“I have it. I just need an expert witness to present it, but I can’t find a replacement for Dr. Schaeffer by tomorrow morning.”
“Well,” Delmont said, “If you can get opposing counsel to agree to the extra time, I’ll consider the motion.”
Uh, right. “Buford Buchanan is conveniently out of town, and he is not answering his phone. Besides, you and I both know better than to expect that he would voluntarily agree to something so reasonable.”
Delmont pulled a cigar out of the humidor on his desk and took a long whiff. “Smells good, don’t it?”
He offered it to me. The gesture felt like an executioner handing a condemned prisoner his last cigarette before facing the firing squad.
I shook my head. “I trust your judgment.”
“On the cigar. Just not the case.”
This conversation wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, and that was saying something, considering I hadn’t hoped for much at all. Everybody around here knew darn well the judge in this town had oil stains on his hands.
I sighed. “I’d like to hear your reasoning as to why you think a continuance wouldn’t be appropriate in this situation.”
Delmont leaned back in his chair and propped his custom-made snakeskin boots on his desk, which was decorated with a humidor, an ash tray (full), a cactus, and a jackalope head. No pictures of wife or family.
“The case has been on the docket for well over a year. Besides that, I got too many cases against PetroPlex floating around here already.”
“And that ought to tell you something about the kind of business they’re running around here,” I said.
PetroPlex is notorious for flouting safety violations and dumping known carcinogens into the air and water. The EPA has been after them for years, but they don’t care. It’s cheaper to pay the fines than comply with regulations.
“It ain’t their fault there’s lawyers like you slinking around trying to sue ‘em out of existence. They employ more than half the people who live here. If they leave, Kettle dies.”
“If they don’t clean up their act, Kettle dies anyway.”
Delmont rolled his eyes.
Almost nothing makes me madder than an eye roll from a good ol’ boy. I mentally pulled up my “big girl” panties, leaned over his desk and delivered my most intense “I-am-a-damn-good-lawyer-and-you-will-listen-to-me” glare.
“Look,” I said. “Maybe you think cancer is something that happens to other people. Maybe you think you put on a pink ribbon once a year and you’ve done your part to fight the disease. But if you’ve seen cancer—really seen it—you know that all the pink ribbons in the world just aren’t enough.”
Delmont pulled out a match and lit the cigar he’d been holding. Clearly he wasn’t concerned about cancer in the least. “You finished, Miss Taylor?”
I lapsed into a coughing fit as I waved the cigar smoke out of my face. “You know PetroPlex is dangerous,” I said. “Even if you forget the cancer, how about the explosions? How about the toxic clouds?”
“You got an explosion in this case you wanna talk about?”
“Not in this one, but—“
“Stick to this case, why don’t ya?”
I squared my shoulders and relaxed my glare—but only by a little bit. There was no way I was going to let this stuffed shirt redneck pawn intimidate me into backing down. There was too much riding on tomorrow’s hearing to just roll over on it. Not only would Gracie wind up in a world of hurt if we didn’t come out on top of this, but I would probably also lose my job. I’d had a pretty nasty string of highly questionable losses in this courtroom under this judge for more than a year now, which was fast destroying my reputation as a good lawyer. . . not to mention depleting my bank account. Wrongful death attorneys don’t get paid if they don’t win, and I’d been eating nothing but Ramen for weeks.
Meanwhile, I was pretty sure Judge Delmont was living fat and happy off the scraps PetroPlex passed him under the table, but I couldn’t prove it.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s cut to the chase, here. I’m gonna stop pretending like I expect you to be reasonable. So if you wanna stop pretending like anything I have to say matters to you, that’ll be just fine with me.”
Delmont shrugged.
“What are my chances of getting you to sign a continuance?”
“I’d say ‘slim to none,’ but I’d hate to give you any false hope.”