Fatal Convictions by Randy Singer

u when u get here.
    Hassan waited. The phone vibrated.
On my way.
    Hassan smiled. One more text message. This one, the most important of all.
Don’t tell anyone, ok? I need this to be just u and me.
    The response was exactly what Hassan had expected.
Of course.

23
    After a weekend of preparing and delivering a sermon, Alex found it hard to get out of bed on Monday mornings. This week it didn’t help that he was facing a mountain of paperwork to review, pleadings to draft, and phone calls to return. He arrived at the office at 9:30, only to find the doors still locked. It could only mean that Sylvia Brunswick had called in sick.
    Again.
    Alex unlocked the office, turned on the lights, and started a pot of coffee. As he expected, Sylvia had left a message on his voice mail, groaning as she told him about her incredibly painful migraine. She promised to try and come in tomorrow but said there was nothing she could do about it today.
    She couldn’t have picked a worse day to stay home. Alex had pleadings to file, including some answers to requests for admissions that absolutely had to be served that day. He would normally dictate the answers and let Sylvia worry about the details of typing them up and hand-delivering them to the other side. Now, that wasn’t an option.
    For the next hour and a half, Alex ignored his phone calls, resisted the urge to look at his e-mails, and typed away on his computer. When he finished and tried to print out the pleading, he discovered that the printer was low on toner. Just like Sylvia not to change the cartridge before she left Friday.
    Alex replaced the toner, printed out the document, made some corrections, printed it again, and tried to run off duplicate copies. The copy machine jammed, and Alex spent ten minutes trying to get it back online. Eventually, he conceded defeat and resorted to copying each page on a small copier without an automatic feeder. A five-page pleading. Four copies. Twelve minutes.
    He called Shannon’s cell phone as he ran the copies one at a time, placing each page facedown on the glass.
    “Sylvia called in sick,” he told Shannon.
    “I know. Migraine.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Our branch office.”
    “Which is?”
    “In my car on North Landing Road, near the site of the accident. I’m coming out here every morning I can this week, just to see if a truck fitting the description Ghaniyah gave us makes routine deliveries on this route.”
    Alex was stacking and stapling documents. The idea of a stakeout sounded like a long shot to him, a needle in a haystack. Even for Shannon, who sweated over every detail of a case, this was a little obsessive.
    “So let me get this straight,” Alex said. “You’re sitting out there on North Landing Road, waiting for a white produce truck with a red cab to come along so you can follow it to wherever and question the driver about a hit-and-run accident?”
    “I’m not really going to question anyone,” Shannon said without sounding the least bit defensive. “I’m just going to take a few pictures and copy down the license plate.”
    Alex’s BlackBerry buzzed with a different call. He didn’t recognize the number and ignored it.
    “I’ll show the pictures to Ghaniyah,” Shannon continued. “If that doesn’t trigger anything, I’ll subpoena the manifests from the truck company after we file our John Doe lawsuit. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some deliveries that would place the truck on North Landing Road at the time of Ghaniyah’s accident.”
    “To be honest, it seems like a waste of time to me,” said Alex, though he actually hoped she would prove him wrong. “Can’t we hire somebody to do that?”
    “One, we don’t have the money. And two, I’m working on other files and making phone calls while I’m out here. I’ll probably bill more than you today.”
    On that point, Alex couldn’t argue. He talked to Shannon for a few more minutes while he assembled the pleadings. After ending the call, he