For the next two minutes there was more, but nothing really instructive. Chapin yelled louder and louder that he wanted a lawyer and, aside from a few tediously repeated naughty words, that was all he had to say. Chambers tried to calm him down and get him back into his chair and Deborah stood with her arms folded and glared. When Chambers finally got Chapin seated again, he took Debs by the arm and led her from the room.
I joined them in the hallway just in time to hear Chambers say, “… and you know damned well we have to get him one now.”
“Fuck it, Chambers!” Deborah said. “I can bend the paperwork and hold him twenty-four hours!”
“He has asked for a lawyer,” Chambers said, as if he were telling a child she can’t have a cookie before dinner.
“You’re killing me,” Deborah said. “And you’re killing that girl.”
For the first time I saw a little flash of heat run across Chambers’s face, and he took a short step in to stand right in Deborah’s face. I thought I was about to witness another attempt on my sister’s life and I tensed, ready to leap in and separate them. But Chambers took a deep breath, clamped both his hands on Deborah’s upper arms, and said very carefully, “Your suspect has asked to see an attorney, and we are required by law to provide one for him. Now.” He stared at her, she stared back, and then Chambers let go of her arms and turned away. “I’ll go get a public defender,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.
Deborah watched him go, a series of unpleasant thoughts obviously running through her head. She looked back through the window in the door to the interrogation room. Chapin was seated again, in his opening pose, leaning over the table. “Fuck,” Debs said. “Fucking Chambers.” She shook her head. “This wouldn’t have happened if that asshole Deke was here.”
“He’d be here if you hadn’t ditched him,” I said.
“Go fuck yourself, Dexter,” she said, and she turned away and followed after Chambers.
Miami is a city with an overcrowded court system, and the public defender’s office may well be stretched thinner than all the rest of it. This is one of the very good reasons why Dexter has been careful to save his money over the years. Of course, the capital cases get priority, but then, there are so many of those that someone facing a mere murder charge had better be able to afford his own attorney, because the public defender’s office, once a nest of hardworking liberal idealists, has become a small and temporary burnout stop for young lawyers hoping to make a splash. It takes a really special case to get anything more than their flustered, part-time attention.
So it was a pretty good indication of how high the profile of our case was when, less than an hour later, a smart young woman fresh out of Stetson Law School showed up to represent Victor Chapin. She wore a very nice business pantsuit, the latest Hillary Clinton model. She walked with a swagger that said she was the Avatar of American Justice, and she carried a briefcase that probably cost more than my car. She took it and her attitude into the interrogation room and sat down across from Chapin and, laying the briefcase on the table, she said crisply to the guard, “I want all the microphones and recording devices turned off, and I mean now.”
The guard, an elderly guy who looked like he hadn’t cared about anything since Nixon resigned, just shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure, okay,” and walked out into the hall and flipped the switch, and the speaker went silent.
Behind me somebody said, “Fuck!” and I realized that my sister had returned. I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, Deborah was glaring into the now-silent room. I wasn’t sure if we were speaking to each other, since I had disobeyed her direct order and failed to go fuck myself, so I just turned back around and watched the peep show. There was really very little to see: Chapin’s brand-new attorney leaned in toward him and spoke rapidly for a few minutes. He looked up at her with growing interest, and eventually he talked back. She pulled out a legal pad and took a few notes, and then asked him a few questions, which he answered with increasing animation.
After only ten or fifteen minutes the attorney stood up and went to the door, and Deborah went to meet her as she stepped into the hall. She looked Deborah over from head to toe with something that was not really approval. “You are Sergeant Morgan?” she asked, with icicles forming in the air as she spoke.
“Yes,” Deborah said grimly.
“You are the arresting officer?” the attorney said, as though that was another term for “baby rapist.”
“Yes,” Deborah said. “And you are?”
“DeWanda Hoople, public defender’s office,” she said, like everybody would know that name. “I think we’re going to have to let Mr. Chapin go.”
Deborah shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.
Ms. Hoople revealed a world-class set of front teeth, though it would be an exaggeration to call it a smile. “It doesn’t matter what you think, Sergeant Morgan,” she said. “Plain and simple, in one-syllable words, You Don’t Have a Case.”
“That little shit is a cannibal,” Deborah snarled, “and he knows where I can find a missing girl.”
“Oh, my,” Ms. Hoople said. “I assume you have some proof of that?”
“He ran from me,” Deborah said, a little sulky, “and then he said he didn’t eat any of it.”
Hoople raised her eyebrows. “Did he say any of what?” she said with sweet reason dripping from her tongue.
“The context was clear,” Debs said.
“I’m sorry,” said Hoople. “I’m not familiar with the statutes concerning context.”
Knowing my sister as well as I did, I could see that she was about to explode, and if I had been Ms. Hoople I would be backing away with my hands held out in front of me. Deborah took a very deep breath and said through her teeth, “Ms. Hoople. Your client knows where Samantha Aldovar is. Saving her life is the important thing here.”
But Ms. Hoople just smiled wider. “Not more important than the Bill of Rights,” she said. “You’re going to have to let him go.”
Deborah looked at her and I saw that she was almost trembling as she fought to control herself. If ever there was a situation that clearly called for a strong right fist to the nose, this was it, and it was not normally my sister’s way to ignore that call. But she struggled, and she won. “Ms. Hoople,” she said at last.
“Yes, Sergeant?”