by Moriah Jovan
“What my father built was good. What Fen made it into was grand. We believe Eilis can commingle and internalize the spirits of her father and mine, and lead the company to an even brighter future as a family operation. Thank you.”
Knox signaled to the room full of reporters to open the floor for questions and picked one of dozens screaming and gesturing to go first. Someone lifted the podium off the platform and out of the way. A microphone was passed from person to person as his or her name was called, in deference to Knox’s condition.
*
Reporter: Ms. Logan, will your position as CEO of OKH Enterprises be a front for Mr. Taight’s leadership?
E H L Taight: No. I don’t run shadow operations.
Reporter: Mr. Hilliard, you bear a striking resemblance to Fen Hilliard. Is it possible that you, too, are his son?
K Hilliard: No. DNA testing has confirmed that I’m Oliver’s son.
Reporter: Ms. Logan, you are well known to be the Goddess, the Muse to Ford. Who is Ford and is he the man in the painting with you?
E H L Taight: If Ford wants to present himself and answer your questions, he may. Today is a day for business, not art.
Reporter: Mr. Hilliard, how do you feel now that you’ve been cleared of all allegations made against you through the years?
K Hilliard: You know, right now I don’t even care. I’m just happy to be alive and with my family, especially my wife and daughter.
Reporter: Mr. Taight, you’re a well-known art speculator, you have extensive training in art, and now there are whisperings in the art community and on Wall Street that you are in fact Ford himself and on the strength of that rumor, the value of Ford paintings has skyrocketed. Would you care to comment?
S Taight: No, and no more questions about Ford will be entertained.
Reporter: This question is for Mrs. Hilliard. Mrs. Hilliard, will you continue to work in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office as an AP until your family’s move to Utah?
J M Hilliard: Yes.
Reporter: Mr. Taight, congressional hearings are scheduled later this month to question you concerning your dubious acquisition of several companies that you subsequently dismantled. Mr. Kenard, Mr. Hilliard, and your respective wives are also requested to be present. Would you care to comment?
S Taight: I don’t recognize Congress’s right to compel me to answer for actions that aren’t crimes to begin with and then to compel me to prove myself innocent of them. If someone wants to bring formal charges against me, fine. Do that, then prove me guilty. We’ve informed Congress in no uncertain terms that we’re staying home to watch the Superbowl.
Reporter: And Senator Oth has warned you that you’ll be cited for contempt and jailed if you fail to appear. Comment?
S Taight: That’s a fair accusation. I do hold Congress in contempt, particularly Senator Oth. If I end up in the can, I’ll consider myself a political prisoner and don’t think Justice and her print and talk radio cohorts won’t have a few things to say about that.
Reporter: So, Mr. Hilliard, what are you going to do next?
K Hilliard: Dude, I’m going surfing.
The End
* * * * *
STAY
Book 2 in the Tales of Dunham
by
Moriah Jovan
Coming November 27, 2009
* * * * *
At 12, Vanessa defied her family to save 17-year-old bad boy Eric from wrongful imprisonment and, possibly, death. She’d hoped for a “thank you” from him, a kiss on the cheek, but before she could grow up and grow curves, he left town.
Fourteen years later, Vanessa is a celebrity chef at the 5-star Ozarks resort she built. Eric is the new Chouteau County prosecutor on his way to the White House.
Four hours apart and each tied to their own careers, their worlds have no reason to intersect until a funeral brings Vanessa back to Chouteau County, back to face the man for whom she’d risked so much, the only man she ever wanted—
—the only man she can’t have.
* * * * *
DECEMBER 14, 1994
“People versus Eric Niccolò Cipriani. Charges of statutory rape, sexual assault in the first degree, and forcible rape in the first degree.”
“Ms. Leventen, how does the defendant plead?”
“Not guilty.”
“Hilliard?”
“Remand, your honor. The victim is thirteen.”
“So ordered.”
* * * * *
THE POOR GET THEIR ICE IN THE WINTER
* * * * *
1: SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
He laughed at the college girl as she scrambled for her clothes, half drunk and pissed. He tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful of warm, flat beer from the bottle he’d left on the bedside table.
“You’re a prick, Eric,” the girl—he didn’t remember her name—snarl-slurred as she misbuttoned her blouse.
“Yeah, you didn’t mind so much when I was fucking you with it, did you? What, did you think I was going to tell you I loved you?”
“No, but I didn’t expect to get insulted, either.”
“Whatever. You’re twenty. I’m seventeen. You came to a frat house looking for good college-boy sex and you got better than you expected—from a high school kid. What’s the problem?” She curled her lip at him. He adjusted his body so he sat more comfortably in the bed, his back against the wall, and he gestured at her midsection with the hand that held his bottle. “Didn’t you learn how to dress yourself when you were five?”
She screeched and threw her shoe at his head. She was too drunk to aim well enough to hit him, though, and he watched it land three feet away. He laughed harder. She opened her mouth to say something else equally scathing when the door burst open, startling them both—badly.
“What the fuck—”
“Shut up,” snarled a Chouteau County deputy, who hauled all six feet three inches of naked Eric out of the bed by his hair and shoved him up against the wall, his arms yanked behind his back.
He was too shocked, too suddenly terrified to make a sound when he heard more than felt his rotator cuff pop out, just drunk enough not to feel the pain of having his dick and face slammed against plaster and woodwork, and not drunk enough to be able to laugh it all off.
“You’re under arrest for statutory rape and sexual assault . . .”
His mind shut down immediately, completely unable to process the combined assaults on his body, his senses, or the college girl’s sudden hoots of delighted laughter, her taunts.
Statutory rape and sexual assault? Of whom?
His mind then spun to life, turbocharged in spite of the numbness he sought. How would he get out of this? He already had a juvie record with nothing to offset it but a 4.5 GPA with his Advanced Placement classes, and a job as a manager at a feed store.
He had no money and he’d never had good luck with the public defenders.
Statutory rape and sexual assault?! He couldn’t possibly have fucked a girl that young . . . could he? Whowhowho?
Still naked except for a ratty blanket, he got stuffed in the back of a squad car. Cold. So cold. The deep freeze of a Missouri December at two a.m. was just another insult. He saw the frat house from which he’d been dragged, alight but still and quiet, all its occupants clustered together on the sidewalk at the foot of the concrete stairs that led up to the house. Sober, clustered together, shivering in various states of undress, they tried to keep warm while they watched Eric get hauled away so spectacularly. He blinked. Glanced away, unable to look back at the people he had blithely called “friends” for the night.
None of them would bail him out. They barely knew him, much less cared. He was just known to be a hard partier and a good fuck.
He gulped.
No one to call. His mother, out of the question. She would believe that he had fucked an underage girl and let him rot, not that he could blame her. She’d bailed him out enough.
Couldn’t call old Jenkins
. He’d told Eric that one slip-up would get him the boot straight out of the feed store.
Statutory rape and sexual assault.
I didn’t do it!
Wouldn’t matter. No one would believe him innocent.
They had no reason to.
The squad car finally began to move toward the courthouse. He knew the routine; he’d been through it enough, but not for a year and a half now. He’d tangled with almost every one of the prosecutors in that office, Hicks more than most. He closed his eyes and collapsed in on himself. Please, no. Not Hicks.
The man was vicious and, unlike most of the attorneys in that office, was not on the take. Eric could only hope to get the new prosecutor, that fucker straight out of law school who’d offed the serial killer and skated. That was a man who’d appreciate a bundle of cash to overlook whatever bullshit Eric was said to have done.
Only . . . Eric had no money, so it didn’t matter who ended up prosecuting him.
No money, no payoff.
And for this, he’d be tried as an adult.
* * * * *
He regretted his wish for the newest, youngest prosecutor immediately upon staring into Knox Hilliard’s cold, hard face—the face of a killer with nothing to lose and a raging thirst for justice.
“Simone Whittaker?!”
Eric shot to his feet, jolted out of his shocked numbness into his own rage when Hilliard told him his alleged victim.
“Siddown,” Hilliard snarled, so Eric sat.
“It can’t be,” Eric said, desperate for him to understand. “She came on to me and I told her to get lost. I don’t do little girls at all ever. Never. Second, even if I did—which I don’t—I wouldn’t have touched her with a ten-foot pole. She’s a disgusting, lying little bitch and who the hell knows what diseases she’s got.”
That was the wrong thing to say. He knew it by the chill in Hilliard’s ice blue eyes, knew it even before his court-appointed attorney hissed, “Shut up, Eric.”
“I’m done with this asshole,” Hilliard murmured, calm, cold, staring Eric down until Eric had to look away. Cold. That was the only word Eric could apply to the man who’d murdered another man in cold—well, not so cold—blood, who sat there on the right side of the law like he had a right to be there.
Eric’s attorney did manage to get him seen for his torn rotator cuff, but no one much cared beyond giving him a sling to wear in jail while he waited for his trial. His life was over, over before it had begun.
Simone Whittaker.
He knew at least two dudes in his class who’d fucked her, but Eric? No way. He’d been creeped out enough to look at a girl that young dressing, talking, acting like an oversexed college girl.
He resigned himself to his fate, although his attorney, a lady Hilliard’s age, also straight out of law school, was actually doing a pretty decent job of defending him. He wouldn’t get off, though, because he could clearly see Hilliard was better—and motivated.
Thirteen-year-old girls.
Even ones who looked and acted twenty, who spread her legs for any male who’d have her. No matter Eric was smarter than his cohorts: valid picture ID and condoms. Always, every time, without fail.
Shit, yeah, Hilliard had made his opinion known loud and clear what he thought of that particular crime. The man had a roar that could be heard all the way to St. Joe. A lion, his attorney had called him; then, after Eric had caught her checking out Hilliard’s ass, he wondered if she was fucking him on the sly.
“Lord, no,” she breathed, aghast. “Knox doesn’t like blondes and he doesn’t like women my age.”
“Are you telling me he’s a closet pedophile?” Eric asked slowly.
“No, Eric,” she said dryly. “He’s not letting loose any self-loathing on you. He likes women older than he is. And no, I wouldn’t sleep with him while I’m defending you anyway. That’s just a little too kinky for my taste. In any case, I doubt any prosecutor anywhere would go any lighter on you. These crimes are—”
Yes, he knew. Universally despised. “I didn’t do it,” he protested. Weak. It was weak. Nobody ever believed a defendant who said “I didn’t do it” because they all said that.
She patted his hand. “I know you didn’t. I’ll do the best I can.”
Apathy: The only emotion Eric could muster.
Except when put in general population, at which point, he didn’t hesitate to make his opinion known about some other inmate’s assessment of him. For the first time, Eric cursed his looks. The term “hottie,” applied by a male, didn’t seem like such a compliment. It was a relief when he was thrown into solitary confinement for damn near killing the fucker with his bare hands.
“At this point, all I care about is managing to get myself in solitary for the rest of my life,” he said to his attorney the next time he saw her.
She pursed her lips in commiseration.
She knew she was losing. Eric wouldn’t live to see his nineteenth birthday.
* * * * *
2: LAZY, LOUSY, LIZA JANE
April 1995
Vanessa squeezed tight into herself, watching from across the street, waiting for him. She sat on the sidewalk, her back against the stone of the café and furniture store, a small book hidden between her upraised knees and her chest.
There he was, striding purposefully into the courthouse like he owned it: tall, blond, hard, and very cruel. She could see it in his face. She knew what he’d done—the whole county knew. And trembled. She didn’t know which was scarier: approaching the man who’d gotten away with the murder of her mother’s boyfriend or going home to her mother after having done so.
She could just forget the whole thing and go back to school, but Laura would be disappointed in her if she left now, so Vanessa tried to screw up her courage and go see the man every person in the county feared.
“He could snap again,” went the whispers. “Who knows what’ll set that crazy bastard off now.”
He had more than one reputation in town, for sure. Whenever Vanessa and the rest of the sixth graders ate lunch in the narrow quad between the elementary school and high school, she would overhear the older girls talking about him as if he were a rock star. Even a couple of teachers would whisper his name and giggle. She supposed he was kinda sorta good looking, but he was way old—like, twenty-five or something—and terrifying.
Her heart in her throat, she still couldn’t make herself move.
What would Laura do?
Laura would march herself on in there and do the right thing no matter what. “That boy didn’t rape Simone,” she’d say, or so Vanessa imagined she might say. “You’re the only person who knows that besides your mother and sister, so it’s your responsibility, Vanessa.”
Vanessa knew what would happen to her when LaVon and Simone found out she’d blown up their scheme—and they would find out.
Dirk, the only protector she had ever had, was gone all the way around the world to New Zealand, to talk to people about his church. She’d had no one to protect her for a year and this would seal her fate. Perhaps it was time she packed her bags and set out on her own, like Hermie and Rudolph.
The crowd of people going to work had thinned out quite a while ago and then only the intermittent flow of deputies coming and going kept her from entering. She supposed it was now or never if she was going to do this because eventually someone would approach her to find out why she wasn’t at school.
Reluctantly she stood and shoved the book up her shirt, then hugged it to her tight. With leaden feet she crossed the street and headed up the long walk to the courthouse doors. Once inside, she didn’t know what to do. Everybody looked at her strangely but no one asked her her business.
She looked up at the building directory and looked for his name. There. Second floor. She stared up the very high, wide staircase and took a deep breath. One step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time, and then she was in front of the door she sought:
PROSECUTOR’S
OFFICE
Her hand reached out for the doorknob as if it were on a string and she was a puppet—wait, no, a . . . She searched for the right word. Marionette. That’s right. A marionette. And while she’d been thinking of the right word, her feet had gone ahead and taken her through the door and into the office.
Ancient wood and metal desks were crammed into an open area any which way. Men stormed around the obstacles, cursing, yelling, and generally filling the air with much anger and lots of bad words. She swallowed. In front of her was another door:
CLAUDE NOCEK
PROSECUTOR
A young black man stopped short and looked down at her. She stepped back, her eyes wide, because now she would actually have to talk to one of those men who were cursing and yelling and being angry.
She bit her lip.
Tightened her arms over her body, over the book whose vinyl stuck to her skin.
“Well, uh, hi,” he said after a long few seconds. “My name’s Richard. What can I do for you?”
She gulped. “I came to see Mr. Hilliard,” she whispered. “I have something for him.”
A bemused smile swept across his face and she knew then that he was nice and he’d help her. “Really? What would that be?”
“A book,” she breathed. “I really need to talk to him, please.”