Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

He has accosted her in the narrow hallway just outside her office, before she has even had the chance to put her things down in her office, much less enjoy the coffee she holds in her hand.

“Think like her, be like her,” he says. “Now this sonofabitch is going to plead ‘not guilty,’ cuz he’s already hired the top defense firm in the city. He’s also well-connected and rich as shit, plus his mother-in-law is who?”

“Elaine Holcomb,” Astrid responds with little affect.

“Right. Now the arraignment is tomorrow, but the trial? My God, it might start in less than two months if this woman has her way.”

“Good morning to you, too, sir. I am on it, sir.” She fumbles with her coffee, her folders and her keys, trying to get her boss to realize she has just arrived and has her hands full already.

“I have no doubt, but you need to be ready,” he says. “Second degree murder, manslaughter, we need it all, back-up plan upon back-up plan. And we need this on the fast track. There’s too much publicity, in addition to the goddamn fact that I don’t need this woman in my hair. I thought I got rid of her once and for all.”

“Sounds like someone had a phone call early this morning.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, walking backwards a step.

Astrid pauses, realizing how badly her boss must need to get this off his chest.

“Sir, she was one of the best you ever had,” she says, placing her hand on the doorknob to her office. Shut up shut up shut up, she thinks.Why does he always seem to do this at the very start of my day?

“And now she and I both want you to be even better.” He walks away mid-sentence.

Astrid tries to use her key to unlock her door but realizes it’s already ajar. She pushes it about two-thirds of the way open, until it’s blocked by a brown box of papers on the floor. She forces her way through the small opening.

Three paralegals are sitting at a round circular table next to her desk, with stacks of folders on their laps. She is concerned about how they got in, but grateful they are so eager. The boss has spoken. We’ve got a job to do.

A driven young woman from a wealthy Pennsylvanian family, Astrid Lerner is 38 years old with medium-length ash blonde hair. She stands at five-foot-ten, and usually towers over her colleagues, both men and women. She owes her height to each of her parents, whom she both admired for their work ethic and hated for their relentless focus on achievement. Her father wanted her to be a doctor, which is why she became an attorney. She’s always had mixed feelings about the law. She hates the practice of it but loves the doors it opens. Confident, well-rounded and empathetic, she fancies herself a judge-in-training but can also see an eventual run for mayor, following in the quasi-footsteps of the infamous Elaine Holcomb.

Her light-grey office walls are covered with awards and commendations, with graduation diplomas and framed photos of her parents. One rather large window looks out into the main work area of the felony unit, but no windows with direct natural light, a fact that has always bothered her about the tiny office. Astrid turns on her desk lamp, then reaches behind her and turns off the harsh artificial lights in the drop ceiling above her. She looks at the paralegals to hint that they should have made this particular lighting choice themselves.

“Good morning, have we found the video yet?” she asks, enjoying the darker, cozier atmosphere she has created.

ADA Astrid Lerner feels the electricity, and now the pressure, of her first major publicized case and is anxious to be a success. After all, the person whose shoes she is filling is ankle-deep in her own son’s murder and is actively looking to the new ADA to prosecute on the fast track.

No pressure filling the shoes of the legendary Elaine Holcomb.

“Not yet. We’ve done everything but knock on doors within the radius,” her young assistant says, fumbling through an unorganized mound of papers.

“Well, then let’s start doing that. Wait. Radius of the camera, is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me more.”

The young paralegal smiles as he searches the messy stack in his lap and finds a folder marked CAMERA. “Well, the camera is a Chutter ProHD, and it looks like the video we are looking for had to be recorded within, say, five hundred or a thousand feet of the apartment, sorry, condo.” He pauses and puts his finger on a line in the file. “Hmmm, okay, it’s battery-operated and has a motion sensor, meaning it only records what’s moving in front of it. Night vision up to twenty-five feet, so even if it was dark, it would record whatever it was pointed at. So all that to say, it says here in some sort of conclusion one of us drew up, ‘After a sweep of the computers in question, no laptop or desktop in evidence has any recordings from this camera. But it was most likely recorded somewhere in or outside the house.’ So if you ask me, if it was the latter, it had to be extremely close, maybe even on the same Wi-Fi.”

“Okay, so the sweep of the condo didn’t produce anything. Any luck with the neighbors?”

“Micah and Lennox own the entire seventh floor. And in the complex, there are five condos that are full-floor units, two floors that have half-floor units, and one downstairs basement condo, which is the biggest and probably the coolest one out of all of them, didn’t you think?” He looks at another paralegal, who gives him a robust validation in the form of a giant head nod.

Astrid claps her hands.

He jumps, looks back at his notes. “We have spoken to the other ten occupants, and none of them have any idea what we are talking about.”

“Oh, then they must not know anything. Oh my God, get