’d followed him to his. In hindsight, she should’ve opted to finish the bottle of gin. At least it would’ve brought some satisfaction.
Or you could always give it a go with a man your own age, Ama’s assistant, Lindsey Harold, had advised whenever she recounted another lackluster evening. At least they know their way around the bases. And they’ve usually learned the value of a good, long warm-up.
Well, that would make one of us, Ama usually responded, which was followed up with Lindsey accusing her of being detached and emotionally unavailable, and naming her job the cause.
Although she wouldn’t admit it, Ama had to agree with her. She welcomed the shadow of every soul with open arms, shielded it, and sent it back into the world. She’d seen some deep, dark, horrible shit in the twenty years since she’d become a defense attorney. Of course it made her reluctant to form connections. Some of the worst minds she’d ever encountered turned their wheels behind very ordinary, clean-cut faces. Preachers, teachers, Little League coaches, presidents of the PTA. Evil wore any face. So she didn’t like the idea of second dates or sleeping over. Gin was her favorite company. At least she got to set the pace of how fast gin would kill her. If those were the costs of being the priciest defense attorney in the city of Atlanta, she’d take it.
She felt for her phone inside her jacket pocket. She should call Lindsey now to tell her where she was, but there was something freeing in knowing she was completely off everyone’s radar. This latest loss was a big one. She knew the phone on her receptionist’s desk probably wouldn’t ring quite so often with calls from potential clients seeking representation in the next few days. Maybe not even until the next big win, which was months away at a minimum. The case should’ve been a slam dunk. What the hell had gone wrong?
Other attorneys might consider the loss the beginning of a losing streak. Most lawyers she knew practiced some kind of habit or ritual before going into a trial or carried a lucky totem with them into the courtroom. Ama wasn’t one for superstition. As she clipped her Walkman to the hip of her running shorts and adjusted it to its perfect spot, it occurred to her that she had more ritualistic preparations for going on a run than she did for walking into a courtroom ahead of a closing argument. She believed in coincidence; many of her cases had been won on it. She knew she couldn’t second-guess coincidence just because it wasn’t stacking in her favor this time.
A decent martini and a little release usually did the trick to snap her out of a funk, but she was zero for two. Surely to God, a long drive and a hard run would do something for her mood, or, at the very least, would chase away the remnants of her hangover.
The rumble of a struggling engine approached from behind. She looked over her shoulder. An old white van pulled into the small parking lot, which was empty but for the two of them. Its rear windows were blacked out, and a pair of red bandanas served as curtains for the rear windshield.
A beat-up American-model van in the middle of nowhere.
Isn’t this how most serial killer stories begin?
She stretched her arms one at a time across her chest, keeping a sidelong focus on the car. It sputtered as the engine shifted into park and then idled in a corner spot. The driver’s-side window was transparent. The driver was a middle-aged black man. His cheeks were flushed like he’d either been drinking or was very upset. He gripped the top of the steering wheel with gloved hands.
Ama hesitated, eyeing her car, the keys in her hand, the tube of pepper spray tied to the front of her shoe. This trail wasn’t popular. It definitely wasn’t listed in any guidebooks or tourist pamphlets for north Georgia hiking. Either you knew about it or you didn’t, which had once made it one of Ama’s favorite places to escape. When she was here, she was small and inconsequential. She didn’t impact lives here. She wasn’t responsible for the grief of the victims’ loved ones being made doubly worse with a not-guilty verdict.
This solitude now made her heart rate accelerate. She propped her foot on the rear bumper of her car and pretended to stretch her leg as she read the van’s license tag, committing it to memory.
She switched legs, considering her options. She could get in her car right now and drive to a different, more popular trail. She could have her office run the guy’s plate. If there was so much as an unpaid parking ticket, she could have them phone in a tip to the local police department. The station wasn’t too far from here. He’d be picked up in thirty minutes tops. She could see the headline now: DEFENSE ATTORNEY HELPS BUST REPEAT OFFENDER. Surely that would send good karma her way. Not that she believed in that, either, unlike the guy last night. He’d asked her, Aren’t you worried helping guilty people go free is going to come back to haunt you?
That’s just not the way the universe works, she’d answered.
And she believed it.
She did.
The universe eventually took care of the guilty—like Michael Jeffery Walton drowning in Cold River a couple of years after his trial. Some say he fell. Others say he jumped. If Ama was a betting girl, she’d put her money down on someone pushing him in, vigilante justice–style. If she’d stayed in town long enough after his trial, she might’ve hired someone to do just that. Would she be back here, even just for a run, if he hadn’t been swallowed up by that river? She wanted to believe she wasn’t afraid; she’d gotten him off against impossible odds. Surely he would’ve wanted to keep her around in case he needed another miracle. Chances were, had he lived much longer, he would’ve ended up in front of a judge and jury again.
Ama opened her phone and dialed her office. The screen flashed and went blank. No signal. She’d try again once she made it to the top of the first peak. Ama cast one last glance at the van, locked her car, pocketed her keys and her phone, and jogged to the mouth of the trail.