by Brad Parks
And then he would contact whatever trusted lieutenant had arranged the abduction of my children, just to make sure all was going to plan.
On the other side, it was a little harder to envision Denny Palgraff—the bearded scientist bungling along in the vegetable oil–fueled station wagon—as a would-be kidnapper.
His lawyer, however? Well. I can’t say I fell easily into believing the stereotype of the sleazy lawyer, because so many of the attorneys who appeared in my courtroom were honorable people. Yet there was no doubting the type existed. A one-third share of a multibillion-dollar fortune, which awaited the plaintiff’s attorney in a case like this, was temptation enough for anyone.
I didn’t know Roland Hemans and he had never appeared in my courtroom, so I set my Internet browser to work on him. There was no Wikipedia entry, but I did find a profile of him in Virginia Lawyers Weekly, with two pictures of him alongside.
In one, he filled up the doorframe of his law office. He was a giant, at least six foot eight. He had ebony skin, bushy black eyebrows, and an enormous hairless head. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to reveal sinewy forearms. He was pure alpha male, and he stared down on the camera like it was one more thing he was looking to dominate.
In the other, he had his arm around his wife, a woman who was as rotund as he was muscular.
According to the article, he had played basketball for the University of Virginia in the eighties and claimed to have entertained an offer to play professionally in Europe, which he turned down in favor of law school. His sporting passion turned to golf, and he once came within two strokes of qualifying for the US Open.
As a lawyer, he had long specialized in patent law and had gained a reputation for taking on complex, highly technical cases and translating them into language that lay judges and juries could understand.
“When I played basketball, I was fortunate to have outstanding coaches,” he was quoted as saying. “They were really teachers. They could explain their concepts in a way that made sense, so the players couldn’t help but buy into the system. A trial is the same thing. I’m coaching the jury to buy in.”
There were a few personal details. In addition to his wife, he had two teenage children; he lived in Newport News; his vacations consisted of hunting and fishing trips. Mostly, the story was a chronicling of his many courtroom triumphs. The Virginia Black Attorneys Association had named him their Lawyer of the Year a few years earlier.
But it was a funny thing. While it was a glowing article, I could feel Roland Hemans’ yearning for something more: He played college ball but wasn’t good enough for the NBA; he could beat anyone at the country club, but the pros had him by a few strokes; even his legal victories, while solid, had this not-quite-there feel to them.
Now here he was, finally, after many years of hard work, poised over a huge score, one that would put him in the big leagues for all time.
Would a guy like that pull out all the stops?
Oh yes.
Yes, he would.
I would keep an eye on Barnaby Roberts. But in Roland Hemans, I felt like I had my man.
NINETEEN
I was just settling in to learn more about Hemans when Joan Smith rang me from the next room.
“Yes, Mrs. Smith,” I said.
“Judge, I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s Judge Byers’ chambers calling from Richmond. He wants to know if you’re available to talk right now.”
My anxiety surged. I had yet to have one useful thought about how I would explain my utterly inexplicable ruling to the chief judge of the circuit.
And yet there was no putting the man off further. He had e-mailed me. And now, having not gotten an immediate response, he was calling. He would not be denied. I probably wouldn’t have been either if I thought one of the judges in my district was on the take.
The weakness I had felt before was back. Except now, instead of just hitting my legs, it was affecting my whole body. Even the phone seemed too heavy.
“Judge, are you there?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Put him through,” I said.
“Okay. Hold on, please.”
Mrs. Smith went away from the line and I waited for Byers. Most of what I knew about the man came from rumor and Google. He was a former federal prosecutor who was now known as a judge’s judge, one who stuck up for the sanctity of the position and battled fiercely for judicial independence. An avowed enemy of mandatory minimums, he once famously testified before a congressional subcommittee that they turned judges into “punishment-dispensing vending machines.” He was bright, straightforward, and well respected in all corners of the federal judiciary.
“Hello, Judge Sampson. Thank you for taking my call,” he said in a voice well suited to a Vuh-ginia gentleman.
“My pleasure, Judge Byers,” I said, trying to affect an external calm with my voice that I absolutely did not feel internally. “What can I do for you today?”
“I sent you an e-mail last night. I’m not sure if you had a chance to—”
“I saw it. I was actually just about to call you.”
“Well, thank you. I’m hoping you can maybe . . . ,” he started, then changed course. “Now, look, I understand better than most that a judge often has explanations for his decisions that are not obvious to the lay public or to anyone who isn’t . . . privy to all the things we’re privy to. So I was hoping you could walk me through your thinking with this Skavron case.”
God bless him. Byers’ respect for a judge’s dominion over his own courtroom was so complete, he still couldn’t bring himself to directly challenge my ruling.
“Certainly,” I said. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”
It sounded every bit as defensive as it was.
“Well, yes, of course. I . . . There was apparently a father who made a statement at the sentencing yesterday, a father who—”
“Thomas Byrd,” I said, because his performance was not easily forgotten.
“Yes, that’s right. Thomas Byrd. Well, it seems Mr. Byrd is rather well connected at Norfolk Academy. He’s on the board of trustees and whatnot. And it seems his son—”
“Dylan.”
“Yes, right, Dylan. It seems Dylan was a popular boy at Norfolk Academy, and one of the boys he was friends with is the son of Michael Jacobs.”
I nearly dropped the phone. Michael Jacobs, I did not need to be told, was a Republican representing the Second District of Virginia in the United States Congress. He was cut from the pugnacious, blunt-talking, take-no-prisoners cloth that had taken over the House. He was an ex–Marine sergeant from the Midwest who settled in the area after his enlistment was up and made a bundle of money on a chain of car washes. He was relentlessly pro-defense and pro-veteran, important stances in a highly competitive district where no small portion of the electorate was current or former military. He burnished his everyman image by shaving his head bald and riding to campaign events on his Harley.
“The boys were on the same baseball teams growing up and it seems the fathers were close as well,” Byers said. “I think it’s fair to say your ruling, ah, significantly angered Mr. Byrd. He put in a call to Congressman Jacobs, who immediately called his good friend Congressman Keesee.”
I felt myself shrinking further. Neal Keesee, also Republican, was the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. The Constitution has any number of checks against judicial power built into it. Keesee was one of the biggest ones going. All recommendations from the US Judicial Conference about impeachment went through him.
“And then Keesee called me to make sure this matter received my full attention,” Byers said. “Now, of course, I don’t want you or anyone to get the idea that I would allow the politics of the situation to influence the process or enter into my thinking.”
“No, of course not,” I said. Even though we both knew that was a lie.
“And I should
stress that, at this point, this is just a preliminary inquiry,” he said in that way people did when it was evident something much more than preliminary would soon follow. “But that doesn’t change that, at least outwardly, there would seem to be . . . I’m sorry, I should say, that some further explanation might help everyone understand what happened here. I was hoping you could give me the insider’s perspective on this thing.”
“Right,” I said, still trying to absorb this new information.
Jacobs and Keesee were powerful enemies. And Byers was now my primary line of defense against them. Under the aforementioned Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, the chief judge alone decides whether to pursue a complaint by forming a special investigative committee—which is basically a Spanish Inquisition performed by a team of judges. The committee forwards its recommendation to the US Judicial Conference, also comprised of judges, which votes whether to send it to Congress.
Or the chief judge could dismiss the matter. Which was the outcome I badly needed. I just had to come up with some kind of story that would push enough of the man’s buttons.
“Well, I realize it was an unusual ruling,” I said in an effort to start convincing Byers I hadn’t lost my grasp on reality. “And it’s not something I intend to make a habit of. I’ve never . . . I can’t think of another time when I’ve deviated from the guidelines so much. So I understand the attention this is generating. And . . . How many years have you been doing this, Jeb?”
It may have been slightly overfamiliar, slipping his nickname into the flow. But I had to establish that we were pals. And colleagues.
“I think in October it’ll be twenty-two.”
“And in those twenty-two years, did you ever just get a feeling on the bench? Just a feeling deep in your gut about someone or something?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then maybe you can understand what happened to me yesterday. I know from the outside it wouldn’t seem to make much sense. I just . . . I was looking at this defendant”—I didn’t want to use his name, lest it seem like I was overly invested—“and I was really moved by his . . . his earnestness. He said some things that—”
I interrupted myself, because it occurred to me Byers might look up the transcript and see just how pathetic Skavron’s elocution had been.
“It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it,” I continued. “There was . . . I can’t explain it. There was real sincerity in the man, Jeb. I felt like if he just had one more chance to get it right he’d—”
This was sounding flimsy even to me. I needed it to get better in a hurry.
“Look, I realize the man has had a lot of chances already. But there was something about him that was really striking in how closely it reminded me of . . . Well, he reminded me of someone in my past, someone who took a second chance and really did something with it.”
“And who was that?” Byers asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Well, now, I think maybe it does. This is just the sort of thing that people don’t always understand about what we do, about how something that can seem impersonal can really become quite personal.”
Byers was clearly engaged. I could practically feel him leaning into the phone. This was my chance to lay it on thick. No one understands how hard this job is sometimes, Jeb. We judges, we’re people, not vending machines.
“Well, it was a long time ago. It was a young man I worked with. This was when I was in Senator Franklin’s office, before the shooting,” I began, trying to wring whatever mileage I could out of my tragic past, which Byers would certainly be aware of. “The senator encouraged us to be active in the community whenever possible, and I was volunteering as a mentor with the Boys & Girls Club. There was a young man they teamed me with—”
“What was his name?” Byers asked.
My mind was momentarily blank. I opened a file that had been sitting on the corner of my desk. It was some kind of class action complaint. The first name listed among the plaintiffs was “Acton, Keith.”
“Keith,” I said.
The second name was “Bloomenthal, Rodney.”
“Keith Bloom,” I continued. “He was . . . he was a very good athlete, a football player, but he came from one of those neighborhoods in Anacostia where young men face a lot of challenges. He had gotten himself in some trouble with the police—and he was eighteen, so he wasn’t a juvenile anymore. Keith and I talked a lot about what had happened and he understood the seriousness of it. I convinced Keith to spill his heart to the judge who was doing the sentencing. I think it was clear to everyone that this was the moment where life was going to go one way or another for Keith. And the judge, he . . . he showed Keith some mercy, even when the guidelines said he shouldn’t. Keith was able to go on and get a college scholarship for football. He’s now a math teacher and a high school football coach, making a difference in the lives of kids just like him, doing a lot of good. And I guarantee you, if he had ended up going to prison—”
“He would have learned some very different skills than he did in college,” Byers interjected.
“Well, exactly. But that judge, he didn’t just see another troubled young black man in front of him. He saw a man of great potential. And Keith ended up vindicating that confidence the judge showed in him. I think most of the time, I don’t . . . I don’t see a lot of Keith Blooms in my courtroom. But yesterday, I saw something in this defendant. His whole family was in court with him. He had been working steadily at the time of his arrest. I got this feeling that if I gave him a chance, he would end up vindicating that decision in the same way Keith did.”
“So you’d say it was a matter of conscience?”
“Yes, exactly. A deeply personal one.”
Clearly moved by the story, with several of his buttons firmly pressed, Byers voiced his approval until I was confident he didn’t plan on taking any immediate action against me.
As we said our polite good-byes and hung up, I considered the events I had just set in motion.
It was possible the chief judge of the circuit, now convinced of my good intentions, would run interference for me until Michael Jacobs and Neal Keesee tired of this cause and went elsewhere to find a new chew toy. If that was the case, I had just dodged a hail of bullets: I would get to keep my judgeship long enough to deliver the ruling that would save Emma’s life.
It was also possible Byers would discover Keith Bloom was one hundred percent fiction.
In which case every one of those bullets would hit me right between the eyes.
I didn’t even try to make it to the bathroom. I simply pulled the wastebasket under my chin and vomited until my stomach was empty.
TWENTY
Perhaps half an hour later, having done my best to clean up both the remnants of my purge and the acid it left behind in my mouth, I was still sagging in my chair, completely enervated, when I heard a soft knock.
It wasn’t Joan Smith—her knock was much more forceful. And there was only one other person in our little suite who felt entitled to disturb me when my door was closed. So I said, “Come in, Jeremy.”
Jeremy Freeland came into my office, hiding behind an enigmatic smile.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “There’s just been so much going on, I wanted to check in, see how you were doing.”
“Thanks,” I said, hoping he couldn’t smell any of the sickness lingering in the air. “Please, sit down.”
He complied, crossing his legs and folding his hands on his knee.
“I heard Judge Byers was calling for you,” he said.
He tossed it out in a typically coy, noncommittal fashion. Jeremy had surely done the math—controversial decision plus call from the chief judge equals trip to the woodshed—and wanted to see how much of his boss’s hide was left.
“We had a nice chat,” I said. Then, just to sate Jeremy’s curi
osity a little, I added, “He wanted to talk to me about the Skavron sentencing, of course. We discussed how we follow the guidelines most of the time, but every once in a great while there comes a decision from deep within our gut that really catches us by surprise. Skavron was one of those for me.”
I could tell Jeremy wanted to ask why, but his sense of decorum forbade it. And I was thankful I didn’t have to repeat the Keith Bloom story. The more people tugging at the strings of a lie like that, the more quickly it would unravel.
Jeremy moved on, instead, to what was clearly his larger concern. “You think Byers understood where you were coming from?” he asked.
Translation: Is the trouble over, or should I start putting out my résumé?
“He’s been doing this a long time now. He’s had a few Skavrons in his time.”
“Well, that’s good,” Jeremy said. “Shifting topics, I take it you saw those articles about Palgraff this morning?”
I nodded.
“Including that investing website?”
Now I was rolling my eyes. “God. That thing.”
“Oh. So that’s not—”
“Jeremy. Don’t tell me you thought that was legit.”
“Well, I mean, I know you didn’t talk to him. But I thought maybe you, I don’t know, accidentally let something slip around someone else or . . .”
Lord help me. If my own clerk thought it was possible HedgeofReason’s post was based on real information, what did everyone else think?
“Absolutely not,” I said firmly. “Whatever that man reported was a figment of his imagination. I didn’t know the case existed until this morning.”
“Yeah, about that. I’m so sorry I let it sneak up on you like that,” he said. “I had seen it on the docket but I didn’t realize it was such a big deal or I would have—”