Directed Verdict (3 page)

3

CHARLES REED TRIED TO FOCUS.
His mind swirled in a rage of anger, pain, and helplessness. Two muscular agents forced him into the kitchen chair again and pinned his arms behind his back. Ahmed was in his face. Sarah lay motionless on the family room couch.

She was alive, he knew. And by the grace of God, she had not been molested. After she blacked out, Ahmed started barking orders. Check the pulse. Lay her on the couch. Grab that list from her bra. Leave her alone.

Charles did not know the reason for the last order. Maybe they were waiting for her to regain consciousness. Maybe they could get whatever they needed from him. Maybe even these men had limits on what they would do to American citizens. Maybe it was just a miraculous answer to his prayer. Whatever the reason, it gave Charles hope.

“Who is Hanif?” Ahmed demanded, reading from the list.

Charles stared at the floor. His face throbbed. The taste of blood trickled through his mouth.

“Who is Khartoum?” Ahmed continued.

More silence.

One of Ahmed’s men removed a sleek black stun gun from its holster. He held it inches from the base of Charles’s neck and looked at Ahmed, apparently waiting for his cue. Ahmed grinned at Charles and boasted about the weapon. It would immobilize any man, Ahmed told him, with two hundred thousand volts of electricity. And the best thing, Ahmed claimed, was that the instrument left no marks on the victim except two small burn spots where the probes of the gun contacted the skin and unleashed the electricity. Only the central nervous system would suffer permanent damage, and the cause would be difficult to prove.

Charles wondered for a fleeting instant how bad it could be.

He soon learned. And for the next twenty minutes—for what seemed like an eternity—his hope for survival faded with every passing question, with every mind-searing jolt.

“I need names of the leaders of the other church groups you have started.” Ahmed spoke deliberately and calmly, as if he knew Charles was beginning to have trouble understanding the words. “Don’t play games with me.”

The waiting was the hardest part. Knowing what was coming—the surging current of the stun gun—and being powerless to stop it. How many times had they been through this? How much more could he take? How long ago had Sarah gone down? And what would happen to her now? His mind raced, chasing questions with no answers.

Charles sensed movement behind him and convulsed at the thought of another jolt from the hated gun. “Please . . . I’m begging you.” He trembled, struggling for breath. “You’ve got to believe me. . . . I don’t know what churches you’re talking about. . . . These names on the card are just friends—”

“Shut up,” Ahmed snapped. He grabbed Charles’s hair and jerked his head backward again, demanding eye contact.

Charles prayed for strength.

Ahmed slowly raised the corner of his mouth, a small and sick smile, then spit in Charles’s face, letting go of his hair. Charles’s head dropped hard against his chest. The saliva dripped from his cheek.

“You think you are strong,” Ahmed whispered through clenched teeth. “But you are stupid. You will talk, my friend.” Ahmed paused, letting the words hang in the air. “You will talk.”

Ahmed held out his palm to stop the agent with the stun gun. This time Ahmed himself would do the honors. He took the gun and jammed it furiously against the base of Charles’s neck.

Burning flesh, surging electricity, searing pain. Charles shook and yelped as his body twitched involuntarily, the pain affecting every nerve ending, the electricity jolting his brain. His body was on fire from the inside out. His screams did not seem to belong to him, and he jerked uncontrollably in the chair, unable to escape the gun or to bear this new round of torture.

Finally, mercifully, Ahmed disengaged the gun. Charles’s seizure continued, blood and saliva flowing from his contorted mouth into his lap. The smell of burning flesh filled the kitchen.

Charles was losing his will to endure. He prayed for strength for the next minute, nothing more. He tried to focus on Sarah and the kids. He would make it one more minute for them, for the church members, for his Lord.

Images flashed through his mind in rapid succession. Images of his wife and children, of baptisms of church members, of the face of Christ as it had been portrayed in his childhood picture Bible. Ahmed’s voice brought the parade to a stop.

“We are just beginning,” Ahmed said gruffly, without emotion. “Do not be a fool. My men are anxious to finish what they started. On both you and your wife. Your wife needs help, and I need names. Let us make a deal.”

The threat to Sarah brought Charles back to reality. He raised his head, looked out toward the living room, then locked eyes with Ahmed.
What does he mean?
Charles wondered. The eyes told him nothing.
Can you deal with the devil? God, give me wisdom!

Sudden clarity came over Charles in the midst of the pain, an immediate answer to a desperate prayer.
This man is just keeping Sarah safe so he can use her as leverage against me. If I give up the names, he will have no reason to let either of us live, no reason to protect Sarah from his men. The informant must have told him the names of the Friday night worshipers. But the other names he does not know. My silence keeps Sarah alive.

Ahmed narrowed his eyes. Charles was sure the man could read his thoughts. As Ahmed reached again for the stun gun, Charles mumbled a sentence and dropped his chin to his chest.

“Again,” Ahmed demanded. “Say it again.”

As if possessed by a force greater than himself, Charles repeated the words, slowly, and in a barely audible whisper. “‘He was led as a lamb to the slaughter—’” he paused, taking a labored breath—“‘and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.’”

Ahmed’s silence caused Charles to raise his head. When he did so, Ahmed turned and looked at Sarah sprawled on the couch, the only sign of life in the heaving of her chest. “Some men need a little extra persuasion,” the Muttawa leader growled. He turned to Charles again and, with great force, pulled Charles’s right arm from behind his back and grabbed Charles’s wrist. He pushed hard against the back of Charles’s hand, nearly bending the wrist in half as he forced the hand toward the forearm. Charles flinched and ground his teeth, swallowing the scream that welled up in the back of his throat. Surely his wrist would snap in two.

The pain returned. Searing, debilitating pain. And then Ahmed backed off slightly on the pressure but continued to hold the wrist. “Speak to me,” Ahmed said simply. “Or you will beg me to stop, and there will be no end.”

Once again Charles summoned courage he did not know he had for another symbolic act of resistance. He gritted his teeth and made a futile effort to yank his wrist away from Ahmed’s iron grip. Charles knew immediately that he had made an awful mistake.

Ahmed reasserted the pressure with a vengeance. This time he did not let up as Charles begged for mercy. Ahmed pushed harder; the pain intensified. It shot up Charles’s arm and engulfed his brain. And then it happened—the sickening snap of the wrist bone as his hand went limp.

His bloodcurdling scream echoed throughout the apartment.

* * *

“When did you hold a prayer meeting on the steps of this courthouse?” Brad asked innocently.

Angela Bennett bolted from her seat, hands spread in protest.

“Mr. Carson, that’s not relevant,” Ichabod said gruffly, leaning back and folding her arms.

“Judge, it
is
relevant. If you give me a few minutes, I’ll link it up,” Brad promised.

The judge hesitated, then scowled. “Go ahead, Mr. Carson. But it better be good.”

Oh, it will be,
Brad thought.

“Reverend Bailey, when and why were you praying on the courthouse steps?”

“It was in the summer of 2000,” he said, “after the
Stenberg v. Carhart
Supreme Court case in which the Court sanctioned partial birth abortion. I just couldn’t believe that in this country our courts would defend a procedure like that—a procedure where a viable fetus is delivered into the birth canal, and then . . .” The reverend paused, pursing his lips and sadly shaking his head. “And then the skull is torn open with scissors, and the brain material is extracted to reduce the head size and ensure the child dies before delivery.”

He did not look at Brad as he finished his answer. Brad chose to let the silence linger.

“God help us,” the reverend mumbled into the silence. “I knew then it was time to pray.”

Ichabod appeared unmoved except for the telltale vein, now a bit larger and pulsing a bit faster than before. She had been duped; Brad saw the realization in her eyes. The volatile issues she had worked so hard to keep out of the case were now cascading around her, and she was powerless to stop them.

“Did you read the opinion in
Stenberg
before you went to the courthouse to pray?” Brad asked, pushing the point.

“Yes, I pulled it off the Internet.”

“Was there anything in the opinion that surprised you?”

“Yes. I had heard so many news reports about the gruesome procedure referred to as partial birth abortion. But until I read the
Stenberg
decision, I had never focused on what really happens during a normal D and E procedure, not a partial birth abortion but the kind of abortion performed every day right here at the Norfolk Clinic.”

“And is that what motivated you—,” Brad began.

“Stop! Right there!” Ichabod demanded, her harsh words echoing off the courtroom walls. “You are flaunting this court’s rulings, Mr. Carson.” She clenched her teeth and hunched her shoulders. “Move off this line of questioning.”

“Doesn’t the prosecution have to make her own objections anymore, or are you just—”

“Don’t push it, Mr. Carson,” Ichabod snapped. “Don’t push it.”

Brad pulled a copy of the case from his counsel table and turned to the dissenting opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy. “Do you recall these words from the opinion?” he asked the reverend. He began reading as if Ichabod had never spoken. “Are these the words that caused you so much anguish that you went first to the courthouse and later to the clinic for the purpose of begging God to stop these procedures?”

Ichabod looked stunned, but Brad could sense the wheels turning. Would she dare rule out of order, as being too emotionally charged, the very words from an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court?

“‘In a D and E procedure,’” Brad read, “‘the fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: it bleeds to death as it is torn from limb to limb. . . .’”

The prosecutor jumped to her feet again. “I strongly object to this inflammatory tactic,” Bennett shouted in an effort to be heard over Brad’s reading.

“‘. . . The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off. . . .’”

Ichabod started banging her gavel. “Mr. Carson! Mr. Carson!”

The prosecutor continued objecting, and a loud murmur rose from the left side of the courtroom. The Reverend Bailey’s eyes widened.

Brad increased his volume and continued over the rising din. “‘. . . Mere dismemberment does not always cause death. Dr. Carhart knew of a physician who removed the arm of a fetus only to have the fetus go on to be born as a living child with one arm.’” The gavel was still banging, Bennett objecting, and Ichabod was repeating the word
sustained
over and over. “‘At the conclusion of a D and E procedure, no intact fetus remains. In Dr. Carhart’s words, the abortionist is left . . .’”

“That’s enough!” Ichabod screamed. The intensity of it stilled the courtroom. Nobody moved.

“‘. . . with a tray full of pieces,’” Brad said into the silence.

All eyes turned to the seething form of Ichabod, still hunched forward, wild-eyed, her face crimson.

“That comment, Mr. Carson, will earn you contempt of court and a ten-thousand-dollar fine,” she said coldly, straining every muscle to keep control. “I have never, in twenty-six years on the bench, seen such obnoxious behavior.” As she spoke, her voice shook, the anger etched deeply on her face. “In addition,” she continued, “your contempt citation will carry a five-day prison term . . .”

An audible gasp went up from the right side of the courtroom. Brad averted his eyes.

After an exaggerated pause Ichabod continued. “. . . to be suspended on the condition of an apology to this court and good behavior befitting a member of the bar throughout the remainder of this case.”

She glared at Brad. “Does counsel wish to make a statement or comment?”

Brad knew the drill. She was waiting for a humble and contrite Brad Carson to grovel and apologize, and then she would probably consider some leniency. Even Ichabod was not in the habit of sending lawyers to jail. The ball was in his court.

For this moment, Brad was ready. He had done his homework. He had mulled this scenario over in his head during the prior sleepless night. He knew that only one word could have the desired effect and consummate his plan. He weighed his response carefully.

Then he shrugged.

“Whatever” was all he said as he turned to take his seat.

“Get him out of here!” Ichabod barked to the marshals, her voice thick with emotion. “Cuff him and get him out of my sight! You have five days minimum, Mr. Carson. And you will stay behind bars longer than that unless and until you apologize to this court and promise to show this court proper respect in the future. This case is hereby suspended until Mr. Carson can finish serving his time.”

She slammed her gavel.

Two hefty marshals grabbed Brad and placed handcuffs on his wrists. The Reverend Bailey looked aghast at the sight of his lawyer being treated like a criminal.

The church members prayed.

Brad turned and caught Bella’s eye as he was being escorted from the courtroom. He stared at her for a second, and then he winked. These were not the actions of an unbiased judge. Perhaps now the appellate judges in Richmond would understand.

Plan B had worked to perfection.