Randy Singer - The Justice Game

A tap on the window shook Jason out of the fog. He looked at Case McAllister and rolled down his window.

“You okay?” asked Case. “You look a little peaked.”

“I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

Kelly Starling didn’t check her phone messages until she was on her way to the Hilton Oceanfront hotel, her temporary headquarters for the next two weeks. Sometimes being part of a big firm had its privileges.

The fourth caller had called from an unidentified private number during lunch. Kelly had returned to the courtroom early and shut off her phone. She must have just missed him.

The voice sounded like a male’s, but it was hard to tell because it had been digitally altered. The connection wasn’t the greatest, and Kelly had to listen twice in order to make out exactly what the person said. What she heard made her heart stop cold.

“Kelly. This is Luthor. Keep Juror 3 and Juror 7 on your jury. If you do, your secret’s safe with me.”

After listening the second time, she hung up the phone without checking her other messages. She had kept both jurors on the panel-why wouldn’t she have?-but that’s not what bothered her. Luthor was interfering with the case. Giving her direct orders. If he had been watching jury selection, he would think that he had her, that she had acquiesced to his requests.

In truth, she had resolved to do just the opposite. She was going to represent Blake Crawford to the best of her ability no matter the cost.

From the looks of things, the price could be high. She had gone along with this demand, albeit unintentionally. How long before Luthor made another demand that she couldn’t comply with?

She called Judge Shaver to let him know she had heard from Luthor again. He didn’t answer his phone, so she left a cryptic message.

“This is Kelly Starling. I just heard from a mutual friend named Luthor. He’s fine right now, but I’m afraid it might just be a matter of time. Thought you’d want to know.” She left her cell number and hung up.

She wondered what she had missed about Jurors 3 and 7. She had frankly been a little surprised that Jason had not struck Juror 3, Rodney Peterson. Now she wondered: Were they plants for the other side?

It seemed unlikely. Luthor appeared to be on her side. He had already provided the damaging cross-examination material for Ed Poole and the copy of Case McAllister’s cost-benefit analysis. But how could she know for sure? Maybe Luthor was just trying to gain her trust in order to betray her in the end.

She still didn’t have the foggiest idea who Luthor was. The only thing she could do was focus on the case. Maybe in the meantime Luthor would slip up and Kelly would learn his, or her, identity.

Either way, if Luthor thought he could control Kelly Starling, he had another think coming. If her affair with the judge ever became public, it would get ugly, but Kelly would survive. After that, Luthor would wish he had never met her.

That was all for later. Right now, she needed to focus on her opening statement.

Jason drove back to the office slowly. He didn’t want to face Andrew Lassiter. In fact, he wasn’t even sure that Lassiter would be there. Andrew believed so strongly in his jury vetting system that he would likely take Jason’s actions today as a personal slight.

Jason also dreaded seeing Bella Harper and Case McAllister. They believed in him. They had worked so hard on the case. Now, to save his own skin, Jason had sold them all out.

He rolled up his sleeves on the way home, stopping at a 7-Eleven to fill up with gas and grab a soda. He was in a funk. He felt as if he were walking around with his soul separated from his body, suspended in some weird state of purgatory after being purchased by Luthor and his e-mails. Yet even in the emotional darkness, Jason recognized a single ray of light. It might not be a way out… but it was a place to start.

Ironically, the documents sitting on the passenger seat provided the one advantage Jason had in his battle with Luthor. Jason assumed that Luthor had provided these documents to Kelly. If Jason hadn’t been so shocked when he first received the documents, he would have asked Kelly about Luthor right there in the hallway and watched closely to see if she flinched. He still planned to ask her at some opportune time during the trial.

Luthor’s only mistake thus far was that he hadn’t factored in Kelly Starling’s ethical standards. He had counted on her to keep the documents to herself and spring them on Poole during cross-examination, the way most lawyers would. That way, Jason wouldn’t have known until later in the case that Luthor was definitely working against him. Instead, Kelly had provided the documents to Jason early, and now he knew, right from the beginning of the case, that Luthor was trying to sabotage him, not help him.

It was a slim and temporary advantage, but it was something. In order to leverage this knowledge, Jason needed an investigator he could trust.

He pulled his truck into the parking lot of his office and let it idle for a few minutes. He pulled out his BlackBerry, took a deep breath, and called his father.

Listening to the phone ring, Jason almost hung up. He put his mind in neutral, forcing himself to say on the line.

“Yeah.”

“Dad, it’s Jason.”

A pause. “I know,” his dad said. “Caller ID.” He waited another few seconds. “It’s been months.”

There’s no law that says that you couldn’t have called me. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’ve been busy.”

They talked for a few minutes, a clipped and awkward conversation about the case. His father’s bias against MD Firearms was still evident. The man spoke with a thick tongue, and Jason could picture him sitting in his living room, wearing jeans and a white undershirt, empty bottles scattered around the room.

Jason stared out the windshield, wondering if this was the right move after all. “I could really use some help on this case, Dad. I need somebody I can trust to investigate a couple of the jurors.” He hesitated, his dad’s silence unnerving him. “I was thinking, I dunno, like maybe you could take a few days off to come and help.”

The silence on the line seemed interminable. Jason’s heart pounded in his ears. A second passed… two. Jason wished he had never asked.

“Seems like you’d want an investigator who didn’t need to be in rehab,” his dad said bitterly.

Jason didn’t know how to respond. “Dad, I did what I thought I needed to do. Julie and Matt too. If that hurt you, I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry, Jason. You need something. It’s what you’ve done your whole life. You come crawling home to fleece the old man; then I don’t hear from you for months.”

Jason wasn’t in the mood for this. It had already been a long day. He didn’t need his dad piling on. “You know what, Dad? Just forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

His dad snorted. “What do you need?”

But it was too late. Every time he tried to reach out to his dad, this was the reward. Rejection. Humiliation. Criticism. Jason just wanted to punch something.

“I don’t need anything from you,” Jason said.

And with that, he hung up.

A few minutes later, after calming down, he walked into the office. Bella was at her station.

“Turkey and cheese on your desk,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Eat it anyway. Trials are like a marathon. You’ve got to stop at the juice stations.”

Actually, trials are more like waterboarding, Jason thought.

He made his way back to the conference room, which looked worse than ever. He had to step over a box and a pile of documents to get through the door.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Jason said.