The Lawyer
They brought him into a small consultation room off the booking area, a square box of space that smelled like old coffee and printer ink. The walls were the color of damp paper, and the air had the faint scent of ozone and was filled with the soft electric buzz overhead.
The cuffs came off with a snap that echoed louder than it should have, metal on metal reverberating through the table and into his bones.
“Your attorney’s on the way,” the officer said. He didn’t look at Kyle when he spoke, just turned toward the door. “Court-appointed,” he scoffed.
Then the door closed, sealing the air.
Kyle sat still.
His hands rested flat on the table, palms open. A thin reflection stared back from the brushed metal surface, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, stubble darkening the hollows of his cheeks, jaw clamped too tight.
Somewhere beyond the wall, a phone rang. Then another. A printer coughed out paper, pages slapping against the tray. Someone laughed down the hall, the brief, tired laugh of people who’d been awake too long.
He listened to it all, the machinery of procedure grinding forward, indifferent to the lives caught in its gears.
The room felt smaller with every breath. The air became thinner.
When the door finally opened again, the hinges gave a soft whine. He didn’t look up at first, just listened to the shift of shoes on tile, the sound of someone drawing in a slow, steady breath before speaking.
Then the voice came.
Soft. Familiar even.
“Mr. Whitaker?”
The air left his lungs all at once. He lifted his head.
Marshall stood in the doorway.
Older. Sharper around the edges. The same eyes, steady, intelligent, a little uncertain now, eyes that had once seen him more clearly than anyone else ever had. His hair was shorter, peppered with gray at the temples, and the suit didn’t quite fit right, as if it belonged to the man he was still learning to be.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Marshall’s expression broke open, just slightly. “Kyle?”
The name cracked something inside him. All the years between them collapsed, the locker room’s echo, the scent of sweat and grass, the kiss next to the fieldhouse, the silence that followed like the sentence of a condemned man.
Kyle’s throat tightened. “Yeah,” he said, the word almost soundless. “It’s me.”
Marshall stepped inside, closed the door with a slow, careful motion, and leaned against it. He exhaled hard, like he’d been holding his breath since the call came.
“Oh, Kyle,” he said at last. The word wasn’t anger. It was disbelief, and something like grief.
He placed his briefcase on the table, fingers trembling as he rubbed the handle. “When they handed me the file, I didn’t even, I just saw the name and thought, no way.”
Kyle gave a small, humorless nod. “Guess it’s me anyway.”
Marshall hesitated before sitting. He pulled out the chair across from Kyle but didn’t lower himself yet, just stood there, searching Kyle’s face like he was trying to find the teenager he’d once known buried inside the man.
“It’s been what, fifteen years?”
“About that.”
“Feels like yesterday,” said Marshall. They locked eyes.
Finally, he sat. His hands came together on the table, fingers locking to keep them from shaking. His voice softened. “Alright. We’re going to start with the case, okay? Just the facts. Get them to see that you're innocent. Then…”
Kyle looked away. “Then what?”
Marshall paused. His eyes flicked down to the notepad, to the ink already smudged under his palm. “Then we figure out everything else, anything that needs figuring out.”
The silence that followed had weight, thick and uneven. You could almost hear the years breathing between them.
Marshall cleared his throat, professional now, forcing distance between the man and the lawyer, between the client and the lawyer. “They’ve got a witness who says she saw you leaving the motel where the murder happened. You were there?”
Kyle didn’t move for a long time. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah. I told the police that I was.”
“You want to tell me why?”
“Why I told the police?” he asked. “Because it’s the truth.”
“No,” said Marshall. “Why were you there?”
He hesitated, gaze fixed on the table’s scratched edge. The words came out low. “Why I was there? Because I needed the money.”
Marshall blinked, as if the meaning didn’t land right away. “Money? Money for what?”
Kyle said nothing at first. The truth made him feel like a failure. “So I wouldn’t have to live in…to live where I live now.” He dropped his eyes. He didn’t need to say more.
“I don’t have any of the information or video from your interviews, Kyle. That motel is known for drugs and prostitution. It’s difficult for me to believe you’ve gotten involved with drugs, you were one of the few kids so gung ho about D.A.R.E. But if you were there to get money, you must have been dealing.” There was a sadness in Marshall’s voice.
For the first time in what felt like forever, Kyle felt like crying. He didn’t want to tell Marshall the truth, but he knew that he had to. “It wasn’t drugs. I got paid to fuck this guy. I admitted that to the detective.”
The truth sat between them like an open wound, raw, silent, undeniable. Marshall’s face changed slowly as the understanding settled in. Not judgment. Just the ache of recognition.
He leaned back, eyes unfocused. “Alright,” he said softly. “We’ll deal with that later. For now, we focus on what matters, proving you didn’t kill that woman.”
Kyle looked up, meeting his gaze for the first time. “You really do believe me, don’t you. You know that I didn’t kill her.”
Marshall didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”
The word landed like warmth after cold. It had been a long time since anyone had said anything like that to him, a simple word, but it cracked something open inside.
For a moment, the air in the room felt charged, alive. The old gravity between them stirred, waking after years of stillness.
Then Marshall stood abruptly, the spell breaking. He closed the folder with a firm, deliberate motion. “I’ll talk to the detective. You don’t say another word to anyone. Understand?”
Kyle nodded. “Understood.”
Marshall paused with his hand on the doorknob. His voice softened again. “We’ll get through this,” he said. “One way or another.”
The door shut behind him.
The quiet that followed wasn’t peaceful. It pressed in from all sides, the hum of the fluorescent light ballast, the faint ringing in his ears, the sterile pulse of a building that never slept. But Marshall had said ‘we’ and to Kyle, that was a lifeline.
Kyle looked down at his hands. They were trembling now, small, uncontrollable shivers he couldn’t stop. Not from fear. Not exactly.
He’d come in here certain of his innocence.
But sitting in that narrow room, he realized what scared him most wasn’t being accused. It was the sudden, unbearable spark of hope.
The hallway outside the consultation room felt colder than it should have. Marshall closed the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, his right hand still holding the knob. His pulse hadn’t settled yet. He straightened his tie, trying to shake off the tremor in his hands. Fifteen years was a long time, but the sight of Kyle, the voice, the stillness, the way he hadn’t changed where it mattered, had knocked the air out of him.
A vending machine clicked at the end of the corridor. Someone down the hall was typing too fast on a noisy keyboard, the staccato rhythm cutting through the silence like rain on tin.
He forced himself to move. Duty first. Emotion later.
Detective Harlan was waiting by the bullpen doorway, coffee cup in hand, his expression caught somewhere between suspicion and fatigue. Today, he looked like every cop Marshall had ever had to work with, sharp eyes, slow speech, the kind of man who measured people like they were puzzles to be solved, not lives to be defended.
“Counselor Greene,” Harlan greeted, tipping his cup slightly. “Didn’t expect you to show up so quickly.”
“I happened to be in the building,” Marshall said. His voice sounded steadier than he felt. “You could’ve told me it was that Kyle Whitaker.”
“Didn’t know he was a friend of yours.”
Marshall’s jaw tightened. “He’s not, ” He stopped himself. “He was someone I knew a long time ago.”
Harlan’s gaze flicked to the door behind Marshall, then back. “That right? Back when he was the town’s baseball hero?”
Marshall could see the calculation in the man’s eyes, the way cops always tested for weakness. He’d seen that look across countless tables. It was never about what you said, only what you didn’t.
“I’ll be filing formal notice to represent him,” Marshall said. “Until then, you don’t question him further without my being present.”
Harlan took a sip of coffee. “You think he’s innocent.”
“I know he is.”
The detective gave a small, skeptical smile. “That’s quick work for ten minutes of conversation.”
Marshall stepped closer. “You’ve got a witness who saw a guy with a mustache in the dark. You’ve got no physical evidence tying him to the scene. You’ve got a veteran with no record, no motive, and no connection to the victim. Plus, Harlan, he’s earned the Silver Cross. What you have is a hunch.”
Harlan didn’t flinch. “You’d be surprised how often hunches turn out right.”
Marshall stared at him. “You’d be surprised how often they ruin someone’s life.”
A silence settled between them, taut, brittle. The kind of silence where careers break and truth starts to warp.
Finally, Harlan sighed and set his cup down on a filing cabinet. “Look, Counselor. I’m not saying he did it. I’m saying he was there. And the more we dig, the worse it’s gonna look. You know how these things go, even for war heroes.”
“I do,” Marshall said. His voice dropped low. “Which is why you’re going to make sure this one doesn’t go wrong. I’m trusting you to make sure the truth gets exposed. I know your record. You’re not a cop who’s just out for an arrest. You’ll dig for the truth no matter what. I know that’s what you’ll do because I know you.”
Harlan studied him for a moment, then nodded, just slightly. “Fair enough. We’ve processed the warrant; we’re checking his truck, and we’ll see what shakes out. The clothing we took from his place doesn’t look promising from the prosecution side, but he could have ditched anything with blood on it. He doesn’t have a cell phone, so we’ve only got his word that he went straight home. Between you and me…” He glanced toward the door again. “That man’s holding something back.”
Marshall’s pulse jumped. He felt a tinge of anger. “You think? Like you’re holding something back?”
Harlan’s jaw muscles tightened. “And you. You don’t want to lay your cards out anymore than I do. I don’t think that Kyle is lying. I think he’s scared. I believe everything that he told me is true. Everything. It’s what he hasn’t told me that sticks in my craw.”
Marshall watched Harlan’s eyes. “He told me why he was there. I know that he told you as well. He’s an honest man.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t a friend,” said the detective.
Fuck, thought Marshall, I fell into that. “He was a very good friend; we lost contact when he left town.”
“He’s been to war. That changes people.”
“Not him. Not who he is at the core. I’ll stake my reputation, my life, on that.”
Harlan turned to leave, but paused halfway down the hall. “Sometimes,” he said without looking back, “the quiet ones are the ones you should really be afraid of.”
Marshall watched him go, the detective’s footsteps fading into the hum of the precinct.
He stood there alone for a long time, eyes fixed on the closed door to the consultation room. Behind it, Kyle was probably sitting in silence, staring at the same reflection that used to haunt him years ago, only now, it came with handcuffs and a case number.
Marshall rubbed his eyes, then took a slow, steadying breath. Whatever history lay between them, whatever truth Kyle was afraid to say out loud, Marshall would have to face it again.
Not as the boy who’d kissed Kyle behind the field house.
But as the man who might be the only one left who truly believed in him.
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