Plea of Insanity Read Online Free PDF Page A

Chief of Major Crimes before. In fact, while she’d been to the second floor maybe a zillion times over her two years in felonies to either see Career Criminal about getting a plea offer on a habitual offender, or visit the offices of other division attorneys, she’d never once even been through the secured access doors that led to the Major Crimes Unit. The Hallowed Hall. It wasn’t that her identification card wouldn’t open the door; it was just that there’d never been any need. None of her cases ever involved issues that appealed to Major Crimes – like a famous defendant, a celebrity victim or a brutal serial killer. And as for socializing, for the most part, attorneys in specialized units did not interact or hang out with the younger pit prosecutors in division. Like Julia supposed it was in every corporate workplace, there existed at the SAO an invisible and unspoken social and economic caste system among its workers: administration dined with administration, senior trial attorneys lunched with senior trial attorneys, support staff noshed with support staff. And in their five minutes of free time, pit prosecutors shared croquetas , PB&Js, and the morning’s courtroom war stories with other pit prosecutors, either at their desks or over at the courthouse cafeteria across the street.
    She got off on two with a guy who she figured for either a drug dealer or a plain-clothes City of Miami narc in need of a shower. The tattooed head of a King Cobra slithered out of the collar of his T-shirt, bearing its fangs in a wicked grin as it arched its back and aimed for the jugular. Its owner smiled at her like he knew her, before disappearing down the hall that led to Career Criminal. She hesitantly smiled back and hoped he was a narc.
    Her own office was up on three, but she decided it might be better to head straight over to Chief Rifkin’s office first, thinking that maybe if the man actually saw the four enormous trial boxes on her cart, he’d remember just what carrying a caseload of 102 B felonies was like before he ripped into her for taking on her judge with a doomed domestic. She stopped at the door marked Major Crimes, wiped her palms on her skirt, took a deep breath, and slid her card through the security access. It clicked open and she entered a long, lowlit, empty hallway, painted – like the rest of the State Attorney’s Office – the most depressing shade of pasty gray.
    Immediately, the air changed. That was the first thing Julia noticed. The second was the collective blank stares of the eight Major Crimes secretaries whose lair she’d landed in when the depressing hallway abruptly ended. A fluorescent-lit maze of Formica and plexiglas cubbies, and there she was, standing dumb-faced right in the middle of it, like a kid whose waterslide had unexpectedly dumped him into the deep end of the pool. Conversation didn’t just softly die down – it dropped dead in mid-sentence.
    ‘Hello,’ Julia began, trying her best at a big smile. Since no one looked away, she addressed them all. ‘I’m looking for Charley Rifkin’s office?’
    ‘Is he expecting you?’ one of the faces asked, an older woman with a sour expression and droopy, doughy cheeks. Somebody cracked gum.
    Julia glanced down. On the desk in front of droopy cheeks was a plaque with a plastic manicured index finger that bobbled back and forth. It read Don’t Mess With Grandma . ‘I think so,’ Julia answered slowly. ‘My DC told me that Mr Rifkin wanted to see me.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Grandma. Her face slid down until it looked like it would just melt into her neck. ‘You’re the one from Judge Farley’s division.’
    That couldn’t be good. ‘That’s me,’ Julia replied, and casually dried her hands on her skirt again. Unfortunately, she’d inherited the sweaty-palm gene from her mother – a career curse. She still tried to hold on to the smile, but it was fading quick.
    Grandma picked up the phone, hit a number, and turned away.