A Conflict of Interest

Not this time. Juries were made up of humans. For the first time, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that twelve humans had made a mistake.

That skinny boy might have taken the gun from his father’s safe and loaded the shells. Gil Daley theorized Griff had then walked up two twisting flights of stairs in his right-side-of-Honesty house and stood over his sleeping parents. He’d had all that time to rethink his plan. Could a kid kill his parents because they’d grounded him?

What about his aunt and uncle? Jake studied the last two adults in the Butler family. With their arms around Griff and each other, they still reached with outstretched fingers, seeking even more contact, as if they all feared a cop was going to show up and drag Griff back to his cell.

Angela Hammond had lost her sister. Were she and her husband covering for Griff because he was all that remained of his mother?

Gil hadn’t found the least whiff of violence in the Butler household. However, at the high school, the teachers and principal had described several escalating incidents, from shoving in the hall to a more dangerous infraction in the boys’ room, when Griff had shoved a freshman’s head into the toilet.

Which any kid might do if his therapist were abusing him.

Jake straightened, searching inwardly for his customary sense of justice served. Time and the law moved forward, and Jake had no choice. The jury’s decision ruled.

“Mr. Butler, you are free to go.”

Shouting and laughter clashed. A couple of groans layered in an undertone. The boy and his relatives started hugging all over again, still stunned and even happier.

Holding his gavel loosely in his hands, Jake eyed Griff Butler with Maria’s doubt, but Griff was oblivious. He wriggled toward the aisle, past his attorneys, but then he saw Maria.

She leaned toward the kid, her face vulnerable, soft with concern.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak. Jake almost lifted his hand, to warn her. Griff’s aunt saw her nephew’s confusion, and she spun, a look of chilling rage freezing her face.

Maria stared at Angela, her eyes soft with pity. Jake swore silently as Angela’s mouth straightened into a bitter slash. He didn’t have to read lips to guess at the words she spit at Maria. David, her husband, regarded his wife with the dismay of a man confronting a stranger.

Maria stood her ground—sat it—without wavering. David gathered Angela and Griff into his arms and dragged them toward the exit.

The fight seeped out of Maria. She lowered her head as if she couldn’t hold it up. Her shoulders hunched. Light glittered in the curls that framed her pale cheeks.

Her air of submission startled Jake more than any other move she’d made. He slammed the gavel onto its rest. “Court dismissed.”

He turned to the doors behind him and the bailiff, a friend since the first time Jake had defended a client in this building, opened the door.

“Over at last, sir,” he said.

“Yeah, Joe.”

“You should go out that back way, too. Those guys are going to want your opinion on the verdict.”

“I have no opinion, Joe.” It was the way he lived. Objective. As Maria had said, determined to see all sides of any argument.

Camera flashes lit up the back of the courtroom. Some of the press had come from D.C. and beyond. Griff Butler’s father had been a congressman before he’d resigned to make money building strip malls. Griff’s arrest had made big news because of his family name, as well as the depraved nature of his alleged crime.

Jake would like nothing better than to go to his chambers, hang up his robe and spit the taste of this trial out of his mouth. Instead, he had to decide whether to ruin Maria’s career and turn her into a pariah in Honesty. No one would ever trust her again if one of the town’s leading judges believed she’d seduced a patient.

“What do you think, Joe?”

“I’m with you. The jury does all the thinking. That’s our system.”

So why did Jake feel as if he were trying to find steady ground with one foot on either side of a fissure? All his assumptions were suspect.

“I hope you’re right, Joe.” He must be.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do the right thing.” The bailiff held the door and nodded before he went on to his next task.

In his office, Jake took a bottle of Scotch from his desk drawer. On a normal verdict day, it would have been celebratory Scotch. He entered a trial entirely on the fence, but he usually had a gut feeling before the verdict came in.

His gut had deserted him. He shoved the drawer shut and dropped into a leather chair that rocked backward.

He couldn’t ask Maria if she was a liar. He had her reply. Couldn’t ask her clients. He didn’t know who they were, and how could he trust their answers?

He spun his chair to face the window and the snow that had blanketed the courthouse square.

Wait a minute. He knew someone whose teenage son had seen Maria.

Jake picked up his phone and dialed Aidan Nikolas. A businessman and a friend of Jake’s since he’d moved to Honesty, Aidan had mentioned that Maria was his stepson’s therapist. She’d also worked for Aidan when he’d still lived in D.C.

Aidan answered his cell, out of breath. Behind his harried hello, a voice on an airport PA system called all passengers to board.

“Jake? I only have a second. What can I do for you?”

A second? He resisted a damn-near compulsion to back down and hang up. “I have some questions about Dr. Keaton.”

“Maria? She’s great. Remember when Eli was so depressed? He depended on her, and he still sees her occasionally for what she calls refreshers.”

“What kind of refresher? Why would she insist on seeing a kid after he was well?” Jake felt dirty and angry. He got himself under control. “Why should he still need her?”

“Insist? Did I say that? What are you talking about?”

“Just getting a little information. Why does she still see Eli?”

“He tried to commit suicide a year and a half ago, and he’s in the midst of adolescence. He’ll talk to her, even when he clams up on Beth and me.”

“Okay, but why doesn’t she wait for you to call her?”

“Sometimes she does, but depression doesn’t make a kid instinctively ask for help.”

“And she worked for you in Washington?”

The phone filled with airport noise. “What is this?” Aidan asked. “You heard that I had to fire her?”

“What?” The room closed in.

“Why are you butting into Maria’s business? Is something wrong with Leila?”

“It’s not Leila, but I need information.”

“Maria’s testifying in the Griff Butler case. What’s gone wrong?” Again, the PA voice demanded that passengers board. “Jake, did you just ease me into saying something I shouldn’t have about Maria?”

“Like what?” The years that had passed since he’d done investigative work had made him clumsy. Inconvenient attraction to Maria had nothing to do with his heavy hands.

“She does not lie. Is that what you’re asking me?”

To hell with subtlety. “The defendant made troubling accusations.”

“You mean, the guy who confessed he’d killed his parents and then decided he hadn’t?”

“The guy’s a sixteen-year-old kid.”

“Who shot both his parents in cold blood.”

“You believe her? I guess that’s an answer.” Jake took solace in the familiar law books, stacked wall to wall in his office. Nothing came before justice. Not even his own need to believe that Maria was not the woman Griff Butler and Buck Collier had painted her in that courtroom. “Why’d you fire her?”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“I have to know, Aidan.”

Heavy silence stretched between them. Jake let it go on. Aidan would answer if he kept quiet.

“I was fixing problems before they started. When I hired her, there had been several incidences of office rage in the news, and investments are high pressure at the best of times. We tried her out as someone the staff could talk to, but I have a company full of corporate types. Maria encouraged them to relax, rather than stress. That didn’t work with my people. They thrive on structure. When she left, it was more mutual than me firing her.”

“I’m not prying into your company’s business, but did she ever do anything you considered inappropriate?”

“Inappropriate? What the hell are you talking about? What’s Maria done?”

“You’re quick to assume she has done something. I thought you trusted her.” Man, he felt like a jerk. He’d rather not help Griff and Buck ruin Maria’s reputation, but what could he do, short of getting the cops to plant some undercover “client” in her office?

“I’ve known you for two years. You don’t jump to conclusions without evidence.”

“I don’t know what to—” In the background, a man spoke Aidan’s name. What the hell? There was no time. “You’re going to hear this anyway. Griff Butler says he and Dr. Keaton had an affair.”

This time, the silence from Aidan’s end of the phone damn near blew out Jake’s eardrum.

“Not a chance,” the other man finally said.

“Because you don’t want to think she might have hurt Eli?”

“She’s a beautiful woman and Eli’s a teenage boy. He developed a crush on her when he began to feel better. If she’d done anything to encourage it, Beth and I would have taken him to someone else and reported her. Maria pretended it wasn’t happening, and she kept working with him until he saw her as his doctor again.”

“She might have been oblivious with Eli. He’s younger than Griff.”

“Do you know what you’re suggesting? That she preys on certain victims?”

“I’m not.” He was. He had to, but—“It kills me to ruin someone’s career like this because of assumptions that might be lies.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You wouldn’t just be ruining her career—you’d be ruining her life. And don’t move on this until I get back.”

“What can you do for her, Aidan? If I think she might harm her clients, I have to have her investigated.”

“She kept my son alive when he wanted to die.”

“That’s why I can’t ignore the accusations I heard in court. She has other underage clients.” He had to call the Psychology Review Board. “I’m not sure she’s done anything wrong, but I have to ask someone to investigate because of kids like your son. For the sake of anyone she’s treating.”

“Don’t jump to this conclusion. Take some time to get at the truth.”

“Discovering the truth is an investigation. Have you ever been concerned about leaving Eli alone with her?”

“My God. Look, they’re going to shut the doors. I’m holding up the plane. Call Beth and tell her not to let Eli see Maria until I talk to her.”

He clearly believed in Maria, but even the possibility of abuse made him cautious.

“Jake,” Aidan said, annoyed.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t believe you want to do this.”

“I don’t, but I have a duty to this town—to the law.”

“You could bend a little. Be human.” Aidan’s voice changed again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Gotta go, Jake. Think about what I’ve said.”

Jake pushed the off button on his phone, his stomach muscles clenched.

He found the number for the licensing board and stared at it. No matter what he thought of Maria, he had to do it. His very weakness made him certain he had no choice.

At last, he dialed the numbers, but then hung up and stared at his own shaking hands. One thing he knew for certain. Maria Keaton led with her heart. He didn’t even understand that kind of person. The heart could not discern.

Jake set the phone down and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Damn it,” he said to the room and the world and his own conscience.

Shoving his chair back, he jammed his phone into his pocket. Then he grabbed his coat and made for the door. The cold air of November promised cleansing. But once he was outside, he was just cold.

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