Justice Denied - A Harper Ross Legal Thriller Read online

  $5,000. I’ve never spent $5,000 in one day ever in my life. Except when I bought my Beemer. I rationalized it, though. I earned this money, dammit. My life was stressful and I was constantly having to put up with nonsense from my clients. I needed something to make me happy, and, today, spending money was that thing.

  In the back of my mind, however, I knew that something was wrong. Something was off. My brain was going haywire. It was as if I had drunk 100 Red Bulls and…that was it! In college, I took speed. Just once, because I needed to stay up all night studying for an exam. I wasn’t used to stimulants, let alone a powerful stimulant like speed, and I ended up running up and down the six flights of stairs several times in a row. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was supposed to be studying – I kept reading the same paragraph, over and over over and over again, and I never absorbed any of it. I felt like I was flying high, yet, the next day, I completely crashed. Just totally crashed. I was eating lunch and, right there at the lunch table, I put my head down and fell right to sleep.

  What is wrong with me? I haven’t taken speed. I haven’t even had a cup of coffee. I never drink coffee. I haven’t even had a glass of tea. What’s wrong with me?

  Eight

  Axel finally arrived and he kissed me on the cheek. “Oh, lass, your hair is beautiful. I really like it. You look different, too.” He stood back and looked at me. “You look like a model.”

  I laughed. “A model. A supermodel, huh?” I brought my sparkling water up to my lips, and I noticed that my right hand was shaking wildly.

  Axel noticed the same thing. He looked at my right hand and then looked at me. “Harper, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I feel weird. I got this murder case, and I have this other murder case, and, well, one of my murderers put me into the hospital. He crushed me.”

  “What?” Axel stood up. “What do you mean, he put you into the hospital?”

  “Just what I said. He attacked me and put me into the hospital. Don’t worry, I’m not representing him anymore.”

  “Harper, you have to be careful.” He put his arm around me. “Seriously. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me, silly. Listen, it comes with the territory. When you’re a criminal defense attorney and you’re defending capital cases, you’re going to get these violent people who get really irate when you tell them things that they’re in no mood to hear. That’s what happened with this guy. He told me that he wanted me to try his case, even though he told me, point blank, that he killed his drug partner with a telephone. He beat her to death with the phone as she was trying to call the authorities to turn him in. He told me it was self-defense.” I laughed. “Self-defense. What kind of nonsense is that?”

  Axel wasn’t laughing along. He was sitting next to me at the bar looking worried. “Harper, I have to ask you something. I don’t want you be offended. But I need to know.” He looked down at his hands.

  “Go ahead. Ask away. I’ll tell you. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  He cleared his throat. “Are you drinking again?”

  I shook my head. “No. Do you see this? It’s sparkling water. Here, taste it. Taste it, since you probably don’t believe me.” I was irritated, really irritated, and I had no idea why. Axel was only asking me an innocent question – why did I feel like he was giving me the third degree? Anybody would ask me the same question. I was acting weird, and I knew it.

  He put up his hands. “That’s okay, I don’t need to taste it. I believe you.”

  “Thanks.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s get a table. It’s not all that crowded yet, so I think that the hostess can seat us.”

  He smiled, but I could tell that something was off with him, too.

  “What?” I asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what, lass?”

  “Like you think that I’m on something. I’m not. I’ve never in my life taken drugs. I’ve never even smoked pot in my life.”

  “Let’s change the subject. Tell me about your new murder case.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t want to change the subject. I want to know what is going through your head. You’re looking at me like you think that I’m high. I’m not. I’m really not.”

  “I don’t think you are. You’re acting weird, though. You seem like you’re on fast-forward.”

  That was how I felt, actually – as if I was on fast-forward. Like everything around me, everything in my environment, was going faster and faster. I closed my eyes and I heard a voice – it was telling me that I was worthless, that I brought all my hardships onto myself, that everybody hated me. I put my hands over my ears. “Stop talking, just stop it.” I shook my head. “Stop it. Stop saying those things.” I suddenly felt like screaming.

  I looked at Axel, who now was looking like he was really freaked out. “Harper, I think that we need to cut this evening short. I mean, I still want to be with you tonight, but maybe not here. Let’s go to your house. See your kids. For whatever reason, you seem a little…freaked out. I don’t know why, exactly.”

  I nodded my head. “I think that maybe you’re right. I don’t feel well. Maybe things will stop spinning once I get home.”

  “Stop spinning?”

  “Yeah. I mean, this restaurant seems like it’s on some kind of a fast carousel right now.”

  We left the restaurant after I took care of the bill. I only drank soda water, but I left the bartender a $20 bill. “Keep it,” I said to him. “You put up with me sitting here for an hour, so it’s worth it for me to give you a big tip.”

  “Thank you,” he said with a smile. “That’s very generous.”

  Axel put his arm around me. “Where did you park, Harper?”

  I furrowed my brow. I really couldn’t remember. My car was somewhere on the Plaza, but where? “I don’t know,” I said. “I started out shopping at Talbot’s. I remember that. And then I went to get my nails done and my hair cut. But I really can’t remember where I parked my car.” Was it on a street? Was it in a garage? Was it in a parking lot? How was I going to figure out where it was? This wasn’t like me, either – I had never been one to completely forget where my car was.

  Axel nodded his head. “That’s fine, lass. I can just drive you home, and then I’ll bring you back here tomorrow morning. Maybe you will remember where you parked your car by tomorrow.”

  I felt spacey yet numb. “Yes. That will be fine. Thank you, Axel.”

  We walked to his car, his arm around me. “You know, Harper, I like having you close to me like this. It’s getting a tad nipply already. It’s going to be really cold pretty soon. Let’s get to your house and build a fire and talk to your kids. You can tell me all about your new murder case, too. Maybe I can help you with that.”

  “Maybe,” I mumbled. Axel opened up my door, and I got in and lay back on the seat. I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on something. Anything. Yet I couldn’t. My thoughts were coming in again, faster and faster, and I couldn’t sort any of them out.

  Axel was saying something, but I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t process what he was saying anymore than I could process any other thing that was in my environment right then.

  “We’re home,” he said in a few minutes. My house was really close to the Country Club Plaza, so it took us only a matter of minutes to arrive at my doorstep. “I mean, we’re at your home.”

  “Good. Thank you, Axel, for driving me home. Come on in.”

  We made our way to the door and I opened it. Rina was there, waiting for me, and she had been crying. She immediately came up to me and threw her arms around me. “Aunt Harper, say it’s not true. Say that you aren’t going to give us up. We’re happy here. I’m sorry, Aunt Harper, I get bratty sometimes, but we’ll be good from now on. We promise. Please, Aunt Harper, please don’t give us up.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but, at the same time, I didn’t feel like I had the abilit
y to properly respond to her. I opened my mouth and shut it again, and I looked over at Axel. He was looking at Rina with an expression of concern on his face. “Harper, what is she talking about?”

  “I don’t know.” I pushed Rina off of me. “I really need to go and lay down. I-“

  I sat down right on the floor. I was vaguely aware that Rina was still bawling and that Axel was comforting her. Abby, for her part, also was crying, but she stayed seated on the couch. Her head was hanging and I could hear sobs.

  “Axel, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know that you were looking forward to hanging out with me and the girls and building a fire and everything, but I really need to be alone. You’re welcome to stay, though, and play a game with the girls. I know that they would really like that. But I don’t think that I’ll be very good company at all.”

  I went upstairs to my room and shut the door. I didn’t even look at Axel before I went up to my room. I didn’t want to see his look of concern or, even worse, his look of being pissed off.

  I went over to my desk and opened up my laptop. I was going to look at Michael’s enemies list again. For some odd reason, my mind suddenly cleared up. I was full of energy, perhaps more full of energy than I had ever been before, but my thoughts were no longer jumbled. Instead, it seemed like I had clarity. More clarity than I had had in a long, long time. I felt like I could do anything. I was going to win this case for Michael and I was going to do things right. Yes, I hated him. I hated him more than I had ever hated anybody in my life. Yet, I was an attorney and, as such, I had an ethical duty to do all I could to make sure I won his case.

  And I was going to win it. I had no doubt about that. Hell, I was Harper Goddamned Ross. If I had a case before the Supreme Court of the United States, I could win that, too. I could win anything, anything at all.

  That night, I stayed up all night long. I took a careful look at all the cases which were pending in front of Judge Sanders at the time he was killed, and I felt that this was a promising avenue to go down. Several companies were in court for various reasons – there was a pharmaceutical company who was being sued for price-gauging; another company was in court because they were arguing that certain regulations were unconstitutional; there were several cases regarding environmental pollution.

  I didn’t see a smoking gun, however. There was nothing in the list of cases that jumped out at me. On the contrary – I found too many cases that were high-stakes. Cases where a certain company would lose millions of dollars in revenue if the judge ruled adversely. I also looked at the judge’s record and saw that he ruled on behalf of the “little guy” more than he ruled in favor of the big corporations. Whether it was the Sierra Club suing because of environmental concerns, a worker suing because a company violated safety laws, or an individual suing because he was denied worker’s compensation, Judge Sanders seemed to have a bleeding heart.

  That made me sad. I was always in favor of the little guy sticking it to The Man, especially if The Man was a corporation that was screwing people over for a buck. I was a justice warrior at heart. Judge Sanders seemed to be a true populist, a judge for the people, and we needed more men like him.

  Now he was dead. He was dead, and a Republican president was going to appoint his successor. I knew that there was a thread there. But what was it?

  After looking over Michael’s enemies list, I realized that this list wasn’t going to bear much fruit. I could speak with each and every person on the list, and I planned to, yet I just couldn’t see how or why anybody on this list would kill a federal judge just to frame Michael. That was a drastic step, killing a federal judge, and killing the judge would certainly carry the death penalty with it. In fact, that was what Michael himself was facing – the death penalty. I received the statement of information from the prosecutor, whose name is April Todd, and it informed me that the death penalty was being sought.

  No, I was going to have to think of something else. I was going to have to get creative with this one. The police weren’t doing investigations – they had their man in custody. And that was the first place that I was really going to have to look – I had to figure out why the police were sure enough that Michael killed Judge Sanders that they would immediately arrest him. There must be a history there, something that Michael wasn’t telling me. That wasn’t hard to believe, really – the slimy worm lied to me repeatedly when I first met with him. I was going to have to get his story, but it was going to have to come from other people. Once I put the puzzle together about who he was and how his relationship was with his father-in-law, I would have the complete picture. Once I had the complete picture, I could anticipate what the prosecutor’s case was going to be.

  But, first thing first. I called Pearl. “Hey, Pearl, it’s me. How are we coming along with the exhumation thing?”

  “Not good. The daughter has filed a motion in opposition to it. The hearing on the matter is tomorrow at 1:30.”

  I sighed. While I anticipated this happening, it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. “On what basis is she trying to deny it?”

  “Her motion in opposition just says that it would be unnecessarily painful for the family, and that there must be extenuating circumstances before the court can order something so drastic. I mean, that’s the argument in a nutshell.”

  She was right. Exhuming a body was something that was definitely the last resort. And it was something that was extremely painful for the loved ones left behind. Especially in a case like this – he was murdered. Shot through the chest and the head, and then the killers just left his body there in the living room. If somebody did that to my father, I would want to find that person and kill him or her slowly. And I certainly wouldn’t be down with anybody wanting to exhume my father after he was laid to rest in that scenario.

  So no, I didn’t blame Christina Sanders for not wanting her father’s remains to be disturbed. At the same time, though, I knew that it needed to be done. I knew that, if Judge Sanders was poisoned, that would be significant. It would mean that the killer was somebody who had access to the judge. Somebody who would have been able to put poison in his drink, at a low level, for a long period of time. Michael told me that Judge Sanders had been sick for a month. That would take a lot of planning. It would mean that the person who did it was somebody who was around the judge on a regular basis.

  That would certainly narrow it down. I could imagine that there might be some greedy CEO out there who had a big case in front of the judge and wanted to kill him so that they could get somebody different to hear their case – some other judge who didn’t have a track record of ruling against large corporations in favor of the little guy. But if the judge was poisoned…that would be a different ballgame altogether. What greedy CEO would have that kind of intimate access to Judge Sanders on a daily basis?

  I walked downstairs and saw, to my surprise, Axel was sleeping on my couch. I approached him and put my hand on his cheek. He opened his eyes and smiled at me sleepily. “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I could ask the same.” I sat down next to him on the couch. “I’m sorry about last night. I…” I shook my head. I couldn’t explain why I was feeling so funky.

  “No, no,” he said. “Don’t apologize. I was worried about you, so I spent the night. The girls are really upset, too. They have this idea that you’re going to give them back. Put them back into the system. I don’t know why they have that idea, but they were crying about it all last night.”

  I furrowed my brows. “I don’t know why they think that, either. I-“ Suddenly, the lightbulb came on. “Oh my God. I know why they think that. Where are they right now?”

  “Sophia took them to school. I called her, because you were literally locked in your bedroom, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “You could have. I didn’t sleep last night. Not even for a minute.”

  Axel screwed up his mouth. “Have a seat, Harper,” he said, patting the sofa next to him. “We need to talk.”

/>   I sighed. “Okay, but I have afternoon hearings, so I can’t talk for a long time. By the way, how come you’re not at work right now?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m doing investigations, so I set my own hours. My department doesn't keep me on the clock. They’re only concerned with whether or not I get my work done. But don’t change the subject. I’m worried about you.”

  I nodded my head and sat down next to him. I put my head on his shoulder. “I’m worried about myself, too. Sometimes I feel that I have the slightest, most tenuous grasp on reality. I feel like, sometimes, that I’m right on that edge of the precipice. I’m looking down, and, if I fall off that cliff, I’m going to end up in the loony bin. I’ve always felt that way. You don’t know how much I white-knuckle my sobriety. I don’t think that I’ve told you this, but I’ve suffered, on and off, from depression almost my entire life.”

  “I can see that about you,” Axel said. “People who are perfectionists often do suffer from depression. They feel that they have to do everything just right, just so, and they just set themselves up for failure. They can’t handle failure, either. I’ve known people like that. My mother was like that.” He sighed and looked into the distance. “She was like that. She had a hard time handling things. Handling the world. She was an amazing artist, very gifted. She didn’t sell much, though, because it’s a hard business if you want to make a living. But you should see some of her paintings. Her sculptings. She worked herself to the bone, but she never could find an audience.”

  I put my arm around him. “Are you close with her?”

  He nodded. “I was. She killed herself 11 years ago.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling his pain. I felt that Axel and I had something in common at that moment. He lost his mother. I lost everything the night that Michael and Jim raped me. I could never get over that, and I doubted that Axel could ever get over losing his mother in such a way.