by Ann Jacobs
“He did, but I disagree, Counselor. You can kiss any part of me you want to, any time, ” she whispered next to his ear.
If only.
If only he didn’t have to prepare for Ezra’s trial, he’d scoop her up and take her back to bed. As it was, he couldn’t resist lifting the oversize sweatshirt she had on and burying his face between her firm, full breasts. While he still could, he pulled her shirt back down and set her on her feet.
“Hold onto those thoughts ‘til later, honey. I’ll feast on every square inch of you and love it. Go on, now. Finish finding those precedents you were looking for, and let me start piecing together Ezra’s defense.”
If Tony could be as positive Kristine would grant him a lifetime of her love as he was that he’d succeed in righting the injustice done to one poor soul in the name of upholding the law, he’d be a happy man.
* * * * *
After an hour’s search for an elusive snippet of decade-old trial testimony Andi needed, Kristine paused and watched Tony.
Why, she wondered, had he neglected to mention his father’s encounter with the criminal justice system at the same time he’d told her about losing his parents and growing up in poverty? It hurt to realize she hadn’t impacted Tony’s emotions enough for him to share that undoubtedly painful piece of history that had shaped his life.
He flipped through a hefty file, apparently saw something pertinent and made brief notes on the yellow pad he’d positioned near his left hand. She doubted the sound of a dozen screaming sirens could pierce his concentration. He made a perfect picture of complete absorption.
She wasn’t. Niggling doubts ate at her discipline, making her lose her train of thought as she tried to organize evidence and precedents she’d be presenting against Kenny Rich at his trial. She looked at the screen on her computer and deleted the last entry she’d made.
Would Kenny’s lawyer be working this weekend, putting forth the kind of energy for his client that Tony was expending now for Ezra Ruggles?
“No.” She looked around, searching for the source of that bald reply—then realized she’d spoken aloud.
Tony looked up from his work, his expression puzzled. “No, what, honey?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged.
“Nothing doesn’t make you frown like that. Come on, talk to me.”
“I—I don’t think Tom Fernandez, who’ll be defending the boy I told you about, is putting in the kind of effort you’re expending for Ezra’s retrial.”
He chuckled. “You’re probably right. The public defenders I know have caseloads worse than yours. Are you still agonizing about whether that defendant might not be guilty after all?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t, Krissy. You’ll eat yourself alive if you start second-guessing. Want me to play devil’s advocate, counter your arguments in the case?”
“You’d win.”
“Probably.” He shot her a grin, as if to take the edge off his smug reply. “Maybe I’d make you dig deep enough into the evidence you’ve got in your files to put your doubts to rest.”
“Sure. I already half-believe the defendant’s story. After I listen to you cast doubts on the evidence, I’ll be ready to nominate him for sainthood.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, honey. I’m no magician, just a lawyer.”
“Tony, you could have gotten Ted Bundy off if you’d been defending him.”
He laughed at her mention of the charismatic serial killer who had defended himself unsuccessfully and made news headlines for years while awaiting execution. “I don’t think so. At best, I’d have had him cop an insanity defense and gotten him life without parole in a high-security mental hospital instead of a trip to the electric chair.”
Finally Kristine gave in, presented the state’s case to Tony and listened to his rebuttal of each point she made. She’d been right. Instead of strengthening her resolve to see her defendant convicted on the evidence at hand, this game with Tony had her doubting Kenny’s guilt even more.
“I hate criminal law,” she said, shutting down the laptop and pushing it away as though it were a coiled rattlesnake.
Tony came and sat beside her. He tilted her chin up, forced her to meet his gaze. “Why do it, then?”
“I’ve never thought about doing anything else. After my sister died—”
“You swore you’d make the guys who supplied the stuff that killed her pay?”
The way he phrased it, her motivation for choosing her life’s work sounded pretty lame. But she had to be honest. That had been her only reason for going to work for the state attorney, so she murmured, “Yes.”
“Did some dealer force your sister to take whatever it was that was her recreational drug of choice?”
“No.”
He took her hand, rubbed her palm with his thumb. “Was the drug she overdosed on tainted? Uncut, so she got more than she’d bargained for? Laced with something downright lethal?”
Kristine blinked back tears. “Not that I know of.”
“Did these faceless villains you’re fighting now entice her to start using?”
“No.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she could barely talk. Unable to look Tony in the eye, she focused her gaze on their joined hands. “I did. I let her come with me to a party when she was just fifteen. Some of the kids were smoking pot. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I smoked a joint myself, drank a little beer.” She couldn’t go on, had to let out the anguished sob that tightened her vocal cords.
“How old were you, Krissy?” His soft tone conveyed no condemnation, only concern.
“Seventeen.”
“Kids experiment with booze and pot, honey. Legal or not, it’s been happening since before either of us was born. The kind of party you describe sounds fairly ordinary to me. Nothing you ought to feel guilty over.”
“Maybe not, but Helen met a boy there and started going out with him. He wasn’t just into booze and pot, as you put it. He liked the hard stuff. Cocaine. Ecstasy. Maybe even heroin. I was too busy having fun, myself, to notice Helen had gotten in too deep, until that morning when I walked in her bedroom and found her dead.”
“Krissy, you weren’t your sister’s keeper.”
She shook her head, unwilling to accept the release he offered. “I was two years older. I should have paid more attention, seen what she was doing to herself.”
“What about your parents?”
“Mom had died the year before. She’d always been the one to take care of us, enforce the rules. Daddy was always busy with work.” Kristine thought back to that summer before her world had fallen apart, realized her father had done nothing much but work and grieve. “I guess he let me and Helen do pretty much as we pleased after Mom died.”
Like the courtroom shark he was, Tony snatched the opportunity to capitalize on what she herself had said.
“A kid can’t be held accountable for letting another kid run amok. You don’t need to spend the rest of your life trying to atone for something that wasn’t your fault,” he told her, his tone and manner as persuasive as it had been when he’d addressed Manny Garcia’s jury.
Chapter Fifteen
Kristine wished she could accept Tony’s argument without reserve, but she had blamed herself too long and worked for the past eight years around possibly misplaced beliefs that she couldn’t quite let go. He’d laid doubt in her mind, though—doubt that tortured her more once they’d parted company on Sunday night. Without Tony to distract her, she found herself dwelling on the past, and the conversation they’d had.
Fortunately, Kenny Rich’s trial filled hours during the next days—hours Kristine knew she’d have otherwise spent agonizing. Revisiting that time after her mother’s death but before her entire world had fallen apart.
On Thursday, Kristine left the courtroom at the close of Kenny’s trial. She’d done a fair job of presenting the evidence, she thought, but the boy’s own testimony had apparently affected the jury as much as it ha
d raised doubts in her mind at the preliminary hearing.
She was glad he’d been acquitted, yet she felt guilty for being relieved to have lost.
Tony’s advice that she should get out of the prosecution business if she didn’t get an adrenaline rush from the fight rang in her ears. He’d made powerful arguments, arguments that made sense.
Still, she wasn’t convinced she could walk away from her quest to rid Tampa of the scum who made drugs available to anyone with the price of a fix. But she’d lost the fury that had fed her for so long. Anger, she realized, was a lot easier to let go of than guilt. She couldn’t shake the self-blame that tortured her more, now that she’d let go of the anger that had masked it.
That afternoon, as Kristine searched out precedents for Andi, her emotions were in turmoil.
Was loving Tony what made her doubt her motives? Did she want him enough to abandon everything she’d worked toward? Did she believe she could learn to live with what had happened to Helen and her dad?
“Kristine?”
Andi stood in the doorway, the frown on her face hinting to Kristine that she wasn’t going to like what her boss was about to say.
Okay. She’d try to beat Andi to the punch.
“So far I’ve found six cases you can cite in the arson trial. I’m certain I can locate some that are more germane to the particular questions in your case, if I can have a bit more time.”
“Forget that for now. Harper wants to see us in his office.”
Kristine stood and followed Andi, though she was in no mood to spar with Mr. Wells.
It came to her that she’d made her choice. Though she disagreed with Tony’s position of advocacy for accused felons, she believed he would never violate the ethical tenets of the law.
She loved the man—and she’d take on his enemies as her own. Including her father’s closest friend, if necessary.
As opposed to the windowless cubicles and metal furniture his employees had to endure, the state attorney had a well-appointed corner office. Light flowed through four sparkling floor-to-ceiling panes of glass and reflected off a large chunk of clear crystal on a side table, drawing Kristine’s attention to the wolf’s head carved in its center.
“Sit down, ladies.”
Harper’s voice was resonant, ideally suited for swaying juries and wooing votes. Not wanting to look into his seemingly guileless face, Kristine focused instead on the bouquet of summer flowers that graced his credenza. Were they real or silk?
Silk, undoubtedly. Nature made zinnias in bold, bright colors, not the muted tones of rust, gold, and burgundy in the bouquet. And Nature created leather fern and baby’s breath in lush green and stark white instead of jade and ivory.
Like Wells himself, his flowers spoke silently of careful attention having been paid to projecting restrained good taste. Tradition. The arrangement whispered of old money and good-old-boy back room Tampa politics.
Though Tony’s condo lacked a personal touch, Kristine preferred its honesty of stark black and white, its accents in bold primary colors, over Harper’s unimpeachably tasteful choice of muted earth tones.
Distracted by pleasant memories, she half-listened as Mr. Wells eased into whatever it was he wanted to take up with her, Andi, and the three senior prosecutors who’d already been there when she arrived.
“Kristine?”
Obviously, she should have been paying better attention. “I’m sorry.”
“Harper asked if you saw any evidence that the defense had tampered with the jury or judge when you were trying the Manny Garcia case.” Andi sounded annoyed as she repeated their employer’s question. Kristine wondered whether it was the state attorney’s question or her own inattentiveness that had Andi on edge.
The question certainly put her own hackles up. Kristine schooled her features into what she hoped was a neutral expression and met the state attorney’s gaze. “No. Mr. Wells, I told you before that the evidence was too weak to get a conviction. And that I’d been surprised that the judge hadn’t directed acquittal.”
Wells scowled, but said no more to Kristine. She listened, horrified, while he badgered Andi and the others. His obvious purpose was to force them to concede that Tony and his associates might have used illegal means to win acquittal for clients in cases that they had prosecuted.
“Harper, Tony Landry has no need to tamper with juries. He’s the best defense attorney I’ve ever had the misfortune to go up against,” Andi said, standing and moving toward the door. “I think I’d better leave now, before I say something we’ll both regret.”
One of the three men who’d been there when Kristine had arrived stood and shook his head. “I’m no stranger to politics, Harper, and I like to win my cases as well as anybody. I draw the line, though, at trying to get rid of a thorn in my side by making false allegations about him. I’m out of here, and I want no part of this scheme of yours. You’ve gone too far.”
He stormed out and slammed the door behind him, leaving Kristine’s ears ringing from the sharp noise.
“Is there no one here who has a shred of loyalty for this office?” Wells looked first at the taller of the two remaining attorneys, then at the other.
One spoke up. “My loyalty’s to the state attorney’s office, not to you as an individual, Harper. You’re taking one hell of a risk, going after Landry—or any other Winston Roe partner, for that matter.”
He paused, took a few steps toward the door. “No, I’m not particularly happy to have lost the only two cases I’ve taken to trial against Landry, but I don’t intend to be caught in the fallout I envision happening if you keep on pursuing these unfounded allegations.”
With that, he left, and the last of the other attorneys headed for the door. “Landry is good. Damn good, as Andi mentioned. He fights hard but fairly, and he certainly hasn’t tampered with juries on any cases I’ve handled. Count me out of your scheme. Slander actions aren’t anything I care to learn more about, up close and personal.” The parting look he shot at Wells personified repulsion.
Kristine sat, speechless. She stared, disbelieving, at the man who had comforted her when her father died and left her without a single close relative. The attorney who had written her recommendations for law school and hired her to work as a clerk in his office before she’d even taken the bar.
Tears in her eyes, she recalled a Saturday years ago when Mr. Wells had gone with her, her parents, and Helen in search of treasure at the country club’s annual Easter egg hunt. She couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time, but the memory was still vivid.
Mr. Wells had just flushed more than twenty years’ respect—and eight years of her thinking of the man as the next best thing to having her father back—down the drain. Kristine’s heart ached, but she steeled herself to do what she must.
“Mr. Wells, I’ll be giving you two weeks’ notice.” She hoped he’d tell her to go now but doubted that he would.
His cheeks turned red, and his gaze was fierce when he turned it on her, but his tone was as even as if he were inquiring about the health of a mutual friend. “Might I have the courtesy of hearing your reasons?”
“I think you know, sir.” Kristine didn’t even try to mask her disillusionment.
“Landry. He’s gotten to you, too.”
Yes, Tony definitely had gotten to her. But that wasn’t the reason she couldn’t keep working for Harper Wells any longer than the two weeks’ notice period professional ethics demanded that she offer.
“It’s you, not Tony, who has forced my decision. I don’t want to go into the details, but if you give me no choice—”
“Never mind. Turn in your resignation. I’ll accept it. I would never have believed Dale Granger’s daughter would take up with a lowlife shyster like Tony Landry, but apparently I was wrong. Mark my words, Kristine, you’ll be sorry if you let him drag you down.”
“Tony may come from humble beginnings, but he’s twice the man you are, Mr. Wells. He would never stoop to do what y
ou just tried to do to him. Excuse me, I have a resignation letter to prepare.”
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Kristine walked out on her former mentor. By the time she reached her own small cubicle and opened the word processor program on her laptop computer, she was sobbing.
“I just quit,” she told Andi when the other woman came and sat on the corner of her desk. “I can’t work for Mr. Wells any longer.”
“I don’t blame you. If I didn’t have Brett to support, I’d be out of here at the speed of light, but with any kind of luck, we’ll have a new boss around here by this time next year, after elections.”
She handed Kristine a Kleenex. “Here. Think of all the fun you can have, coming at us from the other side. I’ll bet Landry will hire you in a minute.”
Kristine sniffed away the last of her tears. “Me? A criminal defense lawyer? I don’t think so.”
But the idea didn’t sound as distasteful as it would have, before she’d gotten to know Tony. Before Harper Wells had tainted her outlook on prosecution and Tony had made her view the business of defense in a different light.
“You know, Andi, I don’t think I’m cut out for criminal law at all. I just don’t love the fight the way you do.”
“Then do something else.”
She typed another sentence of her letter while Andi gave her pretty much the same arguments Tony had voiced earlier. “If you don’t find a niche where you fit, Kristine, you’ll tear yourself apart,” Andi said.
“Look, there are plenty of ways you can help people avoid the trap your sister fell into. Or you could help people who’ve gotten a raw deal when they’ve fallen through cracks in the legal system. If you don’t enjoy prosecuting defendants and you don’t want to defend them, you need to find another specialty.”
Kristine looked at Andi. Suddenly she realized she could make a difference without sending defendants to prison.
She could fight for people like Ezra Ruggles, help them win resources that would aid in their recoveries from injustices that could never be fully compensated. As Tony had suggested, she could redeem herself for Helen by helping crime victims instead of making criminals pay.