The Justice Game (23 page)

    They talked for a few minutes, and her dad put her through the usual interrogation. Was she getting enough sleep? Did she need anything? Was she getting any downtime? Her dad told Kelly a few stories about the excitement of his parishioners when they saw Kelly on TV.

    “We’re praying for you, Kelly. And we’re proud of you.”

    She knew it was true. She had always made the folks back home proud.

    Which only made her feel more like a hypocrite. If they knew what she had done, her family would probably still love her. But pride would turn to sympathy and grave concern, swinging on the hinge of a sin that revealed much about her confused and broken heart.

Jason didn’t sleep more than a few hours Thursday night. He took an early flight to Atlanta Friday morning and met his sister and Detective Corey at the airport. He shook hands with Corey and hugged Julie. She was part mother and part sister to Jason. They saw the world differently—she was into recycling and organic foods and thought Al Gore should be anointed King of the Universe—but they shared the same dysfunctional childhood, a bond more important than politics. She taught a sociology course at some California community college whose name Jason could never remember.

    Julie had always been the peacemaker in the Noble family, quick with a soft word or a diversion tactic or a compromise for the various skirmishes that erupted between Jason and his dad. She was plain and practical and usually put others first. “Just like her mother,” Jason’s dad would say.

    For this trip, she had brought a small gym bag and a backpack. Like Jason, she apparently didn’t plan on staying long.

    The three of them huddled in the airport over coffee, plotting strategy for the intervention. Detective Corey briefed Jason and Julie on how things had deteriorated at the precinct. To Jason’s surprise, his dad was being investigated by internal affairs for some missing cocaine on one of his cases. His absenteeism was up and case closure rate down. According to Detective Corey, even if Jason’s dad was cleared in the internal investigation, there was a risk he would be placed on probation.

    “I can’t believe he’s using cocaine,” Jason said incredulously. His dad hated the drug. He had seen how much heartache and havoc it caused.

    “He’s not,” Matt said decisively. “But that doesn’t stop the rumors.”

    The plan was to meet Dr. Paul Prescott, a trained substance-abuse counselor, at Jason’s dad’s house. Prescott would facilitate the meeting.

    Dr. Prescott had urged Jason, Julie, and Matt to write letters to Jason’s father that they would read during the intervention. “It’s very important to use only ‘I’ statements in the letter,” he had told Jason during a phone call. “When your dad starts saying that we can’t tell him what to do, my response will be, ‘That’s not what’s happening. Your family and former partner are telling you what
they’re
going to do.’”

    Before leaving the airport, Matt, Jason, and Julie each read their letters aloud for the others to hear. Jason had fretted for hours over what he should say and finally just decided to put it all out there. His letter contained things he had never said to his dad out loud. He loved him. He was sorry that he had disappointed him. He respected his dad for working hard all these years, literally putting his life on the line so that Jason and Julie could have a better life than he had. He knew his dad had done his best to raise Jason and Julie after their mom died, and he thanked him for that. Jason ended the letter by saying how much easier it would be just to let his dad continue down the path he was going, but Jason cared too much to sit this one out. He hoped his dad would forgive him if this letter sounded sanctimonious; he just wanted his dad to get help.

    When he finished reading the letter, doing his best to keep his own emotions at bay, he saw the tears spilling down Julie’s cheeks.

    “Dr. Phil couldn’t have said it better,” Detective Corey joked, trying to lighten the mood.

    Julie reached over and gave Jason a hug.

    Writing the letter had been one of the hardest things Jason had ever done.

Paul Prescott was a bear of a man. He had a flushed complexion, curly brown hair, big brown eyes that never seemed to blink, and round cheeks that sprouted dimples when he smiled. He met the others at a Starbucks about a half mile from the house.

    “I was an addict too,” Dr. Prescott said. “Booze. Drugs. Name the chemical. I know what your dad’s going through. Regardless of how he reacts today, this is the right thing to do.”

    They rehearsed the plan one more time, and Jason felt sick to his stomach. He knew that somehow this would all get blamed on him. His feelings were hopelessly complicated, and he didn’t even try to sort them out. He hated being around his dad but suddenly felt sorry for him. The man’s own family and his best friend were now scheming against him. In some ways, Jason felt like a traitor.

    Jason had serious second thoughts about the whole process. It seemed so heavy-handed, so dramatic. His dad was a private man. He didn’t like people pushing him around. If it had been up to Jason, he would have called the whole thing off.

    But it wasn’t up to Jason. Events had progressed too far for him to back out now. He nodded solemnly as the others talked; he tried to picture his dad after a successful course of treatment, reconciling with Jason and mending years of hurt feelings. For some reason, he couldn’t quite crystallize that picture in his mind.

    They took two cars to the house. The goal was to have Jason’s dad ride with Dr. Prescott to the treatment center. Detective Corey had already taken care of getting work reassigned. Jason and Julie had agreed to split the cost of treatment, so money was not an issue. The idea was to take away every excuse and demand immediate action.

    By the time they pulled up to the house, it was nearly noon. His dad’s car was in the driveway. The four conspirators walked up to the door, and Jason swallowed his fears and knocked. He would never forget the look on his dad’s face when he slowly opened the door.

Friday was the third consecutive day that Kelly ate lunch at her desk. That morning, she had also skipped breakfast after her swim at the LA Fitness club. She’d munched on a package of crackers mid-morning and now polished off some fruit, a sandwich, and a handful of carrot sticks while she reviewed corporate e-mails.

    So far this week, she had probably reviewed five thousand pages of documents that one of her corporate clients would be disclosing in response to a discovery request in a big products liability case. Kelly was one of several associates on the case, and it was her job to grind through the boxes of documents lining the floor of her office and decide which documents should be withheld under the attorney-client privilege. It was mind-numbing work, the legal equivalent of operating a toll booth—take a dollar; give fifty cents change; “Thank you very much.”

    It was ironic how the media talked about the advantages of Blake Crawford having a big D.C. firm and all its resources representing him. The truth was that Kelly felt she had to squeeze the Crawford case in after hours and on weekends, all the while keeping up her billable-hour quotas on other cases where she was low woman in the pecking order.

    She read quickly through three more e-mails and placed them in the non-privileged pile. The glamorous life of a big-firm lawyer.

    Her tedium was interrupted by occasional pings from her computer—the sign of new e-mail hitting. It used to be a welcome sign, but now she opened each e-mail with a little more trepidation. Since her victory at the Motion to Dismiss hearing, her e-mails had occasionally been sprinkled with hate mail from various gun nuts out there.

    She had printed out each of the offending e-mails and kept them in a little file for motivation. “First thing we do, let’s kill all the plaintiffs’ lawyers,” said one. “You can’t have my gun but you can have a few bullets,” said another. Others were more blunt and full of profanity. Reading them the first time gave Kelly the chills. Reading them the fourth or fifth time made her angry.

    The firm had taken the appropriate steps—reporting the e-mails to police, offering Kelly private security (which she refused), and taking her e-mail address off the firm Web site, though any moron could still figure it out. John Lloyd, the senior partner on the case review committee, had actually suggested changing lawyers on the case—which Kelly scoffed at—or that Kelly might want to consider buying a gun for protection. It was the first time in her career that she had asked a senior partner at her firm if he was crazy.

    The e-mail Kelly had just received had the name of the Crawford case in the subject line. It looked like it had been sent from another temporary address that would be impossible to trace. She steeled herself for the contents, feeling that familiar mixture of bravado and fear.

    As she began reading, she sensed immediately that this e-mail was different. By the third sentence, every ounce of Kelly’s bravado had disappeared. She felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of her, like her heart had literally stopped. The blood drained from her face, and for a moment she couldn’t move.

    She read the e-mail a second time, then a third. The Kryptonite blog was a gossip site that broke embarrassing stories about actors, politicians, and rock stars. It was the blog equivalent of
National Enquirer,
more reckless in its accusations than most blogs, but every once in a while it would actually get something right.

    Judge Shaver was the district court judge for whom Kelly had clerked nearly seven years ago. He had recently been nominated for a seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He would have his grilling with the Senate judiciary committee if and when the senators found a way to break up the logjam of appointees in the pipeline. In the meantime, he was in limbo.

    The timing of the e-mail couldn’t have been worse.

    What floored Kelly was the fact that somebody else knew about her relationship with the judge. She had never discussed it with anyone. Not a single living soul. Not her father. Not her best friend. Not a psychiatrist or counselor.
Nobody
knew.

    Except this person named Luthor.

    
Luthor.
That was the name the writer used to sign off the e-mail. An allusion, Kelly knew, to Superman’s greatest nemesis.

    She printed the e-mail, folded it in thirds, placed it in a sealed envelope, and put it in the bottom of her briefcase. She deleted the original e-mail from her computer and emptied her computer trash. She realized that the original was still lurking on the firm’s server someplace, but she couldn’t help that.

    It would be hours before she could focus on the corporate e-mails again. The task suddenly seemed incredibly insignificant. Her world had just been turned upside down. A ghost from seven years ago had returned with a vengeance.

    She ran down the worst-case scenario in her mind. As a former clerk, she had been interviewed during the FBI’s background check on Judge Shaver. She vividly recalled the visit by the agents, the cordial conversation and probing questions they had asked. She had protected the judge and, in the process, placed her own head on the guillotine.

    “Is there anything that might make you question his judgment?” they had asked.

    “No.”

    “Are you aware of anything a person could use to blackmail or threaten Judge Shaver?”

    “No.”

    “Are you aware of any intimate relationships between Judge Shaver and anyone other than his wife?”

    Though she thought it was none of their business, Kelly had not hesitated. “No.”

    Now she could be looking at a national scandal, a Shakespearean tragedy, with Kelly in a leading role. The thought of it made her stomach churn with anxiety.

    So far, Luthor had demanded something that Kelly fully intended to do anyway—try the case to a verdict. But what would he want next?

    She called Judge Shaver, something she had not done since she took the job at B&W. His legal assistant answered the phone and perked up once Kelly said her name.

    “It’s great to hear from you! How long has it been?”

    “Seven years,” Kelly said.

    They chatted for a while, though Kelly hardly heard a word the lady said.

    “Is Judge Shaver in?” Kelly eventually asked.

    “No.” His assistant drew the word out, hating to disappoint Kelly. “He’s at a judicial conference in Phoenix until next Wednesday. But I’m sure he would love to hear from you. Do you want his cell phone?”

    “Sure.”

    As soon as Kelly hung up, before she lost her nerve, she dialed Judge Shaver’s cell. Again, there was an exchange of pleasantries.

    “I need to see you about something,” Kelly explained. “It’s fairly urgent.”

    Shaver asked if they could talk about it over the phone, but Kelly insisted on meeting in person. When he asked if it could wait until next Wednesday, she heard the tension in his voice.

    “I think so,” Kelly said.

    The judge didn’t respond immediately. “Should I catch the first flight home?”

    Kelly wanted to say yes. She needed to talk this over with him as soon as possible, needed to prepare him for the worst, develop a plan. But having the judge abruptly leave the conference would create its own set of problems. What if Luthor was following him? Maybe Luthor knew about the judicial conference. Maybe he wanted Kelly and Judge Shaver to drop everything and get together for an emergency meeting so he could capture it all on video.

    “It’ll keep until next Wednesday,” Kelly said.

    “Okay,” Shaver responded, sounding uncertain. “You’re sure?”