A Conflict of Interest

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?”