Justice Lost

by Scott Pratt

  “I’m sorry,” Claire said. “If it’s too painful, just forget I mentioned it.”

  “No, no, it isn’t that. I just hadn’t heard anyone say her name in a while. When she first died, I thought I’d die, too, but something unusual happened. She came to me in a dream—it was like it was real—and she told me she was disappointed in me. She basically said goodbye, she slipped through this veil of mist, and I haven’t dreamed of her since. I don’t feel her presence; I don’t feel as though she’s watching over me. I feel guilty about it, but to be honest, I’ve thought very little about her. I can barely remember her voice. I have some photos, but I put them away. I just don’t want to look at her every day and revisit all of it, and if she’s abandoned or given up on me, which I think she has, then there isn’t much point in torturing myself.”

  “Why would you think those things?” Claire said. “Why would you think she’s abandoned you or given up on you?”

  “She was a gentle soul who wouldn’t harm anyone. She was truly a wonderful human being. She was as smart as they come, she was kind and considerate, and she was even-tempered. She loved her work. She loved people. She hated injustice. She was as close to perfect as anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “That’s a tough legacy to follow,” Claire said.

  “Grace defended criminals and never once gave any thought to the crimes they’d committed. I used to be able to do that, but I changed. She didn’t.”

  “And you think she abandoned you when Dr. Fraturra disappeared?” Claire said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to. For what it’s worth, I think differently than she did. If you did something to Fraturra, I wouldn’t condemn you for it, just like I wouldn’t condemn you if you did something about what happened to your mother or if you evened the scales with Ben Clancy.”

  “You’re hard-hearted,” I said.

  “Violent crimes are basically acts of terrorism,” she said. “I’ve been taught, and I choose to accept the philosophy, that there is only one way to fight terrorism, and that is with violence.”

  I smiled at her, and although I agreed and could have continued talking about violence, I tried to change, or at least soften, the subject.

  “It’s different with my mother,” I said. “I can remember her voice, but her face has faded some from my memory. When her house was blown up, they used so much dynamite that it practically vaporized everything. There wasn’t a single photo of her that survived the explosion and the fire, and since I was living there at the time, all my photos burned up, too.

  “Again,” Claire said, “an act of terrorism. Did Grace love you? I mean, toward the end?”

  “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “Is there any point? Answer the question, please.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Grace loved me very much at one time,” I said. “After my mother’s death, I became difficult and I tested her limits. We were back on the mend when she died, so I suppose the answer would be yes, I think she loved me toward the end.”

  “And you loved her?”

  “I did. We would have married not long after the baby was born, I feel pretty certain about that. It’s like you said the other day, I’ve been through some difficult times. I can become moody and distant. But she was patient with me. She was good to me. When I think about her, I miss her very much. When I think about what we might have been if some of these things hadn’t happened, it saddens me.”

  I felt a tear slide down my cheek and wiped it away with my napkin.

  “I’m sorry, Darren,” Claire said.

  “It’s all right. Really. I’m not ashamed to show emotion when I talk about Grace. I feel cheated that we didn’t get to raise Jasmine together. I think we would have done very well raising a child.”

  “I’m sure you would have.”

  “So what about you? How about a little quid pro quo? I don’t know anything about your personal life. You told me you don’t like men. I think you said they were boorish and boring, but I find that hard to believe.”

  “Why do you find that hard to believe?”

  She took a sip of wine, and I noticed the pale-red imprint of her lips left on the glass by her lipstick.

  “Because of the way you carry yourself, because of the way you dress. You want men to be attracted to you. Do you do it so you can swat them away like flies?”

  “I have to admit you surprise me quite often,” Claire said. “You’re far more perceptive than you want people to believe.”

  “So you don’t hate men.”

  “No, I don’t hate men. I find them deliciously attractive, if you want the honest truth.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I love to see a woman drink wine,” I said. “Half a glass down the hatch and the truth starts bubbling up. Are you attracted to any particular type of man, or just men in general?”

  “I like macho guys,” she said. “I like men who do things. Who live for something. They have to be intelligent, of course, and I mean extremely intelligent, but they can’t sit on their asses. They have to be physically fit, maybe a little bit dangerous, and they have to believe in a cause or an ideal and live to promote that cause or ideal. And I’m not talking about just any cause. It has to be something I consider noble.”

  “I would never have taken you for a Guinevere. You’re a hopeless romantic in search of a king or a prince.”

  She winked at me. “Maybe.”

  “Ever dated a soldier, one of those officer-and-gentleman types?”

  “I did,” she said. She didn’t seem to want to discuss it.

  “Come on, now, Claire, you can’t just leave me hanging. I opened up to you. It’s your turn.”

  I was getting to know her better, but she was still a mystery to me. I wanted to know what made her tick, how she felt about certain things. I wanted to know what kind of man she was interested in, because, whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was becoming interested in her.

  “He worked at the Pentagon when I met him,” Claire said. “He was a major in the army, a Green Beret who wanted to move on to Delta. He was a good man, very dedicated to his work.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I did, and he loved me. But he loved his work more, so I suppose the old adage that one must be careful what one wishes for is true. I found and fell in love with a man dedicated to protecting and serving the country he loved, but there wasn’t enough room in his life for his career and for me. He ultimately chose the career.”

  “How long since the breakup?”

  “Last year in November.”

  “Ah, so it’s still pretty fresh.”

  I reached across the table and patted her hand. “I won’t say it gets better with time, but it changes. The pain eases just a fraction each day that goes by. You learn to cope. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find another knight one day.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone like him, but I guess there’s always a chance.”

  “And in the meantime, you get to work with new and exciting people like me,” I said.

  She smiled and pointed her fork at me. “You are not boring,” she said. “I’ll give you that. The way you went off on Henshaw and Kurtz this afternoon was a complete surprise.”

  “That was for you,” I said. “The first words out of his mouth were, ‘I didn’t vote for your father.’ What an asinine thing to say. I knew right then it wasn’t going to go well. Besides, I don’t have much use for the feds. They framed me and put me in jail. They dieseled me. They tried to break me, turn me into a robot.”

  “They dieseled you? What does that mean?”

  “They handcuffed me with the black-box cuffs that they can practically break your wrists with, they shackled me, and they put me on a bus. I stayed on the bus anywhere from sixteen to twenty hours a day for three months straight. They’d feed me once a day—a bologna sandwich, a piece of fruit, and some milk—and they just r
ode me from prison to prison. There was no bathroom on the bus, so I had to be careful about what I ate and drank. If I lost control of my bladder or bowels on the bus, I was going to take a bad beating. Took a shower maybe once a month, didn’t shave or cut my hair. They call it diesel therapy. It was torture. They do it to people they deem ‘disciplinary problems.’”

  “Who does it?” Claire said.

  “The US marshals. US attorneys or prison wardens usually pick out the people who get dieseled, but the marshals do the dirty work.”

  “That’s unconscionable. I’m going to tell my grandfather about it.”

  “He knows,” I said. “There have been congressional hearings where it’s come up. They turn their backs to it so they aren’t accused of meddling in how the federal criminal justice system operates. Nobody wants to appear soft on crime.”

  “How did you get through it?” Claire said. “I mean, mentally?”

  “About halfway through, I just made up my mind they weren’t going to break me. And I thought a lot about Grace. She was my lawyer then, but I was already in love with her.”

  “Amazing,” she said.

  I raised my glass and she clinked hers against it.

  “To never getting dieseled again,” I said.

  “To becoming the next district attorney of Knox County,” she said.

  “Excellent,” I said. “Now tell me everything that’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The event, which was held at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium, was billed as a political rally and had been well publicized. I had to hand it to Claire. She really knew her stuff when it came to running political campaigns. I had a huge organization of volunteers, envelope stuffers, sign distributors, and people who would make cold calls on my behalf. There were billboards all over Knoxville. I’d seen my name on at least ten buses and six billboards.

  “Darren Street for District Attorney General. A Man of Integrity,” the slogans beneath my face said. I found it horrifyingly embarrassing at first, but after seeing the images over and over, I got used to it. I didn’t believe it, but I got used to it. Had it said, “Darren Street for District Attorney General. A Dangerous Man of Occasional Integrity,” I would have liked it better.

  The rally was held in late October, just two weeks before the election. Claire, as always, was right. The auditorium held twenty-five hundred people, and it was packed. They weren’t there to see me. They were there to see and hear a man who was an icon in Tennessee, Senator Roger Tate. Several dignitaries came—state representatives and senators, the lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives. They all sat up on the stage with us. About five minutes before the proceedings were to begin, the sheriff made his entrance, dressed in his uniform and his cowboy hat and carrying his signature Colt Python revolvers. He took a seat on the second row on the stage, right next to the county clerk. I sat next to Senator Tate. It was a surreal scene and a surreal feeling, thinking I was about to be endorsed for a local political office by one of the most powerful men in the United States. The thought actually ran through my mind, My God, my mother would be so proud.

  The mayor of Knoxville opened the rally by welcoming everyone and introducing a pastor who said a few words and then led everyone in the Lord’s Prayer. A beautiful young child, a girl perhaps eight or nine years old with long blonde curls and wearing a pale-blue dress, sang a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that gave me goose bumps and had everyone in the place on their feet yelling when she was finished.

  The lieutenant governor introduced Senator Tate, and Tate gave a forty-minute, mini–State of the Union address, combined with a State of the State of Tennessee address. He spent the last five minutes talking about me and what a fine gentleman I was, how I had seen hard times and overcome them, and how I would make a fine district attorney by protecting the people of Knox County and ferreting out corruption and aggressively prosecuting criminals.

  And then it was my turn to speak. I was spiffed up to the max. Claire had bought me a charcoal-gray tailored suit with a shirt and tie and socks and shoes to match, and she’d ordered me to go to a spa in Knoxville that morning that she said was the best in town. They were waiting for me, and they pampered me for two hours, including giving me a haircut and a shave. Prior to the rally, there was another barber waiting backstage who put hot towels over my face, gave me a close shave, and made me smell the way I would imagine a high-dollar corporate CEO would smell.

  There was a teleprompter in front of me, and I stuck to the words Claire had written. I thanked everyone for coming. I said I was honored and humbled to be endorsed by a man as revered as Senator Tate, and that I would bring honesty, integrity, and organization to the district attorney’s office. I didn’t say I’d bring those things “back” to the office, because it had been occupied by Ben Clancy for so long before Morris was elected that there hadn’t been honor or integrity in the district attorney’s office for a long, long time. I kept it short, around eight minutes, and then I began to thank everyone again.

  Just as I was about to finish, a man holding up a large placard came walking down the aisle against the wall to my right. The placard said, “Where is Dr. Nicolas Fraturra?”

  “Did you kill my brother?” the man yelled. “What did you do to him?”

  I didn’t know whether the man was really Fraturra’s brother or a Morris plant. Maybe he was both. Security started to move toward him, and people started booing. I raised my hand to quiet the crowd as the man reached the bottom of the steps. He was about thirty feet away.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Michael Fraturra.”

  “And Dr. Nicolas Fraturra is your brother?”

  “Was my brother! Until you killed him!”

  “Who told you that, Mr. Fraturra?” I said.

  “Stephen Morris told me you killed my brother.”

  “Did he offer you any proof?”

  “He said Nick didn’t save your girlfriend and your baby. That you lost them both because of a rare medical condition and that you tried to get Mr. Morris to arrest my brother.”

  “That’s true, Mr. Fraturra. I went to Stephen Morris and asked him to arrest your brother for reckless homicide. He was on call the night my girlfriend and baby died, and he was too drunk to care for them. He could have saved them, but he arrived late and he was drunk. By the time another doctor got there, it was too late. They were gone.”

  “And Mr. Morris wouldn’t arrest him so you killed him! What did you do with his body?”

  “If something has happened to your brother, Mr. Fraturra, I’m sorry for your loss, just as I’m sure you’re sorry for the loss of my girlfriend and daughter. But I didn’t harm your brother. If he’s gone, I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Liar! You’re a liar and a murderer! I hope you rot in hell, you miserable son of a bitch!”

  At that point, a security guard took Mr. Fraturra by the arm and led him out the door. I noticed Claire, flanked by two Knoxville police officers, follow them out.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the audience. “I’ve been falsely accused before. There isn’t really anything I can do other than deny the accusations because they aren’t true. I hope you believe me. Thank you again, and I wish all of you the best, no matter who wins this election.”

  Roger Tate got up and spoke for another ten minutes, controlling any damage that might have just occurred. As he was finishing up, I saw Claire motion to him from the corner of the stage. He said, “Excuse me for just a second,” and walked over to her. She whispered in his ear briefly, and he returned to the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the man who just claimed to be Dr. Nicolas Fraturra’s brother is really a gentleman named Ronald Blair. After he left the arena, a Knoxville police officer asked him to provide some identification. After a couple of minutes of questioning, he admitted that he was paid one thousand dollars to put on the show we all just witnessed. We’ve decided
not to press charges.”

  I breathed a deep sigh of relief as people yelled their disapproval. Then I started to wonder about the $1,000. He said he’d been paid $1,000, but he didn’t say who paid it. Between the release of the information about Morris’s wife, the revelation about the plant at the rally, and the endorsement of Roger Tate, Morris was as good as dead in the water. My money was on Claire. I was betting she’d paid the guy, and it had worked perfectly.

  Damn, she was good.

  CHAPTER 25

  Sheriff Corker was nervous. He and Harley Shaker had been summoned to the small trailer where Roby Penn lived on a Tuesday evening. Cigarette smoke hung heavy in the kitchen. The three men were sitting at the table, drinking beer and playing Texas Hold’em. Sheriff Corker had shown up at the allotted time. Harley had shown up ten minutes late, which caused Roby to go off on a five-minute, profanity-laced rant about respect and wasting other people’s time. Roby had even threatened to shoot him. The sheriff had finally calmed Roby down. They’d settled in and were about five hands into the game, but the sheriff knew this evening wasn’t about playing cards and strengthening male bonds. Something was troubling Roby. He was fidgety and even more irritable than usual.

  “We got something we gotta do,” Roby said after he polished off his second beer and followed it with a shot of tequila.

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said, smiling. He was doing his best to keep things light. “We need to deal some better cards my way.”

  “Shut up, Tree,” Roby snapped. “I’m serious. I’ve got it all planned out so you won’t have to strain that pea brain of yours. Harley, you’re in because you killed that marine and put us all at risk. You gotta put in some work to make up for that.”

  “Work? What kind of work?” Shaker said. “I already helped you get rid of him.”

  “That could have blown up in our faces, but what I have in mind is going to settle things down once and for all. We need to do some wet work.”

  “Wet work?” the sheriff said as he sipped a beer slowly and sucked on a cigarette. “You’re talking about killing people, Roby. I don’t kill people. You know that.”