Losing Faith (13 page)

“Yuppers.”

Aaron has a similarly abbreviated conversation with Lindsay and then heads to the kitchen, where he pulls a tumbler out of the cupboard and pours himself a generous amount of scotch. He takes his new best friend into the living room and tries to calm his nerves.

Shortly before 1:00 a.m., when Aaron is midway through his third drink, Cynthia finally appears. She looks a bit harried, which is not uncommon after she finishes a long night on call.

“Sorry I’m so late. There was this first-time mom,” she says as she’s taking off her coat, “and I’m told she’s at eight centimeters, but when I got there, she was only at two, and so I was stuck at the hospital . . . you got my text, right?”

Cynthia has said this without even looking at Aaron. But when they make eye contact, her expression changes dramatically.

“Aaron, what’s wrong? You look . . . like death.”

“I’m not feeling particularly well,” he says.

“And I see you’re self-medicating.”

She walks over and puts her hand to his head, checking if he has a fever the way she does with their daughters. She hesitates for a moment and then says, “You feel normal.”

During his affair with Faith, Aaron always showered before returning home, and then worried whether the clean scent would be as incriminating as the sexual one he’d washed away. For a moment he has that same fear again, wondering if Cynthia can ascertain that he’s lying by the sweet floral smell that clings to him.

“Why don’t you just crawl into bed?” she continues. “I’ll join you
in a few minutes. You’ll feel better tomorrow. I promise.”

Aaron nods that he’ll follow the doctor’s orders, but he knows she couldn’t be more wrong. Tomorrow will undoubtedly be the very worst day of his entire life.

18

A
aron feels like a man dressing for his own execution. Part of him wants to run. Run and never turn back. But he knows that the only thing he can do is go about his business as usual.

He puts on his favorite Brioni suit, a crisp white shirt, and a solid blue tie, and then heads out the door. Twenty minutes later, he steps into his office and sees Sam Rosenthal sitting there.

“What, are they painting the conference room?” Aaron asks.

Rosenthal doesn’t smile.

“Judge Nichols . . . her body was found last night in Central Park. She was murdered. It’s all over the news.”

The lawyer in him knows that he should stay quiet, but Aaron can’t help himself. “Sam . . . I
saw her
last night. In the park. I was trying to talk her out of staying on the case. Garkov must have someone following her . . . If he took pictures of Faith and me together . . .” Aaron shakes his head, as if he’s in disbelief.

“Sam, I didn’t kill her,” he says.

I didn’t do it.
You have to believe me.

Aaron wouldn’t believe a client who told him the same story, and so he fully expects Rosenthal’s incredulity. But instead he sees in his mentor’s eyes that Rosenthal will not abandon him. And that is oddly even more comforting than being believed.

NICOLAI GARKOV LOOKS LIKE
a man who has just won the lottery. Even he must know how unseemly it is to gloat over another person’s violent death, and yet here he is, grinning ear-to-ear before Aaron can
even say hello.

Under other circumstances, Aaron would have brought Rachel to this meeting. But the last thing he wants is a witness to this discussion.

They are meeting in the same room on the third floor of the MCC where Garkov told Aaron not two days before that he would kill Faith Nichols—and maybe Aaron too—if she did not release him from this place. As he did then, Garkov is wearing the ill-fitting orange jumpsuit, and the guards who brought him in have left him constrained around the ankles but unlocked his handcuffs. Seemingly the only difference in today’s scene is the look of pure joy on Garkov’s face.

“I take it you’ve heard,” Aaron says.

“Yes. Good news travels fast,” Garkov says.

Aaron’s only response is an icy glare. “You do realize that you’re going to be the prime suspect in her murder?” he says.

“At first,” Garkov says with an unconcerned air. “But”—he looks around the room—“I do have a fairly strong alibi, don’t you think? Now, let’s talk about something that matters, like when I can get out of here.”

“It’s not that simple—although I know you know that,” Aaron says. “Everything is on hold until a new judge is appointed, and that’s not going to happen until after the funeral. Then I’ll make the bail application again. Be prepared for the fact that the new judge might well keep you here.”

“Well, what’s a few days in the grand scheme of things?” Garkov says. “And I suspect it
is
going to be that simple. I have every confidence that my next judge will see the wisdom behind house arrest, which apparently fell outside of Judge Nichols’s understanding.”

Aaron suspects that Garkov is correct. The next judge, being only human, will have severe concerns about ruling against Nicolai Garkov. Of course, Garkov could pull someone who is worthy of standing up to that challenge, but even if bail isn’t reinstated, there is little doubt that whoever presides over Garkov’s eventual trial will be more
likely to acquit than Faith.

He also knows that another lawyer will be making that application. Now that he no longer has sway over the trial judge, Aaron Littman is superfluous to Nicolai Garkov’s defense.

MOST MARRIAGES HAVE THEIR
demarcations. Like the equator, these are imaginary lines that take on navigational importance. Some you know going in—the wedding, the day your children are born—the things that forever change the way the world was before.

The night you tell your wife that you’ve been unfaithful and that your lover has been murdered—oh, and that you were the last person to see her alive—is certainly one of them.

Aaron wrestled all day with whether he should venture so far out on a limb with Cynthia. In addition to all the usual considerations that counsel against confessing infidelity to a spouse, he’d be creating evidence that could be used against him later by law enforcement. Spousal privilege would prevent Cynthia from testifying about the things he would share, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still hurt him in other ways, like leading the police to admissible evidence that they might never have otherwise found.

But he pushed away such fears because he trusts Cynthia. He wants her to know that he might end up being a suspect in Faith’s murder, so she’ll know not to unwittingly say anything that might incriminate him.

At least, he thought it was a good strategy.

When he arrives at home, Cynthia is in the kitchen. Their housekeeper, Eunice, normally prepares dinner for the girls, and Aaron is usually wining and dining clients. But sometimes Cynthia likes to prepare dinner herself. She finds it relaxing, she says.

She’s wearing the yoga pants she favors as her at-home attire, and the blue hoodie Aaron bought her as a gift from the Ugg store near his office.

Cynthia is one of those women who looks her best without
makeup, with her hair tousled and . . . wearing yoga pants and a blue hoodie. Aaron can’t help but consider the cruel irony that as he prepares to confess how unworthy he is of her love, she has never looked more beautiful to him.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Cynthia says when she first sees Aaron in front of her in the kitchen. Cynthia’s pique from yesterday over the Garkov case has apparently been put aside. She seems sincerely happy that he’s here.

Aaron is trying to come up with some way to begin when Cynthia says, “I heard on the news about your judge. How terrible. Do they know who did it?”

“No. Not yet . . . Actually, I have no idea what they know. But . . . look, I have something to tell you and it’s important.”

Cynthia turns away from the stirring she’s engaged in at the stove. “Okay . . . ,” she says hesitantly.

He motions for her to sit down in their breakfast room. When she does, he takes a seat beside her. He wants to take her hand but knows that would be a mistake.

Despite Aaron’s grave setup, Cynthia looks impassive. Aaron wants to turn back, but it’s too late for that. All he can do now to limit the pain is come out with it quickly.

“I had an affair with the judge, Faith Nichols,” he says. “It’s been over since the Matthews trial ended, but that’s why Nicolai Garkov hired me. He wanted me to blackmail her to get an acquittal. And I saw her last night, to try to tell her . . .”

Aaron can now see the fear in his wife’s eyes, and although he had more he was going to say, he puts everything else aside and blurts out, “I didn’t kill her, Cynthia. I would never do such a thing.”

I didn’t do it. You have to believe me.

Cynthia’s face constricts, as if she’s just been struck. He can tell that she’s fighting back tears even as she processes how her life just went straight to hell.

Aaron’s silent now, bracing himself for the barrage of questions
he’s sure is to follow:
How many times? Was it ever in our bed? Did you wear a condom? What do you mean you saw her right before she was murdered?

But instead Cynthia asks something else. “Why . . . why are you telling me this now?”

“I . . . don’t know if I should even be telling you at all, to be honest.”

“You’re being honest?!” Cynthia shouts at him. “An honest man doesn’t fuck around!”

Aaron takes a deep breath. “You asked me why I was telling you now, and I was trying to answer.”

Cynthia shakes her head violently. “Okay, sure. Go right ahead.”

“I thought about telling you earlier, but I just thought that would hurt you for no reason. It was over, and the only rationale I could see for telling you was to make myself feel better . . . and that didn’t seem to be good enough a reason. I-I’m so sorry, Cynthia.”

“Stop it! Stop it!
Stop it!
I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry, Aaron. Sorry for what even? For having an affair or for telling me that you’re going to be arrested for killing her?”

Neither of them says anything for a good ten seconds before Cynthia puts him out of his misery. “I can’t even look at you anymore, Aaron. Just get the hell out of my sight. Go to a hotel or something, and give me some time alone.”

PART TWO

19

J
udge Nichols’s murder is covered by the New York tabloids with the hyperbole for which they are famous. The
Post
plastered its front page with
JUDGE MURDERED
! while the
Daily News
went with
JUSTICE DEAD
. Under both headlines was Faith’s photograph, the official shot from the court’s website.

The
New York Times
’s
coverage was more muted, but the story still merited two columns on the front page before jumping to the obituary section. Though long on biographical details (reared in Greenwich, Connecticut, attended Miss Porter’s School before Smith College, then Yale Law School), the paper provided few details about the circumstances of Faith’s murder besides the fact that she was bludgeoned to death in Central Park, with an anonymous source claiming the murder weapon was a tree branch. The article mentioned she was currently presiding over the Nicolai Garkov case and that she’d revoked his bail only the day before her murder, then left it to the reader to connect the dots.

In a sidebar story, the
Times
reported that Judge Nichols was only the fifth federal judge murdered since the Civil War. The deaths of two of the judges—John H. Wood of San Antonio and Richard J. Daronco of New York—were confirmed to have been in connection with their official capacity. Judge Wood was known as “Maximum John” for his tough sentences for drug traffickers and was shot in the back while leaving his home in May 1979. Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, was ultimately convicted and received two life sentences for the contract killing. A few years
later, Judge Daronco was murdered by the father of a losing litigant. In 1989, Judge Robert Smith Vance of Atlanta was killed by a mail bomb, and while many speculated it was due to his refusal to overturn a conviction, that connection was never proven. The last federal judge murdered before Judge Nichols was John Roll of Arizona, who had the misfortune of being in the crowd on January 8, 2011, when a gunman opened fire, badly injuring U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, as well as killing six others and wounding another twelve.

Faith’s funeral is held the Monday morning after her death. It is a family-only event, the location itself a closely guarded secret.

The following day is the public display, a memorial service at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. As much as Aaron would rather not go, his absence would be conspicuous, and so he has no choice but to join close to one thousand of his fellow members of the bar to pay his final respects.

Despite the grim circumstances, the event has the feel of a bar association meeting. Nearly every member of the judiciary from the Southern District of New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals attends, and the city’s most prominent lawyers jockey for their attention. There was some buzz that the governor, and maybe even the vice president, would be on hand, but according to the program that’s given to Aaron when he enters the church, Edward Kheel, New York’s senior senator, and Faith’s benefactor for the Supreme Court, is the highest-ranking government official in attendance.

Even in the best of circumstances, Aaron’s not a fan of any gathering of his fellow members of the bar, which is often little more than a mix of egotistical rantings and groveling for business, sometimes coming from the same person. Today’s chitchat is even more labored than usual. In the ten minutes since he’s arrived at Saint Pat’s, Aaron has had two conversations in which the factoid about Woody Harrelson cited in the
Times
was referenced, and in both cases the lawyer
who shared the information acted as if this were highly confidential information.

Aaron’s now cornered by Steven Schwartzfarb, a short, pudgy bald man who works at a small white-collar boutique law firm. He chats Aaron up whenever he can in the hope that Cromwell Altman will throw some conflict work his way, which Aaron has never done and never will.