Stolen Liberty: Behind the Curtain

by Thomas A. Watson

  “Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything either, unless it had to do with some imminent natural disaster. They cannot make an earthquake go away, for instance. No matter what the Supreme Court might fancy,” Charlie opined, more to distract Joan than anything else while he thought.

  Charlie spent little time in Federal Court. Not a lot of justice for the little guys getting meted out in those marble halls, and Charlie liked to think of himself as a champion for the underdogs. At least, in his city. So he didn’t have a lot of connections there, but he did have someone he could call. Later, he thought.

  “So, what do you think is going on here, Charlie? I’m not embarrassed to admit, I’m scared by what I saw today. Those men, they just marched in like they owned the building, and everyone in it,” Joan said, and shivered before continuing. “There was something in the way they moved, and in the way they looked at us. Made me feel like they actually wanted someone to protest or make a scene. The way they ordered the judges around like small children was clearly a statement, but for what?”

  Charlie didn’t comment right away, but when he did, he spoke with a decisive tone.

  “I might know some people I can call, but it will need to be later this evening. In the meantime, if it will make you feel better, you can come back with me to my place. No strings. I may have some more questions for you anyway. Things neither of us have thought about yet.”

  Joan looked hard at Charlie.

  “No strings? I mean, you seem like a nice guy and Sally said I could talk to you, but I hardly know you.”

  With a slight nod, Charlie offered, “Absolutely. If you’d rather, I can just see you home to your place and check in with you later. Your choice.”

  That was the right move, Charlie realized when he saw Joan’s eyes. Giving her that option sealed the deal for her. She was scared, more so than she wanted to let on, and Charlie just seemed too good to be true. Just by being a decent guy, which Charlie realized said a lot about the current state of mankind.

  “I’ll go with you. If that’s okay?”

  “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it, Joan.”

  “Yeah. I can see that about you,” Joan replied, and before he knew it, the woman was in his arms, clutching at him like he was the last life preserver on the Titanic.

  Chapter Eight

  Parma, OH

  Charlie’s condo was a three-bedroom unit, with a two-car garage on the ground floor and the living space on the second floor. He liked living in a fairly secure, gated community not too far from the Parma office. He might work in the revitalized Cleveland downtown, but he still preferred a place in the suburbs with trees and grass. As long as he didn’t have to trim the limbs or run the lawnmower. Not that he wasn’t handy, finally, after all those years of helping out with Kristi and the kids, but if he had the weekend off, he was either at the retreat or in Chicago.

  After he parked his extended cab pickup in the cramped garage, he got out and showed Joan where to park her Jetta on the street. Joan got a peek into a meticulously organized garage, including a tiny pop-up camper adjacent to the truck and rows of pegboards running around the room, holding a wide variety of tools and big boy toys neatly arranged. She was almost disappointed when Charlie closed the garage with a remote and instead, led her up the steps to the front door.

  Once inside the foyer, Charlie moved quickly to disengage the alarm and then guided Joan into the spotless kitchen and eat-in nook. Heading for the chromed wine chiller, he opened the glassed door to pull out two bottles of water.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” he asked, offering one of the bottles. “I’ve also got ginger ale, orange juice, and maybe a bottle or two of Shiner Bock. Anything harder, and I’ll have to hit the bar.”

  Joan, distracted, took the offered water bottle and continued to inspect the well-equipped kitchen. She was admiring the stainless-steel refrigerator when she saw the colorful, child-like crayon drawings affixed to both doors with magnets shaped like ladybugs and bullfrogs.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you had kids. Are they gone somewhere with your wife?” Joan asked, her voice going a touch uncertain. The last thing she wanted to do was cause a problem here, after all. She was looking for answers, and yes, maybe a little reassurance, but not to get in the middle of someone’s marriage. She knew if the neighbors saw him come in with her, then the wife would know within minutes of her return. Rather than opening the water bottle, she set it aside and started to head for the door, thinking this had been a terrible idea after all.

  Charlie just laughed, obviously enjoying her discomfort just a tiny bit.

  “Joan, relax. No wife, and no children, at least, none that I know of. Those pictures are from Emily and Clark, who are sort of my niece and nephew.”

  Feeling foolish for her snap judgment, Joan turned away from Charlie, so he couldn’t see the color rising in her cheeks. With her pale complexion, a blush was almost impossible to hide.

  This isn’t me, Joan told herself. I’m not some flighty little girl, and this is not a date gone bad. I came to this man for help, and maybe, she had to admit to herself, just maybe a little comfort.

  Joan wasn’t accustomed to being menaced by thugs with guns. Menaced, she mused, was just the way it had felt, too. Threatened without a word being uttered, by men who looked at her from behind those black sunglasses that made the wearers look like insects.

  “Ah, sorry. I just don’t know anything about you is all, Charlie. I mean, Sally said you were hard-working and smart, but she didn’t know anything about your personal life. Married, engaged, gay, straight or what. She said you worked long hours when she was at the firm, but she said she seldom saw you on weekends. You just disappeared.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie responded, gesturing at the artwork on the refrigerator and then to several framed photographs scattered on the walls in the kitchen and on through into the living room. Stepping over, she took a close look at one such photo and saw a pretty, petite woman wearing a baseball cap and kneeling next to two small children. A boy of maybe six years old and a little girl maybe a year or two younger. Not having children and being the youngest child in her family, Joan had no experience at guessing the ages of children.

  “Cute kids,” she said. “Is their mom your sister?”

  “Not exactly. She is a friend, a very close one.”

  “But you two aren’t dating…” Joan continued, for some reason curious about this mystery woman. Not that she had designs on Charlie, she told herself, but out of sheer curiosity.

  “No,” Charlie answered without hesitation, then stopped, opening the bottle of water and taking a long sip before continuing. Though the friends never made any secret of the initial reasons for their concern for Kristi, he still felt a moment’s pause before giving even a brief summary.

  “Her husband was our senior NCO, our platoon sergeant. We lost him on my last mission, the same one where I got burned. When he died, Kristi was pregnant with Emily, and Clark was just barely walking.”

  Charlie’s words, though lacking inflection, masked a pain that Joan could sense. And relate to, in a strange way. They’d both lost someone they held very dear.

  “That’s horrible,” she replied, involuntarily touching her fingers to her lips, as if she could call back the offending question. This wasn’t the first time her curiosity had resulted in hurt feelings. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.” Charlie said simply, and when he continued, his tone sounded like it was coming from a long distance away. “That was a terrible day, but those of us that survived, we did so only because First Sergeant Wheaton was there. So, if I try to keep his memory alive for his children, for his son that doesn’t remember him or his daughter who he never had a chance to hold, then that’s the least I can do.”

  “Can…can you tell me about what happened that day?” she asked timidly.

  “No,” he replied after a beat. “I can’t. Not today. And why would you
want to hear something like that?”

  “To try to understand,” Joan replied, picking up the bottled water again and absently spinning the plastic cap between her fingers. “To try to make sense of what it was like over there, and why he did it once he was home.”

  Even with so many other things on his mind, what Joan said had tumblers clicking in Charlie’s head.

  “Your brother, Sean, he had something happen after he got home,” Charlie’s words weren’t a question. He knew.

  “The Highway Patrol labeled it an accident,” Joan said, her voice cold as she rattled off the dry details. “He hit the bridge abutment going over one hundred and twenty miles per hour. No alcohol in his system, which was a first, and no sign of skid marks or anything that might indicate a loss of control.”

  “And that’s what you originally wanted to talk about,” Charlie supplied, and Joan nodded before continuing.

  “But now, I want to first find out what the heck is going on. The more I think of it, the more it bothers me. Those judges, when they got out, the ones I saw weren’t just upset. The more I think about it, the more I realize I was seeing something on their faces that should never have been there. Fear. Who has enough power to terrorize a group of entitled, head-in-the-clouds jurists, and why? Why try to scare one district full of judges into jumping a certain way?”

  Charlie snapped his fingers at that question, as Joan’s words triggered another thought and a recent memory.

  “I don’t know anybody here I could call who might know more than you do. But you just gave me an idea.”

  Charlie pulled out his cell phone and fiddled with the device, even as Joan was waving her hand in his face, trying to get an answer. What idea, she wanted to know, but Charlie never paused as he hit the send key and pressed the phone to his ear. The line sounded clear and he heard the distinctive pulse that used to be called a ‘ringing’ as the call went through.

  “Charlie!” the voice on the other end of the phone gushed, “How are you doing, old man?”

  Rolling his eyes at the other man, Charlie responded as politely as he could manage, given the nervous energy he suddenly felt running through his body.

  “I’m doing great, Bryce,” Charlie responded, trying but failing to get the same level of enthusiasm in his voice. “And how are things with Rodger?”

  “Wonderful as always,” Bryce responded. “But you didn’t call me out of the blue to ask me about my love life, did you?”

  Despite the way he sometimes let months go between calls, Charlie actually liked Bryce McKentrick, and always felt guilty for not staying in better contact with his friend. In many ways, he thought of Bryce like one might a puppy that sometimes piddled on the carpet but was just too amusing to be punished. Especially when Bryce had been drinking in law school, and there had been a carpet pissing incident that had gone unreported but well remembered. That boy just couldn’t handle his booze. Bryce had become more than just a law school classmate of his, and they’d somehow become friends in spite of the culture clash. Or maybe because of it.

  Charlie came from poor, blue collar roots, the son of an oft-unemployed welder who was more fond of the liquor bottle than his kids. Bryce, on the other hand, came from a wealthy and sophisticated family of professionals who encouraged their only son to explore his passions while backpacking through Europe before enrolling in law school.

  They’d met their first year of law school at Marshall, and quickly found their common areas of interest in Constitutional Law and history gave them something to talk about while they waded through the byzantine world of Contracts and the Uniform Commercial Code. Eventually, Charlie’s interests drew him into criminal law while Bryce finally decided to focus on the corporate route.

  After a few frustrating years as a prosecutor, Charlie managed the jump into personal injury work without too much head scratching, but he still relied on Bryce’s help from time to time when he needed to dig deep into the corporate shell games that some of his opponents utilized. Bryce, for his part, knew he could rely on Charlie’s tutelage if he got himself too deep into a liability or coverage issue for one of his corporate clients.

  They represented different ends of the spectrum: socially, politically, and even sexually, as Bryce was a proud, openly homosexual male, and Charlie remained, as Bryce put it, hopelessly hetero.

  One night had sealed their nascent friendship, when Charlie, for once overindulging in alcohol, had delivered an impassioned defense of the homosexual lifestyle that had all of his small study group helplessly rolling on the floor.

  “I love gay men,” Charlie had proudly announced, much to the surprise of the half dozen law students gathered at their favorite low rent bar. That proclamation had received boos from several of the other patrons, until Charlie proceeded to deliver the basis for his statement.

  “Look, even before I had my little ‘accident’,” he continued, gesturing vaguely to his face while undeterred by the naysayers, “I wasn’t exactly a superstar with the ladies. But look at Bryce,” he waved at his friend. “That guy has perfect teeth, perfect hair, and he talks real, real smooth. If he was straight, I’d have zero chance if we set our sights on the same little lady.

  “But fortunately, he likes the salami, and more power to him,” Charlie forged ahead, his voice growing stronger as he spoke. “Because that puts him out of the running when it comes to female companionship. So, the more gay men, the better my odds. Simple mathematics, you see?”

  Charlie, allowing his crooked grin to show in recollection of that night, brought his attention back to the here and now.

  “Actually, I am calling to check up on Rodger. You know, making sure he is good enough for my buddy Bryce.”

  “Puh-leeze,” Bryce responded, “like you care. I don’t hear from you for months and then all of a sudden, I get a call from my favorite knuckle-dragging right-winger. How are things ‘in the Bubble’?”

  “Har-Har,” Charlie deadpanned, accustomed to his friend’s knee jerk conservative bashing. “Seriously, I was calling to ask about Rodger. He’s still working for Judge Wallenstein?”

  “Yes, he is,” Bryce confirmed, his voice getting a little more serious as their conversation continued. “You have a case in Illinois now? You know, he can’t do anything, right?”

  “Bryce, Bryce, I would never ask something like that,” Charlie said, sensing his friend’s discomfort.

  After graduation, Bryce took a job with one of the biggest corporate transactional firms in the country and relocated to Chicago. After the move, he eventually started seeing Rodger who, the last Charlie heard, was working as court coordinator for one of the District Judges in the Northern District of Illinois situated there in Chicago. Even though Bryce made crazy money at his firm, Rodger wanted to keep making his own way and not become the prototypical housewife. Charlie could respect that attitude. This call was a longshot, but Charlie still felt like he should ask.

  “Nope, Bryce, I was just wondering if Rodger came home early today. You know, if the principal let the kids out early from school?”

  Bryce laughed then. “What? Are you in town? Is this some pathetic way of asking if we want to go out for dinner this evening? Hey, you can bring that lady friend of yours again. She’s adorable, don’t you know? Or you can leave it to me to round you up some suitable female companionship.”

  Charlie had to admit, for a gay man, Bryce had a good eye for the ladies. And matchmaking tendencies that would make Charlie’s own Irish grandmother sigh with envy. Since Bryce was an old married man, he now thought all his friends should be joining him in wedded bliss.

  “No, honest. I was just curious. A friend of mine mentioned her court received a surprise visit today from some unexpected guests, and I was just wondering if this was an isolated incident.”

  The line was silent for several seconds before Bryce replied. Now the man was serious, and all attempts at levity were absent from his voice.

  “No, that was yesterday. Rodger didn’t s
ay much about it, but he was plainly bothered by something he saw or heard. He called me on the way home, saying the staff had been dismissed for the rest of the day. But he’s right here if you want to ask him.”

  After making quick pleasantries, Charlie managed to confirm basically the same information as Joan had shared from this morning’s meeting. At least on the surface, the same entourage had showed up the day before in Chicago to deliver some kind of briefing. Or something.

  When Rodger handed the phone back to Bryce, Charlie heard a quick conversation take place, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then, Charlie’s friend came back on the line.

  “Is this something we should be worried about, Charlie? Is there something you’re not telling me? Some super-secret military plan in place?”

  Charlie had to fake a laugh this time, but his words remained serious as he replied.

  “Bryce, you know I’m out. All the way out. This is just weird because it sounds just like something that happened here today. At our federal courthouse. Maybe you can find out something, but I’ve got nowhere else to look.”

  “Yes, maybe I will. You know, maybe I can have my friends take a look too.”

  Charlie managed not to sigh at that. In addition to his long hours and hard work for his corporate masters, Bryce somehow found time to be active as a volunteer with the local chapter of the ACLU. As a skilled legal researcher and writer, Bryce contributed several hours per week just writing amicus briefs and the ever-constant Freedom of Information requests.

  Thinking about his conversation from earlier with Doctor Hammar, Charlie made one last comment before he ended the call.

  “Longshot suggestion, Bryce, but look for what you can find out about the water bill that Congress just passed. Unlikely, but that’s the only other odd thing I can think of right now.”

  “What water bill? Why is this the first time I am hearing of this?”

  “Maybe nothing, Bryce. Only other oddball event I can think of that comes close to coinciding with the dates.”