Cruel Justice Read Online Free Page B

with him? This is a law office—sort of. Not a day-care center.”
    Ben pressed the baby against Jones’s chest. Joey’s sporadic sobs reverted to a full-throttled wail. “You’re a resourceful guy, Jones. You’ll think of something. I’ve got to get to the courthouse before Judge Hart holds me in contempt.”
    Jones cautiously took the infant into his arms. “Boy, Boss … if I do this …”
    “I know. I’ll owe you.”
    “You already owe me. We’re now talking about a debt the magnitude of which most men have never contemplated.”
    After a five-minute sprint in the sweltering downtown heat, Ben made it to the Tulsa County Courthouse at Fifth and Denver. The courthouse elevators were the oldest and slowest in all creation, and Ben couldn’t afford to wait around, so he panted up the stairs to the sixth floor. Breathing heavily, he slid through the doors to the Honorable Sarah Hart’s courtroom, hoping he could enter unnoticed.
    No such luck. “Mr. Kincaid,” the judge said, the instant he stepped through the door. “How kind of you to grace us with your presence.”
    “Sorry, Judge. I was unavoidably delayed.”
    Judge Hart nodded. “Creditor problems again?”
    “Uh, no.” Well, not entirely, anyway. “Someone brought me a baby.”
    “A baby?” Hart lowered the glasses on her nose. “Does this relate to some previously undisclosed episode in your past?”
    Ben smiled. Hart could be a tough judge, but at least she had a sense of humor. “No, ma’am. It relates to the dangers of being a member of a family.”
    “You’ll forgive me if I fail to follow up on this intriguing dialogue, but the assistant district attorney is anxious to continue the trial. I believe you know Mr. Bullock. So you know how insistent he can be.”
    Ben glanced over at Jack Bullock, who was sitting at the prosecution table. He did indeed know Mr. Bullock. Before Ben moved to Tulsa, they both had worked at the district attorney’s office in Oklahoma City. Jack Bullock had been his boss. More than his boss, really. His mentor. His idol. His hero.
    Bullock and Ben had spent a long summer working on several incredibly complicated white-collar crime cases, Bullock as lead trial counsel, Ben as lead research grunt. And Ben had loved every minute of it. Not because Bullock was such an excellent attorney, although he was, but because he believed in what he did. When you worked with Jack Bullock, you were on a holy crusade, a battle of right versus wrong. All summer long, they worked shoulder to shoulder, upholding the letter of the law, putting the bad guys behind bars. Their work—indeed, their lives—were imbued with a sense of purposefulness, of optimism, of idealism, that Ben had seldom glimpsed since.
    At the time Ben had thought he’d stay at the DA’s office forever. Till unforeseen circumstances proved him wrong. Till unforeseen circumstances turned his life upside down.
    Like the man said, chance makes fools of us all.
    “If you’ll give me two minutes to confer with my legal assistant and client,” Ben said, “I’ll be ready to proceed, your honor.”
    “Another delay, counsel?”
    Ben held his thumb and finger barely apart. “Just a teensy-weensy one, Judge.”
    She removed her glasses and laid them on the bench. “I really should find you in contempt and toss you in jail, but I’m so anxious to hear your examination of the next witness that I’m going to hold off. At least for the moment. You have two minutes, Mr. Kincaid. Teensy-weensy ones.”
    Ben tossed his briefcase on the defendant’s table, nodded politely at Bullock, and exchanged a cursory greeting with his client, a nineteen-year-old bleached blonde named Jessie (short for Jezebel) Johnson. She had run away from home a few months before and somehow ended up in Tulsa, totally broke. According to her, she was wandering the streets a few days after she arrived, aimless and destitute, when the prosecution’s star witness approached her and