The Seal's Secret Child

Blade smiled. “Yes, he is. I’m proud of him.”

Josie bristled. Blade had only just met Archie, yet he was taking the credit for how he’d turned out. It wasn’t fair.

“Can we get to the point?” she asked. “I’d like to make plans as quickly as possible.”

“Sure,” Detective Sykes replied briskly. “I understand that a brick was thrown through your window this morning. And there was a note wrapped around that brick.”

Blade looked sharply at Josie, his face full of concern.

“Yes,” she said. “The police officer stationed outside my home said it was thrown from the same vehicle that returned later with a shooter inside. It matches the description of a car that tried to run me off the road a couple of weeks back.”

The detective checked an entry in her notepad. “Unfortunately, this car was stolen from Wichita last month, so it doesn’t lead us to the perp, but we’ve put out a description to all our patrols.”

Blade leaned toward Josie. “What did it say?” he whispered.

She was confused. “What did what say?”

“The note around the brick.”

“Oh, that.” She closed her eyes, not caring to remember the hastily scrawled capital letters. “It said, ‘Drop the case or pay the price.’”

“We’ve been told that you’ve also been receiving abusive phone calls and letters,” Detective Pullman said. “They’re all related to a current case you’re working on at the public defender’s office, right?”

Josie nodded.

“I think it’s awesome that you’re a public defender,” Blade said admiringly. “No matter what’s happening right now, you should be proud of yourself.”

She ignored the praise. “I worked hard to establish myself as a good attorney,” she said, silently adding in her head, while you were busy finding yourself in Florida. “It was difficult, but my parents helped out a lot with babysitting Archie.”

“I need to know the background to this case,” Blade said. “Can you explain the details to me?”

“I don’t think there’s any point. The police have got it under control.”

He furrowed his brow. “It doesn’t look that way to me. Please, Josie, just give me a little more information. I might be able to help. Don’t forget about my background.”

How could she forget his history in the military? It was the SEALs who cost him his leg. It was the SEALs who destroyed their relationship.

“That was a long time ago,” she said. “You’re a different man now.”

She saw a look of irritation fall across his face. “I’m not so different that I can’t step up and help protect you. It won’t hurt to give me a little background information, will it?”

Detective Sykes seemed to sense the atmosphere grow a little cooler and gave a light cough as if to cover her embarrassment.

“It would be useful if you went over the details with us as well,” she said. “We’ve only just been assigned this case, and although we have the incident reports to read, it would help us to hear the full story in your own words.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath to run through the events yet again. “I’m currently defending a client named Norman Francis, who’s been accused of kidnapping a three-year-old girl, Lisa Brown, from outside her home almost two years ago. Lisa and her parents lived across the street from him. A neighbor of Norman’s telephoned the police one evening and claimed that she saw Norman drag the little girl from the sidewalk and into his home. The police responded immediately, entered Norman’s house and found Lisa in the kitchen, unharmed and helping herself to cookies from a jar. Norman said he had been in his living room for the previous two hours, carving figurines that he sells at craft fairs. He claimed to have no idea that the girl was in his kitchen and asserted that she must have walked in through his unlocked back door of her own accord. But the witness testimony from the neighbor helped to build a strong case against him, and he was subsequently arrested and charged with child abduction. But I believe his story. I don’t think he did it.”

“What did the child say?” Detective Pullman asked.

“Lisa was interviewed by specially trained officers, but due to her age, it was very difficult to get a consistent account of what happened. She started off saying that she went into the house by herself but subsequently changed her story to claim that Norman led her inside with a promise of candy. Then, a little later, she said that Cinderella took her inside.” Josie rubbed her index fingers on her temples. “She’s simply not a credible witness, so the prosecution decided not to include her testimony. But she was examined and found to have no injuries, so there’s no forensic evidence to label Norman as an abuser.” She shrugged. “That doesn’t stop people from gossiping, though.”

“I guess a small place like Sedgwick is full of rumors and amateur detectives,” Blade said. “So this Norman guy has already been judged guilty.”

“Correct,” confirmed Josie. “He’s kinda odd. Before all this happened, he hardly ever went out, but when he did, he always wore a huge padded coat and kept his head bent low like he didn’t want to be noticed. It was only after I agreed to represent him that I found out he suffers from cerebral palsy, which limits the movement of his right arm and leg. He wears the big coat to hide his arm, and he walks in a shuffling sort of way to compensate for his leg. He was bullied a lot as a youngster, so he’s a very secretive person and doesn’t want people to notice his disability.”

Josie glanced at Blade. He appeared to be listening carefully to her every word. Maybe Norman’s experience resonated with him. Perhaps he also suffered the same negative response from society because of his missing limb. Thankfully, she was sensitive to the needs of those with disabilities and always made sure she phrased her words carefully to avoid giving offense. But others were not so tactful.

“It takes a really long time to prepare for a trial,” she continued. “So for the last eighteen months, I’ve been building Norman’s defense case and overseeing all the trial preliminaries. I know a lot of people in Sedgwick think that Norman’s guilty, and I sometimes get yelled at on the street, but things really started to escalate about three weeks ago. That’s when I received the first anonymous letter. Then the phone calls started. It’s always a muffled man’s voice saying I’ll suffer for defending a monster like Norman. I used to ask who he was, but now I just hang up.”

“And how is Norman doing?” Detective Pullman asked. “I understand that he’s out on bail.”

“Norman’s required to wear an electronic tag as part of his bail conditions,” Josie replied. “So he’s housebound. He used his home as collateral to raise the bond, and I had to fight hard to get bail granted. Norman has precise physical needs, and his home is specially adapted to suit him, so the judge agreed to bail Norman on the condition that he never leaves his home. Norman was so distressed about news of his disability leaking out to the community that the judge allowed the hearing to be a closed one, and the media didn’t get to hear the details. It’s unusual for a judge to agree to something like this, but I successfully argued that revealing Norman’s medical history to an open court would have caused him psychological damage. Of course, now everybody assumes he has something sinister to hide.”

“What about the little girl?” Detective Sykes asked. “Surely her family doesn’t want to be living in proximity to their child’s alleged kidnapper.”

“The Brown family moved from the street within a few weeks of the incident, so there’s no chance of Norman running into them.” She shrugged. “But Norman never goes outside, anyway. He’s too terrified. The community doesn’t want him back in their neighborhood, and he knows it.”

“But how does he manage being housebound?” Blade asked. “He has to eat.”

“I take groceries to him once a week and make sure he’s okay.”

Detective Pullman raised an eyebrow. “It sounds like you’re dedicating a lot of your schedule to this client. How do you find the time to work on anything else?”

“Norman is my only client until the trial is over,” Josie said. “Since I became the target of threats, the public defender’s office decided to allocate my other cases to alternate attorneys. I simply can’t offer anybody else quality service while this situation continues, so Norman gets me all to himself. And it’s probably a good thing, as he has nobody else to take care of him right now.”

“But he’s not in danger, is he?” Blade asked. “He’s not getting bricks through his window or nasty phone calls?”

“No,” she replied. “That’s the odd thing. The letters and phone calls have been directed at me.” She stopped to steady her voice. “And now it’s gone way beyond that. Now somebody doesn’t just want to frighten me. They want to kill me.”

Detective Sykes closed her notepad. “This situation does appear to have intensified in these last few hours, and it’s now too serious for the Sedgwick Police Department to monitor. I recommend that you and your family move to a safe house for the duration of the trial. The public defender’s office has informed us that they will spare no expense in ensuring your protection.”

“Neither will I,” Blade said. He turned to Josie. “I’ll make some calls and put a temporary manager in charge of my business so I can stay here in Sedgwick for however long it takes.”

Josie found her mouth dropping in disbelief. “You want to come to a safe house with us.”

“Of course,” he replied as if the question was ridiculous. “I promised Archie that I’d take care of you, and I meant it.”

She began to panic, imagining being forced to spend each day with the man she had once loved but no longer knew. “But...but...my dad and I are perfectly capable of looking after my son by ourselves.”

“Our son,” Blade corrected her. “Archie is mine, too.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve been taking care of him by myself for such a long time. It would be difficult for him to adjust to his father’s sudden presence in his life every day.” She knew this was a lame excuse, designed to suit her delicate emotions rather than Archie’s. “We should wait until this is all over before making visitation arrangements.”

Blade’s expression looked genuinely hurt and, for a few moments, Josie deeply regretted her words. After all, she had dreamed of the day when her son would finally meet his father, fulfilling his longest-held wish. This should have been a day of joy for her. So why did she feel so tormented inside? Why did she feel that Archie might be slipping from her grasp?

“I don’t want to wait,” Blade said quietly. “I want to be around constantly to make sure that you’re both okay.”

The detectives clearly sensed the need to give the two parents time alone to discuss the matter, and they both rose in unison.