The Last Man by D.W. Buffa

Author:D.W. Buffa [Buffa, D.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Michael Harlowe wrapped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He gazed around his office, taking inventory of his surroundings: the long rows of law books on the wooden shelves stacked floor to ceiling on the wall opposite; the diplomas from college and law school and the ornate certificates with their stilted language announcing his admission to practice in both state and federal courts; a dozen random photographs, most of them taken years earlier when he first started trying cases; a tarnished antique replica of the scales of justice, a gift from his wife when he opened his first office shortly after they were married and a long time before their divorce.

Everywhere he looked he found something to remind him of how much of his life he had been doing this, practicing law, trying cases in court, and how long it taken to get to where he was now, a lawyer everyone who was in trouble wanted to have. It was always a lie when someone who had achieved a certain degree of success said in so many words that they had always known it would happen; that no matter how difficult it had been in the beginning, they had never lost faith. They said it because now that it had finally happened and they were looking down instead of up, it was the only thing that seemed to make sense. Harlowe was too honest to invent a new biography for the past. He had always known that what happened had more to do with chance than anything else. You could try cases until the sun forgot to rise and nothing would change, no one notice except a few seasoned veterans of the criminal courts, which meant that only a couple of judges and one or two prosecutors would remember your name. The only way a defense attorney became a great success was to have that one case, that one trial that suddenly became the only case, the only trial, anyone wanted to talk about.

He had been in practice for fifteen years before it happened to him, a murder case in which to the astonishment of both the court and the prosecution he called as the first witness for the defense the victim, the man whose wife had supposedly killed him. He had actually simply wandered off, a victim, not of murder, but of amnesia brought on by rare virus that had attacked his brain. The memory loss was complete and, unfortunately, irreversible. He had been found only by chance, and it was chance again that led Harlowe’s private investigator to hear about it before anyone else. The effect of his sudden appearance in the courtroom had been so stunning, so profound, that no one thought to ask how long Harlowe had known he was alive or where he had been living the last several weeks of the trial; which meant that no one could ask why, if Harlowe knew he was alive, he waited

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.