Say Nothing

by Brad Parks

  Hemans seemed amenable to that. The defense team, however, was clearly displeased. In addition to Clarence Worth, there were thirteen other attorneys from Leslie, Jennings & Rowley and three other firms who felt the need to justify all the hours they had been billing. They wanted more time to show off—in front of me and, just as important, in front of their client. It made for a fair amount of haggling with lawyers who were, I could tell, losing patience.

  The person who normally dealt with those matters, Jeremy, wasn’t saying a word. He had simply withdrawn into his office, to the great discomfort of the rest of the staff. But they were either too confused or too polite to make an issue out of it. They just kept shuffling all those details on over to me.

  It made for two hectic, stressful days. I handled it with a sustained burst of energy that came from one place: the knowledge that if I could somehow keep this messy train moving forward—and Blake could stop it from being derailed—it would continue taking me closer to Emma.

  * * *

  I can mark the exact moment when the energy finally ran out. It was Thursday night. I was reading Sam his bedtime story, ostensibly as a precursor to tucking him in. But the person who ended up nodding off first was me.

  Roughly two hours later, I startled awake when a peal of thunder shook the house. An early-fall thunderstorm had overtaken Virginia’s Middle Peninsula with all its attendant turbulence.

  When I came to, I was in Sam’s bed, still with the light on. A drool slick had accumulated next to my mouth.

  Sam, who apparently thought nothing of his father collapsing with him on his bed, was wedged on the far side, up against the wall. Gently, so as not to wake him, I eased myself up, then looked down on him.

  Watching your children sleep really is one of the great joys of parenting. And if I took a moment to savor his serenity, it was only in an attempt to absorb some of it myself.

  He was wearing his beloved Captain America pajamas, the ones he had gotten when he was two and a half and were now so small he was bursting out of them. His arms were splayed out to the side. His mouth was open. Something in his face reminded me of how he looked as an infant. Yes, he was older now, with features that were becoming sharper and more defined with each growth spurt. I could almost start to imagine the man he would become. But the baby was definitely still in there, somewhere.

  Do they grow out of that, eventually? Or can all parents, no matter what age their offspring, still see the vestiges of the tiny little newborn their child once was?

  I thought of how, when we first brought the twins home from the hospital, Alison and I used to creep into the nursery and watch them breathe. Mostly it was that new-parent paranoia: We wanted to make sure they were still doing it. But I think part of it was also to enjoy the unfathomable miracle we had conspired to create.

  It was a marvel to think of what he had become, this little thing whose heart I had first heard—beating in stereo with his sister’s—when he was in his eighth week of gestation. To think he was now capable of such complex operations, even something as banal as putting on too-small pj’s, astounded me.

  It also made me wonder what Emma was doing. Right at this moment. Was she sleeping and drooling too? What was she wearing? What position were her arms in? It made me miss her so powerfully I could feel it squeezing my chest. I wanted to see her little baby face too; to marvel over the infant she had been, the girl she was, and the woman she would, I prayed, have the chance to become.

  A bolt of lightning cracked nearby, followed a second later by the rumble of thunder. Jolted out of reverie, I went over to the wall and flicked off the lights, so if Sam came to he wouldn’t be greeted by the odd sight of his father standing over him, weeping. Then I recrossed the room and pulled the covers over him, giving him a light kiss on his forehead. He didn’t stir as I left his room.

  The rest of the house was dark, which told me Alison was probably asleep. Now that she was no longer pretending to be healthy, she had been turning in early each night. She needed the rest.

  Outside, a tempest roared. Bands of rain lashed the side of the house. The trees danced to the unpredictable rhythm of wind gusts. Somewhere nearby, our pack of feral dogs was howling at the storm, for whatever good it would do them.

  I padded softly to our bedroom, where I became aware there was an extra shape sitting in our wide windowsill, watching the light show.

  “Hey,” Alison said.

  “Oh hey.”

  “How’s Sam?”

  “He’s good.”

  “Did he ask you to sleep with him?”

  “No. I just passed out while reading to him.”

  She chuckled softly.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked.

  She scooted up, making room for me to slide in behind her. She squeezed herself between my legs, with her back to me, and I wrapped both arms around her.

  “He’s really held up pretty well, all things considered,” she said. “I mean, he gets these bouts of . . . I don’t know if you’d call it melancholy or what. I know that’s when he’s thinking about her, when he’s missing her. The rest of the time, he’s been a real trouper.”

  “You think it’s resilience or youthful ignorance?” I asked.

  “Maybe both,” she said.

  She was about to say something when another bolt of lightning split the night, briefly illuminating our yard, the beach, and the river beyond it.

  Once the boom of accompanying thunder had dissipated, she said, “So, are you ready for tomorrow?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.

  “I’m not talking about the trial. I’m talking about—”

  “How things will go with Emma. I know,” I said.

  This was not the first time she had brought up the topic of how the hostage exchange would work. We had agreed that, with Sam, there were reasons things had been relatively straightforward. They gave us our son back because they had our daughter and still needed something from me.

  It was different now. Much different. The moment I made that ruling, I would cease to be of use to them. So would Emma. She would become a liability, a witness who could testify against them if they ever got caught. That meant I couldn’t issue my ruling until Emma was safe in my arms. We had discussed that fact many times, and I thought she was going to rehash it.

  Instead, she just said, “We’ve got one shot at this, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She had turned toward me and was looking at me in a way that I’m not sure words can accurately describe. It was as deadly serious as I had even seen her.

  “These people, they’re not going to just give us what we want. We’re going to have to take it from them. We have to be willing to do whatever it takes to get her back.”

  I didn’t respond. I just stared out the window and watched that early-fall thunderstorm work out its fury on the York River, whipping it into a white-capped frenzy.

  “Whatever it takes,” she said one last time.

  * * *

  I slept a few, halting hours that night. Around four A.M., my bladder woke me up. By the time I returned from the bathroom, my heart was already pounding so much it felt like the thunder was still reverberating in my chest.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes of deluding myself that I was still getting some form of rest, I gave up and went downstairs to brew a pot of coffee.

  As the sun started its inexorable creep toward our eastern horizon, I sat on our back deck, thinking about my conversation with Alison and the severe way she had looked at me. I knew the end goal as well as she did, of course. What remained unclear was how the mechanics of the exchange would work.

  Maybe it’s different in other jurisdictions, but in the Eastern District of Virginia, we still file rulings—at least the big ones like this—in much the same way Walter E. Hoffman himself did. A hard copy of the documen
t, hand-signed by the judge, is walked down to the clerk’s office and handed to the case manager.

  From there the twenty-first century takes back over: The case manager scans the document and enters it into the electronic case filing system, the attorneys are e-mailed digital copies of the document, the press downloads the PDFs, and so on.

  But that first step—the one that matters most—is still done analog. And it required my putting pen to paper. As far as the federal judiciary was concerned, that was my only real power. I couldn’t give it up until the last possible moment.

  That was the simple part. The rest was more complicated. I couldn’t imagine the kidnappers would want to come anywhere near the courthouse, a secure federal building filled with US marshals. Emma’s captors would insist on the exchange happening elsewhere, in a place they would consider to be more neutral turf.

  And yet the document had to be filed at the courthouse, on what was clearly my turf.

  It was a paradox, one that I had been mulling for weeks now. One more pot of coffee and one more sunrise did nothing to resolve it. Eventually I gave up, went inside to get ready for the day ahead. I checked my e-mail quickly, just to make sure there hadn’t been an e-mail from Jeb Byers saying that the Judicial Council had convened and ordered me to cease and desist. But I was still in the clear.

  After kissing Alison and Sam good-bye, I was soon in my Buick, rolling up our long driveway. It was when I reached the end of it that my eyes went to the sky and I was filled with foreboding.

  Ordinarily, I don’t put a lot of stock in signs or omens. I don’t believe a radio station has played a certain song because there’s a message I’m meant to hear. I don’t think a rainbow means anything other than that there are water droplets in the sky. I couldn’t read tea leaves if I wanted to.

  But the last thing I saw as I turned onto our road was a small flock of vultures—probably the very same ones that had feasted on Herb Thrift—circling overhead.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Ever since the little girl’s escape, the younger brother had lost whatever authority he once possessed.

  The older brother was calling all the shots now. And this latest task was no different. The older brother insisted it had not been done well enough the first time.

  So, really, what choice did the younger brother have? Out he went, shovel in hand, right after breakfast.

  He was wearing long pants, long sleeves, gloves, and a hat. They were going somewhere sandy and sun soaked after this, a place with cheap booze and cheaper women. Hell if he was going to spend his first week in that paradise scratching at poison ivy.

  The air tasted clean, like the previous night’s thunderstorm had hit the reset button on the world. He inhaled deeply. High above, the morning sky was clear, with only a few jet contrails crisscrossing it in wispy strips.

  He found the pine tree that marked his entry point, then plunged into the forest, ignoring the wetness from the dripping undergrowth. He walked due east, directly toward the rising sun, and counted his steps.

  At a hundred, he saw the logs he had crossed over one another. He was still on course.

  At two hundred, he found his second marker, two saplings he had uprooted and pointed in the proper direction.

  At three hundred, he reached his destination. He was off by only a few feet, which wasn’t bad, considering how deep he was in the forest.

  Gripping the shovel in both hands, he climbed down into the hole he had made the day before and got to work. He had already dug until he hit the water table, which wasn’t very far in this soggy part of the world. The older brother insisted he go deeper.

  The younger attacked the job steadily, tossing out one shovelful of mucky soil after another. He was deep enough now that he didn’t have much resistance from tree roots, which had bedeviled him the day before.

  He dug until he was up to his knees in water. That had to be good enough. He climbed out of the hole and took one last look at his handiwork. Satisfied, he retraced his steps back toward the house, eager for a shower.

  If the older brother wanted that little girl’s grave dug any deeper, he could dig it himself.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  There were two court security officers at the employees’ entrance that morning.

  One was a big chunk of a guy who I knew only a little because he was usually assigned to one of the magistrate’s courtrooms. The other was Ben Gardner. I greeted the large man first, then nodded at Ben.

  “Morning, Judge,” he said.

  I passed through the forever-non-beeping metal detector, collected my bag from the X-ray machine’s conveyor belt, and thought I would continue on my way toward the elevator, like usual.

  But Ben said, “Judge, I’m going to walk with you to your chambers, if that’s okay.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I said, a little confused.

  “There’s already a bit of a crowd up on the fourth floor. We just want to make sure there are no problems.”

  He followed me into the elevator. As soon as the doors closed, he cleared his throat.

  “I know it’s going to be a busy day for you,” he said. “But I think I might have an answer for you a little later on that fingerprint thing.”

  “Great.”

  “My guy said he was going to run it this morning. If there’s a match, I should probably have a name for you around lunchtime.”

  “I appreciate that. Really.”

  “No worries,” he said.

  The elevator slowed to a stop on the fourth floor. I had thought Ben’s line about there being a crowd had just been an excuse to get me alone for a moment. But he hadn’t been making it up. I heard the noise even before the doors parted.

  Then they opened and it was like walking into a large surprise party that didn’t yet know the celebrant had arrived. There had to be a hundred voices, talking all at once, bouncing off the terrazzo floors and up to the ceiling.

  It was so odd. The fourth floor is usually as quiet as a mausoleum and half as lively. Yet here were women in silk blouses and men in custom suits, leaning against the walls or gathered in small clumps in the middle of the hallway. They weren’t allowed to have their mobile devices with them, so they had no choice but to talk to one another.

  A few of them were less expensively dressed but just as loud. Those had to be the reporters.

  “I’ll lead the way,” Ben said over the din.

  I followed him into the scrum, letting him pick our path through it. Most of the throng didn’t pay me any attention. Even though I had a CSO acting as a lead blocking back, I was just another guy in a suit. But I could tell, by the way certain heads were snapping in my direction, that a least a few people recognized me as I passed.

  Who were all these people? The reporters, I understood. But the rest looked like . . .

  Investment bankers.

  Of course.

  Every development in the ApotheGen case had a corresponding effect on the stock price. These were analysts and hedge fund employees whose jobs involved making educated bets on the way a stock like ApoG would move next. If they thought it was going up, they’d buy low; if they thought it was going down, they’d short it.

  They followed their hunches based on the information they could assemble. And my courtroom had suddenly become the best source for information on ApotheGen’s immediate future. If I wrinkled my eyebrows in a disapproving way as the plaintiff spoke, ApotheGen would gain fifty cents. If I overruled an objection by the defense, ApotheGen would lose fifty cents. Or twelve cents. Or a buck forty. Or whatever.

  Point was, there was money to be made in the courtroom of the Honorable Scott Sampson on this final Friday morning in September. It was like the fourth-floor hallway had become the lobby of a casino, and a high-stakes game of chance was about to begin.

  And none of them knew the tables were rigged.

  * * * />
  As nine o’clock neared, the horde continued to mass. There was still no word from Jeb Byers and the Judicial Council, though the rug could still be pulled out from under me at any moment.

  With half an hour to go, I asked the clerks to open the doors to my courtroom and the overflow room, to give people time to jostle for seats.

  Ten minutes out, I started my pretrial ritual. I combed my hair. I donned my robe. I checked my phone for instructions—there were none—then tucked it in my pocket.

  Despite the exhaustion that had become my persistent sidekick, I felt myself moving with alacrity. I might get to see this thing through after all.

  Buoyed by that thought, I emerged from my office. Jeremy—who ordinarily would have been there to greet me, to give me one last once-over and a few words of encouragement—was nowhere to be found.

  “Jean Ann says everyone is in place,” Mrs. Smith informed me.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  The court security officer led me down the hallway I had walked hundreds of times before.

  Then he opened the door, and any sense of normalcy was shattered. My courtroom, so empty so much of the time, was stuffed with spectators. I both heard them, with their unquiet chatter, and felt them. Their collective breath hit me like a great, flatulent wall of air as soon as I crossed the threshold.

  “All rise!” my law clerk yelled, and then had to repeat herself because she hadn’t been loud enough the first time.

  As the clerk began the traditional cry, I surveyed the room. The defense team had annexed the side to my left, mostly so its surfeit of advocates, who had occupied the jury box, all had places to sit. To my right, there was Roland Hemans, standing next to bearded Denny Palgraff and two associates from Cranston & Hemans.

  Beyond the divider, in the six rows of benches that comprised the gallery, there was a sea of faces. I identified Andy Whipple, hedge fund genius and my brother-in-law’s employer, whom I recognized from television. He was in the back on the aisle.