Lawless

by K'wan

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

Bernadette "Bernie" Hunt prides herself on never settling. In school, she was always at the top of her class, and after graduating from Spellman with honors, she landed a job at one of Atlanta's top marketing firms. She lives by her father's motto: the best of everything or nothing at all. Bernie excels in life, but love is another story. Being gorgeous, smart, and from a well-to-do family, she has no shortage of high-society suitors vying for her attention, but when measured against her father, none seem good enough.

This changes when she meets Keith Davis, a hotshot lawyer recently hired at her father's firm. Keith is handsome, financially stable, and as skilled in the bedroom as he is in open court, with an infectious personality that draws people, including Bernie, to him. Being new to Atlanta from New Orleans, Keith's past is somewhat of a mystery, but that doesn't stop Bernie from falling head over heels for him. The day Keith gets down on one knee and proposes to Bernie is one of the happiest of her life. She has found a kindred soul who seems to bring everything to the table...including a dark secret.

When Keith is unexpectedly summoned back to New Orleans to attend the funeral of a relative killed under questionable circumstances, Bernie insists on being by his side. Their trip to the Big Easy will find the couple in the middle of a murder mystery that Keith has been reluctantly charged to solve. During the investigation into the slaying, secrets will be unearthed about Keith's past that cause Bernie to question everything she thought she knew about the man she's agreed to marry.

Release date: January 29, 2019

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Charles Johnson was what you would call a less than average Joe. He was an unassuming young man of twenty who lived in his mother’s basement. Three days per week, he rode his bike back and forth to his job at Home Depot. Outside of the people he talked to at work and the professors who taught some of the night classes he was taking at Atlanta Technical College, Charles had no social life to speak of. He was what you would call an unimportant man. So unimportant that if he up and dropped dead, it was doubtful that anyone but his mother would miss him. And that was only because he wouldn’t be around to kick in his monthly payment for the rent she charged him. Charles was an invisible man that no one ever saw.

That all had changed six weeks ago. In the blink of an eye, he’d gone from obscurity to being the meat in a newspaper byline about a man charged with armed robbery and attempted murder. According to the police, Charles was one of several men who had got it in their head to rob a liquor store in Bankhead. The owner, an older white man, had ended up taking a nonlethal gut shot and had been able to point the police in the right direction and identify several suspects. Charles hadn’t originally been one of them, but it hadn’t taken long for his codefendants to point their finger at him unanimously. Charles was the only black man in the group. It hadn’t helped matters when the store owner accused Charles in court of being the one who had shot him. Charles was being singled out and railroaded, and it appeared that only a miracle would be able to save him. Luckily for Charles, the law office he’d stumbled into happened to employ a miracle worker.

Keith Davis was an up-and-coming defense attorney who worked for the firm of Hunt, Lehman, and Gold. It was one of the top law firms not only in the city of Atlanta but also in the state of Georgia. The firm was built on the résumés of the partners, but their stellar reputation came from the stable of young lawyers they kept in rotation. It was a collective of some of the sharpest legal minds in the state, but Keith was by far the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Being the color of milk chocolate, standing six feet two inches tall, with rich black hair that rolled over the top of his head in waves and with engaging brown eyes, Keith was someone who would look more comfortable in a catalog than he did in a courtroom. Writing him off as a pretty boy with a degree was why prosecutors often found themselves caught off guard when he walked into a courtroom and almost effortlessly punched holes in their cases against his clients. Keith had an intimate understanding of the law, which made him an authority on manipulating it to win a case.

Keith sat listening to the prosecutor babble, but he was only half paying attention. He kept casting anxious glares at the courtroom doors to see if his paralegal, Susan, had arrived yet, but there was still no sign of her. If she didn’t show soon, Keith would have to improvise. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to work on the fly, but he preferred to go into battle with his guns fully loaded.

The prosecutor, Allen Glen, was a legend in the halls of courtrooms across the state of Georgia. They called him the Black Death, because he had a reputation for burying minorities in the deepest and darkest holes, never to be seen again. On the stand sat Glen’s star witness and the lead detective on the case, Roy Graves. He was both a smug bastard with a splotchy record and a card-carrying member of the good old boy network . . . a true son of the South. Graves and Glen had been playing Batman and Robin throughout the whole fiasco, going above and beyond to punch holes in Keith’s case, and for the most part, they had been successful.

When Charles was fifteen, he had been arrested for assault when he took part in a fight that had broken out at a high school basketball game. Charles had only been defending himself against members of the opposing team when they attacked him, but at the urging of his legal aid attorney, he’d pleaded guilty to the charges in exchange for probation and a felony conviction. Charles had been a minor at the time, and legally, Glen couldn’t use these old charges in the case, but during cross-examination, he had conveniently let it slip out that Charles had an arrest record. Planting that seed made it easy for Glen to demonize Charles in the eyes of the jury and feed the notion that he was some common thug who was capable of committing the new crime he was being accused of.

Keith glanced over at his client, Charles, who was so terrified that he could barely keep his knees from knocking together. He was nervous, and rightfully so. The deck was stacked so high against him that it was almost a sure thing that prison awaited him in the future unless something short of a miracle happened. Luckily for Charles, miracles were what Keith specialized in.

When Glen finally got tired of hearing himself talk, he rested his case and opened the floor for Keith Davis. “Game over, hotshot,” Glen said slyly while passing Keith on the way back to his side of the courtroom.

Keith took a second to pat Charles’s hand reassuringly before standing up from the table. He spared a last glance over his shoulder, but still no Susan. He was on his own. Taking a deep breath, Keith stepped from behind the table and prepared to address the court. His manicured fingernails glistened in the pale light of the courtroom as he buttoned the blazer to his tailored dark gray suit. The pink shirt beneath was freshly pressed, and his charcoal tie was knotted perfectly. Though Keith appeared to be the perfect picture of calm, his mind was racing at a million miles per minute. He could feel the eyes of his boss, Theodore Hunt, boring into him from a few seats back. He didn’t have to see him to know that he was watching. Theodore always seemed to be watching him. No doubt he was probably wondering if the seemingly hopeless case would finally be the one to smudge Keith’s pristine track record.

Theodore had been the most animate about Keith not taking the case to begin with. “You’re setting yourself up for failure, kid,” Theodore had told him that morning in his office. He’d been more concerned about how Keith losing the case would reflect on the firm than about the young man whose life hung in the balance. This had only made Keith more determined to take the case, just to prove his overbearing boss wrong. Now, drawing closer to the moment of truth, he began to think his ego had painted him into a corner he wouldn’t be able to get out of.

With the last card he had to play seeming to be missing from the deck, Keith now took a deep breath and prepared to mount as best a defense as he could. He had gone all in and now had to finish playing the hand. Just as he was about to open his mouth to start his cross-examination, the courtroom doors swung open and in stumbled his ace.

Susan Delany came stumbling into the courtroom, carrying a stack of folders, which threatened to spill from her grasp. She was a frumpy woman, twentysomething, with curly blond hair and clear blue eyes behind wire-framed glasses. Susan Delany was one of the paralegals who worked for the firm and was Keith’s go-to person. Her uncanny knack for fact-finding and her attention to detail had pulled Keith’s ass out of the fire on more than one occasion.

Susan hustled down the aisle, offering mumbled apologies to those whose feet she stepped on and those she accidentally slapped with her trench coat, which flapped behind her like a superhero’s cape. Her theatrics, though not intentional, caused quite a commotion, to the displeasure of the judge.

“What in blazes is going on?” the judge snapped.

“A moment please, Your Honor?” Keith asked, trying to hide his excitement.

“Mr. Davis, you had better have a damn good reason for disrupting my courtroom!” the judge spat.

“If God has seen fit to smile on me today, I will,” Keith said, moving to meet his paralegal. “Did you get it, Susan?” he asked her when he reached her side.

“Yes. It took some doing, but a friend of a friend was able to help me out, if I promised to go on a date with him,” Susan said, balancing her folders with one hand and digging in her satchel with the other. From it, she produced a green folder, which she handed to Keith.

Keith took a few seconds to flip through the folder to make sure it had what he needed inside. When he laid eyes on the documents, his lips parted into a wide grin, showing off two rows of perfect white teeth. “Susan, I owe you one for this.” He kissed her on the forehead.

“You owe me more than one,” she whispered. “You should see the guy I had to agree to date in order to get you this stuff. He’s got a unibrow, for Christ’s sake!”

“Mr. Davis, do you plan to cross-examine this witness, or would you like to waste more of this court’s time?” the judge barked at Keith.

“My apologies, Your Honor. I do intend to cross-examine Detective Graves, but I plan to make it short and sweet,” Keith said with an easy smile, which made Prosecutor Glen nervous. “Detective Graves,” he began, “I’m going to begin with asking you a very simple question. Can you say without a shadow of a doubt that the right man was arrested for this crime?”

“That’s what my report says,” Detective Graves replied in a smug tone.

“Right, your report. The same report that has my client being positively identified by the store owner as well as one of his codefendants, correct?”

“Yup,” Graves answered.

“Is there any scientific evidence to support this? Camera footage, ballistic evidence maybe?”

“No, the cameras in the store relay only live feed, and as far as ballistic evidence, by the time we tracked Mr. Johnson down, several days had passed, so any trace evidence we could’ve used was long gone.”

Keith raised his eyebrow. “So, your testimony is based on hearsay?”

“My testimony is based on an old man sitting in the hospital with a gut shot, a man who fingered that colored fella as the shooter.” He jabbed an accusatory finger in Charles’s direction. “Hell, even his friend said he done it.”

A confused expression crossed Keith’s face. “So, what you’re saying is that this whole case against my client is based on the word of a traumatized old man and an informant who you’ve promised only God knows what to place the blame on Mr. Johnson?” Keith shook his head pitifully. “Shame on you and the Atlanta Police Department for wasting this court’s time, Detective Graves.”

Detective Graves’s eyes narrowed to slits. For a brief second, he couldn’t hide the contempt he felt for the well-dressed African American attorney. “Look, boy, I don’t know what you’re fishing for, but—”

“I haven’t been a boy in quite a few years,” Keith said, cutting him off. “And I’m not fishing for anything. I’m digging a hole and this”—he raised the folder Susan had given him for all to see—“is my shovel.” Keith approached the bench, then handed both the judge and Detective Graves copies of one of the documents in the folder.

“Mr. Davis, what is this?” the judge asked, looking at the document strangely.

“I was hoping to let Detective Graves have the honor of explaining, but since he seems to be at a loss for words, I’ll help him out.” Keith turned his attention to the detective, who had suddenly turned as red as a tomato. Detective Graves opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. There was blood in the water, so Keith turned to the jurors and went for the kill. “Detective Graves, what you have in front of you is a photocopy of a desk appearance ticket for a drunk and disorderly that was issued on the same night of the robbery, only in the city of Savannah. Could you please read the name of the person this ticket was issued to out loud for the court?”

Before Detective Graves could answer, Prosecutor Glen was on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor! It’s a little late to introduce new evidence, especially if we weren’t made aware of it during discovery.”

“If I’d had it in my possession at the time, I’d have observed protocol, but this information was just made available to me a few seconds ago by my legal clerk.” Keith motioned toward Susan, whom he allowed the honor of presenting Prosecutor Glen with his copy of the document. “I assure you, Your Honor, I would not have disrupted these proceedings at the eleventh hour if the new information had been anything less than a game changer in this case.”

The judge stared Keith down for a few seconds. He didn’t particularly care for the young defense attorney, but he respected his tenacity. “It had damn well better be, Mr. Davis.” He motioned for him to continue.

“The name, please, Detective Graves,” Keith said, pressing his witness.

Detective Graves mumbled something that was inaudible.

“Could you repeat that so that the entire courtroom can hear you?” Keith cupped his hand to his ear.

“Charles Johnson!” Detective Graves repeated in a nasty tone.

The whole courtroom, including Charles, gasped, in shock.

“Bingo!” Keith snapped his fingers. “At the time of the robbery, my client was sitting in a holding cell nearly three hours away from the scene of the crime. Unless Mr. Johnson has figured out how to defy the laws of physics, it’s impossible for him to have been in two places at once. So, I’ll ask you again for the record, Detective. Are you sure the right man was arrested for this crime?”

There was a pregnant pause in the room, followed almost immediately by an outbreak of whispers. Keith studied the faces of the jury to gauge the impact of his words. He didn’t need to sway them, only create the shadow of a doubt. Prosecutor Glen looked like he was ready to blow a gasket. As Keith strutted back to Charles’s side, he stopped for a moment at the prosecutor’s table and leaned in to whisper to him, “I hear that crow really isn’t that bad if you drizzle it with a little hot sauce.”

A few minutes later, Keith came out of the courtroom, leading Charles and his mother, Martha. For Keith’s higher profile cases, there was always some sort of media waiting outside the courtroom, but Charles’s case had been a passion project that nobody had believed in but Keith. There was no fanfare, only the satisfaction of knowing that he had given Charles Johnson a second shot at life.

Keith was standing in the hallway, speaking with Charles and Martha, when his boss, Theodore Hunt, came strutting out of the courtroom. His square jaw was covered in a rich, well-groomed dark beard. Theodore was now in his fifties, but at six feet two inches tall and a shade under 220 pounds, he was still an imposing figure. His broad shoulders strained against the fabric of his tailored black suit. Only a few knew that he got his suits cut especially close about the chest and shoulders to make himself look bigger. When he trolled the halls of their law offices, he gave off an almost ominous feeling.

Trailing him was his pet ferret, Julian Sands, one of the junior partners. He was Theodore’s fly on the wall and keeper of secrets. Julian was an excellent lawyer but a horrible person, and he wore this fact proudly. Most of the lawyers at the firm feared Theodore Hunt, but they unanimously hated Julian Sands.

When Theodore’s dark eyes landed on Keith, the younger attorney straightened himself and waited for his boss’s inevitable critique of his performance in court. Theodore demanded the highest of standards from all the attorneys under him, but he seemed to be especially hard on Keith. No matter what Keith did, Theodore always found something he could’ve done better. Theodore stopped in front of Keith, and much to Keith’s surprise, he simply gave him a curt nod of approval and kept walking. That was the closest Theodore had ever come to complimenting Keith’s work. Keith wished he had a camera to record the rare moment, because when he recounted the story, no one would ever believe him.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for my son. God bless you, Killer,” said a teary-eyed Martha, drawing Keith’s attention away from Theodore’s departing back.

“It’s Keith,” he said, correcting her. Killer was a name that he’d buried long ago, and he planned to keep it that way. “And I’d do no less to stand for anybody from the same soil as me. We kin, baby,” Keith told her, letting slip the faintest traces of the Southern drawl he’d worked so hard to suppress. It was an involuntary reflex that sometimes manifested itself when his path crossed with those of people he knew from back home, which was very rare.

Keith was the last person Martha Jones had expected to run into, let alone take up her cause, when her son had gotten into trouble. Her search for representation had brought her into the offices of Hunt, Lehman, and Gold, where she’d pleaded for someone to hear her out about the mess her troubled son had gotten himself into. It had been divine intervention that Keith had happened to be on his way out to lunch as Martha was being stonewalled by the receptionist.

Over a cup of coffee in one of the conference rooms, Martha had laid her troubles at Keith’s feet. Things were tight for her financially, so there was no way she could pay the retainer, but what she lacked in money, she made up for in the belief that her son was innocent. Keith hadn’t seen Martha in years, but they had a history that went back to when he was just a nappy-headed kid in the South, trying to carry a name that was too heavy for his shoulders. He hadn’t even had to think twice about agreeing to take on Martha’s case pro bono. His decision to try to rectify this dire situation, for free, no less, hadn’t earned him any favor with the partners, but Keith didn’t care. He felt Martha’s pain over her son because he, too, was from a demographic in which it was up to women to ensure the survival of their sons.

“We aren’t completely out of the woods just yet, Martha,” Keith said as they stood in the hallway outside the courtroom now. “We’ve got another court date next month, and hopefully, by then this mess will be completely cleaned up, and your boy properly exonerated. Think of this as a temporary reprieve, and until it’s official, I’m going to need Charles to keep his nose clean.”

“You won’t have to worry about that. I’m confining his ass to the house twenty-four–seven. He might not be in prison, but it’s sure as hell gonna feel like it,” Martha said.

“Come on, Mama. I’m twenty. How are you gonna put a grown man on punishment?” Charles asked with an attitude.

Martha’s lips drew back into a sneer, showing the gold cap on one of her incisors. “Don’t you go giving me no lip! You weren’t grown when your ass was in that cell, crying like a baby and begging me to help your monkey ass get out of this mess. Had it not been for Keith’s kindness, you surely would still be rotting in that cell, because I ain’t have no damn money to spring you. If I were you, I’d try to be a little more appreciative, Charles. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Charles said in a soft tone. His mother had always had the power to make him retreat into his childhood ways by simply changing the pitch of her voice.

“Martha, I need to talk to you for a second, and then I need a minute with Charles before my lunch meeting,” Keith said. Then he led Martha out of earshot of Charles. “Listen, Martha, I’m glad I was able to help y. . .