Primal Fear by William Diehl

“Leroy
thinks
I’m looking at my notes. He forgot he told me the gun was stolen. What he was repeating to me is the story he told the cops.”
    “So we assume Leroy’s lying about it?”
    “He lied to somebody …”
    “Now what do we do?”
    “I’ve got to get straight with him about the gun.”
    “Do you think he did it, Marty?”
    “The jury will let us know.”
    “Are we sticking with the not guilty plea?”
    “As of so far.”
    “You’ll probably get him off.”
    “Ah. Listen to that tone of voice. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you? Guilty, right?”
    “Maybe. But you don’t even care. You’re going to defend him whether he is or not.”
    “That’s what we do here, Naomi. In case you haven’t noticed in the last seven months, we defend people who are usually presumed to be guilty.”
    “I haven’t been able to get used to that yet. I mean, I always feel like, uh, you know, seems to me you’d have some kind of … shit, Marty, you know … moral problem with that?”
    “I am a lawyer, not a fucking moralist.”
    “But isn’t that what the law’s all about?”
    “The law, dear Naomi, has nothing to do with morality. Look, let’s say you get arrested for possession of pot, okay? It’s not the business of the court to rule on whether you should smoke pot or not, or whether it’s good or bad for you. The court rules
only
on the question of possession because that’s what you were charged with. Morality doesn’t enter into it.”
    “In other words, it’s okay to smoke it but it’s against the law to have it.”
    “Precisely.”
    “Sounds like a stupid law to me.”
    “Very true. There are a lot of stupid laws and a lot of bad laws … not our problem. What we do, we figure out the best way to use the law—good, bad, stupid, whatever—to our client’s best advantage.”
    “So how about the pot?”
    “We’ll trash that. Illegal search. They come without a warrant, say they want to talk to Leroy downtown. They come in the house, snoop around a little, see the blue zipper bag and take a look inside. Bingo, two ounces of grass. He hadn’t been charged with anything. He was being cooperative. The bag was lying on the floor, they snooped. No reason to.”
    “Okay, so how about a summary on Nelson?” she asked.
    “Summary? We have to defuse the gun. It’s all they’ve got.”
    The phone started buzzing and Vail turned back to the tapes as she went to answer it. Perhaps, he thought, there was something in these interviews he had overlooked. Some little something that might help him at this point.
    Naomi came back into the room.
    “You’ve got a call.”
    “Take a message, I’m thinking.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
    “I think maybe you want to take this call. It’s Judge Shoat’s office.”

SEVEN
    What the
hell
could Shoat want? Vail wondered as the cab edged cautiously along the sleet-slick street and slipped up to the curb in front of the courthouse. Was he angry at the settlement? Was he pissed that Vail had taken the city, county and state to their knees? Had Shoat remembered some insult or arrogance from the trial? Maybe he was going to try to slap Vail with another citation for contempt out of spite. The only thing Vail was sure of was that it definitely would not be a pleasant meeting.
    As he entered the building, Bobby the newsman yelled to him. “Hey, Mr. V, we sold out. Hottest issue they ever had.”
    “Great,” Vail answered as he entered the elevator.
    The courtroom was on the fourth floor. As Vail entered the almost empty room, Shoat was shaking his hand and head simultaneously.
    “No, no, no,” he snapped. “Overruled, overruled. Just geton with it, I’d like to finish this procedure today if it is at all possible, gentlemen.”
    Hangin’ Harry Shoat presided over his courtroom with dictatorial fervor. He was the lord of his domain, a Calvinistic moralist who saw the sin rather than the