Page 22 of Take the Bait

She collected herself and continued more seriously, “When the judge fails to change your mind, he’ll be forced to set a date for jury selection and a preliminary date for your trial. A few more administrative details having to do with entering evidence and pre-trial motions will happen, but they’re straightforward in your case and won’t take long, particularly since you won’t let me contest the details of the police report.”

“Why should you contest them? They’re accurate.”

She huffed. “I can still make the police prove they got everything right. Sometimes cops slip up on the stand, contradict themselves or one another, forget some detail?—”

“The report is correct. When the prosecutor puts me on the stand and asks if the report accurately describes what happened that night, I’ll tell him and the jury it does.”

“You’re not required to incriminate yourself, Alex. You can plead the Fifth Amendment, which gives everyone the right not to self-incriminate?—”

“It’s the truth. I’m not going to lie about what happened.”

“But you are willing to hide the reason why you did it,” she retorted. “Why’s that?”

He shut down so hard and so fast she almost thought she heard shutters banging shut inside his head.

“Dammit, Alex. I need to know why you tried to kill yourself. That was what you were trying do that night, right?”

“No!” he blurted.

She retorted in her best cross-examination voice, “You seriously expect a jury to believe you were just out there having a little fun with blood alcohol so high you should’ve been unconscious, driving a sports car that recklessly on a public highway, then fleeing the police and resisting arrest?”

“I don’t give a damn what the jury believes my motives were.”

“But motive is everything to a jury,” she exclaimed. “If you broke the law, but your motives were well-intentioned, you’ll get a much lighter sentence, or the jury may decide not to convict you at all. But if they think you were out there trying to hurt innocent people or didn’t gave a damn if someone else got hurt, they’re much more likely to convict you—and to throw the maximum sentence at you while they’re at it.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Alex said pleasantly.

He sounded as if he was glad to know how he could use a negative motive to harm himself even more.

She huffed in exasperation. “If you were trying to commit suicide by cop, I get it. But I’m telling you, suicide by prison is a much, much worse way to die. If the inmates think you want to die, they’ll go out of their way to keep you alive for a while. Torture you. Beat you within an inch of your life, let you heal, and do it again. They could take months or years getting around to finally killing you.”

Alex shrugged. “I’m not worried about handling prison.”

“Well, you should! It’s no joke. It’s incredibly dangerous. It’ll be terrible for your mental health and stressful beyond belief.”

“I’ll worry about that. You just worry about getting my case to trial.”

“What the hell are you playing at, Alex?” she demanded.

He merely shrugged and shot her an enigmatic look.

And they were back at the same old impasse. She wanted to know why he was doing what he was doing, and he flatly refused to tell her. She stared at him in frustration.

He eventually broke the silence, asking, “Is there anything I have to do for these motions and evidence entering?”

“No. I’ll take care of them,” she answered shortly.

He leaned forward, forcing her to meet his gaze. He said clearly, “I want to know everything about them. Everything.”

One thing she’d already learned about this guy. He was ridiculously smart. By the time his trial happened, he would probably know as much about law as she did.

She frowned. “If you’re counting on the prosecutor to screw up something so you can get off on a technicality, I have to advise you that the attorney assigned to your case from the district attorney’s office is really good. He’s not going to screw up a thing.”

A stubborn expression came into his eyes.

She emphasized her point, saying, “The prosecutor told me outright that he thinks you’re waiting for him to mess up. Which means he’s going to be extra careful and double check absolutely everything having to do with your case.”

Alex shook his head dismissively, as if that wasn’t the reason why he wanted a trial at all.

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