I looked over at the two girls, who were now huddled together on the leather couch in my office lobby. Literally huddled together. Rina was speaking softly to Abby, and I could hear various words. I gathered that she was comforting her and telling her that everything was going to be okay. I did hear something about how I was going to fix the problem.
No, I wasn’t going to fix the problem. Not if I wanted to keep my law license, because if I took those girls to my home, I would be guilty of kidnapping. Getting a felony slapped on me would tend to make the Missouri Bar to not look on me so kindly, to say the very least.
“You can’t talk to me like that. Just because you have problems making everything work doesn’t mean that I do too. I told you before that I hired help to stay with those two girls when I had to work late. I also had them come to my office during some really late nights. And, yes, I have had a problem with alcohol in the past, but that’s all in the past.” I crossed my fingers behind my back and held my breath. I had no idea if Alexis knew about my month-long bender, and I prayed that she didn’t. If she ever got wind of that, I would never get those girls for sure.
To my relief, she didn’t contradict that last statement. “I know what you’re saying, and I agree, you were doing a good job with them. But the answer is still no. Those girls need to be in a home where there is a mother and father, and they need to be with somebody who has time for them. No offense, but that somebody isn’t you. Now please send them back. Within the next few minutes. I’ll be getting a phone call from the Browns any second now, and I want to be able to tell them that the girls are on their way home.”
“Don’t they get a say? At all? I mean, they made their way over to my office and they want to stay with me. They don’t want to stay with the Browns. Doesn’t that mean anything at all to you? They’re old enough to decide, or they should be. They’re very mature. They should have a say.”
“They do. But, of course, their wishes are but one piece of the puzzle for me. Just one factor out of many. And that’s the only factor favoring you.”
I looked over at them again, dreading what I was going to have to tell them. It needed to be done, however. If I didn’t want to get charged with kidnapping, it was going to have to be done.
“I’ll be filing a motion for temporary custody tomorrow morning,” I said to Alexis.
“You do that. I’ll oppose it, of course.”
“Can you at least do one thing? Can I take them back to the orphanage? I really don’t want to…”
“No. You have to take them back to the Browns. File your motion with the court, but don’t expect anything to happen. There’s no reason for them not to be there. In fact, if they file a petition to adopt them, I won’t oppose that. At least, not right now. I’ll have to get the results of the home study in, but it looks good right now. Besides, you know that I have no say as to what you can do with the kids tonight. Neither does Rick.” Rick Haverford was the attorney for the Browns, and I knew that he was going to have to sign off on my taking the kids anywhere but back to the Browns that evening.
I sighed, looking over at the kids, and thinking hard. I didn’t want to take them back, not after what had happened over at the Browns that night. I had no idea if they were telling me the truth, but if they were, that was really serious.
“Fine,” I said. “Listen, I didn’t want to do this. I really didn’t, because I know that it’s gonna open up a whole can of big fat worms. But I think that I’m going to have to call the police. What these girls have told me warrants that.”
I hated getting the cops involved. That would inevitably escalate anything that was going on in the home, and it would put a lot of undue pressure on two traumatized girls. But Alexis was really leaving me no choice.
Alexis sighed. “Don’t do that. You’re going to cause a huge mess over there, when it probably isn’t warranted. Kids say things to implicate their foster families. It’s what they do. It’s what Rina and Abby are probably doing.”
“Probably doing. Probably. And what if they’re telling the truth. What then?”
“Take them back and file your motion. I’m not going to go round and round with you tonight. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to go to bed. It’s late.” At that, she hung up on me.
I swallowed hard as I looked at the phone in my hand.
“What?” Rina asked. “What did she say?”
I straightened my spine. “I have to take you back to your home. To the Browns.”
At that, Abby started to cry. It was as if she was holding back before because she had a glimmer of hope that she wouldn’t have to go back there, but, when I told her that I would have to take her back, the dam just burst.
“You can’t do that. You can’t make us go back there.” Rina was adamant.
“I’ll call the police,” I said to Rina. “I’ll call them right now and they’ll investigate and they’ll probably take you to a safe place tonight. Back to the children’s home where you went to after your mother died. And then I can-“
“No. Don’t call the police. We won’t talk to them,” Rina said.
“Why won’t you?” I asked her. “That’s the only way that you can prevent being taken back there. If I kept you at my house, the Browns would have me arrested for kidnapping.”
“We won’t talk to them because Abby has promised me not to call them. She said that Pete threatened her. He told her that he would kill us both if she went to the cops, and that the cops would never believe her anyhow, because the Browns are like the biggest contributors to all the charities that the cops are involved with. Just because they’re rich, the cops won’t hassle them. They’ll hassle us.”
“Well, then, I can’t take you to my home tonight and I can’t take you anywhere else, because that would be kidnapping.”
“How can it be kidnapping? We came to you. You didn’t forcibly take us,” Rina said.
“Kidnapping doesn’t have to be forcible. The Browns are your legal guardians, and if I kept you away from them, I would be guilty of kidnapping in the state of Missouri. I’m sorry, I just can’t…” My voice trailed off. I just couldn’t what? Risk my law license and my freedom? And why shouldn’t I? After all, these girls would have their mother with them if it weren’t for me. They wouldn’t be in the position where the freak of a father and an even bigger freak of a brother were tormenting them.
“You can’t what?” Abby was finally speaking, and I looked into those big brown eyes and I knew that she was telling me the truth. She was genuinely terrified. “You can’t what?”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. “I can’t let you go back there. You’ll come home with me tonight and I’ll file a motion with the court in the morning to have you come and stay with me for good.”
Rina and Abby both jumped up off the couch and hugged me. “I knew it. I knew it,” Abby said. “Rina told me that you weren’t going to do this for us, but I knew that you would. Thank you, Aunt Harper. Thank you.”
I sighed as I hugged them back. I was opening up a can of worms that was going to lead to me going to jail myself. I didn’t need this hanging over me when I was working on a possible capital murder trial.
I didn’t need the hassle, but I needed to protect these girls. I couldn’t protect their mother, but I would be damned if I couldn’t protect them.
CHAPTER TEN
Of course, after I took Rina and Abby home, I knew that there was going to be hell to pay. I looked at Rina, who was sitting next to me in my car. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. “If we go home, then the cops are going to be meeting me there. I can almost guarantee that. Alexis knows what I’m up to, and, as soon as your foster parents come home and see that you’re not there, they’re going to be calling the police on me.”
I gripped the wheel, my mind spinning. What was I doing? Still trying to assuage my guilt, for one, but, for another, I genuinely cared about these two girls. But my priority still had to be on Heather’s case, and getting
arrested was going to make doing that extremely tough.
“Where are we going to go?” Abby asked me from the back seat. “We can’t go to your home, so where can we go to?”
“I’m thinking.” My mind started to race. What was my next move? Hide these girls? How would that work out? It wouldn’t. It couldn’t.
I finally sighed. I promised the girls that I wouldn’t take them back to the Browns, yet I couldn’t possibly think of an alternative that was going to work for any period of time. Even if I hid them, the jig would eventually be up, and they would be returned to the Browns, who would be good and angry at both of them. And I would be put into jail immediately. And possibly prison at some point. Nobody would win in that situation.
“Girls, I-“
“Don’t say it, Aunt Harper,” Abby said. “Please don’t say it.”
“I’ll file a motion with the court as soon as possible, I promise, to try to get custody.”
“Didn’t you say that Alexis isn’t for that?” Rina was wise beyond her years and understood perfectly the dynamics of her and Abby’s case.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t file a petition with the court to try to get you back.”
“But the judge is going to side with Alexis, isn’t she?”
“Not necessarily. Really, we should get the police involved.”
“No police,” Rina said firmly. “Pete is dangerous. We’re both afraid of what will happen once the cops get involved.”
I felt like I was in the ultimate no-win situation. The girls were going to have to return to a place where there was physical and sexual abuse, and there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it. I gripped the steering wheel with frustration, angry that Alexis refused to listen to me and angry that there was little that could be done in this situation to help them.
Most of all, I was angry, furious, with myself.
I looked behind me, and looked at Abby. She was cowering in the backseat, literally shaking. Her eyes were huge and she had silent tears streaking down her cheeks. Her breathing was labored and heavy – I could see her chest heaving up and down, up and down. She bit her lower lip and looked out the window.
Rina looked behind her at her twin. “Don’t cry, Abby, please don’t cry. Aunt Harper will get this straight. She will. She loves us, and she won’t make us go back there. Come on, Abby, please. Please.”
I sighed, trying to figure a way out of this for the two girls. If something happened to either of them, and I could possibly have stopped it…I didn’t think that I could live with myself. Yet, what could I do? Alexis wasn’t listening to me, and the judge would have my balls in a jar, if I had balls to put into a jar. There was just nothing that I could do.
“Rina, don’t tell her that. Don’t tell her that I’m not going to take her back to the Browns, because I have to.”
“No, you don’t,” Rina said.
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll call Sophia and have her take you to a hotel tonight. It wouldn’t do to take you to my house, because the only thing that will happen is that the cops will show up and take you guys back to the Browns. Then tomorrow I’ll file a motion with the court to get temporary custody. I’m sorry, that’s the only thing that I can do tonight. I’ll definitely have to get Alexis on our side for this, and I have to figure that one out. This is the best I can do.”
Rina looked back at Abby, who said nothing, but nodded her head. “Okay. If that’s what you have to do, then do it. It’s better than going back there.”
My hands gripped the steering wheel, wondering what kind of blowback I was going to get for this. Was I still technically guilty of kidnapping? I wasn’t their guardian, and I was keeping them away from their guardians without permission. The Browns were wealthy and could afford a high-dollar attorney to come after me.
I was going to have to cross that bridge when I came to it. My first priority was that the girls were safe.
In the back of my mind, however, I was worried about what my actions with the girls would do to Heather. I was going to be distracted and possibly in jail myself. Perhaps facing criminal charges.
I had to hope that none of these things were going to happen. But if they did, I had to be ready. And so did Heather.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was wrong about one thing - the cops didn’t show up at my door. However, I knew that it was only a matter of time, so I needed to get going.
To that end, I got to work on Heather’s case, while bracing myself for what was going to happen with the Rina and Abby case. I decided to get some subpoenas ready to go so that I could see the computer of Heather’s mom. I knew that there was something on there that was going to lead me to why Heather’s mom was acting so strangely. Heather told me that her mom wasn’t overly religious while she was growing up, and then the mom ended up getting “Jesusy” as Heather put it. Why was this? I needed to see her e-mails and the websites that she frequented, in order to get the answer to that question. Plus, I was going to have to see if she had seen any doctors prior to her death – doctors who might be able to testify to her mental fitness. I would have to find a way around the doctor-patient privilege for that, which was going to be tricky, to say the very least.
Plus, I was going to have to depose the friends of the mother and, of course, I was going to have to depose the “therapists” at that abhorrent Rainbow International clinic. In short, I was going to have to put together a case for the jury that showed that Heather’s mother was, more likely than not, crazy enough to come at her daughter with a butcher knife. At the same time, I was going to have to somehow explain why a butcher knife was never recovered from the scene. That little detail nagged at me – I could imagine how much it was going to nag at a jury. If I couldn’t explain that one away, all bets were off – Heather would lose her self-defense case and there would be very little I could do for her, except plead her out.
Because one thing was for sure – Heather killed her mother. There would be no SODDI defense, no pointing fingers at somebody else. Heather told me that she did it, so that took away SODDI right there. Some other dude didn’t do it – she did it. Self-defense was literally my only card to play. Without that, I might as well plead her. And, if I pled her, I would be sentencing her to almost a certain death.
The pressure was ramped up because of the limited options I had. I had to paint the mother as a crazy lunatic, and that meant that I had to investigate that mother eight ways to Sunday.
Tammy knocked on my open door. “Hey,” she said. “Can I come in?”
I nodded, looking over my subpoena. “Give this to Pearl,” I said, handing Tammy the subpoena. “To type this up. I need to get ahold of the computer of Heather’s mother and I need to subpoena some people for a deposition. And-“
“I’ll give these to Pearl,” she said. “But I wanted to find out what happened with Rina and Abby?”
I sighed and sat back in my chair. “That’s become a nightmare. Those girls are being abused, mentally and sexually. At least one of the girls has been abused sexually, and the other one is in grave danger of that. I don’t think that there’s physical abuse just yet, but they told me that both the father and the brother have explosive tempers and they seem terrified of both of them. I called Alexis, and she doesn’t want to believe me. So, I took the girls to a hotel last night instead of taking them back to the Browns. I called Sophia to watch them there. I’ve…” I trailed off. “I just couldn’t take them back there.”
“You opened a can of worms,” Tammy said. “But that’s a tough one. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“They begged me not to,” I said. “Listen, I have to get these subpoenas out the door, just in case the cops show up here to take me down. I fully expect that to happen.”
Tammy sighed and made a temple with her fingers as she examined me. “You’re still beating yourself up, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Let me. But it’s mo
re than that – I genuinely love those two little girls. They’re a part of me. I don’t care that the adoption wasn’t approved. When they hurt, I hurt. They don’t have their mother because of me. There’s no way that I can let them suffer because of what I did. I know what you’re thinking and I know what you’re going to say. Please don’t bother with telling me how I’m screwing up, because believe me, I know that I am. I know.”
“Well, at least you know.” She raised her eyebrows and her voice got really small. “Alexis has been calling all morning. I think you might be right about the cops thing. She’s pissed and she’s really upset that she doesn’t know where they are. I think that everybody is going to end up in court about this mess either today or tomorrow.”
“I know. She’s been blowing up my cell phone too. I’ve been ignoring it. I have to get going on Heather’s case because she’s been assigned to the rocket docket. There’s not going to be a ton of time to get everything done that needs to be done.”
“Get the subpoenas out and then talk to Alexis. You can’t ignore her forever. That will only piss her off. She can possibly prevent you from going to jail for what you did. Call her. And, while you’re at it, tell her where the children are.”
I shook my head. One disaster at a time. “Let me give this to Pearl,” I said, going out to the lobby of the suite where Pearl, our secretary and receptionist, sat.
I approached Pearl, who was my African-American secretary. She was slim and pretty, with dark skin, braids and a gap between her teeth. She was talking to somebody on the phone and I saw her roll her eyes and purse her lips. “Ms. Winters, I-“ She paused, looking at me and shaking her head. “I told you, Ms. Ross is busy. Busy. She will call you when she’s out of court…how do you know that she’s not in court…traffic court…she’s not answering her cell phone because she’s in traffic court…I will.”
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