Bodily Harm: A Novel

ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Back in his office, Sloane felt the fatigue of the day. He rubbed his eyes to clear his vision and massaged the stiffness in the muscles of his neck. His limbs begged for exercise but were not going to be appeased anytime soon. He had sent the Gallegoses back to their hotel and sent the McFarlands home. Eva had expressed disappointment that she was not allowed to testify about Austin. After days battling anxiety caused by the anticipation of returning to the witness stand, she felt cheated out of the opportunity to talk about her son’s illness. Sloane tried to pacify her with the knowledge that he had submitted a comprehensive brief detailing Austin’s symptoms, but it was little consolation, and he knew words on a page were a poor substitute for a mother’s testimony. He feared Rudolph’s decision was a further indication he had already made up his mind.

John Kannin knocked on Sloane’s partially opened door. He held a bottle of Corona and a can of Diet Coke. “Thought you might need a beer.”

The bottle felt cold in Sloane’s hand and the beer a welcome respite for his throat. As Kannin sat across the desk, Sloane thought back to an evening when he and Tina had shared Chinese food and Tsingtao beer in his San Francisco office. For ten years she had been his assistant, but firm protocol had prevented him from pursuing her. Now he saw those years as lost time they might have shared but never would. When he witnessed his mother’s murder, Sloane had been just a child and his mind had eased his loss by burying the memory. Even when it resurfaced as a nightmare thirty years later, Sloane could not mourn her death. The years had tempered his memory and blunted his emotions.

Not so with Tina.

Her death remained as painful as the bullets that had pierced and torn his flesh, and Stenopolis’s death had not eased that pain, as Sloane had known it would not. Revenge was a poor substitute for love.

Sloane took a slug of beer as Kannin placed his size thirteen black wing tips on the corner of the desk, crossing his feet.

“Am I missing anything, John?”

Kannin shook his head. “If you are, I’m missing it too. It is what it is, David. You can’t conjure up facts that don’t exist. We knew that going in.”

“The thought of Fitzgerald getting away with this makes me sick.”

“Nobody gets away with anything; we all have to own up to our mistakes eventually.”

“I’d like to see it in a courtroom.”

“Don’t underestimate Rudolph. He has an amazing power to grasp the truth, even when it’s obscured.”

“He’ll follow the law, and he’ll be right in doing so.”

Sloane used his thumb to wipe at the condensation on the outside of the bottle, and it brought another memory, of a game Jake had liked to play. He’d ask Sloane and Tina what they would wish for if they had three wishes. “Have you ever thought about what you’d wish for if you could?”

“You mean like the genie in the lamp?” Kannin smiled. “Not for a long time. But I remember I would always save the last wish for three more wishes.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Who are you, the genie police?”

“Jake’s rule, not mine.”

“Yeah, but back when I was a kid I made the rules. Doesn’t matter, I blew the last wish anyway.”

“On what?”

“I was fifteen, sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs with my old man, and I got caught up in the moment and wished that the Cubs would win a World Series. And just like that”—Kannin snapped his fingers—“I realized I had used my last wish. I had kept it for years, and I remember initially thinking, man, I’ve blown it. But then I thought, what the hell; it would sure make me and my old man happy to see them win one. Hasn’t quite worked out that way yet, but when you’re a Cubs fan hope is eternal.” He sipped his Diet Coke. “How about you, what did you wish for?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re boring.”

“All I ever wanted as a kid was a family. I got that with Jake and Tina. I’d use all three wishes to have her back.”

It was the finality of her death that haunted him. In law, Sloane had found no absolutes. Nothing was black and white, and he was adept at finding the gray area and exploiting it. Not so with Tina’s death. She was gone, and no lawyer’s trick or anything else would ever bring her back.

Kannin flexed the can in his thick hand, making the aluminum crinkle and pop. “She’d want you to be happy.”

“I think the thing I fear most isn’t losing this case, it’s having it end. What do I do when it’s over? How do I go on without her?”

Kannin shook his head. “I’d give my last wish, if I still had it, for the answer to that question for you.”

“I just wish I knew she was okay,” he said, but what he truly meant was that he wished he knew that she had forgiven him.

Kannin finished the remnants, crushed the can, and held it up over his head, as if to shoot a basketball, aiming at the garbage can across the room. “How much?” he asked.

In the two years Sloane had known him, Kannin had tried innumerable times to shoot an empty can or wad of paper into Sloane’s wastebasket. He’d never made one.

“A buck,” Sloane said, offering their usual bet. He removed a dollar from his pocket and slapped it on the desk.

Kannin stood, pretended to dribble a moment, then turned and arched the can across the room. Sloane judged the shot to be long, but the can hit the back wall with a clang and banked directly into the basket.

“Hey!” Kannin raised his arms in triumph and danced around the office. Then he leaned forward and took the dollar bill off the desk, snapping it twice. “I think I’m going to tack this on my wall and call it my lucky buck.”

“Luck is right,” Sloane said. “A bank shot? Please.”

“I’ll take it.” Kannin put the dollar in his pocket. “You need anything before I head out?”

“No. Go home to your family.”

Kannin started for the door, stopped, and turned back, grinning as if struck by a thought.

“What?” Sloane asked.

He glanced over at the garbage can. “I just had one of those déjà vu moments.”

“About what?”

“That day in the bleachers with my dad. You want to know the best part of the story? The best part was when I told him, he didn’t just laugh or dismiss it like he could have. He put an arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Anything’s possible if you have hope.’ I don’t think I ever really considered how prophetic that was until just now.”

He knocked twice on the wall as he left, leaving Sloane alone.

Sloane picked up the phone and called Charles Jenkins, but Alex said he was asleep and she would have him call Sloane when he awoke.

Not eager to go back to his hotel room, which had taken on the feeling of a prison cell, Sloane lingered, going through the day’s mail, then making notes to prepare a closing statement. It was not usual for a hearing, but Rudolph had indicated he would allow both sides a brief summation. Sloane wasn’t overly optimistic it would change anything; his closing would have far less impact on a judge than a jury. But it gave him something to do.

He stood and stretched his back as he looked out the tinted windows, but this time he found no one working in the offices of the adjacent buildings. He was alone. On nights he had worked late Tina used to call to ask when he would be home, but like so many things, he had to accept that also would never again happen.

Then the phone on his desk rang.