Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller

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Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Page 24

by Rachel Sinclair


  I shook my head, not wanting to hear what she was telling me. “No. You don’t understand. I’m solving this case. I am.” But, deep down, I was afraid of what she was telling me. Was this whole Gerald Stone tie-in a ruse? Was it something that my brain was making up from whole cloth? I mean, whoever really heard of a CEO of a company putting a hit on a judge? I had never heard of such a thing. It was a crazy idea, and I didn’t know if it was a crazy idea that was true or a crazy idea that my crazy mind had cooked up. Because I was crazy.

  Ms. Hayden shook her head. “You have to do what you think is right. But I would see a doctor straight away. You don’t want to end up ignoring this issue, because you’re eventually going to break. I’ve seen it happen way too many times with my sister. If she doesn’t take her meds, she ends up in the hospital. I don’t want to see that happen to you. I know that you have that adoption pending with the girls. Just please think of that.”

  I sighed. The girls. The adoption. She was right. If I was going crazy…no, bi-polar disorder didn’t mean that you were going crazy. It simply meant that the chemicals in the brain were going haywire. That was all it meant. And medicine could fix that.

  “Thank you, Ms. Hayden. The girls will be picked up today at the usual time, but I’m actually going to be the one to pick them up. I’ll take off work early to do it.”

  “Okay. Please, Harper, think of the girls. And see your doctor.”

  “I will.”

  I walked out of the office feeling dazed and confused. She was right. I was going to have to see a doctor. If I didn’t see a doctor, I was heading for a total breakdown.

  And one thing I couldn’t afford at that time was a total breakdown.

  Thirty

  I got into my office and shut the door. I had tried to call my doctor in my car on the way over, but I couldn’t get in touch with anybody. I left a message for them to call me.

  But, for now, I was going to have to do the research I was going to do last night. I had to find out what Christina Sanders meant when she told me about Judge Perez finding that Judge Sanders was the father of her baby. Unfortunately, the court records for that case would be sealed, as it was a paternity case. So, Anna was going to have to come to rescue for me once again.

  “Anna,” I said, calling her on the phone. “I need your help. Stat.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Thanks.”

  I could barely keep my head up at that point. All the manic energy that had been coursing through my veins had emptied out, and I felt hollow and alone. I hated that feeling. I knew that I wasn’t alone. That was clear. I had the girls, I had Axel, and I had my family. I even had Tammy, even though she hadn’t been around that much lately. She had taken a much-needed vacation, and had been gone for the past two weeks.

  But that feeling of loneliness was the feeling that I got when I was about to go into a deep depression. I had to will that away. I now knew that the anti-depressants that I took probably didn’t work as well as they should have, because I probably didn’t have unipolar depression. I probably had bi-polar depression, which was a different beast altogether and demanded different meds.

  I wanted my doctor to call me back. I needed to see her. I needed her to change my meds around. I couldn’t afford to lose my mind. Not now. Not when I was in the middle of the case that was threatening to consume me. I either had to let the case consume me, so that I was going to go under, blissfully under, or I had to pop my head up and fight. Fight with everything in my arsenal.

  That was what I chose to do. I always chose to fight. And I was going to choose that here, too. This damn case wasn’t going to consume me. It wasn’t. I was going to figure it out.

  I went into the suite where Pearl was sitting at her desk. “Harper,” she said. “I found these on the floor.”

  I cocked my head and looked at what was in her hands. It was a pair of leather gloves.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Michael must have left these. I appreciate your giving these to me. I’ll put them in my desk drawer, and when I see him again, I’ll give them to him.”

  “Sure.” She looked at me. “You okay?”

  “Oh, right.” I suddenly remembered looking in the mirror at the headmaster’s office and seeing that I looked like I had been dragged by a truck through the mud. “I guess I have to comb my hair and wash my face and reapply my makeup, don’t I?”

  She nodded her head, a deeply skeptical look on her face. “You sure do. Here, take some of these.” She handed me some baby wipes that she had stored in her purse and I took them from her.

  “Thanks.”

  I went back into my office and took the wipes and washed my face. I then got some makeup out of my purse and applied it. I took out a brush and brushed my hair, and put it up in a high pony. I looked in the mirror again and saw that I looked presentable, so I sighed with relief. I had court appearances in the afternoon. I couldn’t go in there looking like something the cat dragged in. People would talk.

  Anna came into my office just as I was applying some lipstick. “Hey, Harper,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Yes. I need for you to get some closed paternity records for me. Here’s the name of the mother - it’s Christina Sanders. The child’s name is Lindsay Reynolds. Find me everything that you can possibly find me on this case. I need the petition and I need all the attachments. Especially the DNA test result.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Not a problem. It was filed here?”

  “Yes. The judge’s name is Judge Perez. He was a judge here in the state court, but he’s sitting on the federal bench right now. There’s something rotten, and I’m going to find out just what it is.”

  She nodded and brought out her laptop. “Do you mind if I do my work right here?”

  “No, no. That’s fine. You can keep me company a little. I need that right now.”

  As she clacked along on her laptop, she talked to me a little. “Harper,” she said. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I feel that I need to. You’ve seemed out of sorts. Not quite yourself. Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yes. I’m feeling fine. I mean, I’m not entirely fine. I need to see my psychiatrist and get my meds adjusted. I think that I might be manic, or I was manic, and now I’m just depressed. But I really need to figure out what is going on with this case. If I can get a handle on it, then I’ll feel like I can proceed forward. But right now, there are too many loose ends. Too many threads. Every time I pull on a thread, another thread gets loose. I just don’t know…”

  She nodded her head. “I’m sending you the paternity case,” she said. “With the attachments. Look at your email.”

  “That was fast.”

  She shrugged. “Getting into sealed state court records is a snap. A breeze. I mean, come on, Harper. I could hack into the Department of Defense if I wanted to. Do you think that it would be a problem for me to get a simple sealed paternity record?”

  “No, of course not.” I booted up my email and found Anna’s message to me. I clicked on the attachment and read.

  I shook my head. The order of the court was that Judge Sanders was found to the be the father of Lindsay Reynolds. Just like Christina had told me had happened. That wasn’t surprising – Christina had told me that this had happened, so the only thing that would have surprised me about these records would have been if the Judge Sanders wasn’t found to the father of Lindsay Reynolds.

  I clicked on the attachments and found the one that I wanted.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” I said. “The DNA test results are attached to this order, and they clearly, clearly say that Michael Reynolds was the father of Lindsay Reynolds. Clearly.” I shook my head.

  What the Hell was going on? Seriously. What was going on?

  “What? What are you seeing?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know what I was seeing. It was another layer, another damned layer, to this entire thing.

  “Judge Perez can’t try this case,” I said. “He
can’t.”

  “What case?”

  “The Dowling Chemical case. He can’t do it. He can’t get away with it.”

  “He can’t get away with what?”

  “He’s a part of the conspiracy. He is. The conspiracy to get rid of Judge Sanders.” It suddenly became clear to me. This paternity order was probably used as a blackmail device to Judge Sanders. He was either going to play ball, and find for Dowling Chemicals, or he was going to have this paternity order leaked to the world.

  I leaned back in my chair. A part of me was questioning my logic. Was this all a fever dream that my brain was cooking up? Or was this really real? Was I going to go over to the Chief Judge and tell her my suspicions, only to have her throw me out of her chambers? And how did Michael fit in with any of this?

  There was something at the back of my brain that was telling me that I had the smoking gun. The smoking gun that was going to tie Michael, at the very least, to the murder of Judge Sanders. But I couldn’t quite figure out what my brain was trying to tell me.

  “I need to speak with the Chief Judge of the Western District,” I said. “I need to tell her what I know about Judge Perez. He can’t try that Dowling case. If he does, he’s going to find for the defendant, and all those plaintiffs, who had been hurt, won’t get a thin dime. I know it. It’s not right. It’s not right. He can’t try it. Those plaintiffs need compensation. They need medical care. The babies are going to need a lot of medical care, and they’re going to be special needs children, and they’re going to need special education. That community was hurt. The justice that they need, that they thirst for, is going to be denied. That’s not right. That’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

  “Harper, you’re scaring me.” I could barely see Anna, even though she was standing right in front of me. She was hazy, and then it seemed that she was multi-colored, like in those psychedelic movies. I was vaguely aware that I was going into some other zone, some other reality, and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it. I felt like I was about to take off flying. I closed my eyes, and I felt like I was flying over to the Federal Courthouse. Flying into the chamber of Chief Judge Haynes and bursting in there with my evidence that Judge Perez was as corrupt as the day was long.

  My breathing came faster and faster, and the everything around me looked like it was speeding up. Like that scene in Willy Wonka, where everybody was going through the terrifying tunnel while the maniacal Willy Wonka sang a song. What was wrong with me?

  The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. I looked over at a man in a white coat, my senses dulled. “Where am I?” I asked the man.

  “Just lay back,” he said. “The doctor is going to come and meet with you soon.”

  I looked at the door, and I saw Axel coming through the door along with Albany. I didn’t know what was going on. I really couldn’t figure out what had happened.

  “Mate,” Axel said, coming over to me and smoothing out my hair. “I guess that you’re conscious now.”

  “Yes. I was always conscious, wasn’t I?”

  “No. Anna brought you over here from your office. She said that you started speaking, well, she used word ‘gibberish,’ but she said that the words that were coming out of your mouth were unintelligible. And you kept talking about flying. She was afraid that you were going to somehow open up the window to your office and jump. So she called 911, and the ambulance came and the men gave you a sedative and brought you here. Don’t be angry with Anna. She was only trying to help.”

  “Oh, God. Am I on a 72-hour psychiatric hold?” A 72-hour psychiatric hold referred to the length of time that somebody, who was judged to be a danger to herself or others, can be held in a psychiatric facility against his or her will. After the 72 hours is up, the facility can’t hold the person without consent. If they do want to hold the person without consent, they have to seek a court order.

  “Yes,” Albany said. “That’s what is happening. You’re going to be here for 72 hours, but hopefully they can get everything straightened out with your meds before then and you can leave.”

  I grimaced. “What do you mean, hopefully? I mean, I can’t be in here for longer than three days. I have that case to pursue.”

  Albany came over and put her hand on my shoulder. “Emma is here, too,” she said, referring to my little sister. “And mom and Brad.” Brad was my brother. “We’re all worried about you. We think that you need to take a vacation.”

  “Maybe. Maybe after this case is over.”

  “I think that you need to get off that case. It’s literally driving you over the bend,” Albany said.

  “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. That case has nothing to do with why I’m here. I don’t know, the psychiatrist is going to have to talk to me, but I suspect that I’ve been dealing with undiagnosed bi-polar disorder. I’ve been manic, off and on, for weeks. Not sleeping, staying up all night on the computer, just generally feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin. But if you knew anything at all about bi-polar disorder, you would realize that I would have these same symptoms no matter what was going on in my life. Whether I was working a huge murder case or whether I was sitting around on a beach tanning my ass, I would feel the same way.”

  Albany looked skeptical. “Okay. But sis, I don’t want-“

  I shook my head. “I know. I know. I know. But you don’t understand. I have to get out of this place and tell the Chief Judge of the Western District about what I know. I have to get out of here.”

  The doctor came in with his chart. “I need to speak with you privately,” he said. “Unless you are fine with your sister and your friend hearing. Either way.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Go ahead and tell me what you need to tell me. I’m quite sure that my sister and…Axel…don’t mind.” I still didn’t know what to call Axel. Was he my boyfriend? We hadn’t discussed that yet.

  “Okay. You have had a manic episode and I have a strong suspicion that you are suffering from bi-polar 1 disorder.”

  I nodded my head. “Bi-polar 1. I know something about the difference between bi-polar 1 and bi-polar 2. Bi-polar one is the more severe one, am I correct about that?”

  “Yes. But it is manageable with the right medication. I’m going to start you on a course of a medicine called Geodon. That will be added to your usual course of Prozac, which is, as I understand it, the anti-depressant that you are currently taking. The Geodon should even out your polarities so that you feel a better sense of equilibrium. Of course, it’s not fool-proof, so, when you leave this hospital, you’re going to have to constantly monitor how are you are feeling when you are taking this new drug.”

  I nodded my head. “I know the drill. Okay, Dr. Wilson,” I said, reading his name-tag. “Go ahead and put me on this drug.”

  We talked for a bit more, but I was anxious for him to leave. I was feeling embarrassed that I ended up here, even though I had a feeling that I was going to end up here, sooner or later. I also consciously knew that I shouldn’t feel embarrassed, because bi-polar disorder wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It was a disorder, just like any other disorder. Just like diabetics shouldn’t feel ashamed for taking insulin, I knew that I shouldn’t feel ashamed for taking this Geodon. Or whatever drug was going to be tried on me in the coming weeks and months. I hoped that the Geodon could help me, but I also knew that it was hit or miss with these anti-psychotic drugs.

  Dr. Wilson finally left, and then Albany and Axel left, and my mother came in with Emma in tow. “Hi mom. Hi Emma.”

  Mom shook her head. “Harper, you’re doing too much. You know how I worry about you anyhow. Imagine how I felt when I got this phone call telling me that you’re here.”

  I looked over at Emma. She was my little sister, only 23 years old, and still in college. She was a pretty girl, red-headed like we all were, but she didn’t have as many freckles as I did. In fact, she didn’t have any freckles. She was the only one of us who could tan, too. “Are you going to lectu
re me, too, Emma?”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t need a lecture. Mom is going to be taking over that role, as usual. But I would like to help more. If you need a baby-sitter or anything like that, I mean, when Sophia needs a break, I’ll be more than happy to come over.”

  “Thanks.” I looked over at my mother. “Emma knows how to talk to me. She offers to help, she doesn’t just lecture me.”

  “I’m trying not to just lecture you,” mom said. “But Harper, you’re doing too much. All these murder cases and having those two little girls at your home. You’re burning the candle at both ends.”

  “But what a glorious light, huh, mom?” Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of my favorite poets, and she wrote about how burning the candle at both ends meant that she wouldn’t last the night, but would give out a beautiful light.

  “I don’t consider what you’re doing to be a glorious light.” Mom always did disapprove of what I did. She hated that I defended hardened criminals. It wasn’t just that she worried about me, but it was also because she didn’t think that people who committed violent crimes deserved representation, period. She pretty much thought that they all should just fry. I tried to tell her that the United States Constitution guarantees that anybody accused of committing a felony is entitled to representation, but she always just told me that maybe that was true, but that representation didn’t have to be me.

  “Mom, I’m not going to listen to this. Now, I need to get out of here, because I need to get right back onto this case I’m working. I’m really close, mom, to finding out just what happened to Judge Sanders. I’m itching to get back to it.”

  Mom just shook her head and left the room. Emma and I looked at each and we both started to laugh. “I understand, Harper,” she said. “I know why you enjoy your job.”

  I sighed. “I sometimes wonder what I’m doing, though, Emma. Why I represent these people. Sometimes they’re innocent, like poor Heather, but usually they’re pretty bad guys. I guess, in the end, I feel sorry for a lot of them. Most of my clients have had awful lives. The current guy, however, the one that I’m currently representing – he’s just a bad seed. He was a rich boy, a golden boy, somebody who has been giving everything and continues to be given everything on a silver platter. And yet he’s just a bad guy.”

 

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