The Justice Game

by Randy Singer

  “I can see they’re gone!” Jamison shouted. He turned and unloaded another stream of bullets toward the control booth, the gunshots echoing in Rachel’s ear. The bullets shattered the glass of the booth into tiny shards that dropped onto the sound and edit board.

  He again pointed the gun toward Manuel. “Get us on the air.”

  Manuel shook his head, beads of sweat popping on his forehead even in the clammy cool air of the studio. “I c-can’t… don’t know how.”

  “Then you’re useless.”

  Manuel opened his mouth—a silent plea, too scared to talk.

  Rachel was losing consciousness fast, the edges of her vision going dark. How many shots has Jamison fired? How many are left? She said a quick prayer and threw her elbow backward into his gut, heard him grunt, and tried to squirm free. She had nearly twisted out of his arm, but he drove the corner of the gun’s rectangular magazine against her skull. The blow knocked her to the ground. Dizzy, she could feel blood oozing down her forehead.

  She looked up at Jamison with blurred vision. She blinked and crawled a few feet backward.

  “You think I’m playing games?” Jamison asked.

  Terrified, Rachel shook her head. He smiled at her and popped a second magazine out, quickly jamming a third into place.

  Jamison tilted his head back and shouted. “We’re not on the air! Every minute we’re not on the air, somebody dies!”

  He took a step closer and looked down at Rachel. “Maybe I’ll start with you.” His eyes flashed with excitement. “Put your hands behind your back and lie facedown.”

  Rachel did as she was told, fighting panic. To her left, she saw a flicker of movement, a crouching figure. She forced herself not to look. She hoped it was Bob Thomas, the show’s director, a tall and lanky man who had disappeared once the gunshots started. Bob would not let her die.

  Jamison walked over to Rachel. He stepped over top of her, straddling her. His breath came in short, hard bursts.

  “Beg.”

  For a split second contempt battled her fear. She wouldn’t beg for this man—he’d fire anyway. But she knew she needed time. She closed her eyes. “Please don’t hurt me,” she said. “I can help you get out of this.”

  Jamison laughed—a fake, contemptuous chortle. “Look at me,” he said softly.

  She opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder, her neck craned as she stared at her tormentor. He bent closer, his face twisted with the pleasure of revenge. The black barrel of the gun dominated her field of vision, his maniacal grin forming the backdrop. “You need to learn a little humility,” he said. “You don’t know what it means to beg, do you?”

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back farther. “Please,” she said, tears stinging her eyes. Pain throbbed on her cheek and radiated from her neck. She closed her eyes, but the image of the black barrel and Jamison’s face wouldn’t go away. “Please don’t shoot.”

  “That’s not begging,” Jamison said. He let go of her hair and her head dropped toward the floor. She braced herself, feeling helpless, waiting for the impact of the bullet. She thought about Blake, her husband. About the tiny life sheltered in her womb. It was supposed to be a safe place.

  “Open your eyes!”

  She did. Just in time to see Jamison turn the gun on Manuel Sanchez. “Say good-bye to your buddy.”

  “No!” she shouted.

  Before Manuel could move, Jamison fired. Rachel gasped as a small hole opened in the middle of Manuel’s forehead. He grunted—the air fleeing his body—and slouched to the floor.

  Rachel saw Manuel’s eyes go glassy as blood poured from his head. She turned away, vomit rising in her throat.

  “You need to learn how to beg,” Jamison said, his voice flat. “Now get in your seat.”

  Rachel got to one knee, and the room started spinning. She hesitated, wiping blood away from her eyes and mouth. She watched Jamison kick Manuel’s lifeless body, rolling the co-anchor onto his back.

  “Hurry up!” he said.

  She stood slowly, thinking about Manuel. Watching him die had changed things. Instead of making Rachel more afraid, it somehow steeled her. She felt responsible for Manuel’s death—this whole thing was her fault. Jamison was here because of Rachel. Now it was up to her to think clearly. Somebody had to make sure there was no more bloodshed until help arrived.

  She staggered to her seat, keeping a wary eye on Jamison. He had moved behind Lisa.

  “Get us on the air,” he said to Lisa.

  “I’m trying,” Lisa said, her voice shaking, lips trembling. “But please…” she choked out, “stop pointing that gun at me.”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds,” Jamison said.

  Lisa caught her breath. She pointed to a spot on the right side of the studio. “Behind there,” she said, “is our director. He can run the control booth.”

  “Nice,” Jamison said.

  He walked over to the camera and forced Bob Thomas out of his hiding spot, ordering him into the control booth. A minute or two later, the large television on the floor in front of the anchor desk and the other television suspended from the ceiling changed from a technical difficulties message to a live shot of the desk. Rachel was shocked by her own appearance, blood streaking down her face and staining her blouse. She pushed back her hair and waited.

  How long before a SWAT team storms this place?

  Jamison was just one man. Surely if the four of them acted together…

  Jamison settled in next to the sole camerawoman operating the huge boom camera. She had it on a wide-angle shot that showed both Lisa and Rachel. Jamison kept the gun on Rachel, periodically glancing over his shoulder to check the studio door.

  “This is Larry Jamison!” he yelled, his voice loud enough to be picked up by the wireless mikes that Lisa and Rachel wore. “You’ve just seen vicious lies broadcast by this television station. Now you’re about to hear the truth.

  “Introduce yourself!” Jamison shouted. He pointed the gun at Lisa.

  “I’m Lisa Roberts,” she said, her voice unsteady, an octave higher than normal. Out of habit, she looked straight at the camera.

  Jamison swung the gun toward Rachel. For a moment, just long enough to show the slightest flicker of resistance, Rachel didn’t speak.

  “And I’m Rachel Crawford,” she eventually said, “a member of the WDXR I-team.”

  “Ten minutes ago, this woman lied to you!” Jamison shouted. “And now she’s going to stand trial for it.”

  He checked over his shoulder one more time and then moved forward, circling around behind the anchor desk so that he stood between Lisa and Rachel. Rachel watched as Jamison checked himself out on the TV monitors, then pointed the gun at the side of her head.

  God help me.

  3

  Jamison kept the gun pointed at Rachel, his eyes darting from her to Lisa to the large boom television camera capturing everything. “I’m Larry Jamison,” he said, stealing a glance at the camera. “The report you’ve seen about me is a total crock. And that’s because this station, WDXR, cares more about ratings than truth.”

  He took a half step toward Rachel. Not close enough for her to reach him but close enough so she could smell the body odor from the half-moons of sweat under his armpits and the lines of moisture just under his chest that plastered his shirt to his body.

  “Who are your anonymous sources?” he asked Rachel.

  She hesitated—a journalist’s instinct to protect her sources.

  “Tell me!” Jamison yelled, raising the gun over his head as if he might step forward and pistol-whip her again.

  “Nysa Polides and Tereza Yankov.”

  “Nysa. Tereza.” Jamison spit the words toward Rachel. “Did you know they asked me if they could be part of my Web site? Did you know they planned to blackmail me all along?”

  Rachel quickly processed the allegations. The women had seemed so reliable. Innocent. Naive.

  Jamison’s face darkened, the veins on his
neck rising to the surface. “They wanted a thousand bucks a week or they would go to the media with their lies. A thousand a week! Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?”

  He spun toward Lisa. “Your network let them conceal their identities? You’re responsible for this too! Nobody checked them out!”

  Lisa shook her head quickly, her eyes wide with fright. Jamison took a few steps in her direction until he was close enough to touch her. He was breathing hard, nearly hyperventilating, his eyes wild with hate. Lisa trembled, looked up at him, then at the studio door, then back to Jamison.

  Rachel glanced at the back door too. Where’s the SWAT team? How much time can they possibly need?

  Jamison pressed the barrel of his gun against Lisa’s temple. She closed her eyes, sobbing. He looked over his shoulder at Rachel. “You’d better apologize to your viewers. This time, make it good.”

  Oh, God, don’t let him shoot. “I’m so sorry,” Rachel said quickly. “Don’t shoot her. Please. This report is mine, not hers. She had nothing to do with it.”

  Jamison smiled thinly and leaned over so he was in Lisa’s face. “Is she guilty?” he asked. “Do you agree that it’s her fault?”

  Lisa shuddered. Her words were hard to decipher, punctuated by sobs: “She… made… a… mistake.”

  “I say she’s guilty,” Jamison replied, standing to his full height, the gun still pressed against Lisa’s temple. “What do you say?”

  “Ask her. Not… me.”

  He pivoted just as the studio door blew open and everything happened at once. Smoke bombs exploding, Jamison squeezing off as many shots as possible in Rachel’s direction, his own body convulsing from SWAT team bullets, Rachel diving for the floor, trying to roll as she fell, turning her back to protect the innocent life in her womb.

  She felt something slice her shoulder, a blow to her back, and another bullet rip into the base of her skull.

  A millisecond of images followed—her husband, the new life growing inside her. For the tiniest fraction of a second she reached out for them, but then they exploded into a blinding flash of light.

  She was gone before she could even say good-bye.

  Part II: The Company

  4

  A continent away from the chaos in the WDXR studios, Jason Noble approached the jury for the most important closing argument of his young career.

  “Let’s talk about the hair,” he said, surveying the inquisitive expressions on the faces of the jurors. Some were literally gaping; others suppressed a smirk. Jason pretended not to notice.

  “Mr. Lockhart argues that the hair evidence creates reasonable doubt. ‘Forget about the defendant’s rage when she learned that her husband and her best friend had an affair,’ he says. ‘Forget the fact that her best friend also happened to be a very talented backup singer whom the defendant’s husband could turn into a star the same way he made the defendant a star. Forget all that. If the hair testing shows that Carissa Lawson had been taking drugs for several months, then the cause of death must be a self-administered drug overdose, not poisoning.’”

  The jury was only half-listening, but that was okay with Jason. They were too busy staring.

  The night before, on a whim, Jason had dyed his hair platinum blond and spiked it—the hairstyle of the victim. And the change was more than symbolic.

  Months earlier, when Carissa Lawson’s autopsy showed fatal amounts of oxycodone and cocaine in her blood, the medical examiner had declared the death an accidental overdose. But then the rumors started surfacing. The backup singer had been involved with the husband of rock star Kendra Van Wyck. When Van Wyck found out about the affair, she became consumed with jealousy and rage. She owed her fame to the efforts of her husband, a wealthy recording executive who had “discovered” her. His love for someone else, especially someone as talented as Carissa Lawson, ate at Kendra Van Wyck like a cancer.

  Van Wyck was eventually indicted for murder. But the prosecution’s case was largely circumstantial, and Van Wyck had the best legal help money could buy. The defense lawyer opposing Jason, a pit bull named Austin Lockhart, had built his case on the popularity of Kendra Van Wyck and the lab tests of Carissa Lawson’s hair.

  Van Wyck had not taken the stand in her own defense. Instead, her lawyers had relied on a distinguished toxicologist named Dr. Richard Kramer, a man who lectured the jury about the wonders of testing hair for drugs. According to Kramer, as hair grew, its roots were fed by blood. In a chronic drug user, the blood would contain trace amounts of the drugs in question, which would become entrapped in the hair’s cortex. Since hair grew at the rate of about a half inch per month, you could test different segments of a person’s hair and tell how long that person had been using drugs.

  Kramer testified that hair testing for Carissa Lawson showed high levels of oxycodone and codeine in all segments of her three-inch hair. The obvious conclusion? Carissa Lawson had been abusing cocaine and painkillers like OxyContin for months and had died from a self-inflicted overdose.

  As he approached his closing argument, Jason knew that the jury was looking for a reason to spring the popular defendant, consistently ranked by People as one of the hottest female performers. Her husband’s divorce petition and the murder trial had only garnered more attention, fueling album sales. Plus, the rock star cried on cue during the trial.

  “Murder by poisoning? Or accidental overdose?” Jason asked. He paced back and forth in front of the jury. No notes, just a spontaneous little chat. He had memorized every word.

  “Carissa Lawson had stopped seeing the defendant’s husband. But that didn’t mean he loved her any less. And that didn’t mean he wasn’t planning on dumping the defendant and making Carissa the next big thing.

  “Did Kendra Van Wyck have motive? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ By killing Carissa Lawson, the defendant could punish both Carissa and her husband at the same time.

  “No doubt—the defendant had plenty of motive.

  “The defendant was seen with Carissa Lawson early in the evening on the night Carissa died. When the defendant found out about her husband’s affair, she never confronted him. She never confronted Carissa either, choosing instead to remain friends so that Carissa wouldn’t be leery about spending time together. The defendant had access to OxyContin pills for pain relief and to cocaine from any number of close associates, two of whom have pled guilty for possession with intent to distribute.

  “In other words, the defendant had opportunity.

  “But Mr. Lockhart argues that the affair between Caleb Van Wyck and Carissa Lawson occurred just two months prior to her death. Why would the defendant begin poisoning Carissa Lawson six months earlier? According to Mr. Lockhart, the hair evidence proves that Carissa Lawson is a drug addict who died from an overdose rather than as the victim of a one-time poisoning.”

  Jason paused. He now had their attention. “And so… it all comes down to the hair. Other than the toxicologists, not one witness has linked Carissa Lawson to drug use. Does the hair really show six months of drug use, or should we throw out the hair testing results as unreliable?

  “You will recall my cross-examination of Dr. Kramer. He admitted that hair can be contaminated by drugs from external sources, things like sweat or running your hands through your hair. This can make the results suspect.” Jason paused for effect. One of the things he had learned by studying courtroom advocacy was the impact of silence. An advocate who wasn’t afraid of silence showed confidence. Silence helped refocus the jury.

  It also helped Jason remember his script.

  “You heard the coroner describe the type of slow and painful death Carissa Lawson suffered. In large quantities, cocaine and oxycodone shut down the lungs, causing the victim to suffocate as fluid collects and breathing becomes impossible. Eventually, Carissa drowned in her own lung fluid, probably while her best friend watched, pretending to call 911 as Carissa gasped for breath.”

  Jason shook his head and ran his hands through hi
s hair. “Was Carissa Lawson sweating as she died this slow death, fighting to get air?” He paused again, looking from juror to juror. “You decide. One thing that’s not open for question—if she was poisoned, her sweat would have contained high quantities of these drugs and contaminated her hair.

  “But Dr. Kramer says we shouldn’t worry about that. Before testing the hair, he washed the samples twice with methylene chloride, a solvent guaranteed to remove any contamination. But you also heard our toxicologist, Dr. Chow, say he believes that drugs contained in sweat cannot be removed from the hair through mere washing because they form ionic bonds with the hair follicles. As a result, hair testing can’t tell us whether the drugs present in the hair are due to contamination from sweat after a one-time poisoning event or from long-term use.

  “And so, last night, I came up with a harebrained idea, if you’ll pardon the expression. I dyed my hair platinum blond—the dye representing external contamination that bonds to the hair particles.” He walked over to his counsel table, speaking over his shoulder as he went. “You’ll recall that Dr. Chow testified that the same chemical reaction that explains the incorporation of hair coloring into hair follicles also takes place with drugs like cocaine and oxycodone.”

  Jason pulled a towel out of his briefcase and picked up two plastic bottles from the floor. He walked back toward the jury and smiled briefly at two young female jurors—Jurors 5 and 7—who had been nodding as he made his points.

  Jason could usually count on the younger women. He didn’t have the stone-carved jaw of a movie actor, but he was in good shape and had received more than a few comments about his eyes. “Sleepy.” “Intriguing.” Or on courtroom days like today, when he had his green contacts inserted, “piercing.”

  Jason did fine with women at a distance—like the ten feet that separated him from the jury panel. The ones he let in close always gave him trouble.

  “I asked my expert to provide some methylene chloride,” he explained. “And I’m going to wash my hair right here in front of you, using the same chemical and the same procedures that Dr. Kramer used before he tested the victim’s hair.”