Chapter 9 - The Plea Bargain
Two weeks later, the chill of early December had stripped the trees bare along the James River.
I sat in the witness waiting room of the Henrico County Circuit Court, wearing a clean charcoal suit. My head no longer ached constantly, though Dr. Chen had warned me that the bone remodeling behind my ear would take another six months to fully consolidate. The physical fracture was healing; the family fracture was absolute.
The door opened, and Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Marcus Brody stepped inside, carrying a thick legal pad.
"They're taking the deals," Brody said, sitting on the edge of the laminate table.
"All of them?"
"All of them. Bradley Henderson folded first. In exchange for avoiding a federal racketeering indictment, he pleaded guilty to grand larceny, wire fraud, and subornation of perjury. He’s looking at seven years in state prison, full surrender of his law license, and total forfeiture of his personal real estate to satisfy the restitution order."
"And Garrett?" I asked.
Brody’s expression grew serious. "Garrett admitted everything. He gave a full sworn allocution this morning. He admitted that Marlene and Kendra promised him eighty thousand dollars to clear his shop debt if he took you out of the equation at the party."
"Did he say how they planned it?"
"It was Kendra’s idea," Brody said, reading directly from his notes. "Kendra knew you had the envelope because she saw you put it in your coat when you arrived at the venue. She texted Garrett from the restroom. Garrett had the tire iron in his car. He slipped in through the service pantry, waited behind the curtain until Kendra signaled by stepping on your foot, and struck you from behind the drapery."
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the horrific simplicity of it settle in. "They were going to leave me with permanent brain damage over four hundred thousand dollars."
"Garrett pleaded guilty to malicious wounding. The judge accepted the plea agreement: five years active incarceration at Keen Mountain Correctional Center, followed by ten years of supervised probation."
"And Marlene?"
"Marlene fought until ten minutes ago," Brody said. "Her public defender showed her the bank records, the wire transfers to Henderson, and the sworn statements from her own children. She signed a plea agreement for grand larceny and identity theft. She’s receiving eight years active time."
"What about Kendra?"
"Three years as an accessory, with two years suspended, conditioned on full testimony against Henderson’s co-conspirators. She begins her sentence at the regional jail on Monday."
Brody capped his pen and looked at me with genuine professional respect. "Lee, in twelve years of prosecuting white-collar crime in this district, I have never seen an audit file as clean, airtight, and unassailable as the one you built in your home office. You didn't just save your grandmother’s estate. You saved her life. If they had gotten that conservatorship, Evelyn Morgan wouldn't have survived the winter in whatever facility they put her in."
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"Thank you, Marcus," I said, shaking his hand.
I walked out of the courthouse into the crisp, sharp December air. The sky above Richmond was a brilliant, cloudless blue. For the first time in two months, I could breathe without feeling like the floor was about to drop out from beneath my feet.
