Unfit to Practice Read online

  Unfit to Practice

  Perri O'shaughnessy

  It's the moment every lawyer fears most… One careless moment that threatens careers, reputations, lives…For Nina Reilly, it will change everything – igniting a case where her own clients are witnesses against her – and where the defendant is Nina herself. One September night in Lake Tahoe when her unlocked truck is stolen, her life changes forever. Gone are her most sensitive case files, complete with the sometimes brutally candid notes she took while interviewing her clients. It's every attorney's nightmare. And now the worst has happened: the secrets are being revealed, one by one, in ways that will cause the greatest harm. As reputations are ruined and people begin to die…a chilling pattern of rage and revenge comes into focus. Someone is bent on destroying the lives of Nina's clients and, in the process, Nina Reilly.

  Perri O'Shaughnessy

  Unfit to Practice

  The eighth book in the Nina Reilly series, 2002

  D EDICATED TO

  ALL THE DESPERADOS OUT THERE TRYING

  TO PRACTICE LAW ALONE

  ***

  Prologue

  A FTER BEING DROPPED OFF at a filthy parking lot underneath a gloomy concrete overpass, Nina Reilly stopped in for coffee at the Roastery on the corner of Howard and Main streets. A river of chilly air flowed through the tunnel-like streets around the skyscrapers of the Financial District. The buildings seemed to lean in at her, threatening. She had her pick of caffeine oases, not that it mattered. She was not here by choice. Any black bile would do.

  At the bottom of Howard, the Embarcadero and Bay Bridge buzzed unseen, angry hives of energy. The tall buildings’ glass reflected the sun’s intense beams right at her. People glowed like aliens, or so she projected. San Francisco wasn’t her city anymore. The town of South Lake Tahoe had sheltered her for the last few years after she left the Montgomery Street law firm where she had begun the practice of law, and the city had become a stranger.

  Nina sank into a rattan chair. A young man at the next table, his Chinese newspaper close to his nose, blew steam across his cup.

  Women like her, wearing expensive jackets and gold earrings, waited anxiously in line, then carried their medicine right out the door, swallowing on the run.

  Where was Jack?

  She watched a boy from some cold country, bearing a heavy backpack, lounge against the counter, waiting for his espresso. Next to him a balding man, not very much older but with the suit and briefcase of one who has settled into his life, took an apple from a bowl while the woman behind the counter heated up a muffin. The scent of cinnamon moved through the room, smelling of home, its effect immediate and painful. She thought of Bob, who was staying with her brother, Matt, back in Tahoe. She needed her son beside her but she didn’t want to put him through this. It would hurt him too much.

  She looked around. Jack should be here by now.

  What a strange and terrible day, she thought, taking in the sounds of traffic and the city through the open doors.

  Here she sat waiting for her ex-husband, a man she had never expected to see again, but as a result of this six-month-old legal case they had a closer relationship now than when they were married. Jack as a colleague was a savvy, reassuring presence beside her-a much better lawyer than he had been a husband.

  Jack blew through the door from Main Street, tossing a raincoat on the chair next to hers. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “I just got here myself. We got stuck in traffic coming off the Bay Bridge. How much time do we have?”

  “A few minutes. What time did you leave Tahoe?”

  “Four-thirty.” A long, long time before the dawn. She tried to smile back, remembering that attitude is everything. Reinforcements had arrived and she should straighten up.

  Jack looked spiffy in his suit, his square jaw scraped clean. Fresh from the blow-dryer, his ginger hair stuck out as if fired by electricity.

  Smoothing his hair down with one hand, he read from the green boards. “I’ll be right back,” he said, getting up and walking over to the counter.

  Nina watched him sneak in front of a pale office worker, apologizing as if he hadn’t seen her, offering to wait in line behind her, but the girl was already bewitched and said, oh, no, you go ahead. Jack had charm, that rare quality that eased the tensions in the courtroom as well as in life. Good. He would need that magnetism over the next few days.

  He returned and slurped, careful of his white collar. Then he took her hand. “Relax, now. It’s just another day in court.” His eyes moved over her in a mix of personal and professional interest. “I like the suit. You could pull your hair back.”

  Nina considered the measure of control Jack now had over her, found a barrette in her purse, and pulled her long brown hair back.

  “We should go in a couple of minutes. We’ll be more comfortable if we have a minute to settle in before the judge shows up. You look worried. No, you look mad. Mad and worried. What’s up?”

  “I’m ready to fight, only who are we fighting? I can’t stand this feeling that we’re being manipulated.”

  “So we use the hearing to find out. We focus on that. Meanwhile, don’t get weird on me.”

  “I’ll look confident. But don’t tell me how to feel.” His eyes moved to her hand, where she had bitten a nail down to the quick. She rubbed her lips with her finger, opened her briefcase and withdrew a delicate mirror, then looked herself in the eye. The eye was still brown and showed no panic. Amazing.

  “Why didn’t you come down from Tahoe yesterday? I can see how tired you are, and we’re just starting. You should have stayed with me in Bernal Heights last night, saved yourself that drive. What did you think I would do? Jump you?”

  She didn’t answer, telling herself, this is not the time. Lack of sleep and the months of tension building to this moment were unfettering them both.

  “Sorry,” Jack said after a moment. “The shoes are nice. You look remarkably respectable today. Like someone I might marry.” He smiled, and the smile invited her to play along. He always wanted to brush the edge off, smooth things over with humor. Life is folly, his eyes told her. When she didn’t smile back, his face hardened and he turned back into Jack the Knife, his lawyer-self. She preferred that. She believed it to be the real him.

  His eyes flitted to his watch. “Time to go.”

  They left, hustling although they were still early.

  Nina’s new briefcase felt heavier with every step. Its contents, tagged paper exhibits, represented months of work. This was the most important hearing of her career. Still, she was not ready. She could never be ready for this.

  They moved through a warren of skyscrapers into a dank alleyway. At an outdoor stand, more coffee shot into impatiently jiggling cups. The whole city seemed to be fueled with caffeine, hyper, irritable, on the move. Pushing through double doors, they walked up to a security desk. “Good morning. Do we need to sign in?” Jack asked.

  A friendly black woman eyed their attachés. “You going up to the court?”

  “That’s us. Is the judge in a good mood?”

  “You tell me when you see him. Sign in up there,” she said. “Sixth floor.”

  The elevator gleamed bronze and silver. They rode up in silence, exited toward a sign that read QUIET, PLEASE. COURT IN SESSION, and laid their nail clippers, keys, and coins on a brown plastic tray before passing through the metal detector. As Nina walked through, the alarm sounded. The attendant, a young man in a starched white shirt, motioned her back. He looked down at her feet. “Hmm. No buckles,” he said.

  She removed her watch and walked through again. Again it rang. By this time other people in a small waiting area to the left, several that she knew, were staring at her. She swallowed
and tried to think what in the world she was wearing that would make the thing go off. An underwire bra? No, she’d gone for the soft athletic one, invisible under her suit jacket and more comfortable for a long court day. She was already ridiculous. She felt an urge to flee.

  “Your barrette, Nina,” Jack said.

  Nodding, she removed it. Her hair billowed out, but she walked through soundlessly this time. The guard smiled at her and handed her the barrette. “Sign in here.” He pushed a lined pad toward her. “Put 9:22 as when you checked in. You don’t have to sign out if you leave for a few minutes. Just at the end of the day.”

  “Can we go on in?” Jack asked. “We’re scheduled in Courtroom Two, I believe.”

  “The clerk is already in there. Go ahead.”

  Nina felt the eyes on her back as they walked inside.

  “Your hair,” Jack reminded her.

  “To hell with it.” She slid her barrette into her pocket.

  Small and windowless except for two lengths of frosted glass that ran alongside the door to the waiting area, the courtroom formed a long rectangle. On the right, the trial counsel, Gayle Nolan, sat at an L-shaped table behind two large black notebooks. Nina and Jack took seats at an identical table on the left, Jack seated on the outside, Nina tucked into the L, feeling the unnatural chill of an overactive ventilation system, grateful for a warm jacket.

  Jack put papers on the table and handed her one of two bottles of spring water that were sitting there. She unpacked the briefcase swiftly and efficiently as she had done so many times before in her legal career, getting into it, appreciating the tight organization resulting from so many hours of work.

  A study in neutrality, the courtroom walls were brown, white, and gray. The chairs they sat in bore innocuous stripes. The furnishings were affectless, designed to suck moods right out of the air. Details like the clock on the wall, circular, simply numbered, the judge’s podium, and a large digital clock, right now showing dashes instead of numbers, were strictly functional. Behind them a dozen chairs for observers or witnesses lined the back wall of the court.

  She could be in Chicago or New York. She could be back in her home courtroom in South Lake Tahoe, the room was so stylized. It reminded her of the set of a play she had seen not too long ago at a little theater, Sartre’s No Exit, a black place presumably surrounded by the Void. Purgatory, timeless and eternal.

  But this wasn’t Tahoe. The mountains outside beyond the gray were tall buildings. The dreamlike element, the clash between the bland courtroom and the often terrible events that brought people there, gripped her. What am I doing here? she thought. Who has done this to me?

  Jack reached over and ran his hand along her arm.

  “Okay?” he whispered.

  “Totally freaked out,” Nina whispered back.

  “How you can feel that way and still look so Darth Vader-tough I’ll never understand.” Jack fingered an empty Styrofoam cup, a scraping, ghastly wakeup. Gayle Nolan got up, ignoring them, and wheeled in a cart marked Chief Trial Counsel weighted down with thick notebooks, folders in file boxes, and code books. So many papers. Nina tried to enjoy the sight of her struggling with the load. No eager law clerks helping here. Light gleamed off Nolan’s specs as she stacked the paperwork onto her table. Finally, she sat back down.

  “Hey, Gayle,” Jack said. “And how are you on this fine morning?”

  “Hello, Jack.”

  “You can still back out.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “This whole thing is a laugh.”

  “Yeah? I notice she’s not laughing.”

  “She wants the last laugh.”

  The judge entered from one of three doors at the front of the room behind the podium. They all stood. Extra tall, with a full head of gray hair he had brushed back, he sported a small, neat mustache, not bushy like the one Jack used to wear. He didn’t look at them. The file engaged his attention as he sat down, allowing them to sit, too.

  A placard at the front of his desk read JUDGE HUGO BROCK. “We’ll go on the record,” he said. Sitting on his left with headphones over her ears, the clerk clicked on a keyboard. The digital clock at the front flashed to brilliant red life. It was the brightest spot in the courtroom, and they all stared at it as if the day had exploded.

  “ California State Bar Proceeding SB 76356. In the matter of Reilly,” said the judge.

  Book One

  September

  The Grove, Nina’s mother called her school, and whenever she thought of that name later on she naturally thought of rows of ripe apples and oranges, as though when she was six years old she had lived a country idyll. But it was only a hilly neighborhood in California, and the elementary school was really called Pacific Grove Elementary, a functional name without romance. Nina had gone to first grade there.

  On the playground, little girls swung around a long metal bar about three feet off the ground. Little boys were not allowed to do this exquisitely exciting thing. One leg pushed off from the ground, the other draped over the bar, hands holding the bar, over and upside down she went, at every recess and after school when she could swing all alone. When she got her rhythm right she could somersault ten or twelve times continuously, and get dizzy and watch the hills and trees turn upside down, becoming other forms in an ever-changing world.

  The first important thing in her life happened at The Grove. One day, all alone after school, she swung around and around on the bar, and after a while a thought swung into her head: I am me.

  She had never had this thought before. As a matter of fact, she had never been aware of her thoughts before. I am me. My name is Nina and I live down the street. I swing on the bar. I am me! Wildly excited, she turned furiously upside down. The hills were the same hills now, just upside down.

  Once this thought entered her head, she was never the same. She became aware of things she had never noticed and that was a loss, because she had been mindlessly free before, but there was also the joy of seeing how things fit together. She made discoveries about where she fit into this new orderly world, into her family especially, Mommy and Daddy and baby brother Matty.

  And at school her teacher taught her rules. Follow the rules to keep away confusion. Follow them to keep things in order. Line up when the bell rings. Raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Little girl bathroom, little boy bathroom.

  The second important thing happened toward the end of the year, after school again. Nina should have been heading home, a block away, but the heat made her thirsty, so first she had a long drink of water from the girls’ water fountain. Little girls’ fountain, little boys’ fountain over by their bathroom, that rule was clear.

  While Nina watched, a mother and a little boy came up to the little girls’ water fountain.

  And to her horror, the little boy started to take a drink from the little girls’ fountain. Nina ran right up to tell him he couldn’t do that and tried to explain. But the mother, ignorant and uncaring, brushed her aside and told him to go ahead. And he, who must have felt confused, decided to do what his mother said, but Nina now blocked the way, arms out, defending the fountain. It’s the rule! she said, but the tall grown-up bent down and told the boy to drink up, and he gave Nina a little push to get her out of the way.

  So Nina slugged him. That stopped him. He sat down on the concrete and cried, holding his hand over his eye. Nina breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction, but then along came a big teacher with the mother and made her go into the office and called Mommy and said she did a bad thing! And no one got it, that her defense had saved the fountain and the rules and maybe the orderly world itself, that she was a champion of the girls’ fountain. She had done the right thing and was punished for it.

  To be so completely sure, and then have the system go topsy-turvy on her! She decided, and this was the most significant decision of her life, that from what she knew, she was right to defend the fountain and they were wrong because rules had meaning and purpose. What meaning and
purpose, she didn’t know yet. But rules made sense out of her blurry world.

  In high school about ten years later, Nina went to Monterey with her class to watch a trial. The scruffy-looking, confused man on trial had done something very bad, maybe. Everybody was against him. But one person stood up for him and held them all off, making sure the rules were followed. And as she watched, she understood. This champion was not just defending that poor underdog but a system that kept the world sane.

  How do people with different values, religions, economic status, and hopes coexist in peace?

  Law provided a method.

  And so at age sixteen she decided to become a lawyer.

  1

  T HAT THURSDAY IN early September billowed up blue and white, as breezy and innocent as a picnic, the air filtering through shimmering sunlit leaves. But during the afternoon, the true Sierra atmosphere showed its face in a ferocious summer storm, ruthless, unpredictable, and dangerous.

  And because the storm dislocated all sorts of human arrangements that night, or because life is a mist of error, or perhaps just because she had been working too hard and couldn’t deal with one more thing that day, Nina Reilly made a small, critical mistake that changed everything.

  The day began at eight-thirty sharp with the Cruz custody hearing, now in its second day and going fine, if anything could be fine about a family splitting up. Lisa Cruz, Kevin’s wife, took the stand, and she loved their two kids, no doubt about that, but she had some very strange ideas, too.

  “I’m a full-time mom and a professional with a deep spiritual side,” she said from the witness box, gazing at Jeffrey Riesner with large, earnest, liquid eyes that seemed to beg for further help. “I depend on the great philosophers for guidance.”