A public defender finds a note in her own handwriting—*Check Riverside surveillance*—in the file of a client who took a plea deal four months ago. She doesn't remember writing it, doesn't remember following up, and doesn't know if forgetting was exhaustion or self-preservation. Now she has to decide whether caring about a closed case when she has sixty-three open ones is conscience or just another kind of failure.
The note is in her handwriting but she doesn't remember writing it. *Check Riverside surveillance—J says cameras face loading dock.* The file it's tucked into is Marcus Webb's, but Marcus Webb took eighteen months four months ago, and she hasn't thought about him since.
She sits with the Tupperware balanced on her knee, engine running, and tries to remember. Marcus Webb. Possession with intent. Third strike looking at him so he took the deal. She'd had—what, fifteen minutes with him? Twenty? He'd been quiet. They were all quiet or they were loud, and she'd learned to work with both, but the quiet ones were easier because they usually just took what you told them to take.
Her phone buzzes. Her sister: *Did you ask him yet?*
She deletes it without responding.
The thing about the note is she can picture writing it. She can picture Marcus saying something about cameras, about how they'd see he was nowhere near the actual deal, just walking through. She can picture herself writing it down because that's what you do when a client tells you something, you write it down so they feel heard. And then what? Then twenty other clients and four other court dates and someone's mother crying in the hallway and the prosecutor offering eighteen months instead of five years and Marcus saying okay, saying he just wanted it done.
She closes the file. Opens it again. Her handwriting, definitely. The J would be—she checks the notes—Jamal Porter, codefendant, took a deal the same day.
It's 4:47. She has a 5:30 drinks thing with law school friends she's been trying to cancel all week but can't because Sarah just made partner and you have to show up for that. She needs to go home and change. She needs to not be wearing the same suit she wore yesterday, which she is, because the cleaners closed before she could get there and anyway it's $40 she doesn't want to spend before her sister's bachelorette weekend in Scottsdale.
*Just tell Mom you're bringing someone. She doesn't need to meet him before the wedding. Just a name.*
She starts typing a response, deletes it. Starts again: *I'm not making up a fake boyfriend for your wedding.* Deletes it. The truth is she'd consider it. The truth is she's thought about asking David from the DA's office if he'd do it for $200 and free drinks, as a joke, except she's thought about it enough times that it isn't quite a joke anymore.
The file sits on her passenger seat.
Here's what checking the surveillance would mean: calling in a favor from someone at the PD's office to pull archived footage. Maybe two, three hours of her time. Probably nothing on the cameras. Probably they don't face the right way or the footage is taped over or it shows exactly what the police report says it shows. And if it doesn't—if it shows Marcus walking through, wrong place wrong time—then what? Then a motion to withdraw the plea. Then Marcus sitting in county for another six months while it winds through. Then maybe nothing anyway because maybe the footage isn't clear enough, isn't definitive, and prosecutors don't just roll over because you have a grainy video.
Then her supervisor asking why she's spending time on a closed case when she has sixty-three open ones.
She eats another bite of rice. It's cold and the soy sauce didn't distribute evenly so this bite is too salty. She'd made it Sunday night, meal prep, trying to save money for Scottsdale. Four identical Tupperwares of rice and broccoli and chicken. This is number three. Tomorrow is number four, and then she'll buy lunch Friday because by Friday she'll want to die if she sees another piece of steamed broccoli.
Her phone: *Mom's going to ask. I'm just warning you.*
She types: *Tell her I'm bringing someone.*
Three dots. Three dots. *WHO?*
*You'll meet him there.*
She puts the phone face-down and immediately regrets it. Now she has to produce someone or admit she lied, and admitting she lied is somehow worse than just showing up alone, which was the original problem.
The file. Marcus Webb. She'd told him eighteen months was good. She'd meant it. Eighteen months instead of five years was good, was a win, was the best she was going to do for him in a system designed to process people as quickly as possible through the narrowest possible channels.
She tries to remember his face and can only remember his hands. He'd kept them flat on the table between them, very still, while she explained the deal. Long fingers. A scar across the knuckles of his left hand.
Probably there's nothing on the surveillance.
Probably she wrote the note and then checked and there was nothing and that's why she didn't remember—because it had been nothing, a dead end, the kind of thing you follow up on and dismiss twenty times a day.
Probably.
She could call Jamal Porter's lawyer. See if they ever looked into it. Except Jamal Porter's lawyer was Keith Ventura, and Keith Ventura retired in January and moved to New Mexico to make furniture or find himself or whatever it is burned-out public defenders do when they finally get out.
4:53.
If she leaves now she can go home, change, make it to drinks on time. She can be the person who shows up for Sarah. She can have two drinks, not three, and talk about Sarah's new office and her new salary and not think about how Sarah makes in a month what she makes in a year, because Sarah went corporate and she didn't, which was a choice, which was supposed to mean something.
She puts the car in reverse.
Stops.
The thing is, she'd been tired that week. Marcus Webb's week. She remembers that. There'd been something—what? A trial. A stupid trial on a shoplifting case because the client wouldn't take the deal and insisted she was innocent, which maybe she was, but they lost anyway because of course they did. Three days of trial on a $47 shoplifting charge. And she'd come out of that and had a dozen plea deals to process and Marcus had been one of them.
She'd been tired.
She's always tired.
She puts the car back in park and pulls out her phone. Scrolls to find Andre's number—Andre who works in records, who she bought coffee for when his kid was in the hospital. The favor economy. Everything runs on it.
The phone rings twice.
"This is Andre."
"Hey, it's Lisa Sorenson. You got a minute?"
"For you? Maybe thirty seconds. I'm walking out."
"I need surveillance footage pulled. Four months old. Might be nothing."
Silence. Then: "Closed case?"
"Yeah."
"Lisa."
"I know."
"You got sixty, seventy files right now?"
"Sixty-three."
"And you're chasing something from four months ago."
She watches a pigeon land on the hood of the car in front of her, peck at something invisible. "There's a note. In my handwriting. I don't remember following up."
"So maybe you did and it was nothing."
"Maybe."
The pigeon flies away.
"What's the case number?" Andre says, and she loves him for it, for not making her ask twice.
She gives him the information. He says he'll see what he can do, maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday. She thanks him. Hangs up.
4:58.
She should feel better, having made the call. She doesn't feel better.
Her phone lights up: *What's his name?*
She looks at the phone. At the file. At the parking garage's concrete ceiling with its water stains and exposed pipes.
She types: *Marcus,* then deletes it.
She types: *I'll tell you later,* and sends it before she can think better of it.
Then she puts the car in reverse, and this time she leaves, and the file stays on the passenger seat, and she doesn't know yet if Andre will find anything, and she doesn't know if she wants him to, and these both feel like the same kind of failure but she can't articulate why.
The drinks thing is in Georgetown. She hits traffic on Constitution. She'll be late. She's always late. Sarah will forgive her because Sarah forgives everything, which somehow makes it worse.
At a red light, she picks up her phone and scrolls through her contacts. Gets as far as David (DA's office) before the light changes. Puts the phone down.
The file slides forward when she brakes, and she pushes it back.
Eighteen months. Marcus Webb is eight months in, ten to go with good behavior. Probably he's fine. Probably he's adjusted. Probably reopening everything would just mean more time inside waiting for a hearing that wouldn't change anything.
Probably she should let it be nothing.
The thing about being a public defender is you learn to let things be nothing. You have to. Otherwise you'd never sleep. Otherwise you'd drown in all the ways you can't save people, all the corners you have to cut, all the notes you write and forget because remembering would mean caring and caring about every single thing would turn you inside out.
She parks three blocks away because Georgetown parking is impossible. Checks her face in the mirror. Puts on lipstick. Takes it off. Puts it on again.
Her phone: *Marcus what? Mom's going to want a last name.*
She sits in the car and tries to think of a last name that isn't Webb.
Comes up empty.
Sends: *You'll meet him at the wedding,* and gets out of the car, and walks toward the bar where Sarah is celebrating, and the file is locked in her trunk now, and Andre will call or he won't, and she'll deal with it or she won't, and for now she's just a woman walking into a bar to have drinks with friends, to be happy for someone else's success, to be a person who shows up.
The note is still in the file.
She keeps walking.
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