The Reform Artists: A Legal Suspense, Spy Thriller (The Reform Artists Series Book 1) (4 page)

“Yeah,” Ted said. “Jeff Bishop, one of my construction supers, went through a nasty divorce two years ago, and he was represented by a guy with an office right here, in Olney. He said the guy saved his ass. Do you want me to call him and see if I can get a name and number?”

“Yeah, that would be great.”

Ted excused himself and went to his study to make the call.

“I’m sorry, Marty,” Celia said, after a moment. “God knows we have no reason to doubt you, but Katie has accused you of something truly awful. You claim she’s lying...which would make her actions wholly unforgivable...and yet I don’t get it. Why would she turn on you like this?
What could possibly make her hate you that much...unless—?”

“Unless I did something to warrant it? I get it, Celia.”

“I know, I know. I feel terrible about it. But
domestic violence
, Marty? It’s such an ugly, scary thing. Just look at that awful Barnes case! I’ve never known anyone accused of it.”

“So, that’s another first for me? Nice!”

“God, I’m sorry!” Celia said. “Listen, you’ve always been a gentleman to Katie around us. You’ve always seemed extremely attentive and considerate. You’re a great dad, too, from what I’ve seen. And, for what it’s worth, I really don’t think you could hurt a fly.”

“Thanks, I
think.
”

“The problem is...no one really knows what goes on in other people’s homes, you know? I mean, who could ever have predicted that a young father would slit his own kids’ throats, murder his wife and then take himself out. It’s inconceivable to me! But I’m really worried for you, Marty. I’m also a bit shocked. We had no idea you two were having any problems. You always seemed like such a solid couple.”

“We were,” Martin said. “For years. Rock solid. Did I ever tell you how we met?”

“No.”

“It was a blind date, when we were both in our early thirties. A ‘fix up.’ We hit it off. I think we were both looking to settle down.

“I’ve never told this to anyone, but the night of that first date, after leaving our friends’ house, we slipped away to a little hole-in-the-wall bar and sort of ‘interviewed’ each other.”

“No kidding, like Larry King?”

“Yeah. I had never done anything like that before. We compared notes about what we wanted in life, and we discovered we pretty much wanted the same things. So, we began dating exclusively, and not long after that, we decided to get married.

“We were always, to borrow your term, ‘solid.’ We were extremely comfortable with each other. But I’ll tell you what we weren’t, Celia,” he said, looking at his friend. “We were never madly in love, like you and Ted. At best, we were mildly in love.

“Our marriage may not have been perfect, but it was still pretty good most of the time. And once we had the kids, which happened pretty soon in our case, it was over for me. I believe adults have special responsibilities to their kids. Once they’re here, we need to do everything we can to give them our best.”

Martin felt a sudden chill as he heard himself saying those all-too-familiar words
. Could Katie’s actions wind up rendering them meaningless?
Even before he was old enough to articulate them, those principles had become his life’s mission and private mantra—the salve, and promised cure, for his own secret pain.

As a child, Martin repeatedly had promised himself that, when he grew up, he would give his children the positive, stable and secure home life his parents had never been able to provide. He would do everything in his power to insulate them from the senseless cruelties and hardships of the adult world.

Martin and Jeb had not been so fortunate. As kids, they had watched, helplessly, as their father’s unrestrained gambling addiction wrecked his life and theirs. Charles Silkwood made a good living as a construction project super, but his need to stay constantly in the action, and to offset steadily mounting losses, led him to bet on everything and anything: baseball, football and basketball games; the ponies; even the stock market.

While Charles Silkwood occasionally enjoyed big, even spectacular, wins, the family saw little of it. He might have taken the boys and their mother out for a celebratory dinner, but then he would plow every remaining cent of his winnings right back into making his next big score.

The family’s collective fortunes rose one week, on hollow hopes and empty promises, only to crash the next. But their overall trajectory soon became apparent: The Silkwoods were steadily slipping toward financial ruin and into ever-deepening desperation and despair.

Martin remembered late-night yelling matches between his parents, when his father would stumble in from high-stakes poker games, reeking of liquor and, more often than not, smarting from fresh new losses. As his gambling debts mounted, Martin’s father blew through his salary, the family savings and even much of his aging parents’ retirement nest egg in ever more desperate attempts to reverse his fortunes. Yet it seemed, each new attempt only left him deeper in the hole.

Finally, with nowhere else to turn, he approached the loan sharks. This proved to be his undoing. To pay their exorbitant interest rates, Charles Silkwood began taking bribes at work. He would ‘look the other way’ when vendors substituted inferior goods for the first-rate materials his company had ordered. When he finally got caught, Charles lost his job and went to jail.

No one in the Silkwood extended family had ever sunk so low. The trauma and shame were palpable. Martin’s immediate family never spoke of it to anyone; but the shame, though not his own, left an indelible stain on Martin that had dogged him ever since.

For a moment, Martin considered telling Celia what those words really meant to him. He wanted her to know why he would do anything in his power to preserve the peace, stability and innocence his children had enjoyed. He wanted to share why he would have taken his own life before he ever would have allowed himself to harm them or shatter their world.

Celia and Ted were among his closest friends. It would have been so easy to let them in, if he could just say the words. But he realized he couldn’t. Martin had allowed Katie in, only to have her betray him. He simply could not risk another betrayal, no matter how unlikely. The invisible wall of separation that had served him so well, for so long, would remain in place—at least, for the time being.

Celia had listened intently, nodding her head, as Martin had discussed his marriage and his child-rearing philosophy. She liked what she heard, but that only made her more confused.

“Marty," she asked when he finished, "why do you think your marriage fell apart now? Was there a triggering incident of some sort?”

“I wish I knew, Celia,” he said. “I know that sounds like a cop out, but I lay awake nights now, struggling with just that question.

“All I can tell you is, a couple months back, something in our marriage changed. I’m not sure what. Katie started picking fights with me all the time. Our shared beliefs seemed to go out the window.

“I pushed for us to see a marriage counselor, and she agreed, in principle,” he continued, “but it never amounted to more than lip service.”

Martin’s eyes began to water as the realization gradually hit home. He shook his head. “My God, it’s really over, isn’t it? The marriage and the life Katie and I were building together for the kids? It’s like I'm witnessing some horrible train wreck and I can't do anything to stop it."

“Worst of all,” he said, “this restraining order has cut me off completely from Justin and Monica. I can’t see them or even talk with them on the phone until after the hearing next Monday. I can’t even send them a note or send Justin a card for his birthday this Saturday. If I do, I could go to jail! And what if I lose, Celia? The judge already has given Katie sole custody of the kids. It’s as if I suddenly don’t even exist.”

Celia stood up, walked over and sat next to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. “It’s awful, Marty. I don’t know what to say.”

Ted returned with the attorney’s name and number. They called him at his home and scheduled a meeting for the first thing in the morning. Then, Ted and Celia tried to convince Martin to spend his first homeless night as a guest in their home, but he declined.

“Under the circumstances, it just doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got a motel room.”

Martin said goodnight to his friends and let himself out. He walked slowly to his car, bent over and mumbling to himself. He looked like a death row inmate, who had just learned that his desperate, eleventh-hour appeal had been denied.

Early Tuesday morning, Martin met with Chester Swindell in the restored Victorian home that served as his law firm’s Olney office. The meeting did not go well.

Swindell, one of the area’s most noted divorce attorneys, sat behind his large mahogany desk in a cluttered office that smelled of equal parts freshly brewed coffee and stale cigar smoke. He shook his head from side to side as he reviewed Martin’s copy of the Temporary Restraining Order and petition.

As he read, Swindell repeatedly made the same “zzt, zzt, zzt” sound doctors often make when reviewing particularly disturbing test results. He wore a pained look on his face that Martin found appalling but that Swindell had discovered, over the years, to be particularly useful in preparing his clients for the gargantuan legal bills divorce matters he tried typically generated. At his $300-an-hour rate, litigation clearly wasn’t going to be a bargain.

Swindell, at sixty-eight, was a tall, aristocratic-looking man, whom nature had blessed with the constitution of a rhino and the face of a terminal lung-cancer patient. The combination gave him the good fortune of looking much older than his years—and far more sympathetic than his conduct usually warranted.

Swindell’s sole hint of vitality was the shock of gray hair he combed straight back from his forehead. Everything else about him suggested weariness and infirmity. His naturally loose olive skin, painstakingly weathered to a rawhide-like appearance under an endless succession of sun lamps, had the look, and feel, of a well-broken-in baseball mitt. His considerable jowls, darkened eye sockets, and droopy eyelids—all suggestive of long nights spent “burning the midnight oil” for his clients—were a convenient accident of birth. He was, in fact, the spitting image of his father, who had spent most of his adult life as an underemployed “gentleman” farmer.

Swindell came from an old Maryland family of tobacco farmers and horse breeders. His ancestors were distant relatives of the Lees, a family of pre-revolutionary war origins noted for two things: its extensive real estate holdings and its claim of direct lineage to General Robert E. Lee. This historic connection was a source of great pride for Swindell—so much so, in fact, that he affected a slight southern lilt whenever he spoke.

Swindell fancied himself to be a true “southern lawyer,” and he played the part to the hilt. His southern affectations made him seem like an anachronism in the progressive, increasingly cosmopolitan Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.

“Your wife,” Swindell finally said, looking up from the papers and over the rims of his reading glasses, “appears determined to skin you alive and then keep your hide around as some sort of souvenir.”

“None of the charges are true,” Martin insisted.

“Of course, of course” Swindell replied, with what appeared to be a pained effort at a smile. “Unfortunately, Mahr-tin,” he said, “she has the court, if not the law, on her side.”

“How’s that?”

“You saw how easy it was for her to get a temporary restrainin’ order against you?” Swindell asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s because, in today’s ‘politically correct’ environment, no judge in his or her right mind ever wants to be accused of bein’ ‘insensitive’ to the plight of women who fear for their safety or for the safety of their children. They’d rather blindly issue a thousand of these TROs, as we call them—
carte blanche
—than risk denyin’ protection to even one woman in real physical peril.”

“But what about the truth?” Martin blurted out. “Doesn’t that matter anymore? And what about my civil rights? Don’t I have a right to ‘due process?’ Aren’t I supposed to be protected against unreasonable ‘searches and seizures’? And, more importantly, don’t I have a right to see my kids and to stay actively involved in their lives?”

Swindell cocked his head to one side and squinted. “Yes, sir, Mahr-tin, those are all fine principles—the bedrock of American society.”

“But—?”

“But, they don’t amount to crap in these judges’ minds, at least compared to the thought of them bein’ ridiculed by the press for makin’ a mistake that leaves just one abused wife lyin’ face down in a ditch, beaten to death.

“They don’t want to be caught sippin’ coffee one mornin’ while the TV news reports that a woman they denied protection to a day earlier—someone like that poor Barnes woman—had been summarily executed, along with her two children, upon her return home from court.

“You see, Mahr-tin, it’s not really about justice or the law anymore. It’s all about protectin’ reputations: theirs, not yours. They want to position themselves for advancement, not embarrassment.”

“But my wife’s apparently been spreading lies about me to everyone we know, and now she can start using this TRO as some form of proof.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Swindell said, “unfortunate, but largely unavoidable.”

“Well, what about this hearing I’ve got in seven days. Can we expose her lies then? And where will that leave me?”

“Of course,” Swindell said, smiling to himself. “You should, and you shall, have your day in court. But please understand the position you’re in.”

“What position is that?” Martin asked, growing more and more exasperated.

“Well,” Swindell continued, “it’s hardly like you are goin’ in front of an impartial judge, now, is it?”

“You mean the judge already has made his mind up against me?”

“Well, what do you think? Hasn’t he put himself on record as believin’ you’re capable of violent, abusive acts?”

“Yes, but—”

“And won’t we be askin’ that same judge to now reverse that earlier decision?” Swindell continued.

“Well sure, but—”

“And, Mahr-tin, do you know anyone who likes to admit he’s wrong—and to do it publicly?”

“No, of course not. But the judge hasn’t even met me yet. If he’s received bad information from my wife and her attorney, if she has misled him, then certainly, she’s responsible, not him, right?”

“Well,” Swindell said, “he’s still the fool who believed her, isn’t he? I mean, isn’t that the essence of the point you want me to make?”

“OK, OK. I get it.”

“You see,” Swindell added, “all of this nonsense—and excuse me, I don’t mean to trivialize your situation, Mahr-tin—but all of this could have been avoided, if the judge had simply asked your wife or her attorney some probin’ questions at the ex-parte hearin’. Then, they would have gotten much nearer the truth. But judges in these cases don’t want to ask probin’ questions. They want to grant the petitions, so the less conflictin’ information they turn up, the better.

“I mean, why go out of your way to question the propriety of a course of action you prefer to take? Wouldn’t that be counter-productive?”

By now, Martin looked dumbstruck. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and let out a mild snort.

“These judges don’t care if they fail to establish future grounds for perjury charges, either,” Swindell continued, “because they don’t consider what they’re askin’ you to sacrifice to be such a big deal, after all.”

“Are you crazy?” Martin said, with sudden fury. “I’ve been summarily thrown out of my house. My wife is dragging my name in the mud. My best friends doubt me. I’ve been denied access to my children, and now it looks like my entire case has been prejudiced, to boot.”

“Yes, but that is not the way
they
see it.”

“Well then, how do they see it?” Martin asked bitingly, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Since this is a civil procedure, rather than a criminal one, they see themselves as temporarily inconveniencin’ you, but not doin’ you any real, long-term harm. No matter what happens at the hearin’, you won’t have a criminal record doggin’ you in the future. It will all soon be forgotten.”

“Not by me, it won’t.”

“Of course not,” Swindell said. “But they will be able to put this matter behind them. They will forget about your inconvenience a lot sooner than they’d forget about their own embarrassment and guilt, if anythin’ unfortunate happened to your wife or children.”

“So, what you’re saying is the whole system is rigged against me, because I’m a man—and all in the name of ‘political correctness?’ You’re saying that I’m being judged on stereotypes about men being more violent—and that most judges care more about their personal reputations and careers than they do about making sure justice is served?”

“Yes,” Swindell nodded, “that’s it—precisely. But don’t you dare go around quotin’ me on that. I’ll deny it, because I have to work with these judges. My livin’ largely depends on my ability to influence them. And remember, Mahr-tin, filin’ false petitions still is a drastic, risky, nasty, despicable act. Yes, women do it all the time, more and more. But it remains slightly more the exception than the rule. Unfortunately, your wife and her attorney appear more than willin’ to make this a very dirty fight.” (Swindell tried hard to let his smile shine only on the inside.)

“So what are my odds of getting this TRO, as you call it, reversed next Monday?” Martin asked.

“Dependin’ on the evidence we can produce, probably somewhere in the range of fifty-fifty, but if you’re lookin’ for justice, or to give your wife her comeuppance for subjectin’ you to this, I think that’s a real stretch.

“Right now, your wife has everythin’ she wants,” Swindell explained. “She’s got your kids, she’s got your attention and she’s got the court’s sympathy. I would expect an offer to be tendered soon.”

“You mean, like a
settlement
offer?” Martin gasped, looking dumbstruck.

“Somethin’ like that.”

“Well, she can forget it!” he said, slamming his fist down on Swindell’s desk. “I’d rather lose everything I have in a court fight than let her take what she wants from me in this manner.”

“I understand, Mr. Silkwood,” Swindell replied, growing all warm and mushy on the inside. “You want your day in court, and I’m goin’ to see that you get it.”

“Damned straight,” Martin said.

Swindell shook his new client’s hand, promising to be in touch.