Appeal
an excerpt

“I thought you left,” the receptionist, whose name Julie could never remember, said with her strong southern accent. The coroner’s office was as drab and lifeless as the corpses that lay in freezers downstairs.
“Couldn’t stay away from the mayhem,” Julie replied, smiling. “Is Victor in?”
“Victor’s never in. Not since he started running for City Whatever. Commission or Council or something. Bobby is in though,” the young girl answered back chattily. “By the way, did you know ‘mayhem’ actually meant dismembering somebody? Like, taking off their limbs and stuff like that? Isn’t that sick?”
“Yeah,” Julie laughed, seriously hoping the young girl hadn’t learned that fact by way of an actual example. “Can I get in to see Bobby? Just for a few minutes?”
“Sure, he likes you.” The receptionist picked up the phone and Julie couldn’t help but laugh at her decorated fingernails. “I just got them done. There’s 15 dollar manicures two blocks over, did you know that?” she said as she waived her red and gold fingernails at Julie. An epileptic would be on the floor by now, Julie thought to herself. The receptionist, whose name Julie still could not remember, turned her attention to the phone.
“Bobby, Julie Beckham is here to see you if you have a second.” She hung up the phone after a brief pause. “He does,” she said to Julie. “Have a second, I mean. He has a second for you. Oh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it?” she giggled, her nose scrunched with happy gossip. “You know, when I said he likes you, I didn’t mean, like, sexually. I think he just thinks you’re, you know, like, cool. Cause you’re young and stuff. So, you know, I didn’t mean like he likes you likes you.”
“I figured,” Julie laughed.
Bobby Benn, two years Julie’s senior, poked his head out the door and Julie followed him back to his cramped office down the hall as the girl nosily craned her neck to watch them walk down the hall as if expecting something to happen.
Bobby Benn was second in charge at the corner or’s office, though he lacked any formal title. He was also a good deal more pleasant than his boss, Victor. Julie suspected that Bobby, like her and everyone she used to work with, was waiting for Victor to curl up and die somewhere so that he could no longer thrive off of making those around him miserable.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again. How’s private practice?” Bobby asked friendlily. His voice was just nasal enough that it was annoying but bearable and the man did himself no favors with his thick-framed glasses. He would be handsome if he weren’t so incredibly strange. Bobby and Julie had had to work together on a handful of cases and become causal friends, but there was something rather eager about Bobby. Julie suspected that he did, in fact, have a bit of a crush, though he was far too polite, and likely too socially inept even if she hadn’t been married, to ever make it known.
“I picked up something. An older case,” Julie explained, making herself comfortable in his cluttered office that smelled of moth balls and mold. “It’s not even mine, really. I haven’t actually decided to take the case, or at least not decided one hundred percent in favor of doing so. But there was something in the coroner’s report that had interested me, so I thought I’d come down and talk to Victor about it.” Julie smiled slyly. “I was praying he wasn’t in.”
Bobby smiled politely. “How old is the case?”
“Two and a half years since the autopsy. A child. Michael Winston?” Julie expected Bobby to turn to his computer as he always had in the past when she’d come fishing for information for prosecution. Instead, he looked down.
Bobby cleared his throat and shifted his weight uncomfortably. “The Seaside boy,” he said as a confirmation rather than as a question.
Julie tensed as the room did the same. “Victor signed the autopsy report. His Parkinson’s hasn’t let him do an autopsy in five years.”
“He…” Bobby faltered. “Victor supervised. It was his case.”
“Supervised who?”
“I did the autopsy.”
“Why are you acting incredibly guilty all of a sudden?” Julie asked with both sensitivity and slight accusation.
“The case broke procedure. I didn’t like that. That’s all.”
“Broke procedure how?”
“I should have co-signed the report. That’s all.”
“Which one of you testified?”
“Victor did.”
“You performed the autopsy. You should have testified.”
“Victor was there with his nose in the body. Every cut I made was at his direction. Conclusions drawn were all his. The report was his. He was the proper one to testify,” Bobby said, regaining some of his composure.
Julie took in a deep breath, trying to read the man sitting across from her who she’d always considered to have a rather weak constitution. She decided not to press this issue for now and moved on to the real reason she’d come down. “You said in the report that there was no evidence that CPR had been performed.”
“I didn’t say that. Victor did. You really should talk to him about this,” Bobby said uncomfortably. “It wasn’t my case.”
“But you did the cutting. You saw what he saw. You clearly agreed with the report or you would have…”
Bobby’s eyes dropped and Julie fell silent.
“You didn’t agree?” Julie probed.
Bobby stayed silent.
“What did you not agree with?”
“It wasn’t my case. I didn’t “not” agree. I just… I may have come to different conclusions.”
“Like what?” Julie said with more anger than she’d intended.
“For starters, to say there was no evidence of CPR is implying that there usually would be when that’s not the case. Choice of language or Victor’s writing style, I guess,” Bobby explained, still not looking Julie in the eye. “And I maybe would have said that there was, in my opinion, some evidence, thought not weighty in anyway, that perhaps CPR was administered.”
“You just said that there wasn’t evidence that would show something like that.”
“No, I said the lack of evidence meant nothing. But there was a small crack in the boy’s rib. Victor believed it had come pre-mortem. I thought it looked post.”
Julie’s cheeks blushed red with anger. “Someone was convicted based on the fact that your office said that no CPR had been given.”
“And his side had all the same information you do,” Bobby said firmly.
Julie stared at him. “You told Rainer Holland’s lawyer about the crack in the rib?”
“Yes.”
“And told them that it could have resulted from CPR after the boy’s death?”
“They had their own expert for that. I don’t know what was stated at trial. I didn’t follow it all that closely.”
“You performed the autopsy, but didn’t follow the case all that closely,” Julie said accusatorily.
“I was the hands only. It was not my autopsy.”
“Why did Victor handle this one so closely?”
“It was a big case. I was 29 years old. He had 25 years of experience up on me,” Bobby defended himself. “And don’t come in here telling me that I put an innocent man in prison. Murderers don’t go to prison solely on the evidence of a disputed rib fracture. He was found guilty. I believe that he is guilty.”
“I thought you didn’t follow the case that closely,” Julie prodded.
Bobby shifted his weight again. “He was found guilty,” he repeated firmly.
“Based on a falsified autopsy report.”
“There was no false report. No cover up. It was Victor’s report, Victor’s case, Victor’s opinions. If you’re taking an appeal based on this,” Bobby shook his head, unable to finish this thought and recomposing himself. “No court in the country is going to say that that report was falsified simply because my hands did the cutting.”
Silence filled the office.
“I have nothing to hide, but if you do take this appeal and you need something from this office, I think it’s best, in the future, if you get a subpoena first.”
Julie looked at him in the eyes. “I will,” she said harshly. Bobby dropped his eyes and Julie showed herself out.