William Bernhardt - Deadly Justice

Imagine that. “I saw your daughter outside,” Ben said. “She’s a cutie. How’s she taking it?”

“Oh, Kathleen is fine. Except she keeps wanting to crawl around on my cast and stitches. The doctor doesn’t approve.”

“I can imagine. So, Mike,” Ben said pointedly, “wasn’t there something you wanted to tell Sergeant Tomlinson?”

Tomlinson’s eyes perked up.

“What?” Mike said. “Oh…er…well…I guess I wanted to say…you did all right, Tomlinson.”

“Oh. Thank you, sir.”

“Not perfect, of course, but certainly not bad. You showed a lot of guts out there.”

“And that’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Oh.” The gleam faded from his eyes. “Thank you.”

Mike turned away, then stopped. “Oh yeah. One other thing. I approved your transfer to Homicide.”

“You—” His eyes ballooned. A vivid smile spread across his face. “Why—thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Very very much. I won’t disappoint you, sir. I promise. Thank you very very much.”

Mike grinned. “My pleasure. You earned it, kid. Say, if you get bored, you can swap notes with Buddy, the guy who hid the girl. He’s in a room just down the hall. We found him in a warehouse off Eleventh. He was seriously torn up, lost a lot of blood, but I think he’s going to pull through.”

“That’s great,” Tomlinson said. “I’m glad someone else came through this alive.”

Yeah, Ben thought. Someone.

“Don’t kid yourself, Tomlinson. If Fielder hadn’t been stopped, he would’ve killed every name on the Kindergarten Club list. You’ve saved a lot of lives. Right, Ben?”

Ben was no longer standing by the bed. He was facing the window, staring out at the sun setting across the western horizon.

Mike saw something glistening in Ben’s hand. It was a golden necklace, a half-heart with a jagged tear down the center.

Mike and Christina exchanged a meaningful look. If there was something they could do, they’d do it. But there was nothing. It would just take time.

A nurse came through the door pushing a wheelchair.

“Who’s that for?” Mike asked.

“You,” she said briskly.

“Now wait a minute—”

“Don’t bother arguing, Mike.” Christina steered him into the chair. “You’ve been putting off these tests since you tangled with Fielder. For all we know, you could be hemorrhaging in a hundred different places.”

“But—but—”

“Save it.” She waved at the nurse. “Take him away.”

The nurse pivoted by the door. “Oh, Mr. Kincaid?”

Ben turned his head a fraction from the window.

“There’s someone outside who would like to speak to you.”

Ben returned his gaze to the window, then, a few moments later, left the hospital room.

He found Shelly in the visitor’s lounge. She was dressed in a formal business suit—probably came straight from work. She was holding a baby girl in her arms, trussed up in blue ribbons and a white frock.

“This must be Angie,” Ben said.

“Yeah. I just picked her up at day care. Isn’t she beautiful?” Angie rubbed her little fists in her eyes and peered sleepily at Ben. “Can we talk?”

“Sure, Shelly. What’s on your mind?”

“I just…wanted to thank you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I know you know.”

Ben took a paper cup from the water dispenser and poured himself a small drink. “Want to tell me about it? I promise it’ll remain confidential.”

She sighed, then pressed her baby against her chest. “I’ve been with the Apollo legal department for six years now.”

Ben was surprised. Judging from her position, he would’ve guessed she had been there a year, perhaps two.

“They always say corporations are the best places to work when you want to have a family as well as a legal career. Nine-to-five days, no billable hour demands. I didn’t want any special favors; I just wanted some common decency.” She inhaled sharply. “Common decency. Now there’s an oxymoron.

“I learned right off the bat that everything I’d been told about corporate legal staffs was a lie—at Apollo, anyway. The corporation worked its employees just as hard as the firms, maybe harder. Crichton always acted as if he owned me. And there was no outside client to prevent him from exercising complete control over his department—his private kingdom. He did anything he wanted. Crichton and the other men called me honey and sweet young thing . They asked if I was getting any and when I was going to start making babies—and if I wanted any help. If I complained, they said I didn’t know how to take a joke.

“Anyway, so I’ve been here six years, and I’m still in an Attorney One position. Herb’s been promoted. Chuck’s been promoted. Even Doug has been promoted, for God’s sake. Every man in the department has been promoted. But not me.”

“You should file a complaint,” Ben said.

“Oh, they’re way ahead of me there. They’ve been papering my file since day one. You know, I wasn’t always the quiet, mousy, pathetic nonentity you’ve known. When I first came here, I could belly up with the best of them. And on my very first review, they complained that I was too aggressive. Strident. Can you imagine them ever telling a male attorney that he was too aggressive? But that’s what they told me.”

“Crichton, I assume.”

“Yeah. The thing is, I’m not even sure he realizes that there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t think he’s intentionally discriminating against women. I think he’s oblivious to it. I think his sexism, his different standards and expectations, his preference for working with other men, is so deeply ingrained that he isn’t even aware of what he’s doing.

“Anyway, it was clear that if I continued behaving as I had—actively, aggressively—I was going to be out on the streets.”

“So you…changed?”

“Of course. I didn’t feel I had any choice. It was a real compromise—but you know how bad the job market is in the Southwest right now, and it would be even worse if I were fired, or if I quit after receiving a negative review that every subsequent employer would read. So I did what they wanted. I did my work, and I did it quietly. But as you may have noticed, I still haven’t been promoted.”

“Perhaps you should file a Title VII lawsuit.”

“I threatened to do just that, when Crichton started giving me grief about taking maternity leave. So what did they do? They promoted Candice. Not far—certainly not as far as her male peers, but they did give her a token promotion. And we both know why they chose her—she only got that tiny promotion after she gave Herb what he wanted.

“The point is, if I claim Apollo engages in systematic sex discrimination, they’re going to haul out Candice, their token female attorney with a promotion, and deny everything. The only reason Shelly wasn’t promoted, they’ll say, is her poor work performance. And then they’ll haul out all these bullshit evaluations they’ve been writing to prove it.”

“That’s insidious,” Ben said quietly. “You should fight them. Surely some judge would listen to you.”

“Ben, I can’t afford to lose my job. Who’s going to hire me now—a single mother with a three-month-old baby? Forget it. They know I’m helpless. As Crichton himself said, ‘Screw you—where are you going to go?’ ” She pressed her free hand against her forehead. “And then Chuck started doing his junior supervisor routine on me, threatening to get Crichton to fire me. I was so scared. I guess you know Howard was Angie’s father.”

“I suspected.”

“And then he was killed, and I didn’t know what we were going to do.”