William Bernhardt - Blind Justice

“Such as?”

“Such as, getting me off the hook against incredible odds— numéro un. Deux , nailing Stanford for killing Lennie. Trois , convincing the U.S. Attorney’s Office that Margot should get counseling, rather than a jail sentence. Quatre , finding Spud a nice job at the file desk in the downtown police station.”

“Mike had something to do with that.”

“ Cinq , saving Polly from Reynolds and finding her a good home with Wolf, whom you also managed to keep out of J.D. court. Six , um—” Her eyes darted from side to side. She stalled for time. “Er, getting rid of those chickens.”

“Stretching it a bit, aren’t we?”

“Well, okay, number five was really two impossible things. The point is, Ben, you’re a winner and everyone knows it but you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m rather busy. I’ve got a lot of work to do if I’m going to whip this Popsicle joint into shape.”

She closed her briefcase, put it away, and opened her top desk drawer. “Oh!” She gasped. “Ben!” She removed her small French porcelain pig, cochon emblazoned on the side. The cracks showed where it had been broken, but it was more or less intact. “You put my French piggy back together! And put it in my—” She looked up at him. “Then you must have known!”

“Well, I suspected.”

“But this is so—oh, Ben!” She placed the pig atop her desk and looked up at Ben with sparkling eyes. “I’m going to keep my piggy right there, always. And whenever I look at it, I’ll think of you.”

How flattering.

Ben surveyed his new office, marveling at the changes. No toilet paper, no chickens. Loving was growling into his phone, threatening to “make someone’s life a misery.” Jones was banging away at the typewriter, still typing on the wrong side of the carbon. And Christina was right beside him: Safe.

Ben smiled. Things could be worse.

Acknowledgments

I WANT TO THANK Kathy Mozingo and Deborah Loss for their assistance in the preparation of the manuscript; Arlene Joplin and Kindy Jones for their assistance with the intricacies of federal criminal law; countless volunteers at the Oklahoma offices of the American Humane Society; and my wife Kirsten, for the closet bit.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1992 by William Bernhardt

cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4532-7713-3

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