Power and Justice

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “Okay.” Cindy conceded defeat, looked down at the table, and rolled her fingers over each other. “Is he going to press charges for the punch?”

  “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’m sorry, you get used to certain things in politics. You build up many skills, including how to avoid answering questions that you don’t want to give a direct answer to. I’m sure, as a lawyer, you’ve built up many different skills that come in handy in everyday life. What would be your best skill, Mr. Hunter?”

  Again, Hunter didn’t respond verbally. He just raised his eyebrows.

  She nodded. “I imagine that Robert has already given you his version of events and you’re looking to verify them. He did get a black eye in the office that day, and yes, I was there. I was feeling angry that day.”

  “But why did you hit him?”

  “Is that not what I just answered?”

  “You said that he got a black eye in the office and that you were angry.”

  “Isn’t that what you asked?”

  “I asked why you hit him.”

  “I can see you have quite a formidable intellect, Mr. Hunter, but the reality is—I’m not going to answer that question today. You’ll have to get me under oath to answer that.”

  “You could’ve said that from the start.”

  “But then we wouldn’t be having as much fun, would we?” Her face was emotionless.

  “How angry were you that he rezoned the building so the stadium could be approved?” Hunter pushed another angle.

  “I was angry that he voted against the people that voted him into office. I held onto that anger for months, and I guess that had to come out at some point. He rode into the City Council under the guise that he wanted to do better for his fellow veterans, but the reality was that he couldn’t care less about the other veterans. He chose his position of power over the people that needed his help.”

  “And that decision is just about to end your career as a politician. Did that make you angry?”

  She sat upright. “You can understand my confusion here. These questions seem to be all about me, and not about the case with Robert. What angle are you going for here?”

  “I think it’s clear to everyone that your support has diminished. Robert’s vote effectively ended your career as a politician. You had all your eggs in that basket, supporting veterans, and now, nobody is going to vote for you at the next election. Nobody is going to vote for someone who can’t get anything done in office. Rumor has it that you might even resign.”

  “I’m not going to resign. Why would I? I will always do what’s best for the people. Just because Robert murdered a prostitute doesn’t mean that I should stop trying to do my job.”

  “A prostitute?”

  She looked confused. “Isn’t that who she was?”

  “Nobody knows who she was. She’s still unidentified. A Jane Doe.”

  “I must’ve heard it on the news. You know what news reports are like. They take a piece of information and twist it until they get the story they want.”

  Hunter leaned forward. “Where were you on October 2?”

  “October 2? I have no idea. What day was it?”

  “A Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday is usually my stay at home night. A night just for me. I work all the time, always at different places helping someone, but I always keep Tuesday night free. I usually sit down with a good book and a nice glass of red wine. I say glass, but I mean bottle. Is that a crime?”

  “Can anyone verify that you were at home?”

  “As I said, it’s my time. I was alone.” Her teeth ground together.

  Hunter nodded and stood, having provoked the reaction he wanted. “Thank you for taking the time to meet.”

  Cindy’s response was merely to stand and follow the lawyer to the door, her hand resting on the doorknob as he stepped outside.

  Hunter paused just beyond the threshold and turned back to her. “I’m sure we’ll talk again, Cindy, and next time, I’m going to get more direct answers.”

  Chapter 10

  She hadn’t fired a gun in a long time.

  She hadn’t felt that desire to shoot a weapon for more than a decade.

  Now, with everything that had happened, she needed to. She needed to feel that cold, hard metal press into her skin. She needed to feel alive again.

  City life had drummed her into numbness, a mess of avoiding pain, marching towards emotional emptiness.

  With the 9mm Glock 17 in her right hand, she remembered the feeling. She remembered what it felt like to be alive.

  When the metal pressed into her skin, squeezed tight, with no chance to make a mistake, the pleasure began. It was when fate took over, driving her actions, tingling her senses, forcing her to make decisions.

  Life-changing decisions.

  Decisions that would impact more than just her.

  He used to be good to her.

  He used to look after her, staring at her with a heart-warming gaze. He used to smile when she walked into view. She felt like they were on the same team, but she hadn’t felt those days in a long time. She tried to quash the memories of those days, tried to force them out of her head.

  He abandoned her. She tried to ignore that fact, but there was no denying it.

  Her husband had left her.

  Wine had helped her deal with her emotions. Lots of wine.

  But nothing would take those days away for long. That love, that passion was etched so deeply into her mind that no amount of alcohol would ever rid her of it. She longed for those days, the days when he’d placed his hand on her shoulder, whispering into her ear.

  She had never felt that loved.

  She had never felt that cared for.

  But one day, suddenly, it was all gone.

  “Ma’am?” The voice came from over her shoulder. She smelt the man first. He stunk of smoke, beer, and gunshot powder. “Do you need any help?”

  “No,” she mumbled without turning around. “I’m taking my time to get ready.”

  “Are you sure, ma’am? I can help you—show you how to hold a gun.”

  She turned. “I know how to hold a gun.”

  The man took a step back, intimidated under her stare. He’d seen lots of angry people at his gun range, and he knew when to step back and give them space.

  She moved her attention back to the target. She had been at the gun range for ten minutes, psyching herself up to pull the trigger, edging herself closer to action.

  Her revenge was so close.

  It wasn’t easy to go back when she had been trying to be such a good girl. It wasn’t an easy thing to break free.

  She set her sights.

  Focused on the board.

  Held the piece steady.

  Her finger gripped the trigger.

  Squeezing closer to action.

  The shot fired.

  Dead-on target.

  Exactly what she wanted.

  Chapter 11

  Tex Hunter’s shoulders tightened, the grip on his briefcase strengthened, the muscles in his face stiffened. The walk through the narrow corridors leading to the prosecution’s office always raised his heart rate, and the more he thought about the sweat building in his armpits, the more it did.

  But anxiety was the perfect response to the situation; an emotional front to heighten his awareness for what was coming next.

  He always thrived on the pressure that came with the first meeting of the defense and prosecution. One wrong slip of the tongue, one wrong statement, and either side could jump on the hint and destroy a case. Some people leap out of planes, others climb mountains, but Tex Hunter got his thrills from having somebody’s life, hope and dreams resting in his briefcase.

  Michelle Law knew him better than any other prosecutor, knew his style and strengths, and more importantly, she knew his weaknesses. Her willingness to exploit them had caused him many headaches in the past, but Hunter was a man familiar with headaches.


  He stood in front of the secretary’s desk and waited for her to greet him; however, she seemed more interested in her computer screen than his presence.

  “My name is Mr. Hunter, and I’m here to see Miss Law.” Formality always took over when his nerves rose.

  “A pleasure to see you,” the secretary stated, but the pleasure did not translate to her face. She barely raised her eyes from her mid-afternoon attack on the keyboard. “Miss Law is expecting you, and she’s free now. Please go on through. Second door on the right.”

  He nodded, smiled, and then walked past the rows of administration staff working in office cubicles. He understood that the workers were there for the money, but he could never work in a place like this—the mundane chicken-coop existence would drive his rebellious streak into submission.

  But then, that was the point of the cubicles.

  When he came to the wooden door that stated the prosecutor’s name, title, and the many degrees earned through years of studying textbooks, he took a breath and gently knocked.

  “It’s open.”

  He turned the doorknob and stepped inside the public office. Dark wood paneling lined the walls, old textbooks sat on the shelves, unused and forgotten about in the age of the internet, and the leather couch at the side of the room, although luxurious, was more than two decades old. The only personal item in the room was a Rubik’s Cube on the middle bookshelf.

  “Tex. It’s good to see you again.” The prosecutor stood and noticed his eyes looking at the brightly colored puzzle. “One of the admin staff left it here last week. She said it was a present for my birthday, but I don’t have time for such frivolous activities. Actually, I’m surprised anyone has the time for that sort of thing.”

  Everything was organized perfectly on her dark mahogany desk; loose paper lined up with the edges of the table, pens in a perfectly straight line, files stacked from largest to smallest. The entire room felt sterile; it would take the best forensic team in the country to find a speck of dust in it.

  “You never know; you may enjoy the challenge.” Hunter shook her hand firmly, but with care.

  After attending high school, college, and then law school together, they had confronted each other in the courtroom numerous times over the past decade, and with decades of interactions comes wisdom, providing Law the ability to get under Hunter’s skin like no other lawyer.

  Straight black hair, a body toned from too many hours in the gym, and a lackluster look in her eyes from years of secret alcohol abuse, her physique made the statement that she was still fit, but the yellow in the whites of her eyes told a story of addiction.

  “It was good to see you last week; I should’ve mentioned that you look stunning.” Hunter turned on the charm as he sat in the leather chair old enough to be a star in an antique show. “You still look like you haven’t aged a day since high school.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” She tried to smile. “And trust me, I’ve aged many days since then. Botox keeps the wrinkles at bay on the outside, but on the inside, I’ve had more hard days than a one-legged duck trying to swim upstream.”

  “Strange image—a one-legged duck.”

  “A one-legged duck swims in circles. That’s my point. Life is a merry-go-round of days now. Another day, another case. Another case, another file. Another file, another mistake to find. You must be feeling the routine now too. It’s middle age—that’s what my therapist keeps saying to me each week. Attacks the best of us.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Hunter looked around the office. “At least you’ve got all this to show for it. Look at that view of Chicago behind you. That’s got to be worth something.”

  “Worth what? The years of pain that I’ve given? Worth the breakdown of my marriage?” She shook her head and sat down with a posture so rigid that she might as well have had a metal pole down the back of her white shirt. “Sometimes, I wonder what life would have been like if I’d gone on to become a painter, or a writer or a naturist. What would I be like now? Would I still be so bitter and twisted? Does middle age still hit those people with real freedom? I don’t like this Western freedom anymore, not this capitalist-consumer ‘freedom’.” She used her fingers as quotation marks to indicate her disgust for her apparent independence. “I want real freedom. The sort of freedom that comes with doing what you want, when you want.”

  “You can always step out of the rat race,” Hunter said, a little stunned at how quickly his old friend was falling apart. “There’s nothing to say that you’ve got to keep living this life. You may want to consider that while you’re still young.”

  “Young?” She scoffed. “Tex, stop kidding yourself. You and I aren’t young anymore. Those days we had in high school were two decades ago. Two decades! I barely even remember the girl that was so full of life, popular, and used to flirt with all the boys. I saw one of our teachers last month; she was being sentenced for theft from a high school, and she didn’t even recognize me. I don’t blame her though. When I look in the mirror, I barely recognize myself some days.”

  “I remember that girl.”

  Waving him away, she leaned across her desk and removed a file. “All this leads me to think about my birth mother. She had me at fourteen years old. Can you believe that? Fourteen. That’s so young, and I’ve been around now for more than four decades, and I still haven’t found someone to reproduce with. My therapist said that it might be my biological clock that’s causing all this mental pain, along with the pain of not knowing my birth mother, but I don’t agree. I think I’ve just had enough of it all.”

  “Did you ever look for her—your biological mother?”

  “I searched for the adoption records in City Hall, but my file was missing. Apparently, missing files happened a lot back then. I’ve looked for her, over and over, and I would love to know who she is. Before my time is up, I hope to have found her, or at least her family.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “My dream was always that someone would walk into my office with a file that stated who she was.” The sadness in Law’s eyes was clear as she blinked back the tears. “I wish it was that easy.”

  “Be careful what you wish for.” Hunter smiled. “Family isn’t always perfect. Trust me, I know.”

  “Enough about family, and my birth mother. I’ve already thought about her too much. Talking about it only makes me miserable, and I’m going to have to pop another Valium if we keep going.” She looked at her cupboard, the one where she kept her spare stash of prescribed pills. “Enough of this small talk.”

  “You have a very strange idea of small talk. Most people like to talk about the weather or sports.”

  “The older I get, the worse I get at social interactions, but I guess that’s what happens when you live by yourself, and your whole life revolves around work.” She coughed deeply. “What are we discussing today?”

  “The Sulzberger case.”

  “Ah, yes…” Law placed the file down and scrolled through what was on the computer screen, happy to be distracted by her work. “Of course. The remarkable case of another innocent man. If you win this case, you should write a book about it. The only thing is—the librarians would put it in the fiction section as nobody would believe the case was real.”

  “It’s not that clean cut.”

  “I’m afraid it is.” She smiled as she leaned back in her black leather chair, hands resting comfortably across her lap. “We’ve got an unidentified woman, who was found deceased and tied to a chair in the basement of a three-bedroom house. His prints are all over the room. So is his blood. You have no alibi, no evidence, and no other explanation. How could you possibly win?”

  “He was set up.”

  “Is that what he’s saying? That’s going to be very, very hard to prove based on the weight of this evidence. Have you even read what the papers are saying? They’ve already convicted him. The public is already convinced that he killed Jane Doe. Some people are on his side, trying to explain why he did i
t, but even his strongest supporters are conceding that he did it.”

  “There’s no blood at the scene of the crime other than a spot near his power tools. There’s no evidence that the attack took place there, and the lack of evidence speaks louder than the evidence you have. You must know how that’s going to look in a courtroom. There’ll be doubt in the jurors’ minds from the start. It’s going to be easy to exploit that.”

  “Maybe. But it also doesn’t raise enough doubt that he didn’t do it elsewhere. All it says is that he killed her somewhere else and carried her into the basement. If that’s what you’re building your defense around, then this is going to be a very easy case for us. There’s doubt, but it’s not enough to get him off. There’s no other reasonable explanation for what happened.”

  “If we can locate a particular person, then we can break this whole case apart.” Hunter looked over the desk for any clues about the case—a file or a note accidentally left out.

  “Who?” Law leaned forward, her hand covering the notepad to her left. She turned the notepad over, covering up any potential hints.

  “The right person.”

  “Of course.” She tried to smile again. “You’re not going to disclose that yet.”

  “There’s nothing to disclose yet, but we’re getting closer. We’ll find her before this case hits the courts.”

  “Is that your play? Drag it out as long as you can—see if you can get a good deal from us? Well, I’m afraid that isn’t going to work. We’re in this one for the long haul. He’s a high-profile public figure, a popular reality television celebrity and now a politician, and we can’t let you walk over us. There’s more than a case at stake; there’s our public reputation to protect. We’ve requested the case be pushed through for the sake of public interest. The State Attorney is very keen to have this one wrapped up quickly, and I’m sure the courts will feel the same and find an opening for us.”

  Hunter didn’t respond, staring at her, letting her continue the conversation.