LOVING THE HEAD MAN (12 page)

       “With a syringe in his hand,” Pru added.

       “— with a syringe in his hand,” Bree agreed, “justifies ripping into her the way Mr. Colgate did.”

       Deidra, who viewed herself as the leader of them all, the automatic frontrunner despite her lagging test scores, slung her blonde hair back and shook her head.  “You talk as if context means absolutely nothing,” she said.  “Dr. Brokaw wasn’t coming out of just anybody’s room.  He was coming out of the room of a woman who was poisoned within the same time frame, that same
day, that
he was coming out of that room.  That’s damning evidence in and of
itself
, and I’m amazed that you aren’t sharp enough to see that fact.”

         Bree glanced at the others.  They found her equally dull of senses.  And Robert was staring so intensely at her.  “I never said it wasn’t damning,” she explained.  “What I’m saying is why beat up on a witness who has no axe to grind?  It makes the defense look like a bully trying to cover up for the fact that she’s a problem for his client.” 

       “Are you certain,” Robert interjected, “that she has no axe to grind?”       

      
“Thank-you!”
Deidra agreed. 

       Bree was thrown by his question, but not so thrown that she could not manage a comeback.  She hated that she always ended up as the odd girl out.  “Yes.  I mean, I just assumed she was an innocent bystander.”

       “Wouldn’t you agree,” Robert said in a measured tone, as if he didn’t want to offend her, but at the same time wanted to school her, “that a reasonable jury might assume the same thing if I were to treat her with kid gloves and take her testimony at face value?”

       “Probably, yes,” Bree reluctantly agreed.  “But you treated her as if she might be the murderer.”

       “What’s wrong with that?” Pru asked.  “She might be.”

       Michael Nesmith, another finalist, shook his head.  “Come on, Pru, that’s nonsense.”

       “No, it’s not,” Pru said.  “You don’t know her and Bree doesn’t either.”

       “It’s ridiculous,” Bree said. “If you treat every prosecution witness as if they had a hand in the murders, then you’ll run the risk of looking like. . .”

      
“Of looking like what?”
  Deidra wanted to know.

       “Of looking like you
were
a con, a gamer, somebody who was just trying to distract from the fact that your client may be a very bad man.  You’ll lose all credibility with the jury.  Everybody can’t have blood on their hands”

       Robert stared at Bree.  “No, they can’t,” he said.  “Good point, Brianna.  I’ll keep that in mind going forward.” 

       The intensity in the room turned onto
itself
as the others could not believe that Robert gave in to what they considered was Bree’s nonsensical arguments.  But before they could react, the door to the room opened and Monty peered inside.  “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen,” he said in that precise tone of his, “but a moment, Mr. Colgate, please.” 

       Robert looked at his assistant.  “What is it?”

       Monty stood erect and then entered the room, closing the door behind him.  “It seems the prosecution, sir, is suddenly ready to deal.” 

       “Wow,” some of the finalists couldn’t help saying, impressed. 

       Alan smiled.  “I wonder why.”

       Bree, however, was alarmed.  “But you aren’t going to accept.  Are you?”

       Everybody looked at her with that, once again,
who
does she think
she is
look.

       Robert looked at her.  “No,” he said.  “I just like to play rope-a-dope with them.”

       “What’s that?” Pru asked.

       Robert smiled and excused himself, making brief eye contact with Bree as he left. 

       When he left, everybody looked at Monty.  “As Mr. Colgate always
says,
when you have them on the ropes, play rope-a-dope.  He’s playing rope-a-dope.  It’s distracting and it gives them a false sense of insecurity when he turns down every deal they toss.  They begin to wonder whoa, what’s Colgate got up his sleeves this time? Then, they overplay their hands trying to one-up him, thinking that they may be losing, and eventually their entire case falls apart.”

       Bree grinned.  “Brilliant,” she said, as they all began to stand. 

       Once they were back in the board room, however, criticisms of Bree first came with some subtlety, and then fast and furious.  Bree just sat there, listening.  Even Alan joined in the fray, stating unequivocally that she should have never questioned Robert’s techniques.  He even went so far as to suggest that Robert was just being nice to her by saying she had made a good point.  Who did she think she was, anyway?

       Bree listened to all of them but didn’t respond to any of them.  She felt she knew Robert well enough to know that he liked honesty above all else.  And no matter what Alan said, or how he felt that she was way out of line, she was going to remain true to who she was. 

       Less than three weeks later, however, she would find herself naked in a bedroom, waiting for Alan DeFrame to pound her, being anything but true to who she was.

SIX

It all started a week before the end of the program, the day after the finals, when that so-called favoritism Robert supposedly had toward her was put to the test.  Although the grades would not be posted for another few days, the tension was on everybody’s face.  Bree, in fact, for the first time in her entire time at Colgate, had awaken late and therefore arrived late, walking into the twenty-first floor board room just as Alan was on yet another one of his rants about how unimpressed he was with the lot of them.  As soon as he saw Bree tipped in and sit down, he pounced.

       “You may think you’re the golden child around here,” he said, “but I’ll knock that luster off of you real quick if you show up late to my meeting again.  Understood Hudson?”

       Bree was mortified.  What golden child?  Was he listening to Lois Peterson and those staffers up at the tower? 
Certainly she
nor Mr. Colgate had been going around claiming that she had any inside tracks to anything. 
Especially the way he’d been completely ignoring her.
But yet there it was. 
Out in the open again.
Alan DeFrame himself making it clear.

       “Did you hear me?” he asked her, when she didn’t respond. 

       “Yes, I heard you,” she replied, stunned that he would have gone there.  Yet, less than thirty minutes later, she herself had to go there in a move that she knew at the time would change what relationship she had with Robert forever.

       It started when her cell phone began to vibrate against her pant pocket.  When she pulled it out slightly to glance at the text message, and saw that it was her fifteen year old sister Candice urging her to phone home immediately, she stood and hurried out of the board room, despite Alan’s glaring look. 

       Normally when she received a text message during Alan’s lectures, she would let it slide.  But normally it would be her mother, or her brother Ricky.  Candice, although only fifteen, was easily her most reliable sibling.  She would never phone, unless it was serious.      

       Bree stood in the corridor outside of the board room and quickly phoned home.  Candice answered on the first ring. Their mother, she frantically told Bree, had been arrested.

       Bree’s heart dropped through her shoe.  “Arrested?” she said with loud astonishment and then, realizing where she was, lowered her voice. 
“When?
 
What for
?”

       “It happened last night, but they didn’t let her call none of us until this morning.  She told us it was parking tickets they had arrested her for, and for us not to let you know, but when they still wouldn’t release her, Ricky went down there.”

       “I thought Ricky was in jail.”

       “He was, but they dropped the charges.”

      
Again
?
Bree thought.  That brother of hers had more lives than a cat. 

       “She wasn’t arrested for
no
parking tickets, Bree,” Candice kept on.  “She was arrested for selling drugs.”

       “Selling
drugs
?” Bree asked, astounded even more.

       “For selling crack, that’s what they told Ricky.  And the bail bondsman said her bail has been set for one-hundred-thousand dollars, that’s how serious this is.  But he said we can get her out with ten thousand.”

      
“Ten thousand?”
Bree said.   Where in the world were they going to get ten thousand dollars from?  Then Bree shook her head. 
Selling drugs.
  She can’t even imagine her mother doing something
that nuts
.

       “I know she told us not to call you,” Candice kept on, “but what else was we gonna do?  She was probably selling them drugs for Ricky, to help him pay that child support so they wouldn’t lock him up for being delinquent, I’ll bet that’s why she was doing it.”

       “That still doesn’t make it right,” Bree reminded her younger sister.

       “I know,” Candice said lowly, and Bree could just feel the pain in her voice.  Their mother was the worse role model in America, and Bree hated that her younger siblings had to witness all of the crap her mother and brother had them witnessing.  She exhaled.