Professor Marie Kang was indeed nicknamed “cheetah mom.” This professor demanded student answers to legal questions at the speed of light, or she would pounce on the slowest of the herd.
In that fateful criminal law class in that first spring, Professor Kang had made Denise cry with a series of questions about the insanity defense.
“If you agree with Judge Cardozo in this case, Ms. Song, surely you must be saying this, this and this…” After Kang’s fifth question, and Denise’s fifth wrong answer, Kang had Denise stipulating to her own death sentence.
Dew and Denise reminisced for the next few miles about their brief stint in law school. She would draw closer to her brother with every passing exit sign, and with every sip from the thermos. The Lexus made incredible time on Forty East, heading toward the sharp turn-off onto Route 285 southbound at something called Cline’s Corners.
“I still don’t know about this, Dew,” Denise said. “Law school wasn’t much fun. Law isn’t much fun.”
“It was once,” Dew said. “Remember Team Turquoise back in high school. We were great. You were great. Just pretend that a real trial is like mock trial.”
“Team Turquoise!” They chanted in unison. In the beginning they had both excelled on the mock trial team at Albuquerque Academy. They caught the notice of the powers that be and were invited to be on the state’s mock trial all-star team, Team Turquoise, along with some scientist’s kid from Los Alamos named Hikaru Yu, and Denise’s best friend, Rayne Herring.
Team Turquoise was a big deal, at least to them. They’d become really close and sometimes it felt like Team Turquoise versus the world. Their coach, a cop turned law student name Bebe Tran had to channel their energy, channel their anxiety. Despite her law enforcement roots, Ms. Tran soon became more of a camp counselor than a coach, and sometimes practice would turn into a singalong.
Team Turquoise went to an invitational tournament and beat the best mock trial lawyer in the country, a tough-as-nails Native American woman named Jane Dark. Denise and Hikaru had played witnesses; Dew and Rayne had played the lawyers. In an auditorium filled with hundreds, Denise and Dew had made a strong case for the judges in five minutes of direct examination. Then Denise had endured relentless cross from that damn Jane Dark, but had held her ground. It was the first happy moment of her life.
A car honked from behind. Startled, Denise swore under her breath. She probably shouldn’t flashback while driving, much less being on the phone as well.
“You OK?” Dew asked.
“Fine,” Denise said. She slowed to seventy-four, sensing a cop right ahead. She was right of course. “I’m just a little on edge playing lawyer.”
“You have never been scared of courtrooms.”
“I think I can play lawyer,” Denise said. “But what if they won’t let me play?”
“Paranoid much? You are a clinical law student at an online school according to Rule 5-110.1. I even had the dean of that online school sign off on it. You still owe me for the contribution I had to make to the dean’s discretionary fund,” Dew said.
“But suppose they find my mom and she tells the truth?” Denise asked. “She’s supposed to be my online supervisor.”
“They won’t check these days with the lawyer scarcity in rural areas. They’ll just be happy you’re a warm body.”
“Even if I am ready, I don’t really know this case.”
“You should call your girl, Rayne. She’s doing the background check on the client, right and she’ll be able to help you fake it.”
Rayne—her former Team Turquoise teammate and only other confidante—had become a private investigator. She was supposed to be looking up this Nastia woman online. If Denise knew the case at least, no one would give her a closer look.
“I’ll call her when I’m done with you.”
Dew and Rayne didn’t like each other much. For a psychic, Denise could never figure out why.
“Maybe your girl Rayne the private eye can even help you find Hikaru,” Dew asked, dismissively. “You still have a crush on him?”
Hikaru, the fourth and final teammate, had been an immature eighth grader, possibly with Asperger’s. Dew used to tease Denise for being soft on the kid.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s probably still single…” Dew said. “And so are you. You’d be perfect for each other. The two weirdos.”
“Talk to you later,” Denise said and hung up. Time to call her only other contact in the world, Rayne.
Still, Denise hesitated to call Rayne for a moment. She wanted to give the two women some breathing space in her thoughts. Maybe she was hesitating about this whole “lawyer” thing. She passed a few more ranches and ominous “testing stations” on the road to Roswell. And then she saw them, a series of political billboards for Rayne’s mother, Regan “Big Red” Herring, who was running for Congress. Her slogan was WORKING TOGETHER TO KEEP AMERICAN STRONG! GO BIG RED!
The candidate’s billboards were filled with missiles and flags, indicating Big Red’s military background. There was even a flying saucer in the background. Certainly not a bad thing on the way to Roswell, as it showed respect for the local legends. Were aliens liberal or conservative?
Regan was such a great first name for a Congresswoman in the red part of a blue state; a nickname like “Big Red” Herring made it even better.
The last billboard before Roswell had an invitation to see the BIG RED HERRING UPBOUND TRAIN WHISTLE STOP TOUR. There was a picture of Big Red, Rayne and Rayne’s nine-year old daughter, Rita.
Denise dialed and Rayne seemed to pick up before Denise had finished. “Hey Denise. I was just thinking of you.”
“I’m almost to Roswell to meet Nastia Kowalski. Just saw your mom’s billboards.”
“I wish my mom wasn’t running for anything,” Rayne said. “She made me feel like an underachiever back in high school when she was only a colonel, I can’t imagine how bad it will be when she’s in Congress.”
“I know how you feel. Any news on the Nastia woman? I’m heading to Roswell.”
“This chick Nastia did live in Albuquerque the same time your mom did, and they worked together. Nastia was a stripper at a place called the Ends Zones.”
“My mom told me that she was just a waitress there to pay for school.”
“I can picture your mom working at a club as a waitress,” Rayne said. “She’s beautiful. I sure couldn’t picture anyone wanting to see my own mom in a sexy outfit.”
Rayne was probably the only person who had bigger mommy issues than Denise. Denise didn’t want to imagine Rayne’s Amazon mom in anything other than military garb and quickly changed the subject. “What about Nastia?”
“Nastia got busted like ten times, so I was able to read up on her cases online. I checked with some old sources on Vice who told me that she claimed to be an Eskimo, but I couldn’t find that she was an enrolled member in any tribes.”
“I don’t care if she was a stripper or an Eskimo, what did you find out about her and my mom?”
“And here’s where it gets weird. Right around the time you and Denny were born, there’s border patrol records of her going to Mexico, staying there for a while, and then ending up in Lordsburg. There are some sealed records of her on Nmcourts, the New Mexico courts website mentioning an adoption, but the records don’t say who was being adopted and from whom.”
“Sealed?”
“Certain adoption records are sealed. You should know that; you’re the lawyer.”
Denise bit her tongue. “Is there a way to unseal them?”
“I can’t find out anything else without a court order.”
The lights flickered on and off in her car. It was probably Denise’s spark acting up in both frustration and excitement. She was getting closer to Denny.
“Anything else?” Denise asked.
�
��That’s all I could find on such short notice before my mom calls me back onto the campaign trail,” Rayne said. “This case is just a restraining order against her loser boyfriend. She got a restraining order and he visited her at the museum where she works, like five times. I’ll send you his priors.”
Denise’s phone beeped indicating that she’d received some files. “It shouldn’t be that hard to get the restraining order against this jerk. Anything else?”
“I had some extra time, so I looked up someone else for you...”
“Hikaru?”
“He was working for his dad’s company,” Rayne said. “But they got bought out and as far as I know he’s still working for them. That’s all I know.”
Denise knew that Hikaru’s dad was a successful military contractor, so that had to be a good job, especially if they got bought out by someone bigger. “Thanks.”
Denise heard some giggling on the other end.
“There’s somebody who wants to talk to you,” Rayne said. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”
“Auntie Denise!” a girl’s voice shouted. In New Mexico, it was common for young girls to call adult friends of the family “auntie,” even though they weren’t related by blood.
“Lovely Rita Meter Maid,” Denise sang out loud.
Denise had never met the nine-year-old Rita in the flesh, even though Rayne was pregnant with her back during their mock-trial days. Rayne had never revealed who the father was, presumably a one-night stand intended by Rayne to piss off her mother the colonel. Then again, Denise hadn’t seen Rayne in person for years either.
“Nothing can come between us,” Rita sang back. It was a ritual between them.
“I knew you before you were born,” Denise said.
“What was I like?” Rita asked.
“My daughter really wants to meet you for reals,” Rayne said. “She’s lonely being homeschooled, and tired of being used as a prop on her grandma’s campaign.”
“Hopefully, we’ll see each other this trip,” Denise said.
“Promise?” the young girl asked.
“I promise. Got to run. I’m coming into Roswell pretty soon. Hopefully Nastia can lead me to my brother.”
“Good luck Auntie!” Rita said.
Denise hung up. She drove past a gigantic black and white sign at the rest stop that warned her to “Watch for Rattlesnakes” which was visible from the highway. She laughed. Her cousin, Marley, had been the son of Dan Shepard, the self-proclaimed Rattlesnake Lawyer. Was this the sign he had seen that supposedly inspired him to take the name? No, there were a dozen signs like it all over New Mexico. Still, she didn’t stop, just to be on the safe side.
There were rattlesnakes everywhere, even in her head. Denise didn’t like guns, so she carried a six-foot wooden staff for protection. A screw in the middle of the staff allowed it to break down into two pieces, so she could store it in her gym bag.
Talk softly and carry a big stick, even if you had to take it out of a gym bag and screw it together.
It was five o’clock sharp and Roswell had the slightest hint of a rush hour for a small city. Denise slowed down as she hit the city limits at a WELCOME TO ROSWELL sign with a glowing 3D UFO colliding with a corner of the signpost.
Unfortunately, the sculpture had been tagged with the letters CTR. Crazy Town Roswell.
Crazy Town Roswell, indeed. Roswell had survived off oil and agriculture for decades but then hit the motherlode with extraterrestrial tourism. All those tourists were on the Main street right now.
Unfortunately, sometimes her spark wasn’t really like radar; more like sonar and the water was muddy today. The desert highway became four lanes with a median: Main Street. This boulevard could be the main street of any American midsized city. There was a Sam’s Club, a Target, nice and not-so-nice hotels and almost every fast food joint known to man. Other than the plastic sculptures of little green men on every corner, this could be Anywhere, America.
At the next light, the exit for the gothic walls of the New Mexico Military Institute, the ping on Denise’s left temple grew worse. Nastia was in trouble. On cue, Denise heard the beep of a new text.
AT MUSEUM.
ALMOST THERE, Denise texted back.
Roswell had a surprisingly modern art museum right on Main Street, north of Roswell’s downtown. Nastia must work on the janitorial staff and was cleaning up for the night. The museum itself was adobe and fit in more with chic Santa Fe than here in the heart of the “Little Texas” part of New Mexico.
Denise realized that this was also a crime scene, well the site of the other party’s violations of a restraining order. She was wary that he would show up again.
Denise parked the Lexus and took her staff out of her gym bag. She screwed the halves together. It was time to watch for rattlesnakes.
An elderly woman answered Denise’s knock on the museum door. Nastia was not what Denise had expected. The woman was stout and had high cheekbones, perhaps she was an Eskimo after all. She had a tattoo in Olde English Script on her arm—GROUNDLINGS. That was one she hadn’t seen before.
Denise wasn’t sure what it meant. Were they a gang or an improv group? Next to the script, small letters in plain English—BITCH GF.
On closer examination, she could see that the BITCH GF was crossed out. Presumably that meant someone didn’t consider her a girlfriend or a bitch anymore.
“Nastia Kowalski?” Denise asked. “I’m Denise Song.”
“You must be the legal ninja.” The woman had a strange accent, a cross between Native American and Russian, mixed with the Texas twang of Roswell. Nastia’s dark hair covered part of a skull tattoo—only the letters UT could be seen. This woman did not look like a Texas Longhorn fan.
Denise sensed a strange energy, a psychic energy, coming from Nastia. Denise could tell that this woman once had direct contact with her brother, but a long time ago in a town far away.
“It’s Laser Geisha Law. How can we help you, Ms. Kowalski?” Denise asked, and then went with a lie. “My mother said good things about you.”
“Then she doesn’t know me. Or you’re lying. That doesn’t matter. This is like totally free, right?”
“Well, I’m also hoping you can help me find someone. Do you know a Denny Song?”
“Of course I do, I raised him for a while,” she said. “Is he like your long-lost brother or something?”
“Kinda.”
Chapter 5
There was silence for a moment. Denise felt a vague electrical field even from outside the door. Nastia once had a spark to her, but years of abuse and drugs had dulled it. Denise couldn’t read her, but felt something…
“I don’t know about this,” Nastia said. “You look pretty young.”
This woman could be the last best chance to find Denny. Time to play lawyer, or at least a clinical law student pursuant to Rule 5-110.1. “There will be no charge for our services. Since you are employed, you might not qualify for the legal aid or the public defender. A different lawyer might charge you two-hundred dollars an hour for your case.”
“And you’re still free, no? No money down?”
“Everything is free. Just give me some information. You needed help with a restraining order?”
Nastia took another moment to judge. Cop cars raced down Main Street. Nastia shuddered reflexively. Denise knew that this woman had been in the back seat of more than a few cop cars. Those were prison tattoos on her arms and neck.
“Yeah, I need an extension of the restraining order against Fally,” Nastia said. “My ex. He knows I’m alone here cleaning, and we can’t turn the alarm on.”
“Fally?”
“It’s short for Falstaff or some funny old English name like that. People have weird names where he’s from.”
“Is he in a gang?”
“Yeah they’re ca
lled the Groundlings. They’re like all over the state, all over the planet maybe.”
Nastia’s electrical field spiked, indicating stress. Denise had to step back. She surmised that this man Falstaff aroused deep emotions in the poor woman, and it increased the charge in her spark. After a moment the charge dissipated, and Denise grew closer.
“What do the Groundlings want?”
“Fally doesn’t want me to testify in court tomorrow at our restraining order hearing, because it makes him look weak or whatever. He used to work here with me, till he got fired.”
On the other side of the door the museum was small and illuminated by the red safety lights. A Georgia O’Keeffe hung among paintings by artists she recognized from her one art history class in college. As for her client, Nastia had a tattoo of an iris on her neck that could have been inked by O’Keeffe herself. While Denise sensed danger, she figured she could handle a small-town museum and its janitor.
“I like your tattoo,” Denise said.
Nastia smiled, but still hesitated, her field weakened some more. Denise moved closer. Without another word, Denise shook Nastia’s hand. The contact cancelled much of the negative energy coming from the other woman. Nastia pulled her inside the threshold, then closed the door behind them.
“I can’t lose this job,” Nastia said. “I love this job. It took me forever to get back on track after I got paroled the last time. I can’t let Fally mess up my life again.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Denise said. She needed to keep this woman relaxed. “I like your place.”
“Do you want to see my museum?”
“I’d love to.”
Nastia gave Denise a quick tour of the museum and pointed to a small room in the back labeled WOMEN’S PRISON ART COLLECTIVE GALLERY. One painting showed a flying saucer hovering above a prison rec yard, with the women looking up with rapture. It was Diego Rivera meets the X-Files.
Just by looking at that painting in the gallery, Denise felt something. She then touched the frame. “You did this,” she said.
The Shakespeare Incident Page 4