Twisted Justice

by Diane Capri

  He wasn’t exactly disrespectful, but he treated women as if they were flies buzzing around a picnic: Something that couldn’t be helped and were best ignored.

  Back then, both Andy and I had made allowances for each other because of my respect for Deborah and our mutual admiration for George, our common friend. But I never spent any time alone with him. The idea just wouldn’t have occurred to either of us. We’d have had absolutely nothing to talk about.

  George’s voice brought me back to the present.

  He continued, now, in that same far away, remembering kind of tone. “Derek Dickson was another officer, the third member of our triumvirate. Derek made his career with the army, but he served in a different unit from Andy and his career stalled out after he made Colonel.”

  My head had started to spin a little because of the gin and not having eaten anything since my tuna sandwich at lunch. I squinted my eyes and tried to pay attention.

  George cleared his throat. “One day, we heard that Derek’s boy, a young First Lieutenant, had committed suicide. Derek was crushed. The boy had gone to West Point. Derek had been so proud of his son.”

  He left to refill his glass, and he took his time about it, gathering his composure.

  When he returned, I felt the chill he exuded. He’d become more remote, his emotions in check, determined to finish the distasteful story.

  “I wanted to send a gift of some kind to Derek and go to the funeral. I wanted Andy to go with me.”

  “Did he?”

  “He flatly refused. He said the boy was a coward who couldn’t face his responsibilities and the army didn’t need him.”

  George stopped a second or two, then finished. “He said the army didn’t need Derek either because he obviously sired a deviant.”

  My breath drew in quickly, in shock and disgust.

  George refused to look at me. “Andy, unbelievably to me, tried to arrange a posthumous dishonorable discharge for cowardice, but it couldn’t be done. Andy and Derek quarreled about it.”

  Then he raised his eyes to mine and I could see how much it cost him to tell me this now, years later. In an even softer voice, so that I had to strain forward to hear him, George said, “Derek killed himself the next day.”

  Incredulity heightened my disgust. “That’s despicable! I had no idea. Why would Andy do such a thing?”

  To deliberately hurt a man and his family when he’d suffered the death of his child was gratuitously cruel beyond measure. I’d known Andy to be a single-minded military man back then, not a harsh, heartless monster.

  And I knew George. He felt guilty. I sensed it in everything he told me, in everything he’d done these past few weeks to keep Andrews off the court.

  “I couldn’t fathom it, even then,” he said quietly. “But it was obvious to me that the Andy I had known years before was not the man who literally ruined Derek’s life.”

  “What happened between the two of you?” For I knew there was still more to this story.

  “Andy and I fought about it and some pretty harsh words were said. Words I never regretted, even once,” George’s defiance reminded me of the principled man I was used to, and I was glad to see that man was still there, somewhere. “After that, I distanced myself from Andy and I guess he distanced himself from me, too.” George stood up now, at the veranda’s rail, looking out over the bay.

  There was more. I waited.

  “Over the years, you know, you hear things. I heard a lot of similar stories about Andy’s lack of compassion. Even the way he treated his kids was overly rigid and controlling. He acted like they were his to command, too.”

  I hadn’t said anything in quite a while. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” was the best I could manage.

  George sipped his drink for a while, almost as if he was alone with his thoughts. But he wanted me to know now, to know what he’d kept to himself all these years.

  He turned around to face me. “I finally came to believe that Andy was mentally unbalanced. As he rose further and further up the ladder, and eventually received his fourth star, I became truly alarmed.”

  George walked back into the den and returned with a light throw I used on the sofa sometimes. I blamed the evening chill that had settled on my shoulders for causing gooseflesh to rise on my arms. He placed the throw around me, snugging it up close, and cupped my cheek in his hand before he knelt down to look me in the eye.

  “That’s why I worked so hard to defeat his nomination. Why I couldn’t let such a man sit on the highest policy making court for the next generation.” George looked directly at me, trying to communicate the intensity of his feelings. “There were so many good men in the army. And many more good candidates for the Court. But Andy was unfit to serve. I knew it. President Benson and Sheldon Warwick knew it. I think even Andy knew it.”

  George continued to look at me intently. I realized it was important to him that I understand now, although he hadn’t shared any of this with me before. I nodded. It was all the speech I could manage.

  He took my silence for lack of comprehension. “But don’t you see? Andy would never have given up on any fight. Fighting was how he solved all his problems. He would have seen this battle for the Supreme Court seat to the bitter end and he was too damn close to winning.”

  He stood up again and put both hands in his pockets. “A heart attack from the stress could have killed him or maybe some other lunatic with a better aim could have gotten him.” His voice filled with strength and conviction. “But he would never, never have taken himself out of the game early and definitely not by suicide. Someone killed him. No one will ever convince me otherwise.”

  I drew the throw closer around my shoulders and tried to stop shaking.

  The minutes passed as I struggled to get myself under control, to face one central question I couldn’t answer: Was I more upset by the story itself or by the fact that I’d never heard it before?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tampa, Florida

  Monday 7:30 p.m.

  January 24, 2000

  I THOUGHT I KNEW everything there was to know about my husband. I’d believed we were soul mates in the way few couples are. I knew his favorite meals, vacation spots, what he liked to read, even the underwear he preferred.

  I knew all these trivial details of George’s life. How could I have had no clue about his failed relationship with Andrews, something so important? A serious personal friendship had exploded in a spectacular and awful way. Yet, George had kept it to himself.

  What other things had he kept secret?

  I shook that off. Or tried to.

  Maybe our connection had just never been tested before, I hoped.

  My most significant personal tragedy, the death of my mother, happened long before I met George.

  Since we’d married, our lives had been pretty uneventful, upwardly mobile, middle class, white bread normal.

  Like the lives of most of our friends.

  George had been my lifeline to the world. He acted as my anchor, my sounding board. He was my protection and companionship. We lived in a special world. He cared for me and I cared for him. We shared everything.

  Or so I’d thought.

  If I found out he had other secrets, what would they do to our lives?

  Could we live with such knowledge?

  I really wasn’t sure. And it was that lack of certainty that unnerved me. I needed to be sure of George, I wanted to be sure of him. Dammit, I had been sure.

  Until lately, I was dead certain I knew who and what my husband was.

  My emotions careened uncontrollably from hysteria to catatonia. I felt alternately sad and angry, near tears and near rage.

  Because I didn’t know what to say or how to say it, I said nothing. I was so lost in my bewilderment, so focused on my personal feelings, that I didn’t hear George leave the flat a while later. He must have gone downstairs to work, I thought, to the extent I noticed at all.

 
; By the time I found my way back to reality, it was dark out and getting colder. There were no lights on in the flat and the dogs were outside, howling to get in. In fact, that was the noise that roused me and made me realize that George wasn’t there.

  I stood on shaky legs and opened the door to let Harry and Bess run headlong into the room. After petting them for a while and giving them a few treats, I did what I always do when I need to control my emotions.

  When I don’t know what else to do, I work. I know I use work as an escape from life, a substitute for life. It’s where I go to get away from everything that I can’t cope with. I know it’s not healthy, but it’s better than other self-destructive methods of escaping the world. And it works.

  I got comfortable in sweats and began to work on the Newton file in preparation for tomorrow’s opening statements. In the den, I sat at the desk where Aunt Minnie had done her household accounts as a young bride. It was a partner’s desk; one person could sit at either side and both could work in the middle.

  At some point, hours later, noticing I was hungry, I called downstairs, asked George to send up whatever tonight’s special was and join me for dinner. When he said he had already eaten, I realized it was after ten o’clock. I’d been working for over three hours and didn’t remember a thing I’d read. I’d have to start over and try to concentrate this time. It would be a long night.

  Making room on the desk for my dinner tray a while later, I noticed the black leather book Kate had given me last year for Christmas sitting on the small table beside my favorite reading chair. It was embossed in the center with the words she’d said to me when she gave me the journal, “When your heart speaks, take good notes.”

  The pages of the book were blank. Kate insisted that keeping a journal would provide guidance and connection to my intuition. Every time I saw her, she asked me if I’d started to use it. She’d asked me today, in fact, but I had ignored the question.

  Maybe now was a good time. If I wrote down some of these thoughts I was having about George, maybe I could at least leave them there on the page and pay attention to my work.

  I wrote for over an hour, putting down all the things that had happened in the past three days and how I felt. I wrote long paragraphs describing how shaken I was over George’s secret. And I wrote one short sentence about how stupid it was for him to tell Frank Bennett about it.

  Finally, I approached the questions I feared most: If Andy didn’t commit suicide, who killed him? And did George know the answer to that question?

  My hand shook so badly that I couldn’t read what I wrote next: what would the State Attorney do to George?

  I slammed the journal closed and threw it on the floor. It landed face down in the corner under one of Aunt Minnie’s twenty wing chairs that seemed to sprout full-blown in their ball-and-claw feet every time I had my head turned.

  It would be a damn long time before I touched that thing again. Not only did writing in the journal not make me feel better, I’d come to a conclusion that everybody else must have reached yesterday. I’d never felt so stupid.

  I left George a note, got my car keys and stomped off down the stairs, out into the cold air of the wee hours. Although I hadn’t glanced at the clock, it had been hours since my dinner had been delivered.

  Greta and I drove over to St. Pete beach. I had a long, long walk. I settled onto a towel on the beach and stared out into the endless dark horizon. And just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, drove home, got dressed and headed to the courthouse.

  Nothing was resolved and I didn’t feel any better and if either of those lawyers messed with me today, they’d be damn sorry they had.

  I stopped at Cold Storage, my favorite Cuban coffee place, on the way to the office. Cold Storage lost its lease on Florida Avenue when the City sold the land to new development after the Ice Palace increased business over there. Now, it was located at the corner of Whiting and Tampa Street in a much bigger building.

  Sometimes when restaurants move, they lose their ambiance. But Cold Storage managed to reproduce its graffiti on the walls, pictures of patrons and welcoming atmosphere in new, larger surroundings. I drank the heavenly mixture of sweet, strong Cuban coffee and scalded milk in the way an addict consumes heroin— I needed it.

  When I arrived at the Courthouse, I saw the news vans in front and seized the new target for my anger. If the lawyers in my case were giving press conferences I’d throw them all in jail. I didn’t want my cases tried in the media. The courtroom is where all evidence would be presented.

  If I had to put a gag order on the participants to get the point across, that’s what I would do. I’d done it before and if that big city lawyer didn’t know it now, he’d know it in the next ten minutes, I fumed.

  By the time I got up to my office, I’d worked myself into a fine snit and I was ready to take on everyone who crossed me. All of which I blamed on the caffeine in the Cuban coffee.

  I pushed open the outer door to Margaret’s office and stormed through without even so much as my customary good morning. I snatched my robe from the hook on the back of my door, put my arms through it and marched out into the courtroom, ready to vent my rage on the first person I saw.

  Absolutely no one was there. I asked the Court Security Officer where the parties were and he said he didn’t know. I glanced at the clock. Eight thirty-five, five minutes after we were set to start.

  The ruckus from the hall was the flock of media I’d witnessed out front just a few minutes before. I turned to the Court Security Officer. “Please go out in the hall and tell both Mr. Newton and Mr. Tremain that if they are not in here in five minutes, this case will be the first in history to have judgment entered against both parties.” To his everlasting credit, he didn’t laugh at me. “Tell the media they are, from this point forward, barred from the courtroom and do not let them in.”

  I couldn’t keep the media out indefinitely, but I could do it for the next thirty minutes at least.

  Until one of them went to the CJ and he entered an order allowing them back in which I knew he’d do the second they asked him, just to tweak me.

  And because he’d be right.

  “Yes, ma’am!” the officer said, on his way out as he said it. The court reporter gave me one of those, “What’s with you?” looks, but I didn’t care.

  The relationship of the press to the law was an issue I’d always felt strongly about, but on no sleep and less patience, I would definitely have made good on my threat to give Mr. Newton the fifty million dollars he requested and to dismiss his case with prejudice at the same time. Let them figure that out in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

  Apparently, the officer got the point across, because both lawyers hurried into the courtroom and remained standing at their respective counsel tables while the officer kept everyone else out. I was still standing as well and we all looked foolish.

  Getting myself under control, I gestured to the court reporter to begin taking down the proceedings, and managed to speak in an even tone instead of like a mad woman.

  “Counselors, listen closely because I am only going to say this once and I expect no misunderstandings. This case is pending before the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. We spent the entire day yesterday selecting a jury. The case is not being tried to the media and the jury is not the public. “From this point forward neither of you are to discuss this case with any member of the media, on or off the record, until the verdict is returned and the jurors are released. This order includes any conversations of any kind.

  “If I so much as hear a rumor that you are talking to a friend over coffee who happens to be employed by one of the newspapers, I will enter a verdict against the offender in this case immediately. And I will award fees and costs in amounts I deem appropriate. Is that perfectly clear?”

  “But, Your Honor—” Newton sputtered.

  “Judge, you can’t—” Tremain spit out simultaneously.

  I cut
them both off with a slam of my gavel.

  “There will be no argument and no further discussion on this subject. I can’t bar the media from the courtroom forever, but I can stop you from talking to them. It is completely within my discretion to do all that I’ve told you I will do.” I turned to the officer and told him to bring in the jury in ten minutes. “Don’t test me, gentlemen.”

  The system fails only because we let it. That wasn’t going to happen in my courtroom, where I still had control. Not in this trial, and not in any other.

  Despite my outward calm, I was still breathing hard. I felt my fists clinched at my sides and strained to release my fingers.

  Both the lawyers were united against me now. That was perfectly fine with me. I was legally right here, they were behaving like jackasses, and I was tired of it all.

  Besides that, at the moment I was spoiling for a good fight with somebody.

  Too bad the CJ wasn’t here right now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Tampa, Florida

  Tuesday 9:30 a.m.

  January 25, 2000

  ONE OF THE MOST exciting days of any trial is when the lawyers make their opening statements, a time I normally anticipated with some curiosity, if not joy. Openings are similar to the trailer for a movie: they give an overview of what’s to come. It’s the first time the jury, the judge and the other side all hear the whole story.

  No matter how much a lawyer prepares for opening, she is never quite sure what the other side will say. Sometimes, what is disclosed in opening is a fact or a theory the other side had never considered.

  The closer a lawyer gets to trial, the more he begins to believe his own case. A dangerous road to travel because it makes him believe he can see what’s around the blind corners.

  Newton v. The Whitman Esquire Review was one of those cases where both lawyers were going to be unpleasantly surprised.

  Back in my chambers, while I waited for the lawyers to prepare, I attended to the thousand and three details that somehow just multiplied on my desk like rats in a laboratory. I’ve never had, nor do I want to have, any actual experience with rats. Pink telephone slips must be related to rats in some molecular way, though. What else could explain their proliferation?