More Twisted

year’s acquittal of the Sacramento wife for the premeditated arson murder of her husband with a novel abuse defense (embarrassment in front of friends being abuse too)? The luscious not-guilty awarded to Fred Johnson, the pretty thief from Cabrini-Green in Chicago, who was brainwashed, yes, brainwashed, ladies and gentlemen, into helping a militant cell, no not a gang, a revolutionary cell, murder three customers in a Southside check-cashing store. The infamous Time magazine profile? The Hard Copy piece?
    But Lescroix merely repeated, “There is no one better than me, Jerry.” And let the sizzling lasers of his eyes seal the argument.
    “The trial’s tomorrow . Whatta you know ’bout the case? Can we get it, you know, continued?” The three syllables sounded smooth in his mouth, too smooth: he’d taken a long time to learn what the word meant and how it was pronounced.
    “Don’t need to. I’ve read the entire file. Spent the last three days on it.”
    “Three days.” Another blink. An earlobe tweak. This was their first meeting: Why would Lescroix have been reviewing the file for the past three days?
    But Lescroix didn’t explain. He never explained anything to anyone unless he absolutely had to. Especially clients.
    “But didn’t you say you was from New York or something? Can you just do a trial here?”
    “Goodwin’ll let me ‘do’ the trial. No problem.”
    Because he’s a decent fellow.
    And a spineless wimp.
    “But he don’t charge me nothing. You gonna handle the case for free?”
    He really doesn’t know anything about me. Amazing. “No, Jerry. I never work for free. People don’t respect you when you work for free.”
    “Mr. Goodwin—”
    “People don’t respect Goodwin.”
    “I do.”
    “Your respect doesn’t count, Jerry. Your uncle’s picking up the tab.”
    “Uncle James?”
    Lescroix nodded.
    “He’s a good man. Hope he didn’t hock his farm.”
    He’s not a good man, Jerry, Lescroix thought. He’s a fool.
    Because he thinks there’s still some hope for you. And I don’t give a rat’s ass whether he mortgaged the farm or not. “So, what do you say, Jerry?”
    “Well, I guess. Only there’s something you have to know.” Scooting closer, shackles rattling. The young, stubbly face leaned forward and the thin lips leveraged into a lopsided smile.
    But Lescroix held up an index finger that ended in a snappy, manicured nail. “Now, you’re going to tell me a big secret, right? That you didn’t kill Patricia Cabot. That you’re completely innocent. That you’ve been framed. That this’s all a terrible mistake. That you just happened to be at the crime scene.”
    “I—”
    “Well, Jerry, no, it’s not a mistake.”
    Pilsett looked uneasily at Lescroix, which was just the way the lawyer loved to be looked at. He was a force, he was a phenomenon. No prosecutor ever beat him, no client ever upstaged him.
    “Two months ago—on June second—you were hired by Charles Arnold Cabot to mow his lawn and cart off a stack of rotten firewood near his house in Bentana, the ritziest burgh in Hamilton. He’d hired you before a few times and you didn’t really like him—Cabot’s a country club sort of guy—but of course you did the work and you took the fifty dollars he agreed to pay you. He didn’t give you a tip. You got drunk that night and the more you drank, the madder you got ’cause you remembered that he never paid you enough—even though you never bargained with him and you kept coming back when he called you.”
    “Wait—”
    “Shhhh. The next day, when Cabot and his wife were both out, you were still drunk and still mad. You broke into the house and while you were cutting the wires that connected their two-thousand-dollar stereo receiver to the speakers, Patricia Cabot came back home unexpectedly. She scared the hell out of you and you hit her with the hammer you’d used to break open the door from the garage to the kitchen. You knocked her out. But didn’t kill her. You tied her up. Thinking maybe you’d rape her later. Ah, ah, ah—let me finish. Thinking maybe you’d rape her later. Don’t gimme that look, Jerry. She was thirty-four, beautiful and unconscious. And look at you. You even have a girlfriend? I don’t think so.
    “Then you got spooked. The woman came to and started to scream. You finished things up with the hammer and started to run out the door. The husband saw you in the doorway with the bloody hammer and the stereo and