Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Read online

  “Mr. Morrison,” he said, addressing Heather directly. “Is what your lawyer is saying true? That you identify with being a female and not a male?”

  Heather batted her long eyelashes and looked coyly at the judge. “Yes, your honor. That’s true. I haven’t had a reassignment surgery yet, because I haven’t the money, but, yes, I do identify as female.”

  I braced myself, expecting that the judge would call her a freak and tell her to get out of his sight. I knew that Judge Wilson wasn’t one to mince words.

  To my surprise, he actually seemed to sympathize. “Okay, Ms. Ross. $250,000/10% will be your client’s new bond. If she can’t make that, then I’ll see what I can do as far as getting her sent over to the ladies’ side of the jail. No promises though.”

  You could have knocked me over with a feather after I heard what the judge said. He not only reduced Heather’s bond, but he called Heather by the feminine pronoun and said that Heather could be remanded on the women’s side of the jail if she couldn’t make bond. I wasn’t expecting that from him, and I knew that sometimes people can surprise you in the greatest of ways.

  Vince looked at me, smiled and shook his head. “Your honor, I object to lowering Mr. Morrison’s bond. There’s no reason for it. He’s accused of a brutal murder and he’s living with a drug dealer who has the means to spirit him away. $250,000 cash is an appropriate amount, if not a little low, considering what he allegedly did to his own mother.”

  The judge simply shook his head. “This kid is trans. She stays in the men’s detention much longer, and she won’t live to see trial. But she still has men’s parts, so she doesn’t really belong in the ladies’ side of the detention area, either. I’m not going to be responsible for her having the crap beaten out of her because of how she looks and who she is. That won’t be on my watch. $250,000/10% is her bond. You want to take it up with Judge Reiner, go right ahead. I won’t have blood on my hands, though.”

  At that, he called the next case, and I walked away from the bench, feeling absolutely stunned. Just goes to show – never judge somebody by their prior actions and thoughts on other issues. Considering Judge Wilson as a whole, I never thought that he would be sympathetic to my client.

  Who knew?

  CHAPTER SIX

  I opened my eyes the next day, and I knew that the beast was back. Crippling depression had rolled in during the night like a hurricane making landfall. I felt like there was a fog that was covering my brains and my thoughts, and every single muscle in my body ached. There was a dark cloth that was covering my soul, and, even though it was a beautiful day outside, I wished that it was raining, because then I could excuse my desire to simply stay in bed.

  I wondered how long it would last this time. I knew that the depression was probably a short-term effect of stopping my drinking cold turkey. My body needed time to adjust to that, which hopefully meant that the dark beast would only be with me for about a week. I could handle that.

  What I necessarily couldn’t handle would be the panic attacks that often accompanied some of my darker periods. There was a time when I literally couldn’t leave the house for almost a month. I met clients in my home office, putting on a cheerful face for an hour at a time, and then paid various attorneys around the city to cover for me in court. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why the outside world suddenly seemed like a terrifying place for me – I only knew that it felt that way. I felt that, if I stepped outside, something was going to happen to me. Maybe I would drop dead of a heart attack, or there would be a drive-by shooting. Perhaps a masked gunman would come to my office and kill me on the spot.

  I didn’t know why my mind went there, I only knew that it all seemed extremely real. There wasn’t any way that somebody could tell me that I wasn’t being rational, because I knew. I knew that the world was unsafe and I knew that I was doomed somehow. I didn’t quite know what, but I knew that something awful was out there.

  Tammy saved me that time, too. She got me a prescription for Prozac – telling her own doctor that she was experiencing panic attacks – and made me take them. I resisted at first, but, in the back of my mind, I knew that taking drugs was probably necessary, so I went ahead and took them. Within a week, I was able to leave the house, although the lingering depression was still there. I was able to see my own doctor, however, and he tried different dosages of anti-depressants on me until he found a combination that worked. But I always knew, having dealt with depression all my life, that it was only a matter of time before any cocktail I tried would stop being effective, and the black clouds would come rolling in again.

  I gingerly put my feet on my cold hardwood floor and squinted. It was summertime and somebody was mowing his lawn next door. I could hearing shouting outside, perhaps some neighborhood kids riding their skateboards or bike. Birds were singing in the big oak tree right outside my home.

  These were the sounds that made me more depressed, because I knew that there was a world out there that I needed to join, and I simply didn’t want to. I wanted, more than anything, for a massive thunderstorm to roll in, so that I could only hear the sounds of the rain on my windowpane, coupled with the crackling thunder that would boom so loud my windows would shake. I wouldn’t have to hear the world going on around me, begging me to join them, because everybody would be indoors as well.

  Summertime was the worst time to deal with depression for another reason – there was simply too much daylight. I loved the darkness. I always did. I craved the wintertime with its shortened days, when the night would fall around 4 PM and the moon would be out around 5. The darkness, like the rain, was my solace. I was perhaps opposite from many depressed people who craved the sunlight, because, for me, the darkness held a sense of peace and belonging. A camaraderie that told me that everyone was in the same boat, that we all were in darkness and you could hide out and not feel ashamed. When the days stretched on forever, as during the summer months, there wasn’t any place to hide. You knew that life was going on around you, because it was always there in front of you. It was in the sounds of baseball games being played on fields that you passed by on your way home. It was in the sights of people hanging out on various restaurant patios, enjoying their wine and tapas. It was in the scents of barbecue pits that were tended by various neighbors that you knew and currently wanted to avoid.

  Everywhere there is life during the summertime, and you couldn’t avoid it. So all of that made depression that much more real and palpable.

  It was on these days that I had to force myself out of bed and into the world and hope that getting out of the house helped lift the fog. Sometimes it did, but it often didn’t.

  No matter, I was going to have to get out of the house to meet with Heather. She posted bail and was currently staying at a halfway house, because she couldn’t go home to her drug-dealer boyfriend - the conditions of her bail precluded that. The judge specifically stated that she was not to be around drugs or people who are into drugs, nor was she to fraternize with people who were felons. Her drug-dealer boyfriend flunked on all of these fronts, so, even though said boyfriend actually posted the bond, he wasn’t allowed to enjoy the fruits of his labor, and Heather had to have someplace to live.

  It occurred to me that perhaps I could have Heather come and live with me. I knew that a halfway house wasn’t the right place for her, because she would be around bad influences there, as well. And, after losing Rina and Abby to the system, my big house was feeling…empty. Cold. Drafty. Scary. There wasn’t much in my house except for furniture, plants, appliances and televisions, and I really needed there to be more lifeblood in it.

  I made the decision on the way over to see Heather that maybe I would go ahead and petition the court to allow her to stay with me for the duration of the trial. There would be no reason not to and a thousand reasons why that would be a good decision for her. The biggest reason was that I had been to this particular halfway house, and I didn’t think that it was a healthy place for anyone. It was on the
wrong side of the tracks, where condoms and trash were strewn around, stray dogs ran freely and homeless people were living in small communities nearby.

  Not that I minded any of this – I was a substitute teacher during the summer months between undergraduate school and law school, and I worked for the Kansas City school district. I got to know the underprivileged kids in these schools, and I befriended many of them. They were from bad situations and the schools didn’t do much for them at all. I got beyond the stereotypes of who they were and what they were like, and saw that they were children who were just like any other group of children – they had dreams and goals and longings and frustrations. They didn’t have much of a chance to move beyond their station because the schools didn’t provide them with a decent education – the classrooms were cramped, sometimes 30 kids to a room, and the misbehavior of some of the kids meant disruption for all. They were coming from homes where they didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast in the morning, where their fathers were mostly absent and where the environment was chaotic. It wasn’t at all unusual for some of the girls to have two children by the age of 15, and they would proudly show the pictures of their tykes to their peers.

  With such hopelessness in their lives, many of them turned to dealing drugs. It was the only way some of them felt that they had a chance at a minimal standard of living. The halfway house that Heather was staying at represented, for me, a place where many of those kids who I taught all those years ago probably were presently living. It was in the same basic neighborhood as the places where I taught, on Prospect, which was east of Troost, which was considered to be the dividing line between the impoverished communities and the more middle-class ones.

  I drove up to the home, which was in the middle of a neighborhood that was standard for this part of town. The houses were all old, most probably dating from the turn of the 20th Century, and many were built in the familiar shirt-waist style – three stories, with the first story being built in stone and bounded by a wooden front porch with peeling paint where people were always hanging out, day and night. The top part of the house was marked by a small window, which I assumed meant that the attic was where people often lived during the time that these homes were built. The homes were also marked by fences around their front yards – this was unusual, because I never saw front-yard fences except for in these neighborhoods, but most of these houses had them. Behind these fences were usually tall weeds and large dogs that would come right up to the fence and bark at anyone who walked by.

  Everywhere on the street there was trash. Smashed liquor bottles, cigarettes, condoms, fast food sacks and wrappers, and more than one plastic pop bottle filled with urine. I presumed that the urine-filled pop bottles were a product of the homeless population, as they needed to do their business somewhere, but, then again, I never quite understood why they just didn’t pee in the bushes or against trees. Why pee in a bottle? Perhaps it was somebody driving along who would do the deed and then would throw it out the window.

  I came up to the home, opening up the front gate, and walked up to the enormous wooden door. I was greeted by a slight blonde woman who looked friendly enough.

  “Hello,” she said pleasantly. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes. I have a client who is living here. Her name is Heather Morrison, but you might have her listed as Heath Morrison.”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “My name is Harper Ross. I’m Ms. Morrison’s attorney.” I showed the woman my bar card and she got out a pair of glasses and looked at it. She didn’t look convinced, so I showed her my driver’s license as well. I didn’t usually get too much scrutiny, mainly because the jail and the courthouses knew who I was, but I was new to this halfway house. I was actually happy that she was so thorough. I was sure that it wouldn’t be good for just anybody to be able to come in and see people who lived here.

  “Wait for her just over there,” she said, pointing to a room that was in the front of the house. It had hardwood floors that looked new, with a red leather couch, a coffee table, a colorful throw rug and a plant in the corner. “I’ll go and get Ms. Morrison.”

  I looked around, thinking that this was a nice room, and happy that the state provided a little something nice for the people who had to stay here. I closed my eyes, trying to fight back the feelings of despair that were creeping up. I hadn’t been able to shake the black mood that haunted me when I first woke up – I had simply learned how to put a mask on. Putting on a mask, hiding my true feelings, was how I was able to get to where I was.

  About five minutes after I arrived, Heather came into the room. She was dressed down, in a way, in that she was wearing skinny jeans and a grim bunny t-shirt that featured a cute little bunny who was dressed as the Grim Reaper, complete with a hood and a sickle, and words that said “hippity hoppity death is on its way.” Her long brown hair was held back by a glittery red headband and her nails were painted jet black. She was in full makeup, and she wore a lot of it – dark black eyeliner, full foundation, red lips and mascara. On her ears were enormous hoop earrings, such as was worn in the 1970s, and, on her feet, were a pair of high heeled boots. She also wore a tea green scarf that was doubled up around her neck.

  I had to admit that she looked effortlessly fashionable. It was probably because she was so thin and little and she had the kind of frame that would no doubt make a potato sack look like haute couture.

  I stood up and Heather wrapped her arms around me. “Harper, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. I was sure that I was doomed to wear that hideous orange number until my trial. As you can see, I look much better on the outside.” She twirled around and smiled. “I even have a semi-private bathroom here.” She rolled her eyes. “Of course, I have to share the bathroom with the boys, because this is a men’s hellhouse. I mean halfway house. Freudian slip.”

  I smiled back. “You do look happier than you did the other day. To say the very least.”

  “Oh, you don’t know. Anyhow, I can’t really leave this place, but we can go and talk in private. They have little rooms where lawyers can talk to their clients confidentially.”

  We walked through the house and I noticed her ankle bracelet. That was another condition of her bail, of course – she had an electronic monitor. Not that she was a flight risk, but she was commanded to not leave the halfway house, at the moment. I hoped that if I petitioned the court I could bring her home with me, however. I was going to have to talk to her about that when we could meet in private.

  She walked with a sashay, as if she were announcing to the world that she was the most fabulous person in the room, and you better know it. I wondered if her demeanor – the fact that she didn’t show much fear in the courtroom, the fact that she seemed to be in good humor, and the way that she was so light and joking – was her mask. Just like I had a mask that showed the world that I was a confident attorney who had it all – a beautiful home in Brookside, a new Beemer, and a successful practice, but, inside, I was sometimes a depressed mess who couldn’t stay sober – I wondered if there were layers to Heather as well.

  I guessed that I would soon find out the answer to that question.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Okay,” Heather said. “I want to talk to you and tell you about my case. I know that you have questions, so go right ahead.”

  We were sitting in a small room that didn’t have much in it besides a metal desk, a black office chair and a smallish red chair that had wooden arms. This room didn’t have nearly as nice of a vibe as the room that I was in before, the cute and cozy room where I waited for Heather to show. This room did have a poster in a frame – it was an old movie poster for some kind of 1950s schlocky sci-fi film, but, other than that, it was a cold, oppressive place. I shuddered and shook my shoulders. I took a deep breath and tried to quell the roiling feeling of anxiety. I knew that I was going to have to see my psychiatrist to make sure that I had my meds adjusted, and I hoped that adjusted meds would do the trick. This was a capital m
urder case. I had to have all my mental faculties firing on all cylinders if I was going to win this.

  And, after meeting Heather, I knew that I was going to have to win it. There was simply no other option. If I lost, God forbid, she would possibly get the death penalty. At any rate, she would be spending the rest of her life in prison. A men’s prison. There wasn’t any way that she was going to make it in such a place. As small as she was, she was going to be a target. Then again, she was friendly and affable, so perhaps she could find a protector in there. That would be her only chance. Otherwise, she was going to have a death sentence, because I would imagine that she would be beaten to death within a year of her serving time.

  No, I had to win this case. So I had to be mentally healthy.

  Heather smiled, and, as if she was reading my mind, she addressed my concerns. “I’m not going to prison, Harper, but if I did, I think that I can make it.” She raised her eyebrows. “You’d be surprised to know this, but straight boys love getting with me. They can get their freak on and never admit that they really like boys. Why do you think that chicks with dicks are so popular on the porn scene?”

  I opened my mouth, but I didn’t really have an answer for that. I felt hopelessly square, because I really didn’t know that “chicks with dicks” was a thing, much less a popular thing. “I, um.”