A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon (different ereaders txt) 📗

Luz’s eyes go wide and her manacled hands reach out, jerk the chain, and retract to their default position at her waist.

Shauna looks at Abby and mouths, Are you kidding me? Abby, smiling, gives a slight shrug of her shoulders.

Judge Richards clears his throat.

“Mrs. Rivera Hollis, the United States has charged you with the first-degree murder of your husband, Sergeant Travis Hollis. Have you read the complaint detailing those charges and do you understand it?”

Luz’s yes is barely audible.

“You are here in federal court in Los Angeles today because of a law, recently passed by Congress, which says that civilians who commit crimes against members of the armed forces while outside of the United States shall be extradited for trial in the jurisdiction where they reside. It’s called the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. Because your last known residence was within the Central District of California, you are in this courtroom today. Do you understand?”

After another barely audible yes, Richards continues, “Alright. It’s the government’s motion here, so I’ll allow you to argue first, Ms. Gooden.”

Shauna stands and immediately begins speaking in a voice that carries with it a tone of barely suppressed outrage. “Sergeant Travis Hollis, a decorated combat veteran who served this country bravely in Iraq, found out too late that his most lethal enemy resided in his own home.”

Shauna settles her gaze on Luz. “It is hard to think of a more cold-blooded and brutal crime. Upon learning that Sergeant Hollis had been unfaithful through email communications from the—the mistress—Mrs. Rivera Hollis brooded for hours, until her husband came home from a party. Then, wielding a knife, she stabbed him with such extreme force that it pierced through his rib cage and tore open his heart. Despite the heroic efforts of first responders on the army base to save him, Sergeant Hollis bled to death in his own hallway at the age of twenty-three. Mrs. Rivera Hollis robbed Sergeant Hollis’s recently widowed mother of her only son. She robbed her own child of her father.

“The defendant planned this. She turned a kitchen knife into a deadly weapon. She is extremely dangerous. She needs to remain in jail pending trial where she can’t hurt anyone else.”

Luz is returning Shauna’s stare, her eyes narrowed in contempt. Abby grabs her just above her shackled wrist and whispers sharply in her ear. “Look down. Look down at the ground.”

Shauna has moved on to argue that Luz, facing a mandatory death-in-prison sentence, might escape across the border to Mexico, where she has many relatives waiting to welcome her with open arms. Abby half listens, eyes on her client, who has trained her gaze downward but still looks angry.

When Shauna is finally finished, Judge Richards thanks her politely before turning to Abby. “I’ll hear from you now, Ms. Rosenberg.” He pauses. “Would you—would it be more comfortable for you to remain seated?”

Abby gives the judge her warmest smile. “No, thank you, Your Honor.” She takes her time extracting herself from her chair and walks carefully to the lectern, making sure to give Luz a friendly squeeze on the shoulder as she passes by. Once there, Abby finds she has to hold both sides of the wooden podium, canting her abdomen forward to remain balanced. Shauna is right, she’s a fool to be wearing high heels. But that is what she always wears, to add precious inches to her height—on her straightest-backed day, she’s barely five foot two. Forgoing the practice isn’t just about vanity, although that is assuredly part of it. Choosing sensible flats feels like giving up.

She glances briefly to her left at the marshal on duty; Jared, a friend of Nic’s. Lanky and unsmiling, he sits slouched on the front bench, just a few feet from Luz in the highly unlikely event she will try to shuffle off in her leg irons. But Jared is also there to keep an eye on everyone else, including—and maybe especially—on Abby. To make sure she is safe, to guard against the possibility that she might try to do something reckless herself, though God only knows what that might be. Abby knows Nic has arranged it on purpose, as he has with all of her court appearances for the last month, although they do not talk about it at home. Sometimes, Abby has to remind herself that they share a home—what had been her home. A year ago, she hadn’t known Nic’s last name, just that he was the US marshal who brought her infamous client, Rayshon Marbury, to court every day for the trial. But Nic, as it turned out, had been far more than that. Now, a few unimaginable turns later, they were having a baby.

All of it was unimaginable. Over a year ago, Abby had been just another public defender. Hardworking, and with glimmers of real talent, but also regularly dismissed and condescended to, as many younger female trial attorneys are. But in her third year in the office, she had been assigned to defend Rayshon Marbury, and now she was known as the woman who had proven innocent a man widely considered to be the city’s most dangerous gang member, on trial for his life for masterminding the killing of a DEA agent. She had made headlines again and again, humiliating the US Attorney’s Office and exposing one of the LAPD’s finest as a corrupt racist, then landing in hot water herself over the tactics she had used. Rayshon Marbury’s case—and the outsize consequences that came with it—followed her everywhere. Everyone knew who she was and had an opinion about her, for better and for worse.

Abby turns to Judge Richards. “It is all too easy for the government to point the accusatory finger, particularly in a charging document that arranges the facts to their liking and omits the ones that are less convenient. So let me offer a few. Sergeant Hollis was six foot four and weighed 260 pounds. He could bench press his own weight and then some.