She does have emotional bias. Marcus said she also has a mind like a scalpel and she will not stop looking until she finds whatever is actually wrong with this case. Because there is something wrong with it. Gerald, I know it. I was at home that night.
I was nowhere near that building. Someone used my badge and my name and counted on my past to make it stick. Can you prove where you were? I was alone. I was at home.
My neighbor's porch light was on. I remember thinking I should offer to replace the bulb sometime. I made dinner. I watched a game. I fell asleep in the chair.
He spread his hands. I have nothing that proves any of it. But Emily, he stopped. Pressed his lips together. Emily will find whatever I'm missing, he said, because she has never once stopped trying to protect the people she loves.
She arrived the next morning before the session again. Marcus was already at the defense table when the courtroom doors open and Emily Carter walked through them. He heard her before he saw her heels on marble floor, quick and purposeful, not the uncertain shuffle of someone who wasn't sure of herself in a room like this. When he turned, she was already moving past the gallery railing. She was 23 years old when he had last seen her in person at her law school graduation.
She was 27 now. Four years of her life had happened without him in the room for most of it. And somehow those four years had added something to her bearing that he recognized but couldn't quite name. It was the particular quality of someone who had been tested and had not broken. She wore a dark blue suit.
Her blonde hair was pulled back. She carried a legal folder in one hand and a small leather briefcase in the other, and her eyes went straight to Marcus the moment she cleared the railing. She stopped at the defense table. "Dad," she said. "I'm here."
The two words landed in the room like a chord played in a cathedral, resonant, filling every corner, leaving nothing unchanged. Every head in the gallery turned. The prosecutor looked up from his notes. The baleiff glanced toward the judge's chamber. Marcus stood slowly, the chair scraped back.
He looked at his daughter, this woman who had once refused to make eye contact with anyone who had stood in the rain behind a convenience store with a backpack that held everything she owned. And something in his throat went complicated. You didn't have to come, he said. Her expression didn't soften, it steadied. I know, she said.
I chose to. Gerald How appeared at Marcus's left shoulder. Miss Carter, Gerald How, lead defense council. Emily turned and shook his hand with the kind of confident efficiency that told Marcus she had been doing this long enough that it was automatic. Emily Carter, I filed the paperwork to join the defense team as co-consel.
Judge Watkins should have the notification. She does. Gerald said she's reserving judgment until she hears the prosecution's objection. There will be an objection. Emily said there will.
Let them make it. She set her briefcase on the table. I've been reviewing the discovery documents for 6 weeks. I have questions about the fingerprint analysis and I have significant questions about the chain of custody on the badge access logs. Gerald blinked.
You've been reviewing since the day my father was arrested. She glanced at Marcus briefly. I told you I was working on it. You said you were looking into some things. This is what I meant by that.
The prosecutor, Andrew Reigns, crossed the room with a deliberate, unhurried movement of someone who had decided that looking untroubled was itself a strategy. He stopped at a professional distance from the defense table. Miss Carter, he said, Andrew Reigns, I know who you are, Emily said pleasantly. I'm going to object to your participation as co-consel. I expected that.
You have an obvious emotional connection to the defendant that compromises your professional neutrality. Emily looked at him with an expression that Marcus recognized from when she was 16 and someone at school had told her she couldn't possibly understand a concept she had already mastered. Mr. Reigns, my professional neutrality is in service of the law. My personal connection to Marcus Walker means I will work harder on this case than any attorney you've encountered in a courtroom. If you believe that combination threatens your case, I'd suggest that tells you something important.
Reigns held her gaze for a moment, then he nodded once and walked back to his table. Marcus sat back down. Emily settled into the chair beside Gerald, opened her briefcase, and laid out a series of documents with the efficient economy of someone who had already arranged them in the order she intended to use them. She didn't look at Marcus again until she had finished. Then she turned to him briefly and said quietly, "How are you holding up?"
"Better," he said honestly, "than I was 10 minutes ago." She held his gaze for one second. Something passed between them that didn't need words the particular understanding between two people who had found each other in the least likely circumstances and had against every reasonable expectation become family. Then she turned back to her documents because Emily Carter had not come here to feel things. She had come here to win.
Judge Patricia Watkins was 61 years old and had been on the bench for 19 years. And she had seen enough unusual situations that her face registered almost nothing when she looked out over the courtroom that morning and observed the addition at the defense table. She called counsel to the bench before the jury was brought in. Reigns argued Emily's participation created prejuditial optics, that her emotional stake in the case's outcome was a conflict of interest, that allowing a defendant's daughter to serve as co-consel would taint the proceedings regardless of outcome. Gerald countered that Emily was a licensed attorney in good standing with no disciplinary record.
That family members had represented defendants in American courts throughout legal history. That her stake in the outcome was personal. Yes, but that this applied to every defense attorney who genuinely cared about their client. Emily said three sentences. Your honor, I understand the prosecution's concern about the appearance of bias.