Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller

by Rachel Sinclair

  This guy was making me sick. Here he was, trying to get me to blame the murder on his wife and mother-in-law. Maybe he was right about that, but it still made me sick. I didn’t want to do that.

  “Well, I need to keep on doing my due diligence,” I said. “I need to get your mistress, Kayla Stone in here next. I need to speak with her.”

  He stood up. “No. I forbid you to do that.”

  “What do you mean? As I said, she’s your alibi. You were with her at the time of the murder. She’s the only person who can testify that you were nowhere near the house when your father was shot.”

  “No. No means no. I won’t let you speak with her.”

  The wheels started to turn in my head. “I am going to speak with her. I am going to get her on the record. She will appear for a deposition. I might work for you, but the trial strategy is going to be all me. I’m the lawyer, you’re the client, and you’re going to do things the way that I say. I hope that I’ve made myself perfectly clear.”

  “If you call her in for a deposition, then I swear to God, I will fire you.” He crossed his arms and glared at me and I felt a chill. I felt the same type of chill that I felt way back when. Every time I saw him on campus after the rape, I felt sick and I felt a chill running up and down my spine. Now, the way that he looked at me, I felt that same type of cold, prickly feeling.

  Like I was looking into the eyes of evil.

  I stood up. “You go right ahead.” I raised my eyebrows, knowing that he was stuck. He was broke and Christina was paying my fee. I would imagine that she also had paid his bond, which meant that she could call it in at any time. He would spend the pre-trial process in jail in that case, and he would have to get a Public Defender to take his case.

  The Public Defender attorneys were excellent attorneys – they were dedicated to their jobs, they were knowledgeable and experienced. I knew this about the PD office, but I doubted that Michael did. He probably had the same type of view of the PD’s office that many people did – that those attorneys were overworked and underpaid and didn’t do a good job.

  They were overworked and underpaid, but they were dedicated and excellent attorneys. I doubted that Michael knew this, though.

  At that, he stormed out the door.

  “Pearl,” I said, calling her into the office. “I need for you do something for me. And I need it ASAP.”

  She popped her head in. “What’s that, Harper?”

  “Get Kayla Stone in here for a deposition. You need to get that subpoena out for her today. Get it out, have it served, before something happens and she disappears.”

  “On it,” she said.

  I suddenly felt out of sorts. There was something about Kayla Stone that made Michael nervous. I didn’t know what it was, but I was sure as Hell going to find out. I was nervous because I was afraid that Michael was going to make her somehow disappear from the jurisdiction.

  Maybe that was the missing piece of the puzzle.

  I hoped that I was getting close.

  Twenty

  That night, I started to feel weird again. Not quite as weird as before, but I had a sudden burst of energy. I lay in my bed, tossing and turning, not feeling tired, even though it was 3 AM. My thoughts weren’t jumbled, but I had a sudden sense of clarity in my brain.

  I knew that I was going to win this case, and, by winning, I really meant losing. I was going to figure out what was going on, and I was going to do it before the case was tried.

  I sat up straight in my bed and I heard a voice. “You’re missing a case that’s pending in front of Judge Sanders,” the voice said. “A very important case.”

  I was hallucinating. I knew that I was. But I knew that this voice was coming from inside my own head. There was something in my subconscious that was shouting at me. There was something that I was missing. Some case that I was missing.

  I didn’t know what it was, though. Something was telling me that the missing puzzle piece was going to be found in all the cases that were pending before the judge. I didn’t know if Michael was going to be involved with that case, though. I didn’t want to let go of my belief that Michael did it, so I didn’t want to go that route. If the person who killed the judge was somebody who was involved in a case in front of him, then that probably pointed the evidence back away from Michael.

  I sighed and went back over all the cases that were pending. I had looked over these cases and looked over them, and nothing was popping out at me. There were companies that stood to lose quite a bit in front of the judge, and that was a good place to go, but, yet, I didn’t quite have a good hunch about any of them. None of them.

  “What case?” I asked nobody in particular. “What case? Please tell me. I need to know which case? There are so many of them. I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove that anybody on this list would have killed him.”

  “Environmental issues,” said the voice. “Lots of people getting sick. Follow the money.”

  Environmental issues. Lots of people getting sick. Follow the money.

  I sighed. What did any of this mean? The only possible case that I saw that was pending in front of the judge that had to do with the environment was the case of the plant that exploded. That case had nothing to do with making people sick, though.

  There obviously was something else.

  I sighed. I was going to have to do research on this issue. I might as well, I thought. I certainly wasn’t tired. I was wide awake. I was feeling strange, too. I got frightened that I was going to get as weird as I did before. That day when I was feeling out of sorts, and I wanted to do nothing more than spend, spend, spend on stupid things that I had never spent money on before. I was going to have to see a doctor if I felt this way for a long period of time.

  I sat down in front of my computer. I was going to have to look for information about environmental issues and people getting sick. There were companies all over the country who were doing this. I knew this to be true. Erin Brockovich was a true story, after all. But the thing of it was, I was going to have to find out a company who was doing this that was based in the Kansas City area.

  Or maybe not. Maybe a subsidiary company was poisoning people. Maybe the parent company was based here in Kansas City. That would make things much more complicated.

  This was going to be a needle in the haystack. There was a case that was brewing out there, not yet filed, but brewing. Maybe a class-action. I knew that those class-actions took a long time to be brought before a court. They took a long time before they were even filed. They were a lot of work, trying to get the class together and certified and find victims that were flung around the country and even the world.

  I got up to make myself a cup of tea, and, for some odd reason, my mind drifted to Elmer. I had no idea why I thought about him at that point. He just popped into my head for some odd reason.

  I decided to get on my coat and my hat and head downstairs. Sophia had been staying the night lately, because I needed the reassurance that Rina wouldn’t just up and leave. She still hadn’t forgiven me for the John Robinson thing. I knew that for sure. She was slightly more friendly with me, but I knew that she was up to something. She was up to no good. So, I was having Sophia sleep over just in case something happened and I had to go out in the middle of the night to look for her.

  Because Sophia was spending the night, I felt comfortable leaving the house. I was going down to the jail and I was going to see Elmer. I knew that he was sleeping, but I was going to wake him up. The jail was going to let me see him because I was a professional, therefore I was able to go to the jail 24 hours. They weren’t going to be happy that I was there, but I didn’t really care.

  I didn’t even know why I was going to see him. I only knew that he had some kind of clue for me about this whole Michael Reynolds case.

  What was I going to ask him? And who was I going to see when I got there? Was it going to be crazy Elmer or the charming one? The charming one wasn’t charming for long, so I thought that I
probably was going to be up against the raging bull. That was okay, though. I felt invincible for some odd reason.

  Like nobody could touch me. I felt like I could take him if he tried to kill me again. I could beat him up with my bare hands. Tear him limb from limb.

  Why was I feeling this way again? My brain was going haywire again.

  I thought about Axel’s mother. She locked herself in her room and painted picture after picture after picture. 20 pictures in a week, he said. I never thought about it, but my mother’s brother, my Uncle Patrick, was the same way. He was a heavy drinker, and he had attempted suicide several times, but I also knew that there were times when he went completely off the rails. He would call my mother at all hours of the night, telling her about some novel he was writing or some painting he was working on. It got the point where she had to turn off her phone when he was like that.

  He also went out and gambled for long periods of time. He would come over for dinner and talk the entire time about nonsense. His speech during these times were almost stream of consciousness – he would go from one topic to another to another. He would also be ready to fight anybody for any reason. He would start yelling and screaming at my mother and my sisters and brothers, seemingly for no reason at all.

  He went into psychiatric facilities several different times. I was a kid at that time, so my mom didn’t talk to me about what was really wrong with him.

  Nowadays, it seemed that he had it all together. He managed to finally figure things out, I guess, because he had a decent job and, to my knowledge, he hadn’t had any more incidents where he started to act crazy.

  I was going to have to ask my mother about Uncle Patrick the next time I saw her. I was scheduled to have dinner at her house this coming Sunday. I was going to have to ask her to confide in me, because I felt like I was acting just like Uncle Patrick.

  I saw the Jackson County jail come into focus. I went through the doors and went right up to the windows. “I need to see an inmate,” I said. “His name is Elmer Harris.”

  She looked at me strangely. “Miss, you do know that it’s 4 AM.?”

  “I know. I need to see him. I need to talk to him.”

  She shook her head and called on the phone. “Go on up,” she said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I do.”

  As I headed to the pod where Elmer was located, I didn’t quite know what I was doing or why I wanted to see him. I felt like I was being led to him by some force unknown. I assumed that this force was my gut instinct, but I also knew that I had the kind of mental clarity that I never had before. Because of this extreme sense of mental clarity, I somehow knew that Elmer held some kind of clue for Michael’s case.

  I got to the meeting area and sat down. Within minutes, Elmer approached me. His wrists were shackled and so were his ankles. He looked like somebody had just woken him up, which was the case, of course.

  “What do you want, darlin’?” he asked me.

  I cleared my throat, not knowing what to say at first.

  He just stared at me and I noticed something. Something that I never really noticed before. His left eye drooped. “I wanted to know a few things,” I said. “About you.”

  “Why you here in the middle of the night?”

  I shook my head. “I just had a hunch about something. I admit, I didn’t really get to know you very well.”

  “No, you didn’t.” He continued to stare at me, and his left eye, which drooped only subtly, just haunted me. I didn’t even know why. I only knew that the whole thing was a clue to proving Michael was guilty.

  Come on, Harper, you’re not making a lick of sense. So his left eye is drooping. What does that have to do with Michael’s case? It has nothing to do with it, that’s what.

  Yet my gut was nagging at me. “Elmer,” I began. “When did you first start to exhibit violent behavior?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think that I exhibit violent behavior, Ms. Ross.”

  “Are you medicated now?”

  “Yes, I am. I have been ever since that day in the courtroom. They give me the good drugs now so I don’t feel like I want to kill everyone I see anymore.”

  I shifted in my seat. “You don’t see your behavior as violent?”

  “No. I see it as a reaction. A reaction to bullshit. That’s all it is. Nothing more and nothing less.”

  “But, Elmer, you killed your crime partner and you almost killed me. You don’t see that there’s anything wrong with any of that?”

  He shrugged. “I guess there is. But why are you asking me these questions?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Were you ever diagnosed with any kind of brain condition? Any kind of brain damage?”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah. I was. I apparently was born this way. Born bad.”

  “Born bad? What do you mean?”

  “My mother was exposed to something before I got born.” His jaw started to go back and forth, back and forth, as if he was trying to chew something. “She got money for it.”

  “What were you exposed to? Do you know?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t know. You’re gonna have to get my records.”

  “Can you sign a waiver for me to get those records?”

  “No, ma’am.” He stared at me and I got a chill, but I tamped it down.

  “Why not? You just said that I would need to get your records. I can’t get your records unless you sign a waiver for me to obtain them.”

  “You’ll just have to figure it out yourself.”

  I sighed. Anna was going to have to get on this one. It wouldn’t be difficult. I still had copies of his criminal records, so I knew his date of birth and things like that about him.

  Still, I always felt intrusive doing this. It was necessary, usually, but I always felt kinda dirty when I went behind these people and did things without their knowledge or consent.

  “Is that all you want to know from me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I needed to see you and talk to you. I admit, I don’t really know why, but I think that it’s going to become extremely clear to me at some point.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I guess. By the way, my new attorney got a real good plea deal for me to take. Life in prison. It sure beats being on death row. They don’t feed you real good on death row and you don’t get to get out in the yard and the library and things. If I’m going to prison, I don’t want to be on death row.”

  I smiled, wondering how his new attorney got him to go ahead and take something. I guessed that him being calmed down with “good drugs” had something to do with it.

  I left the jail wondering what it was about Elmer’s case that was going to tie in Michael. I knew that it would. I had an unbelievable amount of insight, an unbelievable amount of clarity. I had so much energy and I felt invincible. I was going to figure out why Elmer was significant and I was going to do that soon.

  Twenty-One

  The first thing I did that day, after I got the girls up and fed and dropped them off at school, was get on the computer. I also called Anna and had her look for Elmer’s medical records.

  I remembered that there was a drug, used back in the 1960s, which caused severe birth defects. It was used to treat morning sickness, and then kids were coming out without limbs. I did a Google search and quickly found the name of the drug – Thalidomide. I went through the images that was on the page and saw kids who literally had no arms – their hands were attached to their shoulders, or they had extremely short arms that were useless. I shook my head, reading on. It turned out that the drug was not readily available in America, as only 17 babies were born in the 1960s with Thalidomide birth defects.

  So what? Elmer had his limbs. And he was American. There was very little chance that he was affected by this drug. Brain damage was another side effect of this drug, but the main birth defect that was seen was the missing limbs.

  I still thought that I was on the right track, however. There was something
that he was exposed to, something that caused his brain damage. He said that he had been “born bad.” I wondered if that meant that he had been born with brain damage, damage that affected his impulse control and moods and caused rage. I had enough clients in my life to know that there were certain aspects of the brain that modulated different things. Damage to the prefrontal cortex, for instance, generally meant a loss of impulse control and an increase in aggression. I didn’t necessarily know if that was the cause of his left eye drooping, but I had a feeling that it was a piece of the puzzle.

  I was itching to get a hold of his medical records. Itching to find out what it was that he was exposed to in utero that might have caused his problems. There was a voice inside me that told me that I was missing something important, and, once I figured out what had happened to Elmer, I would be led on the right path.

  Anna called me. “Harper, can I come in? I found out some interesting things when you asked me to research Elmer’s history. I think that you probably need to see this stuff in person.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Come on in.”

  Pearl came into my office. “I got that lady scheduled. Kayla Stone. I had to subpoena her, though, because she didn’t want to come in on her own.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sit down, Pearl. I need to brainstorm with you.”

  She sat down, a pad of paper and pen in her hand. “What you need?”

  “I think that’s weird that Kayla Stone doesn’t want to come in. Don’t you think?”

  “Why is that weird? Who is she? What role does she have to play in this case?”

  “She’s the lover of my client. The other woman, as it were. But one of many. She’s important, however, because she was with my client at the moment that his father-in-law was shot. She would be his alibi.”

  Pearl nodded. “His alibi. Well, then, she should be eager to come in and talk to you. She would be the person who could maybe get him off the hook for the murder, right?”

  “Yeah. But Michael, my client, was adamant that I not involve her. He doesn’t want me even speaking with her. Why? Why would you think that he would be like that about her? It seems like she would be key to his case.”