The soldiers asked her questions about Cary, and she answered with what little information she could provide.
While Cara bought the soldiers beers, they made calls on her behalf to other soldiers on base. By the time Jesse, Bobby, and Darrel were finishing their third round, Cary Jones had been located, and the number to his cell phone was triumphantly handed over to Cara.
Cara signaled Britt that it was time for another round. She was still nursing her first beer. “You gentlemen have been such a big help,” she said, “that drinks are going to be on my tab all night, as long as you promise to take a cab home.”
“You’re not leaving, are you?” asked Jesse.
“For now,” she said, “I’m just excusing myself to call Cary.”
“And you really don’t have a boyfriend?” asked Darrel.
“I really don’t have time for a boyfriend,” said Cara. “My work keeps me very busy.”
“‘Lady Lawyer,’” said Bobby, “we agree with your stipulation to avail ourselves of alternative transportation in lieu of driving ourselves in exchange for continued libation on this eve.”
When Cary Jones answered his phone, his voice wasn’t what Cara expected. He was soft-spoken and sounded diffident, nothing like the three testosterone-driven males with whom she had been drinking.
“Since Jones is such a common surname,” said Cara, “I want to make sure you’re the same Cary Jones who grew up in Gaffney and recently returned from Afghanistan.”
“Well,” he said, “I did grow up in Gaffney, and I did just return from Afghanistan. What else do you want to know?”
Cara asked him a few more questions and made sure she had the right soldier. When she was satisfied she had found her man, Cara had to come clean.
“I am sure you are wondering what this is all about Mr. Jones. I know earlier you heard from other soldiers that a friend of a friend of yours from Gaffney wanted to talk with you, but I am afraid that’s not the case. I apologize for using that false story to track you down.”
“It didn’t quite sound right,” he said. “Or as we might say in Gaffney: Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
“I promise not to do that to your leg. I am a lawyer, Mr. Jones, and I’m hoping you’ll agree to meet with me. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I’d like to discuss what happened to you in Afghanistan. I should mention that my firm is suing Arbalest. They are the weapons manufacturer that made Sight-Clops. We’re pretty sure that Sight-Clops is a defective product, and its use has resulted in many deaths and injuries.”
From his end of the phone Cara heard a loud exhalation of breath. “Mr. Jones?” she asked.
“Cary,” he said. “You are the first person to ever call me Mr. Jones.”
“Cary,” she said, “it sounded as if you had a strong reaction to what I just said.”
“I told everyone my gunsight was off. I said it had to be way off. But no one believed me.”
“I believe you,” said Cara.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“I’d like to talk about what you experienced.”
“I don’t know if that would be good,” he said. “Everyone tells me I need to put what happened behind me.”
“I imagine that’s a lot easier said than done.”
He didn’t answer, but Cara knew his silence spoke plenty.
“I’m not much of a philosopher, Cary, but I have always tried to follow a little bit of advice my mom gave me every time I was unwilling to let loose of all the things that used to make me angry. She had a quote she borrowed that said: ‘For every minute you hold your anger inside, you give up 60 seconds of piece of mind.’”
Jones broke his silence. “Your mom sounds like a smart lady.”
“I think so too,” said Cara.
“I don’t think the brass would want me talking about what happened.”
“Not even to an old friend of an old friend from Gaffney?” she asked.
She made him laugh, even though he sounded out of practice. “Have you ever even been to Gaffney?” he asked.
“The only time I’ve been in South Carolina was when I went to Myrtle Beach on spring break with some college friends a few years ago.”
“Did all of you act silly?”
“I am pretty certain that we did, if I remember correctly.”
“How old were you?”
Cara thought about it. “I think I was nineteen.”
She heard something that approximated a laugh or a grunt from his end of the line. “What?” she asked.
“I shot and killed a man when I was nineteen while on spring break in Afghanistan. Now I’m twenty years old and I feel like an old man. I should have been getting silly in a place like Myrtle Beach or Fort Lauderdale.”
“Look,” said Cara, “I’m up here from Spanish Trace. I don’t know Fayetteville other than avoiding Bragg Boulevard. How about we meet up? If you don’t want to talk about Afghanistan, that’s fine. I promise I won’t push you. All you’ll be doing is spending a little time with a friend of a friend from Gaffney.”
“I’m off-duty tomorrow until zero thirteen hundred hours,” he said.
“As it happens,” she said, “so am I.”
They had agreed to meet at a restaurant called the Waffle Spot at “zero nine hundred hours.” Military time notwithstanding, Cara arrived fifteen minutes early. Despite her being overly punctual, Cary was already there waiting out front.
She knew who he was without ever having seen a picture of him. Maybe it was the way he was looking at her, as if trying to identify someone he only knew by voice. Perhaps it was his forlorn look that gave him away. Or she might have been clued in by the bags under his eyes that advertised his hard service. Or maybe it was just that this soldier reminded Cara of her brother, Andy. The last time she’d seen Andy, Cara had been surprised at how much he’d grown up. He’d deferred going to college to have the opportunity of working with at-risk children from the Middle East, but in the fall he would be starting up at the University of Florida.
“Cary?” she asked.
“Cara?” he said.
The two of them shook hands. “It’s probably good we’re by ourselves,” said Cara. “Our names are just too similar. We’d have to listen closely to see if someone was saying ‘Cara’ or ‘Cary.’”
Cary nodded. He had a hard time looking at Cara for more than a second or two. It was clear that it had been some time since he was in the company of a pretty, young woman.
“Are you hungry?” Cara asked.
When he nodded, Cara decided to take up both sides of the conversation. Soon enough she was sure Cary would find his confidence, and with it, his voice. She would see to that.
“I was so glad you picked a place with waffles,” she said. Cara focused on putting him at ease. She knew she needed to be less lawyer and more everyday Cara.
“When I was a girl I always looked forward to Sundays because that was the day we’d go out for waffles. Usually we went after church. And I always wanted a pile of whipped cream on my waffles. There was this one server who would make faces in the whipped cream using blueberries and strawberries.”
Cary was nodding and smiling as he opened the door for Cara. Since returning from Afghanistan he had been trying to reconnect with America, but without much success. Maybe eating waffles with a pretty girl would help him find his way back.
Cara and Cary were on their third cup of coffee. The breakfast crowd was gone and the lunch crowd was beginning to trickle in. Cara hadn’t yet asked him a single question about Afghanistan, although it seemed as if they’d talked about almost everything but that.
“You really do need to meet Andy,” said Cara. “The two of you are just about the same age. If you visit Florida I’ll make sure he shows you around.”
“I’d appreciate that,” said Cary.
“Do you know what you want to do when you get out?”
>
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. For three years I’ve had someone else telling me what to do. I kind of have this dream of getting back to nature and decompressing for a few months from everything I’ve been through.”
“I can understand your wanting to do that.”
Cary reached into his pocket, pulled out several coins, and placed them in front of Cara. The coins weren’t elaborately decorated, although there was some Arabic script on each.
“Ahmad sold me these coins,” said Cary. “They don’t look like much, do they? That’s because image-making is forbidden by Islam.
“Two and three times a week he would come and try to sell me something. I bought a Soviet soldier’s cap and some medals, even though I didn’t want to hear the story of how they had been obtained. The Afghanis didn’t care that the Soviets were a superpower, just as they don’t care that we’re one. They sent them packing, and soon they’ll send us packing.”
Cara nodded to show she was listening.
“Ahmad was always selling me things for ‘Mrs. Cary.’ He couldn’t believe I didn’t have a wife or girlfriend back home. Over time, he got me to buy lapis lazuli jewelry, jingle chains with beads, and jewelry boxes. Everything came with a story. That’s what I liked most, hearing his stories.”
Cary cleared his throat and looked away for a few seconds. “After I shot his grandfather,” he said, “Ahmad never came back. The army gave some settlement to his family. I wish I had a settlement, and I’m not talking money. I told my superiors that the gun-sight was defective. I said that I had absolutely locked on to my target. And that target was nowhere near the heart of an Afghan grandfather.”
“I know you’ve been beating yourself up ever since that happened,” said Cara. “But it wasn’t your fault. You were told to trust your equipment and trust what your eyes told you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You should have seen the way Ahmad looked at me. His eyes still follow me. I can’t escape them. I never got to tell him how sorry I was. I never got the chance to say it was a terrible accident. I hope more than anything that you’re right about it not being my fault, but I still feel there’s blood on my hands.”
“I am so sorry, Cary,” she said.
“You and me both,” he said.
22
COPS’ CLUB
The day had not begun well for Gina Romano. When she awakened, she couldn’t find her cell phone. That had put her in full panic mode. Her cell phone was essentially her life. She used it to take notes and make recordings. It woke her in the morning and played gentle music at night. All of her contacts were on her phone.
Peter called her cell number from various spots around the house, but they hadn’t heard the familiar ring tone. Then she and Peter had searched the house, but came up empty.
For once, her younger brother was the voice of reason. “Your phone didn’t get up and walk away,” he said. “And since you made calls on it last night, and you didn’t go out, we know it has to be somewhere in the house.”
Then Peter had stepped up for her big time and said, “You go to work. I promise I’ll turn the house upside down looking for your phone. And I promise I’ll find it.”
When her desk phone rang she was hoping to see Peter’s name on the display, but it was Carol.
“We’ve got the name of that cop and that led us to Bull’s-eye.”
Gina’s day suddenly improved. “Back it up,” she said. “You linked our bad cop with bull’s-eye?”
“Officer Ron Thursby,” said Carol, “works out of the thirteenth precinct. That’s on the South Side. He’s got quite a reputation there, but for the past eighteen months he has been on special assignment, or more accurately, union business. His boss is former Chicago cop and deputy chief Tom Lutz, who now heads up the CPD union.”
“What’s the bull’s-eye connection?” asked Gina.
“Lutz works out of Libertyville Gun Club,” said Carol. “The place was built as a shooting range for Chicago cops, but most of its facilities are also open to the public. In addition to being an indoor and outdoor shooting range, it has a gym, a pool, and workout facilities. There’s also a meeting hall for union business. Corporate money contributed to the building of Libertyville. Among those corporate donors was Arbalest.”
“Angus referenced Libertyville,” said Gina. “He suspected there was collusion going on between Arbalest and the CPD union. Angus also said that lots of questionable parties were thrown in what he referred to as Libertyville’s ‘private facilities.’”
“I guess in his reports Angus didn’t call Libertyville by its cop name,” said Carol.
Gina finally made the connection. She was angry at herself that it had taken her this long to figure it out. “The cops call it Bull’s-eye!”
“Bingo,” said Carol. “Out front of the club there is this display, a big slab of marble or granite, where some sculptor carved out a bull’s-eye.”
“Can we put this Thursby or Lutz anywhere in Florida around the time Angus died?”
“I knew you’d ask me so I already have my team looking into that now.”
Gina took a moment to respond. Angus’s face was seared into her memory. It had taken all his strength to try and toss her clear of the moving vehicle. Up until now, she hadn’t been sure what his last words had been. From essentially beyond the grave, he had yelled, “bull’s-eye.” She returned to the present. “Great job, Carol. Tell me when you know more.”
Ten minutes later she got another wonderful call. “Hey, Sis,” said Peter, “Do you sleepwalk?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why was your phone jammed under that mattress of yours?”
“You found my phone under the mattress?”
“It was pushed about two feet in.”
“How strange.”
“I’m thinking the alarm went off, and you reacted by pushing your phone under the mattress.”
“I have no recollection of that.”
“That’s why I asked about your sleepwalking.”
“When I see you, I’m giving you a big hug,” she said.
Peter was not one who enjoyed hugs from his big sister. “How about you promise not to hug me if I bring your phone to work?”
“Deal! You are a lifesaver!”
23
I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT
In most cases, the legal system moves at a glacial pace, but Madsen-Zimmer continued to be a cooperative participant in Gina’s hurry-up game. Gina was now even more certain that someone high-up in Arbalest was giving them no choice but to speed things along.
Her suspicion was that Quentin Carter himself was calling the shots. Carter had the ear of Arbalest’s owner Tim Knapp. Usually the only time that lawyers for the defendant worked this quickly was if they were being ordered to, or if they were confident of a dismissal. Gina wondered if she was missing something. She knew the case inside out from both sides of the argument. In her own mind she had prepared a case that would withstand any motion Madsen-Zimmer could present for dismissal. Was it possible Madsen-Zimmer had some rabbit ready to pull out of a hat?
It was always hard for a trial lawyer to not be paranoid.
The day after Madsen-Zimmer submitted its filed brief to Seventh District Court’s Judge Lyn Sanders asking for a dismissal of Robert Diaz’s case against Arbalest, Gina and her team met in a conference room and began pouring through the paperwork. The substance of Madsen-Zimmer’s brief was that the suit should be dismissed because Arbalest was a critically important contractor to the US government and therefore immune from punishment.
For Gina, the Madsen-Zimmer brief was oddly anticlimactic. Although the Madsen-Zimmer team had managed to come up with thirty different reasons to dismiss the Robert Diaz whistle-blower suit, Gina couldn’t help but think that their arguments and the precedents they cited were overly basic and routine. Judging by the sounds her team was making as they went through the same paperwork, those were their thoughts as well.
&
nbsp; Madsen-Zimmer’s first defense was to deny that anything improper had ever taken place on the part of Arbalest. That was followed by the argument that, yes, something criminal might have occurred, but the statute of limitations had run out, and the case against them should be dismissed. From there, they argued that even if Arbalest was involved in any wrongdoing, Diaz was not the proper party to bring a claim against them.
“Let’s see,” said Ned. “They start with, ‘My client is innocent.’ And then they segue to, ‘And even if my client is guilty, the game is over because no one caught us soon enough.’ And then they go to my favorite: ‘Even if you have a case, your whistle-blower can’t bring a claim against his old company because he participated in the crime too. He was a criminal right along with us.’”
“I love the way they try to imply that they are above the law,” said Cara, “and that our suing Arbalest would put the safety of all America at risk.”
“More and more defense contractors are trying to use that one,” said Ned. “Their claim is that since they are working for the government and doing their best to keep America safe, they should get a pass when they screw up. I call it the ‘Old Glory’ defense.”
“I wonder if all those dead people they left behind would agree they were doing their best?” asked Cara.
“Their families sure don’t,” Ned answered, “but Arbalest contends that the government wanted a gunsight, and that’s what they provided them. Their contention is that’s the sum of their contract, and that there is nothing in it that says Sight-Clops had to actually work correctly.”
“Look at paragraph fifteen,” said Gina. “They might as well have submitted as evidence a Monopoly ‘Get out of Jail’ card. On the one hand they’re admitting Arbalest might have been wrong in accepting taxpayer money, but then they say because the federal government knew the gunsight was defective and bought it anyway, the company is not liable.”
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