Honesty and Quiet Fury

Andrea shifted her position as she leaned against the wall of the interview room. The hard concrete wasn't the most comfortable, but she wanted to keep the pressure on Kyle. Her threat of hitting the call button and walking out of this entire situation forever felt like the only thing forcing him to be honest.

For his part, Kyle looked like a trapped animal as he sat chained to the desk; knowing that his fate was out of his hands, but not happy about it and looking for any chance to turn the tables.

Andrea wasn't about to give him that chance. As far as she was concerned, she had a royal flush, and his hand was full of nothing but uno cards.

"So you had a highly respected defense attorney, Francis McCabe, offer to take your case, but you didn't want to plead guilty, and he wouldn't take your case unless you did? And I'll bet he suggested a bunch of alternatives you could try, but told you they would all say the same thing? So your fall back was the one lawyer you knew was foolish enough to try to win unwinnable cases," Andrea said bitterly.

She went on. "So you cooked up a scheme to lure me here to try to convince me you're innocent. Because I'm gullible enough to believe you might be, when one of the greatest defense lawyers of the last thirty years has reviewed your case and thinks you're guilty. Does that about sum it all up?"

Kyle rubbed his eyes in frustration. "Not exactly. McCabe was willing to take the case, even if I didn't agree to take a plea deal, and he would have defended me, but… I could tell that he didn't believe me when I said I was innocent."

"Of course he didn't, Mr Wynn. Haven't you heard? 'They ALL say they're innocent.'"

Again, Kyle flinched at having his own words thrown back at him. "You were really taking notes on what I said yesterday, weren't you?"

"It left an impression!" Andrea wasn't going to let things get sidetracked. "So you turned down McCabe because… what, you didn't think his heart would be in it?"

Kyle nodded. "More or less."

"Did you talk about other options?" she asked.

Kyle nodded again. "You were right about that, McCabe suggested a few names… Poppovich… Cartwright… Roth…"

It was Andrea's turn to nod. Dominic Roth would have been her choice if she were the one needing a defense attorney.

Kyle went on. "But you were also right that he told me that they would give me the same advice, that 'taking a plea was the only sensible move.'"

Andrea didn't know any of the case details McCabe would have had when he'd said that, but she had to assume his assessment was accurate. It sounded like Kyle didn't have a strong case. "And you're hoping that I'd be inexperienced enough for you to convince me to not do the 'sensible' thing?"

"I hoped that you might care enough to do the right thing," he countered.

"And how do you think your plan to make me care is going so far, Kyle?"

Kyle shrugged. "I'll admit, not great."

'Correct!' she thought.

"So tell me about this plan, Kyle. You couldn't just pick up the phone and ask me? What happened, have you been watching too many movies? Did you forget that you don't only get one phone call? Instead, you had McCabe scurry round laying a trap for me."

"McCabe passed on my instructions to others who did the actual arranging. I don't see him getting his own hands dirty like that." Kyle looked down at his own hands in thought.

"It didn't take much," he said. "One officer to watch for you arriving to make sure you were directed to the right desk. Another was told that there was a computer glitch and Adams hadn't actually been transferred, so he would sign you in. A third just directed you to the right room, unaware of who you thought you were meeting. None of them knows enough to put the picture together."

"Seems like a lot of effort just to save you from making a phone call. Were you too shy to talk to me on the phone, Kyle?"

Andrea was clearly getting under Kyle's skin. There was an edge of anger as he next spoke, "Let me ask YOU to be honest then, Blondie. If I HAD called you up out of the blue and asked you to represent me, WOULD you have said yes?"

Andrea thought back to how she had laughed at him, how she hadn't believed him when he told her what he wanted, and how it still seemed like a stupid crazy idea that he would even want her. WOULD she have agreed to help her arch-enemy…?

She didn't reply.

Kyle seemed to take that for an answer. "I decided that I would have a better chance at convincing you if I could talk to you face-to-face, break it to you a little at a time, explain things and give you my side of the story… which I still haven't had the chance to do…"

"Still won't get the chance to do," Andrea replied hotly. "Still not your attorney."

Kyle sighed. "I really think you're making a big deal about this. It honestly was less complicated than it sounds. I had a few favors to call in from–"

"Think for a moment if you really want to share any names, Mr Wynn, unless you want me to be sharing them when I'm testifying against you in court."

"You're being ridiculous! It wasn't some huge conspiracy!" Kyle was clearly losing patience— with Andrea, with his predicament, with not being in control. He wasn't used to not being in charge, and he didn't like it. "The hardest part of the whole thing was convincing Jacquelyn to clear time on your schedule and send you over in the first place!"

Andrea had been angry before, but she was suddenly filled with a quiet fury. And for the first time in the entire conversation, it wasn't all directed at Kyle.

HE was the big case she had been told to clear the decks for? HE was the reason all of her cases had been taken away from her?

She was furious at Kyle, of course. The audacity of having someone call her boss and interfere in her work like that!

She was furious at Jacquelyn for being a part of this mess. Andrea only hoped that Jacquelyn hadn't known what she was involved in, that she had been tricked somehow, too. Andrea was infuriated at what Kyle had done, but she had never trusted him enough to feel betrayed by his actions. Jacquelyn on the other hand…

Andrea was going to have words with Jacquelyn when this was over.

And lastly, she was furious at herself for not having put the pieces together before now. It seemed so obvious in hindsight.

She didn't want to admit any of this to Kyle, though, so she clamped down on her fury, keeping it bottled up inside.

'This knucklehead probably wouldn't even understand why I was so upset,' she thought.

He certainly didn't seem to have picked up on the change in Andrea's mood.

"I knew that you wouldn't have time to work on your regular cases," Kyle continued. "Technically, the case has already been assigned to you, you just need to agree to take it. So listen, if you'd just let me tell you about it–"

"No, YOU listen!" Andrea exploded. "That's NOT how it works! I don't let SUSPECTS dictate how I get my information about a case. So HERE is how it's going to be." She stepped over to the table and placed her hands flat down on the surface, looming over the seated Kyle.

"I am going to review the case files! I am going to look at the evidence! I am going to do whatever other investigation I think is necessary to make up my mind if this is a case I'm choosing to accept! And it will be MY decision. Understood?"

Kyle gave the tiniest of smiles. "So you are still thinking about it?"

"Thanks to you, it's been assigned to me. So technically I am required to at least review the case. I am NOT required to accept it." Andrea spun away from the table and punched the call button. "We're done here," she called into the tannoy.

"So you'll come back and let me know your decision?" asked Kyle hopefully.

"I'll come back IF I take the case," Andrea said, as the interview door swung open. "If you don't see me again… then you'll have my answer."

"Hey, Blondie," Kyle called as Andrea stepped out of the room. "If I had just called you first, would you have been willing to even meet with me?"

Andrea called back over her shoulder. "I guess we'll never know."

The door slammed shut behind her.