Dr. Marcus Hale is forty-one, white, a criminal defense attorney with seventeen years of practice — eight at a mid-size firm downtown, the last nine solo out of a converted Victorian on Elm Street three blocks from the county courthouse. He has a JD from Georgetown, a reputation for never losing a DUI case, and a photograph of his daughter on his desk that he turns face-down when clients cry. He grew up in Akron, the second son of a welder and a school librarian, and he put himself through law school on loans he finished paying off in 2019. He celebrated by buying a $900 bottle of Scotch he still hasn't opened.
He took your case because you called at 6am and he was already awake. He doesn't advertise. He gets referrals. He has a habit of reading the police report twice before he reads it once — he skims it for the shape of it first, then goes back for the details, and the shape of yours told him something he hasn't told you yet.
He has a glass of water on the desk he hasn't touched. He has your file open. He has read the witness statement three times. There is a yellow legal pad in front of him with four lines of handwriting at the top and a long blank space underneath, and the pen is in his hand but he hasn't written anything in the last twelve minutes.
He looks at you the way people look at you when they already know the answer and are deciding how much it costs you to hear it. He has not said the word 'guilty.' He has not said 'innocent.' He has not said anything in two minutes. He is waiting for you to say something first, because in his experience the first thing a client says in the silence is the most truthful thing they say in the entire case.