Silent Justice

by William Bernhardt

  “Objection!” Ben shouted. “Colby, if you don’t shape up, I’ll terminate this depo just like the last one!”

  “Which will only continue it to another day. Frankly, Ben, I don’t care if you stretch this case out for a year. I’m in no hurry.” He turned back toward the witness. “Mrs. Hardesty, there’s no point in hiding. We all already know the answer. Your husband beats you, doesn’t he?”

  Martha’s eyes turned downward. “He … has before.”

  “How often?”

  “N-not often.…”

  “Two times a week?”

  “No!”

  “You went to the emergency room three times last year alone.”

  “But—it wasn’t because of Jack.”

  “Yes, that’s what you said before. I’m afraid we can’t trust anything you say now.”

  Ben clenched his teeth. “Colby!”

  Colby proceeded. “On one of these occasions, your arm was broken. Surely you realize that violence of that magnitude could potentially damage an unborn baby.”

  “But—Tommy was born long before that—”

  “True. But while you were pregnant, the hospital records show you”—he cleared his throat—“ "tripped and fell down the stairs." Right?”

  “That had nothing to do with Jack! I just got dizzy—”

  “Mrs. Hardesty, you’re aware that an injury like that could potentially damage an unborn fetus, aren’t you?”

  “The doctors said there was no damage.”

  “None that they detected at the time. But it’s always possible. For that matter, almost anything is possible in a home with a man as violent as your husband.”

  “Jack did not cause Tommy’s illness!”

  “How can you be sure? Are you a doctor?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you know what causes leukemia?”

  “I’m not a doctor, but—”

  “But when your son died prematurely, you didn’t blame your violent husband, who had shown a repeated tendency for violence—which, I might add, you could have curtailed by pressing charges, something you never bothered to do. Instead, you trumped up some preposterous unprovable claim against a corporation.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “We’ll let the jury decide, ma’am. We’ll let them decide what they think is more probable—death due to some fantastic pseudoscientific water problem, or death due to habitual unchecked physical abuse.”

  “That’s not what happened!”

  “This deposition is concluded,” Colby said, folding up his notes. “If you wish to dismiss your suit now, Mr. Kincaid, this would be a good time. Otherwise—bring on the next one.”

  Loving was leaving the bowling alley when he heard a whisper from the alleyway separating the Bowl-O-Rama from a closed pawn shop.

  “Psst! Mister!”

  Loving had to grin. Was this really happening? It was like something out of a spy movie.

  “Over here!”

  Well, he never passed up a lead. Loving ambled into the alley and found . .. not James Bond … not Humphrey Bogart … but two kids on bicycles. They couldn’t be more than ten, if that.

  “You talkin" to me?” Loving asked.

  “Are you the one asking all the questions about the plant?” the towheaded boy asked.

  Loving saw his reputation had preceded him. Well, spend a day asking questions in a small Oklahoma town, that sort of thing was bound to happen. “Yup. I’m the one. Why?” He crouched down to the kids" level. “You know somethin’?”

  The two boys looked at each other. “Yeah,” the blond said finally. “We were there when they found the body.”

  Loving’s chin rose. This was turning out to be more interesting than he had imagined. “You were at the plant?”

  “No. Just outside. Hiding in the ravine.”

  “Hiding?”

  The other boy jabbed his friend in the stomach. “He was hiding from the Outsider.”

  “The Outsider?”

  The blond boy looked mortified. “It’s just a game we were playing. It isn’t real. But what happened at the plant sure was.”

  “You were there when the workers found the drum behind the plant with the corpse?”

  “Yeah. Except it wasn’t behind the plant. It was buried.”

  “Buried?”

  “Yeah. Under the ground. Lots of them were.”

  Loving’s eyes bulged. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Waste storage drums were buried in the ground?”

  “Yeah. They had a big Brush Hog diggin" "em up. "Cept it dropped one of them and it burst open. And a body tumbled out.”

  Loving couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was not the official Blaylock account of how the body was discovered—not by a long shot. “Are you sure you boys aren’t maybe … confusing what really happened with your game? Imaginin" stuff that didn’t strictly speaking occur?”

  The blond boy seemed offended. “What d’ya think I am, some kind of jerk?”

  “No, no. And you say barrels were buried?”

  “Yeah. Lots of them. Fifty or more.”

  “Fifty?” It was more than he could believe. “Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

  “I wanted to, but my dad told me to keep my mouth shut. See, he works out at the plant. He’s a floor manager. You understand?”

  Loving nodded. He was beginning to, anyway. “Look, kid, would you be willing to testify about what you saw? So we can make a record?”

  “Sure, I would. But my dad says I can’t.”

  Loving placed his hand firmly on the boy’s shoulder. “Let me see if I can’t persuade him otherwise.”

  Chapter 19

  FINALLY, AFTER MORE THAN three weeks of excruciating depositions, they had reached the last of the plaintiff parents, Ralph Foley. It had been three weeks of hell, not just for Ben, but more important, for the parents themselves. Every fear they had ever held, every cliché they had ever heard about the nastiness of litigation and lawyers, had been paraded before them. Colby had proven he was willing to stop at nothing, to inflict any measure of pain or humiliation to badger the plaintiffs into dropping their case or accepting a trivial settlement. And there was nothing Ben could do to stop it.

  To their credit, so far, neither Cecily nor any of the others had talked about dropping the lawsuit. But Ben could see some of their fervor was ebbing. The fire was draining out of their eyes. “These people killed our children!” he heard on more than one occasion. “Why should we have to bear this abuse just to see justice done?”

  Ben had no answers for them. No answers to those questions existed.

  Colby was taking the slow route this time, dancing around Ralph’s college days for no apparent reason—apparent being the operative word. Ben could see Ralph’s stomach was tight as a drum. It must be horrible, he thought, sitting there like a clay pigeon waiting for the shot, wondering what dark secret this demon had dredged up about you. At least his nervousness wasn’t showing too badly—not like some of the others. Ralph drove an ambulance; he was probably more accustomed to working under pressure.

  “How long have you been driving the Blackwood ambulance?” Colby asked.

  “Over eleven years now,” Ralph replied.

  “Looks like you have a spotless record. No accidents since the day you took the job.”

  Ralph looked at Colby warily. “That’s true.”

  “But appearances can be deceiving, can’t they?” Colby reached into a manila folder previously clamped under his elbow. “Can you tell me what this sheet of paper is?”

  Ralph gave it a quick once-over. “It looks like … a job application.” He looked a little closer. “This must be the application I filled out to get the job with EMSA.”

  “That would be correct. Of course, you filled it out truthfully.”

  Ralph didn’t answer immediately. He was smart enough to see the red flags flying.

  “You wouldn’t lie on your job application, would
you? Take a job under false pretenses?”

  “No,” Ralph said. “Not intentionally.”

  “Just the same, I couldn’t help but notice your answers in the box at the bottom left. Where it asks about your driving record.”

  Ralph remained silent.

  “Do you see that section?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say you have a clear driving record, correct?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “But that wasn’t true, was it?” Colby reached once more into his magic folder. “You had a traffic accident. Sideswiped a car at the intersection of Park and Lincoln.”

  Ralph’s jaw clenched. “I was just a kid.”

  “You were nineteen. Which does not in any way justify lying on your job application.” He reached into his folder again. “It was a pretty bad accident. A little girl in the other car was almost killed.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Ralph said quietly. “It was horrible. She was screaming, crying. Took twenty minutes to get her to the hospital. She was in such pain.”

  Colby looked at him squarely. “You’re lucky her parents didn’t decide to bring some big lawsuit against you.”

  “My insurance covered her medical costs. She recovered.”

  “But you lied about it on your application.”

  “I wanted the job!” Ralph said. “She shouldn’t have had to wait so long to get to the hospital. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again, to anyone else. So I took a special course to sharpen my emergency driving skills and applied for the job.”

  “And lied in the process.”

  “If I had told them about the accident, there’s no way I would’ve gotten the job.”

  “So you lied. Didn’t you?”

  Ralph was trapped, and he knew it. “Yes.”

  “You lied in order to get something you wanted. And now, eleven years later, there’s something else you want. A lot of money. And to get it, you’re making all kinds of outrageous claims—”

  “They’re not outrageous.”

  “The question I have to ask myself—and will ask the jury at trial—is, if you were so willing to lie before, how can we believe what you say now?”

  After the questions were done and Ralph had left the room, Ben asked the court reporter to remain. “I have an objection,” he explained.

  Colby cocked an eyebrow. “The deposition is over.”

  “I can still make an objection. For the record.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On grounds that you’re an embarrassment to every man or woman who ever practiced law.”

  Colby was nonplused. “I’m only doing my job.”

  “Yeah. That’s what the boys at Nuremberg said, too.”

  Colby pushed away from the table. “If you’ll excuse me—”

  “Not so fast, Colby. It’s only three in the afternoon.”

  “But—he was the last of the plaintiffs.”

  “Good. Then we can depose someone on my list. Someone I just added.”

  “And who, pray tell, would that be?”

  “You don’t know him,” Ben answered. “But after today, I bet you never forget him.”

  “What have you got, Kincaid? Some crackpot witness?”

  Ben smiled. “Close. A nine-year-old boy.”

  Loving only had to ask a few questions to find out where the Blaylock group was hanging today. Apparently they were regulars; everybody knew them.

  They were congregated over by the bar. Four of them—Archie Turnbull, Loving’s old pal Beer Breath, and two other guys he hadn’t seen before. They were well into their cups—or Beer Breath was, anyway. His displays of hilarity far exceeded the amusement quotient of his jokes, and he was having a bit of trouble staying on his bar stool.

  He would prefer to catch Turnbull alone, but it hadn’t been possible. Turnbull seemed to surround himself with these goons whenever he was out of the house. Like it or not, he’d have to go after the man here. Loving knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant, so he figured it was best to just get it over with. He positioned himself directly behind them, hoping the element of surprise would buy him some extra time.

  “Good evenin", gentlemen,” he said in an unnecessarily loud voice. “Can I buy you all a drink?”

  “You?” Beer Breath gasped, then collected himself. “Again? I can’t believe it. What are you, some kind of tar baby?”

  “Private investigator, actually.”

  “I told you to get lost back at the bowling alley. But some of the boys tell me you’ve been following them around all over town. Hounding them in restaurants and chasing after them at the grocery store.”

  Loving threw back his enormous shoulders. “My ex-wife always said I was a persistent cuss.”

  Beer Breath slid off his stool. “What the hell is it you want, anyway?”

  “I told you already. I want to ask you a few questions about how Blaylock got rid of its waste product.”

  Beer Breath leaned into his face. “Yeah? Well, we don’t wanna talk to you!”

  Enough spit flew to make Loving feel good and drenched. He snatched a cocktail napkin off the bar and dried his face. “That go for all of you?” He scanned the unfamiliar faces in the group. They were looking away from him, practically hiding. “That go for you, Archie?”

  For a moment, it looked as if Archie might actually speak, but before he could, Beer Breath interposed himself between them. “Is there somethin" goin" on here I should know about? Why the hell are you always pickin" on Archie?”

  “No reason,” Loving said hastily. He didn’t want to alienate Turnbull from his friends—or cause any problems that would make his coming forward even less likely. “He just looks like an honest man. And I understand those are in short supply up at Blaylock these days.”

  Without warning, Beer Breath drew back his fist and clipped Loving hard on the jaw. It knocked him a few steps back. He’d had a lot worse in his time, but it stung, just the same.

  “There’s more where that came from,” Beer Breath said, sneering.

  “No, actually, there ain’t.”

  “Oh yeah? How come?”

  Loving hovered over the much shorter blowhard. “Because if you try anything like that ever again, I’ll bend your arm back and snap it in two like a toothpick.”

  Beer Breath laughed, trying to save some face, even though he was obviously terrified. “Oh, yeah?” he finally managed.

  “Snappy comeback,” Loving replied. “You’ll probably get on Letterman with that one.” He walked over to a bulletin board covered with business cards at the end of the bar. “I’m pinning my phone number up right here. I’m thinkin" that since this is public property, no asshole’ll come along and tear it up. If any of you boys wants to come clean and talk about what really happened, call me.”

  He heard a voice from the bar. Archie’s. “No one’s gonna talk to you, mister.”

  “Really?” Loving said. “I’ll bet your Becky would. Course, she knew what a swell, special kid Billy Elkins was. And she still knows the difference between right and wrong.”

  Normally, Ben wouldn’t depose his own witness; depositions were for obtaining information from the other side. In this case, though, it was critical that he get Scout on the record. It would eliminate the danger of Scout getting scared at trial or forgetting what he’d seen, and would also give Ben some ammunition when Colby filed his inevitable summary judgment motion.

  When Scout took his seat at the huge mahogany conference table, he was so short his head was barely visible. Christina found the blond-headed boy a thick cushion to sit on, and Ben started the deposition. Scout—whose real name, as it turned out, was Harold, spoke clearly and answered to the best of his ability, even though he was obviously intimidated by his surroundings.

  “Scout,” Ben asked, “do you know the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Sure I do. I go to Sunday school. Most times, anyway.”

  “And you know th
e difference between the truth and a lie, don’t you?”

  “Sure. When I tell the truth, my momma says I’m a little angel. And when I tell a lie, my daddy turns me over his knee and beats the tar out of me.”

  Ben tried to keep a straight face. “I’m going to ask a favor of you, Scout. I’m going to ask you to answer my questions, but only tell the truth. Okay? Nothing but the truth.”

  “Sure. That’s what I promised.”

  Ben took Scout back to the day several weeks ago when he and his friend Jim had been playing in the ravine near the Blaylock plant. They heard all about the elaborate game of “Flee the Outsider,” how they had been wrestling in the mud, and how they’d spotted the Brush Hog at work behind the plant.

  “Could you tell what the Brush Hog was doing?” Ben asked. It was important not to lead the witness. He wanted this testimony to be pristine, so he could read the transcript at trial if necessary.

  “Sure. It was diggin up the ground behind the plant.”

  “Digging up the ground? Could you tell why?”

  “They were haulin" big containers out. Those big drums.”

  “Storage containers? Like this?” Ben showed him a picture of some of Blaylock’s waste-disposal drums.

  “Yeah. That’s it exactly.”

  “And they were buried in the ground?”

  “That’s what I said. That big Brush Hog would haul them out of the earth. Saw them pull up twenty or thirty of them. Till one popped open and that body dropped out.”

  “Are you sure they weren’t just stored behind the plant? Waiting to be carried away?”

  Scout didn’t blink. “That’s not what I saw. They were in the ground. Deep down there, judging by the size of the hole they dug.”

  Ben nodded. “Waste-filled drums, buried deep in the earth.” He glanced at Colby. “Not exactly your federally approved waste-disposal procedure.”

  For once, Colby looked just a tad ruffled. In two months of depositions, this was the first time Ben had made the slightest dent in his case. “Mind if I ask a few questions?”

  “Be my guest.” Ben figured he might as well be magnanimous—since he had no choice about it. Cross-examination was an absolute right, even in depositions.

  Colby smiled, apparently trying to put the boy at ease, to make him think he had nothing to fear. And Scout was just innocent enough to believe it.