A Time to Stand

by Robert Whitlow

  Luke was encouraged and confused at the same time. “I’ll try,” he managed. “Are you going to talk to the DA and help me out?”

  “Like I said, he knows my thoughts on the situation, and we’re in close communication,” Lockhart replied cryptically. “No one wants a bunch of negative publicity and a huge lawsuit against the city.”

  “Who’s handling the internal investigation?”

  “Detective Maxwell. He’s the obvious choice.”

  Luke swallowed. To him, Mitch Maxwell was the worst choice if the goal was to prevent charges from being filed against him. The longtime detective seemed impervious to the opinions of others.

  “Mitch is the best and that’s what you deserve,” the chief continued. “And on the publicity front, remember what I told you the night it happened. Don’t talk to any reporters. It’s not good for you, and it’s not good for the department. The press doesn’t care about you, only about selling papers.”

  “I haven’t and won’t.”

  “Have you met with Dr. Flanagan?”

  “Yes, sir. He gave me some pills that are supposed to help me sleep. I’m not sure—”

  “Don’t tell me anything else,” Lockhart said abruptly. “What you and the psychiatrist talk about is between the two of you. But keep going to see him if you want to. There’s no deductible for the visits. The department covers all the costs.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Good. And don’t stay cooped up all the time. You and Jane need to sneak out for dinner in Gainesville where you won’t be recognized.”

  “There’s a chance my mother-in-law will come up from Florida for a few weeks and help out. If she does, we could do that, although being with Jane and Ashley together has been the best therapy I’ve had.”

  Luke stopped. He sounded like someone dealing with situational depression caused by poor self-esteem.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea for your mother-in-law to camp out at your place?” Lockhart asked with a smile. “If she’s anything like mine, she doesn’t come to help; she comes to take over.”

  “Jane’s mom is great,” Luke replied, avoiding a fake macho response.

  “Good. And we’ll schedule a patrol car on each shift to check your street and make sure everything is quiet. If you see anything suspicious, let us know ASAP.” The chief tapped his fingers on the desk for a moment. “Have you been able to keep up with the condition of the Hamlin boy at the hospital?”

  “Not really. All I know is that he’s still in a coma. I was hoping you could give me an update.”

  “That’s the gist of it. The wound to his upper chest was on the right side and will heal over time. It’s a good thing you didn’t pop him on the left side. It would have killed him instantly.”

  Luke licked his lips.

  “But the bullet to the head has him on the fence,” Lockhart continued. “He has a lot of swelling in the brain, and they can’t risk trying to remove the bullet until that goes down. For all our sakes, let’s hope he pulls through. An aggravated assault charge is a lot easier to deal with than an indictment for murder.”

  The tightness in Luke’s chest returned, only worse. The police chief stood to signal an end to the meeting.

  “And remember, we’re here for you, son.”

  On his way out of the station, Luke passed Detective Maxwell in the hallway. The blond-haired detective didn’t look at him.

  It was six blocks from the courthouse to the thirty-seven-story building where Dixon and White maintained its Atlanta office. The firm occupied floors thirty-five to thirty-eight. The corporation division where Adisa worked filled the entire thirty-sixth floor. Her primary job, and that of the six other lawyers in her subgroup, was to uncover traps and pitfalls of multimillion-dollar business mergers and acquisitions. Few people outside the legal community realized the enormous stress that came with putting together major corporate deals, a pressure that often exceeded the tension experienced by seasoned trial lawyers.

  Catherine Summey, the senior partner in the group, had instilled the perspective in her team that it was better to kill a shaky deal than keep it alive. One of her favorite analogies was “Even a tiny bacterium can turn deadly if allowed to enter the body.”

  While she waited at the curb for a taxi, Adisa offered up a quick prayer of thanks for her courtroom success. One of her favorite verses was Proverbs 21:1: “In the LORD’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him.” Time after time in her six-year career she’d seen evidence of the Lord’s intervention on her behalf with people in positions of power—including judges, corporate CEOs, and senior partners in law firms. Others might view the instances as coincidence. Adisa knew better. She’d worked hard to prove that Leroy Larimore was one of the tiny percentage of inmates who were in fact innocent of the crime for which they were convicted, but she gave the Lord significant credit for Judge Boswell’s ruling. And if Larimore’s interaction with her helped wash away a few stains of his long-held bigotry, that was an added bonus.

  Adisa slipped into the rear seat of the cab. Her cell phone vibrated, and an unknown number popped up.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “This is Sharon Rogers, a reporter with the AJC. Are you the lawyer representing Leroy Larimore?”

  Adisa sat up straighter. Any reversal of a conviction based on newly analyzed DNA evidence would justify at least a brief mention in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and serve the interests of the law firm.

  “Yes, I’m an associate with Dixon and White. Our firm agreed to represent Mr. Larimore pro bono.”

  “Is it true the DNA evidence proved another man already in prison committed the crime?”

  The reporter’s summary was accurate but skipped a lot of information.

  “Yes.”

  “So your client is going to be released?”

  “It’s my hope that Mr. Larimore will be released within the next forty-eight hours and begin the challenging task of rebuilding his life after spending fourteen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Proud of the spontaneous news bite she’d delivered, Adisa prepared to get out of the cab as it stopped in front of her building. She handed the driver a twenty-dollar bill, motioning for him to keep the change.

  “Are they going to prosecute the man who actually committed the crime?”

  “You should ask Mark Kildare with the Fulton County DA’s office that question.”

  “He never returns my calls.”

  Adisa wondered what the reporter had done to irritate the sanguine prosecutor.

  “What about the pending burglary charges against your client in South Carolina?” the reporter continued. “I understand there’s no statute of limitations on criminal charges there.”

  Adisa stepped away from the flow of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk and stood to the side of the front doors of her office tower. She quickly gathered her thoughts.

  “Mr. Larimore was a juvenile when that incident took place, and the case wasn’t transferred to general sessions court, which handles felony criminal matters. That means he wasn’t charged as an adult. I’m not licensed to practice in South Carolina, but I investigated that issue as part of my work on his behalf in this case.”

  “But he’s not a truly innocent man, is he?”

  Adisa was beginning to understand why Mark Kildare didn’t talk to the reporter. It was easy to imagine the sensational slant the article might take.

  “In the eyes of the law, he’s innocent,” Adisa replied. “The juvenile case was dismissed for want of prosecution.”

  “By his grandmother, correct?”

  “That’s true. But regardless of what happened when Mr. Larimore was fifteen years old, he spent fourteen years wrongly incarcerated in the state of Georgia. Today, the system corrected that wrong.”

  “Got it.”

  “Are you recording this conversation?” Adisa asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Of
course. I don’t want to misquote you. Are you going to represent Larimore in his claim for damages from the State for locking him up for all those years?”

  “That will be up to my bosses at the law firm, but there’s no doubt he should be compensated for a decade and a half spent behind bars. He was as much a victim as Mr. Chesney.”

  Adisa didn’t like the sound of her last statement but couldn’t think of a quick fix.

  “Who’s your boss?” Rogers asked.

  “Catherine Summey is the supervising attorney in this case. She’s a partner at Dixon and White in the Atlanta office.”

  “How many of these cases have you handled?”

  “This is the first, but I worked for a couple of years as a prosecutor in Cobb County. It’s not unfamiliar territory for me.”

  “What kind of work do you do at Dixon and White?”

  “Forensic accounting for corporate mergers. I spend a lot of time piecing together financial puzzles so our corporate clients can see what they’re getting into. Working to unravel the evidence that exonerated Mr. Larimore was a similar process.”

  “Interesting. What is your hourly rate at Dixon and White?”

  “I’m not going to answer that question because it’s not pertinent to my representation of Mr. Larimore.”

  “What’s next for you?” the reporter asked, unfazed. “Would you be willing to take on another criminal case?”

  “No, but I’m glad for the opportunity to represent Mr. Larimore. I need to go now.”

  “Sure. Will you be available if I circle back with you before I run the article?”

  “I’ll try.”

  The call ended. Pulling the catalog case containing the file and her laptop behind her, Adisa stepped into the marble-floored entrance of the office tower. A security checkpoint blocked the bank of elevators that served floors twenty through thirty-eight. Adisa swiped an access card that triggered an electric lock on a glass door. She recognized the security guard on duty, who greeted her by name.

  Waiting for an elevator door to open, Adisa suffered a second moment of anxiety about what Sharon Rogers might include in the newspaper article. If the story took a negative slant, it would send the wrong kind of waves rippling up to the large offices on the thirty-eighth floor. Adisa offered a quick prayer for the Lord to direct the reporter’s heart as skillfully as he had Judge Boswell’s.

  Adisa’s first stop was to see Catherine Summey. The managing partner of the subgroup was staring at the screen of her computer. Fifty years old, Catherine had been a free spirit in her younger days and still let her blond hair flow down her back. Over her boss’s shoulder, Adisa could see the Atlanta skyline to the southeast of Peachtree Street. Catherine looked up and smiled.

  “I already know,” she said, her green eyes sparkling. “It came across as a local news item five minutes ago. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Come in and tell me about it.”

  One of Catherine’s strengths was the ability to listen. The competing demands on her boss’s time were as tough to balance as a juggler trying to keep multiple plates spinning at the tops of long poles, but the Princeton Law School graduate always made Adisa feel like she had her undivided attention when they talked. Catherine didn’t interrupt Adisa until the phone on the partner’s desk buzzed. One of her two assistants spoke.

  “Mr. Katner wants to move up his appointment with you by ten minutes,” the young man said.

  “I’ll be there,” Catherine replied promptly.

  Adisa hadn’t yet told her boss about the conversation with the newspaper reporter; Catherine, however, pointed to the ceiling. Linwood Katner, the managing attorney in the Atlanta office, had a massive office that occupied an entire corner of the thirty-eighth floor. Katner made Adisa uneasy. The first year she worked for the firm, he had either ignored her or confused her with one of the two black female paralegals who worked in the corporations department. He’d never solicited Adisa’s input in a meeting, which left Adisa no option but to let Catherine do the talking for her.

  “Rumor has it a huge deal is coming our way,” Catherine said, putting her index finger to her lips. “Big enough that it’s going to be a two-thousand-hour project. I need you to finish up your work on the Sipco matter as soon as possible so you’re available when it hits.”

  Adisa wasn’t even halfway through her review of the proposed merger but had already identified a couple of red flags in the financial data.

  “How quick?”

  “Prepare a memo by tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss it first thing.”

  “Okay,” Adisa replied, knowing she would be working into the night.

  Adisa walked quickly to her office, a small space barely big enough for a desk, a chair, a stand for her laptop, and a juvenile schefflera plant that extended its leaves hopefully toward a window that let in a narrow sliver of light. But Adisa would have been grateful for a closet. Beside the window was a framed poster of a waterfall with the caption “My Cup Runneth Over” beneath it. Few of Adisa’s coworkers suspected that the words were part of a Bible verse.

  As a third-year associate, Adisa had received a decent bonus in December that enabled her to buy new clothes and make headway on a six-figure student loan debt, which hung over her head like a sword on a silken thread. Someday she hoped to buy a townhome in the midtown area near the office, but that would have to wait at least another couple of years.

  On the corner of Adisa’s desk was a picture of her older sister, Shanika, holding twin daughters who would turn four years old in a few weeks. Standing behind Shanika with his right hand on his mother’s shoulder was her six-year-old son. Shanika had worked as a bank teller for several years, but after the twins were born she became a stay-at-home mom. Her husband, Ronnie, was a traveling salesman for an industrial equipment manufacturing company.

  Next to Shanika’s photograph was a picture of their great-aunt Josie. Josephine Adams had raised the two girls after their parents’ marriage blew up and no one else wanted them. In the photo, a much younger Aunt Josie was hanging white sheets on a clothesline to dry. In the black-and-white picture the sheets were flapping in the wind, and the rangy woman had a contented smile on her face. Aunt Josie had worn many hats in her long life: a spinster who raised two girls, a retired business owner, and an intercessor who for decades had prayed as she walked the streets of her hometown. She carried a crude walking stick during her spiritual outings, earning her the nickname of “Walker Woman.”

  While her computer was booting up, Adisa went to the break room for a fresh cup of coffee. On the way she passed several coworkers, but no one stopped to chat. Idle conversation in the middle of the workday wasn’t part of the firm culture. Returning to her office, she opened the electronic folder for the Sipco matter. The phone on her desk buzzed.

  “Your sister, Shanika, is on the phone,” the receptionist said. “She says it’s an emergency.”

  FOUR

  “WHAT’S HAPPENED?” ADISA asked rapidly. “Is it about Mom?”

  Their mother had struggled with addiction issues for over twenty-five years. The last they’d heard she was unemployed and living somewhere in New Jersey. The sisters weren’t sure where and didn’t know how to contact her.

  “No, it’s Aunt Josie. She’s had a stroke. They admitted her to the hospital in Campbellton about an hour ago.”

  “How serious is it?” Adisa asked as a wave of anxiety rolled through her.

  “They put her in a regular room, not ICU. I haven’t talked to her, but she was lucid enough to give the EMTs a slip of paper with my name and number on it when they picked her up in the ambulance.”

  Adisa relaxed slightly at the news that her aunt wasn’t in a life-and-death crisis. A skinny woman with more nervous energy than a ten-year-old, Aunt Josie spent time not only prayer walking but also growing a vegetable garden. She still could hoe an entire row of green beans without taking a break. And the only medicines she took on a daily basis were a
pill to treat hypertension and a baby aspirin.

  “Even though she’s not in critical condition, should they transfer her to a hospital here in Atlanta?” Adisa asked. “They don’t have tons of resources in Nash County.”

  “I agree. Ronnie is out of town overnight in Macon, so there’s no way I can get up there to check on her and make sure she’s getting the attention she deserves.”

  Shanika lived in a rural area that was a two-hour drive from Campbellton.

  “What about Ronnie’s mother?” Adisa asked. “Can’t she watch the kids for you?”

  “She has a nasty upper respiratory infection, and I don’t want it to infect everyone at our house. I just finished a round of amoxicillin with the twins, and if they pick up a new bug, I’ll need to go to the hospital myself.”

  Adisa glanced at the clock on her computer taskbar. It was 2:47 p.m. If she left immediately, she could beat the worst of rush-hour traffic and be in Campbellton within ninety minutes.

  “I’ll talk to Catherine and see what she says about leaving early,” Adisa replied.

  “This is our aunt Josie,” Shanika responded. “She’s more important than the legal problems of a billion-dollar company that already has hundreds of lawyers available to do their bidding.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t try to put a guilt trip on me. But I can’t bolt out the door without making arrangements for a project that’s time sensitive. It shouldn’t be a problem if I can be back by early in the morning.”

  Shanika didn’t respond.

  “Did you hear me?” Adisa asked.

  “Yes, but did you hear yourself? I hope you put checking on Aunt Josie in the hospital at the top of your to-do list. I’ve already told Ronnie he has to be home before noon tomorrow so I can get up to Campbellton myself.”

  Adisa heard a high-pitched scream in the background.

  “Keisha! Stop!” Shanika yelled, and the phone went dead.