Blind Justice Read online

  Blind Justice

  James Scott Bell

  Copyright © 2013 James Scott Bell

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual places, events, or people living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Two

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part Three

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Dedication

  Part One

  Cruelty has a human heart.

  —William Blake

  CHAPTER ONE

  ON THE LAST Thursday in March, 1999, Howie Patino stepped onto Alaska Airlines Flight 190 out of Anchorage, carrying a teddy bear with a little ribbon across the front that read, Alaska’s Cool! Howie wore his best suit, his only suit, because he wanted to look like he was “dressed for success.” He also wore, he told me later, a huge smile. “A big, fat, dumb one,” he said. “How dumb, stupid, and blind can a guy be?”

  His sleep was peaceful on the trip to Los Angeles. Hardly a hint of turbulence. The guy sitting next to him was no trouble at all, chatting amiably without overdoing it. Mostly Howie slept and dreamed of Rae—Rae in a bathing suit. Rae sitting by the pool and offering him a long, cool drink. Rae making kissing noises at him just like she used to.

  Howie woke up smiling when the plane touched down at the Los Angeles Airport as smooth as a swan gliding onto a pond at Disneyland. That was one of Howie’s favorite places. He and Rae had gone there on their honeymoon. He told me that Rae’s favorite attraction was “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.” They went on it five times that night, laughing and screaming like little kids.

  The sleep on the plane had removed any creeping hint of fatigue, so Howie wasn’t tired when he finally made it to the Greyhound station and boarded the bus. It had all gone so well to this point. Howie closed his eyes and thanked God that he and Rae would be together even sooner than planned.

  The trip north, though, took forever.

  It was bumper-to-bumper into Westwood and through the Sepulveda Pass. Things opened up a little in Sherman Oaks but tightened again around Tarzana. All the way up, Howie ticked off the towns in his head in a cadence of anticipation: Calabasas and Agoura, Westlake and Thousand Oaks, Ventura and Ojai. Like stepping stones across dividing waters, they were taking him closer and closer to Rae.

  It was pure night when the bus finally pulled into Hinton. Moonless. And the town, in its peculiar rustic ceremony, was starting to fold up. Through the bus window Howie saw a few tourists sitting on the outside patio of the Hinton Hotel sipping evening wine and watching the passengers—all three of them—step out into a bit of country California.

  The first to alight was Howie, still holding the teddy bear. An older couple sitting at the hotel smiled at him. A good sign. Howie smiled back, snatched his duffel bag from the sidewalk where the bus driver had dropped it, looped it over his shoulder, and started walking west toward White Oak Avenue.

  Hinton was both strange and familiar, Howie told me. It seemed, as he got further and further from the town square, unnaturally still. Mixed with the hopeful perfume of orange blossoms and sage, the smell of cows and dry weeds wafted through the air. Howie said later that those were the last smells he remembered, until that final smell, the awful stench of fresh blood that he would mention in the police report.

  At White Oak he turned south under an awning of towering eucalyptus trees. It was like walking through a dark tunnel, Howie said, but he knew where the light at the end was—home and Rae, security and warmth. All would be well once again.

  When he finally reached the front door of the little house at the end of White Oak, he was dizzy with excitement. He tossed the duffel bag onto the porch and held the teddy bear behind his back as he reached for the doorknob. The door was locked, though, and Rae hadn’t given him a house key when he left for Alaska. This was one of her peculiarities, which Howie overlooked through eyes of love. He wouldn’t be sneaking in for the surprise he’d planned, so he knocked.

  And waited.

  And knocked again.

  He shouted, “Rae!” and pounded on the door.

  No answer. No lights on inside.

  He set the little bear on top of the duffel bag and went around to the side gate, finding it padlocked. It had never been padlocked before. Something wasn’t right.

  “Rae!”

  A dog barked in the yard next door.

  “Quiet!” Howie ordered as he scaled the wall and jumped into the side yard, knocking over a recycling container. It thudded hard on the walkway, its contents of bottles and cans spilling onto the concrete.

  The dog barked louder.

  “Quiet, boy!”

  Howie slipped around to the back patio. The sliding glass door was never locked. Never a need for it in Hinton. He would get in that way.

  But tonight it was locked. Howie banged on the glass with his fist. No answer from inside.

  Okay, so she wasn’t home.

  Where was she then? Out with friends maybe. She wasn’t expecting him, after all. He’d caught an early flight because he wanted to surprise her. All this was his own fault, Rae would tell him, maybe at the top of her lungs. That was her way sometimes. He’d grown used to it.

  Howie considered his choices. He could grab his stuff and go downtown and have a Coke while he waited. He could see if she was at Sue’s house, and if not, he could ask Sue to make some calls.

  Or he could try to get in the house.

  With full force, Howie yanked the sliding glass door. The lock snapped, and the door slid open. Later, Howie would say he didn’t realize he had that much strength and speculated that his action might have been due to something more welled up inside him, a part of him he never knew he had, like when a mother suddenly gets the strength to lift an automobile when her child is trapped underneath.

  Howie entered the house, found a lamp, and turned on the light.

  The first thing he noticed was the sofa and the clothes tossed carelessly on it. Rae was never much of a housekeeper, but this was an out-and-out mess. On an end table was an ashtray with a few cigarette butts. Rae had supposedly quit smoking. Had she started up again while he was away?

  Howie stood and listened for a few moments, and not hearing anything, walked down the hall to the master bedroom.

  He opened the door and turned on the light.

  Someone was in bed. The covers moved and then Rae Patino sat up.

  “Ra
e, didn’t you hear me?”

  Her red hair was messy. With a head toss she whisked the strands out of her face and stared at him coldly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m home.”

  “Tomorrow. You said tomorrow night.”

  “Surprised?” He took a few steps toward her, his arms out for an embrace.

  Rae recoiled. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Honey, what are you talking about?”

  “You just can’t, that’s all.”

  “Can’t? But—”

  “Just leave, Howie.”

  “But Rae, I’m home.” He said it like he had to convince himself.

  Rae sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Look,” she said, “you might as well know it now. I’m in love with somebody else.”

  It wouldn’t have been any different, Howie said later, if she had stuck a knife in his stomach and carved him like a Halloween pumpkin. That was the moment things started to go fuzzy on him. He was in and out after that, feeling dizzy half the time and plain lost the other half.

  He figured a half hour went by as he pleaded with her, cried in front of her, begged her to see someone for counseling. It seemed to him she was, by turns, cold and caring, obstinate and open. He thought there might be at least some hope of reconciliation, if only she’d try.

  And then there was the matter of Brian. During the course of the conversation, Howie asked Rae where their five-year-old son was, and she told him he was at Sue’s house, where he loved to visit. It seemed odd to Howie that Brian would be there in the middle of the week, but he paid it no mind. It was more important to talk about their future, the three of them, together.

  Howie finally said, “We can all move up there now. I’ve got a place and a good job. They’re building like crazy, and it’s a great place for a kid to grow up.”

  Rae was unmoved. “I’m not going to freeze in Alaska, you can bet on that.”

  “Rae, please. We need to be together. For Brian.”

  When he said that, her eyes seemed to darken. Howie remembered that explicitly. It was like looking into two dead pools at midnight.

  “What makes you so proud?” Rae said.

  “Proud?”

  “Yeah, proud.”

  “Proud of what?”

  “Brian.” Her voice seemed to spit the name.

  “What are you talking about, Rae?”

  “I’m talking about Brian, Howie.”

  “What about him?”

  “What makes you think he’s yours?”

  It was the smile on her face then that unlatched a dark door to some unnamed oblivion. Howie’s memories of the next few minutes were short, surreal images, which included that smile twisting her face into a funhouse clown expression, the mockery of it, and her hands clasped behind her head as she lay on the bed as if showing Howie what he would never have again. Then came the blackness followed by the gleam of a blade, a flash almost as bright as a tabloid photographer’s camera, a scream, the red stained sheets, the sounds of a woman sucking for breath, and that final image he couldn’t get away from, that he kept mentioning over and over. “The devil,” the police report stated. “Suspect keeps talking about the devil.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHILE HOWIE PATINO was confronting horror he could scarcely have imagined, I was trying hard to come up with one good reason why I should continue to breathe.

  Max’s Tavern was crowded for a Thursday night. Three ex-jocks—I could tell because I am an ex-jock and know how I used to get obnoxious and annoy people—were fooling around at the pool table near the back. I watched them for awhile as they alternately strutted, posed, and laughed at their own beer-induced hilarity.

  I was sitting at a table with a yellow legal pad in front of me. Most people don’t approach suicide on a rational basis. It’s an emotional decision with, I guess, as many psychological reasons as there are people. Not that I am unemotional, but I do have a certain kind of permanent brain damage known as the “legal mind.”

  It was 1999 and I’d been a lawyer for almost seven years. Having spent three years in law school, my mind did not work like that of a normal person, especially after four shots of bourbon chased with two beers. Which is why I was approaching the decision whether to off myself just as I would any other matter, legal or practical.

  Here’s how I do it.

  I divide a piece of paper into two columns. On the left I list all the arguments or facts that lead one way. On the right I list the counterarguments and considerations. When that is all done, I take stock and let my rational mind decide the best course of action.

  I had that line down the sheet of paper in front of me, and on the left-hand side I wrote the first argument in favor of checking out of life: Disgraced.

  Just how disgraced had come home to me earlier in the day when I couldn’t even get assigned a drunk driving case from a commissioner out in the sticks of Calabasas. I’d shown up early in hope of getting a case to bring in some badly needed bucks. Court assignments don’t pay much, but they can stop financial hemorrhaging when the wallet is thin.

  In my case I was flowing red because Gil Lee had asked me for last month’s rent on my office and in his own sweet way was starting to make eviction noises.

  I went to court on a tip from the Calabasas clerk about a possible conflict case. That meant there was a slight chance I’d get assigned, which also meant a case to nurse along on the county dole. With no other prospects, I snapped at the chance.

  I never got it. Commissioner Craig Noonan refused to give me the case. I charged back to his chambers to ask him why. “Because,” he said, “you’re a disgrace to the legal profession.”

  Part of my brain began to formulate the insults I would hurl back in Noonan’s face—good ones laced with epithets—while in another part of my mind I heard myself agreeing with him. That word, disgrace, has a particular history with me. I could hear the voice of my father saying it. I could see myself ten years ago deciding to go to law school so I could show the old man I was better than he ever thought, even though he was dead. There’s something immutable about what fathers say to sons. So I was going to be the greatest lawyer the world had ever seen, or at least one of the most successful, with a huge salary, a corner office with a view, and long lines of powerhouse clients begging me to represent them. That would show Dad.

  But now I was standing in Noonan’s chambers begging him to flip me a scrap off the table of leftover misdemeanors, and he was telling me I was a disgrace to the profession.

  That is why the word disgraced was the first on my list in Max’s Tavern. Noonan was right.

  I wrote a few more words on the left side of the legal pad:

  No prospects.

  No money.

  No future.

  No wife.

  No daughter—maybe.

  The last two notations referred to the wife who had divorced me and our five-year-old daughter. Ex-wife had remarried, had custody, and had told me two weeks ago that she and new husband, along with daughter, might move back east to North Carolina where new hubby had a job offer.

  That meant my visitations with Mandy would be of the once-a-year variety, if, and this was a big if, I could come up with airfare.

  I paused in my ruminations of self-ruin to order another beer. The three ex-jocks were still making a scene around the pool table, laughing at high decibel levels and sword fighting with their pool cues. They were in their twenties. I was thirty-two but felt a couple decades older. I wanted go over and tell them to enjoy their laughter while it lasts because it won’t last long.

  With the fresh beer served, I decided to write some things in the plus column.

  That’s when I started to get scared.

  I couldn’t think of anything to write—not a single, solitary thing. I suppose that if I’d thought hard enough I could have come up with something, even if it was a lie.

  But there I sat wondering if I’d actually convinced myself that I had no choic
e but to do the Dutch.

  I sat there for maybe ten minutes, just staring at the list.

  Then it hit me, the one thing I could write. And this one thing was powerful enough to tip the scales all by itself. I wrote:

  Mandy.

  Even in my inebriated reflections of doom, I knew somewhere deep down I couldn’t do this to my only daughter. I couldn’t saddle her with the lifelong curse of a father who committed suicide.

  I tore off the page of legal paper, crumpled it up, and tossed it on the floor. Like it or not, I couldn’t check out by way of my own hand. Then my legal mind automatically started considering alternatives—like an accident. . . .

  Suddenly I started to laugh. It was a drunk’s laugh, the kind that seems like it won’t shut off. I got to where I was laughing so hard that the three ex-jocks actually stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I think one of them may have asked me what was so funny.

  I was in no condition to explain that I was laughing because I had decided that my only hope in life, the one thing I was wishing for, was to be hit by a truck doing seventy miles an hour.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHEN I WOKE up, the talons of a predatory bird were embedded in my head.

  Hangovers, I’ve come to believe, are related to animals and come in various forms, such as the crushing press of an elephant’s foot or the sharp report of a woodpecker pounding out a new home in the cerebral cortex. Most often, for me, hangovers came in the form of talons gripping my temples. I groaned, rolled over, and saw an angry red 10:15 on my digital clock. I gripped my entire forehead with one hand. Forget about going into the office. I’ll just die here in bed.

  As I lay there wondering whether to call the embalmer, the phone rang. The talons dug in harder.

  I fumbled for the phone. “Yeah?”

  “Jake?” It was my lovely ex, Barb, she of the exquisite timing.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “How are you?”

  “You know me.”

  “Taking care of yourself?”