Finding Honor

by Ripley Proserpina

  “Miss Leslie.”

  “Detective.”

  Detective Michael Vance dressed like someone’s dad. He didn't look tough, or world-weary. Nothing about his appearance suggested he was made of ice.

  Gathering her thoughts, Nora checked herself. No—the man had feelings, because he most certainly hated her. His politeness did nothing to mask it.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  She was in trouble. She didn’t know why, but she was in trouble. “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Why would you need a lawyer?” He cocked his head to one side. There was an unspoken meaning behind his words; only guilty people need lawyers.

  I'm not guilty. “Go ahead.”

  “Who is Reid Merchant?”

  Nora blinked at the unexpected inquiry. She thought his questions would be similar to the ones he’d asked the last three times he’d visited: What happened? Why did you try to leave? Why didn’t you follow school protocol?

  “Reid?”

  Vance nodded. “I’m going to record this,” he said, putting a tape recorder on the bedside table.

  Nora eyed it, her earlier opinion about his dad-ness was solidified by his use of obsolete technology. She hoped he had a stock of those tiny cassettes, because she didn't think they made them anymore. Vance waited for her to answer, and she realized she'd been too silent, caught up as she was in her self-protecting sarcasm.

  “He was my foster brother.”

  Vance’s lip curled into something vaguely smile related and he nodded. “Your brother.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not biological. We were in the same foster home for about five years, until he aged out.”

  “You thought of him like a brother, though?”

  The way his eyes gleamed made her wary. So she didn’t answer. She loved Reid. He’d always been kind, stepping between her and kids on the playground when they’d been in elementary school together, but they hadn’t been in touch in years.

  That’s how it went with foster kids. They turned eighteen and the state gave them a one-time check, and a voucher to find an apartment. Good luck, kid! Some foster families didn’t wait for high school graduation. When the checks stopped coming, they were done. Nora had been lucky, even if her foster family hadn’t been stellar, when she’d turned eighteen in October, they let her stay until June.

  “So you must have been pretty mad when he left you and never came back.”

  “No.” It was impossible to describe this to someone who had a stable family. Most people couldn’t fathom how a mother, or brother, could move on with their life without knowing what happened to someone they’d cared about. Nora’s life was based on survival, and she stood a much better chance of feeding, clothing, and housing herself without worrying about anyone else.

  She understood when Reid left she might never see him again. He needed to take care of himself, like she did. She remembered how frightening everything had been when she’d left her foster family. She spent months before her looming age-out date in June searching for an apartment so she’d have a place to go. When she left her foster home, all she had to her name was a suitcase of clothes and a few tattered books. It took her a long time to have her apartment set up: to have pots to cook in and to have more than one bowl or cup. If Reid’s transition from state care to independence had been anything like hers, he wouldn’t have had time to think about her.

  He sat in the chair next to the bed, the leather creaking beneath him as his body eased forward. She could smell his deodorant and the coffee on his breath.

  “Come on, Honora.”

  It jarred her, hearing her full name, and threw her off-balance. Like everyone else, he didn’t know how to pronounce it. It’s Ah-nora, she wanted to say, not On-ora.

  But she didn't, because baiting a police detective was stupid.

  “Did he talk to you at school? It must have stung to see him at the college, especially when you were there, housekeeping.”

  “What? No.” Confused, she shook her head again. “I’m glad he was there.”

  Vance leaned forward again, closer now, close enough she could see the blue striations in his eyes. “What’d you say to him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You think it’s a coincidence your foster brother, a successful student with no criminal record, suddenly took an automatic weapon to the local high school where his sister just happened to be working and cleared out a hallway of kids?”

  Her mind flashed back to the kitchen, and the moment her eyes met the gunman’s. He was Reid?

  “I don’t understand.”

  He curled his lip. “Let me ask again. Why did you tell your foster brother to shoot the kids at the high school?”

  Bile burned her throat. Automatically, she put her hand there. “Reid?”

  “Why Honora? What’d those kids ever do to you?”

  God help me. “I never…”

  “You must have been jealous? Right? All those kids at the beginning of their life. Disrespecting you. The honor student turned maid. Or maybe you wanted to be special. A hero. The heroes were those kids who died. They had a future.”

  Nora couldn’t form words anymore. She was terrified, as terrified as she was in the cafeteria.

  It all suddenly made sense. The nurses’ behavior, the spartan room. They thought she’d been part of the shooting, and maybe ordered it or driven Reid to it.

  Reid, who was sweet and shy, and honorable. She never imagined him doing anything like this. He shot her! Vance was right in one respect; Reid had been her protector. This made no sense. Reid would never try to kill her.

  “Where is Reid?” she asked, closing her eyes. As soon as she asked the question, she realized she already knew the answer.

  Vance was silent and when she opened her eyes, she met his triumphant gaze.

  “Dead.”

  Three

  Ten to One

  Ryan Valore’s class, Criminal Law and Society, had been discussing one topic for the last week: the shooting at A.T. High School. Students surmised motives and outcomes, and then branched into the inevitable debate; would any of them defend the killer? Ryan listened carefully, but didn’t participate. Today the class vibrated with excitement after the police department identified a “person of interest.”

  What a phrase .

  So broad, but it implied all sorts of horrible things. It could mean they found someone who gave Reid Merchant a gun, or the person who provoked him until he lost control.

  He listened with one ear to his classmates’ side-conversations while trying to follow his professor’s lecture.

  “The country is terrified, and the town mourning. The man who killed five people is gone. There will be no trial, no punishment. So. What does it mean for our person of interest?”

  Once the question was posed, the class immediately began discussion. Ryan hunched over his desk. Once upon a time he’d have been the first to answer, the first with an opinion, something well-formed and with case history to support it, but not anymore. He learned his lesson when it came to judging quickly.

  “If this person has a connection to the shooter and the situation; they should have done something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Alerted police, stopped him, something.”

  If that was the case, then it was asking someone to be a mind reader. Ryan shook his head.

  Their whole discussion was conjecture anyway. This person could have directly caused the shooting or they could be a long-lost cousin. Without knowing all the details, the debate was pointless. At least until Professor Bismarck wrote on the whiteboard, Blackstone’s Formulation.

  He leaned back in his seat, trying not to smile. He should have suspected there was a deeper purpose to Bismarck’s question. Beneath the title, the professor wrote a quote from the eighteenth century jurist, “It is better ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”

  The class was silent for a moment as t
hey read the quote. Then they erupted into argument, countering the age-old ratio with modern day problems.

  “What about terrorists?” someone yelled. “What if we can stop terrorist attacks by questioning the families of the terrorists?”

  “Questioning or torturing?” someone else challenged.

  Another line of debate started. He might have his own thoughts, but he wasn’t ready to share them.

  “Participation is 25% of your grade.”

  He met the professor’s amused glance. The class chatted around them, most of them completely ignoring the talking points of the person they debated.

  “They’re interested in hearing themselves talk,” Ryan noted. “I’ll add something if it’s relevant.”

  Bismarck chuckled. “Valore, it’s my job to decide what’s relevant. It’s your job to add it.” The older man turned his back, then clapped his hands together. “Valore!” The professor raised his voice, getting the attention of the class and honing it in on Ryan. “Your thoughts?”

  It was hard to maintain his glare when the professor merely twinkled back at him. Composing himself, he began. “Historically, the importance of innocence has always carried more weight than guilt. We can go back to the Bible, and Sodom and Gomorrah, where an entire city could have been saved if there had been only… I don’t remember how many people… was it ten?”

  “Ten,” Bismark agreed.

  “…Ten righteous people in the city. Even in Islam,” he continued, eyeing the classmate who suggested torture as an effective way to deal with terrorists. “Mohammad speaks of leniency in judgment if there is doubt of guilt.”

  “How does this relate to a person involved in a school shooting?”

  “Do we know they were involved?” he countered. “What does 'person of interest’ mean? Does it mean they have information about the shooter? Or they were directly involved? It's also possible the police released this information for other reasons. They could be putting pressure on the person, or they could be flushing out another accomplice. The truth of the matter is, we can't judge yet. We don't know everything, and even if we were on the jury in the trial of this individual, we would never know exactly what their motivation was because we can never be in their head.”

  “So would you defend this person, Valore?” Bismarck asked. “After all, that’s the crux of the question. It's all well and good to talk about the theories of guilt and innocence, compassion and mercy, but if it came down to it— if this 'person of interest' could have somehow stopped the shooting— would you defend them?”

  “Yes.”

  The classroom erupted in exclamation. “How? Why?”

  “Our justice system affords each person the right to a fair trial, and unbiased representation, neither of which are dependent on the person’s innocence or guilt. But if they were guilty— I would represent them and counsel them as best I could. Hopefully, they could make amends for the wrong they committed.”

  Saying the words out loud made Ryan's head pound and his teeth clench. It was the closest he'd ever gotten to admitting his motivation to the world and it felt like a gigantic slip. He was sure his own guilt was a glaring, yellow sign flashing above his head. He tucked his shoulders in, feeling like he exposed himself too much. If only he could backpedal before anyone saw through his facade.

  “Counsel!” Bismarck erupted. “There is our goal! Before there were lawyers, there were counselors, and it was the job of counsel to instruct their clients in the best way to obey the law. Of course, some of us became experts in circumventing it, and used it to our own ends.”

  “Do you mean yourself, Professor Bismarck?”

  Ryan almost choked. Bluntness came with the territory in prelaw, but most students tried not to antagonize their teachers.

  “Yes, I mean me, Miss Stevens.”

  Chagrined, the student began, “Professor...”

  Bismarck waved her off. “Some of you are aware of my past. I cultivated a formidable reputation as one of the top criminal defense attorneys in this country, and you all know the result of my success.”

  His story was a made-for-tv drama. Bismarck defended a rich doctor accused of assaulting his wife. He got the man off with community service and a fine, and the man went on to assault a patient, a nurse, and then a minor. He’d kept a serial killer free. If Bismarck hadn't defended him, the man may have been incarcerated before he murdered.

  “So, how do you live with yourself?”

  All Ryan wanted was to run away, but he forced himself to stay in his seat. The conversation too closely paralleled events in his past. Each comment, though obviously not directed at him, forced him to confront his own guilt.

  “I try to make amends,” the professor answered quietly. “I try to remember there is innocence but there is also guilt. I may find the person I defend is guilty, and if my conscience pricks me, I listen to it. I won't bury my morals for a paycheck anymore.”

  “So.” Bismarck tried to bring the class back on track. “Would you defend this person?”

  The tone of the class changed, and they began to discuss the case in relation to themselves, rather than what it represented to the world.

  “I don't know. I have a sister at Twilight. I couldn't be objective.”

  “I think so. I'd still want them to have the best possible defense. If they were guilty, I hope the evidence would show it. The judge and jury are there as a check and balance.”

  A tightness in Ryan's shoulders eased, until… “Valore?”

  The spotlight was on him, and he couldn’t step back into the shadows. “I would want to meet them first,” he answered after a moment. “I think if I met them, then I could decide whether or not I could defend them.”

  “Interesting,” Bismarck answered smiling. “What do you think you could gain by meeting them?”

  “Who they are. If it's possible they would be part of something... I'm not sure. I feel like I couldn't decide either way unless I came face-to-face with the person.”

  Bismarck glanced at the clock. “Thank you, Valore. All right. You’re dismissed. I want a five page essay on Blackstone's Formulation as it relates to a recent world event. Cite your work but don't be afraid to give your opinion!” he yelled over the din of students collecting their backpacks and checking their phones.

  “Valore.”

  Ryan sighed. He hoped to make it out the door without anyone seeing him.

  “You'll get your chance to see if your theory works.”

  “Sir?”

  Bismarck walked to the front of the class, stuffing the students’ work in a worn leather bag. “I received a call from Legal Aid. It was a referral for the ‘person of interest.’ I am meeting her this afternoon. Are you interested in going with me?”

  “You’re going to defend her?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m going to meet her.” Bismarck corrected. “I don’t defend anyone anymore without meeting them first.”

  ***

  The car ride to the hospital was awkward. At different times, Ryan tried to fill the silence, but then trailed off, leaving sentences unfinished. The class discussion replayed in his mind, juxtaposed with images from his own time in a courtroom.

  Turning his face to the window, he watched the dark brick buildings of the college blur. At a stoplight, he saw the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette with a traffic cone on his head. The prankster placed it at an angle, probably because they had to climb one-handed with the cone, but it gave the Frenchman a jaunty air, especially with his hand propped on one hip.

  “You're awful quiet over there, Valore. Do you ever talk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The professor waited a tick for him to answer. Ryan struggled to find something else to say, so Bismarck rescued him. “What's bugging you?”

  Ryan cleared his throat, wondering if he went for honesty or not. At the last moment, he went for... not. “I'm thinking about the person we'll meet.”

  “Yes,” Bismarck remarked. “I was wondering why yo
u haven't asked me for more information.”

  “I'm not sure if I should.”

  “Want to go in with an open mind?”

  He pondered the question. “Partly. I also don't know if it's any of my business yet. Shouldn’t this person meet me before I get their life story? Shouldn’t it be up to them what they disclose?”

  Bismarck glanced over at him quickly. “Not one out of a hundred students would have said that, Valore. Color me impressed.”

  “I wasn't trying to impress you.” He felt his face heat; he hadn’t meant to be quite so brusque.

  Bismarck barked out a laugh. “Fair enough,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Fair enough. Let me fill you in, and you can stop referring to her as 'this person' and 'they.' “

  “All right.”

  “We're meeting Nora Leslie. She's the twenty year-old foster sister of the shooter. I got a call from her this morning. Apparently, she's been visited by the police a number of times.”

  “She hasn't asked for a lawyer?”

  “She's not really asking for one now. She's asking if she needs one.”

  “It's not the same thing?”

  “No.” At the parking garage entrance, he stopped and retrieved the ticket, before heading underground. “Nora doesn't understand her rights. She thought if she answered the police's questions, then she'd be helping them. She had no idea they viewed her as a suspect.”

  Ryan didn't answer. His initial instinct was such a claim meant she wasn’t guilty. Then he began to doubt himself. It also didn’t mean she was innocent. It merely meant she knew what to say to make them think she was.

  Bismarck pulled into a small space in the back of the lot, sandwiching the car between a concrete pillar and an SUV. The fluorescent lights flickered, making him squint his eyes. It gave the darkness a surreal feeling, reminding him of a rave his friend Seok dragged them to once. His eyes tried to adjust: dim, bright, dim, bright. It made him feel as if he was observing the world from a distance.

  He opened the car door, jerking it back at the last second when he heard the small metallic tap of metal against metal. He eased the door closed slightly, sliding from the car. He was careful this time not to ding the other car, but he sucked in his breath, holding his bag out from his body.