Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 7

  “So what happened next?”

  Heather shrugged. “Nothing much, not for several more months. Then I turned 18, so I knew that the foster care system wouldn’t come and get me if something happened, so, I don’t know, I started to relax a little. And then we had this big fight one night, right after my 18th birthday. She again told me that I was possessed by a demon and that she wanted me to see some kind of priest who would get that demon out of me. Throw some holy water on me and maybe make my head turn all the way around, like in that movie. Or some shit, I don’t know what they do in an exorcism. I only know what they did in that movie. I wanted no part of that. I screamed at her, she screamed at me, and then…”

  “And then what?”

  She shuddered and sucked on her cigarette again. She looked into the distance, as if she was remembering a painful memory. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were trying to hug herself, and shook her head. “She came at me with a butcher knife. We were standing in the kitchen and she opened up the drawer and came at me with this knife. Scared the crap out of me, but thank God I had a pocket knife on me. I always carried it around with me, because I always got the crap beaten out of me in school, so I needed to have it on me at all times in case I needed to defend myself at a moment’s notice.”

  I was quiet, trying to get the incident out of her without freaking her out too much. She looked like she was going to break down at any moment. This was a painful memory for her. I knew that, so I was going to be sensitive about this.

  She finally sighed. “She lunged at me with the butcher knife, and I plunged my knife into her neck. I didn’t even have time to think about it. I just was on auto-pilot. I just put that knife in her, and blood started to squirt everywhere. It was every-fucking-where. And I ran. I ran out of the house and went and stayed with Charlie.”

  I nodded my head. “Charlie. When did you meet him?”

  “At a party. I sucked him off in the bedroom of this big party, and, well, I didn’t really know him all that well. He gave me his number after the party, asking me to call him, but I didn’t want to. I don’t like to play that. I like to keep my options open at all times, and I didn’t want to get tied down with nobody. That’s why I never tried to stay with him before. But after that happened with my mom, I needed a place to go and I went to stay with him. He lives in the Bottoms in a converted loft. I felt safe there, but somehow the cops found me anyhow. I think that one of Charlie’s buddies snitched on me, because my face was in the paper after my mom was found. And somehow the whole thing blew up. I don’t know why, but the papers got on it, and blew it up, like I was a public enemy or something like that.”

  I opened up my file that had the criminal statement of information and read through it again. I was looking for any kind of evidence that there was a butcher knife found at the scene. It sounded like Heather fled the scene right after she killed her mother, so the butcher knife would have been found. There wasn’t any reason why it wouldn’t be there.

  Yet, as I read through the Statement of Information, I couldn’t find the words “butcher knife” anywhere in there. I shook my head, wondering if I could trust my client’s recount of events. I had to look at all angles, because the prosecution sure as hell was going to as well. No way would they let her get away with saying that her mother had a butcher knife if one wasn’t recovered at the scene.

  I didn't want to confront her with that pertinent piece of information, though, until I could do some independent investigation of my own. I didn’t want her to get defensive with me, because then she would just shut down.

  Just then, I looked at my phone and saw that Tammy was texting me 911.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Heather. “I need to take this.”

  Heather just shrugged her shoulders. “Okay. Just make sure you come on back as soon as you can. And keep me posted on what’s going on. I hope that you believe my story.”

  I didn’t believe her story. Not entirely. It sounded good, but the problem with self-defense was that it was difficult enough to prove. A defendant will always try to say that he or she had to kill because the victim was going to kill him or her. But actually proving that was the case…there was the rub.

  “I have some more questions,” I said. “But I need to issue some subpoenas so that I can get some independent verification on what you’re saying. I’m going to schedule some depositions for the people you saw at the gay conversion therapy center, so I need to know all the doctors and therapists you saw and the name of the clinic where you went. And I’d also like to subpoena your mother’s computer. I have a feeling that, when I go through her history, I’m going to find out the information that I’m going to need to build a good defense. There’s something that you’re missing, and that’s what caused her to suddenly become so aggressive with you, when she wasn’t before. Once I find that out, the pieces of the puzzle might come together better.”

  “Okay,” Heather said, putting her forefinger in her hair and twirled it around and around. She swung her legs to and fro, swinging back and forth, while she smacked her lips. “You take that call, I have to get back to my room. I hope to see you back here once you get the information you need. And my therapists were called Dr. Schultz, fucking Nazi, and Dr. Woods. The name of the conversion therapy place was called – get this – Rainbow International. How fucking ironic is that? The official word is that they call it that because they want their clients to have hope and a rainbow is the symbol of hope. Or some shit.” She started to laugh. “I have no idea if they really know what the rainbow means to us gay folk. If they don’t, well, what rock have they been under?”

  I nodded my head, distracted by the text message from Tammy. What was going on? Was it bad or good? I had no idea, no clue.

  I only knew that there was some kind of emergency.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I called Tammy and she picked up immediately. “You need to get down here right away,” she said. “Rina and Abby are here. They apparently ran away from their new foster family. They need to talk to you.”

  I groaned, but, at the same time, I was really happy. I desperately wanted them back in my life. I really bonded with them when they were at my house. They were just happy that I had taken an interest in them. Apparently, nobody else in their lives did the same.

  “Keep them right there,” I said. “I’ll be at the office in a half hour.”

  I went and found Heather, who was in her room. She was bunking with three men, two of whom were currently in the room with her. One guy was completely bald, with tattoos all over his face and his bald head. He looked like he might have been halfway good-looking at one point, before he apparently started doing steroids and getting completely inked over. His eyes were piercing blue and he had long dark eyelashes and a straight Roman nose. The other guy was an overweight African-American man with extremely dark skin. Both men were over 6 feet tall. The third guy wasn’t in the room, although I did see his bed and, next to his bed, was a mound of clothes.

  I wondered if these guys were okay with bunking with somebody who was essentially a woman. I never quite understood the logic that legislators used to ensure that trans people didn’t get some kind of accommodations for who they were. To me, this situation didn’t make sense at all – here was Heather, in her high heels, sparkly headband and full makeup, bunking with these guys who were obviously guys. She didn’t belong there at all. She was a woman, for all intents and purposes. A woman, not a man. Yet there were still so many people in this country, indeed in the world, who didn’t believe in transgenders. They apparently didn’t believe that it was possible to be a woman in a man’s body or vice-versa. They were also in the majority, or so it seemed, so their wishes and viewpoints were what controlled when it came to legislation.

  “Hello,” Heather said, looking at her nails. Her two roommates were playing cards, and weren’t paying attention to me or to Heather. I wondered if that was always the case. “I know, you have to leave, don’t you?”
<
br />   “Yes. But I’ll be back. Listen, I would like to petition the court for you to come and stay with me until you have your trial.” I looked around the room. “I think you might be more comfortable at my house.”

  Heather nodded, but I saw tears come to her eyes. “That would be nice. It would be nice to have somebody in my life who’s older and not a total phobe. Not that you’re older, but, you know what I mean.”

  I did know what she meant. I was 35, and Heather was currently 18, so, technically, I was old enough to be her mother. She desperately needed somebody who cared about her and who wouldn’t judge her. From what she was telling me earlier, it sounded as if she had never had that in her life.

  “Ta ta,” she said, waving her hand. “Don’t be long.” She pursed her lips, making a kissing motion to me and I laughed.

  “I won’t be.”

  I ARRIVED in the office to find Rina and Abby waiting there in the lobby of my office suite. Rina came up to me when I came in and immediately gave me a hug. “Harper,” she said. “You made it.”

  “I did. What’s going on? Why aren’t you at your foster family’s home?”

  Abby looked at me and then cast her eyes downward. “We hate it there. The mom and the dad fight all the time, and the dad beats on the mom. And…” Abby started to look extremely nervous.

  “Go on,” Rina said. “Tell her. Tell her and maybe she can try again to take us in. She can give the court reason to get us out of there and back with her. So just tell her.”

  “The court won’t believe us. They’re going to make us go back there no matter what we do,” Abby said, and then she started to cry. “They’re going to have a status hearing on Monday. We need to tell our Guardian Ad Litem about what’s going on so that she can hopefully recommend that we come back to Harper’s home.”

  In Missouri, minor children who are involved in the system or any time that abuse or neglect is alleged, get their own attorney who represents their interest. Rina and Abby’s Guardian was named Alexis Winters, and she annoyed me because she was the one who advised the Family Court not to allow me to adopt the two girls.

  I sighed as I realized that my lapse – the month that I spent drinking – was going to probably sink me again if I tried to get the girls under my roof permanently. I mentally kicked myself for going off the deep end like that. I should have gotten it together and not unraveled like that. My only hope was that the Kansas City attorney’s bar didn’t pass around the gossip about my not being around the office a lot and the reason why, and maybe, just maybe, Alexis didn’t know about my falling off the wagon.

  I also wondered if my taking in Heather was going to destroy my chances of getting the girls back. I promised Heather that I would try to have her come and stay with me, and I needed to go ahead with that promise. I knew that I had to do that after I saw her reaction when I told her that I would try to take her in. That proud young girl, who tried to show the world that she was fierce and not scared of anybody or anything and she could whip anybody’s ass, let her guard down and showed me that she had emotions. That meant the world to me.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said to Abby. “Tell me and I’ll do all that I can to make sure that you won’t go back there. I’ll call Alexis right now and tell her that you can’t go back and I’ll file an emergency hearing to get temporary custody of the two of you. But you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  Abby sighed. “They have this son who is 18 and living with them. He’s very weird. He has all these outbursts all the time, where he starts to scream at the top of his lungs and he punches the walls. There’s holes everywhere in the walls from where he has his rages. The mother, who is the only sane person in that house, told me that the son, his name is Pete, has something called Intermittent Explosiveness Disorder and he can’t control these outbursts. So, we have the dad who also seems to have to same disorder, because he acts the same way, and the son both becoming violent all the time.”

  Rina looked over at Abby, who shook her head.

  “Okay, if you’re not going to tell her, I will,” Rina said. “Pete molested Abby tonight. He made her jack him off, and he threatened her with a knife. The parents weren’t home – I think that they were at some kind of a fundraising event or something like that, and he attacked her. I had no idea what was going on, because I was in the living room at the time, watching TV. He gagged her with a sock so that she couldn’t scream. Harper, you have to get us out of there. He did that to Abby, and he told her that I was next, because we’re identical twins so he quote wants to have us both unquote.” Rina looked disgusted and Abby started to cry. Rina put her arm around her and put her head on her shoulder. “Shhh, Abby, don’t cry. Harper will help us out. Won’t you, Harper?”

  “Of course,” I said without hesitation. “You just come and stay with me tonight, and I’ll give a quick call to Alexis tomorrow. Then I’ll file an emergency motion with the court and hopefully we can see the judge within the next few days. That’s a very serious charge, Abby, so I would imagine that Alexis would be on board with, at the very least, the two of you leaving your current home.”

  Abby and Rina looked at one another. “I told you,” Rina said to Abby.

  “I know,” Abby said, her head hanging.

  “You know what? You told her what?” I asked Rina and Abby.

  “I told her that you probably weren’t going to take us in again.” Rina’s voice was accusing and her body language was just as accusing. She had her arms crossed in front of her and her eyebrows were raised.

  I was devastated by her words and more devastated by their predicament. I was responsible for where they were at the moment. If it weren’t for me, they would be with their mother right now. Yet I was deathly afraid that Alexis had gotten news about my relapse, and she wasn’t going to let me have these girls. Alexis was the Guardian Ad Litem, and what she recommended to the court was pretty much what the court would adopt.

  “Let me call Alexis,” I said, looking at the clock. It read 9:20. I didn’t know what time Alexis went to bed, but I was going to call her anyhow. I needed to get some kind of reassurance that she would, at the very least, not object to me getting the girls temporarily.

  I got on the phone with Alexis. She picked up on the second ring. “Hello,” she said. “Alexis Winters.”

  “Alexis, this is Harper Ross,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you this late, but it can’t be helped. I have Rina and Abby Caldwell here in my office, and they had to leave their foster home.”

  “Why did they leave that home? The social worker gave that home an A, and that family is one of the most prominent in the city. If I were you, I would take them back there tonight.”

  I sighed. I hated it when people talked like that – as if, just because somebody is wealthy and connected, they were automatically considered to be a good home. “Alexis, I’m not going to advise those two girls to go back to that house after what they told me. They said that the father is abusive and rageful and so is the son. And the son sexually attacked Abby.” I felt the bile rise in my throat and I blinked back tears. The haunting that I felt ever since I found out about Gina got hotter and hotter until I felt like it was about to overwhelm me.

  Alexis sighed. “Do you actually believe that? There have been other foster children who have stayed with the Browns, and there has never been a problem that has been reported. They’re playing you, Harper, because they want to come and stay with you. You and I both know that’s not a good idea.”

  I looked over at Rina and Abby, wondering what the truth was. They certainly did look freaked out, but maybe they were really good actors. If what Alexis was saying was true – the Browns have had foster kids before, with no bad reports - what was the chance that they suddenly had these kinds of problems when they didn’t before? As a lawyer, I was cynical. People lied all the time.

  Yet I really wanted the girls back with me. There was a part of me that actually wanted this whole awful story to be true. Not that I
wanted them to have actually gone through such trauma, but I really wanted them to come home with me and stay for good. It wasn’t just my guilt feelings at this point, although, I admit, that was my initial motivation for taking them. Once I found out that there wasn’t any friend or relative who could care for them and they would be going into the system, I knew that I had to save them. After having them under my roof, though, I realized that I was really bonding with them and I enjoyed having them around.

  “No, both you and I don’t know that having them at my house is a good idea. Only you think that.”

  “Yes, I think that, because I’m an attorney too, and I know how hard it is to juggle everything. And, I hate to be frank with you, but I find it hard to juggle everything and I’m not a recovering alcoholic. Nor am I dealing with two traumatized girls who just lost their mother in a brutal way. It all adds up to you not being right for them. They need to be in a nuclear home and the Browns are the best family I could find for them. Tell them to go home.”

  I could feel my blood boiling with every word Alexis said. She was being completely unfair in her assessment of me and my supposed fitness to be a mother to the two young girls. How dare she judge me like that? She should know that there are always intangibles that go into every situation, and, yes, I looked terrible on paper. But she didn’t know that I did all I could to make sure those two girls had an incredible home and I tried my hardest to make sure of it. They would be much better off with me than with a father and son who have temper problems and they certainly would be better with me than with a son who was a pervert.