Joel Goldman - Stone Cold

Alex rose and paced the room, Bonnie and Quincy watching and waiting. She stopped at a portrait hanging on the wall that they had posed for a year ago. The photographer had taken it in their backyard. They were on a bench beneath a sun-dappled tree, hands intertwined, Quincy between them, sitting on his hind legs.

Bonnie’s makeup and nails were perfect, her outfit a designer’s ensemble. Alex had consented to a light dusting of makeup at the photographer’s insistence but had refused to wear anything other than chinos and a polo shirt. The photographer, a gay friend, told them to face the camera as he joked that Bonnie looked like a debutante and Alex looked like her escort. They both laughed, the photographer catching the moment.

Alex loved the portrait. It showed them for who and what they were-a family. She brushed her fingertips across the image of Bonnie’s face, unable to imagine ever losing her, certain that she’d do anything to protect her.

“Judge West said that Jameer Henderson asked the best question of the whole trial,” she said, telling Bonnie about their conversation in his chambers. “He made it sound like I was responsible if anything bad happened to Henderson and his family.”

Bonnie crossed the room to Alex, taking her hands. “That’s not right. You were doing your job. He shouldn’t put that on you.”

“I know. I know, but I can’t stop thinking about them. What if something horrible does happen to them because of me?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them, and if it does, it won’t be because of you. It will be because of the choices Jameer Henderson made and the actions of other people over whom you have no control.”

Bonnie wrapped her arms around her and Alex rested her head on Bonnie’s shoulder. They stood like that until Quincy nosed his way between them, reminding them he hadn’t eaten. They didn’t talk about it again, fixing dinner, turning on and ignoring the television until they went to bed.

Bonnie fell asleep right away, while Alex replayed her conversation with Judge West, parsing it for meaning. She kept coming back to the same conclusion. Justice required that the guilty be punished. No argument there. The trick, Judge West had told her, was figuring out what steps she should take. To do what? Represent her client? No, that wasn’t what he’d meant. And then she knew-to protect the innocent, even if that meant protecting them from her guilty clients.

Could he really mean that? Did he truly expect her to throw her clients under the bus to make certain the guilty didn’t go free? She could no more imagine a judge suggesting that she do so than she could imagine doing it. That would violate everything she believed in, not to mention innumerable laws and ethical standards.

And Judge West hadn’t said that, at least not directly. Nor would he have if that were what he’d really meant. Plausible deniability was critical just in case she filed a complaint against him or, worse, did what she though he had suggested, got caught, and claimed it was all the judge’s idea. Deciding she’d had too long a day and too much wine, she dismissed the whole notion as a product of an overly tired mind and soon was asleep.

Alex’s cell phone rang at four o’clock the next morning. She flopped her hand across her nightstand, struggling to find her phone, eyes closed, hoping she was dreaming. When she found the phone, opened her eyes, and saw Kansas City Police Department displayed on the caller ID, she knew she wasn’t. Opening her phone, she padded out of the bedroom and into the hall to avoid disturbing Bonnie. Quincy, who had been sleeping at the foot of their bed, followed her.

“Who’s this?” she asked.

“It’s me, Dwayne.”

“Dwayne? Dwayne Reed? Are you kidding me?”

She recognized his deep voice, but her brain didn’t want to admit it. Not at this hour.

“Shit, yeah, woman! How many clients you got named Dwayne?”

“Why are you calling me from the police department? You should have been released right after the jury came back.”

“They let me out, all right. That ain’t the problem.”

Alex leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. Quincy plopped down next to her, his head in her lap. “Christ, Dwayne! You couldn’t stay out of trouble for twenty-four hours?”

“You know how it is.”

“No, Dwayne. I don’t know how it is. What happened?”

“I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ over the phone, ’specially when it’s five-0’s phone. Get on down here and you’ll see what’s what.”

She tilted her head to the ceiling, rubbing her temple with her free hand. She was still his lawyer, but only for the Wilfred Donaire case. Bradshaw could file a motion to set aside the jury verdict, which meant that the case wasn’t technically over. If Dwayne had been arrested on a new charge, someone from her office would be appointed to represent him. Until then, she couldn’t leave him there to be worked over by the cops. Too many people confessed to things they didn’t do when their lawyers weren’t there to protect them.

“What’s the charge?”

“Same bullshit as last time. Murder.”

Fully awake and focused, she shared his concern about who might be listening to their call.

“I’m on my way. Keep your mouth shut until I get there.”

She hung up and took a moment to rub Quincy behind his ears, stopping when she realized what Reed had left out. He hadn’t said he didn’t do it.

She and Bonnie lived in Crestwood, a middle-class midtown neighborhood a fifteen-minute drive from downtown. At that time of night, it was ten minutes, long enough for her to imagine whom Dwayne Reed could have murdered in the twelve hours since he became a free man. Of all the images that came to mind, the one that she couldn’t shake was of Jameer Henderson in the courtroom, holding his children in his lap and comforting his wife.

In a violent world where gangs were more heavily armed than police and teenage boys didn’t expect to live long enough to become old men and treated a stretch in prison as an inevitable rite of passage, revenge was both an ethic and a necessity to maintain street cred. Henderson had made himself and his family targets. That she had been complicit in exposing them to harm was a cruel irony that ate at Alex, her insistence to Judge West that their fate wasn’t her problem a boast she could no longer back up.

Her fear for the Henderson family was enough to make her detour to their house before going to police headquarters. They lived on the east side, a part of Kansas City where the name of one of the long-defunct homeowners associations, Forgotten Homes, told the story of too many people who lived there. The promises of generations of politicians to root out the crack houses, revitalize the economy, and protect the law-abiding citizens who got caught in the crossfire had been broken more often than they had been kept.

She drove east and north, passing rundown retail strips barricaded behind iron bars, untended and abandoned houses, and vacant lots choking with weeds and trash. The bright spots-well-tended homes, churches, schools, and businesses ready for the coming day-were muted in the darkness.

The closer she got, the more she heard Jameer Henderson’s plaintive question echoing in her head. What am I gonna do now? Her creeping sense of dread went viral, and by the time she turned onto his block, her chest was pounding and her heart was breaking.

When she didn’t see any squad cars or ambulances with flashing lights, she skidded to a stop in the middle of the street. There were no cops, crime scene investigators, or TV trucks set up for live remotes. If Dwayne Reed had murdered Jameer Henderson and his family, investigators would still be on the scene and neighbors would be holding a vigil. But there was none of that. There was only quiet.