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He watched his wife take a deep breath, collect her thoughts, and start again.
“When I entered the house, I found two adults shot in their bed. Plus a kid—a teen boy—dead in the hallway.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“Just listen. I also found a girl sitting at the foot of her parents’ bed with a shotgun across her lap. She’s inside now being interviewed. She needs your help.”
“With what?” Garrett asked. “You’re not making any sense, Donna. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Listen to me, Garrett. The girl needs your help before she says something that will incriminate her. Something that she can’t take back.”
Donna took another breath.
“I can’t figure it out right now, in the moment. Everything is swirling together, but . . . I don’t think she did it. You need to go in there as her attorney and stop that interview.”
“As her attorney?”
Garrett Lancaster was one of the top defense attorneys on the East Coast. Lancaster & Jordan was a powerhouse criminal defense firm Garrett had started two decades earlier with his partner. They had offices across the country, with the main hub located in Washington, D.C. Garrett Lancaster had a powerful reputation for defending those accused of heinous crimes. The irony of being married to a police officer was lost on neither him nor Donna. It was one of the reasons Donna had kept her maiden name. Besides that it was common for female officers to do so—it kept their private lives private, and prevented the perps they arrested from finding personal information about them online. In addition to avoiding predators out for revenge, her maiden name buffered her from Garrett Lancaster, a prominent criminal defense attorney whose job it was to keep the bad guys out of prison. Donna’s job was to put them behind bars.
“Please!” Donna said. “I know I’m putting you in a bad spot, but please do this for me.”
Garrett tried to think of the right thing to say. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then the truth will come out in a day or two, and you punt the case to someone else. But if I’m right, they have a seventeen-year-old girl in an interview room in the middle of the night. She just saw her family slaughtered and now they’re grilling her for a confession without consent from a legal guardian. They’ll keep the pressure on her until she tells them what they want to hear, and then it’ll be too late.”
Garrett looked at the precinct building, lighted with spotlights shooting up the façade—a beacon of justice glowing in the middle of the night.
He cocked his head toward the entrance. “Let’s go.”
McIntosh, Virginia January 15, 2013 4:15 a.m.
Garrett followed his wife into police headquarters. Donna checked him in at the front desk and Garrett obtained a visitor’s badge that allowed him access into the building. Normally, defense attorneys were left to wander the halls until they found their way to wherever it was they needed to be. Inside a police precinct, defense attorneys were the equivalent of rats scurrying along the baseboards. Tonight, though, Donna led him straight to the interview room, where Garrett saw Donna’s lieutenant watching through the room’s window, along with three uniformed officers. Inside, he saw a detective in a suit talking with a hollow-eyed girl wearing an oversized nightshirt.
Instinct pinched the muscles of his back together, pulling his shoulders apart and inflating his chest. He was frustrated at himself for not taking the time to comb his hair or climb into a suit, having to do this now in jeans and a Wizards hat.
“Lieutenant,” Garrett said in an assertive voice.
The man watching the interview turned, as did Donna’s fellow officers. Garrett felt their stares. But more so, he felt Donna next to him. She deflated a bit. These officers had entered the house with her and had had her back as they’d stalked through the house looking to engage an active shooter. It was surely a traumatic and bonding experience for them all, and Garrett knew a pang of guilt had touched Donna’s core for what she was doing.
“I’m Garrett Lancaster, I’m representing . . .”
Garrett realized he didn’t even know his client’s name.
“The girl,” he finally said, pointing at the interview room. “I’m her attorney and I’m going to need you to stop the interview.”
Lieutenant Marcus Grey looked over Garrett’s shoulder and squinted his eyes at Donna. “What’s going on, Koppel?”
Donna tilted her head. “Ask Garrett.”
He looked back at Garrett. “What’s going on, Counselor?”
“I need you to stop the interview, Marcus. I’m her attorney.”
“You called your husband?” Lieutenant Grey asked Donna. “You’re trying to go over my head by calling your husband?”
“I’m not going over anyone’s head, sir. Something’s not right. This girl deserves the same protections as anyone else.”
“She shot up her goddamn family, Koppel!”
