Mistress of Justice

says?”
    “I—”
    “True or not true? Answer the question.”
    “They set me—”
    “Is this what the report says?”
    Sobbing, the man said, “Yes, but—”
    “Wouldn’t you say, sir, that you can hardly state my client is guilty of malpractice because of the improper administration of drugs when you can’t even knock out a teenager enough to rape her?”
    “Objection.”
    “Withdrawn.”
    “They set me up,” the witness said. “Just to blackmail me. They—”
    Reece turned on him. “Well, then, Doctor, did you atany time contact the law enforcement authorities in Mexico City or in the United States to report that you were being blackmailed?”
    “No,” he raged. “I paid them the extortion money and they said I could leave the country and they’d seal the record. I—”
    “You mean,” Reece said, “you paid the
fine
for your
punishment
. Like any other criminal. No further questions.”
    Taylor found herself sitting forward on the edge of the pew. She now saw Reece’s brilliant tactic. First, he’d gotten the jury’s attention. Expecting petty bickering, they’d seen Reece befriend the witness, surprising them and getting them to sit up and listen. Then he got the man to say the magic word that, by rights, Reece or LaDue or anyone on the St. Agnes legal team would try never even to allow into testimony, let alone elicit themselves: “malpractice.”
    And then, in a masterful stroke, he’d linked that characterization—that one magic word—to the witness’s terrible behavior and completely destroyed his credibility.
    Taylor saw a gleam in Reece’s face, a flushing of the cheeks, fists balled up in excitement.
    Reece turned. He noticed Donald Burdick in the back of the courtroom. The two men looked at each other. Neither smiled, but Burdick touched his forehead in a salute of respect.
    Taylor turned and looked at Burdick then behind him. Finally Randy Simms showed some emotion. His lips were tight and his eyes bored into the back of Donald Burdick’s head. He rose and stepped out of the courtroom, which was utterly silent.
    Except for the sobbing of the witness.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    She stopped him in the hallway of the court.
    Reece smiled when he saw her.
    “How’d I do?”
    “How do you think? I’d say you mopped up the floor with him.”
    “We’ll see.” Reece continued, “What most lawyers don’t realize is that cross-examination isn’t about being an orator. It’s about having information. I called a private eye I’ve used out in San Diego and he dug up the dirt on the guy. Cost me—well, cost St. Agnes—fifty thousand. But it saved them a lot more than that.”
    “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
    “Handling the cross? Yep.” He hesitated a moment, and finally spoke, though whether it was what he’d originally intended to say or not she couldn’t tell. “I sometimes feel bad for them—people like that witness—when I tear apart their testimony. But in this case it was easy. He was a rapist.”
    “You believe he did it? What happened in Mexico?”
    He considered. “I
chose
to believe he did somethingwrong. It’s a mind-set thing. Hard to explain but, yes, I believe it.”
    Taylor reflected: You could certainly argue that their client, the hospital, had done something wrong too—destroying the plaintiff’s life; and she wasn’t sure if the rape, if it had actually occurred, undermined the legitimacy of Morse’s opinion about that.
    She said nothing about any of this though and, indeed, she secretly envied Reece his fervent view of right and wrong. For her, justice wasn’t quite as clear as that. It was a moving target, like the birds she’d watch her father hunt every fall. Some he hit and some he missed and there was no grand design as to which.
    “Listen,” she said. “I’ve got some leads. Have time for lunch?”
    “Can’t. I’m meeting one of the vice presidents from New Amsterdam. I’ve got to be at the Downtown Athletic Club fifteen minutes ago.”
    He looked around. “Let’s talk later. But tell you what: Come over to my place for dinner.”
    “I’m playing Mata Hari tonight. What’s tomorrow? Friday—how’s that?”
    “Make it Saturday. I’m meeting with the bank people all day tomorrow and I’m sure it’ll go into dinner.” He fell silent as someone walked by, a sandy-haired man in coveralls, who glanced at them quickly and then continued on. Reece’s eyes followed the man uneasily as he walked