paid her dues. Sheâd spent years in the pits prosecuting crappy cases and winning them, and for the past two years sheâd been Division Chief of one of the most congested trial units in the office, supervising three felony attorneys and responsible for a court docket of more than four hundred felonies. The average ASA lasted three years on the state payroll before heading out to greener pastures; anyone who went past five was considered a lifer. And on the lifer scale, there were those bodies that stayed on simply to earn a paycheck and keep the benefits, working their eight-hour shifts from the trenches of the Felony Screening Unit, taking witness testimony and filing cases all day long, or buried under mounds of paperwork, tucked safely away in some dull, specialized unit on the fifth floor, like Economic Crimes.
Then there were the lifers who made a run at bigger and better things.
Daria fell into the latter group. While sheâd never consciously decided to spend her entire legal career as a prosecutor, besides the possibility of moving to the feds, sheâd never really had the itch to circulate her résumé. Once youâd put a rapist behind bars for thirty years, a slip and fall at the grocery store just didnât seem all that exciting. Neither did bankruptcy law, corporate litigation, insurance defense, or helping sound the death knell on peopleâs marriages as a divorce attorney. A rabid fan of all cop and lawyer shows and everything FBI since she was a kid, Daria figured being a prosecutor was simply what she was meant to be. Unlike her older brothers â a hospital administrator and an eighth-grade science teacher â sheâd never dreaded going to work in the morning. And God knew sheâd never spent a single second bored in her job. On occasion sad, and a lot of times pissed off, but never bored. That didnât mean she wanted to stay an overworked, underpaid division pit prosecutor for the rest of her career, though.
To prove to Vance Collier and the rest of Administration that she was a lifer with a future, in addition to trying cases that a lot of other ASAs wouldâve pled out, sheâd worked weekends, volunteered for on-call robbery duty even when it wasnât her rotation, and handled holiday bond hearings without complaint. Coming in early and leaving late every day, watching jealously at times and scornfully at others while the support staff headed en masse for the elevators at 4:30 and most of her colleagues followed by 5:30. Some a helluva lot sooner. Sheâd made the requisite sacrifices: no boyfriend, no hobbies, no life, outside babysitting her brotherâs ADHD triplets on her first long weekend off since Christmas.
If it was only a simple murder case that she needed to win in order to prove herself capable of heading up a unit full of specialized prosecutors, sheâd have no real worries. The case against Talbot Lunders was circumstantial, yes, but the evidence, in the collective, damning. As a law school professor had once described it, making a circumstantial case was a lot like making a strudel: while a single sheet of paper-thin filo dough couldnât support the weight of ten apples, if you capably assembled sheet upon delicate sheet, eventually you had a pastry with enough layers to support a whole bushel of fruit. The key was in the dogged construction, and, of course, in the oven you ultimately loaded your dessert into, which had to be brought to the perfect temperature before actually introducing the food, and that temperature had to be maintained throughout the whole baking process. The oven in the analogy, of course, referred to the jury â already plenty hot and fired up by the time you opened the oven door, ready to bake anything to a crisp the second you closed it. Too cool and nothing would gel. Considering Florida was a death penalty state â and, until a few years ago, the stateâs preferred method of
Then there were the lifers who made a run at bigger and better things.
Daria fell into the latter group. While sheâd never consciously decided to spend her entire legal career as a prosecutor, besides the possibility of moving to the feds, sheâd never really had the itch to circulate her résumé. Once youâd put a rapist behind bars for thirty years, a slip and fall at the grocery store just didnât seem all that exciting. Neither did bankruptcy law, corporate litigation, insurance defense, or helping sound the death knell on peopleâs marriages as a divorce attorney. A rabid fan of all cop and lawyer shows and everything FBI since she was a kid, Daria figured being a prosecutor was simply what she was meant to be. Unlike her older brothers â a hospital administrator and an eighth-grade science teacher â sheâd never dreaded going to work in the morning. And God knew sheâd never spent a single second bored in her job. On occasion sad, and a lot of times pissed off, but never bored. That didnât mean she wanted to stay an overworked, underpaid division pit prosecutor for the rest of her career, though.
To prove to Vance Collier and the rest of Administration that she was a lifer with a future, in addition to trying cases that a lot of other ASAs wouldâve pled out, sheâd worked weekends, volunteered for on-call robbery duty even when it wasnât her rotation, and handled holiday bond hearings without complaint. Coming in early and leaving late every day, watching jealously at times and scornfully at others while the support staff headed en masse for the elevators at 4:30 and most of her colleagues followed by 5:30. Some a helluva lot sooner. Sheâd made the requisite sacrifices: no boyfriend, no hobbies, no life, outside babysitting her brotherâs ADHD triplets on her first long weekend off since Christmas.
If it was only a simple murder case that she needed to win in order to prove herself capable of heading up a unit full of specialized prosecutors, sheâd have no real worries. The case against Talbot Lunders was circumstantial, yes, but the evidence, in the collective, damning. As a law school professor had once described it, making a circumstantial case was a lot like making a strudel: while a single sheet of paper-thin filo dough couldnât support the weight of ten apples, if you capably assembled sheet upon delicate sheet, eventually you had a pastry with enough layers to support a whole bushel of fruit. The key was in the dogged construction, and, of course, in the oven you ultimately loaded your dessert into, which had to be brought to the perfect temperature before actually introducing the food, and that temperature had to be maintained throughout the whole baking process. The oven in the analogy, of course, referred to the jury â already plenty hot and fired up by the time you opened the oven door, ready to bake anything to a crisp the second you closed it. Too cool and nothing would gel. Considering Florida was a death penalty state â and, until a few years ago, the stateâs preferred method of
Similar Books
