Justice Returns

by William Bernhardt

  8

  I didn’t get home till almost eight thirty. I had a lot to do, and a lot on my mind, and I was more than a little shaken by my lunchtime conversation. I got through the afternoon in court, but I knew I wasn’t functioning at top capacity. This is another reason why when I’m in trial, I typically don’t go to lunch, don’t watch television at night, and basically become a miserable person to be around. Because the only way to do the job right is to give the trial everything. The second the judge snaps that gavel, you’re in a submarine that doesn’t come up until the foreman reads the verdict. That’s why most trial attorneys have multiple marriages and burn out early.

  I managed to get some decent admissions out of Wagner. Not as good as having an adoring girlfriend testify about what he said, but keenly damaging, just the same. I felt certain the jury could put two and two together.

  During the drive to Nichols Hills, I hands-free dialed Mark Ames. We’re both small-office lawyers, and we cover for each other when possible. He was going to be at the courthouse anyway and agreed to appear for me in court whenever the jury returned its verdict. He’d already entered an appearance, so it wouldn’t offend client or court. I hadn’t made any decisions about Oz’s case, but one way or the other, I had a hunch I’d be busy tomorrow and didn’t need to be jerked out of it just to hear the verdict read live. I could never predict how long it would take a jury to finish. Even in the simplest cases, there were too many variables. Do they have a strong foreman? Do they have any rebels? Is there anything good on television?

  The Nichols Hills neighborhood still seemed like a foreign country to me. It shouldn’t have. I grew up here, and I’d been living here almost a year since I moved back. Long rows of huge front lawns professionally trimmed, each blade of grass mowed to precision-measured height. Clothes closets bigger than most people’s homes. Foreign cars in every driveway, just below the porte cochere. Big change from the place Christina and I had in Tulsa.

  As I eased off Sixty-Third, Francis Bolton waved from the botanical garden he called his front yard. He trimmed his hedges like other people trimmed their soul patches. He had a lot of time on his hands. Back in the day, he’d been a highly successful orthodontist, with offices in three different metro suburbs. He’d wrangled some sort of government contract, providing braces to the underprivileged, which turned out to be a great way to amass a fortune. He owned half the office space in Bricktown.

  I slowed and rolled down my window. “Hey, Fran. If you run out of hedges to trim, feel free to start on mine.”

  “That’s not gonna happen, Ben. Not that they don’t need it.”

  I didn’t take that as a slam. I knew most of the men in this neighborhood were much more interested in yard work than I was. Of course, most had bought their own houses, so they understandably took more pride in them. Most had gardeners, too, but they still made a point of appearing every now and again in those one-piece jumpsuits with a pair of clippers.

  “I’m not really trimming, anyway,” Francis added.

  “Just taking in the air?”

  “Watching for speeders. People come off Sixty-Third driving at the speed of light. They don’t realize they’ve passed from the highway to a residential neighborhood. Where children play.”

  Other than myself, I didn’t think anyone here raised small children, but whatever. “So you glare at them as they race by?”

  “I take down their plate numbers and call the cops. Bastards need to be taught a lesson.”

  “Do the cops do anything?”

  “I don’t call the city cops. They’re worthless. I call NH Security. They know who’s paying their salary.”

  “But they don’t have jurisdiction over anyone who’s left the neighborhood.”

  “Then they’ll get them the next time. Hey, you know people at the police station, don’t you?”

  “More than I’d care to admit.”

  “Maybe you could pull a few strings.”

  I pondered. I did want my neighbors to like me. “Sure. Maybe if you see a particularly egregious driver, I could talk to my friends.”

  “Thanks, Ben. You’re a stand-up guy. That’s what I was telling them down at the neighborhood association meeting. Some of them weren’t crazy about it when you moved into your mom’s house.”

  “It’s only temporary.”

  “Yeah, you said that six months ago. Hey, I get it. If you’ve got a house here, you’re crazy not to use it. But some of the others think you didn’t earn it. You know what people say. Kids today don’t know how to work for a living. They want to do as little as possible and have as much as possible. The world doesn’t work that way.”

  “Not usually.”

  “And doctors don’t love lawyers. That’s a universal truth. Oilmen aren’t too crazy about them, either. Course I adored your mom. Everyone did. Never saw a woman who aged more gracefully. She was something else.”

  “That she was.”

  “So I stood up for you, pal.” He punched my shoulder. “I told ’em you were Nichols Hills born and bred, and a man never shakes his roots, right?”

  I declined to comment.

  “So don’t be surprised if you get recruited to be an officer. We always need fresh meat.”

  They need someone desperate enough to be accepted that he’ll do the grunt work. It wouldn’t be me. “Well, thanks. I better get home.”

  “Say hi to that cute little wife of yours for me.”

  “Will do.” I rolled up the window and drove the rest of the way home.

  I pulled into the ridiculously large driveway leading to the four-car garage. I would never get used to living in a forty-six-thousand-square-foot home. Our little place in Tulsa was just fine for me. But my mother’s health diminished when she hit her mideighties. My wild-child sister, Julia, could not be located, and my father died years before, so that left the eldercare to me. After months of traveling up and down the turnpike with wife and twins in tow, I realized it would be simpler to live here. Fortunately, this house was more than large enough to accommodate us all. I leased our house in Tulsa. When my mother finally passed, turned out she’d left the place to me and my sister in her will. So we just stayed here.

  The irony was not lost on me. As soon as I was old enough to leave this place, I bolted, never once looking back. My cardiologist-scientist father and I never got along, for good and valid reasons I won’t rehash. He completely disowned me, left me nothing in his will.

  And now I had everything. And lived in that same house I’d turned my back on all those years ago.

  Turns out Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. It’s just not home anymore.

  ***

  I walked through the garage into the house. I could hear Christina goo-gooing with the girls in the playroom, and I could smell something delicious emanating from the kitchen. She’d been busy. Even more impressive, since I knew she’d been in the office till late afternoon.

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round . . .” I felt as if I were being sung around the corner. There she was, sitting on the floor, one tiny girl in each arm, Elizabeth on the left, Emily on the right.

  We were neither of us as young as we’d been when we met, all those years ago, working our butts off at Raven, Tucker & Tubb. But the years had been kinder to her. To me, time only brought crow’s-feet and a receding hairline. To her it brought wisdom and elegance, or so it seemed to me. The red hair mellowed into a dustier pink, the freckles were less prominent, and she was all the lovelier for it. I could see worlds inside her pellucid green eyes. This one man still loved the pilgrim soul in her, and always would.

  “Look, Daddy’s home!” Christina swung around and passed a beautiful eighteen-month bundle to me. I knelt down to receive.

  “Hello, Lizzie!” I said with a bug-eyed expression that passed for animated engagement. Chris made fun of the way I played with the girls. Truth was I had no experience with babies at all, save for a brief period when I
had custody of my nephew, when he was about the same age the girls are now. I knew next to nothing about children. But I managed to get by. Instead of nursery rhymes, I recited poetry. Instead of lullabies, they got show tunes.

  “Nothing’s gonna harm you,” I crooned, “not while I’m around . . .” Elizabeth made a gurgling noise, which I recognized as the universal indicator that she loved me. I pressed my face, goo-goo eyes bulging, into hers. “Who loves the little girl? Who loves the little girl?”

  She giggled and squirmed. The tickling no doubt helped. “Dad-dy,” she cooed, with admirable precision and diction.

  I have never felt such unrestrained love in my entire life.

  “Don’t forget her little sister by forty seconds.” Christina passed Emily into my unoccupied arm.

  “Who loves this pretty girl?” I said, redirecting my bug-eyed facade. “Who loves the pretty, happy girl?”

  No reaction, except perhaps a slightly quizzical expression. Probably gas.

  “Emily . . . I just met a girl named . . . Emily.” I tried something else. “Emily had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb .

  Nothing.

  I pulled her close and hugged her tight. “What’s going on in there?” I whispered. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  I stared into those beautiful eyes. The lids were open, but it was as if nothing looked back. Not that the head behind the eyes was vacant. More like the eyes were pointed inward rather than out.

  “Talk to me, Emily,” I whispered. When I caught Christina’s expression, my heart felt as if it had dropped to the pit of my stomach. “Just one word. Tell me you’re in there.”

  But no words came.

  Not from Emily. Elizabeth flung herself at me with such force it almost cracked my clavicle. “Fambly hug!” she chirped, as she nestled in beneath my chin.

  Christina wrapped both girls and me in her embrace. We hugged as tightly as seemed safe. Her face was pressed to mine, and our tears commingled.

  By nine we had both girls asleep and in bed. Emily always took longer. She might not talk, but she definitely knew how to cry. And I was still too much of a softie to leave a crying child alone. She had to fall asleep in my arms. My college friend Mike knew more poetry than anyone on earth, but even using his cheat sheets, I found that putting Emily to bed usually drained my resources.

  “She’s not Joey, you know,” Christina said, when I came to our bedroom. “Some children develop at different speeds than others.”

  “Twins?” I tossed off my bathrobe and climbed under the covers. “One talks, the other doesn’t. One follows directions, the other acts oblivious. That’s not normal.”

  “What is normal, anyway?”

  “There are standards.”

  “From everything you’ve told me about your father, he had miserable social skills. Didn’t get humor. Didn’t say goodbye at the end of phone calls. Was awkward around other people. He probably could’ve been diagnosed as autistic. And yet he became a doctor and a scientist and made a ton of cash.”

  “I want our girl to be normal.”

  She placed her book, something by Tess Gerritsen, on the nightstand. “And why would you expect your children to be normal? They share your DNA, after all.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Neither is you assuming your daughter is autistic just because your nephew is.”

  “I spent a lot of time with Joey—”

  “As I recall, I spent a lot of time with Joey while you tried your big murder case.”

  “We both spent time with him. And we both know how difficult he was.”

  “I adored Joey.”

  “I’m not saying—” My entire body felt cold. Perhaps I needed to check the thermostat. “I loved Joey, too. But we both know that his future options are limited.”

  “Everyone’s future options are limited by one thing or another. Mine were limited by money. Yours were limited by neurosis and deep-seated dodo-headedness. And yet, we both ended up with law degrees, making a living, more or less.”

  “Joey is not going to be a lawyer.”

  “Perhaps, but he could be a fine engineer. Or computer programmer. My friend Sally works in Silicon Valley, and she says half the guys out there are autistic. But they’re making big bucks, which means they can attract mates, which means their genes reproduce, which means their genes may be the dominant strain in a few generations. Maybe this isn’t an abnormality. Maybe this is the evolution of the species.”

  “Thank you, Carl Sagan. I don’t care about the species or neurodiversity. I care about my little girl. You’re being brave, but I know you’re concerned. I can see it in your face. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “No, what you’re seeing and hearing is my concern about you, you thundering dunderhead.”

  “Why would you be concerned about me?”

  “Because I know how you obsess and fret purposelessly given the slightest cause.”

  “You can’t pretend you haven’t worried that Emily might be autistic.”

  “I think it’s too soon to worry. You, on the other hand, never think it’s too soon to worry. You were worrying about the girls before they were born.”

  “The ultrasound looked weird.”

  She laid her hand on my shoulder. “Honey, let’s wait till we have a good reason, okay?”

  I took her hand and pressed them between mine. “You’re claiming you’re not worried about her? I saw your eyes watering up when mine did.”

  “Because you looked so sad.”

  This conversation was not remotely satisfying, but I could see that my worry was worrying her more. Worry is like yawning—highly contagious.

  “Tanya told me you have a new client,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Maybe.” I told her about my encounter with Oz. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s hiding something.”

  “Every client is hiding something.”

  “Yeah, but this one doesn’t make sense. I don’t think the feds would interrogate him for three weeks, or follow him around now, just because he worked with this Abdullah guy. There must be more.”

  “We only had a few minutes to talk.”

  “He probably wouldn’t have told you anything useful if you’d had all day. You need to talk to someone else. Someone who might give you the straight skinny.”

  “Oz wants to file a civil suit. You know the feds will counter with take-no-prisoners tactics. They can’t afford bad publicity. And they don’t want the Freedom Act subjected to a constitutional challenge.”

  “Maybe that will inspire them to settle.”

  “Not if the press gets wind of the story. And it will.”

  “Gag order? Transcript under seal?”

  “Wouldn’t help. Even if we got it. Which I think unlikely.”

  “Will you be able to handle the negative publicity? I mean, you personally.”

  I felt my brow crease. “Why do you assume the publicity will be negative?”

  “Put on your big boy pants, Ben. You know as well as I do that the feds will portray themselves as the thin red-white-and-blue line between the terrorists and the American way. They’ll portray you as the shyster attorney trying to set the terrorists free so they can bomb again.”

  “Not everyone is so easily led.”

  “True. But some will be. And you are the most sensitive person on the face of the earth. The hating will go viral, and you’ll have clueless nerds pontificating on Internet bulletin boards about you and your case and making ugly assertions about your motivations. I don’t know that you can take it.”

  “I’ve outgrown my insecurities. I don’t need everyone to love me.”

  “You so do. Your feelings get bruised if someone frowns at you in traffic.”

  I pondered a moment. “This case might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Clearly.”

  “On the other hand, I have known Oz a long time.”

  “Loyalty to boys fro
m the decadently wealthy hood?”

  “If even half of what he says is true, he has been wronged.” I loved talking cases with Christina. Just the process of thinking out loud with her as devil’s advocate helped crystalize the issues in my mind. “His civil rights were compromised in a frightening way that could happen to anyone, innocent or guilty.”

  “True enough. And you say he has money?”

  “Can get it.”

  “Well, that’s different. I don’t want to be the venal Lady Macbeth, but we have a property tax payment on this house coming up that’s roughly equivalent to our combined annual income .

  I frowned. Why couldn’t life be easier? At least occasionally. “Okay. I’ll pursue the possibility of taking his case.”

  “And you’ll stop worrying so much. You’re too young for ulcers. Or Xanax.”

  “Not as young as I used to be.”

  “No one is.” She scooted over and laid her head on my chest. “Wanna know a secret?”

  “Desperately.”

  “Your daughter loves you. Both of them.”

  I felt the fountain gushing up toward my eyes again. I couldn’t speak.

  “And you wanna know something else?” she continued. “So do I.”

  9

  I scored an appointment with the chief prosecutor in the US Attorney General’s office with surprising ease. The fact that I knew Hickman, and I was already on their radar, probably helped. The attorney general himself was typically too busy with political and administrative obligations to keep a close eye on the legal issues that came before his office. The staff attorneys handled the criminal and civil appeals with federal jurisdiction, as well as requests for advisory opinions. The chief prosecutor ran the shop, which made him one of the busiest men in the office.

  So why was he so willing to carve space out of his day to chat with me? Clearly, he knew who I was and probably knew what I wanted. Given that they knew Oz was in my office before I did, I had to assume they were still one step ahead of me. And far more knowledgeable.