The tendrils of cigarette smoke wound their way through the air conditioned atmosphere, past the expensive vanity portraits that hung on the wall. Slowly rising to the vaulted ceiling before, losing their energy, they fell slowly back down, raining their carcinogens unseen onto the file covered desk. Some of the particles randomly found their resting places on the deeply lacquered, extortionately expensive mahogany, whilst the majority fell onto the briefs and research papers, adding their own toxicity to the already poisonous contents of the documents.
Frank Miller watched the smokes passage with a wry smile, his wife would smell the smoke on him, find him out. She was good at that, eminently qualified to hone in on the smell of stale, cheap tobacco. Its cheapness would jar with her otherwise perfect life and she would rile against him for going back on his word and smoking again. She was wife number four and he knew already how that story would play out.
He took another deep drag on the cigarette before slowly exhaling another long plume of smoke. He needed this after a day like today, as if the toxicity of the tobacco could somehow expunge the toxic words from his the memory. When he had first started out as a junior attorney many years ago one of the partners had explained to him how he’d know when it was time to talk about settling a case.
“Son”, the older man had said. “When a client first comes to you they hate the person they’re filing against, they want justice and have some crazy notion that you’ll find it for them. They think you’re their friend. They don’t know what you will have to do to fight for them; they don’t know what it will cost them. Sure they know it will be expensive, but they don’t know how much it will really cost them. The time, hours and days of their lives, they’ll lose having to spend it with you. The invasion into their lives by you let alone the opposition. They’ll reach a point, they always do, when they hate you more than they hate the person that started all of this, and that’s the time to talk settlement.”
Miller knew that that time had come; he’d seen it in the mother’s eyes. He couldn’t see it in the girl’s eyes, but then he hadn’t seen anything in the twelve year olds eyes for some time now. She’d arrived that first day in his office damaged by what had happened. He’d assured her and her mother that she would be protected in the court; testimony would be by video link. Evidence would be collected by experts trained in dealing with children like her. But he hadn’t told her what the process in his office would cost her. Now she was beyond damaged, she had already lost her innocence and now he had taken the last bit of faith she had left in the world.
Victims often spoke about having to relive their ordeal in the court room, but that was a one off, being cross examined by the defence lawyer, the enemy. No one spoke of the countless times the victims had to relive their ordeal in their lawyer’s offices. Being cross examined by the very person that they had put their trust in, who was supposed to be fighting for them, not against them, their so called friend.
His client had been ready to settle long ago and he had received an offer from the defence lawyers, a very generous offer, but he couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t even tell them of the offer because no matter how many times they had sat in his office, the mother drinking endless cups of his coffee, the girl drinking her favourite soda, that his secretary had so thoughtfully bought a stock of. They weren’t his clients, his client was the person that paid him, and they were just witnesses. The morality of the situation was borderline but the legality was sound, the papers they had signed when he took on the case clearly stated that all strategic legal decisions about the case would be made by the benefactor that was funding it. They hadn’t minded that, they were just so happy that this anonymous donor was willing to fund their otherwise crippling legal costs. They had nowhere left to turn.
Miller picked up an evidence file from the desk and flipped it open. Just over eighteen months previously Sophie, then ten years and three months old, had gone to a motel for a play date with her new friend Casey. She had only ever been to a motel once before when she had gone to Arizona with her mother to meet her aunt. Casey lived in a motel because her mum changed jobs a lot, Casey was cool.
