The Second Chair

When the door had closed and she turned around, Andrew was back in his chair, leaning over, his face down by his knees, his fingers laced over the back of his head. She went to his side of the table, boosted herself onto it, folded her own hands in her lap, and waited.

He was still taking deep, labored breaths, but gradually they slowed, and eventually he looked up. Seeing her so close, nearly hovering over him, he pushed the chair back six inches, then hung his head again, perhaps in shame. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry." He brought his hands to his face, said "Oh God," and broke again, a sob that seemed to sound the death knell to all the hopes of his childhood.

Someone else witnessing the breakdown, hearing the same words, might have reached a different conclusion, but to Wu it ratified all of her preconceptions- she'd been expecting something like this, Andrew's show of remorse for what he'd done. To her, the apologetic words sounded exactly like an admission of his guilt.

She pushed herself off the table and went up beside him, put a hand on his opposite shoulder and pulled the close one against her hip. "It's all right," she whispered. "It's okay."

Through the wired windows, steep shafts of sunlight mottled the floor, struck the backs of both of them. The tableau held for nearly a minute, an eternity in that setting. Andrew's breath became more regular. Wu herself was nearly afraid to breathe, hyper-aware of the possible implications of the scene. This proximity was unprofessional. Prompted at first by a genuine sympathy, she remained out of an awkward desire to appear natural. Some small despicable part of her was also aware that even such a slight physical gesture, a hand on his shoulder, her hip against him, might work to her advantage in the next phase of their negotiation.

Finally, he raised his head. "So what am I going to do?"

She moved away, a gentle extrication. Leaning back now against the table, she didn't answer right away. "I don't mean to put you through any more agony, Andrew. God knows you've got enough to deal with as it is. But I needed to make you see, and see very clearly, some of the really powerful and convincing evidence that they've got against you."

"But it's still…"

"Please. Let me go on." She paused. "Count the ways," she said. "They've got an eyewitness, someone who saw you at Mr. Mooney's that night both before and after. They've got motive and lots of it. Your gun was there. You were there, walk or no walk. They've got the testimony of your best friend, showing premeditation. They've got the gun that you threw away, when if you'd saved it, it could have proved you i

"What if a jury doesn't believe all that?" he asked.

"They don't have to believe all of it." She kept her tone soft. "But let me ask you one, Andrew. What part of it isn't true?"

He bit at his lip, ran his hand back through his hair.

Wu drove home another point. "And even if a jury drew a slightly different conclusion from all this evidence, say they came back with some lesser offense, say second degree murder or even some kind of manslaughter, you're still, best case, looking at a minimum of ten and maybe up to thirty years."

"But none, if I got off."

"No," she agreed. "Not then. But think about what we've just been over in the past two days. That's just a part of what the prosecution is going to present. Think of how you'd feel if you were on your own jury and heard what they were going to hear."

"So you're saying it doesn't matter whether I actually did it or not."

"Of course it does. It's critical to who you are, to the person you'll be when you get out. I'm just asking you to consider your alternatives with great, great care. We've got a hearing tomorrow, and I have set it up so you can be done with all this and out of custody with your whole life ahead of you in no more than eight years. I know that seems like forever right now, but you'll still be a very young man, believe me, with everything to live for."

"But… eight years…"

She nodded. "No one's pretending this is an easy call. I understand that. Talk to your mom and to Hal, if you want, get their opinions."

"My mom and Hal," he said with withering dismissal. "My mom and Hal. What are they going to tell me? And whatever it is, why should I listen? They live their own lives, if you haven't noticed. They're not interested in mine."

"That's not true, Andrew. Your mother's been in here to visit you every day so far, hasn't she? She loves you. She wants what's best for you. I've just come from seeing them."

"Yeah? And what did she say?"

"She said this was your decision."

Andrew snorted. "See? She'd love it if somebody else took care of me for eight years. It'd leave her and Hal freer to party."

Wu sat back, shook her head. "I don't think that's true," she said, "but it's really neither here nor there. What's important is that you've seen how hard it is to control the way evidence comes out, what it looks like. Your friend La

"So you really don't think you can win?"

Wu empathized with his despair, but it would be a disservice to sugarcoat his predicament. "I will try with everything in me, Andrew. You're free to get another lawyer if you want, but I promise you that I will live and breathe this case for as long as it takes if you decide to go as an adult. But I want you to have a clear understanding of what we're looking at. It will be a long haul, with no guarantees."

"How long?"

She drove in yet another nail. "It might go as long as two years before we can get to trial, maybe eighteen months if we're extremely lucky. And all that time you're in custody anyway. There's no bail, so you're right here until you're eighteen and after that probably at the county lockup downtown."

"Two years?" He swallowed, his eyes pleading. "Two more years?"

"I'd try to speed it up, of course, but that's about the average wait."

"Even if I didn't do it? Even if they found me i

"I'm afraid so. Either way. I'm sorry."

Bailiff Nelson again picked up Andrew at the door to the visitor's room. If Judge Johnson had reprimanded him over his conduct in the courtroom after the detention hearing, or even discussed it, Nelson gave no sign of it. Wu watched the two of them trundle off to wherever Andrew's cell was located back in the confines of the building. She thought that having a goon like Nelson monitor- hell, shadow- your every move must be one of the most debilitating things about confinement here.

In the women's room down in the main admin building, she fixed her makeup, then found she had to gather her emotions for several minutes. Andrew's disaffection with his parents had bothered her more than she could allow herself to show- it so closely mirrored her now forever unresolved ambivalence about her own father. How much had he really cared about her? Now she would never know. Maybe, she thought, Andrew's approach was healthier- just go on the accumulated evidence of absenteeism and benign neglect and admit that there is no profound co

Her next stop, Jason Brandt's office, added to the volatility of the emotional mix. She knew that she had to have a talk with the prosecutor and didn't want to acknowledge their physical intimacy of the night before in any way. And though she might have preferred to believe for a moment last night that they actually had potential to co