“I see that Robert made bail. You did a very good job there—give up his passport, post a million dollars, and convince the judge that he actually cares about his community. I apologize for not being there, but I was impressed when I heard about it. Are you going to bring him in to a case conference? I would love to see him.”
“See him?” Hunter questioned. “Don’t you mean meet him?”
Her mouth hung open for a moment. “I’ve seen his face on television like a hundred times. I have always been a big fan of Island Survivor, and that was my favorite series—I’ve watched it four or five times online. I loved the characters, and Robert’s mental toughness was so clear. Did you know that no other contestant in the show’s history has won as many challenges as he did?”
“I never watched the show,” Hunter replied. “Robert’s lying low for a while. The media aren’t playing nicely at this point, so we’ve got him holed up in a secret location. We’re giving him some space to work through what’s happening. It must be hard for an innocent man to deal with these sorts of accusations.”
“Innocent?” She laughed. “I can tell you now that he’s not innocent. He rejected his vets so he could get more funding for his next election campaign. That’s why he voted for that stadium development. It was about money—it’s always about money. Always. When that evidence is presented in court for the public to see, they’ll all see how guilty he is. And who knows what else he’s done. He’s stolen from the people of Chicago, and he’s probably stolen from others. He’s a thief as well as a murderer.”
“We’ll be working hard to keep a lot of your evidence quiet, Michelle. You should expect that from us.”
“Of course. You and I both know how this works—we challenge, we challenge, we keep challenging until one of us makes a mistake. But, lucky for you, I’ve made a few mistakes lately. Maybe this is your lucky break, your chance to beat me in court.”
There was a pause between them.
Hunter looked at her, not having to search hard for the cracks in her armor. They were in the open for everyone to see. He was surprised that she was still working, still taking on the big cases, still risking the reputation of the office.
But work was all she had.
“I saw you in the papers last month.” Law rested her arms on the table. “You had a very good write-up about your win in court regarding the Dwayne Rogers case. Charged with murder, but got off once the police realized that his brother murdered their mother. Sad story, but it’s good that the bad guy was brought in.”
“I did receive a lot of good press after that one. I even thought that the media might be turning, placing me on the good side. The police didn’t ‘realize’ the evidence was tainted. They took the lead from the evidence that was uncovered in his brother’s court testimony.”
“The goodwill from the press didn’t last long.”
“No.” Hunter shook his head. “I should’ve known that as soon as I picked this case, they’d go back to their old ways.”
“At least you’re still passionate about defending evil people. I guess it’s in your blood.” She pushed him for an angry response. “Nature or nurture, that’s the big question. Do you defend evil people because of your killer genetics, or do you defend scum because of the upbringing that you had? Tough question to answer.”
He didn’t bite back with anger. “The thing about this job is that you realize there are very few truly evil people in the world. There are evil people out there, but most criminals have good in them. The thieves, the violent offenders, the fraudsters—they’re all still good people who’ve done bad things. A lot of people, they’ve hit a breaking point, and they make wrong decisions. There’s still good in them. There’s good in everyone. It’s my job to make sure that their goodness shines through in court.”
“So you’re going to push for leniency in the sentence because Sulzberger was a good man before his breakdown? You expect concessions because of his combat history? That’s not going to work. Not in this case. The State Attorney wants blood, the public wants blood, and I even had Cindy Mendel in here telling me not to take a deal on this one.”
“Cindy Mendel? What’s her interest here?”
“Nothing big.” Law waved his interest away. “She’s been my mentor for years, and she’s my closest ally. Perhaps she’s even the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother, but she actually cares about me. We have coffee every week. She checks in on me a lot. She lost her only child when she was very young, so I feel like she takes me under her wing and protects me. And you must know the story of Robert and Cindy—how they went into the City Council on the same side, and then he betrayed her when it mattered. She pleaded with me not to offer Robert a good deal—said he needs to pay for his evil behavior.”
“What’s the best deal on the table?”
“First-degree murder, a minimum sentence of twenty years, but we can recommend minimum security. That’s all I’ve got.”
“First-degree murder? Are you serious?” Hunter’s voice rose. “He’ll be dead within a year on that sentence! He’s a marked man behind bars. You’re signing his death certificate if you put him away for that long.”
“His death? What about the death of Jane Doe? When does that factor into your equation? I can’t help what happens behind bars, and if he’s a target, then it’s because of what he did, and who he betrayed. If he’s going to die behind bars, then that’s his own doing. Not mine.”
“It can’t be first degree. You don’t have enough evidence.”
“It’s easy to prove that he knew his actions would result in the high probability of great bodily harm or death. That’s murder in the first degree! No argument about that!”
“Second-degree murder. Ten years. How does that sound?”
“You’re going to go for self-defense? Or are you going to say that his actions were the result of intense passion caused by serious provocation from our unknown victim? That would almost be impossible to prove! The girl was tied to a chair; she wasn’t responsible for this!”
“But will you consider it? Take it to your boss?”
“Not a chance.”
He looked at her puzzled. “The courts are full. Your job is busy. Give us a good deal, and we’ll consider it. But twenty years—we might as well take this to court and run the risk of a judge’s sentence. There’s no incentive for Robert to take the deal.”
“Everyone feels the pressure of life!” Her fist hit the table. “Robert Sulzberger shouldn’t be given leniency because he had a breakdown! What about the rest of us? Where’s my break from life? Where’s my chance to escape? No. He’s not getting any help from this office. If he breaks down, he can deal with the consequences.”
Hunter sat back, shocked my Law’s statements. “How bitter has this job made you?”
“This job…” She looked away from her old friend. “It takes everything away from you. Family, friends, your hobbies—after you’ve worked eighty hours a week, fifty weeks a year, there isn’t much time for anything else. Last week, John Fay, one of the senior prosecutors, had a complete breakdown in court. He started crying for no reason, and couldn’t stop. He had to leave the court with tears dripping down his cheeks. He’d been working eighty hours a week, fifty weeks a year for the best part of three decades, and it finally broke him. The case of a child molester finally broke him.”
“What about you? How close are you to a breaking point?”
Pulling her shoulders back, Law swirled her chair to look out the window at her view of Downtown Chicago. She used to love this view, the way the sun hit the artistically designed buildings, reflecting the soft glow upon the busy streets. Now, it only represented her lost chances in life.
“I’ve been lucky. I’ve already hit my breaking point numerous times and dealt with it. Or perhaps, this is one big breaking point, and I’m still going through it. I don’t know yet.”
“You’ve already hit breaking point, and you’re still here?”
“W
ho knows for how much longer though.” She drew a breath, and then expelled a long sigh, turning back to Hunter. “Perhaps I won’t be here much longer.”
“I always wondered how long you could do good for. I remember after you left school, just when you were at the top of the popularity ladder, you changed overnight. You shaved your head and were suddenly getting in fights in bars. And then you became a prosecutor. You went from good to bad to good again in only a matter of years, so I always wondered when that bad would seep back out.”
“Perhaps it already has.” She stood. “I was lucky that no one ever pressed charges. I was lucky that my adopted father was a lawyer and threatened litigation against any person who dared to take me to the police.” She looked down at the table, her fingers tapping her notepad. “Is that what happened to your client? After years of being a good boy, he finally had enough and let the inner animal free?”
“He’s a good man.” Hunter stood. “The question is: how long are you going to keep your animal down, Michelle? How long are you going to do ‘good’ for the world?”
“As long as I can.” Law looked at him. Straight at him. “That’s the trouble with our jobs. You realize that everyone says they’re good, but we all have a little bit of bad in us. Some more than others.”
Chapter 12
A bed, a television, a microwave. Only the essentials. In the tight entrance of the apartment, a generic photo of the City of Chicago hung in an attempt to relieve the blandness. It didn’t work.
Robert Sulzberger sat hunched forward on the two-seater black leather couch, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the shoebox full of memories. He hated the small apartment. Its darkness, its lack of direct sunlight, hindered by the neighboring apartment blocks, only added to his misery. It was a three-room rental which included a small galley kitchen, the main living area, and a bathroom, which was only just big enough to fit the toilet, sink, and shower.
The rope that was placed on top of the box made his heart sink. It was the first thing Robert Sulzberger saw when he opened it. Digging deeper into the cardboard box, no bigger than a case of beer, he found a photo of himself, smiling, carefree and happy.
Staring at a photo of his much younger self, the crinkled picture from a time before digital-everything, Sulzberger’s mind drifted back to the first time he stole. At sixteen, he walked into the convenience store, its bright lights in contrast to his dark outlook, and he stared at the shop assistant, knowing he didn’t have the money to spend on chocolate. He stared at the assistant as he slipped a candy bar up his shirt sleeve. That rush of blood, that excitement, that feeling of escape from his dark sadness.
When he stole a second time, another candy bar, the adrenaline rush was even bigger. Then he did it again, and again, and again.
It was his most vivid memory of his adolescence, the one that he thought about the most, the one where he was at his happiest. The bigger the challenge to steal an item, the bigger the reward was afterward. The moments after he walked out of a store carrying a microwave, when he laughed so much that he couldn’t breathe, his childhood friend next to him, was one of the happiest moments of his life. The two boys developed a bond through thieving, driving each other to do bigger, better, each week.
It was why he went back to it.
When he returned from the reality television series about surviving on a remote Pacific island, he had all the support in the world around him, everyone adored and admired him. He couldn’t walk down the street without someone asking to take a selfie, or yelling how much they loved him as he passed.
Naively, he saw politics as the best way to make a difference for people who were going through what he had experienced when he returned to civilian life.
But he didn’t understand the political game. After he was backed into a corner over a decision to rezone an area to make way for a new stadium, he lost his support network—the support of his brothers and sisters in arms. That cut him deep.
Months of protests outside his office followed, which triggered his first post-traumatic stress episode in over five years. The flashbacks to the world of Afghanistan, the violence, blood, and horror that he saw, spun him out of control. His assistant found him crying in the corner of his office one morning, the desk overturned and all his files on the floor.
After numerous more PTSD episodes in the next month, he took to stealing again. It was his way to feel relief from the painful images, his way of taking him back to a simpler time, a time when he felt the happiness of adolescence.
Stealing was his connection to the distant past.
In the Lincoln Park short-term rental apartment that his lawyer organized, he moved the box in his hands. It was the only thing that Kim, his wife, had left out on the porch for him to collect. She refused to answer the door to their house, already having had the locks changed to keep him out. Lucy, his four-year-old daughter, was crying through the window before being dragged away by his mother-in-law. That broke his heart.
It was bad enough that the neighbors were watching him try to get back into his old home, but with the news crews outside, and cameras targeted on him, it only made the situation sadder. No doubt it would be on every front page tomorrow.
Heartbreak in front of the neighbors was one thing; heartbreak in front of a whole city was on another level.
He talked to Lucy on the phone after he left. She asked when he was coming home, and he promised her that it would be soon. He promised her that he would read her a bedtime story, but he didn’t know if he could keep that promise. Kim wanted Lucy kept away from the drama that was unfolding. His wife told him that it was for the best, the only way to protect Lucy. It broke his heart, but he’d agreed.
She left one box—filled with his war medals, a bunch of old photos, and the thing that was designed to hurt him the most.
Her wedding ring.
After a decade of marriage, he was surprised at how quickly love had grown into hate. They met when she was an army nurse caring for people, and he was a sergeant, hunting them down. Their love blossomed under the intensity of warfare.
While he entered into politics to make a difference, all it did was drag him further away from his wife. They had barely even talked in the past year, living next to each other in the same house as icy housemates rather than anything more.
He rested his head in his hands. The roller coaster of life had taken many turns for him, many ups and downs, and he didn’t like the road he was walking right now. His father, hard and cold, would be turning in his grave.
His phone buzzed again, and it made his heart jump.
Not another message of hatred. He’d had enough of those.
But he couldn’t resist checking the phone, hoping that at least one person in the world was sending him a message of support.
He turned the phone over and unlocked the home screen.
You deserve to die in prison.
It was Cindy Mendel, his old ally. His old friend. They’d stood side by side as they fought for the benefit of veterans, but when he lodged his vote for the stadium, he sacrificed everything he stood for.
When she hit him, he was glad there were no cameras to see it. As much as she hated him, he could never hate her, not after what she had done for his fellow vets.
He’d been surprised by the force of the punch. It was a solid right hook square in the left eye socket. Blood had dripped from a cut above his eye onto his office floor, and he had to explain to his secretary that he tripped and hit his head.
He understood where Cindy was coming from—she had lost her husband to suicide after he could no longer take the images that kept coming back into his head. The only thing she was interested in was making sure other people never had to experience the pain that she suffered after that loss. Cindy was as single-minded in her approach as she was strong.
She was not the only friend that he’d lost over the past month.
Many others had ignored his phone calls; while others sent messages of outright hatr
ed. People he thought he could count on.
He wouldn’t last long in prison. Not with what he’d done. How he’d turned on his own people. They would target him, make sure that his life behind bars was short.
He knew the veterans would make sure that he didn’t see his sentence through.
They would take great joy in taking him out.
He removed the photos from the bottom of the shoebox and stared at the last item that his wife left in there. One photo of Kate, Lucy and himself, carefree, smiling and hugging, with a scribble drawn over the top of his face in red pen.
He held the rope she left in the box, the texture stabbing into his hands.
She was giving him a way out.
He looked up at the roof; the arch would be able to take his weight.
“Not today,” he whispered to himself. “Not yet.”
He knew X was the reason he was in this predicament.
He knew that all of it stemmed from their relationship, but he couldn’t see a way to get to her. He had no doubt that she was the reason he was in trouble, but he knew nothing about the woman.
She was the only chance he had left.
His only hope.
He had to find X.
Chapter 13
One month earlier…
The walls of the ground floor electrical store were splattered with a confusion of colors, a smattering of oversized words and a collection of boisterous posters showcasing the store’s amazement of their own mid-year sale.
A baseball cap pulled down and sunglasses covering his eyes, Robert Sulzberger wandered through the aisles of the well-lit shop, waiting for his opportune moment, pretending to gaze over all the electrical options for the useless waste of his hard-earned cash.
He glanced to his left and noticed his friend, slim and brunette, engrossed in a conversation with the teenage male shop assistant, who was wearing a work uniform two sizes too big. X smirked as she listened to the teen explain the intricacies of a particular videogame, edging closer to the boy’s personal space with each breath.
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