The Price of Justice Read Online Free

“Well, then, you’re going to have to find someone else, if it comes to that.”
    “C’mon, Dani. We all sometimes need to do things we don’t like.”
    Bruce might be right, but Dani wasn’t sure she’d be up for the task. As a former assistant US attorney, she’d prosecuted criminals. Although many of her colleagues had left government service to argue for the other side, her desire to work for HIPP was predicated on righting a wrong. Freeing the unjustly convicted. Despite the constitutional guarantee of adequate representation at criminal trials, the thought of taking on the defense of someone she believed guilty of the crime rankled her. She just couldn’t do it.
    “Not this. Not if I think he’s guilty.”
    “Well,” Bruce said as he picked up his pencil, signaling that this would be the end of the discussion, “it’s likely a moot point. Winston insists he’s innocent, and someone else has confessed. No reason to believe the truth is anything else.”
    As Dani left Bruce’s office, she fervently hoped he was right. Despite her tirade, she knew, guilty or not, she had to represent him. Otherwise, she’d be responsible for staff layoffs and, as a result, a cutback in inmates HIPP could take on. It would be a classic avoidance-avoidance conflict. Even if it turned out she had doubt about Melton’s innocence, she’d need to look at the bigger picture.
    She settled back in her own office and picked up the phone to call Winston’s trial attorney. After identifying herself to his personal assistant, she was passed through to Jackson Donahue. She hadn’t needed to do any research to know he was one of the preeminent criminal defense attorneys in the United States. It wasn’t surprising that Amelia Melton had turned to him to represent her grandson.
    “I’ve been expecting your call,” Donahue said when he answered the phone.
    “Good. Is this a convenient time to talk?”
    “Actually, I’m heading into a meeting shortly. Are you free around noon?”
    Dani looked at her desk calendar, then answered, “That works for me.”
    “Fine. Why don’t you come to my office, and I’ll have lunch brought in.”
    Dani smiled to herself. Wall Street firms didn’t stint on the niceties. Lunch wouldn’t be stale sandwiches and a platter of cookies, standard fare when HIPP had lunch meetings. It would be catered by one of the gourmet restaurants nearby. “I’ll see you then,” she said, then hung up.
    Two hours later, she exited the subway at Broad Street and walked over to Donahue’s office. His firm occupied the top eight floors of a forty-eight-story skyscraper constructed in the early seventies. The lobby had been renovated in the late nineties, during the height of real-estate values, and was clad in marble and granite. Dani signed in at the security desk, flashed her attorney’s identification, and then rode the elevator to the top floor. She stepped out into the hallway, which led to a reception area, and gave her name to the young woman sitting behind the rich mahogany counter. A crystal vase with a large bouquet of fresh flowers was the only item on its top.
    Dani took a seat in one of the overstuffed club chairs reserved for visitors and waited. In just a few minutes, a diminutive man wearing neatly pressed beige slacks and a multistriped brown shirt, open at the collar, approached her.
    “Dani Trumball?” he asked. When Dani nodded, he held out his hand. “I’m Jack Donahue.”
    She’d expected to meet with a stuffy man dressed in a custom-tailored cashmere suit and a tasteful silk tie, befitting her image of this old-line firm, founded fifty years ago by Donahue’s father. Instead, with his round face, chestnut-colored hair that drooped over his forehead, and black-rimmed glasses, Jack looked like a man just out of law school, although Dani knew from her research that he was the same age as she—forty-five.
    After they shook hands, he led her into a conference room. Its wall of windows