The Coming of Bright (2 page)

“Ms. Bright, I’m going to interpret your tone as a complimentary one. I’m sure you meant it that way. And yes, I’m certainly no idealist in the traditional sense.”

He paused to let the paradox sink in and then struck a somber pose, no further trace of laughter.

“But I think you’ll find—”

Here he strangely, uncannily seemed to put extra emphasis on the
you’ll
, as if he were talking only to Zora, not the class as a whole.

“—that I am truly an idealist when it comes to the law serving its deeper purpose, the purpose for which it was truly made.”

A sharp thud resonated around the room. The gavel.

His bearing changed, the entire tenor of the discussion transformed. Less personal, less intimate. His eyes, his feelings, his consciousness, less fixed on any one particular object. Less fixed on
her
.

To her great relief. She was glad to have his gaze, his rapacious vision, off of her. It was time for his next victim.

“Mr. Chu, the casebook beckons. Why don’t you fill us in on Judge Moylan’s holding for the court in
Owens v. State
on the presumption of innocence?”

Zora was still seized in place.

CHAPTER TWO

“Ms. Bright, what am I thinking right now?”

Jack walked beside her as they filed out of Mather Hall and headed south across the law school’s academic quad. They were joined together at least for the moment out of new rapport and old commiseration.

The Texas day was like so many others—good weather for scorpions. Jack was lit up with satanic glee at his question, doing a decent impersonation of the Judge, needling and domineering.

“I don’t know what the hell you
are
thinking, but you
should
be thinking that Zora is really in no mood for answering questions. That was humiliating in there.”

“No, no, believe me, you handled yourself like a pro. I’ve seen people melt into a blabbering mess under the Judge and his ivory gavel of despair.”

She continued to walk alongside him, letting his words fall into silence. He didn’t wait long before filling the void left in her wake.

“You and I should go grab a bite at the Cave.”

The Cave was the cavernous basement of the main administrative building, extending to the rear and sides of the upper floors, where all manner of recreational and gastronomic activities awaited. Chiefly in the form of a haute-cuisine food court, more CPK than KFC, a 24-hour bowling alley, and a pretty fucking fancy exercise facility that included an Olympic-size pool and every piece of cardiovascular hardware imaginable.

Founders School of Law had assets in spades, an endowment in fact that gave Harvard Law a run for its money. Despite the blinding light of wealth all around him, Jack liked nothing better in the Cave than a New York-style hot dog from the Coney Island Deli and a game of foosball at the single ratty table next to the janitor’s water closet with A-22 on the door.

“Jack, can’t right now, I’m heading back to Ford”—the residency hall, a cross between Eero Saarinen and cinder-block modern—“to go over the cases for Property this afternoon.”

This was not simply an excuse to free her from having to tangle herself in Jack’s intentions, then disentangle herself. Zora considered law school and romance to be mutually exclusive. Life of law, life of celibacy. At least until she had run the 1L gauntlet with body and spirit intact.

Or rather, out of the sheer exhaustion, drudgery, and depletion of time she knew lay on the horizon, celibacy had chosen
her
. And she really did have cases to go over, hadn’t even begun to read
Pierson v. Post
or
Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States
. Lunch would have to wait.

“Actually, the Judge wants me to talk to you. It’s important. I thought lunch would be a good way to do it.”

For a second Zora blanched, went paranoid, butterflies in her belly, thinking that Jack had been tasked to give her a dressing down over how she had handled herself in class. Victor was the judge, Jack the executioner.

Just as quickly she realized the absurdity of this idea—Judge Ras had not even spoken to Jack after class. At any rate, she decided on the spot, lunch would
not
have to wait—but those pesky fox hunters and fellers of timber in her casebook would.

“Lunch, good idea, the Cave sounds fine, but about what, talk to me about what?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually a great opportunity the way I look at it. I’ll tell you when we get to the Cave and have something good to chew on while we chat.”

. . . .

“Please Jack, can we move one more time? I don’t like this table either.”

It wasn’t possible to find a table in the food court of the Cave that was perfectly centered, the tables had been laid out in a helter-skelter fashion, to give the place a more casual, less orderly air. Zora was still trying. Trying Jack’s patience.

“Jesus, Zora, this really bothers you, doesn’t it? Sure, find another one.”

They picked up their trays—his with the customary hot dog and soda and hers with a berry smoothie and an edamame-and-fusilli salad, a fusion dish if ever there was one. And moved a couple tables over.

Once seated and for Zora, measured out properly:

“I’ve been in therapy for this Jack, still am. It can make life difficult for me, it really can. And others.”

“Don’t mind, honestly. But have you gotten to the deep of why you do it, why everything in the middle?”

“It’s a compulsion, I need to have things centered or they start to close in. Fingers on the throat. I panic. What I’ve learned in therapy is it’s my way of dealing with all the uncertainty in life. I’ve tried to find other ways of dealing with it, normal ways. Can’t do it. And I refuse to go on meds. I’m stuck I guess. Seems to bother others more than it bothers me, unless it’s a place like this with no rhyme or reason to it.”

“Well, you’re right about that, whoever designed this place was like the anti-you. Your nemesis.”

“Very funny. Speaking of my nemesis, what does the Judge want? Come on, that’s the whole reason we came here and I have to see you eat that nauseating hot dog.”

Zora was not a strict vegetarian, she ate chicken and fish aplenty, but her sympathies ran more in the herbivorous direction than the carnivorous one. It didn’t help that Jack chewed like a cave man. A gourmand he wasn’t, nor a master of etiquette in general.

“Ever heard of the Gatekeeper?”

“Yeah, who hasn’t, most famous female serial killer in American history, right? Over in Arizona.”

The Gatekeeper’s real name was Dorothy Krause. Like the Unabomber, she’d gotten an acronym in honor of her peculiar talents:
g
ouge,
a
mput
ate
,
keep
. Aside from dozens of stab wounds in their pulped-up chests, her five victims had been found with their eyes gouged out.

And when the police found Dorothy, half a mile from the bodies in a ramshackle shelter on a small tract of undeveloped BLM land outside of Phoenix—she’d been homeless for years, schizophrenic since her teens—she had in her possession five sets of severed hands and five sets of severed feet. Trophies, mementos, toys. Dueling psychiatrists didn’t prevent her from being found competent to stand trial, and she was currently on death row in some hellhole.

“Know where she is now?”

“No, really didn’t follow her story that closely, too sick and twisted. Pray tell.”

“The Drome.”

“No shit!”

Zora put a little too much juice in her voice and surrounding eyes swept over at her. She fixed her face with the sheepishness of apology and then overcompensated by whispering to Jack.

“Wow, that close. Now I’m officially freaked out.”

The Drome was only a mile away from the city limits of Madison Springs. In more official parlance: United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, Madison Springs, Texas. But pretty much everyone within eyeshot, or anywhere really, called it the Madison Springs Supermax, the Drome for short. MSSM. A palindrome.

The Drome was 100% supermax, on top of which it had its very own death row, a super-dupermax of sorts, the Gatekeeper’s new home. Zora couldn’t imagine that the Gatekeeper’s schizophrenia had improved very much in that infernal place. Dante’s paradise. If you weren’t already mentally ill when you arrived there, you’d unwind fast.

“She’s slated for execution about a month from now. Lethal injection. The Judge wants to meet you tomorrow during his office hours, wants you to help.”

“He wants me to help with her execution?! What the hell are you talking about?”

Zora was starting to feel the slightest desire to asphyxiate Jack, and not in a good way either.

“Zora, calm down, the Judge knows you’re part of the LORD Project. He read your resume, dummy.”

The Judge could read her like a Crim Law casebook. He knew of her religious convictions, knew she opposed the death penalty, knew she had joined the Life Over Death Project. To keep the needles out of felons’ arms, at least while they were in prison. What they did on their own time, injecting death into themselves from a spoon if they so desired, that didn’t concern Zora as much as what the government did to them.

She took another bite of salad. Chewed methodically, everything she did was methodical. The anti-Jack.

“That makes sense. What time are his office hours again, where? Never mind, I’ll check the syllabus back at Ford. Let’s just eat this food and get out of here. If I’m lucky I can still prep for Prop. And I have something
I
want to talk to the Judge about.”

“Really Zora. You’d better be careful. He doesn’t take kindly to upstarts. Asskissers maybe, bootlickers definitely, not upstarts. You definitely seem more the upstart type. And what is it you have in mind?”

Jack’s tone had flattened out, almost as if he didn’t relish talking about Zora and the Judge in the same sentence.

“If I told you I’d have to strangle you.”

Now she gave voice to her playful subliminal impulse.

“Way sooner than I would have to otherwise.”

“Just try it, I dare you.”

It seemed more of an invitation than a warning, a double entendre for the not-so-celibate.

“Eat your salad. If I don’t let you prep for Prop you probably
will
kill me.”

As they parted outside the Cave, standing in the bright shadow of a billowing sky:

“See you on Wednesday Zora, or maybe I’ll run into you before then. I live off campus, but I’m around here most of the day. I
will
get you to tell me your secret. Over dinner next time. An actual restaurant. With everything in a grid. Geometric.”

Before she could reply in the negative, one excuse after another, all reducing to celibacy, to the proverbial nunnery, he had turned on his heels and exited from the stage.

CHAPTER THREE

“Enter.”

Past the secretary’s desk, a look of sympathy from the harried woman, through the translucent inner glass door, gilt lettering,
Hon. Victor Ras
. Zora could see the hazy shape of her Socratic tormentor. A blur of fear passed through her as she swung the door.

The haze resolved into the Judge in a blue silk shirt, the tie a darker shade of blue, not as catching, cobalt-fiery as the eyes, seated at an arboreal work of art, the most gorgeous desk she’d ever seen, huge, varnished zebrawood with an enormous burl right in the middle. The ivory gavel was nowhere in sight.

“Ah, Ms. Bright, so glad you could come. Do sit down.”

Two matching zebrawood chairs. She chose the one on the right but first moved it to the left. A clouded look passed over the Judge’s face but he gave it no voice.

Carefully, sputtering almost perceptibly, conscious of the gulf that lay before her, between them:

“Jack Carson told me you wanted to see me. About the LORD Project.”

“Of course, of course. I have your resume right here in front of me.”

He gestured to a stapled set of three sheets on the zebrawood, Crane cotton paper, bright white, the one she’d mailed to the admissions office. Sure she’d submitted an electronic copy like everyone else, but her old-fashioned sensibilities had eclipsed her worry that the admissions people wouldn’t appreciate snail mail. She figured if Crane paper was good enough for the U.S. Treasury, it was good enough for the FLS Admissions Office. Her upstart attitude again. A paperwork rebel, a bureaucratic maverick.

“Vanderbilt alumna I see. Justice major. You from Tennessee?”

She got the uncanny impression he already knew all of this, had already memorized her resume, researched her life, knew her inside and out, her paper-thin self.