Dark Justice

by Sinclair, Rachel

  “Well, all I can say is that the police are going to be making an arrest very soon. I have this on good authority. It’s going to be somebody that you’re not going to suspect. But what I can tell you is that this person is going to want you as his attorney.”

  I headed into my bedroom and got dressed. High-heeled sandals, a light jacket, a skirt, and a sleeveless shirt underneath the jacket were my standard uniform for days, like today, when I had to be in court.

  “And what is your good authority?” I knew I probably shouldn’t have asked that question, because I knew what she was going to tell me. Inevitably, she would tell me something like her spirit, who she merely referred to as Chaz, told her. Chaz seemed to have a lot of information. And, granted, the information usually was spot-on, but that didn’t make it any less weird.

  That was one thing that I didn’t share with my mother. As much as she proved to me time and again that she was able to tell things ahead of time, I always thought that she just got very lucky with her information. I refused to believe in things like spirits, Tarot cards, psychics and the like. My own beliefs tended towards atheism. Maybe agnosticism. I couldn’t help but think that each of us were merely people who were on earth for as long as we were alive, and once we’re dead, we’re dead. We go into the ground, and that’s that. There was no hanging around and talking to the living once you’re dead. There was no getting a line on the future before anybody knew what was going to happen.

  Nonetheless, I knew that I should probably listen to what my mother had to say, just because she was usually right.

  To my question about who was her “good authority,” she simply smiled. “I just have a feeling that you’re going to get the case.”

  I put my shoes on and grabbed ahold of the soft leather bag that held the files that I would need for today’s court appearance.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to see about that, won’t we?” I went out the door, pausing before I left. “Now I would appreciate it if you kept the pot smoking to a minimum. I’m having company over tonight, and I’m not quite sure how they feel about pot.”

  I also had been seriously considering getting a dog. Maybe two. If I did that, then I wouldn’t let my mother smoke pot in the house at all. She could do edibles all she wanted – and she did make some very good edibles. Her marijuana brownies and cookies were legendary. Even I enjoyed them, when I was in that kind of mood. However, I wasn’t going to let her just smoke in the house if I got animals. Not to mention the fact that when the two girls moved in, whenever that would be, mom was going to definitely have to get rid of her weed.

  She rolled her eyes. That pissed me off, because, after all, she was staying here on my dime. I had no clue why it was that she still thought that she would be able to do anything she wanted to around my house, but apparently that’s what she was thinking.

  “Dear, you do know that it’s legal now, don’t you?”

  That was a question that was simply meant to bait me, and I knew it. Of course I knew it was legal. Everyone knew it was legal. You couldn’t drive down the street without seeing huge billboard signs announcing just how legal it was. Granted, there wasn’t yet a Costco-sized dispensary like they have in Colorado, and you didn’t smell pot as you drove down the highway like you do on I -70 in certain parts of that state, but you still couldn’t miss the fact that it was legal.

  It’s legality didn’t really matter to me. I was more concerned about the effect that smoking pot around the house would have on people who came to visit me, and possibly animals, and that was that. Myself, I didn’t really care – I grew up with the stuff, long before it was legal, even medicinally. But not everybody had such an open mind about it, and I really had to be sensitive to that fact.

  “Goodbye, mother. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  At that, I left to go to work.

  Chapter 3

  Emerson - August 25. Four days after Addison goes missing.

  When I got to the office of my firm, O’Donnell and Laurie, which was on the 40th floor in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise, I saw that the media had camped out in our law firm’s lobby. Grey Jenkins, the senior partner, was talking to some people who had microphones and cameras on them. He was smiling and joking, and I could hear him mention my name a few times. “Ms. Justice isn’t here yet, but when she’s here I’ll have her talk to you a little bit about this.”

  He obviously hadn’t yet seen me.

  Grey was a 75-year-old guy who kept in shape over the years, and had more energy than a lot of people I knew who were half his age. He was witty, affable, yet, at the same time, definitely a hard-nosed businessman.

  I had it admit that I was wondering what the hell was going on with these media people.

  It was then that he finally saw me. “Ms. Justice. Come over here, come over here.” He motioned to me, and I reluctantly went over to stand next to him.

  “Ms. Justice, I’m sure you’ve met Anna Todd, and James Monroe. I know that you’ve done segments on CNN and MSNBC, so you know who these people are.”

  I nodded my head. I did recognize them – they were reporters for CNN and MSNBC, but I wondered why they were hanging around our office.

  Grey was right – I had spoken on air, from time to time, to give my learned legal opinion about various high-profile cases, back when cable news had time for something other than what was going on with the current administration. Those were the good old days when a case like Casey Anthony, Natalee Holloway, Elizabeth Smart and Scott Peterson could become nationwide obsessions, with virtual wall-to-wall coverage.

  I still got a little bit nostalgic for those days, because lawyers like me, who were prominent in the Los Angeles area, were often called to come on air and opine about the case, whatever the case happened to be. Nowadays, it seemed that no murder case got that kind of attention. All the air had been sucked out of these 24-hour news channels, as they all became “all president all the time.”

  With this case, however, that seemed to change. The 24-hour news channels were on this case likes white on rice. It was almost like the good old days, as the president shared the spotlight with Addison Wentworth and her unfortunate situation.

  “Of course, how’re you doing Anna and James?” I looked around and saw that there were camera crews ready to go. “Just a second, I need to speak with Mr. Jenkins.”

  I took Grey aside. I made sure that we were out of earshot of the two reporters. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  He nodded his head and smiled. “It’s just that I can already tell that our law firm is going to be doing a lot more business this year than usual.” He rubbed his hands together with glee and smiled again.

  I rolled my eyes. This firm did plenty of business – we did lots of personal-injury business, lots of white-collar and high-profile criminal business, and everything in between. There was more than one Hollywood producer who had come to us to represent him in a divorce. More than one A-list actress as well. Our firm’s lawyers were the cream of the crop from mainly Ivy League schools all over the nation, as well as quite a few Stanford graduates. We definitely weren’t lacking in prestige.

  Yet, it seemed that Grey was constantly on the move, trying to make some more rain, because apparently his salary, which was, based on our billables, probably north of $10 million a year, just wasn’t enough.

  “Okay,” I said. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m trying to say that we just got a pro bono case from Heaven.”

  He was talking to me in a riddle, and I didn’t quite like it. “What are you saying? What are you talking about?”

  “They made an arrest in the murder of Addison Wentworth. The kid’s name is Carter Dixon, and we nailed him down early this morning. They made an arrest at 5 this morning, and, as soon as I heard, I sent Saul down to meet with him. He got to the kid before anybody else did and signed a contract with him for representation.” He rubbed his hands together again and grinned. “We’re going to b
e in the news all the time now. This is probably the biggest case this town has ever seen, bar none. Bigger than OJ.”

  There was an arrest made in the Wentworth case? They were already calling it a murder? Last I heard, she was only missing. Granted, there was a lot of blood in her bedroom, but I was surprised that they had already called it a murder. I was also really surprised that the police made an arrest so quickly.

  “I guess I don’t understand,” I said. “I never heard over the radio that an arrest was made.”

  “I guess you probably weren’t tuned into your television or your radio, so you don’t know about it just yet. The media immediately found out that this Carter Dixon is going to have you represent him, which is why they’re here. They want to talk to you.”

  I had to admit, I didn’t really pay that much attention to the local news, and sI was listening to music in my car on the way over, not a station that would have something about this case. I liked to listen to my Amazon Prime music playlists on my drive to my office, because listening to music relaxed me .

  “Tell me about this Carter kid? Why was he brought in for questioning and why was he arrested?”

  “Apparently, he’s a member of an online community, Incel, that traffics in misogyny and dark fantasies. He apparently wrote openly on a community Reddit about how he wanted to rape and murder Addison. Add to that the fact that the kid’s hair was found at the scene, and the police had enough to make an arrest.” He grinned. “It’s gonna be an uphill climb, but that doesn’t matter, does it, Emerson? As long as we get great publicity from this case, it’s all going to work out.”

  As Grey told me the story, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something that was off about all of it. I also thought about my mother and how she was so sure that I was going to get this case, and I wondered again how it was that she did it. What kind of information was she really getting from her spirit guide? I never wanted to admit that the spirit guide actually knew something, but it was eerie how right she always was.

  “Okay. I guess I’ll go down and see Carter as soon as I can. Get his story. But, in the meantime, can we get rid of the reporters over there? I don’t know anything about this case. I literally just found out that there was an arrest made, let alone the fact that we’re going to be representing the guy who’s accused of doing this. And how did the police decide to call this a murder so quickly? No body has been found. For all we know, she’s –”

  Grey shook his head. “For all we know she’s what? You forget that there was a lot of blood that was found in her bedroom. And, from what I understand, she was making a movie that was coming out this fall. The studio wanted to replace her as soon as possible, but her agent was fighting the movie producer on this. The agent was keeping the movie company on the hook for Addison’s contract. Something tells me that the bigwigs over at Janus pictures probably put some pressure on the police to go ahead and upgrade this case from a kidnapping to a murder. After all, if she’s declared to be dead, the agent doesn’t have a leg to stand on as far as holding the movie company to account for the contract.”

  At that, the two reporters came over to me. “We wanted to get a word on the record with you,” Anna said to me. “Could you please give us a statement?”

  I didn’t really know what to say. “Let me figure out what’s going on in this case first, and then I’ll be in touch. At the moment, I probably know about the same amount that you do, probably even less. I haven’t seen this Carter guy. In fact, I just now found out that there was an arrest made, and that the police are already calling Addison’s case a murder. I’m quite sure that you found out all this information this morning, before you came over here, which means that you are way ahead of me as far as it goes.”

  I pushed past them and walked into my office, but I didn’t have a moment to breathe before my personal assistant, Sarah, poked her platinum blonde head into my office. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to see you all morning.”

  I put my bag on my desk and glared at her. There was one thing that I always told her – I needed a few moments alone in my office before she could bombard me with everything that I was missing from earlier that day. Not only that, I had court that morning at 9:30, so I really didn’t want to have to deal with anything at that moment. I was already overwhelmed in knowing that, apparently, the Addison Wentworth case was going to be mine. Just like my mother said. That was a major source of stress, as I didn’t feel prepared to go into a case this big. I had had other high-profile cases in the past, but none this high-profile. I had to admit that having something like this, which could put me in the news, constantly, not to mention tabloids, and everywhere online, intimidated me just a little bit.

  “Okay,” I said, realizing that she wasn’t going to go anywhere until I talked to her. “What’s so important?”

  “Teresa Vinova is dead,” she said.

  I drew a deep breath, knowing what that was going to mean. Teresa, dead? She couldn’t be. It had only been six months. I had been in touch with her, and she was actually doing better. She had gone into remission, although she told me that her remission was probably going to be brief. She had sounded stronger than I had heard her sound in a long time.

  I wasn’t ready for the girls. Not yet. I hadn’t had the chance to look for a larger place. I just figured that I was going to have at least a few months to move into someplace else before I was going to have to address this issue.

  “Oh,” was all I said. I massaged my temples. “I’m so sorry, but I’m having a hard time processing this right now. I talked to her, and she sounded fine. She was getting stronger every day, it seemed. I mean, it shouldn’t really be a shock, but, somehow, it is.”

  “I know.” Sarah nodded her head. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to break it to you. She died in a car accident. I know that you assumed you would have more time to get your ducks in a row, what with your mother showing up at your door and everything, but sometimes that’s just how life is. You think you have things figured out, and then boom! You don’t.”

  That was one of the truest things that Sarah could say to me. Life was always full of curveballs. You just had to learn how to duck them better.

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I guess I need to go ahead and take custody of the girls as soon as I can. I assume that they’re with a temporary foster family? I already have the judge’s consent order allowing me to take custody of the girls and the home study has been done. Another study is going to have to be done, obviously, but I think that I’ll tell the social worker about my mom living with us after I get a bigger place.”

  I knew that if the social worker knew that I didn’t have a proper bedroom for the girls at the moment, a monkey wrench was going to be put into the whole guardianship, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want the girls to be shuffled around while I got my act together. Once I got a new, bigger place, the social worker could do another home study and, hopefully, everything would be fine.

  I felt a headache building behind my eyeballs. I had court in just over an hour, and I had this on my mind. Not to mention the fact that I was about to be plunged right in the middle of a huge murder case, an event that was not even on my radar before I came to work. Hell, when I first woke up this morning, I didn’t even know that there was a murder charged in Addison’s case. As far as I knew, it was still a kidnapping case. At best. Granted, I knew that there was a lot of blood that was found in her bedroom, but I really didn’t think that the police were going to jump to a murder charge so soon, before her body was found.

  Now, here I was, thrust in the middle of that case, while dealing with the fact that I was probably going to have two kids under my roof by the end of the day.

  Just goes to show how life can change on a dime.

  Chapter 4

  I could barely concentrate on the road as I sped to the courthouse. I hated that Sarah chose to drop that major bombshell on me. Between Sarah telling me that I was going to have to ta
ke in two girls before I was ready to, and Grey dropping the bombshell that I was going to have to take the Carter Dixon case, I knew that my head space was going to be messed up.

  Granted, the court appearance I was going to make was a routine pretrial motion that I had filed in one of my white-collar criminal cases. I knew that this was going to be an open-and-shut case. Basically, my client, who was a rich jerk by the name of Matthew Buchanan, was going through a divorce. It was his fourth divorce, to be exact. His wife was a snoopy sort, and she knew that he was going to try to cheat her. She had spoken with his prior wives, once she found out that he wanted a divorce, and each of them told her the same thing – Matthew was going to cheat. He was going to hide bank accounts, property, and investment accounts. So his wife did everything she could to make sure that that didn’t happen to her. She logged into Matthew’s account and snooped around his emails and his bank statements, and kept track of every website that he visited.

  While she didn’t find what she was looking for by logging onto his computer, mainly because she didn’t know what she was doing, and she didn’t find a professional to help her, she did do something that was highly illegal in the state of California. She hired somebody to tap Matthew’s phones, and she just happened to record Matthew talking to his brother about dumping a stock of a pharmaceutical company.

  Apparently, Matthew and his brother Andrew were the main investors of a small start-up company that was focused upon finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. That particular cure was the Holy Grail, or one of the Holy Grails, of the pharmaceutical world, as no company had been able to find a cure for the dreaded disease. However, this company, called Hydrona, was getting close to doing just that. And, with Matthew and Andrew’s investments, the company was almost ready to bring a promising drug to market.