Power and Justice

by Peter O'Mahoney

  Chapter 4

  The woman walked around her dimly lit living room, studying the photos on her wall. She clinked her wine glass against a picture, stumbling a little as she finished the last drop of the bottle.

  Life was exciting. Thanks to a rediscovered passion for guns she got to experience the highs of a thrill. That rush of adrenaline. That urgency of pulsating veins.

  “It’s amazing how heavy you are in real life,” she said to her latest purchase. “And, boy, you feel good. So cold, and so powerful. If you were a man, I’d marry you.”

  The 9mm Glock 17 sitting on the table didn’t respond.

  Her home was spacious, but it still felt like her prison. There was enough room for a family, bedrooms to be filled, but it was only filled with the emptiness of solitude. She never switched on the lights at night, preferring to wander her home in darkness, lit only by the streetlight flooding in through her large front window. Her neighbors probably thought she wasn’t home, but she didn’t care. She’d given up caring about what other people thought a long time ago.

  Her original plan for revenge hadn’t worked.

  She’d wanted the girl to wake up from her cocktail of drugs in Robert’s basement, screaming for help, desperate to be saved. She wanted to see what Robert would do—would he report the situation to the police? Would he call for help? Or would he brush it under the carpet and pay the girl off to keep quiet?

  The incident would have been leverage for her to blackmail him.

  The girl wouldn’t have remembered her, and even if she had, her presence could have been explained. It was the perfect set-up. Fill the homeless girl with too many drugs, carry her light frame into the basement with outdoor access, and leave her there, confused and worried.

  At least it was the perfect plan until the girl died.

  When she’d heard that Robert had been charged with murder, she expected him to roll over and take a deal. How could he fight against such a charge? What sort of lawyer would even take that case on?

  The son of a killer would.

  She hadn’t factored him into the equation. She thought that every decent lawyer in town would run for the hills when they found out their name would be smeared with the same mud as her target.

  But some people thrive in the glory of infamy, having their name spoken about no matter how badly, and Tex Hunter was more than used to that level of pressure.

  She couldn’t take the fall for the murder, and every day that Robert didn’t take the deal, they came closer to her. She couldn’t go to prison. She wouldn’t do that. Not now. Not with everything she’d been through.

  She could run, but she wouldn’t know where to go; in all her travels, she’d never found a place she could call home.

  As she ran her hand over the cold metal piece sitting on her dining room table, her heart rate accelerated, her pupils dilated, and her shoulders tightened. It felt so real, so cold and powerful.

  It was her answer. Her vengeance.

  She was sure that Robert wouldn’t escape her wrath next time. She wouldn’t let him get away with what he had done to her family.

  She smiled.

  Not because of the impending danger, not because of the threats, and not because of her life of torment; she smiled because, next month, everything would be different.

  One way or another, her life would have changed.

  She would have her revenge.

  Chapter 5

  Beauty is a gift given randomly at birth, and Esther Wright had been blessed with the full package.

  Her eyes were a rare shade of cobalt, her sandy-blonde hair rested just beneath her shoulders, and her figure boasted a healthy feminine curve. Add to that lightly tanned skin, perfect teeth, and a smile that would bring any guy to his knees. Tex Hunter would have thought she was flawless… except for her severe lack of table manners.

  “Remind me never to have a coffee meeting with you again.” Hunter watched as Esther grabbed a chunk of blueberry muffin, eating it like a teenage boy who hadn’t seen food in days.

  “Why not?” She questioned as she slurped her coffee.

  Her lips almost vibrated as she sucked back the drink, turning the heads of the people next to her. Even in the busy Downtown Chicago café, filled with many suits refueling before their next deal and workers looking to escape their offices for a brief moment of respite, everyone heard her slurping.

  Even some of the customers with headphones turned their heads.

  Trying too hard to be alternative, the café instead just matched the style of every other alternative café in Chicago—dim lighting, Swedish furniture, dance music humming in the background. But their showpiece was the edgy art on the walls; pencil drawings of half-naked women holding animals, the art attempting to make a statement about the primal acts of human nature. Or perhaps they were attempting to make a statement about the lack of half-naked veterinarians. Only the artist would know.

  “Have you ever been told that you are the loudest coffee slurper in the world? You sound like a vacuum cleaner that has been charged up by a NASCAR mechanic.”

  “I’ve been told something similar many, many times. The last time was yesterday in fact. A guy next to me on the train platform asked if I could ‘consume my coffee a little quieter.’”

  “Any man who messes with you is either plain stupid or stupidly brave.” Hunter slapped the wooden table in laughter. “What happened to the poor guy?”

  “I told him I could shove the coffee up his tight butt if that would make him happier.”

  “That’s my Esther.” She might look like a model, but this woman would be more at home on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico than in a photo shoot on the beaches of Malibu.

  “Want to hear a joke?” She slurped a drop of coffee off her finger.

  “Is it racist, sexist, or really, really terrible?”

  “Don’t know.” She grinned. “I’ll tell you the joke, and you can make your own decisions.”

  “Go on then. Tell your joke.”

  “My uncle died the other day because we didn’t know his blood type. It was hard, but he helped us through it. He was a good guy. As we struggled to find out his blood type, he was encouraging us, even though he was dying. He kept shouting ‘Be positive, be positive!’”

  Hunter laughed and shook his head. He was sure that Esther was a construction worker in a past life.

  “If you don’t like that one, then you’ll like this one. It’s a lawyer joke.” She tried hard not to giggle. “My dad took an airline company to court for misplacing his luggage. He lost his case.”

  Hunter shook his head again before a slight smile escaped his lips. “That’s a really, really old joke and the years haven’t made it any better. You should stick to new jokes, and give up on telling the old ones.”

  “I’ve given up many things lately, including asking rhetorical questions. I mean, what’s the point?”

  “Ha!” He clapped his hands. “That’s good. You’ve got a winner there. How’s the plan for your stand-up comedy routine going?”

  “Not yet.” The smile disappeared from her face, replaced by a look of anxiety. “I’m not ready to stand up in front of people yet.”

  “If you want to be a comedian, then you’ll have to stand up in front of a room. That’s how it works, but I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. They’ll love you. People always love you. No matter where you go, people adore you. Even if your jokes were really disgraceful, people would still love you.”

  “But what if they don’t? What if I get up there and freeze again? I got booed off stage last time, remember?”

  Hunter wasn’t used to seeing this attitude from his legal assistant. She was the one that always made her presence felt, her name remembered, but the fear of public speaking was holding her back, keeping her dreams locked up inside a little box.

  “Courage is the acceptance of fear, not the absence of it.” Hunter tapped his index finger on the table. “My only advice would be—don’t eat
or drink on stage.”

  Esther broke out in a nervous smile. “Maybe one day I’ll get back up there. Maybe.”

  She placed her coffee cup down, gulped hard, and returned to her muffin sitting on its side, slightly destroyed by her attack.

  “So, what have you got for me?” He changed the conversation back to the case.

  She stopped powerfully munching on her blueberry muffin, licked each finger twice, and then reached into her handbag to pull out a file. “I’ve got—”

  Hunter raised his hand.

  She understood, finishing her mouthful before she continued.

  She loudly gulped down the food after minimal chewing and started again. “I’ve got some preliminary information about your new client, Robert Sulzberger. Son of a construction worker and stay-at-home mother, both long deceased. Grew up in poor housing in Naperville, Illinois. Dropped out of school, left his small town at sixteen, moved to Chicago, got into a web of drugs and stealing. Got caught stealing a sweater during a snowstorm, and was arrested but not charged. Then turned to the army as a way out. Said that in one of his political speeches: ‘The army provided me the structure and family that I needed.’”

  “He’s been very vocal about how the army was his ‘real’ family.”

  “Got out of the army after ten years, and went on the reality show Island Survivor. He won it, and the public loved him. The lovable giant with integrity. With that level of popularity, someone convinced him to go into politics, and it was all downhill from there.” She leaned forward. “We deal with a lot of interesting characters in this job, and this guy is up there. In politics, he’s been the complete opposite to what we saw on Island Survivor. He doesn’t seem to have a spine. He flip flops between different ideas all the time, and never stood up for his constituents. I have no idea how he got voted onto the council.”

  “He was charismatic, good-looking—and thanks to good investment decisions—wealthy. After his success on reality television, he wanted to do good for his fellow returning veterans, and he entered politics believing that he could make a difference to someone, somewhere. He believed that politics was the way to change society, make the world a better place, but I think he quickly found out that he was wrong.”

  “But where was the substance?” Esther appealed. “The policies? He ran for office on the back of nothing.”

  “It wasn’t important. Fame was more important.”

  “It shouldn’t be a popularity vote. Politics is about the best person for the job, not the most popular.”

  “It’s a lot more complicated than that, Esther.” Hunter swirled his espresso, the tiny cup almost swallowed by his hands. “He also had a lot of money from his backers. Plus, he united a group of people who felt their voice wasn’t being heard. Veterans felt they finally had someone in office who they could trust; he was one of their own. His whole campaign was built around what he could do for his fellow vets. There are a lot of vets in his council ward, and he said all the right things for them.”

  “But when push came to shove…”

  “He changed his mind. He agreed with what his backers and mayor wanted. They wanted to demolish the current community center to make way for the new stadium, so they could try and corner the younger voters. He was told that if he didn’t change his vote, he would lose his donors, and then the Mayor wouldn’t endorse him in the next election.”

  “It shouldn’t be like that, and it shouldn’t be about keeping your job.” She shook her head. “Politics should be about doing what’s right for your people.”

  “Henry Kissinger once said that ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.” He smiled. “Robert’s a politician. That’s his job. He’s got to look at the whole picture. He could do more good for the people of Chicago by voting for the party politics than he could by standing up for his vote. He would have achieved nothing if he stuck to his vote. They still would’ve found a way for the stadium to go ahead. The development was too important to the Mayor’s reelection.”

  “Well, from the outside, he appeared to be the perfect politician. Good teeth, nice wife and child, nice house, nice suits. From the outside, it looked like he had the ideal life...”

  “I feel like that’s not the end of your sentence.”

  “But you never know what happens behind closed doors.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I found out that the wife, Kim Sulzberger, bought a registered gun one month ago.”

  “Interesting.” Hunter paused. “What sort of gun?”

  “A Glock handgun. She walked into the Midwest Sporting Goods store on Plainfield Rd, registered herself, and bought a handgun. It’s all on paper. I fluttered my eyelids, and the owner slipped me the file.”

  “You do have nice eyelids.” He laughed. “Do you think it was for protection? Worried about the public’s reaction to her husband’s choices?”

  “Who knows? Could be revenge. Obviously, things weren’t right in their perfect life.”

  “Maybe she knew he had a new lover? Maybe she wanted revenge on him for that? It would be very easy for her to set him up.”

  “She would have known about Robert’s new woman. Nothing would have gotten past Kim Sulzberger. She’s on community boards, on the neighborhood watch, an active member of many blog websites. It took me hours to go through all her Facebook comments in the last year alone, and they were all quite attacking. This is a woman who loves drama and being a part of it all. Maybe that’s how she gets her kicks.”

  Esther was a very skilled woman. The only child of a Chicago beat cop; she had seen enough of that side of the law growing up. When she’d watched her dominant father arrest her boyfriend for a minor drug infringement, she knew she had to stick up for the disadvantaged.

  Her father tried to push her into becoming an officer, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of picking on the ‘little guy’. When Hunter employed her, her father hated the fact that she was working for Tex Hunter, and pleaded with her to change her mind. He was more concerned about his colleagues’ reactions than her career. He even told her that she should go out, meet the right guy, get married, and stay at home to raise his grandchildren.

  That statement had made the decision for her, and six years later, Hunter couldn’t be happier with that choice.

  “What happens next to our new buddy?”

  “His bail hearing is this afternoon, and we’ll apply to suppress his name on the files. I don’t think we’ll get the suppression order, but he should make bail, and then we can start to build this defense. I’ve already got Ray on the case.”

  “Ray Jones?”

  “Only the best for this case, Esther. He’s the best private investigator going around, and he owes me a few favors. He didn’t think twice about working on this case—he’s researching all of Robert’s connections. As for me, I’m going to talk to the arresting officer, and see if we can get any extra information.”

  “Chances of winning the case?”

  “At this point, slim to none. We don’t have much to go on yet, and we don’t have any information about the only real lead.” Hunter finished the espresso full of enough punch to get him through the next hour. “Robert’s a good man who’s done a lot for his country and people, but I don’t think that’s going to keep him out of prison for long.”

  “A good man who’s hated.”

  “He’s really hated behind bars. He’s already a target, and if he’s convicted, he’ll be dead within a year. Robert Sulzberger is the type of person that can actually make a change in the world; he’s got the skills and motivation to make people’s lives better. He’s the type of man that we have to keep out of prison.” He finished his drink. “And I’m going to make sure that happens.”

  Hunter threw a few bills on the table and began to make his way to the door of the busy café.

  “Wait,” Esther complained as she stood to leave. “I haven’t finished my muffin.”

  He turned around to
say something, but Esther had already shoved the remaining half into her mouth.

  “I’m… ready… ugh,” she mumbled with food dropping out as she dusted down the front of her jacket with her hands. “I’m good. Let’s go.”

  Hunter sighed, shaking his head. “Just finish chewing before you get back into the office.”

  Chapter 6

  The world buzzed around Hunter as he stood next to the Union Park outdoor basketball court, a takeaway coffee cup in each of his hands.

  Looking out of place in the area dominated by loose T-shirts, long shorts and brand-name socks, Hunter stood tall in his fitted suit. Not only did his dress sense look out of place, but he also felt like dishing out life advice to every young person that whizzed past him. The park was situated between a nice suburb, and a not-so-nice suburb, creating a space that felt comfortable enough for a family picnic under the evergreen trees during the day, but not comfortable enough to walk through at night without a police escort.

  The basketball courts were separated from the adjoining tennis courts by a tall, chain-link fence, making the enclosure seem more like a prison yard. And the pickup basketball games were played in the same manner.

  Chicago PD Detective Jemma Knowles looked at home on the other side of the white line, bouncing the basketball in her left hand, holding out her right hand as a defense, and mouthing off to the young men on the court. Despite being at least twenty years older than them, she moved between them with agile ease, springing up to lay the ball into the hoop.

  There were two places that the forty-one-year-old, six-foot-tall, African-American woman felt comfortable—flying around a basketball court, taking down macho young men, and wearing her badge in society as a Chicago PD, taking down macho older men.

  With one tattoo sleeve, usually covered during working hours, Knowles could be mistaken for a rough street player, but whoever thought that would do so at their own peril.