The Wrong Man Read Online Free

lawyer let out an audible sigh and shook his head, seemingly defeated. Maybe beneath the impressive surface, Deidre thought to herself, he wasn’t that great a lawyer, after all.
    The judge said, “Anything further, Mr. Kolarich?”
    “Oh, just one more thing, Judge,” he said. “Alicia, how did you pump the gas?”
    “How did I—what?”
    “How did you pump the gas?”
    “I—same way you always do, I guess…”
    The lawyer moved away from the table, back toward the witness. “No,” he said. “What I mean is, if you pulled the driver’s side of the car up to the gas pump, as you’ve repeatedly testified, how did you fill the tank? When the gas tank for a 2006 Mercedes C280 is on the
passenger
side?”
    The witness froze.
    Jason Kolarich smiled.
    And so did Deidre Maley.

2.
    My client, Ronaldo Dayton, looked better than I’d ever seen him as the sheriff’s deputy escorted him from the defense table to the county lockup. I promised him I’d stop by later to review the case before tomorrow, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to put on a defense. We would rest, and closing arguments would follow. I didn’t want to give the prosecution any time to try to rehabilitate their star witness, who hadn’t turned out to be such a star, after all.
    “Mr.… Kolarich?”
    I turned around and saw a woman standing with her hands clasped together, as if in prayer. She was on the high side of middle-aged, gray and weathered, wearing a troubled expression. That wasn’t exactly surprising. There weren’t a lot of happy faces in the criminal courts building.
    “My name is Deidre Maley,” she said.
    “Pleasure to meet you,” I said. My mother raised a polite boy. His name is Pete, my brother. But I have my moments, too.
    “That was… impressive,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask: How did you know she wasn’t driving the Pontiac?”
    The courtroom had filtered out. The jury was long gone, and the prosecutors had left, too.
    “I didn’t,” I said. “I just knew she was lying.”
    She considered me. She probably couldn’t decide if she was impressed or disgusted.
    “My nephew needs your help,” she said.
    Okay, put her down for impressed.
    “He’s been charged with… felony murder, they call it. He has a public defender for a lawyer, but I’d like someone else.”
    I asked, “Who’s the P.D.?”
    “Bryan Childress.”
    “Sure. He’s good.” I knew Chilly back from law school. He’d been with the P.D.’s office since graduation. But he was about to leave. I wondered if she knew that.
    “He’s good, but he’s about to leave,” she said.
    Check.
    “And I think… I’d like you to represent him, Mr. Kolarich.”
    The P.D.’s office gets a bad rap. Most of them are actually quite good. But they’re overworked, so sometimes clients feel like they’re not getting special treatment.
    “I don’t have very much money,” she said. “But if you could be patient—I promise I’d find a way to pay you.”
    She was probably in her sixties, so her earning potential wasn’t exactly at its peak.
    “Tom is a sweet boy. He’s sick. He came back from Iraq a different person. I tried to keep an eye on him, but I just couldn’t. My husband, you see, suffers from multiple sclerosis, and I couldn’t take care of Tom like I should have. I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.”
    And I couldn’t help but feel like I was being played. Aunt Deidre was laying it on pretty thick. I was waiting for her to collapse so I could catch her in my arms.
    “His parents are deceased,” she added. “I’m all he has for family.”
    Did he rescue drowning orphans, too? But lucky for her, she caught me in a good mood.
    “I’ll meet him,” I said. “After that, no promises.”

3.
    Don’t ask me why I do the things I do.
    But I was bored. And this one sounded interesting.
    The Madelyn R. Boyd Center was two blocks south of the criminal courts building. I finished a preliminary hearing I had before