Unfit to Practice (7 page)

5

N
INA AND HER CLIENT
entered the familiar doors of the courthouse, passed through security, and turned right, taking the stairs up, Kevin moving fast. With her heavy bag in tow, Nina had to struggle to keep up with him. Setting it down for a moment to rest her arm at the top of the stairs, she looked around, seeing no sign of a girl in the hall. She allowed herself a happy thought: Maybe we'll luck out and Ali'll evade process or fight it. Sometimes the lawyers kept the cases right on track, and sometimes the cases oozed in unexpected directions, along with the witnesses.

Inside the courtroom, Kevin took his place at the table beside Nina, his face set and his eyes averted from her. She smiled first at her good friend Deputy Kimura, the bailiff today, who was on the phone as usual, then nodded at Judge Milne's clerk. Praying for the glint of a car key, she sneaked a quick look under the table. Nothing there.

Just to their right, Jeffrey Riesner took his place alongside Kevin's wife and whispered into her ear. Lisa Cruz inclined her head toward her lawyer, listening. When he finished, she turned toward Nina and stared, holding still, all frantic activity ceased for the moment, almost frightening in her cold disgust. Eventually, she turned back to the table. She had a stiffer look today—her long hair sprayed into a twist, tiny pearl earrings, smooth white skin.

Lisa's long-fingered hands eventually settled down on the photo of her children on the table in front of her that had kept her company throughout. Riesner finished his intermittent whispering, then got up and approached Nina. She stood to meet him, tensing her muscles to prevent herself from flinching.

Of course he noticed. Stretching to emphasize the whopping height difference between them, he plastered on a fake smile for the onlookers. “We should chat.”

Kevin excused himself to go back into the hallway momentarily for some water, leaving the two lawyers alone at Nina's table.

“Why?” she asked.

Riesner nodded. “Outside.” Seeing her expression, he chuckled a nasty chuckle. “In full view of the glass front door of the police department. That way there's no chance you'll lose control. Get violent. Or something.” Although he overtly referred to an actual physical altercation they had gotten into during another case a few months earlier, the subtext was, as always, sexual.

“No,” Nina said. “I don't think so.”

They both kept their voices low so the conversation, already bursting with tension, held an intimacy that made Nina recoil.

“Am I supposed to coax you? Don't worry, I only eat what tastes good. You're too sour to bite.”

“You already bite,” Nina said. She gave herself an immediate, silent tongue-lashing about not giving him the satisfaction. A cringe, a flinch, a flash of anger—he lapped up her emotional reactions like Dracula lapped blood.

The slightly upturned corner of his mouth twitched with pleasure. He had shaken her already. Success. “My client has a settlement proposal.”

“You better be serious.” Nina looked at her watch. Court convened in seven minutes. She indicated the back of the courtroom with her head. She wasn't going to get out of Deputy Kimura's sight this time.

Riesner followed her to the back wall and leaned against it, arms crossed. His eyes were green, the same color as fungus on the rotting stump in her backyard. “Well?” she asked.

“Mom gets sole physical custody. She'll agree to joint legal custody. Under the circumstances, she's being generous. Supervised visitation. He can have Christmas. She doesn't celebrate it, so she doesn't give a shit. And the kids go to her church.”

Sole physical custody meant the kids would live with Lisa. Kevin would have visitation rights. Joint legal custody meant Kevin would have to be consulted regarding important issues such as the kids' educations and health.

The offer wasn't much. Lisa couldn't get a better deal even if she won in court. Plus Kevin had already rejected the whole idea of Lisa taking physical custody of the kids.

But Ali altered the topography of the case. Could Kevin lose even joint legal custody? Nina thought about it briefly, then decided. When in doubt, give nothing. “Too bad,” she said.

“What do you mean, too bad?”

“You weren't serious.” She began to walk away.

“Last chance,” Riesner said. His celebratory tone stopped her. “Personally, I'd just as soon drag this thing out, rack up fees, and end by humiliating you. That would be a pleasure.”

“Why should my client consider this offer?” Nina said. “Give me one good reason.”

“Don't you remember sweet Ali?”

“Go on.”

“I faxed the notice in advance, as you well know.”

“Too late under the rules.”

“Just learned about her myself. Ask for a continuance if you want. Heck, let's both make more money on this thing.”

“How did you learn about Ali Peck?”

Riesner blinked. “Such an attractive young lady. Such a young, young lady.”

“If you don't answer my question right now, this discussion is over.”

An innocent look. “As I will be happy to tell the judge, I received a call about six this morning at my home.”

Nina steeled herself and asked, “Who called you?”

“Ali Peck, stricken by a guilty conscience?”

“I don't believe you,” Nina said. “I'm going to object.”

“Of course you will. I told my client you would.”

Nina didn't know if Riesner already knew her files had been stolen and she recognized her need to tread extremely carefully. Just keeping her face straight stressed her out at the moment. “Where is she?”

“Oh, she's here somewhere, trailing her subpoena, rarin' to go.”

“If she came forward, why is she under subpoena?”

“I don't have time right now to get into all that. Suffice it to say that Lisa now knows all about her husband's adultery. Suffice it to say that she's not taking it well.”

Adultery
. The word recalled red letters, pulpit-thumping, and that old-time religion. Nina tried for a noncommittal expression.

“Cruz folds. He pays my fees,” Riesner said, moving away from the wall and putting an open hand out as if making a generous gesture. “He can even have a payment plan.”

Nina said through gritted teeth, “I'll speak with him.”

“Do that.” He smiled at her, one hand in his pocket, projecting suave. “Save the little girl from the witness stand and all those sordid details about that big bad cradle-robbing client of yours.”

“Is that it?” Nina said. She looked at the clock on the wall.

“He looks chipper today,” Riesner said. Again he laughed. “He puts on a good front. Maybe that'll make it easy for him to do the smart thing.”

“Don't concern yourself with my client.”

“Now, there's some damn good advice.”

Back at the table, in a hurry now, she leaned down to give Kevin a brief rundown of the conversation. He fixated on one thing. “Where's Ali?” He looked around the court.

“Probably waiting outside by now. Riesner's keeping her out of sight until the last second so we can't talk to her.”

He ran a hand across the fuzz on his skull. “She worried that it might come out more than I did. I'd hate for her to go through this. Oh, man.”

“Kevin, joint legal custody gives you a lot of say, and I would make sure the visitation was generous. But it's not the result we wanted.”

“I'm sick that this is going to happen, but I'm not going to give up. Like you said. Maybe the judge can see past Ali. I have to get Heather and Joey away from Lisa.” He shook his head. “No, we have to win. We have to fight.”

“Of course the choice is yours.”

He turned to look at Lisa and Riesner, then looked back at Nina. “I'm the better parent.”

“We still have a strong argument,” Nina said. “We'll work around Ali. We have to.”

“Good. Thanks for not telling me to give up.” Nina felt a pang. He sure shouldn't be thanking her when she might be part of his problem.

Nina looked over at Riesner and gave her head a sharp negative shake. He shrugged and bent to Lisa's ear.

They all stood while Judge Milne entered the room and took his seat. Judge Milne, a tall, imposing man, had a deep golf tan and an untroubled brow. He trusted himself, that was his secret. He made his decisions and then never thought about them again. Luckily, if you appealed to his pragmatic side, his judgment was pretty good.

And luckily, he seemed to have a soft spot for Nina. She played to that. There were limits to high-mindedness.

After the preliminaries, Riesner, straightening an imaginary bend in his faultless tie, stood at his table.

“I would like to call a final witness,” he said.

“Objection, Your Honor.” Nina leafed through the pitifully small pile of papers relating to the case just to give herself another second to construct her reaction to this unsurprising news. “There are no further witnesses on his list, Judge. It's improper and should not be allowed.”

“I see that,” Judge Milne said. “What's going on here?”

“Your Honor, I have provided the court with a copy of a supplement to the witness list, duly faxed to counsel as soon as the witness was discovered and filed this morning. I just received some information about Miss Reilly's client that has bearing on his fitness as a parent. I apologize that I was unable to give reasonable notice to his attorney, but this information came to me through a third party early this morning. I took Miss Reilly aside just before court and advised her again of the circumstances, so I hope we aren't going to have a show of disingenuous surprise.”

“Inadequate notice, Your Honor.”

Judge Milne found the supplemental document. “Oh, here it is. A supplemental witness. Affidavit in support thereof. Ms. Reilly. You are requesting a continuance?”

Kevin shook his head. No.

Credit the judge for giving her a full ten minutes to argue her objection for the record. She realized from his expression almost from the beginning that he would allow Peck to testify. Finally he raised a hand to stop her. “I'll continue it if you need additional time, Counsel. Otherwise, we'll proceed.”

Nina sat down, already moving her mind on to the testimony. No sense letting this lost skirmish knock her off-balance. Judges were notoriously lenient about allowing evidence when it came to custody hearings. There was no jury to confuse and they wanted as much information as possible.

As Riesner escorted a young woman into the courtroom, Kevin no longer looked the confident father. He murmured something unpleasant and started to get up. Nina clamped a hand on his shoulder and shoved until he sat. “Settle down,” she whispered.

“I can't just sit here and let them screw me!”

“Shh,” Nina said.

The buff-looking girl clumped up to the stand in jeans and hiking boots, her pink cheeks complemented by shiny black hair. Kevin clearly favored athletic women, Nina thought, as Ali swore to tell the truth. Riesner got right to it, rushing through the boring preliminaries and dallying in the salacious details.

An older version of the girl sat in the back of the courtroom, wincing. Ali's mother.

“We went together for about three months,” Ali said in answer to a question.

“How often did you engage in sexual relations?”

She lowered her head. “A few times a week.”

“And you were seventeen at the time.”

“Yes.”

“Not even old enough to vote or drink a glass of wine, were you?”

“Objection,” Nina said. “She was seventeen. We get it.”

“Sustained.”

“And where did you have these sexual relations?” Riesner asked, steepling his hands on the table.

“Different places.” Her voice had a note of anger in it. Resentment at being hauled over here today? “Sometimes on a blanket in the woods.”

“Anywhere else?”

“In his car.”

“His patrol car?”

“No, his regular car. Never in the patrol car. We had a rule.”

“Anywhere else?”

She flushed a deeper red and didn't answer.

“Did you ever have sex with Mr. Cruz at his home?”

Although Kevin seemed ready to explode, Nina put her hand on his arm and sat calmly. No point in objecting. Riesner would insist on this one and the judge would allow it.

“Yes.”

“Please tell the court how that came to happen.”

“We had finished for the day.”

“You mean, the youth cadet program?” he asked, with the emphasis on
youth
.

“Right. We were done for the day. We stopped at his house on the way to my house and, uh, we got carried away.”

“Where did you get carried away?”

“Uh, in their bed?”

“‘In their bed.' ”

“Your Honor,” Nina started.

“We can hear, Mr. Riesner. No need to repeat,” said the judge.

“And where were the children?”

“Where do you think they were, asshole?” Kevin whispered. “Standing there watching?”

“I think they were gone somewhere. Yes, they weren't there. We just got carried away. Kevin wouldn't have—Kevin kept me away from his kids. I never met them.”

“Were there any other such incidents?”

“You mean did we do it in his house again?”

“Yes.”

“No. We didn't. Except kissing once out front on the porch.”

“Where were the children that time?”

“Oh. They were supposed to be asleep but that one kid, the boy, he woke up. Kevin had to put him back to bed.”

Kevin jabbered into Nina's ear. “Joey never saw anything, I swear it, Nina. We had no privacy—things got out of hand, but we were so careful. The door, that one time at our house, it was locked and the kids weren't even home. I would never harm my kids, never expose them to anything like that.”

When Nina's chance came to cross-examine the girl, she took only enough time to clarify the issues. The girl had entered into the relationship willingly and had, in fact, initiated it. The Cruz marriage had already broken down. Kevin Cruz had always shielded his kids from knowing anything about Ali. Nina kept her questions short. The longer she stayed up there, the worse things would be for Kevin.

Although Kevin tried to talk her into it, she decided not to put him back on the stand. Refuting the details of Ali's statements might work just to etch sordid details of the relationship into the judge's mind. And anything Kevin said now might be used against him in the further complications that were sure to develop due to Ali's age. She had to protect him from incriminating himself.