Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

“Nothing further,” said the plaintiff’s lawyer.

“And we’re adjourned,” Juliana said.

As the courtroom emptied, she saw George approaching her bench. He was holding the bouquet of flowers, a pastel arrangement of stargazer lilies and pale pink roses, tipping it toward her.

She had crazy thoughts. What if there was a bomb in it, a plastic explosive or something?

“Those were for me?” she asked.

“‘Judge Juliana Brody, courtroom 903,’” George read.

“Who the hell told that kid to deliver to a judge on the bench?” Ordinarily all deliveries to a judge went to her lobby.

He held the bouquet in her direction. “Just hand me the card, please,” she said.

He pulled a small white envelope off the bouquet and passed it to her.

She slipped a white card from the envelope.

It read:

See you soon. — Matías.

She flushed, her heart suddenly knocking.

She stared at the note.

“It better be your husband,” the court officer said, mock-sternly, laughing.

“My secret admirer,” she said, forcing a smile. “Thanks, George.”

As soon as the lunch break began, she went online and checked a bunch of legal-related websites to see if that video had been posted anywhere. She clicked on sites that ran news about the legal profession, like Underneath Their Robes and Above the Law, to see if anything had been reported. They wouldn’t post the video, of course. They’d post a story about it.

But she found nothing, thank God. At least nothing yet. Finally she Googled herself and waited tensely for a couple of seconds for the search results.

Nothing about a sex tape.

She glanced at her phone. Paul Ashmont from the CIA had left her a message, returning her call. As she was about to call him back, her phone rang.

“Hey,” Ashmont said. “You have Signal on your phone, right?”

“I do.” That was one of the encryption apps Sasha had told her to install.

“I think we’d better use it.”

He called her back a minute later using Signal. She answered the phone out in the hall.

“Okay, you called me. What’s up?” Ashmont said.

“This board meeting of the Protasov Foundation — there are a lot of VIPs coming to Nantucket,” she said. She mentioned some of the names: a former prime minister of the UK, a former female Secretary of State, a senator from Massachusetts. “Security’s going to be tight.”

“Oh, you better believe it.”

“I wonder who does security for Protasov. If he contracts it out.”

“The Russian mafiya does security for most of these guys, these oligarchs,” Ashmont said. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

Juliana called in Kaitlyn and asked her to cancel the afternoon session. She had important personal business to attend to, she said. Then she drove over to Boston Medical Center in the South End. She parked, took the elevator up to the neuro ICU on the sixth floor of the Menino building. She stopped at the counter and asked the nurse where she could find a patient, Philip Hersh.

The nurse looked up and then away, said, “Um, yeah, let me ask someone.”

She got up and went over to another nurse, who was standing at a desk, a dark-haired young woman. They conversed quietly for a few seconds. Then the dark-haired nurse came over and said, “Hi, excuse me, are you a family member?”

“I’m a friend,” Juliana said. “I... my phone number was in Philip’s pocket when he was found.”

She nodded. “Let me page the neurocritical care fellow, Dr. Robiano. I think he’s still on call.” She picked up the phone and spoke briefly. Then she hung up and came around to the front of the counter. “Why don’t we talk in one of these rooms?”

“Oh, no,” Juliana said, her eyes tearing up. “What happened? A few hours ago he was stable.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know any of the details.”

The dark-haired nurse showed her to a small, stark conference room, a round table with four chairs around it. Juliana sat and pulled out some Kleenex.

When Dr. Robiano showed up a few minutes later, holding a can of Coke Zero — still looking like a fifteen-year-old playing doctor — he seemed genuinely saddened. “I’m sorry to tell you that Mr. Hersh died.”

Juliana sighed, her breath trembling. She nodded. The tears were streaming now.

He said, “He had a rebleed in his brain. We took him to the operating room, and he died on the table.”

She nodded, couldn’t talk.

He sensed that and went on. “It’d been touch-and-go since he got here. His injuries were just too severe.”

“When did it — when did he die?”

“About an hour ago. They haven’t taken his body away yet, so if you want to go into his room and spend some time...?”

“Thanks,” she said. “I do.”

When she was able to stop crying long enough to talk, she called Martie and arranged to come by. She didn’t want to tell her over the phone.

Numbly, she entered Martha Connolly’s apartment. She gave Martie a quick hug, leaned over and petted Lucy. The dog had brought her Donald Trump chew toy over, as if to show off how little of it was left: just half a torso and an arm.

“You look terrible,” Martie said. “What happened?”

“Philip Hersh is dead.”

Martie gasped. “What?”

Juliana told her what little she knew.

“Can I pour you a drink?”

“I have too much to do now.”

“Have you talked to the police?”

She shook her head.

Martie seemed to know what Juliana was thinking. “You don’t know this happened because of your case,” Martie said.

“But it did.”

She shook her head. “You think .”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “You told me to get off the trolley; that was how you put it. Stop what I was doing. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t ask Hersh to stop digging, even when we knew it was dangerous.”

“Juliana—”

“I need to ask you something,” Juliana said.

“Ask away.”

She hesitated. “You know Yuri Protasov. You’re on a Doctors Without Borders board with him. Yet you never mentioned that to me.”

Martie was silent for a long time. She looked down at the carpet. Then she looked up at Juliana. “I knew a woman once who became obsessed with black mold,” she said. “Who was convinced she was getting sickened from black mold, that she was suffering from toxic mold syndrome. So she had dehumidifiers installed in her basement. But the experts came to test, and the tests still came back positive for mold spores. So she ripped everything out. When that didn’t work, she gutted the first floor. Then the second. Eventually she got rid of every piece of textile she owned, even a quilt that had been passed down from her great-grandmother. She ripped her whole damn house apart, her whole life apart.”

“And?”

“She ended up moving into some sterile cinder-block house in Brighton. But she still felt something was wrong. So she had the place tested, and it came back positive for black mold.”

“Your point?”

“There’s no uncontaminated terrain. Or people. Some hands are cleaner than others; none are truly clean. Have I ever met Yuri Protasov? No. Have I ever even been in the same room with the man? I don’t think so, but maybe. You want to find moments where I’ve crossed paths with this villain or that? The harder you look, the more you’ll find. And I could explain every one, but that’s not the point. Because anyone can explain anything. At the end of the day? You need to ask yourself one question: Do I trust her? So do you?”

It was a long, fraught silence. The two women stared into each other’s eyes frankly, almost hostilely. And then something in her melted. Because she knew the answer was yes.