The Client ~ Flash Fiction Friday

The man was guilty. There was no doubt about it in her mind. She knew her client had done what the prosecutors said he had done. The look in her client’s eyes had told her all she had needed to know when she had asked the question of him on their first meeting.

She shivered as she thought back to the conversation. It had been in one of the city jail’s bleak interview rooms. Her client was an older man, in his mid fifties with charcoal grey hair and piercing blue eyes. He had been waiting for at the small table in the middle of the room. His hands were cuffed and chained to the table top. His legs were in irons and chained to the floor.

“So are you guilty?” She had asked and watched his reaction. She always made it a habit to ask her clients of their guilt or innocence. It managed to give her a starting ground on which to build their defense. They all thought they were not guilty and each and every one of them that she had met over the years had told her the same thing. They were not guilty.

To some of her client’s credit there were some who were definitely not guilty of the crimes that they had been accused of. They had simply been caught up in something that they had no business being involved in, in the first place. Then there were of course the guilty ones, who just didn’t want to admit that they were indeed guilty of the crimes charged to them. And there were more still whose guilt was unknown. Those were the hardest of cases for her.

Some would think that they wouldn’t be as hard, but they are. Not knowing was worse than knowing one way or the other.

He had said nothing when she had asked him. He had simply sat there smiling at her.

She then had begun to read to him the charges. As she had she had watched from the corner of her eye to see his reaction.

What she had seen then had made her stomach turn.

With every count he had licked his lips. At every victims name he had grinned. His eyes were alive and sparkling with a gleam that could only be described as evil. He however said nothing which only served to make his reaction more vile.

It was as if he was enjoying the obvious fruits of his labour.

She had had to force herself to keep reading the charges as it was what was customary and expected. There was well over one hundred charges, and over fifty victims. Those were the ones that they had found.

How she was going to be able to defend a man such as this she had no idea. She hated her bosses at the firm for having put her in such a position. But she had drawn the short straw on this one and had been sent to deal with the man before her.

Once they were done reading out the charges they would have to go over each and every one of them and he was going to have to explain.

She found the room hot as she continued to read. She felt the man’s hot gaze on her as she bent over the pages. She did not want to look up. She did not want to see the look on his face as he stared at her.

She came to the last name on the list and that’s when he finally spoke for the first time since she had sat down.

“Wait.” His voice was as smooth as silk. Low and sultry.

If she had been anywhere else she would have thought it was sexy. But here it only served to make her skin crawl.

“Yes?” She said finally looking up at him again.

“That last one? That was not mine.” He said and he smiled at her.