Gary took a long sip of his drink and then looked into Jonathan’s eyes. “There’s no point rehashing this. Breaux made up his mind and that’s that.”
“I’m still troubled.”
Gary’s gaze didn’t budge. “Maybe they’re full of shit.”
“Who?”
“Our client!” said Gary as if Jonathan should have known. “Moore, Glengeyer, the whole lot.”
“What are you saying?”
“What if Glengeyer made up the whole incident to cover his bad judgment? Maybe that’s why the insurance company and the Navy are fighting so hard. Have you thought about that, Jonathan? What if the Cajun Star crewmen are nothin’ but liars?”
“I hardly think Glengeyer is that sort of man.”
Gary frowned. “Don’t be too sure.”
His words left his junior partner speechless for a moment. Jonathan had never considered this possibility. Not once. When it came to the old skipper, Jonathan had long ago set aside his natural lawyerly skepticism. He believed Glengeyer with a passion.
“I know you better than that,” Jonathan said. “You would never have accepted this case if you didn’t believe Glengeyer’s account to be true, or at least highly probable.”
Gary shook his head and cracked a smile. “Victory Lines is an old client of ours, Jonathan. I couldn’t turn them down, even if...”
Jonathan studied Gary’s expression. The thought of being complicit to a contrived incident of such magnitude was abhorrent.
“But even if our clients are lying,” Gary suggested after a long sip of his drink, “there are still several things pointing to a collision, like the seismic readings.”
“True,” Jonathan said, downing the last of his alcohol until the ice cubes tumbled to the tip of his nose. “But did you see the way most of the jurors reacted to Mikkelsen? They were bored to tears! I was tempted to lob my chair at them to wake’em up.”
Dr. Høgaard Mikkelsen was a seismologist from the Technical University of Denmark. Gary had flown him in to testify as an expert witness to show that some sort of seismic activity indicative of a collision had occurred on the night of March 19, 1989. In his testimony, the professor explained various seismic recordings taken from Denmark’s National Survey and Cadastre seismograph stations, which, although designed more for registering large earthquakes around the world and tremors from nuclear tests, were perfectly suited to monitor smaller man-made tremors. Dr. Mikkelsen had stressed that although the alleged impact of the two ships was an impulsive event—where only a fraction of the resonance manifests itself below sea level—the seismograms he used definitely showed an event consistent with a vessel collision.
It all sounded quite logical, but the jury had a hard time, given Mikkelsen’s thick accent and quirky body language, not to mention a topic so tedious it would drive clergy to drink. The jurors became notably restless when Mikkelsen buried them in technical jargon. Fortunately, when it came time for Peyton to have a shot at the professor, he couldn’t debunk Mikkelsen’s claim of a collision. And his own expert had neither the credentials nor the wherewithal to do it.
Jonathan sat back in his seat and sipped his espresso.
“I’m just an old fart,” Gary said as the waitress arrived with the check. “I’m not sure we’ve made the right decisions in this case.”
Jonathan didn’t respond.
It didn’t take long for the lunch crowd to vanish. The busboys toiled like drones to restore the restaurant to its orderly environment. Jonathan stared at his empty cup, his thoughts filled with the dreaded reality of having to return to the courtroom.
As the two waited for the waitress to bring back change, Jonathan noticed a beefy man taking a seat at the bar. He wore a tan-colored tweed jacket, which had earlier caught his eye in the courtroom—the back row. But it wasn’t the first time he’d seen the stranger. As Jonathan thought harder about it, he recalled seeing the guy on at least two other occasions. The man was in his late thirties or early forties, with short blond hair.
“Do you know that fella?” Jonathan asked his partner, who then turned with a raised brow.
“He was in court this morning,” Gary answered. “But I don’t know him.”
“A reporter, maybe?” Jonathan suggested.
“Hardly. This trial has a tough time attracting lawyers, let alone the press.”
Jonathan was uncomfortable with the man’s presence, although he couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but he wasn’t about to annoy Gary with his vague suspicions.
The two walked back to the courthouse just in time for the resumption of proceedings. But to their surprise, the afternoon session didn’t last long. Judge Breaux allowed Peyton to redirect Captain Tucker for about forty-five minutes before ordering a recess till the following day on account of an urgent motion in another case. It was yet another unexpected interruption in the trial. But this time Jonathan welcomed it. He’d done his best with the scant evidence at his disposal, but he hadn’t really damaged the naval officer’s credibility. He had tonight to scour documents for anything else he could use to reduce his chances of defeat.
“See you in the mornin’,” Gary said as he left the plaintiff’s table. “We need to come up with a break in this case. Captain Tucker is leaving town tomorrow.”
Gary was asking for magic.
* * *
The passenger side of Jonathan’s car was filled with trial papers, some stashed in two vinyl satchels and a leather briefcase, while the rest covered the floor and filled the door bins and other nooks in the front compartment. Gazing at the pile of materials, he added the hours needed to re-read them and quickly realized he was in for another long night. But his endurance was better than most lawyers. Linda had trained him well. He’d gotten used to late nights. As lead anchorwoman on Channel 6’s ten o’clock news, Linda rarely got home before one in the morning on weeknights. And she had done this for four years.
Jonathan drove out of the parking garage onto St. Charles. As he passed the first block from the garage, he spotted the blond man in the tweed jacket slip into a green Toyota sedan parked in a metered space. The streetcar ahead slowed, and the traffic backed up, giving Jonathan more time to observe the man through his rearview mirror. The Toyota pulled out and was about ten car lengths behind.
Jonathan was headed home, but first to a flower shop in New Orleans’ west suburb of Metairie. It was a habit he’d picked up after his brother died, to give Linda a bouquet each month. Lilies, stargazers, or irises, but never roses—too pedestrian.
He turned at the next light and noticed that the Toyota made the same turn. After crossing the next intersection Jonathan was convinced something wasn’t right. The man seemed to be on his tail, way back. By the time Jonathan reached Tulane Avenue, there was no more doubt. His nervous glances toggled between the side and rearview mirrors, studying the Toyota’s every move.
Why the hell would someone be following me?
Jonathan’s palms began to sweat. His anger fermented. He clenched the steering wheel and shook his head.
Gary Moore, maybe? Checking on his lawyers? He’d be capable, that ungrateful bastard.
Jonathan became angrier. For a split second, he considered stopping, getting out of his car and confronting the stranger. But he quickly tempered his instinct with a good dose of caution.
The Carrollton Avenue light ahead turned yellow. Jonathan, seeing an opportunity to lose his tail, floored the accelerator. He hoped the man trailing him would be forced to stop at the red light. Jonathan cleared the intersection and gazed into the mirror. But the Toyota also sped up.
“Stubborn bastard,” Jonathan said, his eyes glued to the mirror.
A truck suddenly appeared out of nowhere and slammed into the Toyota. Jonathan heard the thud, followed by the sound of screeching tires and then a loud bang.
“Christ!” Jonathan said, instantly letting off the pedal. He threw his head over his shoulder, but there was no sign of either vehicle, except some debri
s scattered over the road.
He quickly drove around the block and parked at the far end of the shopping center facing the intersection. He walked a few feet before catching sight of the scene. The mangled car rested partly over the sidewalk, its left quarter panel twisted around a concrete bench. The truck was some fifty feet away, its grill smashed and spewing steam. The smell of gasoline seeped into his lungs.
He cautiously approached the Toyota. All the windows were shattered. When he walked around to the driver’s side, the serious condition of the vehicle was even more apparent. The driver’s door was smashed nearly all the way to the center console, and the man behind it was a bloodied mess.
Jonathan leaned in. “Can you hear me?” he asked, not expecting the driver to answer. He stared at the man’s left eyeball which was halfway out of its socket.
Jonathan pressed his hand over the driver’s nose and chest. The man wasn’t breathing. Nor did he have a pulse.
At that moment, a bystander claiming to be a nurse opened the door on the other side and jumped into the front seat. She quickly straightened the victim’s upper body.
“Help me loosen his clothes,” she said to Jonathan. She hurriedly unbuttoned his blood-soaked collar as Jonathan unbuckled the man’s seatbelt. She too checked for a pulse.
The crushed car was not an ideal place to give CPR, but she tried anyway, repeatedly pushing on the man’s chest. She then shoved her pudgy fingers into his mouth to clear his airway.
“I’ll tilt his head,” Jonathan said, leaning farther into the car.
The woman continued her efforts, but she could barely move her arms. Her chubby body was wedged between the victim and the wrecked dashboard.
She threw a gaze at Jonathan. “This won’t work! Let’s get him to the ground.” She then yelled over her shoulder for someone to call an ambulance.
Jonathan couldn’t help but find a sliver of humor. Only hours earlier he’d given first aid to another man, the courtroom bailiff. I’m acting out an episode of M.A.S.H., he thought just as reality quickly set in again. He removed the man’s jacket and loosened his legs from under the dash as the woman pulled the man’s body toward her. That’s when two other people helped her extricate the victim from her side of the car.
Jonathan stepped back and observed the nurse. She bobbed up and down, as did her melon-sized breasts. She was determined to resuscitate the victim. She persisted for several minutes. But it was a pointless exercise. He was unresponsive. His blood gushed uncontrollably from his temple and neck and oozed over the pavement.
Jonathan glanced at the tweed jacket he had removed from the victim. The crimson-stained garment rested over the shattered remnants of the driver’s door. This was an opportunity he wouldn’t pass up. He dug into the inside pocket and pulled out a wallet. His driver’s license was from Maryland, and his name was Anthony Gordon.
Jonathan shook his head. “Come all this way to see a boring trial and then die. What bad luck.”
Just as he returned the wallet, a shiny, odd-shaped object on the front passenger floor mat caught his eye. He craned forward for a closer look, suspecting it was a camera. It wasn’t.
“I’ll be damned,” Jonathan said as he stared intently at a chrome-plated handgun nestled in a black leather holster. He then gazed at the man’s body lying on the pavement. “You’ve just made me very curious.”
3
Jonathan couldn’t fend off the revolting images of the crash scene. The crushed skull, the broken jawbone protruding out of the man’s ear, and that loose eyeball. And all that blood. Jonathan’s clothes were covered in it. He had stayed at the intersection a while, well after the nurse threw in the towel, and after the ambulance left. He was troubled that an armed man had been following him for no apparent reason. He had to find out why.
Once home, Jonathan sprinted upstairs and wasted no time dialing the number he had in mind.
“Eighth District, Royal Street, Lequesha here.”
“Is Derek in?”
“Who ju’say, seh?” the receptionist asked, the crunching sound of food echoing after her words.
“Lieutenant Derek Ashton.”
She swallowed whatever it was, sighed and asked, “And yow name?”
“Jonathan Brooks.”
“One momen’,” she said, followed by another slow sigh.
A second later, Derek picked up and answered in his usual hurried tempo. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I was wondering if you could do a little favor for your kind and thoughtful brother-in-law.”
“Kind and thoughtful, my ass,” Derek said, chuckling. “Okay, what d’you need? And make it quick—it’s busy tonight. A drunk tourist just got stabbed on Dauphine, a huge amphetamine bust is underway in Armstrong Park and I just got word of a balcony brawl at the Conti—damn college brats. So, let’s have it.”
“I need information on someone named Anthony Gordon.” Jonathan gave Derek the Maryland address he had read off the driver’s license and the license plate information, and added, “The guy died in a car crash today on Tulane Avenue—I witnessed it. And he had a gun in the car.”
“So what? Everyone’s got a gun.”
“He was following me.”
“You’re probably imagining things.”
“Can you pull up any info on him?”
“I suppose, sometime tomorrow.”
That was all Jonathan wanted to hear. He hung up, threw a pillow on his chair, sat down and flung his long legs over his cluttered desk. His eyes circled the room, gazing at the inordinate memorabilia—frames, trophies, ornaments, and photographs—that was stuffed in its confines. Linda had insisted that none of it stray to other parts of the house. Trophies from archery and crossbow were the most ostentatious and covered many of the shelves on the far wall. There were also framed professional certificates, awards and degrees, which he chose to display here rather than in his office downtown. And for good reason. This was home, and he preferred to savor his trinkets of accomplishment in the quiet comforts here. By day, his window offered a slice of the Mississippi, with ships passing by the distant tree-lined levee. At dusk the view was just as serene.
* * *
Even at midnight, the evening was still young. In front of him lay a hastily prepared sandwich, and around it an endless amassment of legal papers—all of it from the Victory Lines litigation. For several hours, he had refreshed his memory by rereading transcripts and notes, some from depositions, some from earlier testimony at trial. As tempting as it was to simply go to bed, he knew his team depended on him to extract something more from the mountain of evidence.
Jonathan wasn’t alone in conducting this chore. He picked up the phone and dialed Allen at home.
“Did you recalculate the distances?” Jonathan asked, referring to the gap between the collision site and alleged location of the Meecham. Though Jonathan had previously measured the charts, he was aware that his legal skills did not extend to mathematical formulations.
“You’re in luck,” Allen said. “I just crunched new numbers moments ago.”
“How do they look?”
“Not good. The distance is still about seventy nautical miles under the most favorable interpretation.”
Jonathan sat back in his chair and sighed.
“But,” Allen came back, his voice hinting of better news, “if somehow we can time-shift the other data, in particular the radar tracks, we could bring the distance down to twelve miles.”
“Twelve?” Jonathan asked. He dropped his sandwich and held the handset with both hands.
“You got it.”
“But what exactly do you mean by time-shifting?”
“If for some reason the time-stamp on the radar data was off by two hours, the data coupled with the redacted log would show that the Meecham could have been as close as twelve miles from the Cajun Star—”
Which could be helpful to sway the jury, Jonathan thought. “Well done. But how on earth can we prove the radar data was wrong?�
�
“Faulty calibration, perhaps.”
“Maybe,” said Jonathan, “but that’s a stretch. We’d be better off claiming it was manipulated.” He wasn’t sure, but it was a sliver of good news in what had otherwise been an unproductive day. “Can’t you find out more from that radar expert—that former Navy technician we talked to a few months ago?”
“Will do.”
They hung up, and with food back in one hand and a transcript in the other, Jonathan returned to his tedious reading.
* * *
A faint buzzing sound crept through a deep dream and mutated into a recognizable noise. It was Jonathan’s cell phone, laying face down on the nightstand. It kept vibrating as he simply stared at it, shaking its way toward the edge of the furniture. He hadn’t been asleep long, having scrutinized mounds of transcripts and other records until nearly two-thirty in the morning, about an hour after Linda had returned from the station.
His languid hand reached forward, grabbed the device and brought it to his ear.
“Brooks,” whispered a sleepy-eyed Jonathan, his jaw restrained by his plush feather pillow.
“Good morning, sir,” said a young woman with a British accent. “I have Barrister Paul Higginbotham on the line. He would like to speak with you. It’s rather urgent.”
Jonathan sat up quietly and headed out of the bedroom so as not to wake Linda. “Can’t this wait till later in the morning?” he asked, but she had already patched him through to a beeping tone.
“Mr. Brooks, I’m dreadfully sorry to wake you,” said the Englishman, his accent an intoxicating resonance of aristocracy. “I know it’s awfully early on your side of the pond, but I thought you might want to hear the news as quickly as possible.”
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