The Resurrection File Read online

  Jacki was a woman in her mid-thirties, with short, sculptured hair, large, pretty eyes, and smooth, coffee-colored skin. She was petite, but carried herself with the confidence of someone who could be tough and forceful.

  She straightened her tailored suit as she swung around in her executive chair.

  “Judging by the look on your face, I’d say you need my help,” Jacki said.

  “We’ve got a couple of new clients in the lobby expecting to see Will.”

  “Oh. And of course Will isn’t here, I suppose?”

  “Naturally.”

  “You want me to handle it?” Jacki asked calmly.

  “Look I’m sorry to do this…again,” Betty said with exasperation.

  “I’ll be glad to meet with them. Do you have any idea what this conference is about?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Betty replied as she walked with Jacki down the hallway. Then Betty stopped and turned to Jacki, and in a hushed and serious tone said, “I think you should also know that Hadley Bates was on the phone this morning, just before Will ran out the door.”

  “And?”

  “And, he didn’t want to talk to Will. Not exactly.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Well,” Betty continued in a whisper, “he wanted to know Will’s schedule. And he wanted to know whether he was going to be out of the office all morning. So I told him that Will was scheduled to be in court all morning.”

  “And what did our esteemed managing partner have to say?”

  “He just said, ‘Very good.’”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yeah. He just said, ‘Very good.’ You know how he does, in that ‘I’m HAL the IBM computer’ voice of his.”

  “So what was that all about?”

  “I really don’t know. I got the feeling that Hadley was glad that Will was going to be out of the office this morning. I’ve got to tell you, I have a bad feeling about today. Okay, so we all know that Will and Hadley have never gotten along. But I think Will has finally pushed him too far. Will doesn’t return his calls. He never attends the partnership meetings anymore. I think that the other shoe is really about to drop. I’ve got really bad vibes about this.”

  Jacki smiled and walked past Betty, straight to the lobby, where she shook hands warmly with the threesome. They introduced themselves and she invited them into the conference room.

  Jacki explained that Will Chambers had been “detained” in court and that she was going to handle the interview. She offered them coffee but they declined. Jacki quickly sized them up as folks who were friendly and courteous—but who definitely wanted to cut to the chase.

  The older man started first.

  “Miss Johnson, I have to ask you a question before I get into my case. It may strike you as a bit odd. But, considering the unique aspects of my case, I absolutely have to ask. You see, my case—the reason that I am here—really deals with the most important question that has ever been asked in the last two thousand years. And even a bit more than that, this case is about a full-scale attack, a massive conspiracy, by the prince of darkness—against the church of Jesus Christ. So here is the question—are you a believer in God, Miss Johnson?”

  Jacki paused. She was used to strange cases and strange clients, particularly after practicing law with Will Chambers for a while. Will had often remarked to her about that great paradox of the law: how the most profound civil-liberty issues often seemed to be wrapped around the lives of difficult, bizarre, and obtuse people. And working with Will, she had met a lot of them. Yet even in that, she had never heard a more audacious description of a lawsuit than the one just delivered by this man with the soft, friendly Scottish accent.

  “Well, I was raised by my aunt to be a good Mississippi Methodist,” she answered. “Church on Sunday mornings, and Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights. I won a couple awards for church attendance and Bible readings back then. Yes, Mr. MacCameron. I am a believer in God.”

  “You see,” MacCameron continued, “I ask you this for a reason. The Bible says that ‘the fool says in his heart there is no God,’ so I want to make sure that my lawyers are not fools.” MacCameron’s face lit up with an impish smile, and for a moment Jacki couldn’t tell whether this old man was pulling her leg. She studied him closely and concluded that beneath his warm and infectious smile he was deadly serious.

  “Which brings us to Will Chambers,” Fiona MacCameron said. “Because he is the senior lawyer in this office, we are interested in some of his background. I assume that Mr. Chambers would be the one primarily handling this case. My father is very interested in hiring Mr. Chambers. But to be honest, I have some—well—some questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Jacki asked.

  Fiona sat poised and attentive, and waited for a moment before responding. Jacki recognized the line of clothes—strictly New York fashion. Fiona’s makeup and hair had the touches of an expensive salon. As she folded her left hand over her right hand and rested them on the conference table, Jacki noticed the French-manicured nails. She also observed that there was no wedding ring on Fiona’s hand.

  “I’ve read some background research that Bob, my manager, provided to me about Mr. Chambers,” Fiona continued. “I was impressed and certainly intrigued. Will Chambers is a fascinating and obviously a very talented man. But our questions have to do more with his personal life.”

  “The truth is, we have heard some unsettling things about Mr. Chambers,” the man in the dark suit stated. “Since I am Ms. MacCameron’s business manager, when she found out that her father seemed intent on hiring Mr. Chambers, she contacted me. I, in turn, contacted some people in the legal community to check up on him. I know that in the past Will Chambers handled some high-profile cases. But the word I’ve received is that the man now has some serious personal issues. In point of fact—that he is an alcoholic and his days as a trial lawyer may be over.”

  Jacki’s eyes flashed with irritation. Controlling herself, she began to explain.

  “Folks, let me tell you something. I came to this law firm because of Will Chambers. I was a law student at NYU. And I probably would have stayed up in New York to practice after law school. But I read an article in a magazine about this attorney down in Virginia. How he took on a case on behalf of a young Hasidic Jewish boy and his family up in the Bronx. The Jewish boy had been beaten up, set on fire, and left for dead by some neo-Nazi group in New York. Somehow he survived, miraculously, but he was terribly burned.

  “Now, two of the thugs who did this horrendous thing were caught, tried for attempted murder, and convicted. But the ringleader was never caught. Will Chambers filed a lawsuit for the Jewish family against the owner of a trucking company in the Bronx who was suspected of being the driving force behind this racist Nazi group. One of the two convicted guys had tipped Will off to the fact that the trucking company owner was the guy who gave the order to ‘be sure and burn a Jew tonight.’

  “So I read in this article how the Virginia lawyer—Will—was poring over the records of the trucking company one night in his law office at three in the morning—searching for something that could tie this trucking company owner to the Nazi group and to the torture of this little Jewish boy. He went through the papers, page after page. Document after document. The rest of his staff had already gone home and were asleep. But he wouldn’t give up. Then, in the middle of these thousands of pieces of paper that had been produced to him in the lawsuit, he found a little crumpled note in the handwriting of this trucking guy, talking about ‘Kristallnacht tonight.’ Kristallnacht—the ‘night of broken glass’—was the name given to the evening when the Nazis went out on a rampage through German cities, smashing the windows of Jewish stores and killing Jews. Well, the note had been written on a little calendar pad and ripped out—and the date on the calendar was the same day the little Jewish boy was attacked.

  “Well, that broke the case wide open. Will tried the case in front of a jury and collected ten million dol
lars in damages against the trucking guy, and he ended up getting the trucking company as part of the damages. The company was turned over to the Jewish family. They are still running it to this day. And the former owner, based on the evidence that Will discovered, was later charged with criminal conspiracy and is now serving thirty years in prison.

  “After reading the magazine article about that case I decided to come down and interview with Will’s law firm when I graduated from law school. And I asked him about that lawsuit, and about why he was so certain that he could find that one piece of evidence to prove his case.”

  The room was silent as Jacki finished the story.

  “Will looked at me, and he said this: He said it’s like being buried alive in a tunnel, or a cave, and you’re in total darkness—but you know that as long as you keep digging, and if you are going in the right direction, you’re going to break out. He said his cases were the same way. He told me that if you keep digging for truth, and you’re heading in the right direction, you’re bound to break through to justice on the other side.

  “So that’s why I came down here to Virginia to practice law with this firm. I wanted to practice with a lawyer like Will Chambers. As for these ‘personal problems’—his wife died tragically about two years ago. He had a bit of a setback. But despite that, Will Chambers is still probably the best trial advocate I’ve ever met.”

  Angus MacCameron threw his hands up in the air as if he were a referee at a football game and someone had just scored a touchdown.

  “Praise Jesus!” he exclaimed. “Did you hear that, dear Fiona? ‘Digging for truth!’ He said ‘digging for truth!’”

  Then he looked at Jacki, who was staring at him with a puzzled look.

  “Don’t you see, Miss Johnson? Digging for truth. That’s the very same as the name of my magazine. I wrote the truth about this fraud—Dr. Reichstad—and his phony ‘discovery’ in my magazine, in Digging for Truth magazine. And that’s why I’ve been sued. And your boss, Mr. Chambers, is going to vindicate me and help me to tell the truth to the whole world! God has his mighty hand upon us today, can’t you see it?”

  The business manager tried to break in, but MacCameron interrupted him.

  “Oh, Bob, I know you want to protect me, and I know that my precious daughter wants me to be careful. But God has been in this from the first. When I hired that private detective to do some investigative work for me on this lawsuit, I asked him if he knew any good lawyers. And in the very next breath he mentioned your boss, Miss Johnson. He said that Will Chambers is the best in the business. So here I am. As far as I’m concerned, it’s settled. I want to hire Mr. Chambers and your firm to defend me. I want to hire Will Chambers to save the Christian church from the deception of the evil one.”

  And then, patting the conference table with his hands, MacCameron added, “So, we start today, aye?”

  6

  FOR WILL CHAMBERS, WINNING IN COURT had always been the first thing and the last thing. But now—and in fact for a long time—it was not enough. Now it merely provided him with a handy excuse for celebration, usually alone, usually drinking himself into the regions of full-blown self-pity, of which he was already hovering at the borders on a daily basis.

  Driving back on Interstate 95 after winning Tiny Heftland’s case, Will entertained the idea of going straight back to the office. Working through lunch. Getting things under control at the office. As he cruised along in his Corvette convertible with the music blasting he decided to turn his cell phone off. He started to sour on the idea of skipping lunch. He needed to celebrate.

  Will pulled off the freeway and into Monroeville. He decided he would go over to the Red Rooster tavern and grab a sandwich and a few drinks.

  At the tavern, he ordered a steak sandwich but only took a few bites. He downed several vodkas while he pretended to watch the Orioles game on the overhead television.

  Will lost track of time. But he got to thinking that maybe he had had too much to drink. He figured that he would go to the office, put in an hour or so, and then go home early and sleep it off.

  When he pulled up in front of the law firm building he noticed a truck parked in front with men loading it. On his way up the stairs he noticed the moving men were carrying furniture that looked familiar. Then he realized they were walking down with the lobby chairs from his office. He began to run up the stairs but missed a step and almost fell facedown.

  Jacki Johnson was waiting for him in the empty lobby area of the office.

  “What is going on?” Will yelled out.

  “We’ve been trying to call you on your cell phone.”

  “I turned it off.”

  “Well, what can I say?” Jacki said, visibly upset. “Things are real bad. The partners voted you out, Will. They’re taking you out of the firm. They pulled the plug on you. The partnership property—the furniture and everything—is being taken down to the Richmond office. They’re closing the office here in Monroeville.”

  Jacki could see that Will was thunderstruck.

  “I’m really sorry to hit you with this,” she continued. “They’re sending you a check for your share of your partnership interest—less the amounts they say are due to the firm from you. We got the message by email and then by fax just a few minutes before the moving men arrived. They’ve taken all the files, and they say they have contacted all the clients. You’re closed out for good, Will—I’m so sorry.”

  “This is not the partners, I’m telling you that right now. This is all because of that twisted ‘managing partner’ Hadley Bates—he’s behind this, that little scumbucket.” Will ran toward the telephone in his office.

  Jacki grabbed him and looked him in the eye.

  “You’ve been drinking,” she said in an irritated voice.

  “I’m going to kill that…”

  “No. You’re not going to pick up the phone, not right now. If you do, you’ll end up saying something to Hadley that you’ll regret.”

  “He can’t do this.”

  “He can. And he did. You have to move on. I think I’d better drive you home in your car. Betty can follow us in mine.”

  Will was shaking with rage, but he was too humiliated to look at Jacki, so he kept his back to her.

  “Come on,” Jacki said sympathetically, putting her hand on his back. “I’m going to drive you home to that big old mansion of yours. I just wish you had someone to be with you tonight.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Will muttered, but his voice was barely audible.

  Jacki drove Will’s Corvette away from the office with Will sitting in the passenger seat.

  “This is ridiculous,” Will snapped, “I had two drinks.”

  “Oh? Just two?”

  “Maybe three.”

  “That’s all you’d need now. To get arrested for DUI. You know, you don’t need an assistant lawyer. What you need is a full-time nanny, a drill sergeant, and a priest, all rolled into one. And frankly, Will, that person is not me.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “No. You give me a break. I tell people you’re one of my heroes. Which is really a remarkable thing considering the fact you’re white, and you’re a guy. But I’m tired of handling your screwups, like that client conference this morning.”

  “What client conference?”

  Jacki sighed heavily and shook her head.

  “There is other stuff going on out there in the world, Will, besides your pain. You are going to have to get around to doing whatever you have to do—forgiving yourself for Audra—getting on with your life. Check yourself into rehab. I don’t know.”

  “I’m no alcoholic.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m seeing you heading for a cliff. And I’d rather not go along for the ride.”

  Then Jacki took her left hand off the steering wheel and, reaching over across to Will, waved her hand in front of his face.

  “Look at this, Will, what do you see?” Jacki asked.

  “Nice manicure.”

  �
�The ring, Will, the ring. Howard proposed to me two weeks ago. I’ve been wearing this diamond on my finger for two weeks. I wanted to see how long it took you to climb out of that cave you live in and notice it.”

  “I noticed it.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything? ‘Congratulations.’ ‘Jacki, I’m happy for you.’ Anything.”

  Will looked at her, then he laid his head back against the headrest, and looked out the window.

  “Congratulations.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Jacki said, “We need to talk business, Will. You and me. My life is taking a different turn now. Howard and I are going to be married. I have to have my career settled. I can’t afford to work in an office where I don’t know what my future is.”

  “Come on, you know what your future is with me.”

  “Do I? Hadley said in his e-mail that the firm has secured written consents from every one of your clients in the last forty-eight hours—to dump you, now that you are out of the firm, and to continue with the firm instead.”

  “Every client? He’s a liar.”

  “Let me amend that,” Jacki said. “Every client except two. One is that big loser Tiny Heftland. Bates said that you can have him, and any money due to the firm from him—as if you will ever recover it—you can keep. And then there’s just one other client.”

  “Yeah. Well, I just finished Tiny’s latest case today, so I guess that means I’ve got only one client.”

  “What happened in court?”

  “We won. Great, huh? A victory for a nonpaying client, and on the same day that I get booted out of my law firm.”

  “Will, stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Listen, Jacki, Hadley has got to know that I will be taking him to court over the way he is dissolving my partnership share.”

  “You want a friend’s advice?” Jacki’s voice was rising. “And frankly, I may be one of your only friends right now. Let it go. If you need to negotiate the figures with Hadley, let me work on him for you. But don’t make this a bloodbath.”