Faith and Justice

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “How’s your midlife crisis coming along?” Hunter closed the door behind him.

  The office was well lit and roomy, but still, it felt suffocating. The desk sat prominently in the middle of the room, a lamp on one side and a computer on the other, while the walls were dark wood paneling with a lone piece of art on the left-hand side. The brown abstract painting did nothing to lighten the mood.

  “I’ve had many, many midlife crises.” She smiled as she sat down. “And I had my first at twenty-five, which doesn’t really say much about my longevity.”

  Michelle Law ran her hand over the top of her hair, her black hair pulled back so tightly that it almost gave her a headache. Her black dress also didn’t lighten the mood, but that was the way she liked it.

  “Do you still steal items from shops?” Hunter asked.

  “The only things I steal these days are wins.”

  Almost six months ago, Hunter uncovered Law’s addiction—stealing small items from convenience stores. She did it for the rush, for the hit of adrenalin. Although she was never caught by the police, Hunter found the information and confronted her about it. Once she knew she was trapped, she committed to taking a leave of absence to sort through her issues.

  “Your eyes look very clear,” he commented as he placed his briefcase on the floor. “And your skin is almost glowing.”

  “I’m sober now. 98 days and counting. It’s on my calendar at home. I mark off every single day that I make it through, but some days are tougher than others. Mostly I feel great. It… it’s hard to describe what life is like without alcohol. I have energy. Clear thoughts. Enthusiasm. It’s amazing, Tex. It really is. Giving up alcohol is life changing.”

  “Don’t give me that look.”

  “All I’m saying is that you should try a month without alcohol. You’ll feel fantastic, and you’ll never go back. Being sober changes everything. You’ll feel…” She struggled to find the right word to convey how much her life had changed. “You’ll feel better than ever. I don’t even know how to describe the feeling.”

  “The reason I drink is so I don’t feel at all.” Hunter’s tone was flat. “But congratulations, Michelle. You should be proud of making it to the edge, and being one of the few that are strong enough to walk back from it. How’s your birth mother, Cindy? Do you still talk to her?”

  “She’s doing the time for the crime. That’s what happens when you kill someone. If you do the crime, you’ve got to do the time. No matter who you are.”

  “I wish that were true.” Hunter smiled. “You and I both know that’s not the case.”

  “Well, lucky for us, your latest client is a prime candidate to do the time for his crime.” Law scrolled through the document on the computer screen. She typed quickly, her fingers tapping loudly on the keys. “The remarkable case of the innocent man. DNA, witnesses, and a motive all point to your client killing a popular Baptist minister. But, of course, he didn’t do it, did he?”

  “That’s what he claims.”

  “Everyone is guilty of something.”

  “If that’s true, then the only real offense is being stupid enough to get caught.”

  Law laughed and placed a file in front of Hunter. “New evidence. It’s only come in today.”

  “What is it?” Hunter opened the file, read the notes, and looked over the pictures.

  “One of our detectives received an anonymous tip-off about Amos Anderson’s place. They obtained a warrant, conducted a search, and found a necklace that belonged to Green, right next to Anderson’s bed. A little more than a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Hunter didn’t respond.

  He reread the file, flicking between the pages, looking at the photos—no fingerprints, and no DNA on the necklace. That was too convenient.

  Law ran her hand over her hair again. “What are your thoughts?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, Michelle; it only matters what the twelve people in the jury box think based on the evidence. That’s what we do. Don’t tell me that the Caribbean sun has taken that knowledge away from you.”

  “But you must have an opinion, Tex? You, the famous Tex Hunter, must have an opinion on whether or not your client is guilty.”

  Hunter closed the file on the new evidence, sat back in the chair, crossed one leg over the other, and rested his hands in his lap. “The evidence is weak. The whole case is weak. You’re making a mistake by putting this man on trial. A big mistake. And it isn’t going to look very good for your office when you lose, especially with your record. You should admit defeat and walk away now. Drop the charges and be done with it. Let an innocent man walk free.”

  “And why would we even bother with a fragile case, Tex? The courts are too busy, and the prisons are overcrowded. We only go after the ones we need to.” Law made eye contact. Her clear, deep blue eyes were mesmerizing, and Hunter struggled to maintain focus.

  “We both know why you’re pressing ahead with this case. You’re not after my client; you couldn’t care less about him. Despite the fact that my client is a great citizen, you want to persecute him for someone else’s crime. You want a scapegoat to prevent riots happening all over our city. You took the closest man to the scene and you’re willing to sacrifice his future to save face. That’s not justice.”

  “There are people in the city looking for a reason to start a riot. The situation is at a breaking point. It’s more than a hundred years since the Chicago race riots of 1919 turned this city upside down, and I don’t intend to encourage an anniversary party.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should charge an innocent man.”

  “We haven’t.” Law didn’t flinch.

  When Law saw Tex Hunter’s name on the defendant’s notes, she was delighted.

  Sobriety had been wonderful to her, but she still felt she was missing something in her life. Even after three months, her days were becoming a boring slog of case after case, charge after charge, late night after late night, and without the comfort of alcohol to deaden her loneliness. To go toe to toe with Hunter in the courtroom, considering his reputation, invigorated her desire. It recharged her enthusiasm for the system.

  Most charges were settled out of court, settled before the excitement of a trial, but Hunter had a reputation for dragging the impossible before a judge. For this meeting, Law wore her best work dress, one that she only bought the week before and added an extra spray of her best perfume.

  It was having the desired effect on her opponent.

  “Did you even look at other suspects, Michelle? My client is an innocent bystander, and you’re going after the wrong man. Focus your attention on the real criminals. Like you said, you don’t have time to chase this case.”

  “Innocent men don’t kill people.”

  Hunter took a moment to collect his thoughts. The meeting was going exactly as he expected. He would push her to drop the charges, she would refuse, and then, when she was intrigued by his position, he would drop a bombshell on her.

  “Tell me about one of the officers in the PD.” Hunter leaned back in the chair. “Detective Browne.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking?”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Of course,” she lied.

  She hated the man; the last time she talked to him, he called her “baby.” She showed impressive restraint not to break his nose.

  “Do you think he has any links to the case?”

  “Other than the arrest and search? No.” Law shook her head.

  Even if she did think so, she wouldn’t give that information away now, and Hunter knew that. He was testing the waters, checking to see if she flinched under the questions about the integrity of one of the detectives.

  She didn’t.

  “Nothing the Bureau of Internal Affairs would know about?”

  “No, Tex. Nothing.”

  It was the response he anticipated, but what he had done was planted a seed of doubt, a moment of indecision, in the prosecutor’s mi
nd. With the added pressure, she might make a small mistake.

  And that was all he needed.

  Hunter uncrossed his legs and leaned his elbows on the table.

  “How about we drop this case now and save ourselves some time? Go after the big fish. Don’t play this game of cat and mouse. Don’t put an innocent man behind bars for the sake of avoiding a riot. That’s not what we got into law for. We got into law to uphold justice—and this isn’t justice.”

  “This is justice, Tex. Justice for the people of the Grand Crossing Baptist church. Amos Anderson is a killer. He will do time. That’s justice. And you know the deals that are on the table. Don’t try and convince yourself that your client is innocent. I can guarantee you that he’s not. He’s not an innocent man. The only reason he spends time helping others is because he makes money from it. If he was truly passionate about this fake magic, if he truly wanted to make a change, then he would do it for free. Just ask your nephew, Maxwell Hunter.”

  Law had dropped a bomb of her own.

  “Pardon?”

  “We have very good researchers here, Tex.” She smiled. “You’re personally invested in this case. I understand why. Your nephew was a dirty drug addict, a part of the scum in the city, and Amos saved him. This is more than a case about an innocent man; this is a case about your family, and we all know what your family is capable of.”

  His mouth hung open, and for the first time in a long time, he was speechless.

  Hunter stood and placed his index finger down firmly on the table. “Don’t talk to me about family. Yours isn’t much better.”

  Law grinned, bit her bottom lip, and winked. “I really do like it when you’re angry, Tex.”

  With a grunt, Hunter turned and left the office, disappointed that he had let out such a display of raw emotion.

  He needed to get his emotions in check during the trial, or Law would use them against him. The problem was—those entrenched feelings were something that whiskey couldn’t fix.

  But he was still going to try.

  CHAPTER 24

  The files were spread out on the table; not neatly, not precisely, but with a sense of order.

  The headshots of all the suspects, copies of the witness statements, and files of the evidence sat on the table. Layer upon layer was spread across the boardroom, the whiteboard behind them filled with notes, and a picture of Amos Anderson sat in the middle of the table—the centerpiece of all their work.

  “So what do we have?” Ray Jones asked as he circled around the room.

  “We have an innocent man that’s about to go to prison,” Hunter quipped.

  The sun was low in the sky, with a slice of light sneaking through the window behind them. Not strong enough to project any warmth, but the temperature in the large boardroom was still warm enough for Hunter to roll up his sleeves.

  “Do you really think Anderson is innocent?” Esther questioned. She was sitting at the head of the table and took a loud sip of coffee from her mug.

  Hunter and Jones glared at her while she continued to sip her drink.

  “It’s not—” Hunter began, but Esther sipped loudly from her mug again.

  They continued to stare at her, but she was oblivious to their irritation. Once she had finished slurping, she turned back to them. “He could be guilty? He could be the killer, you know. We could be barking up the wrong tree.”

  “He might be crazy, but he’s not a killer.” Hunter looked back to the files. “Regardless, it’s not our job to determine whether he’s the killer or not. Our job is to get the best outcome possible, and the way we do that is to create doubt about his guilt. The best way to do that is to present someone else to the court.”

  “Is winning from here even possible?” Esther looked at the file and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Look at all this evidence.”

  “That’s the concern. While we have other people to present as possible suspects to the jury, we can’t disprove much of the evidence,” Hunter stated. “Yes, Anderson’s DNA was under Reverend Green’s fingernails and his blood was on the shirt. Yes, he argued with Green only hours before his murder and he had a motive. Yes, he was in the area at the time of the murder and Green’s necklace was found in his house.”

  “Sounds pretty closed to me.” Jones sat down in one of the leather office chairs surrounding the table. “It looks like Amos is going to prison. It might be best to take a deal. Perhaps ten years for a guilty plea.”

  “The prosecution isn’t going to give us that. If it’s anything less than twenty years, there’ll be riots in the streets, and they know that. Things are bubbling, waiting to boil over. Green was one of the most vocal African American ministers out there and his followers were as passionate as he is.”

  “I know. I’ve listened to his sermons online.”

  “How many sermons are online?”

  “Maybe a hundred. All on YouTube. They’ve had millions of hits, and they’re quite inspiring.” Jones clenched one fist and tapped it on his chest. “The speeches inspire hope that there’s something beyond racism, something beyond the hate. He often said that he was willing to go through the present pain so that others may benefit from it in the future. He was willing to fight the good fight, even if it turned some people away from the church.”

  “And now he’s a martyr,” Hunter stated. “If we get Anderson off the charges without producing another suspect, then you can expect that we’ll be targets for that hate. So, we have three options, and we need to focus on one of them—Chuck Johnson, Lucas Bauer, and possibly, Reverend Darcy. We know that both Bauer and Darcy were there that night, and have flimsy alibis after the event.”

  “A racist, a sly dog, and a nice minister. I know which one I’d be presenting to the jury,” Jones said.

  “Whichever one we present, we have to go hard, because two of those people will fight back hard against us.” Hunter moved a piece of paper across the table. “The best story to present at the moment is Chuck Johnson. He’s almost perfect—a racist who hated the church, the Reverend, and the congregation. If we can find out where he was that night, if he was anywhere near the scene, then he’s almost perfect.”

  “But he’ll be the one that fights back the hardest,” Esther said.

  Hunter sat down and swirled his chair around to stare at the whiteboard. “We might also have one other suspect—Nancy Bleathman. She’s a fanatic supporter of the Faith Healing Project but seemed unusually content with the idea of getting Anderson out of the picture, and she seemed quite attached to Lucas Bauer.”

  “Bleathman—I know that name.” Esther stood and moved more files across the table. She brushed her long sandy blonde hair behind her ear as she read off a list. “Yes. Bleathman, N. She’s one of the people on Bauer’s list to begin the faith healing training. One of the expansion healers.”

  “Interesting. She has a motive, and we know that she was at the seminar that night,” Hunter said. “Ray, find out what you can about her. She stated that she walked home after the seminar that night, so if that’s true, there must be footage of her walking home from somewhere. If we can tie her to being around the scene of the crime, we might have a chance.”

  “On it.” Jones wrote a note on his phone. “Nancy Bleathman.”

  Hunter stood back up and tapped his finger on the whiteboard, over Caylee Johnson’s name. “How did it go with the girl?”

  “It’s strange.” Esther sighed. “I tailed her and saw her talking to and being friendly with an African American girl at Northeastern Illinois University.”

  “Really?” Jones interrupted. “Her father wouldn’t like that.”

  “I confronted her about it as she walked to class, and she assumed I must’ve known her father. I looked in the mirror all night after that. I mean, do I really look like a racist? Do I look like someone that would join the White Alliance Coalition?”

  “You don’t have enough tattoos.” Jones laughed. “And you didn’t marry your brother.”

>   “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.” She smiled. “So she explained that she, ‘had something planned for the school and I needed to trust her judgment.’”

  “What do you think that means?”

  “I hate to think what it means.” Esther shook her head. “She didn’t give me a time, or what it was, but I was worried. I saw a phone booth on the drive home, and I stopped. I called the police anonymously, but they said they couldn’t do anything about it. They said there wasn’t enough information for them to take action.”

  “There was neither a direct threat nor specific information, but you did the right thing by calling them, Esther.” Hunter tapped his finger on the table. “She isn’t a weak spot, but I imagine that Chuck is protective of her, so she might be leverage to get at him. Look into that.”

  “Got it. Leverage.” Esther wrote a note on her legal pad.

  “Burt Johnson, the brother?” Jones suggested, pointing to the picture on the table. “By all reports, he’s as thick as a log. Might be someone that you could pressure into spilling the truth?”

  “He’s protected. The only way we’ll get to talk to him is on the stand, and I’m not calling him to the stand without some evidence.”

  A hush fell over the boardroom as they all contemplated the case. Hunter inspected the connections on the board, Jones peered down at the table, and Esther’s eyes were on her phone. They had options, but the challenge was determining the right choice. They had to make a clear decision about where to guide the case; they needed a clear story to present to the jury.

  It was only once Esther slurped her drink, again, that everyone returned from their thoughts.

  “What would happen if we get Anderson off the charges without offering up another suspect? People won’t like that, will they?”

  Hunter looked at the city beyond the window in front of them.