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“Meghan!” I snort a piece of pasta and go into a coughing fit at the table.
“Am I wrong?”
“No…”
“Good. Now clean up the dishes and get back to work.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Soon after, I'm back on my laptop. Meghan’s in her big, comfy reading chair with her legs thrown over one of the armrests and her face buried in some kind of fantasy romance. Once I tried to tell her that bikers are basically werewolves, but she just stuck her fingers in her ears and pretended not to hear.
I change tactics, sorting his files into categories based on how likely I think they are to contain something useful. There are some folders that look like tax information. As I skim through them, something doesn’t feel like it’s adding up. I look up the value of the house Mullerby lives in. Four million dollars? That could make sense if he inherited it, or bought before the prices skyrocketed, but the real estate site says he bought it five years ago. Some lawyers make a lot of money, but not usually state paid attorneys. There's no way.
Unfortunately, there’s no smoking gun, unless it’s in the password protected or encrypted files. I don’t know the first thing about how to get into them. For that I’ll need some kind of geek to help me out.
I open my personal research, staring at the spreadsheet I made of all the cases Mullerby has been assigned to, stretching back to a few years before my brother’s time and until last month. I made up similar sheets for other defense attorneys in the state, and I’ve been trying to spot a pattern. “Remind me to always hire my own attorney if I get arrested.”
Meghan looks up from her book. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. The court appointed ones aren’t always bad, but they’re overworked and have no real stake in your outcome. Or time to do anything but give you some advice even if they do care.”
“So it’s not unusual that they lose most of the time?”
“Eh. It’s not always about winning or losing. They are there to try and make sure people know their rights and don’t end up with worse outcomes just because they don’t know the law. A good defense attorney might keep your sentence low, or find ways to keep you out of prison completely.”
A fuzzy idea starts to take shape in my head. Maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong. Mullerby’s record is slightly under the average when it comes to conviction rates, but if I look at the average sentencing length, it’s double.
“Does your brother know you're investigating this?” Slipping a bookmark into her book, she closes it and puts it on the round table next to her.
I shake my head. “No. Up until now he’s refused to see any of us.”
I don’t blame him. Mom and Dad were at the end of their rope by the time he was arrested. They were worried I was going to fall down the same path. I don't know if they really believe that he did the things they put him away for, but in retrospect, I think they felt like no matter how much it hurt, they had to let him go in order to save the rest of us. I was so mad at them for giving up on him, and part of me still is. He’s my big brother. I worshiped the ground he walked on, and then he was suddenly torn out of my life.
“Up until now? Are you going to see him?”
“Yep. Tomorrow.”
Both her eyebrows go up in surprise. She's one of the more expressive people I know. “Really? How did you get him to agree to it?”
“I sent a message that I found information that could help get him out.”
“But you don't.”
“I sort of do. I've got the flash drive.”
“Which you've spent the whole day swearing at.”
My chest squeezes tight. “Doesn’t matter. It was enough to get him to agree to see me, and that's worth a little white lie. Not even a lie. An exaggeration. This is going to lead to something. I know it. I just have to keep pulling on strings and see which one lands me the clue I need. Something in here will help me get what I need out of Mullerby.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You're not going to do something stupid, are you?”
I shrug. “Honestly? Probably.”
7
MACK
I take a good grip on my sledgehammer and swing. Drywall explodes in a shower of dust and debris. We’re taking out the wall between Mila’s old place and the unit beside it, and I have to say, there's something deeply fucking satisfying about this job.
“Feels good, don't it?” Reaper yells with a laugh. He swings his on the other end of the wall, taking out a stubborn chunk.
