Excerpt from Her Kind of Case by Jeanne Winer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Sure hon, just give me a second. It's only eight-thirty and it's already a madhouse. Are you going to make one of my lawyers happy?"

"I'm thinking about it."

A public defender's caseload was ridiculously high. Because she was a perfectionist, it had taken Lee more than seventy hours a week to handle so many cases. After ten years of it, she'd had enough and quit. But when she was young and juggling over a hundred active felonies, it was always good news when one of her clients managed to hire someone from the private bar.

"Okay Lee, I've got it. It's Phil Hartman's case."

"Is he there?"

"For you he is. Hold on."

It took another few minutes, but eventually Phil picked up.

"Hey Lee, are you going to make my day?"

"Maybe." She leaned back in her chair and placed her feet carefully on her desk. She was wearing a pair of black leather boots with a silver chain around the ankle. The boots were at least fifteen years old but like most of Lee's possessions, they looked brand new—the upside of being a perfectionist.

"Oh happy day," he sang.

"I said maybe."

"Come on, Lee. I've got five ugly sex assaults, a three-time loser cooking meth next door to an elementary school, and a burglar caught in the victim's backyard carrying the victim's forty-two inch TV who says it's all just a big mistake and wants the charges dismissed."

The image made her smile. Like all criminal defense attorneys, she loved hearing about other people's hopeless cases. It was a lawyer thing. The more pathetic the case, the more terrible the facts, the funnier it was. An outsider listening in might think the stories were being exaggerated for effect, but in fact they weren't. Luckily for the DA, the vast majority of criminal cases were obvious and utter losers.

"But wait," Phil said. "Matthews is a street kid. Who's paying?"

"His aunt."

"Great, you'd be the perfect advocate for him. He's exactly your kind of client."

"That bad?"

She could hear Phil opening his file drawer, rummaging through it, and pulling out Jeremy's case.

"Okay," he said. "For starters, he's an asshole."

"Ooh."

"Yeah, and not only that, he confessed."

"He confessed? Shit. His aunt didn't know that." She slid to a sitting position and grabbed her notepad. "All right, read me what he said."

"Christ, why do juvies always confess? It's no fun. Wait, I'm still looking. Okay, here it is: 'After being advised, Mr. Matthews told us he acted as the lookout while the others kicked Mr. Donnelly to death. According to Mr. Matthews, the victim was quote just a faggot who deserved to die unquote. Mr. Matthews also admitted kicking the victim a few times, but wasn't sure whether the victim was already dead. After these admissions, Mr. Matthews refused to answer any more questions and told us he needed to lie down and go to sleep. Detective Armstrong then escorted him to the juvenile detention center. On the ride over, Mr. Matthews became belligerent when he learned he was being separated from his co-defendants and demanded that he be housed at the Boulder County Jail. Because of his age and other security issues, his request was denied.'" Phil paused. "So, there you go. Not so bad really."

"Not so bad?"

"Well, I mean it could be worse. Let's see, they could have pushed the victim off a cliff."

Lee stared at her purple horse, which was almost but not quite faceless.

"I don't know about you," she said, still trying after twenty years to make out the horse's expression, "but personally, I'd rather be pushed off a cliff and be done with it than be kicked to death which would have taken much longer."

"You know what? You're absolutely right. I'd pick the quick death off a cliff too. No question about it. So, yeah, your client's an asshole."

Excerpted from Her Kind of Case by Jeanne Winer. Copyright © 2018 by Jeanne Winer. Excerpted by permission of Bancroft Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.