Unfit to Practice

“You don’t stay in one place long, do you?”

“I was looking for the right place. I’ve found it now.”

“You know that after less than a year?”

“That’s right.”

“You think this one’s going to stick when the others haven’t?”

“I’ve been promoted once already. I think I’m doing well.”

“Not all that well, actually. I understand you failed the detective exam when you took it this summer?”

“I put a lot of time in with my kids. I guess I just haven’t put my energy there.”

“Are you going to take it again?”

“I’m pla

“You’ll have to study nights for it?”

“I’ll make sure Heather and Joey come first.”

“Of course, if you happen to pass it this time, that will mean you spend even more hours on the job, is that correct?”

“Probably, but now the kids are in school, that should work okay and the extra money will come in handy.”

“Or you’ll flunk it again and move on to some new town?”

“No. I’m settling here.”

“Now, you say that money would come in handy, Mr. Cruz?”

“Yes.”

“Do you resent the child support you’ve had to pay pending this hearing while the children were with their mother?”

“No.”

“You’ve paid late three months out of nine months. Is that what you call being financially responsible?”

“There was some kind of foul-up. It’s corrected.”

“The kids didn’t get the money they needed, and it’s just a foul-up to you?”

Kevin’s face hardened. “I love my kids.”

“You’d rather spend the money on, let’s see, new bowling shoes the first month you were late, and, oh, in August there was that trip to Vegas.”

“It was one weekend. The child support was only ten days late.”

“So what comes first?” Riesner said, taking a long step toward the witness box and sticking his chin out.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You know, bowling shoes and Vegas seem to come first. The kids can wait.”

Kevin put his hand up to his mouth. “I-”

“Move to strike that last malicious comment by counsel,” Nina said.

“I’ll withdraw it, Judge. How’s your temper, Mr. Cruz?”

“Well, I think I’m holding on to it pretty good, considering how you’re talking to me right now.”

That got a relieved laugh from the audience, and Nina thought, he’s going to get through it.

“Tell us more about your schedule, Mr. Cruz. How do you intend to put in the time it takes to raise your children when you’re never home?”

Kevin kept his cool, got a few more chuckles, even one from Judge Milne, kept smiling, and looked confident.

Nina was satisfied. Aside from the vague and unproven trouble on his first job, which did not reflect badly on his abilities as a parent, and the late child support, Kevin had the edge. He was never violent with his kids. He wouldn’t even spank them. Even Lisa had admitted that.

At lunchtime, Judge Milne adjourned the hearing until the next day. Kevin made a mumbled excuse and ran out ahead of Nina before she could speak with him.

Feeling like she’d had all her teeth yanked out of her jaw, the usual feeling that the court clerks, the other attorneys, and the witnesses milling around her in the hall probably shared as they made their way toward the exit at noon, Nina hurried out. As she left the courtroom in the crowd, Jeffrey Riesner sidled up behind her, brazenly close, brushing against her, walking in step, mimicking her short, swift stride for a few moments. She forced herself to ignore him. Thinking back to the case, hustling away, she refused to dirty her mind with rank images of what lurked underneath the gray silk slacks he had pressed so noxiously close.

In the hallway, where the other courtrooms were adjourning for the break, she felt a hard push to her shoulder and whirled around, prepared to confront him. But instead of Jeffrey Riesner, Officer Jean Scholl now stood behind her, uniformed, a skyscraper to Nina’s low bungalow, six feet tall if she was an inch. “Ms. Reilly,” Scholl said, her voice a slow drawl. “So sorry to jostle you like that, but you got right in my way.”

“I don’t believe I did,” Nina said firmly, standing her ground. “Look, if you have something you have to say, why not just spit it out?”

“Okay,” Scholl said, a hand on her hip. By now several other police officers had paused to watch. “Stay out of my face. I don’t appreciate the way you handled the Guitierrez case. You made me look bad, when I was just doing the best job I can. I like to think we both serve justice, but when it comes to someone like you, I wonder. Now, you and I both know he stole that T-Bird and wrecked it.”

“The judge saw it differently,” Nina said. “Obviously, since he let the man off.”

Scholl leaned in until Nina could feel the heat of her breath. “We didn’t read him his rights because the rotgut he was drinking left him comatose. He wouldn’t have understood them anyway.”

“He has the right to a defense. He got it.”

“Technicalities be damned,” Scholl said. “Did you ever think about the kid who spent six years restoring that car? He came into our offices crying. But you don’t give a damn about that, do you? You don’t think about all the harm you cause, setting bad guys loose.”

“Are you done?” Nina asked.

Stepping back slightly, Scholl nodded. “Look forward to seeing you in court again real soon, Counselor.”

Nina fled for the outdoors.

Caught in a rush of wind, her friend Betty, a deputy clerk, sighed, “A big one coming up.” The trees around them rattled and Nina watched clouds massing over the Sierra Nevada to the east. Betty ran for her car. Clutching her blue blazer around her, Nina ran for Paul’s new Mustang, parked in a no-parking zone right out front.

“Let’s blow, otherwise you’ll get a ticket for sure,” she told Paul as she climbed into the passenger’s seat. “There were at least ten police officers in the hall with me. Some big drug case. Jean Scholl was in there. She’s a real old-timer in the department, been there eight years at least and also has a lot of support in the sheriff’s department. She blew up at me in front of everybody. She’d love to lay a ticket on us.”

Paul backed out.

“I don’t know why, but lately it seems like she’s involved in every case I defend. I think she’s taking it personally.” Nina consulted her watch. “I’m exactly four hours into my day. I had to take a witness apart and it was damned unpleasant. Jeff Riesner was opposing counsel. I had to sit passively through his nasty cross of my client. Then Officer Scholl gave me a push and a warning. A morning like this makes me wonder why I do it.”

“Hello to you, too, Beautiful,” Paul said.

She exhaled the breath she had been holding and all the poisons of the courtroom went with it. She smiled, shook her head, said, “Sorry.”

The man deserved her full attention. Ah, how she adored him. Tall and blond and hers at the moment, Paul van Wagoner worked for her as an investigator now and then. She had spent the past several weeks at his home in Carmel playing house, making love, and jumping ocean waves with him. Now they were back to their real lives, his in Carmel and hers in Tahoe, and, although the geographical separations hurt, Nina felt more tightly bound to him every day.

Using his left hand, he pulled out of the lot. His right arm circled her, pulling her close to him.

Taking in the fresh smell of his leather jacket, she kissed his cheek, letting the physical tensions of the morning slip away in his comforting presence. “The farther we get from the courthouse, the better.”

“Good. Let’s go all the way out to the Y and eat at Passaretti’s. You have time?”

“Kevin Cruz’s hearing was adjourned for the day. We start up again tomorrow.”

“Trouble?”

“Besides what you’d expect in a full-scale custody battle?” She paused, reviewing the morning, which chugged through her mind in a blur of questions, answers, and lightning judgments. “Riesner’s odd lately.”