Free Bad Lawyer by Stephen Solomita Page A

Priscilla with his right arm around her throat, shouting, ‘I’ll kill the bitch. I swear I’ll kill the bitch.’ He was crazy, out of his mind. His eyes were rolling in his head like he was having a fit.”
    She sniffed up her tears, her lips tightening as she pulled herself together. “It was chaos,” she continued, “and so unexpected. Byron appeared out of nowhere and we didn’t understand about violence.” Her eyes flicked from mine to Julie’s. “Joe had a heart attack two months later. From what happened is what I think. Byron took his daughter, and Joe couldn’t stop him. That’s all Joe ever talked about.”
    The only response I could think of—don’t worry, your daughter got even—seemed inappropriate, so I changed the subject. “Did Priscilla say anything to you? Did she ask for help?”
    “She couldn’t. He was choking her.”
    “So you just let him go?” I waited for her to nod, then continued. “Where does the neighbor come in, Mister Cassadina?”
    “Byron dragged her out through the front door. She was fighting him, but he was too strong. Gennaro was walking his dog near Byron’s car. He saw it all.”
    “Did he try to do something? Try to intervene?”
    “I think he wanted to, but there’s not much you can do when you’re eighty. And you know how those people are built. Byron looked like a …” She took a deep breath as she censored herself, then gave me a defiant look that bordered on triumph, as if she’d won some important point. “Like a bear. He looked like a bear.”
    “Did you report this incident to the police?” Not for the first time that afternoon, I congratulated myself on leaving Caleb at home.
    “I certainly did. I went down to the 107th Precinct that very day and spoke to Sergeant Shannahan. He works in the Domestic Violence Unit.”
    “And he said …”
    “He said he’d make a report, but unless Priscilla filed a complaint there wasn’t much he could do. Not with Byron living in Manhattan.”
    “What about the burglary?”
    “The what?”
    “You said Byron broke in through a window.”
    “I said, probably. Nothing was actually broken.”
    “All right.” I looked around for an ashtray, found none, considered using the cookie dish, but settled for drumming my fingers on my knee. “I take it Priscilla didn’t want to file a complaint. Is that the way it went?”
    Thelma began a complicated explanation of the phone calls that flew back and forth in the week following the assault. Myself, I tuned out after the second sentence. Given sufficient preparation, Thelma would make a powerful witness, especially if Shannahan had filed a report that substantiated her account. That would be true even if Gennaro turned out to be an incontinent drooler.
    “Thelma,” I said when she paused for breath, “there’s two things I want you to do now. I want you to call Gennaro, ask him to meet me outside, show me where he was standing when Byron dragged your daughter to the car. Then I’d like you to get some of Priscilla’s things together. Report cards, if you have them, graduation pictures, preschool finger paintings …”
    “I understand, Sid.”
    “Good.” I waited until she was standing, before springing the bad news. “But there is one other thing we need to talk about. You remember our conversation yesterday? When I asked you why Priscilla took her husband back after he was released from prison?”
    “Yes.” Her tone was wary, as if she’d been ambushed once too often.
    “Well, the problem is that unless we get a woman on the jury who’s been abused by her husband—and the prosecutor’s going to do everything in his power to see that doesn’t happen—there’s only one way to make the individuals charged with judging your daughter’s guilt or innocence understand.” I stopped, smiled, waited for a grudging nod. “We’re going to have to find a psychologist, preferably a woman, to take the stand and explain it. It doesn’t really matter