At around 4 PM the next day, I am about to be released from county jail #1 on bail with the help of Lina Landon, my attorney, as she calls herself. I wouldn’t call her my savior just yet, but for bailing me out of this god damn place alone, she deserves a five star rating and whatever she bills me, as long as she can get these charges dismissed.
After a brief self-introduction that lasts less than a minute, Lina turns and busies herself with the legal process, leaving me only her back as she hops between desks. I don’t have any idea how good a lawyer she is, but her magazine cutout look radiates professionalism, even from behind. She’s in her forties, slicked back hair reaches just below her unadorned ears, a classic suit pressed to perfection, a jet black skirt falling mid-calf of her veiny legs, and a pair of three-inch needle heels sharp enough to kill. In this outfit, she can totally play a kickass assasin or wartime spy in a movie.
Wait, is she just an actress Daniel hires, not an actual lawyer? My heart starts racing as I ponder the possibility. I look down at the expensive looking business card she handed me earlier, grazing my fingers over the letterpress fonts. “Lina Landon, Defence Attorney, The Law Offices of Lina Landon.” Looks legit enough. I’d applaud at Daniel’s ingenious idea if she weren’t real, because at this point, I am willing to hire a stripper if she can play lawyer in a suit.
“Let’s go.” Lina jerks her head towards the door, urging me to leave as I am about to ask for my phone and wallet back. The arraignment is scheduled at 10:30 AM on Monday, she tells me in a monotone voice before the heavy metal door closes behind us with a dull thud. My eyes travel to the ceiling where security cameras are stationed at every corner. No, it’d be stupid to ask her if she’s real now. Besides, I bet she would be offended if she is. So, like a sleep walker stepping into a nightmare that has just begun, I trail along after her in the long hallway, mimicing the sound of her footsteps in my head as we walk.
Click, click, click, click.
Click, click, click, click. Ding.
The elevator door opens. Lina strides in, and I silently follow.
Ding.
The elevator door opens again. I step out, momentarily dazed by the busy lobby flooded with natural sunlight. After all the other passengers file past me, Lina leads the way across the lobby out to the main entrance.
I am free!
Only temporarily, I remind myself, but my brain doesn't get the memo. It races with each descent from the concrete stairs to the sidewalk, the thought of seeing Daniel and Abby again speeding up my heart rate every step of the way. That is, until my pounding heart sinks to the asphalt pavement.
Daniel greets me with an unexpected hug, squeezing the life out of me like he hasn’t seen me in years. Standing next to him, is his new boyfriend Marcus, but Abby is no where in sight.
“Where’s Abby?” I ask as I look around in confusion.
“Hey, don’t I deserve a thank you for getting your ass out of jail?” Daniel complains teasingly.
“Oh, sorry. I owe you big time, man. Thank you.” I give him an appreciative pat on the back before repeating the question, “but seriously, where is she?”
“She’s been here with us since six but left about half an hour ago for an urgent appointment. I told her I’d let her know once you are out.” His brows furrow as he notices my bruising eye and injured nose. “What happened to your face?”
I jerk my head away from his touch. “I am fine. Nothing’s broken. Now call her and tell her I am out.”
“Why don’t you call her yourself?” He asks. Realization dawns on him in two seconds, “did they take your phone? I thought they were supposed to give you back your belongings when you got out!”
“They are keeping it as evidence.” Lina cuts in, making her presence known by providing the helpful information.
“Why?” Well, I have an idea, but I ask anyway. Sort of like a question in the bar exam. I’ll verify her identity with Daniel later.
She rubs her temples and replies in a huff, “your sexual assault and drug charges, Chase.” With her eyes fixed on me, she tips her chin towards Daniel and adds, “You owe him more than a thank you. He sticks his neck out for you this time to get you the bail money. If they catch him forging your signature on the check, he can get into serious trouble.”
Daniel waves her off. “That’s okay, Lina. Chase saved my ass from bigger troubles for more times than I can remember.” He shoots me a sheepish grin, “but please, don’t divulge any information to your lawyer without my consent. That’s not cool.”
I chuckle a little, and Daniel breaks into a full smile. He always has a way of bringing light to the darkness, which is exactly what I need at the moment. For the first time since I breath in the fresh air outside of the courthouse, my chest finds room for hope, for genuine friendship, for a future that doesn't involve orange jumpsuit or bars.
Snatching the phone in the back pocket of his jeans, he unlocks it and punches in Abby's number. I watch him like a hungry hawk as he waits for the other end of the line to answer.
“Nope, she’s not answering.” he shakes his head, handing me the phone for a second try. No luck. I leave her a message the third time the call goes to voicemail, and send a quick text telling her to meet me at my house.
“Now what?” I look to Daniel, who turns to Lina, the only grown up in our troop. She jingles her car key in her hand like dangling a carrot in front of us, “come on kids, it’s group study time.”
After paying the parking fee, Lina guides us to a shiny black SUV that’s still got a dealer license plate on. Marcus hops on to the passenger front seat, leaving the back seats to Daniel and me like he reads my mind. As the car pulls out of the parking spot, I discreetly confirm with him Lina is 100% legit while he swears on his life he didn’t video tape Abby after I tell him about the nude footage in his hard drive. I am about to ask if he knows Abby has a twin sister, when Lina’s authoritative voice disrupts our private conversation, “where are we going?”
“My place.” Daniel and I say in unison.
Lina frowns in the rear view mirror. “We live next door to each other.” Daniel explain before telling her his address. With the polite GPS lady taking care of the direction, she jump starts the discussions about the case like she’s on a deadline, giving us considerable attention while she drives.
“Let’s start from the child pornography charge.” She suggests, directing her gaze to me from the reflection of the mirror. “Chase, I’ve read your file. According to the police officer, you were watching a video containing nude images of a girl you identified as your girlfriend in the film editing room.”
“No, I didn’t know what was in the hard drive!” I snap, my voice sounding louder than I intended in the confined space of the car.
Lina digests the information. “Good, we can use this as a defense. Are you sure there were only nude images, no sexual conducts of any kind?”
My face starts to heat up at the thought of the latter. If I were to be honest with myself, the possibility is pretty high. I blow out a deep, calming breath, trying my best not to lose my shit, “hell if I know. I don’t even remember how long I’d been watching the fucking tape, but it was still running when the cops came.”
“The reason I asked this question,” she clarifies matter-of-factly, “was because it makes a difference between two distinct charges. Possession of nude images, regardless of the age of the victim, is a misdemeanor offense under what we called the 'Peeping Tom' law. If the content includes sexual conduct of a minor, however, it becomes Child Pornography, which is a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to a year in county jail.” As if this doesn’t sound serious enough, she tops it with the most dreadful fact I’ve been trying to ignore, “since the girl seems to be unconscious, it would carry more severe penalty. That’s where the rape charge comes in.”
I have a hunch this is what the District Attorney’s Office is referring to when the skinny cop reads me the charges, but hearing Lina’s professional analysis makes it sting more. It’s like watching an abstract painting with brushes of red, orange and black suddenly turn into an HDR photo of the burning Hell.
“But Abby didn’t file any charges, the District Attorney’s Office did. Can they go forward with the case when there’s no plaintiff?” Daniel asks. I nod at this valid question.
“It depends. Sometimes the prosecutor, or the DA Office in your case, would dismiss the charges if the victim doesn’t testify, which is very common in sexual abuse and domestic violence cases. The problem is that you have a second witness here, the officer who saw you watch the footage in the editing room. That video and the testimony from the office alone, would be sufficient evidence to put you behind the bars. Besides, how can you be sure your girlfriend wouldn’t testify?” She fixes a challenging gaze on me, her expression serious.
“No, she wouldn’t! she wouldn't have given me the jacket to cover my puke at the police station if she didn't believe me.”
Lina shakes her head slowly like she's pitying a child, “you have no idea, do you?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demand. Is this how lawyers make their money, withholding information to bill more hours?
“I read the statement the police office submitted to the DA Office. He said he showed the footage to your girlfriend, but she couldn't identify the girl in the video.” She pauses, letting it sink in before she continues, “do you think she'll still trust you? If you were she, would you?”
I have nothing. After declaring I wanted to keep her in a dungeon as a sex slave, which I am sure is on the cop's statement, I don't seem like the most credible guy at the moment, not even to myself. Fuck! Where's the time machine when I need one to go back and kick my horny, stupid ass?
The car goes quiet for a full minute, until Daniel breaks the silence in a small, timid voice, “I didn’t know there was nude footage in the hard drive either.” He turns to me, his eyes full of uncertainty, “you trust me, right?”
“Of course I do.” I stare at him, not sure if I should be offended, “I meant it when I told you that.” Jesus, shouldn’t I be the one doubting him, not the other way around?
“It won’t matter if the judge doesn’t.” Lina’s words bounce from the windshield to the backseats like a tennis ball, hitting us both hard on the head. “But I do hope you can convince your girlfriend nothing more than the nude images happened.” She spares Daniel a quick glance at a stop sign, “the same goes for you too, Daniel, because the hard drive belongs to you.”
He stiffens in his seat, color draining from his face instantly. Squeezing his eyes shut, Daniel bangs the back of his head against the black leather, sending me the same dose of frustration.
I sigh. God damn it! Who knew this fucking documentary would turn into a life-altering assignment? And It’s not just us. The whole crew is also in deep shit.
No no no......if we didn’t do it, it had to be someone on the crew, or anyone who had laid hands on the film. How can I be so blind?
“Daniel, you were not the only cameraman, and the footage in hard drive was only one of the copies from the dailies you made, right?”
The car comes to a screeching halt, and Daniel’s eyes shot open, his head swinging to me like I just told him he won the grand price in Powerball. “That’s right! I copied the raw footage every night into this hard drive and synched it to the cloud every week.”
“Oh, thank fuck!” Relieve washes over me like a tidal wave, until something odd occurs to me. “Wait, how did you not find out about it when you edited it at night?”
Daniel’s jaw drops open, and his whole body slumps to the seat like a deflated ballon. “I didn’t edit them.” His voice is barely audible, but the message reaches me perfectly clear.
“What? Are you fucking kidding me?” My hand flies to the side of his head, landing a sharp slap that knocks him to the head rest. “How many times do I have to tell you to edit it every night, not just copy the raw footage? That’s why they are called dailies!”
He jerks his head out of my hand’s reach and tries to justifiy his stupidity, “I thought you could do the job ten times better and faster than I did, so I skipped the daily editing and save it till the end......”
Steams are coming out of my ears in full force, and I don’t realize how loud I am yelling at him until Lina interjects, “how many copies did you make?”
Daniel takes a moment to think it over before answering, “there’s the copy in the cloud, and the original daily raw footage I store in my computer. That’s it.”
Lina lets out a long breath, and looks between the two of us as she asks, “is there a way to trace the raw footage to the person who shot it?”
My chest is still heaving like a fire-breathing dragon, but I manage not to spread the flames and set the entire car on fire with my anger. Pinning Daniel to the car window with a lethal glare, I answer, “Unless Daniel the genius here is a total dumbass, he should have a log of the daily footage. With the time stamp of the raw footage in the computer, we should be able to track down who took which shot.”
“Yes, I have a log! it’s...it’s in my backpack!” Daniel says quickly, one hand raised like he’s the smartest kid in the class.
I cock my imaginary rifle with a red laser light pointing to his forehead, ready to shoot the idiot, “your backpack, as on a fucking notebook? You didn’t even use a spreadsheet on a computer?”
He ducks his head, shrinking to a ball to make himself a smaller target as he gives me the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard, “I...I...I thought it’d be fun to try the old school paper log thing Mr. Gilman told us.”
“No, you are just straight up too lazy to type it up!” I bark, “did you sleep through the part where Mr. Gilman said it needed to be transferred electronically as a backup?”
The car pulls up to the curb in front of a bank. Lina unbuckles her seatbelt and turns to shout at us from the driver seat, “you two, cut it out!” She takes a couple seconds to compose herself with her eyes closed before speaking again, “if I understand your conversation correctly, the nude footage was mixed into the hard drive by someone on your crew, and now you need to find this person to get you both out of trouble, right?” She regards us expectantly, “who was on your crew?”
Marcus, who’s been silent the whole time, clears his throat and volunteers, “we hired a couple international students. It can be anyone of them.”
“Wait, don’t forget that J guy. Didn’t he bring his fancy camera to help as well?” I add, remembering my brief encounter with him two weeks ago. “Isn’t he your cousin, Marcus?”
Marcus rubs his nose and reaches for a tissue from the arm rest and responds in a muffled voice, “yeah, but it can’t be him.”
“Why?” I raise one eyebrow in question.
The pimples on his face turn from dull pink to glowing red as he retorts, “I’ve known him my whole life. He’s not that kind of person!”
Lina shoots him a warning stare, and Marcus shuts up like a clam. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.” Her eyes dart to Daniel, “you, delete every footage related to this documentary in the cloud.”
“Why?”
“Remember the footage Chase watched in the editing room? It was seized as evidence without a search warrant, so I can submit a motion to suppress evidence to exclude it in the pretrial hearing. But once the investigation is under way, the police can easily get a warrant from the court to hunt for copies. The first place they look is usually social media and the cloud.” Daniel gulps, but Lina is not done yet, “they don’t know there’s raw footage in your computer, so once we track down the person who took the video, we will need to destroy the original in your computer as well.”
She turns to Marcus next, “you, go help Daniel find out who that person was on the crew with Daniel’s paper log and the raw footage in the computer.”
Lastly, she fixes me with an indecipherable look and orders me like a commander in chief, “and you, need to tell me everything about your drug use. Every, little, detail.”
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