A Good Marriage(62)
I nodded absently. “Exhibit C.”
“It was for loitering?” Paul asked, after looking at it more closely.
“Yes,” I said, already feeling defensive.
“What kind of Penn Law student doesn’t just walk away when the police tell him to?” he asked. “It would be one thing if he’d been taking a political stand against racial profiling or something, but this is a white guy, right? So he was, what? Being a dick?”
“I don’t know,” I said, annoyed by Paul’s eleventh-hour insights, accurate or not.
“Reminds me of that partner I had to get rid of,” Paul said grimly, flipping through the brief. “He showed up on not one but two different legal assistants’ doorsteps, offering to help carry their groceries at just the right time. When confronted about this implausible coincidence, you know what he said?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said, not bothering to hide my impatience.
“‘Sometimes, you have to show people what they need.’” Paul shook his head. “Defiant narcissism: some assholes think the rules don’t apply to them.”
“That’s helpful, thanks. Anyone is capable of anything. I am aware. Are you aware you’re at defense counsel’s table?” I asked. “Because Wendy Wallace is over there, if you’d like to go help her.”
Paul’s eyes shot up, but luckily the judge’s chambers swung open before he had the chance to cut me back down to size.
“All rise!” a stout, angry-looking court clerk bellowed as the judge entered the courtroom. “The Honorable Reggie Yu presiding!”
It wasn’t until I heard the very loud collective rustling of everyone behind me rising to their feet that I became aware of just how many people had filed into the courtroom. Glancing over my shoulder, I recognized several local crime reporters from my own high-profile cases at the US attorney’s office. The press out in force, surely as Wendy Wallace had intended.
Judge Yu was a petite woman with a blunt black bob and a commanding air. Older than me but younger than Paul and Wendy. Fifty-two, to be precise. I knew because I’d looked her up when I’d found out she was assigned. Slightly defense-leaning. I could only hope that was an understatement.
“Docket number 45362, the People versus Zach Grayson,” the court officer called.
“I’ve read your papers,” Judge Yu started in, all business. “I’ll hear from defense counsel first.”
“Your Honor, the defendant in this case is a successful businessman, father, and well-regarded member of his Brooklyn community,” I began. Calm, assured. “He has absolutely no criminal record and has been charged only with assaulting a police officer, an accident that occurred within minutes of his discovering his wife was dead, when he was quite understandably distraught. And yet he is now being held without bail at Rikers Island, where he’s been repeatedly assaulted.”
Judge Yu gave me a cold stare through her funky, oversize red glasses. “Uh-huh,” she said. “So you want me to substitute my judgment for that of the judge who presided over the arraignment?”
An unsurprising response. That was the standard—whether the arraignment judge had abused his discretion. I was ready for it.
“We’re merely asking that the appropriate standard be applied in assessing my client’s eligibility for bail. The only question before the court should have been whether or not my client was a flight risk for the crime with which he had been charged: resisting arrest. Leaving aside the glaring insufficiency of the evidence in support of that charge, the arraignment judge was shown highly prejudicial photographs of a violent homicide scene. His decision was improperly influenced, Your Honor.”
“Wait, what homicide?” Judge Yu asked, growing impatient.
“Amanda Grayson, my client’s wife, died in her home of an apparent head trauma which—”
“Apparent head trauma?” Wendy Wallace guffawed, like she just couldn’t help herself. “Her skull was crushed, Your Honor. She was savagely beaten to death with a golf club belonging to the defendant, in the defendant’s home, and, oh, the defendant was the one who found the body after the two of them returned home from a night of heavy drinking at a sex party.”
“Objection!” I barked.
Though there really was no point. There was no jury in place, and this was not a trial. But it was enraging. Wendy Wallace had gotten in almost every single piece of damaging evidence I’d been there to object to, short of the crime scene photos themselves.
“What about this old warrant?” Judge Yu asked, brow furrowed as she motioned to her clerk, who handed up some papers. “April 2007, for loitering, apparently? The court looked into it, but there were no additional details online.”
Her caution was understandable. No judge wanted to be responsible for turning a blind eye to something as glaring as an outstanding warrant in a case where someone was dead. Even if the charge before the court at the moment wasn’t murder, it was the unspoken pall hanging over Zach’s head.
“Yes, an unpaid ticket for loitering my client received as a law student. It was an innocent oversight, not to mention ancient history,” I said. “Regardless, it’s been resolved. The warrant has been discharged.”
“Loitering?” Judge Yu asked, brow furrowed skeptically. “What exactly does that mean?”