“No, it’s sort of urgent.”
I could hear anxiety in her tone.
“Well, can we just talk now on the phone?”
“No, I need to show you something. In person.”
I was intrigued but knew I couldn’t blow up my schedule for another case at the moment. And I didn’t like bringing potential clients to the warehouse. It might make them question my skills — even more than people did when I worked out of a Lincoln.
“Okay, then we can meet,” I said. “But my office is a complete mess because we’re getting ready for trial. Files and paperwork, exhibits all over the place. Are you free for lunch? I could meet you if you’re here in L.A.”
“Yes, I go to USC. Law school.”
“Law school — cool. My daughter went there. Have you been to Fixins over on Olympic? It’s not far from USC.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good fried chicken and gumbo and other stuff. How about I meet you there at noon?”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“See you soon, Cassandra.”
I put the phone in the cradle and didn’t have to wait long before Lorna came back into the office with her concerns and questions. Lorna was my gatekeeper, and as such she adopted a suspicious pose when anyone managed to gain access to me without proper vetting from her.
“Cassandra Snow,” she said. “Is that even a real name?”
“It actually is,” I said. “I saw it on her birth certificate. A long time ago.”
“Well, who is she?”
“The daughter of a former client. A client... I totally failed.”
“Oh, no. Not one of those.”
But it was true. David Snow was one of those black balloons that hovered above me. Lorna started asking questions about his case but I quickly put her off. I said I wanted to see what the daughter wanted to show me and find out why she wanted to hire me before I opened up that painful chapter. Lorna finally left and I went back to my juror questions until it was almost noon.
Fixins was probably the only soul-food kitchen in the city that took reservations for lunch, but it was a popular spot. I arrived for my reservation on time and was seated near the bar, where a large flat-screen showed highlights from the weekend’s football games. I watched but wasn’t really watching. I was thinking about the David Snow trial.
By 12:15 I assumed Cassandra wasn’t coming. I was about to flag down the waiter and order a bowl of gumbo when a woman in an electric wheelchair approached my table.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said. “All the parking spots for people like me were taken. Probably by people who don’t need them.”
I jumped up and pulled a chair away from the table so she could maneuver into the spot. She had reddish-brown hair and sharp brown eyes with a pretty face. The mixed races of her heritage were evident. She looked very small in her chair, like a child. It wasn’t what I expected. I knew that her childhood injuries had left her paraplegic, but I was somehow surprised to see that her physical growth had been stunted. I came back around and sat across from her. I noticed her fingernails, long red press-ons that tapered to a point.
“Good to see you, Cassandra,” I said. “It’s been a while.”
She smiled like I had said something funny.
“I go by Cassie now,” she said.
“Cassie — I like it,” I said. “So, you live near campus?”
“Not too far. West Adams.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. I’ve been on my own for a long time.”
Besides the whispery tone of her voice, she spoke with an unusual cadence. She spaced her words out as if guarding them, even with sentences that required little thought or hesitation.
“So, law school — how did that come about?” I asked.
“I think it was inevitable,” she said. “Considering what happened with my father.”
I understood. I was trying to keep the conversation light, but I knew there was something dark coming. This wasn’t a social visit.
“What year?” I asked. “What year law, I mean.”
“Second,” she said. “I’m about halfway through.”
“You on a scholarship?”
My interior thought came out as an awkward question. The last I knew, she had been taken into the foster-care system after the trial left her without a parent. I didn’t track her after that, probably fearing that what I’d find would put me into a deeper tailspin of guilt. But I knew there weren’t many foster parents out there who could afford tuition at USC Law.
“No,” Cassie said. “I support myself.”
“Are you interning at a firm?” I asked.
“No, not yet. I support myself as an ASMRtist. I have my own channel and I’m on Patreon. I do pretty well. I can even afford to hire you. I think.”
She smiled. I nodded, not knowing what most of that meant.
“That’s great,” I said. “Any decision yet on what kind of law you want to practice?”
“Definitely criminal defense,” she said.
“Ah, a lawyer after my own heart.” I put my hand on my chest.
“My goal was to get the degree and someday get my father out,” she said.
I nodded. It was an uncomfortable moment. I took my hand away from my heart.
“But I’m running out of time,” Cassie said. “He’s dying, and I want to bring him home.”
I nodded again. It seemed like all I could do. I knew I could not offer encouragement. Her father was probably only halfway through his sentence, and parole boards didn’t show much sympathy for abusers of children.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “What’s going on with your father?”
“He’s got terminal cancer,” Cassie said. “Esophageal.”
“I’m so sorry, Cassie. Where is he?”
“In Stockton. The medical prison. They said he has nine months. Maybe less.”
I hadn’t thought about David Snow’s case for years. I had handled the trial, which ended with guilty verdicts on all charges. Another lawyer handled the appeals that followed. I thought I knew which way this conversation was going.
“And you want to try to get him out on a medical hardship? That’s going to be a—”
“No, not a medical hardship,” Cassie said. “A habeas. I heard about that case you handled last year. I think you can get my father out. He’s innocent.”
“Cassie, that was actually almost two years ago. And after that I stopped doing criminal. I’ve been in civil court since then.”
“I still think you can get him out.”
“There is nothing I would like better than to help your father. I never thought he deserved what he got. I believed him and never thought he was guilty. But... have you taken habeas yet at USC? I don’t think it’s required at most law schools.”
She nodded.
“I took it last semester at an innocence clinic at the law school,” she said. “At one point we even talked about your case. That’s how I heard about it.”
“Well, then you know,” I said. “I’m assuming by now your father’s appeals have run their course. Habeas corpus may be his only shot, but it’s a long shot, Cassandra — uh, Cassie. To get a habeas in front of a court, you need new evidence—”
“That was unavailable at the time of conviction. Yes, I know.”
“Okay, then what is our new evidence?”
She stared me down with those dark eyes.
“The new evidence is me,” she said.
18
I gathered the troops after I got back to the warehouse. The only place with enough chairs was the cage. McEvoy was in there, working through the material Naomi Kitchens had turned over. I told him he could step out because this wasn’t about the Tidalwaiv case, but he asked to stay because he thought that anything that came up in the days before trial might be material for the book he’d write. I said that was fine and started telling them my news.