Interest of Justice Read online

After the Henderson case had been disposed of, Benjamin England had called and asked Lara to dinner. Fluttering with schoolgirl excitement, she had rushed out and bought a new dress, got her hair cut, even fiddled with her makeup so she could be as attractive as possible. And the relationship was developing nicely. Tonight was their fifth date. They’d just finished a lovely dinner at a fine restaurant, sipped a sweet red wine over a pale pink tablecloth and fine china, chatting about books they had read and people they both knew.

  “Why did you take Henderson’s case?” Lara suddenly asked him. “You haven’t taken a criminal case in years.” When they had first gone out, Lara had issued a no-shop-talk policy, but they were running out of other things to talk about. She’d heard all about the sad days of his wife’s illness, her death from breast cancer, heard all about his son at Stanford. Her own personal revelations had consumed no more than thirty minutes of conversation before being exhausted. Her marriage had lasted six months; she couldn’t stretch it that far.

  “To be honest, his mother is a client of mine and she asked me to represent him. Not only did she ask me, but she paid me. I feel sorry for the woman. She built a successful business, a chain of small hotels, but her son is a fucked-up lunatic. Besides, I love criminal law.”

  “I see,” Lara said. “Didn’t it bother you to know you were involved in releasing a dangerous man, a probable killer?”

  England swirled his wine in his glass and gazed at Lara with those magnificent eyes. He sat forward, leaning over the table. “Do you doubt for one moment that even the public defender would have pushed for dismissal and suppression of that confession? Those cops beat him until he collapsed. They broke his arm. They…”

  Lara nodded in agreement. England was right. Even though the P.D. had let it slide and the defendant was so whacko that he didn’t realize his rights had been violated, it would have all come to light in the end. They were all just doing their jobs. England had done his well; the cops had not.

  “I can’t really believe you even asked me that,” he said, raising his eyebrows in a questioning expression. The waiters were yanking off tablecloths and setting up for the next day. They would have to leave soon.

  “It’s just sad for the family when something like this goes down,” Lara said. “I feel for them, you know.”

  He was a little abrupt, somewhat shocked at her emotional involvement. “Then you might be in the wrong profession,” he said.

  Lara smiled. “Just a little feminine regression. I love my position, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Anyway, I think they’re about to throw us out.”

  England draped an arm around her walking to his Mercedes in the parking lot. When he suggested they continue the evening at his sprawling home in the Tustin hills, Lara eagerly agreed. Five dates was a respectable amount of time. It was obvious where the evening was heading.

  He had thick candles burning around the large Jacuzzi; two chilled glasses and a bottle of wine were set on the stone ledge. Soft music filtered out of two stereo speakers designed to look like boulders positioned among the greenery. It was overcast and the air was heavy and moist. He slipped her sweater off her shoulders with thin, tapered fingers. She inhaled his scent, something musky and masculine. She really didn’t need the wine; she was already intoxicated by the moment—ready, willing.

  “Look at you,” he said, “even your shoulders are beautiful. I don’t know why you always cover them up.” He bent down and kissed each one, moving his mouth to her neck and tugging on her sweater until her breasts were exposed, encased in her bra. He slipped his hands behind her and unsnapped the hook. Tossing the flimsy bra to a dark corner of the patio, he quickly seized her breasts in both hands and squeezed them like lemons.

  “Don’t squeeze too hard,” she whispered in his ear. “They’re sensitive. Be gentle.”

  He ignored her and locked his mouth on one and started sucking, moving his teeth over the nipple like he wanted to take a bite. She unzipped his pants and let her hands slide over his hips, pulling him closer to her body.

  “God, you feel so good,” he said in a raspy voice. “I want you.”

  She could tell; he was eager, his eyes heavy-lidded with lust. His erection was pushing against, her, strong, solid, his hand making its way up the inside of her thigh and ending up between her legs on the crotch of her panty hose. “Are we going to get in the water?”

  “What water?”

  “Your neighbors will see us. Let’s go inside.”

  “No one will see us. I want you here.” The panty hose was down and she was exposed from the waist up, her sweater being swiftly removed and tossed like her bra. He groped under her skirt, his fingers probing inside her. She moaned, trying to let the pleasure take her, but then she jerked away.

  “What’s wrong?” he mumbled, undaunted, his breath hot and fast, his fingers back again, more insistent than ever.

  “You have a hangnail.”

  He didn’t reply and removed her skirt, letting it fall to the ground. “Bend over. I want to take you right here.”

  “Protection…” she said. This was the nineties: safe sex, condoms.

  “I have it,” he said. His arms were already turning her around, and he moved in close behind her, pushing gently but firmly on her back until she bent over and placed her hands on the cool stone surrounding the Jacuzzi. In seconds she felt him push himself inside her, and her body began to respond. The strokes were long and smooth. Her mouth fell open and she moved with him, almost in time with the music, a soulful Kenny G tune, while her long dark hair tumbled over her head and brushed the ledge, several strands floating on the water. She tried to shut out everything but the feeling, the sounds, the excitement. It was going to be good, and she needed it desperately. They would make mad, passionate love all night, and she would sleep in his arms, warm and secure, waking to make love again in the early morning hours before the sun came up. They would take vacations to Las Hades and Palm Springs and spend Christmas and Thanksgiving together. She would buy a string bikini and a dozen off-the-shoulder slinky black dresses with hems four inches above her knees. His hands gripped her around the waist and the pace quickened. She began panting with mounting desire and anticipation of the sun-filled days ahead.

  Then it stopped.

  He didn’t cry out or moan or sigh. He just stopped. She waited, thinking it would continue but she could tell it was over. Inside her body he was retracting, shrinking.

  “That was wonderful,” he panted, pulling her to a standing position and kissing the back of her neck. In seconds the panting stopped. “Want to get in the Jacuzzi now?”

  She stuttered, “I…oh, we could…” She watched as he stepped into the swirling water and reached for his wineglass. It was no use suggesting that they go inside to continue this in the bedroom, continue it to the point where she too could enjoy it. Mission accomplished, she thought. Case closed. Another notch on the old belt, already heavily notched with all the willing secretaries and law clerks and divorcees that had gone before her. He was leaning his head back with his eyes closed as if she were already gone.

  “Boy, today was a bitch. I’m dead. One of my clients came storming in today threatening to sue me because he has to pay fifty grand to his ex-wife. The nerve of these assholes. Never fails to amaze me. Without me, he would have paid a hundred grand. Believe me, if it weren’t for the money, all my cases would be criminal. But the crooks can’t pay, so…” He sipped his wine, opening his eyes momentarily and then closing them again. The other wineglass remained empty. He made no move to fill it.

  Lara stood there naked, her arms wrapped around her breasts. It was always chilly at night in Southern California. She glanced around her. The yard was enclosed with a white picket fence—charming, probably his wife’s idea, but not capable of affording them privacy. She imagined the neighbors watching them through the slats of the fence, looking at her standing there exposed. Had they seen her bending over the Jacuzzi a few minutes before?

  �
�I think I’ll go home now,” she told him. “I had a long day too.” She started searching for her clothes. Some of them were wet, having been tossed in puddles of water splashed from the Jacuzzi. She picked up her soggy bra and shoved it into her purse.

  “Now?” he said, his eyes springing open, the muscles in his face, previously relaxed, tense. “You want me to drive you home now? Right now?”

  “Well, you said you were tired. The evening’s over.” She didn’t look at him. She was stepping into her skirt.

  “Just sleep here. I can drive you to the office in the morning. I’m too tired to drive anywhere right now.” He leaned back in the Jacuzzi and closed his eyes again.

  She was frustrated and angry. “I said I’m ready to go home, Benjamin. Will you please have the common courtesy to drive me?”

  “Can’t you take a cab?” he said without opening his eyes.

  Impulsively she kicked the empty glass into the water and exploded. “You’re an asshole, a self-centered asshole.” She stomped into the house and called a cab, waiting on the doorstep until it arrived. So much for this fantasy, she told herself. The cab pulled up and she climbed in the backseat, giving the driver her address.

  Thirty minutes later, the cab pulled up to her modest ranch house in Irvine, a far cry from England’s palatial spread. Lara was sound asleep in the backseat, and the cabbie had to wake her. Then she had to search the littered contents of her purse for enough money to pay him, dumping out all the change and counting it out into his palm.

  The house was dark. She had her shoes in her hands, her feet were killing her, and she now had a throbbing headache. Postcoitus syndrome, she thought. Post-nothing syndrome was more like it. She was about to put the key in the door when she saw a small card stuck into the slit. She pulled it out and tried to read it, but it was impossible in the dark. Dropping her shoes on the porch, she unlocked the door and flipped on the light.

  Her heart started racing and she almost screamed. Quickly she glanced at the card and saw it was from the sheriff’s department. She’d been burglarized. The police had responded around seven-thirty when her alarm had gone off, only a few minutes after Benjamin had picked her up.

  Her eyes took in the damage. Everything she owned was dumped in the middle of the floor, and the place was a total shambles. Even the cushions on her new sofa were slit, and the stuffing was scattered everywhere like thick balls of snow.

  She just stood and stared. Although a residential burglary probably occurred every second in Los Angeles, she had never been hit. She felt violated. They had gone through her things. Her head was pounding so violently that she knew she had to sit down. But she couldn’t disturb anything. She went to the garage, hoping the doorknob wasn’t the only one in the house with fingerprints, and called the sheriff’s office from the car phone in her Jaguar. Then she hit the garage door opener and sat in the dark until they arrived.

  An hour had passed. Lara stood on the back porch with one of the police officers while evidence people were still working inside the house. One of them was hammering a piece of plywood over the broken window where the intruder had entered. Lara was picking dead white roses off a rose bush, oblivious to the thorns. “What?” she said, glancing up at the officer, barely able to hear him over the racket. “You really think it was more than a burglary?” It was three o’clock in the morning, and she was so tired she couldn’t think.

  “Well, nothing was taken of value and the place was ripped apart.” The officer was a well-groomed man in his late thirties. His uniform was tight across his midsection, almost too small. She could see the outline of his bullet-proof vest. “Not many burglars do this type of damage and walk off without taking the TV, VCR, stereo, or something. Just doesn’t make sense.” He had a bag of peanuts squeezed in his pocket and was cracking them open and tossing them into his mouth. “Want a peanut?” he said, offering one to Lara.

  “No, thanks,” she said. ‘Then what were they after, what was the point?”

  “How do I know?” he said nonchalantly. He had a handful of shells now and shoved them into his other pocket rather than toss them on Lara’s porch. “Looked kind of vicious to me. Like maybe someone was looking for you, didn’t find you, and went a little bonkers in there. You know, cushions slit with a knife…stuff like that. The only time I see a crime scene like this one is in a drug deal. When they’re looking for the stash.”

  Lara was deep in thought. Jessica Van Horn’s boyfriend came to mind and his hurled threats in the courtroom. With Henderson safely locked away, there was only her or England to strike back at. Could the boy have followed her from the courthouse one day and come here to act on his threats? She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered. A young man like that, so deeply in love, so devastated by his girlfriend’s death—it was possible.

  “What should I do?” she said.

  “Anyone got a beef to pick with you?” He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking up at the sky. Some of the fog had lifted and he could see the stars. “Didn’t you handle the Henderson case?”

  So, she was notorious. “Yes…” Of course, she had tried hundreds of people, both as a D.A. and as a judge. If a person wanted to count her enemies, they’d have to have a lot of free time.

  “Judge Sanderstone, if I were you…you know,” the officer continued, “I’d find somewhere else to stay for a while. At least until we process the evidence and see what we can find. I’d hate to come out here one night and find you cut up like your sofa.” He had finished the peanuts, and he dusted his hands off. He was deadly serious, his eyes on Lara’s face. Then his vision drifted and Lara realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. With the sheer sweater she had on, her nipples were protruding. His eyes lingered on her chest, and he took a few steps closer. Lara stepped back, putting her arms around her chest again.

  “I have an alarm. I even have a panic button.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well, those are worth jack shit. See, how it works is the alarm company calls us when they get around to it, and then by the time we get here, the perp’s long gone. I’d lay low if I were you. I personally think someone’s got a hard-on for you. They’ll probably come back.”

  “Great,” Lara snapped, jerking her head to the side in anger. That’s all she needed—some off-the-wall lunatic stalking her.

  “Can I go inside now?” She glanced around the yard, all the tall trees and greenery. Even with the officer beside her, she was afraid. They might still be out there, hiding. They could have a gun and start shooting any second. Even before this had happened, she sometimes got frightened in the middle of the night, hearing strange noises, letting her mind wander. She handled so many heinous crimes that they came back to haunt her, always in the twilight hours before dawn. She sometimes had nightmares of autopsy pictures, bloody crime scenes, imagined her own image in the place of the victims.

  Lara didn’t know what to do or where to go. “Don’t you think I’m safe here tonight? I mean, why would he come back the same night?” They went into the house. Lara stopped and made sure the sliding glass door was locked.

  The other men had loaded up their equipment and left. The officer was eager to leave as well, and he moved toward the door. “Probably won’t tonight. But if I were you, I’d get out of here by tomorrow and keep a low profile.”

  “Thanks,” Lara said. Once he was gone, she locked the front door and slid the dead bolt in place. Like she could really keep a low profile. She was beyond logic at this point, into the area of absurdity. I can go to work tomorrow, she thought, and wear a hood over my head. The unknown judge, they could call her.

  She staggered to the bed, certain she would be asleep in minutes. She was wrong. A dog barked, and she jumped, her heart racing. A car backfired and she leaped out of the bed and fell flat on her face on the carpet. By the time the gray light of dawn filtered into the bedroom, she had decided to move out.

  She went through the day in a haze of exhaustion. It was Tuesday and her night to teach at the Unive
rsity of Irvine. Several times she picked up the phone to cancel and then decided against it. She was going to check into a motel that night until she could figure out what to do. I might as well teach my class, she decided, and then hopefully I’ll sleep through the night.

  The evening was pretty disappointing. She taught a class on field officer legal liability, more or less for students majoring in police science and aiming at a career in law enforcement. She’d offered to teach the class, thinking it might be a way to stop police brutality before it even started, telling these soon to be cops what could happen if they stepped out of bounds. Tonight, only about six students showed up. Right after the Henderson matter, the class had been packed—standing room only. The students had wanted to know exactly what was going to happen to the arresting officers. Would they be sued by the defendant? Could they actually go to jail? Would they ever get their jobs back? Tonight, she thought, they must be studying for a big test in another subject.

  After the last student left, Lara headed to the computer lab to pick up her friend and fellow instructor. Emmet Daniels suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The disease caused disintegration of the nerve cells in the spinal cord and the section of the brain that regulates voluntary muscle control. It doesn’t affect the mind, thank God, Lara thought, peering into the lab and seeing the small man sitting in a wheelchair before a computer terminal. Emmet’s genius was renowned, particularly in the area of computer science. UCI was extremely fortunate to acquire him, although he did require a teaching assistant to handle the class. Every year his ability to talk diminished. Soon he might not be able to speak at all and would have to rely on a voice synthesizer. His actual profession was designing computer software for major corporations across the country. Except on Tuesdays, when he taught his class, Emmet worked in his condominium not far from the courthouse. A heavyset woman who lived in his complex drove him to the campus every week, and Lara drove him home.