Page 27 of The Best Lawyer
He didn’t answer at first. This wasn’t uncommon when he turned something around in his thoughts. He pulled out and headed back toward the highway. We would grab lunch somewhere along the route back.
“I don’t know if you can use any of that,” Eric finally said. “The prosecutor would try to block her entire testimony as irrelevant if you tried to put her on the stand. Not unless we canfind evidence of more recent contact between Tom and Maisy. Or something overtly threatening.”
He was right. But there was something else on my mind. “Eric,” I said. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the most important thing Daphne said is what didn’t happen, not what did.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as he accelerated on the on-ramp.
“Maisy’s emails to Tom were in his personnel files at both stations. More so in Detroit, but it raised enough red flags for Tom that he reported it once she contacted him more recently.”
“Okay. But, like I said, you’ll still have a fight to get that stuff in.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter what Maisy did or Tom did in response to it. What really matters is that you and I were the first people to go pound on Daphne Carmichael’s door. Sharon DePaul should have done that. Don’t you think? If this were your case, you’d have at least ruled this lead out, wouldn’t you?”
He scratched his chin. “I don’t know. Maybe. You’ve still got an eyewitness who saw Katy standing over Tom with a knife.”
He was right of course. But that didn’t change my frustration with DePaul. I felt like I was doing her job for her. And I knew that might resonate with a jury. I could absolutely use it on cross-examination with Sharon DePaul.
“I get that,” I said. “But I need you to do what Sharon didn’t. I need you to keep trying to find Maisy Carmichael. Because we are running out of time.”
Chapter 11
“I knew this was a bad idea,”I muttered through clenched teeth. Eric stood next to me in the kitchen, placing raw hamburger patties on a tray before he took them out to the grill.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “You all can’t stay mad at each other forever?”
“Wanna bet?” I smiled.
Today was Matt’s birthday. It had been a rough summer for him and Tori with the new baby and his three-year-old brother running them both ragged. Tori had yet to emerge from the back bedroom. She’d taken little Henry back there to nurse almost an hour ago.
Sean was fully into his terrible threes. He was currently screaming bloody murder at the end of the dock, trying to tear off his life jacket. My sister Vangie stood over him, giving him a pretty close approximation of the Shaky Finger of Doom we all remembered from Grandma Leary.
Joe sat on the pontoon, looking out at the water. He’d spent most of the day there, brooding. Vangie wasn’t talking to him. She couldn’t forgive him for sticking up for Katy and dragging me into it, as she described it.
Emma seemed just as broody. She sat on the porch swing, her legs drawn up to her chin. Matt fished from the end of the dock, ignoring his son’s tantrum.
I scooted ahead of Eric and held the door open. He kissed me as he balanced his meat tray and headed for the no-fly zone of the grill.
“You doing okay out here?” I asked Emma. She smiled but she looked so tired. Her cheeks were hollowed out. She was skin and bones.
“Never better.” She smiled.
I sat beside her. “I’m worried about you too.”
“I know. But you shouldn’t be. Just worry about my mom.”
I raised a brow. Katy was Mom again now? I knew Emma had gone to visit her a few times, or at least tried to. Katy had put her on a no-contact list. She didn’t want Emma to worry about her. She didn’t want Emma to see her in her jail uniform anymore.
I patted Emma’s knee. “How’s your studying going?” I asked. “You know, it’s okay if you postpone. You’re not going to lose your job or anything.”
Emma was scheduled to take the bar exam in East Lansing in a few weeks. I’d give her the entire month of July off to take an online prep course and get ready.
“No,” she said. “I want to get it over with. If I fail, I can take it again.”
“You won’t fail,” I said. “You’re a good test taker. A heck of a lot better than I was.”
“Areyouready?”
I grabbed a hard cider from the cooler between us and cracked it open. “As ready as I can be.”
