Kem Nunn - Chance

Whatever sleep he was granted that night came behind the wheel of the Oldsmobile in the small garage beneath his apartment where he reclined the seat as far as it would go and covered himself with a jacket. He was afraid to go inside, for any number of reasons.

He was awakened the following morning by the computer programmer come to get his own car from the garage. As to whether or not the programmer had seen him there, asleep at the wheel, he could not say. The two had not spoken since the night of Chance’s struggle with Jackie Black and had in fact gone so far as to avoid eye contact at those times when they might otherwise have exchanged pleasantries, though Chance put this more on the programmer than on himself. He was still willing to be friends. When the man had at last managed to extract his Toyota from its hopelessly cramped space and the door swung shut in his wake, Chance went upstairs to shower and shave. Later he rode the bus to his office, where men in suits were awaiting.

There were three of them altogether. Chance could not say the sight was unexpected but this did not make it any easier to take. Passing from the hallway and into the outer waiting room of his office, it occurred to him that he was at that very moment in possession of Big D’s thumb drive and the files of Detective Raymond Blackstone, lifted from his laptop computer on the day of a murder and he exchanged what must have appeared, at least to her eyes, a look of pure terror with Lucy behind her desk. She responded with a raised eyebrow then stood to make the introductions.

One of the men, the youngest of the three, was a Shorthand Reporter, certified as such by the state of California. The other two men were attorneys. There was a Mr. Berg, appearing as counsel on behalf of the plaintiff, in this case a Mr. Chad Dorsey of Eugene, Oregon, and Mr. Green, counsel for the defense, Dr. William Fry, retired. Charges of elder abuse and undue influence were at long last being brought against Lorena Sanchez and the agency that had sent her to Dr. Fry. To ensure the future safety of whatever was left in Dr. Fry’s numerous accounts, Mr. Dorsey, a distant nephew, was seeking a ruling by the court that would have Dr. Fry declared incompetent with regard to testamentary capacity and thereby grant the power of attorney to his heirs, in this case the aforementioned Mr. Dorsey. Dr. Fry had chosen to fight. Much to his chagrin, Chance had been asked to appear as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiff. Things being what they were, the entire proceeding, on the books now for at least two weeks, had slipped his mind.

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked, her voice at a whisper. She was standing at Chance’s shoulder. He had just seen the men into his office. The question seemed to have become a standard one of late. Given his current circumstances, any interest in his well-being from any quarter was more than welcome. “I’m good to go,” he told her. “But thank you. Thank you for asking.” A moment passed between them. “You’ve changed your hair,” he said. “There’s more red in it today.”

“Umm, for about two weeks now.”

“Really? I’m sorry I didn’t notice.”

Lucy just looked at him. She seemed torn between laughter and a call to 911.

“I like it. Did I say that?”

“You did, just now.”

Chance nodded.

“Doctor…” She looked toward the room, the waiting men.

“Well,” Chance said. “It’s very pretty.”

Depositions were dreadful enough things, the tedious answering of the same tedious questions that had become his meat and potatoes, the barrier he had erected to save him from the Jaclyn Blackstones of the world. This particular day’s proceedings were even more dreadful than most as Chance was soon made witness to an attenuated pissing match between the two attorneys, it being Mr. Green’s contention that with respect to Dr. Chance there was a distinction to be made between a consulting expert and a retained expert. He was no doubt hoping to keep certain of Chance’s original comments, made in his original report to the family regarding a possible neurodegenerative condition, out of the courtroom. Mr. Berg had never heard of such a ridiculous assertion. Nor would he hear of it now. And so it went. By the three-hour mark Chance was not yet fully deposed. “I wonder,” he asked, “if I might take five minutes to use the men’s room?”

“Good idea,” said Mr. Green, and they all went out together. Chance finished first. He left Mr. Berg and Mr. Green, along with the state-certified recorder, whose every act, urination included, seemed carried out in complete silence, arguing the merits of some particular golf course somewhere south of the city. The two were apparently old friends.

Chance found Lucy waving him over as he reentered the waiting room and he crossed to her desk. “She keeps calling,” Lucy said.

“Who?” he asked then realized he had spoken before she’d finished with whatever it was she had to say.

She gave him a look before consulting her pad. “Delores Flowers. She says it’s very important that she talk to you. She says you will know what it’s about.”

He could only wonder if his relief was apparent. “Ah… yes… Ms. Flowers. She and I had a little run-in east of the bridge. You must tell her that you are my office manager and that you have my proxy. Anything she wishes to say to me, she can say to you. There is the matter of a bill for some work that will be done to her car.” He gave her his credit card. “Have her tell the shop or garage or whatever it is to call here. Have them charge this account. That doesn’t take care of things, tell her I will call her after work.”

The remainder of the day was spent in the company of Mr. Berg and Mr. Green. It was, all things considered, the longest, most tedious deposition of them all. The day’s only bright spot was that neither attorney seemed privy to any part of Chance’s history, so recently unearthed. He was left to imagine that, failing conviction for accessory to murder, his career as an expert witness was yet intact.

When the gang of three had gone and he was at last alone, he lay on the floor at the foot of his desk watching the late light at play among clouds through the wonderful old glass of his office windows. “ ‘Lord, it is time…’ ” he said aloud then, skipping from the beginning to the end, “ ‘Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone now, will stay alone.’ ” He’d once been able to recite the poem in its entirety, in the language in which it had been penned. “ ‘Wer jetzt kein Haus hat…’ ” His recitation was interrupted by Lucy calling in from the front desk. “You might want to come out here,” she said.

“Delores Flowers?”

“No, it’s something else.”

He went out to find Jaclyn Blackstone in jeans and a red T-shirt with a picture of Bob Marley on the front beneath a black leather jacket. Her hair appeared fashionably tousled, freshly cut. She was deep in conversation with the tragic Jean-Baptiste, who, perhaps emboldened by Lucy’s becoming friendlier, had come in broad daylight for the hanging of yet one more of his dreadful photographs, an act that till now might just as well have been carried out by a cat burglar operating in reverse.

Chance moved as quickly as possible to separate them, with apologies to Jean-Baptiste for interrupting a conversation he was loath to even imagine while taking Jaclyn by the elbow and steering her into the hall. He had no idea about where to begin. She saved him by going first. “Raymond’s been hurt,” she said. “He caught someone trying to break into his car. Last night.” She took a breath. “The guy threw a knife. He’s in the hospital with a collapsed lung. Another man was murdered.”