Bearing Witness Read Online Free PDF Page B

Engineering will have gained an unfair advantage through its tactics. I request that the Court continue the trial to the spring.”
    â€œOh, no,” said Judge Wagner with a chuckle. “No way.” She shook her head firmly. “I’m getting this case off my docket. Come hell or high water, we’re picking that jury on January twenty-third.”
    She leaned back in her chair and checked her watch. “That’s all for today, ladies. I have a sentencing in ten minutes.”
    As I waited for the elevator, my blood pressure gradually returning to normal, I tried to remind myself that there was nothing personal or spiteful in Kimberly’s strategy. It was standard operating procedure. Her goal was to use her client’s substantial economic resources to grind me into the ground. My goal was to avoid needless skirmishes and somehow survive until trial. As for today’s brawl, my plan had been even simpler: survive without heavy casualties. I had.
    Barely.
    In the courthouse lobby downstairs, one of Kimberly Howard’s smarmy underlings came over. “Here,” he said, holding out a slip of paper with dates written on it. “These are the days that we’re available to take your client’s deposition.”
    I studied his smug face. He was a typical product of the big firm litigation department—that macho subculture most closely akin to a street gang, except that this gang carries notebook computers and dictaphones instead of knives and guns. I knew the type. After all, I’d come of age within a big firm litigation department. We were the guerrillas, the SWAT teams of the law. Although there are few battlefields more stylized and bloodless than a courtroom, you’d never know that from the jargon of the big firm litigator. You don’t simply “win” a motion to compel, you “blow the other side out of the water.” You don’t ask a witness difficult questions at a deposition, you “drill him a new asshole.” You don’t reject a low settlement offer, you “piss all over it.” It’s a weird warrior cult where men with soft hands and tasseled shoes swagger into court as if they were wearing battle fatigues and ammo belts.
    I stared at this Brooks Brothers tough guy with his slip of paper and for a moment I was mightily tempted to suggest a different place for him to stick it. But why play that game again? It was one of the reasons I left Abbott & Windsor in the first place.
    I gave him a tolerant smile. “What’s your name?”
    He seemed taken aback. “Uh, Arthur Brenton.”
    I took the slip of paper and dropped it into my briefcase without looking at it. “Thank you, Arthur. I’ll call your boss after I check my client’s schedule.”

Chapter Three
    Jonathan Wolf leaned back in the booth and scratched his beard pensively. “Gloria Muller doesn’t match any profile,” he finally said.
    â€œHow so?” I asked.
    â€œWhite, heterosexual, Presbyterian.” He shook his head, frowning. “That is not a typical skinhead target.”
    â€œAre the Hammerskins typical skinheads?”
    Jonathan nodded. “Absolutely.”
    We were having dinner at Cardwell’s in Clayton. That afternoon, after returning to the office from Judge Wagner’s chambers, I received a call from one of the Springfield homicide detectives to let me know that they’d arrested two men and charged them with first-degree murder in Gloria Muller’s homicide. One was an auto mechanic, the other worked on the loading dock of a Springfield factory. Both had rap sheets more typical of hooligans than gunmen: arrests for peace disturbances, barroom brawls, vandalism, and common assaults. But they shared something else: both were members of a local neo-Nazi group known as the Springfield Aryan Hammerskins. Although the police didn’t understand the skinhead connection with the murder, they