The Simple Truth (10 page)

“Lot of phone calls lately, Harms. What, you have a mail-order business going or something?”
The guards laughed loudly at the man’s words. Vic Tremaine was a little under six feet, had white-blond, close-cropped hair, weathered features and was molded like a gun turret. He was the second-in-command of Fort Jackson, and he had made it his personal mission to compress as much misery into Harms’s life as he could. Harms said nothing, but stood there patiently as Tremaine looked him up and down.

“What’d your lawyer want? He coming up with another defense for you slaughtering that little girl? Is that it?”
Tremaine drew closer to the prisoner.
“You still see her in your sleep? I hope you do. I listen to you crying in your cell, you know.”
Tremaine’s tone was openly taunting, the muscles in his arms and shoulders tensing with each word, neck veins pulling taut, as though he were hoping Harms would crack, try something, and that would be the end of the prisoner’s life tenure here.
“Crying like a damn baby. I bet that little girl’s momma and daddy cried too. I bet they wanted to wrap their fingers around your throat. Like you did to their baby. You ever think about that?”

Harms did not flinch. His lips remained in a straight line, his eyes looking past Tremaine. Harms had been through isolation, solitary, taunts, physical and mental abuse; everything one man could do to another out of cruelty, fear and hatred, he had endured. Tremaine’s words, no matter their content or how they were delivered, could not break through the wall that encased him, kept him alive.

Sensing this, Tremaine took a step back.
“Get him out of my sight.”
As the group headed off, Tremaine called after them,
“Go back to reading your Bible, Harms. That’s as close as you’re ever getting to heaven.”

* * *

John Fiske hustled after the woman walking down the hallway of the court building.

“Hey, Janet, got a minute?”

Janet Ryan was a very experienced prosecutor currently doing her best to send one of Fiske’s clients away for a long time. She was also attractive and divorced. She smiled when she turned to him.
“For you, two minutes.”

“About Rodney — ”

“Wait, refresh my memory. I’ve got lots of Rodneys.”

“Burglary, electronics store, north side.”

“Firearm involved, police chase, priors — now I remember.”

“Right. Anyway, neither one of us wants to take this sucker to trial.”

“Translation, John: Your case stinks and mine is overwhelming.”

Fiske shook his head.
“You might have a chain-of-custody problem with some of the evidence.”

“
Might
is such a funny word, don’t you think?”

“And that confession has holes.”

“They always do. But the fact is your guy is a career crim. And I’ll get a jury who’ll put him away for a long time.”

“So why waste the taxpayers’money, then?”

“What’s your deal?”

“Plead to the burglary, possession of stolen property. Drop the nasty little firearm count. We end up with five years with credit for time served.”

Janet started walking.
“See you in court.”

“Okay, okay, eight, but I need to talk with my guy.”

She turned around and ticked off the points on her fingers.
“He pleads to all of it, including the ‘nasty little firearm’ count, he gets ten years, forget the time served, and he punches the whole ticket. Probation for another five after that. If he pees funny, he goes back for another ten, no questions asked. If he goes to trial you’re looking at a slam-dunk of twenty. And I want an answer right now.”

“Damn, Janet, where’s the compassion?”

“Saving it for somebody who deserves it. As you can probably guess, my list is very short. Besides, it’s a sweetheart deal. Yes or no?”

Fiske tapped his fingers against his briefcase.

“Going once, going twice,”
Ryan said.

“Okay, okay, deal.”

“Good doing business with you, John. By the way, why don’t you call me sometime. You know, off hours?”

“Don’t you think there might be a conflict lurking there somewhere?”

“Not at all. I’m always hardest on my friends.”

She walked off humming while Fiske leaned up against the wall and shook his head.

An hour later, he returned to his office and tossed down his briefcase. He picked up the phone and checked his messages at home, listening to the recorded voices at the same time he wrote down notes for an upcoming hearing. When he heard his brother’s voice, he didn’t even stop writing. One finger flicked out and erased the message. It was rare but not unheard-of for Mike to call. Fiske had never called him back. Now he thought his brother was doing it just to antagonize him. As soon as he completed this thought, he knew it was not true. He rose and went over to a bookcase jammed with trial notebooks and legal tomes. He slid out the framed photograph. It was an old picture. He was in his policeman’s uniform, Mike stood next to him. Proud little brother just entering manhood and stern-faced big brother, who had already seen a lot of evil in life and expected to see a lot more before he was done. In reality he had experienced firsthand the ugly side of humanity, and was still, but now he did so without the uniform. Just a briefcase, a cheap suit and a fast mouth. Bullets exchanged for words. Till the end of his days. He put the photo back and sat down. However, he looked over at the photo, suddenly unable to concentrate.

* * *

A few days later, Sara Evans knocked and then opened the door to Michael Fiske’s office. It was empty. Michael had borrowed a book and she needed it back. She looked around the room but didn’t see it lying anywhere. Then she spotted his briefcase underneath the kneehole of his desk. She picked it up. From the weight, she knew there was something inside. The briefcase was locked, but she knew the combination from having borrowed his briefcase a couple of times before. She opened it and immediately saw two books and the papers inside. Neither book was the one she was looking for though. She was going to close it back up but then stopped. She pulled the papers out and then looked at the envelope they had come in. Addressed to the clerks’of-fice. She had just glanced at the handwritten page and then the typewritten letter when she heard footsteps. She put the papers back, closed the briefcase and slid it back under the desk. A moment later Michael walked in.

“Sara, what are you doing here?”

Sara did her best to look normal.
“I just came looking for that book I had lent you last week.”

“I’ve got it at home.”
“Well, maybe I can come over for dinner and get it.”
“I’m kind of busy.”

“We’re all busy, Michael. But you’ve really been keeping to yourself lately. Are you sure you’re okay? Not cracking under the strain?”
She smiled to show she was kidding. But Michael did look like he was cracking.

“I’m fine, really. I’ll bring the book tomorrow.”

“It’s not that big a deal.”

“I’ll bring it tomorrow,”
he said a little angrily, his face flushing, but he calmed down quickly.
“I’ve really got a lot of work to do.”
He looked at the door.

Sara went over and put her hand on the knob, then looked back.
“Michael, if you need to talk about anything, I’m here for you.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”
He ushered her out and closed and locked the door. He went over to his desk and pulled out the briefcase. He looked at the contents and then over at the door.

* * *

Later that night, Sara pulled her car down the gravel drive and stopped in front of the small cottage located off the George Washington Parkway, a truly beautiful stretch of road. The cottage was the first thing she had ever owned and she had put a lot of work into fixing up the place. A stairway led down to the Potomac, where her small sailboat was docked. She and Michael had spent their rare free time sailing across the river to the Maryland side and then north under Memorial Bridge and then on to Georgetown. It was a haven of calm for them both, surrounded as they were by a sea of crisis at work. Michael had turned down her last offer to go sailing. In fact, he had turned down all of her get-together ideas the past week. At first she thought it was due to her rejecting his marriage offer, but after the encounter at his office, she knew that was not it. She struggled to remember precisely what she had seen in the briefcase. It was a filing, she was sure of that. And she had seen a name on the typewritten letter. It was Harms. She hadn’t remembered the first name. From the little she had been able to read before Michael walked in, apparently Harms was filing some sort of appeal with the Court. She didn’t know what about. There had been no signature at the bottom of the typewritten letter.

She had gone directly to the clerks’ office to see if any case with the name Harms had been logged in. It hadn’t. She couldn’t believe she was thinking this, but had Michael taken an appeal before it had been processed and put into the system? If he had, that was a very serious crime. He could be fired from the Court — sent to jail, even.

She went inside, changed into jeans and a T-shirt and walked back outside. It was already dark. Supreme Court clerks rarely made it home while it was still light, unless it was daybreak and they were coming home to shower and change clothes before going back to work. She walked down the stairs to the dock and sat on her boat. If only Michael would confide in her, she could help. Despite his words to the contrary, Michael had pulled back from her. He had not taken rejection well. Who would? she told herself.

She abruptly jumped up and raced to the house, picked up the phone and started to dial his number, but then stopped. Michael Fiske was a stubborn man. If she confronted him on what she had seen, that could very well make matters worse. She put the phone back down. She would have to let him come to her. She went back outside and looked at the water. A jet flew by and she automatically waved to it, a ritual of hers. Indeed, the planes were so low at this point that, had it been light, a passenger on the plane could have seen her waving. When her hand dropped back down, she felt more depressed than she had since her father had passed away, leaving her all alone.

After that loss, she had started life anew. Gone to the West Coast for law school, where she had excelled, clerked at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then taken a job with the Supreme Court. That’s when she had sold the farm in North Carolina and bought this place. She wasn’t running from her old life, or from the sadness that gripped her whenever she dwelled on her parents not being around either to see her accomplishments, or to simply hold her. At least she didn’t think she was. When the day came for her to leave the Court, she had no idea what she wanted to do. In the legal arena, she could go anywhere. The trouble was, she didn’t even know if she wanted the law to be part of her life. Three years of law school, a year at the court of appeals, starting on her second year up here, she was creeping close to burnout.

She thought of her father, a farmer and also the town’s justice of the peace. He had no fancy courtroom. He often dispensed sound and fair justice while perched on his tractor in the field or while washing up for dinner. To Sara, that was what the law was, what it meant to most people, or at least what it should mean. A search for the truth, and then the handing down of justice after that truth was found. No hidden agendas, no word games, simply common sense applied to the facts. She sighed. But it was never that simple. She knew that better than most.

She went back inside, stood on a chair and snared a pack of cigarettes off the top of the cabinet in the kitchen. She sat on the glider on the back porch overlooking the water. She looked up at the clear sky and located the Big Dipper. Her dad had been an avid, if amateur, astronomer, and had taught her many of the constellations. Sara often used the stars to sail by, a practice she had picked up while at Stanford. On a clear night, you could never lose the stars, and with them you could never be truly lost. That was comforting. As she smoked her cigarette, she hoped Michael knew what he was doing.

Her next thoughts turned to another Fiske: John. Michael’s comment about his brother had been close to the mark despite her protests. At the very first instant she had seen John Fiske, something had clicked in all the important conduits of her heart, brain and soul that she simply had no way to explain. She did not believe that significant emotions could be aroused to such an intensity that quickly. It just didn’t happen. But that was why she was so confused, because, in a way, that’s exactly what had occurred to her. Every movement John Fiske made, every word he spoke, every time he made eye contact with someone, or simply laughed, smiled or frowned, she felt as though she could watch him forever and never grow tired of it. She almost laughed at the absurdity. But then again, how crazy could it be when it was how she felt?

And that wasn’t her only observation of the man. Unknown to Michael, she had checked with a friend at the courthouse in Richmond and found out Fiske’s trial schedule for a two-week period. She had been amazed at how often the man was in court. She had gone down once more during the summer when things were slower at the Supreme Court, and watched John Fiske argue at a sentencing hearing. She had worn a scarf and glasses, just in case she was ever introduced to him later on, or in case he had seen her the first time she had come to watch him with Michael.

She had listened to him argue forcefully for his client. As soon as he had finished, the judge had put the man away for life. His client led away to begin his prison term, Fiske packed his briefcase and left the courtroom. Outside, Sara had watched as Fiske had attempted to comfort the man’s family. The wife was thin and sickly, her face covered with bruises and welts.

Fiske spoke a few words to the wife, hugged her and then turned to the oldest son, a young man of fourteen who already looked to be a committed slave of the street.