I shrugged my shoulders. “No. Of course not. But, trust me, if I find out that he did it, I’m going to ensure he gets his just desserts. That was one of the reasons why I went ahead and took the case – I can ensure that he doesn’t walk if he’s guilty as sin. And, yes, I’ve thought a lot about sinking him even if he didn’t do it. But I can’t really do that – if I do that, the real people are going to go free.”
I sighed and put my hands on the edge of the sink. “Axel, I’m having issues with this, I’m not going to lie. But there’s a part of me that feels that representing him will help me put what happened behind me. I’ve been carrying it around with me all this time. My therapist has told me that the rape is behind a lot of my issues.” I peeked out the kitchen into the living room and made sure that the girls were pre-occupied and couldn’t hear me. “And we need to talk about that.”
Axel nodded his head. “Let’s go out back,” he said. “I think that I know what you’re going to say to me.”
I got on my coat, and Axel did the same. The weather was getting colder and colder by the day. Soon there would be snow on the ground and the big oak tree in the backyard would have white branches. I was looking forward to it, yet dreading it at the same time. I loved the snow, because it reminded me that Christmas was right around the corner. Christmas was always my favorite time of year, for some reason. It meant family gatherings and holiday specials and Christmas-themed movies on the Hallmark Channel, which I loved.
Yet I hated the snow because I hated driving in it and the city was terrible about clean-up. The snow plows would pile the snow up on the sides of the streets, and I would have to scrape my car, because I didn’t have a garage. And I did a lot of walking, because I usually had to park far away from the courthouses downtown, and I hated walking through the snow.
But tonight, the air was crisp, but not cold. Even so, I felt a chill. I didn’t want to have this talk with Axel, but I knew that I had to.
We sat down on the backyard chairs, and I wrapped my coat around me tight. Axel was looking at me and I could almost read his thoughts.
He took my hand and I smiled. “Uh, Axel, I wanted to talk to you before things between us went further. I know that you are probably going to want to, uh, make love at some point. But I…” I shook my head and felt tears coming to my eyes. “I haven’t been intimate with anybody since the rape. I’ve pushed every guy away from me because I just can’t bring myself to make love with anyone. My therapist has tried to work with me about it, but, so far, I’ve been having problems. I associate the act of being intimate with fear and degradation and intimidation and pain. I’m so sorry.” By that time, I was crying, really crying, my hot tears running down my cheeks.
Axel nodded his head. “I understand, Harper. I do. Of course, at some point, I would like the two of us to make love, but it doesn’t have to be right away. I can wait. I’ll wait for as long as you need me to.”
I took a deep breath. “What if you have to literally wait forever? What if I can never get there? I mean, it’s been 17 years. It’s been 17 years, and I haven’t so much as dated a man since then. I can’t even think about doing that with a man. I just don’t know…”
He put his arm around me and kissed me on the forehead. “It’s okay, Harper, really.”
“No it’s not. It’s not. You deserve a real relationship. I can’t hold you back like that. I might never get to the point where I can make love without wanting to freak out, and that’s not fair to you.” My heart was breaking, because I really was falling in love with Axel. Yet, I just couldn’t hold him back like that. I was going to see my therapist this week, and I was going to have to try to work it out again, yet I didn’t think that I could. And if I couldn’t, how could things go forward with Axel or any other man? They couldn’t. I hated that fact, but I had to face it. Axel and I probably were going to have to only be friends.
I hated Michael that much more. He screwed me up, maybe for life. Because of him, I couldn’t be normal. He made me sick.
“Harper, I’m not going to give up on this.” He looked down at the ground. “I’m falling in love with you. And your girls. You’re worth waiting for. You’ll figure it out. You’re strong. I believe in you, Harper. And there’s no need to rush anything.”
He put his hand in my hair and kissed me softly. I closed my eyes, feeling the tingling, yet also feeling the fear. My heart was pounding and I felt my entire body shaking.
I pulled away. I didn’t want to lose control. I didn’t want to go further.
“I’m falling for you, too,” I told him. “But-“
“No buts. Seriously, I’m a very patient man.” He kissed me again and then kissed my forehead. “But I don’t see why you’re putting yourself through this. Representing him. How can you be unbiased?”
I took a deep breath. “I’ll admit it. I want him to fry. I’m actually hoping that he’s guilty, so that I can make sure that he fries. That would actually give me the most emotional satisfaction.”
“But if he’s not guilty? What happens if you find, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had no hand in killing that man. What then? You’re going to represent him and I know that you’re going to give it your all. Or, worse yet, what happens if he did do it and the jury finds him not guilty? Like with that John Robinson bloke. How are you going to handle that? I’m worried about you, Harper, I’m not going to lie. I’m worried about you, anyhow. I don’t know why you were acting odd the other night. I think that you should see a doctor.”
I shook my head. “I think that I’m okay. I mean, I’ve suffered from clinical depression for most of my life, and I do take meds for that. I admit that I did feel weird the other night, but I feel fine today. But I am going to see my therapist. I have to get my head straight about this Michael thing. It’s bothering me and I have to get to the bottom on how I really feel about it.”
Axel kissed my forehead again and I sighed. “Thank you for being so patient with me. I hope that I can get past this and get on a better footing. I know that you’re not going to wait forever, though.”
He smiled. “I’ll wait as long as you like. You’re special, Harper. I mean that.”
At that, Rina poked her head out the door. “Brianna’s mom is here,” she said. “To pick her up.”
I nodded my head and stood up. “I better greet her. You can hang out back here or come on in.”
Axel followed me into the living room so that I could see Brianna off.
I was relieved that we had this talk, but worried at the same time. He said that he would wait for me.
But what if I could never get there?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day, I decided that I was going to do the investigation of Michael with an eye towards proving to myself that he was guilty. I wanted him to be guilty. I needed him to be guilty. It would give me great satisfaction to make sure that he went down. Yet, if I thought for a second that he was innocent, I couldn’t sink him. I was too ethical for that.
I was restrained, however, by my Sixth Amendment duty to Michael. I was bound by ethical rules to give Michael a zealous defense, even he was guilty as sin. That was always the hardest part of my job, even though, usually, if a person was guilty, I could just plead him out. I could possibly plead out Michael, too, if I thought that he was guilty.
Yet I wanted to try the case. I wanted to try it and see the jury stand up and find him guilty. If that happened, I would derive immense satisfaction. If I pled him out, it wouldn’t have the same effect. I wanted him to be humiliated in front of the jury and the people in the courtroom and the media, which was ramping up interest in this case.
If I pled him out, it would just be me, the prosecutor and the judge in the courtroom. That wouldn’t be as fun for me.
I shook my head as I made my way to my car. Fun for me. I was going to have fun if the jury found him guilty. What kind of person was I? My psyche was tangled up, so haywire, and I didn’t know which way was up.
One
thing that I did know, however – my investigation was going to be geared towards eliminating possibilities, not trying to find if Michael didn’t do it. I wanted to make sure that I crossed every T and dotted every I, so that I could prove to myself that Michael was guilty.
I started with going downtown to the police department to talk to the cops on the scene. I would also talk to Christina Sanders to find out what the relationship was between Michael and Judge Sanders. That was important to me, because I knew that there was some reason why the cops were so quick to arrest Michael for the crime. Yes, he was on the scene. But he called the police. Since he called the police, why was he so quickly suspected of killing the judge?
I also wanted to talk to Christina, because I had a suspicion about her, as well. She was one of the people that I wanted to eliminate.
I went to the police department. I had previously made an appointment to see Officer Murphy, who was one of the officers on the scene. I wanted to talk to him and get a feel for why it was that he was so quick to make an arrest.
“Hello, Harper,” Office Chris Murphy said when I went to the police headquarters to see him. “It’s great to see you.”
“You too, Chris,” I said. He offered me a donut and I politely took one and started to eat it. “I guess you know why I’m here.”
“Of course. You wanted to talk to me about that Michael Reynolds case.” He took a bite of his donut. “That was a bad deal, I tell you what.”
I brought out my trusty yellow pad and pen and prepared to make notes. “It was. But tell me about it. You arrested him on the scene. Why? He told you that an intruder must have killed Judge Sanders, and that he was not home when the judge was killed. He basically got there and found the judge dead. Yet you and your partner didn’t even hesitate to arrest him. There must be some reason for doing that.”
Chris nodded his head. “There was, Harper. He was the person on the scene. Plus, his story didn’t quite add up. And he strikes me as being slick, that one. I’ve seen rich assholes like that in my life, and they’re usually up to no good.”
I sighed. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that Officer Murphy had a better reason for arresting Michael, but it seemed that he didn’t. Unfortunately, everything he said to me, every reason he gave me for arresting Michael didn’t seem to pass muster. It could all be explained away perfectly.
“Officer Murphy,” I said, addressing him formally, even though the two of us were friends. “If he killed the judge, then he probably wouldn’t have called the police when he found his father-in-law. He’s smart enough to not be so obvious, don’t you think?” I shook my head and took another bite of the donut. This wasn’t going well.
“Well, that’s right, unless he’s going to go the other way with it.” He pointed at me. “There’s a kind of reverse psychology that these people use with us all the time. They try to be really obvious, for the same reason you just said – they think that they’ll never be suspected because they called us to the scene. It’s just as likely that he did it and tried to make us think that he didn’t, because he was just too obvious as it is that he didn’t do it.”
That made sense to me. I had actually experienced just that sort of thing – I represented people in the past who admitted to me that they did it, even though their actions were similar to Michael’s. They would call the police, yet they were guilty. So it did make sense that some criminals would go the reverse-psychology route and make the cops think that they didn’t do it because they were too obvious about it.
It didn’t usually work, however, with the cops. It did work with jury arguments, though – show how illogical it would be for my client to kill somebody and then immediately call the cops. I got more than one person off with that very argument.
More than one guilty person, I’m ashamed to say.
“You mentioned earlier that his story didn’t add up. Why do you say that?”
He shrugged. “It was just a hunch I had. I think that the little bastard was lying. He told me he was out at the supermarket buying fried chicken. That’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The deli case closes at 9 at the local Hen House, if it stays open that late.”
“Did he have fried chicken when he came in the door?”
“Yeah. He had a little box of chicken, but I looked at it, and it was cold as ice. He bought some chicken, alright, but hours earlier. But he was eating it when we got there.”
I made a note about that. I wondered why Michael went through the trouble of buying the chicken earlier and then try to tell the cops that he was out buying the chicken during the time the judge was killed. What a ridiculous story to tell, really.
“What else struck you as odd?”
“Nothing, really. I interviewed the mother and the daughter, and they both told me that Michael wouldn’t do something like that, but I have my doubts.”
I sighed. “Tell me the truth. Did you just arrest him because you had nobody else to arrest for this crime? If it was a random intruder, as he told you it was, then it’s going to make your job much, much more difficult. And the media has been all over this case – you’re under a lot of pressure to make an arrest. It’s a federal judge who was bumped off. If you didn’t make an arrest, you would be hounded night and day until you had somebody in custody. So, there Michael Reynolds is, he looks good to you, and you arrest him for the crime. Boom, you’re done. Is that it? I mean, it’s obvious that he never confessed. There’s nothing in the file to suggest that he confessed.”
I was disappointed. I thought that the police had so much more than this. But, it seemed like I hit the nail on the head – a federal judge was knocked off, and, if Michael’s story was to be believed, the culprit was a random intruder. It was much less work for the police to arrest Michael, so that was who they arrested.
Nothing more than that, apparently.
Officer Murphy’s silence spoke volumes. “Listen, Harper, I would like it if you didn’t judge me about this. We get a lot of pressure from the powers that be when things like this go down. Yes, Michael was convenient to arrest.”
“And you guys aren’t looking at anybody else?”
“No. We have our man.”
I stood up. “Well, I guess we’re done here. Thanks for the donut.”
I left his office feeling out of sorts and angry. I couldn’t believe that the Officer Murphy was so lazy as to just arrest the first person that he could, without doing the necessary work to find out who really did it. There were people with motives – anybody who had a case in front of Judge Sanders really had a motive to kill the judge. Yet the cops never even looked at any of them.
Why?
I WENT TO THE OFFICE. “Pearl, I need to get Christina Sanders in here for a deposition. She acted very peculiarly when I petitioned the court to exhume the body of the judge.”
“On it,” she said. “What else do you need done?”
“I need for you to take a closer look at all the cases that Judge Sanders had pending in front of him. And get Anna on the phone. I need for her to do some hacking work.”
Pearl got busy doing all these things and I went into my office. I had an appointment to see Judge Johnson, who was Judge Sanders’ buddy. I had to find out more about the judge’s habits and to see if he had any suspicion on anybody who might have targeted the judge.
Pearl came into my office. “I did all these things that you asked me to do. Let me take a closer look at the companies who are going to be in Judge Sanders’ court. I’ll give you a run down and let you know if I see anything suspicious.”
“Thanks.”
I stared out the window, looking at the Country Club Plaza below me. My mind was on Michael and Axel and Elmer and, somehow, these three men melded in my mind. Michael raped me, Elmer attacked me and Axel…sweet, lovely Axel. He was completely innocent of any crimes against me, yet I couldn’t bring myself to really love him because of men like Michael and Elmer and all the other men who had attacked me physica
lly and mentally throughout the years.
I had my first appointment with my therapist that evening. The first one in a long time. I was looking forward to it, yet dreading it all the same. I didn’t quite know what to tell her. I hoped that she could try to straighten me out. All that I knew was that I was confused about so many things in my life.
I looked at my watch and realized that my appointment with Judge Johnson was coming up. “Pearl,” I said, “I need to go and talk to Judge Johnson. Keep looking over those cases and let me know if anything stands out for you. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“I will, girl. I’ll see you soon.”
I GOT to the Federal Courthouse, went in and immediately got on the elevators. I went to the eighth floor, which was where Judge Johnson had his chambers. “Hello,” I said to the receptionist who was sitting behind the desk in the judge’s suite. “I have an appointment with Judge Johnson at four.”
She nodded. “Harper Ross,” she said, looking at her appointment calendar. “He’s expecting you.”
“Thanks.”
I went back to the chambers and found Judge Johnson. He was an African-American man, about 6’5” and very slender. His head was shaved and he dressed impeccably. Even though he was always in his judge’s robe, and nobody really got a chance to see his actual clothing, he always made sure that his suits were pressed and clean, his shoes were buffed and he even had a little handkerchief in his pocket.
“Hello Ms. Ross,” he said, standing up. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” I said. “You’re looking well.”
He nodded. “It’s difficult circumstances, but I’ve been holding my own. Holding my own. Please have a seat.”
“Thank you.” I sat down. The chambers were opulent, much more opulent than the judge’s chambers on the state circuit court level. The ceilings were high, the walls were paneled in walnut and the windows were floor to ceiling. The room was enormous and, on two of the walls were bookshelves that had every legal book and treatise imaginable.
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