Steven James - The Knight

“Gotcha.”

He mumbled a few choice words concerning how excited he was about talking to the reporters. When he paused for a breath, I said, “I booked an earlier flight. I need to get to the airport.”

“I’ll give you a shout tomorrow.”

I nodded, he lumbered away, and after I’d picked up my knife and SIG, I headed toward the back door so I could avoid the media drones swarming around the courthouse entrance. On the way, I called Cheyenne and told her I could make the 7:00 a.m. meeting tomorrow morning. “I’ll swing by your place at about 6:30,” I said.

“How about I drive? That is, unless you have power issues with a woman being in the driver’s seat?”

I had the sense that she wasn’t just talking about carpooling but decided not to go there. “All right. You can pick me up.” Only after I’d said the words did I realize that they contained at least as many meanings as hers had.

“Sounds good to me,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I’ll see you at 6:30.”

She’d never been to my house before, so I told her my address before we ended the call. Then I speed-dialed Calvin to let him know I was taking a cab to the airport and that he could just hang on to my suitcase until Monday. While I waited for him to answer, I exited the courthouse’s back door.

And found him standing on the steps, sheltered from the drizzle by a broad gutter high above him, scouring his pockets, looking for his ringing phone. “Oh, there you are, my boy, I’ve been waiting for you.” He found the phone, looked at the screen, then at me. “Shall we speak in person or on our mobiles?”

I stared at him. “How did you know I was coming this way?”

“I know how much you like to appear on the news. Come along. I’ll give you a ride to the airport.” He repositioned his coat and stepped into the rain.

But I hesitated. “I just changed my flight less than five minutes ago. How did you…?”

“My dear boy, I can’t give away all my secrets.” He pulled out his car keys. “Come along, there’s something I would like to ask you on the way.”

For nearly twenty minutes Calvin wove through traffic without speaking. Maybe he was trying to give me an opportunity to deal with Sikora’s death. Hard to know.

The rain was easing up, but the clouds hung heavy and gray above us. I knew the sun wouldn’t be setting for a few hours, but already the day seemed to be withering into night.

We hopped onto the Kennedy.

More time passed.

A car swerved in front of us, and the driver flashed Calvin a rather elaborate finger gesture I’d only seen a few times before, on the streets of New York City. For a moment it reminded me of my years in the City, and of Christie, the woman I’d met there, fallen in love with there, married and then buried there.

Death.

Surrounding me.

Touching my life no matter where I turned.

And now this week, more of it: the two victims on Wednesday, the day before I joined the case… Heather Fain and Chris Arlington yesterday… Sebastian Taylor and the unidentified woman, and now Grant Sikora…

So much death in my past, in my present. I’d chosen this career, this life for myself, but sometimes “I heard some of the reporters chatting,” Calvin said softly, interrupting my thoughts, “while you were giving your statement to the police. The media is already calling you a hero, my boy. They want to pin a medal on you.”

“I’m no hero, Calvin.”

“You saved a man’s life.”

“Who?” This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “Basque? He deserved to die. Sikora deserved to live. How does that make me a hero?”

Calvin thought for a moment. He chose not to reply, and I felt his silence to be some sort of refutation.

“I was proud of you today,” he said at last. “Proud to have been your teacher.”

His words sounded conclusive, as if he were wrapping up one of his lectures rather than simply commenting about the day. It made me uneasy. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

Once again he chose not to reply, which was uncharacteristic of him. Now, he definitely had my attention.

A dump truck in front of us spit up a plume of sour exhaust.

Calvin pulled into the left lane to pass.

Silence stretched between us, and finally, when I realized he wasn’t going to answer my question, I tried to guess what he’d been hoping to talk to me about. “Was there something I said on the stand that…” I searched for the right word. “That you felt was inaccurate or unrepresentative of-”

He swept his hand through the air dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous, my boy. Of course not. Nothing like that.” I waited for him to continue, but once again I received only silence.

I’d never met anyone who chose his words more carefully or more precisely than Dr. Calvin Werjonic, but now he was being evasive. I didn’t want to pressure him, but I did want to find out what was going on.

“Patrick, governments daily break international laws and treaties to look after their nation’s best interests. And this is necessary because laws are established to serve something greater than themselves.”

“Justice,” I said.

“Yes.”

I considered his words in light of the day’s events. “But Calvin. Justice is a matter for the courts to decide.”

“Yes, yes, of course. The right answer. The textbook answer.”

I hadn’t noticed earlier, but now in the cloud-darkened day, I saw that he looked frail and tired, like a mighty cliff finally eroding with time. “But not your answer?”

“The quest for justice leads not to an answer but to a dilemma: how far is one willing to go to see it carried out?” Calvin merged back into the right lane.

I was beginning to see how his words might be related to the trial. I hoped I was wrong. “Don’t we vow to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’? Justice isn’t served when truth is censored.”

“Yes, precisely.”

Another surprising answer. “But?”

“But have you noticed that the attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense are not required to take the same oath? Rather than being bound to tell the whole truth, they are, I dare say, expected not to. Their legal obligation is to tell only the version of truth that supports their case. Only the witnesses, not the lawyers, have to vow to tell the whole truth. And yet, as you just noted a moment ago, justice is not served when truth is censored.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. Thick traffic closed in on us. Rush hour.

“We’ve lost sight of the goal, Patrick. Our justice system is concerned more with prosecutions and acquittals than it is with either truth or justice. You know it’s true. It’s just that we’re reticent to admit it.”

He was right on both counts: it was true, and I didn’t like admitting it. Both the prosecution and the defense stick to the evidence and witnesses that support their case. If they discover evidence that would help the other side, they don’t submit it to the trial-even if it might mean keeping an innocent man from going to prison or making sure a brutal killer gets locked away. That’s what happens when a legal system values individual rights above the search for truth or the administration of justice.

Calvin went on, “But seeing justice done, isn’t that why we entered this field in the first place? Isn’t that more important than winning a case?”

“You’re not justifying-”

A tired sigh. “I’m seventy-six years old, my boy. I don’t have time left to either justify or condemn, only to reason and, while I’m able, to act.”

It felt strange hearing Calvin say these things. Over the years, I’d questioned aspects of the judicial system myself but had never articulated my misgivings to anyone.