by Dave Daren
But this was about more than just the people of Piney Crest now. This was about me, too, about my name and my reputation.
Abraham Knox had made a point to drag me through the mud in his attempt to discredit the case, and I refused to let him succeed.
I pulled my gaze away from my briefcase on the bench at the sound of heels clicking against the stone-tiled floor of the courthouse and looked up.
Clara quickly made her way over to the three of us with an apologetic look on her face. Her thick hair was pulled back from her face in a low ponytail that was a bit more polished than the ones she seemed to wear to work. Her heels weren’t the towering, horribly uncomfortable-looking sort, but it still jarred me to see her in something other than sneakers. She wore a floral-patterned sundress that hung loose around her knees and cinched at her waist, with little flowy sleeves that capped her shoulders.
I realized with a start that this was the first time I’d seen her in anything other than scrubs.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she exhaled out the words as she struggled to catch her breath with one hand raised up to her chest as if feeling how fast her own heart was racing.
“Emma’s babysitter was running late, and then my car wouldn’t start, and then I realized this might not be professional enough to wear, and--” Clara swallowed down a gulp of air and managed to stop her own rambling with a sheepish smile.
I matched her smile, minus her sheepishness.
“You look completely professional,” I assured her. “You could have worn scrubs, and you’d still look… professional.”
I’d wanted to say something else, but it didn’t feel like the time nor the place, and so I swallowed it back down.
Clara cocked her head to the side and raised a single, well-groomed eyebrow, but didn’t remark on my comment.
“Is it normal to feel like throwing up?” she asked with another apologetic smile as if her nerves were something to be sorry for at a time like this.
Evelyn waved her hand, still cool as a cucumber from her place on the bench.
“He’ll love you,” she said with a huff as if it was obvious. “Who the hell wouldn’t? We picked you as the lead plaintiff for a reason, didn’t we?”
She could have been a bit less gruff about it, but Evelyn wasn’t wrong.
Clara had been chosen for a reason, and I doubted any of us had any real question as to whether or not she’d be sympathetic enough for Judge Calhoun.
Brody offered her a tilt of his head with his cowboy hat clutched to his chest.
“Ma’am,” he greeted with a kind quirk of his lips.
At least he was using his manners, whereas Evelyn seemed to have completely disregarded hers. I suppose we all handled stress differently.
Clara blew out a thin stream of air and gave a nod in greeting toward Brody. She then folded her arms across her waist and smoothed her hands over her freckled skin. There was something soothing about the action, and I wondered if it was something she used with Emma.
“You’re going to do great,” I assured her with as kind of a tone as I could manage as I looked down at her.
She only nodded in response before turning her hazel eyes back up to me.
“How’s your hand?” she asked with a quirk of her head.
It was clearly an attempt to give herself something else to think about, and I was more than willing to help her distract herself. So I lifted up my injured hand and extended it to her waiting palm.
I’d forgone the bandages that morning to give me full use of both my hands. The cut hadn’t gotten much prettier in the last handful of days, but it hadn’t gotten worse, either.
The slash across my knuckles was no longer a violent, bloody red thing, but instead had already started to fade into a dark, deep mauve shade that I knew would later fade to a soft pink, and then, if I was lucky, into white and into nothing from there.
I doubted, however, that I’d be that lucky because the injury had gone too long without any real medical care. I knew it was going to be a long, arduous healing process, and probably even longer before I could curl my fist without the memory of a gunshot ringing out.
Clara ghosted her slim fingers over the injury and inhaled a sharp, sympathetic breath as I just barely felt her touch.
She cut her eyes up to me for another split second.
“You’ve been cleaning it?” she asked before looking back down at the angry split in my skin.
She gently turned my wrist in her hand to get a better look at the side, as if the new angle would give her new insights into the injury itself.
I didn’t think this was necessary, but I also didn’t want to tell her to stop. I told myself it was because it gave her something to do to still her nerves before we were let into Judge Calhoun’s chambers.
If I was lying to myself, no one else was in my mind to know.
“With that... spray stuff, you told me about,” I assured her and then nodded. “Bactine? Right? I use it every night and change the gauze each morning.”
I nodded again as if confirming my own statement.
She pursed her lips, and I could tell she wanted to say something about my lack of bandages at the moment, but she ultimately didn’t say anything. Clara took a small step back and dropped my hand down.
“Good,” she said with a huff. “Good. You don’t want it to get infected, or you could potentially lose the use of that hand...” Her sentence trailed off, and it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t looking at me.
Instead, Clara had turned her focus toward the mouth of the hallway where she’d just come from, and a small furrow nestled between her eyebrows.
I blinked and realized it was probably because of the sound of footsteps echoing and bouncing against the walls. Between Evelyn and Brody’s soft conversation behind us and the sound of my own blood rushing past my ears at Clara’s touch, I hadn’t noticed the sound of newcomers to the area.
The sound reminded me of a funeral march or of some sort of doomsday elegy as the bodies attached to the discordant footsteps finally crossed the threshold and came into view.
The ball of bile that had been growing in the pit of my stomach seemed to expand and swallow the nervousness I’d fought all morning.
All I felt then was anger.
Abraham Knox had a wide, false smile plastered across his face as he waltzed into the courthouse like he owned the place. For one, terrifying moment, I remembered that there was a chance he did own the court, owned the judges, and worst of all, owned the verdicts.
Men richer than God didn’t exactly have many people left to answer to when called.
Something dark and angry flashed across Clara’s face and made itself comfortable there on her delicate features as her eyes fell onto Knox.
For a moment, I was curious how she recognized him, and then I remembered the catastrophic news broadcast that had gone out at the beginning of our suit. I couldn’t recall if Knox had said anything nasty against Clara herself, but I doubted she was too torn up over the specifics.
I glanced back at Brody and Evelyn as their conversation stilled to silence to see how they were handling the appearance of Knox.
The air in the room had gone still and seemed to have plummeted about a thousand degrees. The change was practically visible amongst us all.
Accompanying Knox was his brigade of lawyers, two men and one woman that I didn’t recognize. They were all dressed in various shades of black and gray and looked spectacularly severe.
I couldn’t help but equate them with James Bond’s villains, if his villains had degrees in law and an eagerness to practice.
I took a step forward to put myself between Clara and the lawyers. The gesture wasn’t to protect her from whatever scathing comment Knox might have had to offer, but rather it was to keep Knox from filing charges against her when she inevitably tried to take his eyes out.
Knox gave us his thin, ugly, simpering smile that didn’t quite meet his watery blue gaze.
; “Archer,” he said with a flat, grating edge to his southern drawl. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well after that… unfortunate accident I caught wind of.” He continued to smile as he spoke, and I felt the unmistakable urge to hit him.
I tamped down that urge and returned his smile with one of my own, even though all I wanted to do was bare my teeth. I wasn’t sure how one man could seem to find joy in being so undeniably evil or in causing so much harm.
His hands rested atop his cane, and his skin along his knuckles was so papery thin I could practically see his veins pulsing beneath the surface.
His lawyers waited in a small huddle behind him like a treacherous flock of birds that I felt the distinct urge to shoo away with a wave of my hand.
“It was nothing,” I brushed off his attempted murder with a cock of my head. “Just a scratch.”
The split skin against my knuckle begged to differ, but I refused to give him the satisfaction.
I felt a presence approach from behind me and recognized the cologne as Brody’s. He clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder and cleared his throat.
“We should have a quick discussion,” he said as I glanced over my shoulder at him.
My new partner had a hard, stiff set to his jaw as he stared at Knox, and it was obvious he was fighting the same urge to knock Knox on his keister.
The thin pleasantries we’d all been exchanging hung in the air, and I felt suffocated by the falseness of it all. It would have been easier if we’d all started to lob threats at one another rather than pretend we were friendly, like we all had shared some sense of camaraderie for being here today.
Brody used his hand on my shoulder to steer me back over toward Evelyn, and I reached out to cup my hand around Clara’s elbow to guide her with us. As much as I wanted to watch her spit in Knox’s face, I’d rather not have had our case tossed out the window on some insane grounds.
She stumbled after us, and her chest rose and fell in short, angry breaths as she visibly worked to get herself back under control. Only Evelyn seemed to be in control of her feelings.
Brody brought Clara and I to a stop in front of Evelyn’s perch on the bench, and then he let out a heavy sigh.
His cowboy hat was back on his head, and he seemed to be making an active effort to keep his eyes away from Knox and his cronies as they loudly spoke about something, probably the case if I wanted to wager a guess as to the subject.
“Don’t let him get under your skin,” Evelyn said with a flatness to her tone.
I knew she was right, and I knew that both Clara and Brody knew she was right, too, but it still didn’t change the fire that I felt clambering its way up my veins at the sight of him in his expensive suit with his Disney villain cane.
Before I could manage to burst a blood vessel in my eye, which is something that felt dangerously close to happening the longer I stood in proximity to Knox, even with him across the hallway, the heavy doors to Judge Calhoun’s chambers swung open with a thud that resounded down the hall and startled all of us into silence.
I turned my focus to the now open office and to the judicial secretary that stood in the entryway with raised eyebrows. I couldn’t quite recall her name, but I’d seen her a few times before. Mary, maybe? Or was it Maria? Something with an M.
“The judge is ready to see you now,” she said with a certain lifeless air to her tone that I assumed came with years of government work.
Her thin blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun that tugged her eyes at the corners and seemed to keep her skin taut over her bones in a way I couldn’t imagine being comfortable.
I glanced back at my colleagues and Clara and offered as reassuring a smile as I could muster. The adrenaline that had faded to the backburner revved itself back up just under the surface of my skin.
“Ready?” I asked and gave a deep breath.
There was a general murmur and a nod of agreement from my three companions, and then Brody gave a sweeping gesture with one of his tree-trunk arms.
“Lead the way, kid,” he said with a nervous smile that danced at the corners of his lips.
Evelyn swatted Clara’s extended hand away to brush off her offer of help before she rose up to her feet with a soft huff. She grabbed my briefcase from the bench beside her and offered it to me with a steely look.
I nodded my appreciation and took it from her waiting hand before I took a deep breath and started toward the secretary waiting at the entrance to Calhoun’s chambers.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been in his chambers, but I took a moment to refamiliarize myself with the layout.
Just past the wide, wooden doors we walked through was a small room where the secretary’s desk sat, bracketed by walls of shelving and filing cabinets that broke the sort of old-school, dark wood theme the rest of the chambers had been decorated in.
Past her desk at the front of the room were two more sets of doors. One set of doors, I knew, led to the bailiff’s office that was shared with one of the mandated court reporters.
The next set of doors, however, was Calhoun’s private office.
I’d presented a few cases in his direct office, but those had all been smaller suits. The idea of both our legal parties and Calhoun packed into the space like a bunch of well-dressed sardines made my stomach roil with anxiety.
But, with my grip tight on my briefcase, I followed after the secretary as she led us through the office to Calhoun’s doors.
She didn’t knock before she pushed the doors open and stepped aside to let our strange menagerie file into the enclosed space.
I offered a silent thanks up to whoever in the universe was looking after me for the fact that Calhoun had opened a window this time. The cool breeze blowing in through the screen of the window had already made the room feel less suffocating, and I sucked down a quick breath of clean air.
Brody, Evelyn, Clara, and I all trickled over to the far left-side of the room in front of Judge Calhoun’s desk, and Knox and his crew of expensive lawyers took up position on the right side.
I couldn’t begin to imagine how absurd this looked to Calhoun. A young, upstart lawyer with a recently retired paralegal, a disgraced class action lawyer, and a nurse up against a man that looked like a caricature of an oil baron, cane and all, and his cohort of Bond villain lawyers.
We were practically packed shoulder to shoulder, and I had the distinct thought that it might have made more sense for us to hold this certification in an actual courtroom, just for ease of space. But, because I wasn’t a stupid man, I kept that thought to myself.
Calhoun’s familiar bulldog face was set in a look I couldn’t quite interpret. As always, he was sitting ramrod straight in a way that might have even rivaled Evelyn’s posture. He had his hands folded atop his desk and one point of his collared shirt was half-caught under the hem of his black robes.
I gave him a pleasant smile and a polite nod of my head, and to my left, Clara did the same.
Brody tipped his hat in greeting before he removed it out of respect and clasped it behind his back.
“Landon,” Calhoun greeted in return before he turned his focus onto Knox and his brigade.
I didn’t recognize Knox’s lawyers, and I couldn’t quite discern if Calhoun did, either. They looked to me like the sort of lawyers that worked in cities larger than Crowley and probably cost something absurd by the hour.
I doubted a man like Knox was without lawyers on his payroll to do his dirty work, and I had no doubt they’d made the trek from Dallas or Houston to deal with the suit. I imagined there was also a whole boatload of additional attorneys and staff to back them up, and I could only imagine the mound of paperwork that many people could create in order to drown us. But I caught Knox’s smug smile then, and I refused to be baited.
I turned to Calhoun then and gave a small gesture to the corner of his desk. I raised an eyebrow in question since I didn’t want to be rude and just assume.
“May I?” I asked with my hand still extended.
“Go ahead,” Calhoun agreed with a slight nod.
I offered a smile in return and set my briefcase on the corner of the desk and in an easy motion, I flicked open the latches that held it closed and pushed open the top. I took a moment to sort my papers into a more organized stack before I set them atop the newly closed briefcase.
It was strange to see the evidence we’d so painstakingly acquired, the evidence we’d struggled so desperately to find, organized into one neat little paperclipped stack of papers.
All our signed releases from the residents of Piney Crest, medical records, the water pollutants findings, and the cherry on top, high resolution, glossy photo prints of the shots I’d managed to take with my phone after the dump.
Even my phone, bullet embedded and all, rattled around in my briefcase just in case I needed the aftermath of a literal smoking gun.
To my right, one of Knox’s lawyers, the woman who appeared to be the one taking point on the case, set her own briefcase on the opposite edge of Calhoun’s desk. She pulled out a thick stack of papers, and I felt a bit queasy to see that it was nearly three times the height of our stack.
Clara’s shoulder pressed into mine for just a moment, and I pulled my focus from the stack of papers and back at her. She gave me a soft, reassuring smile, but I could still see the fire burning behind her eyes.
I was reminded once again that this was the woman who’d been willing to take on Knox’s empire all alone if she had to, and I felt a surge of new resolve coursing through me.
I looked back at Calhoun, straightened my posture, and squared my shoulders. Knox might have thought he won the war already, but those had only been battles, and he shouldn’t have underestimated me or my team.
“Now, this isn’t an official verdict on guilt,” Calhoun began his spiel with a tired sigh. “This is a class certification, to see if the suit you, Ms. Shepard, as the leading plaintiff would like to raise against Knox Chemicals can even be tried as a class action. Is that clear?”
