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The ACA doesnt give a damn about what he was doing to your girlfriend that night.
I cant believe this shit. Buddy of mine cut up somebody last year and he got two years, half that suspended. Out in three months with time served. And Im looking at five damn years? What kinda shitty lawyer are you?
Did your buddy have a prior felony conviction? Was your good old buddy one of the top men for one of Richmonds worst diseases? Fiske wanted to ask, and he would have but it would be wasted breath. I tell you what Ill go back with three and time served.
Now Derek looked interested. You think you can get that?
Fiske stood up. Dont know. Im just a shitty lawyer.
On the way out, Fiske looked out the barred window and watched as a new shipment of inmates climbed from the prison van, grouped close, shackles beating a chant on the asphalt. Most were young blacks or Latinos, already sizing each other up. Slave to master. Who gets cut or scored first. The few whites looked as though they might drop and die from sheer panic before they even got to their cells. Some of these young men were probably the sons of men Patrolman John Fiske had arrested ten years ago. They would have been just kids then, maybe dreaming of something other than the public dole, no daddy at home, mother struggling through a horror of a life with no end in sight. Then again, maybe not. Reality had a way of punishing ones subconscious. Dreams werent a reprieve, merely a continuation of the real-life nightmare. As a cop, the dialogue he had had with many arrestees tended to repeat itself.
Kill you, man. Kill your whole damn family, some would scream at him, drug-faced, as he put the cuffs on.
Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent. Think about using it.
Come on, man, aint my fault. My buddy done it. Screwed me.
Where would that buddy be? And the blood on your hands? The gun in your pants? The coke still in your nostrils? Buddy do all that? Some buddy.
Then they might eye the dead body and lose it, blubbering. Holy shit! Sweet Jesus! My momma, wheres my momma? You call her. Do that for me, oh shit, do that, will you? Momma! Oh shit!
You have the right to an attorney, he would calmly tell them. And that now was John Fiske. After a couple more court appearances downtown, Fiske left the glass and brick John Marshall Courts Building, named after the third chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Marshalls ancestral home was still right next door, now a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of the great Virginian and American. The man would have turned over in his grave if he had known of the vile acts being debated and defended in the building that bore his name. Fiske headed down Ninth Street toward the James River. Hot and humid the last few days, the weather patterns had angled cooler with the coming rain, and he pulled his trench coat tighter around him. As the rain started, he began to jog along the pavement, his shoes cleaving through puddles of filthy water collected in dips of asphalt and concrete. By the time he reached his office in Shockoe Slip, his hair and coat were soaked, the water ru
Like a brooding hawk, Fort Jackson perched on the desolate topography of southwest Virginia, fairly equidistant from the Te