The Great Divide

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Marcus, this is Jim Bell. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” For a federal judge’s guard-receptionist to call him on the weekend during a trial was definitely one for the books. “What can I do for you?”

  “Judge Nicols doesn’t know anything about this call.” The words had a rehearsed quality. “I’m not gonna say a thing to her, and you probably shouldn’t either.”

  Marcus searched for his chair, said slowly, “Okay.”

  “Last night the judge was approached by Senator Stern. He told her the White House is looking for a new independent U.S. prosecutor. Something about issues being raised by the Senate Ethics Committee. He asked if she’d like the position.”

  Marcus breathed tightly. “She said yes.”

  “Right. Also yesterday Jenny Hail was called by the governor’s office. A district judgeship has come available over in Winston-Salem. They’re considering Jenny for the position. You know how close those two are.”

  Marcus hefted the newly arrived document. “I’ve just been served with a subpoena. A grievance has been filed against me with the state bar. It’s related to a case I was involved in, oh, it must be five years ago.” He flipped the pages, confirmed, “Yes, here it is, five years. It accuses me of turning a man whose will I drew up against his surviving heirs.” Marcus dropped the pages to his desk. “Charlie Hayes would call this a hanging offense, since if I’m convicted I would lose my license to practice law.”

  “Interesting how all this came up together.”

  “You said it.”

  “Well, see you on Monday.”

  “Right. And thanks, Jim. A lot.” Marcus hung up, trying hard not to read too much into what he had just learned.

  BUT ASHLEY GRANGER did not call back that day, nor did Marcus receive any answer except a taped message when he phoned both Ashley’s office and his home. Marcus held to patience through a steady stream of work, finally giving in to exhaustion just after eight. As he lay waiting for sleep to come, he decided the day seemed altogether incomplete.

  As usual, his sleep was shattered before dawn. This time, however, he opened his eyes and searched for what remained just beyond the reach of his senses. He peered into the darkness, but found no reason for fear. Instead, his room seemed disturbed by the beat of disembodied wings.

  Marcus sat up in bed and tried to listen beyond the night’s sibilant hush. The chamber did not hold to the feel of his nightly trauma. Instead he sensed a different presence, neither good nor hostile, merely watchful. As though he was on trial himself, and the night was asking, Are you worthy? Marcus sat there until dawn, helpless to do more than hope the verdict would come down in his favor.

  MONDAY MORNING dawned with a mocking beauty, a false clarity to the sky and the road ahead. Marcus did not see the lie revealed until Darren was pulling into the courthouse parking lot, and he finally had an answer to his repeated telephone calls to Ashley Granger’s office.

  Afterward it seemed that even before he heard the anguished voice, even before he detected the weeping in the background, even before Ashley’s secretary sobbed out the news on the car phone, he knew. Marcus sat and heard the keening words, and loathed the absence of rain and gray and universal mourning.

  He was all the way down the courtroom’s central aisle before he realized he had passed Kirsten. He turned and greeted her with a solemn nod, and the thought that at this moment, her gaze of broken gemstone was completely appropriate. Here at least was one who shared his sorrow, even though she did not know it yet. Marcus moved to his table, said to Alma and Austin, “Do you still have the video?”

  Something either in his eyes or in his tone stilled their questions. Alma said simply, “Yes.”

  “The original?”

  “In our safety deposit box,” Austin replied.

  He turned to Charlie. “Find us an expert. Have it cleaned up, make Gloria as visible as possible.”

  Charlie nodded. “What’s the matter, son?”

  The bailiff chose that moment to announce, “All rise.”

  Marcus remained standing as the others seated themselves, isolated by more than his stance as the court was called into session. He waited until Judge Nicols turned his way to announce, “Your Honor, it is my forlorn duty to announce that an attorney assisting me with this case, Mr. Ashley Granger of Washington, D.C., was murdered on Saturday.”

  “No!” Kirsten’s wail wrenched Marcus where he stood, but he did not turn around.

  Logan catapulted to his feet. “Your Honor!”

  “Mr. Glenwood, I see you are distraught,” Judge Nicols began. “But—”

  “Your Honor, Ashley Granger was brutally murdered while driving to take a deposition related to this very case.”

  “Your Honor! I move for a mistrial!”

  “Hush up, the pair of you!” Nicols hammered her gavel so powerfully even Kirsten’s second protest collapsed to weeping. “Mr. Glenwood! You are in serious breach of court discipline here!”

  “Your Honor, counsel for the plaintiff has biased the jury with these utterly unfounded accusations!” Logan started forward. “I demand you declare a mistrial!”

  The hand holding the gavel shook threateningly. “You get back to your table, sir. Mr. Glenwood, plant yourself in that chair.” Only when they were both seated did she lower the arm and the gavel. “This will not happen. Not ever again, not in my courtroom, no matter what the supposed reason. Is that clear?” She glared at them until both attorneys nodded their acceptance. “All right. Mr. Kendall, your motion is dismissed. Mr. Glenwood, I see you are bereft. I am sorry. That is all I can say.”

  “Your Honor, Ashley Granger was going to take a deposition from one Hao Lin, who is being held in the INS detention center outside Washington.” Kirsten’s sobs tore at him, as if she were weeping the tears he could not himself afford to shed. “I request the court’s permission to attend Mr. Granger’s memorial service this afternoon, then proceed to depose the witness and if necessary return with her.”

  Logan was having none of it. “Your Honor, this is nothing more than yet another blatant—”

  “I will not warn you again,” Nicols snapped, holding Logan in his seat by strength of will alone. “I am this close to severely sanctioning you for misleading the court and intentionally withholding critical evidence. Do not try my patience at this point, Mr. Kendall. I am warning you.” She turned back to Marcus. “Very well. Have the papers drawn up. You may use my secretary.” She banged the gavel. “Court is adjourned until Wednesday morning.”

  At the bailiff’s call, Marcus rose with the others, wishing there were some way to have the court remain there, standing in homage to the loss of a truly good man.

  AT LEAST Kirsten mourned Ashley’s passage. The preparations and the drive to the airport and the flight were punctuated by her sorrow. She did not seem aware that on occasion her eyes leaked a scattering of tears. Marcus waited until they were in a taxi headed for the Washington church to ask the first of what would have to be a multitude of questions. “The last time we talked, Ashley said he was chasing something critical to the case. Do you have any idea what that might have been?”

  She was too far gone to even pretend anymore. “No. All I know is that about two weeks before she left, Gloria became so excited about something, I thought she was going to have a heart attack.”

  “Before she left for China?”

  Her nod was little more than a shiver. “She wouldn’t tell me what it was. Something so big it could mean everything, that was all she told me. It could make it all worthwhile.”

  “Make what worthwhile?” Marcus demanded. “Her research? Her trip?”

  But the question only renewed her tears. “I begged her not to go. I pleaded with her. I told her I couldn’t do what she wanted. All she said was, ‘If I fail, then it will all have been for nothing.’ ” Kirsten seemed unable even to draw a decent breath, leaving the words tattered. “Now another person has died. And I can’t help feeli
ng it’s because I didn’t get it right.”

  Marcus assumed she was talking about Gloria, and said only, “You don’t know she’s gone.” When Kirsten’s tears continued, he could not bring himself to say anything more.

  The memorial was in one of the great landmarks of downtown Washington, a church of stone and lofty dimensions. It had to be, for the crowd was astonishing. Whatever else Ashley Granger might have been, he was certainly well-liked, and by a vast assortment of people. Blacks and Asians and Hispanics and Indians and whites all mingled and shared the pallor of the truly grieving. Marcus settled Kirsten into a pew toward the rear, for the church was full and growing cramped. He gave his own seat to a woman weeping jewels and genuine tears, and moved to the back wall. There were people in corporate-style suits and others in baggy jeans and sweats, polished shoes and work boots, all burdened with unexpected sorrow.

  As the minister completed his greeting and led them in the first hymn, a diminutive figure walked up and said, “It is good to see you, Marcus Glenwood. Though the reason is not good, no, not good at all.”

  Marcus stared at Dee Gautam, the little figure swallowed in a dark suit two sizes too big, or perhaps too big for the size of the man this day. “I can’t believe this has happened.”

  “This is the problem with our lot and our life.” Dee Gautam surveyed the crowd, nodded to someone Marcus did not see. “We are witness to the bitter fragility of life on earth.”

  Marcus asked because the sorrow he carried demanded it, “Is Gloria Hall dead as well?”

  Dee stared at him with eyes deep and liquid. “I do not deal in rumors, Mr. Glenwood. You must try to avoid this as well. Rumors are a sea you can drown in.”

  The similarity to his own last conversation with Ashley only pushed the sorrow deeper. “Is she?”

  Slowly Dee Gautam shook his head in refusal. “This day we bury Ashley Granger, a good man and a friend. That is enough for now, Mr. Glenwood. The day can only hold so many tears.”

  The little man turned and walked away, leaving Marcus open to the thrust of unassailable fact. The gathering condemned him with both its numbers and its grief. Marcus stood at the church’s back wall, aware that were he the one laid out in the bronze coffin there in the central aisle, his own passage would go unnoticed and unmourned. He would simply depart and be gone, a leaf plucked by winter’s bleak hand and tossed away, overlooked and unsung. A loss to none but his own forgotten dreams.

  The pastor started to speak, his words both a dirge and a personal conviction. Marcus heard about a man he had hardly known and now never would. A man whose tenets ran so deep they were rarely expressed, and then only in the barest of words. History was full of such men, the pastor lamented, while the present knew only their lack. Ashley Granger had lived the Samaritan’s challenge, turning his back to no man. He died, yes, yet still he lived. The pastor did not shout this news triumphantly, nor even strive to convince anyone. Instead, his voice beat steady and determined as a drum. Ashley Granger lives on because he must. He enters the wedding feast and is taken to the very first table, greeted there by the bridegroom himself. Marcus stood and listened and understood very little save for his own lack of accomplishment.

  Afterward he stood by the bottom stair, watching the throng drift out slowly. The mourners seemed reluctant to give this good man such a paltry sum of time. Marcus stood and realized that something had happened to him in that service. What it was, he did not know, for genuine awareness remained below the level of words. Yet he knew, and felt the resulting energy there in his gut. He was taking something away from this tragic confrontation, something so potent it would require days and perhaps weeks to understand. For now, all he could do was resolve not to let his weakness dominate. He would do his best to keep Ashley Granger’s parting gift from fading into yet one more toneless memory.

  The resolve hardened his gaze and his voice as Kirsten walked slowly toward him. “You knew Ashley?”

  She was unable to lie. “We dated for a while. After Gloria started going out with Gary. But I wasn’t ready … It didn’t work out.”

  He accepted the admission with a single nod. “I want you to stay up here in Washington.”

  The direct command was enough to focus her gaze. Marcus continued, “Ashley was investigating something. I have no idea what it was, only that it was important enough to turn our case around. I want you to find out what it was.”

  She gave the barest nod of acceptance. “I’ll try.”

  “No more trying, Kirsten. No more avoidance. You will do it. And fast. I can only give you tomorrow.” He did not care how it sounded. The time for velvet wordplay was over. “I’ll speak with Dee, ask him to have you watched and make sure you’re safe.”

  “Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The day after tomorrow, you need to be ready to travel to Raleigh with a new witness. I won’t know any more until tomorrow night at the earliest.”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish. Whether you decide to stay in Raleigh is your choice. But if you do, I expect to find a change staying with you.”

  Something sparked within her violet eyes, a gleam that left him with a sudden urge to draw her near, hold her so tight she could feel the hollowness at the center of his own chest. The desire only hardened his tone. “Up to now, you’ve done nothing but try your best to run away. No more, Kirsten. If you stay in Raleigh, I want you to do so with answers and a will to fight. A determination to see this case through to the very end.”

  He turned and left her there, not looking back, not needing to. He was not turning from Kirsten, but rather from all that had been before. The path leading forward was lined with mourners and with grief, as it should be.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING Darren met him at the Raleigh airport with the news, “C-Charlie Hayes, he’s b-been calling all the t-time.”

  “Does he have the video ready?”

  Darren handed Marcus the cellular phone as they passed into the night. “Sounded t-that way t- to me.”

  But Marcus did not call. He needed time to sort through everything he had learned at the detention center. He kneaded his neck, leaned back, closed his eyes. Charlie could wait. They would go into court the next morning with whatever they had.

  They were midway to Rocky Mount before he picked up the phone, and then it was to call his secretary, not Charlie. The familiar voice with its strange mixture of humor, good sense, and constant tragedy said, “Well, hello stranger.”

  “How are you, Netty?”

  “Can’t complain. Well, I could. But it never helps, so I won’t bother. Things have been jumping around the office.”

  “New business?”

  “Some. Nothing that can’t wait. People coming in know you’re tied up with this trial—shoot, the whole world does. No, most of the calls have been from the press.”

  That pushed him up straight. “You don’t say.”

  “Charlie Hayes has been having himself a field day. Talking to the New York Times reporter almost gave the man hives, he got so worked up. He was interviewed by PBS and a couple of the local television stations.”

  “This could be a very good thing,” Marcus said, wishing he could feel more hope for the missing woman.

  “Kirsten there with you?”

  “No.” Marcus noted his own disappointment at the unspoken news that she had not called. “She’s looking into something up in Washington.”

  “Pity. Alma’s been asking about her. I’ll miss her, too. She was a big help last week.”

  “Kirsten helped you?”

  “Almost every day. Jay’s been going through one of his bad spells. She was seeing to things around the office. That girl is a good worker, hon’. Solid as they come.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Now that’s a curious thing.” The humor was back full force. “She made me promise not to tell you, wouldn’t arrive till after you left, had to be gone before you came home. I guess them big-city l
adies got ways we country folk won’t never understand.”

  “I guess,” Marcus agreed idly, and took a long moment to decide there was no profit in studying that course. “Can you do something for me tonight?”

  “What, now?”

  “Soon as possible.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I need you to come by the office, get the last couple of New Horizons annual reports. I’ll have them ready for you. Go to one of those late-night photo places, have them make copies of all the executives’ pictures. Make one set big as they can. Then fifteen eight-by-tens of each.”

  As they pulled into the driveway, Marcus was immensely gratified to see Dee’s gardener leave his shabby trailer and make his bowlegged way toward them. He said into the phone, “We’ve just gotten home. Come on by any time.”

  The gardener opened his door and announced, “Dee Gautam say, it all done. Lady, she come.”

  Marcus felt the cloud of worry he had been carrying begin to coalesce into action. “He found us an interpreter?”

  The ancient face screwed up tight. “I just say that, yes?”

  “Good. Right. When does she arrive?”

  “You say tomorrow, she come tomorrow.” The man huffed his way around and started off, muttering a chanted curse.

  Marcus called, “Wait.” He picked up the shopping bag and slid from the Jeep. He walked over to the little man and held it out. “This is for you.”

  The man seemed not to believe there was any good reason to reach for the bag. “You not pay. Dee Gautam pay.”

  “This isn’t payment. It’s a gift. Take it. Please.”

  Reluctantly the wizened figure accepted the package, and drew the first of two items into the streetlight. The man breathed a quiet Eeeeya. He unfolded the sweater, cable-knit merino wool, green and chased with suede along the shoulders and the elbows. Marcus was vastly relieved that the store’s smallest size apparently would fit him well, and said quietly, “There’s something more.”

  Slowly the man returned to the bag, drew out a pair of deerskin gloves, yellow as butter and soft as an autumn sunrise. Marcus said simply, “It looks to be a cold winter for gardening.”