Reilly 02 - Invasion of Privacy (2 page)

1

BLUE MOUNTAIN AIR, THE CRUNCH OF BOOTS ON snow, a deep breath, and one long last look at the snow-laden evergreen forest around her—Nina Reilly walked into the court building with lips as cold and blue as the Tahoe winter, entering the Superior Court arena for the first time since she had left the hospital.

She had a nice, peaceful preliminary injunction hearing, with some interesting legal issues, a civil case, the kind that gets decided on the paperwork, on the intellectual arguments she had thought, way back in law school, that practicing law was all about.

No more criminal law, she had promised herself. No more contact with physical violence and murderous emotions. She’d had enough to last a lifetime. She had made simple resolutions in the hospital—to practice a kinder, gender law, and to leave the office at five o’clock.

Today she would keep her resolutions, if she could avoid sparring with her opposing counsel, the pugnacious Jeffrey Riesner, and keep Terry London, her headstrong client, away from the people who were suing her.

As she started up the stairs to the main Superior Court courtroom, she heard Terry’s voice behind her. "Can’t go wrong with navy blue."

"Thanks." Nina chose to hear the comment as a compliment. "You look good too. Are you ready for the fight?" She turned to let her client join her.

Terry London was a tall, slender woman. Today the icy wind outside had tangled a mass of long, curly chestnut hair. Her face had become sculpted over forty years into hard beauty with a large, full mouth and pale, flawless skin.

But darkness circled her eyes, and her mouth bore a slash of red lipstick too dramatic and citified for Tahoe. A white wool pantsuit with an ocher scarf amplified the intensity of her yellowish-brown eyes. She held a full-length fur coat, silvery and thick enough to disappear inside.

"Sure, why not. I’ve got the current champ on my side," Terry said. The two women climbed up the stairs. At the landing Terry stopped Nina and said, "I expect you to maul them."

"Our chances are good, as I told you."

"It’s not your job to take chances," Terry said as they stepped into the second-floor hallway. "Not with my business, anyway."

"I’ll do my best."

"Yeah," said Terry. "Win."

Jeffrey Riesner waited for Nina on the second floor. One glance at him and she could feel her hackles, whatever those were, begin to rise. Remember, she said to herself, a kinder, gender Nina....

"May I have a moment with you, counselor?" he said, the polite words asked with unmistakable mockery.

"See you inside, Terry," Nina said, unable to avoid noticing as Riesner’s eyes followed Terry’s gently swaying ass. He kept at it long enough to make sure she noticed. The rest of the crowd had gone inside, leaving them in the dim hall.

Nina forced herself to turn and acknowledge him, telling herself again to stay calm. Even in her high heels she had to tilt her head up sharply to make eye contact. She could smell the acrid, musky scent of his after-shave, mixed with his sour coffee breath. From a foot above her, the opaque eyes looking down from his long, mean face glittered with suppressed rage.

Her entry onto the Tahoe legal scene the year before as defense counsel in a murder case had angered him. He had made it clear from the start he didn’t like competitors, especially women, and he didn’t let manners deter the open expression of his feelings.

Worst of all was the fixed way he watched her, like a snake before it struck.... Jeffrey Riesner was an ugly guy, and he was about to get uglier, she could tell.

"Couldn’t wait to see me again, could you?" he asked, adjusting the immaculate Hermès tie he wore to accent his thousand-dollar suit and offensive grin.

"I managed to pass the time somehow." Her voice sounded good, strong and confident.

"I’ve been looking forward to a moment alone with you, Nina." Somehow he had cornered her.

She had avoided being alone with this particular lawyer ever since she first met him. Did it have to be today? Mentally she sighed, put her resolution on the shelf, climbed into her armor, unsheathed her battle sword, and held her shield over her heart.

"We’re not on a first-name basis," she said. "It’s Ms. Reilly to you—"

"What I am trying to say is," he interrupted, ignoring her, "that I have again consulted my clients, and they have again asked me to try to settle this matter. Persuade your client to can the psycho-killer stuff; and the aspersions of parental drunkenness, and we can go somewhere with this thing."

"My client isn’t willing to let them censor her film. She won’t edit it to suit their sense of propriety. I’ve presented your proposal, and she says no, absolutely not."

"You could try exerting a little control over her."

"Don’t tell me how to deal with my clients," Nina said. "This lady has her mind made up, and she’s within her rights. Now, do you have any practical suggestions about how this matter could be settled?"

Riesner shrugged. "I told them it was useless to try to talk to you. You’ve got your rent to pay, don’t you? I hear you stopped taking criminal cases. Those bad ol’ crooks are too scary. And if you settle this case, you won’t make enough of the do-re-mi. I told them all that. They understand."

"You’re going to lose this case and you know it, but you push your clients in deeper just because you’re itching for a fight with little old me." Her voice shook a little. She was so mad, she could feel her throat choking on the words.

"There, there," Riesner said, smiling widely, making a motion as if to pat her head, and withdrawing his hand without actually touching her. "Why don’t you ladies agree to the injunction? Then you can go have tea and talk about your hair and nails."

"We’ll have a nice time totting up the court costs your clients will owe my client. Meanwhile, I have work to do, even if you don’t." She turned to leave, but he blocked her way.

"Wait. I just want to show you something," he said. "See this?" Her eyes drew automatically down to his white, big-knuckled right hand. On his ring finger, embedded in thick gold, a ruby gleamed. "Stanford Law School. Class of ’72."

What was he going to do with it, slug her? She braced herself, looking past him in the empty hall for help, but she saw only Terry London peering around the door, her face avid, as if she were feeding on the encounter.

"I’ve been around a little longer than you, Nina, quite a bit longer actually. And I want you to know, your intransigent attitude in this case is exactly what I would have expected. Because all you lady lawyers, and I use both of those terms loosely, have to rely on bravado, having lost—"

"Move it," Nina said, putting all her weight into slamming against his shoulder, pushing her way past.

"—all vestiges of feminine charm," he said, regaining his balance. "My, my. Here we stand chatting, and our clients are waiting for us inside. Shall we?" He strode ahead to open the door for her.

Deputy Kimura stood just inside the main doors to the courtroom, his heavy key ring jingling as he hung it back on his belt next to the holster. He smiled at Nina as she walked inside. He had been the bailiff on duty in the main courtroom on that day three months before when Nina was shot. "Don’t worry," he said to her as she walked past, patting the holster. His words, meant to be reassuring, brought it all back. He went to the front of the court, and Nina tagged along after him, carrying her heavy briefcase up the aisle.

Sweet v. London was the only case on the eleven o’clock docket, but the room seemed jammed.

Along with the strangers in the back row, Nina recognized a news reporter for the Tahoe Mirror. She would bet some of the spectators came merely to luxuriate in the warmth of the overheated court. She wondered if they realized they probably paid more for this comfort through their taxes than they paid on monthly furnace fees.

Jessica and Jonathan Sweet, two of Riesner’s clients, sat near the middle. They turned and watched her approach. "Hello," she said pleasantly. She would not blame them for Jeffrey Riesner.

Today Jonathan Sweet wore a black sweater and baggy khakis, which with his boyish face made him look about thirty instead of fifty-two. He was a real estate investor, with several precious, undeveloped lots on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. He sat in his wheelchair, partially blocking the aisle, next to his wife. Mrs. Sweet, whose gray hair was cropped short, looked much older than her husband, but tanned and healthy from her work at a local ski resort. She fidgeted in her seat. They nodded at Nina’s greeting.

Next to them, Riesner’s other clients in the case, Doreen and Michael Ordway, ignored her greeting. These two looked to be in their middle thirties. Ordway wore a windbreaker and cowboy boots, as if he had just ridden in from the range. His wife wore her long, gold-streaked hair down her back, and a purple leather miniskirt that cried, hey, look at me!

Nina stopped at the gate that separated the audience’s seats from the lawyers’ area, taking it all in again. A large room lit to brutal brightness, its center formed by the counsel tables and the high judge’s bench, a little circus maximus where the gladiators fought each day. The empty jury box on the right, where a couple of lawyers lounged. The scribes toiling at their tiny desks below the judge’s bench. The bailiff at his desk on the side, behind a new transparent bulletproof shield, answering the phone. And behind her, Romans in the rows of seats, bloodthirsty, spoiling for the fight.

Really, the adversarial system was one hell of a primitive way to settle a dispute.

The clock on the wall said eleven-fifteen. Judge Milne was late. Nina had thought everything was ready, but she began feeling unsteady as she sat down at the defendant’s counsel table next to Terry and took out her files, too aware of the attentive eyes behind her.

The scene in the hall with Riesner had been business as usual, and she’d stayed cool—well, as cool as she could. As for Terry, all clients had their drawbacks. She preferred an intelligent client, and Terry was certainly intelligent, though she was also on the hostile side.

She was perfectly fine, she told herself, perfectly safe. And ...

This was the chair she had been sitting in right before ... She had been standing in front of that witness box. ... She had turned and seen the gun suddenly swing toward her, watched the finger pull the trigger from less than twenty feet away.... She should be dead....

She squared her shoulders, fighting off the emotional overload, dragging her eyes away from the spot a few feet away where she had fallen. That case was over.

Terry sat at her left at the counsel table, quietly wary. On her right, Jeffrey Riesner set his briefcase down on the plaintiff’s table and began pulling out his files.

Deputy Kimura said, "All rise. The Superior Court of the County of El Dorado is now in session, the Honorable Curtis E. Milne presiding." You could almost hear the trumpets. Judge Milne appeared on the bench, flipping open his own file. Nina couldn’t help a quick nod to the emperor who would do a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down in his ceremonial robes.

The court reporter flexed her hands and crouched over her machine, and Edith Dillon, the henna-haired clerk at the desk under the judge’s dais, began to wield her pen over a fresh pink form.

"Be seated," the bailiff said. Everyone sat down except the two lawyers. Nina stood up straight, as tall as five feet three inches plus Italian pumps allowed.

"Sweet v. London," Milne said, opening a thick file. "A hearing on a preliminary injunction, is that right, Mr. Riesner? All parties and counsel of record are present?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Riesner said.

"Welcome back, Ms. Reilly. We’ve missed you," the judge said, giving her a small smile.

"Thank you, Your Honor. I’m glad to be back," Nina said.

She watched Milne carefully, but his face was a model of judicial decorum. He gave no clue about his mood, the effects of his breakfast, or his reaction to the briefs he had read. He pooched out his lower lip and tapped it thoughtfully with a finger. "Proceed," he said.

Riesner threw his papers down on the table, leaned on it, and said, "The court has on file our complaint for invasion of privacy, declaratory relief, and breach of contract. The relief sought in the complaint is an injunction providing that the defendant, Theresa London, be permanently prohibited from showing, publishing in any manner, distributing for sale, licensing, promoting or otherwise publicizing the existence of, copying, or otherwise disseminating in any manner a film of approximately one hour in length known as Where Is Tamara Sweet?

"I will summarize the basic facts briefly.

"Tamara Sweet disappeared in 1984 at the age of eighteen from South Lake Tahoe. Because she had talked about leaving for some time, and had some problems at home, and because there was no evidence of foul play, the authorities chose not to consider her disappearance a criminal matter.

"Over the years, Mr. and Mrs. Sweet have worked with missing persons organizations and hired private investigators in an attempt to locate their daughter. To no avail—"

"Counsel," the judge interrupted, "you’ve covered all this in your Points and Authorities. Let’s move along to the film."

"Certainly, Judge." Riesner picked up his brief, flipped a few pages, and said, "Twelve years have gone by, distressing, sorrowful years for her parents. Then, on January tenth last year, the defendant, Terry London, contacted the parents and asked them if they would be interested in having a film made about their daughter’s disappearance, a film that might help them find out what happened to her. Naturally, they agreed.

"The defendant has filmed and produced several video documentaries and appeared well qualified to undertake the project. The Sweets opened their records and their hearts to Ms. London. They authorized Ms. London to review Tamara’s school records, talk to her old friends, do whatever was possible to help make the film.

"And make the film she did. But rather than a wellintentioned film that might prove helpful in ascertaining the facts about a lost young woman, Terry London exploited access to private materials to make a film that depicts Jonathan Sweet as a self-absorbed and selfish father, Jessica Sweet as an alcoholic mother, and Tamara Sweet as a promiscuous, drug-abusing woman of questionable morality." Riesner paused for effect.