Old School Ch. 03: Naked Justice

I heard the toilet flush and two sets of footsteps creaking on the boards making their way to the stairs -- Kass's and Ryder's. Kass came to me and gave me a kiss. I gave her a cup of French roast as I finished the scrambled eggs and sausage.

"Les, I hope you won't think this request is weird or nerdy or... whatever," she said as she nibbled at her wheat toast.

"Try me."

"Can we go to church?"

My eyes widened for a moment. I was not a regular churchgoer, but I did manage to show up once, maybe twice a month at a Presbyterian church in Oakley, about a 10-minute drive away.

"Sure. Starts at 11. Gives us just enough time to finish breakfast, shower and get dressed and make it," I said.

She smiled. "Thank you. It's just something I've always done. Makes me feel a part of something that goes back to... well, you know where it goes back to."

It was a new experience for me, sitting in church beside a "significant other." The several parishioners I knew came up and greeted Kass warmly. For all but one of the hymns and common prayers, she needed no hymnal; she had committed them to memory long ago.

"I needed that," she said on the drive home. "I needed to refill my soul's tanks. And I needed to formally thank God for what he's given to me."

"What's that, baby?"

"You."

I smiled and nodded. "I did the same thing."

"Tell you what," I continued, "since it's a beautiful afternoon and Ry's good for another few hours before he needs to pee again, why don't we go for a stroll?"

She shrugged. "Why not. I wore flats and while they're not my hiking shoes, they'll do."

With that, I changed course and drove to East Fork State Park. The last time I had been here was the Sunday I learned Dano had died, became alarmed at the strange phone call from Sergeant Burnley and had learned some unsettling things from Cabot Nathanson. I had also broken the crushing news of Dano's passing to Kass in a call that set us on a course to this Sunday stroll in the park.

I wanted to tell her all of that. But I remembered Gene Fassbinder's counsel and chose to focus on things more comforting.

"I know you have to be back in Danville, but I don't want you to go, baby," I told her.

"Yeah. That's another reason I asked to go to church. To push aside knowing that I have to drive back today and end this beautiful weekend."

"Well, we're two pretty smart people and I say we start thinking about ways to stay together more," I said. It wasn't a proposal. Not yet anyway. But who am I kidding. It was hard to imagine this going any other way.

We strolled at least a couple of miles (neither of us counted) and mapped out a rough itinerary for the rest of 2022. We'd spend Thanksgiving together in Danville because the next day, Black Friday, is a retailing day from hell, the start of the Christmas shopping rush in earnest. She suggested that Mom -- "Miss Elise" to Kass -- join us and stay in her guest bedroom. I could sleep on the couch with Ry if necessary to preserve the sense of propriety that Miss Elise might have about unmarried couples sharing a bed.

Christmas would involve a trip on December 23^rd to see her brother, sister-in-law and their new baby in Owensboro, Kentucky, then swing through Louisville on our way back to Cincinnati on Christmas Eve to pick up mom and bring her to Hatch Street where we would spend Christmas Day and the day after.

All of that was subject to more planning, but it seemed like a good, working pencil draft. And knowing we had plans in the works made it less depressing when we got back home and Kass packed her bags for the return drive back to Danville.

"Can I come see you next weekend, stay in Danville?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Why not. You may have to entertain yourself for a while during the day because it's my weekend to mind the store. Maybe you could run some errands for me?"

We reached the front door, and before I opened it, I put down her bags, framed her face in my hands and kissed her.

"I mean it about not wanting to be without you, baby. This is killing me," I said.

This time she leaned in to kiss me, and just as she did, we were startled by a knock on the door, not three feet away.

I opened it and there was a tired-looking man in a blue suit, open-collar white shirt and no tie. The face was familiar but I couldn't place it.

"Sorry to interrupt your Sunday, Mr. Walker. I'm special agent Gustin from the FBI. We met here a few weeks ago, remember?"

Kass looked at me, looked back at Gustin and then at me again, clearly startled. "Les, what's going on?"

Before I could say anything, Gustin spoke up. "Could the three of us go inside? There have been some developments."

▼ ▼ ▼

The sun had just dipped below the horizon and the automatic headlights on Kass's green Elantra had come on about midway between Covington and Lexington on Interstate 75. Even though the car never exceeded 60 miles per hour in the 65 mile-per-hour speed zone, a gray Kentucky State Police cruiser had stayed about five to seven car lengths behind for at least 20 miles. And it hadn't gone unnoticed.

The blue strobes came on along with a quick yelp from the siren to ensure that the driver knew to pull over. And she did.

On the berm, well off to the side of the right lane of southbound traffic, the window lowered as the officer approached.

"What seems to be the problem, officer," she asked.

"Clocked you over the speed limit back a ways," the cop said, standing well back of the passenger side door, his right hand resting on his holster.

"I don't think I did and I'm pretty sure the GPS data stored on my car's navigation system will verify that, sir," she said.

The cop nodded and gritted his teeth, his face reddening. "Then I think you've got a taillight out."

"Strange. The safety inspection sticker on the windshield here says it was issued just a week or so ago. Wouldn't they have made me repair it to get my inspection sticker if the light was out?"

The officer strode to the rear of his car, took out his baton and, using both hands, smashed it into the left, rear taillight, spraying shards of translucent, ruby-colored glass and plastic onto the asphalt.

"As I said, ma'am,... taillight's out," the trooper said. "Gonna have to ask you to exit the vehicle facing forward with your hands behind your head, Miss Felson."

As instructed, the door opened and she emerged from the car, facing south, hands behind her head.

"You know, officer, I don't recall you asking my name and I don't recall giving it, yet you just called me Miss Felson," she said.

That and the uncharacteristic calm of the woman before him rattled the cop.

"I... I ah... ran your plates while I was following you. Now step straight backward toward me until I tell you to halt," he said, trying to reassert control of the stop.

"Officer, isn't it regulation on a stop like this that you ask for ID? You know, license and registration? This all seems very irregular to me, especially since you seem to know my name," she said.

"I'll get that from you when I search your car, miss, but for now..."

"Well officer..." she turned, almost a perfect pirouette, hands still behind her head, and faced the officer and read the name on the rectangular silver pin over the shirt breast pocket opposite his badge, "...Poynter, I am going to help you out and provide my identity anyway."

A look of momentary panic registered in the officer's pudgy face as he put his right hand on his service weapon. "Don't come no goddamn closer, miss. I ain't here to hurt you."

The cold confidence in the steely eyes that now stared directly into those of a very nervous trooper Gordon Poynter. That and the distraction of a helicopter approaching low and fast from his left. He knew he had taken a serious risk abusing his badge like this, but he had a duty and... now this whole damn thing was going badly off-script, and he wasn't prepared for that.

"My name's not Felson, officer. It's Corder. Special agent Sandrine Corder. FBI," she said. She saw the officer's jaw slacken and tremble as she said the words. "And those guys in the chopper just overhead now? That's special agent Kennedy piloting and the guy with the sniper rifle locked on your body mass right now, that's special agent Moser."

Poynter fumbled at his holster as if he was thinking of pulling his pistol.

"I wouldn't. Agent Moser there? He served one tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan as a Marine Corps sniper. Thirty-two confirmed kills. If they see me give a discreet signal to them indicating my life's in danger, you die instantly."

He kept his hand on his holster, his head looked upward to the chopper no more than 50 feet overhead as the wash from its rotors sent dust, debris flying. To his left, he saw oncoming traffic slowing and stopping.

"Officer Poynter, I have no idea who those guys coming up behind you are," agent Corder said, her voice raised almost to a shout to be heard over the chopper. "They're probably a bunch of eager young agents fresh out of Quantico looking for a way to earn a Director's Medal before probation by putting a bullet in your ear to save a fellow agent."

"Right now, officer, I strongly suggest you slowly unbuckle your gun belt and let it drop to the ground then clasp both hands behind your head."

Sandy Corder had been doing this long enough that she knew when an adversary was beaten. Rarely did it come to actual shots fired, but that didn't ease her fresh, bottled-up sense of dread. Not a month earlier, she had seen a team of police riflemen vaporize the head of an 18-year-old on a murderous rampage that started in New Jesey and ended on a South Carolina college campus where he took one woman hostage at knifepoint and was about to stab another he believed had betrayed him years earlier. She had already told her superiors after that harrowing day that another gruesome outcome like that one in a dormitory at Fulbright University and she would retire early from the bureau.

Fortunately for her, the officer standing not 10 feet from her saw the hopelessness of his situation and took the peaceful route. Trooper Poynter, as instructed, gingerly removed the thick, black belt with a holster that held his 9-mm semiautomatic handgun, placed it on the asphalt, took two steps back from it and put his hands behind his head. When agent Corder picked up the firearm, the helicopter retreated to a less threatening distance as men in black jump suits and flack jackets, their guns drawn, surrounded the surrendered trooper and handcuffed him.

Agents wordlessly took Poynter to one of the several unmarked black Chevy Suburbans in a line of SUVs.

They seated Poynter alone in the back seat. In the front seat, an unsmiling man in khakis and a sweater vest turned around from the passenger seat and introduced himself as Michael Pinlok, assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

"Am I under arrest?" Poynter asked.

"Not yet," Pinlok said dryly.

"Where are you taking me? What happens to my car -- that's state property?"

"We've got that under control Mr. Poynter. You're being taken someplace where we can talk," the federal prosecutor said.

"Why would I talk? You know I haven't been Mirandized," the uniformed cop reminded the federal lawyer.

"That's correct. If you want us to go ahead and place you under arrest, then we'll read you your Miranda rights, but we're hoping you'll hear us out first."

Poynter looked through the tinted window at the darkening western sky and exhaled in resignation.

▼ ▼ ▼

The first 30 minutes of the Sunday evening drive south on Interstate 75 -- a safe distance behind agent Corder driving her Kia and the small army of federal agents who sprung the trap on officer Poynter -- were in stony silence. Kass sat with her arms tightly folded as I took her to a State Police post just north of Lexington where her car with its shattered taillight and the trooperless patrol cruiser had been towed after the dramatic standoff with the FBI a few hours earlier.

It was Kass who spoke first.

"What the hell is all this, Les? This dirty cop... actually, cops. Those crazy church people. The closeted life Dano lived that was so awful that he killed himself. That's all bad enough. But the worst part is you didn't tell me... any of it," she said.

"I'm sorry, Kass. There were reasons for it. In hindsight, I should have let you know, but I was told by law-enforcement and my own private investigator not to say anything to anybody," I said. "And tonight's stuff about this plot to have another trooper try to pull you over and scare me by scaring you, I knew nothing about that until Agent Gustin knocked on the door as you were getting ready to walk out of it. Evidently, it was something the feds didn't know about until their intel sources picked it up just before he showed up at my house."

"But you've been connected to this in some way or another for weeks, starting the day Dano died, and you hid it from me. That day I asked you about the word 'groomer' written on my car, you should have told me then, but you didn't. Instead, you pretended not to know what it meant. You treated me like I'm stupid, Les, but most of all you lied to me," she said.

I was prepared to argue with her. I couldn't disclose what I knew, I had reasoned, because it would violate the confidentiality I was legally and professionally obliged to honor since I signed that cocktail napkin retainer agreement with Dano. And had I told her the true connotation of the graffiti Brother Brewer's minions scrawled on her car window, it would have forced me to explain all the aforementioned.

Technically, those were all defensible excuses. But there wasn't a good reason among them. From a moral perspective, she had me dead to rights. How the hell could I have not seen that. So I just spoke the truth from my heart.

"Kass, I was wrong. You are right. At the time, I was thinking and acting as a lawyer, not someone who loves you. I will never regret anything more. I rationalized it as protecting you when, in fact, I was doing the opposite," I said. "Please believe me when I tell you I am sorry."

She began quietly weeping. I reached across the center console to clasp her hand but she yanked it away. This was bad. It could very well be that I had fucked up the most important thing in my life.

"Now what do I do? I can't stay in my apartment because they know where it is. My car had some kind of tracking bug on it so they knew every trip I took," she said. "And you knew!"

"I did, Kass. And I made sure that the police and private security that I hired were discreetly watching your back. That's why I urged you to get security cams."

"Good God! You had me under surveillance, too? Holy shit, Les, this just gets darker and darker," she said. "Who are you?"

The more I sought to explain, the more it hurt her and the more distance it put between us. As the axiom goes, when you find yourself in the bottom of a hole, it's a good idea to stop digging.

"I'm so sorry, Kass. I love you and I was doing what I did believing I was helping you. I see how wrong it was. I hope you can forgive me," I said.

The rest of the drive the state police regional post was in silence. I offered to drive her the rest of the way, considering that she had only one functioning taillight. She shot that down immediately. She filled out the requisite paperwork for claiming her vehicle after it was processed for evidence. When the clerk handed her the keys, she asked whether the tracking device had been removed. The clerk, who knew nothing about why the car was there, looked at her blankly and shrugged.

"Can you find someone who does know?" Kass asked.

"That would be the duty sergeant and he's on break," the clerk said.

Kass never shows her temper, but I could tell she was reaching her boiling point. So I stepped in.

"Ma'am, I think it's wise to perhaps interrupt the duty sergeant for this, if you don't mind."

"I think he's at lunch," the dull-eyed civil servant replied.

Now Kass was about to unleash, so I spoke up again.

"Madam, I am an attorney involved in this matter, and I assure you this is something your sergeant is going to need to be involved in. Now I don't care if he's back there raising Lazarus from the dead, you really need to get him out here. Now."

The pudgy woman glared at us and stormed through a door behind the reception area. She returned a couple of minutes later with her equally doughy graveyard-shift supervisor, Sergeant Addams, still sipping at the straw of his super-sized McDonald's soft drink.

"Yessir, what seems to be the problem," he said.

"Sir, your department processed Miss Felson's vehicle after it was towed as evidence from an incident on I-75 this afternoon. Miss Felson was told by federal authorities that a GPS tracking device had been covertly and unlawfully planted on her car for some time, and she wants to know if it's been removed. Can you tell us if that's been done?"

"That's the green Elantra?" he asked.

"Yes," Kass replied. "I have a right not to have my travels illegally monitored. I want that thing off my car."

Addams had put on his reading glasses and reviewed the evidence inspection form, scanning one page after another.

"Ma'am, there's no mention of it anywhere in this report. If they found a tracker, it's not stated here. And if they found one and removed it, I'm pretty sure it would be noted."

"Sergeant, can someone check?" I said. "I believe they normally conceal them under a bumper, on the gas tank or in one of the wheel wells."

"I'm sorry but the evidence techs have all gone home for the night. It's just me and the road officers, and even if I or anybody else found a bug on the car, I can't remove it without approval." Addams said.

"Well, what if I take my car, find it on my own and throw it in the damn river," Kass asked.

"Ma'am, I wouldn't advise it, but I ain't a lawyer. That's a question you'd have to take up with your attorney here 'cause if that's evidence in a criminal case and you destroy or tamper with it, that could get you in trouble," Addams said.

"How much trouble," Kass asked me.

She had to be pissed just to ask that question. Her whole life, Kass had played by the rules and detested those who didn't. Teachers loved her in our school days for that very reason. I had never seen this rebel streak in her.

"Sergeant Addams, please give us a moment," I said, touching Kass on the arm and gesturing toward the entrance. "We need to discuss this privately."

Kass walked outside with me, bristling with anger and defiance.

"Give me a dollar," I told her.

"What?" she shrieked.

"A dollar bill. And a piece of paper," I said. "You hand me a dollar or just any amount of currency, I write three sentences on a piece of paper, we sign and date it and that legally constitutes a retainer and makes me your attorney. That way I can give you legal advice and anything you tell me is protected from disclosure for the rest of my life by attorney-client privilege."

"Rest of your life?"

"Yes. Let's get this done."

She started rifling through her purse, first finding her pocketbook and extracting a 10-dollar bill, the smallest denomination of currency she had, and then extracting a printout of a utility bill she had paid weeks earlier. I pocketed the sawbuck. When she fished a pen from her purse, I pressed the old electricity bill against the glass of the front door and scrawled out a retainer agreement on the blank back of it, signed and dated it, then handed it and the pen to her instructing her to do the same.

"Can't believe I'm doing this," she said, and signed and dated the line designated "client" just below mine.