Fall From Grace

“He was going to, but he got an internship senior year at Columbia that made him change his mind. Then when we got to Duke, he knew it was the path he wanted to take.”

“What about you? Did you always want to be a criminal defense lawyer?”

He shakes his head. “Hell no. But one of my professors was a defense attorney, and I got a coveted internship. I saw a lot of bad things. A lot of things I didn’t agree with.”

“Then why didn’t you become a prosecutor?”

“I actually interned with the DA’s office. But we were up against one of the toughest criminal defense attorneys in the state. And we lost the case. But I saw something in him, something I didn’t see in my professor’s practice. I saw the power and control and the money he got and as a young guy in my twenties, that’s what I thought I wanted. Then I got an internship with that lawyer. Working for Pennington was the most career-changing move of my life. He hired me after I passed the bar, and I spent two years working on his legal team. But when Owen told me there was an opening in Asheville where he had gotten a job, I snatched the opportunity up. I wanted to be closer to my family. But working for Pennington definitely helped me secure the job I have now. And set me on the path to being a partner.”

That name sounds so familiar. I rack my brain, trying to figure out why. And then it hits me. “Theodore Pennington?”

Carson looks over at me. “You know him?”

“More or less. I know he represented a few politicians out in DC.”

“He has his hands very deep in the political circle. And he isn’t exactly…” He fades off, not finishing the statement.

“Isn’t exactly what?” I ask, curious.

“Don’t worry about it. He is a good lawyer and knows when to make the decisions he makes, whether they are right or wrong.”

I nod but stay quiet after that. My mind trying to remember as many details as possible from my article without my notes in front of me. But I am ninety percent sure Senator Jonathon Williams used him as his lawyer ten years ago when he was just a representative for the North Carolina state government. And that Pennington got him out of a sex ring scandal by making him lie on the stand and fucking with evidence.

And if all this is true, then that means Carson was working for Pennington when all this went down. And Carson may not be the man I thought him to be.