Page 58 of The Wrong Side of the Law

No way in hell I can deal with that, not this late at night. Click the X, close that window. Let’s look at other stuff.

Google. “Robert Ferry” plus “Grant.” Plenty of results, but nothing on the first ten or twelve pages where “Grant” is a name. Lots of philanthropy stuff.

Okay, try “Robert Ferry” plus “Birchall-Jones.” Not a lot there, either. Nothing that’s an obvious tie, anyway.

“Robert Ferry” plus “Sherman Lee Grant.”

Huh. There’s pictures there, looks like it’s dated 2010. Old guy, he’s in a wheelchair in one shot, using a walker in a second one. He’s identified as Ferry’s father, but no mention of the mother or why their names don’t match. Just a puff piece, really, and it looks like he died in 2012 anyway.

“Robert Ferry” + “trafficking arrest.” Plenty of hits, there. A Rolling Stone piece from 1998 about the latest—at the time—in a long series of people connected to him arrested for trafficking.

“Look, I like a little bit of the puff-puff-give,” he told me. “I won’t deny that, and you wouldn’t believe me if I did, anyway.” The rock star winks knowingly at me. “But I just can’t get down with the needles and the nose-candy. I don’t know why that guy did it.”

When I asked him about the publicity surrounding the arrest, Ferry shrugged it off. “Well, yeah, it got my face on television. Been a couple years since the last album and tour, so I can’t say I hated it. And sure, it drums up the interest, but I hate seeing so many young people going down these bad paths. It’s just a shame to see a kid like that make such wrong choices.”

Yeah. That kid made a wrong choice, all right. He made averywrong choice when he accepted a job offer from you.

There’s a picture of Ferry inset to the text, caught in the middle of that knowing wink, and the longer I stare at it the hotter I burn to take the guy down.

Nobody gets to twist the justice system that way. I don’t give a shit how rich you are or how well connected your family is. It’s a personal insult to me that he picked my judicial district to play this game in now. Taking him down is the right thing to do.

But it’s one of those cases that I’m going to especially enjoy, for a couple of other reasons.

This is going to make national news. Breaking this one open is going to put me front page above the fold on every newspaper in the country, and John Whitehall is going to have to look at that every day of the trial while he has his coffee. It’s going to give him an ulcer, thinking about the next election, and when he retires he’ll need to be a pitchman for the antacid industry to pay for all the meds he’ll need to take care of it when he hands me the keys to the State Attorney’s office.

And then the other reason. Emily’s smile across the table tonight flashes through my head. I want to see that smile again. I want to see it on a lot of agains, and how badly I want that worries me. I need to make sure that my priorities are straight, on this one. It’s a very, very slippery slope. One false move, and I’m on my way straight to hell.

Oh, c’mon, Gabriel. You’re being melodramatic. What’s the worst that could happen?

The worst. Hm.

I suppose the worst is that she’s not really into me. Maybe she’s just… what? Trying to get close to me to help her brother out? But no, that doesn’t make sense either. She started here before any of that went down, and I hope I’m a good enough judge of character to tell if that were the case.

So, the worstrealisticcase, then. Whitehall finds out what I’m doing and fires me. Frank Wilson goes to prison. I hang up my own shingle, bring Emily with me, and together we work on clearing her brother’s name in and around defending innocent people who’re being prosecuted for politically-motivated reasons. Okay, that’s not realistic. That’s a Lifetime movie-of-the-week.

But still. I could go into private practice. And I know that working for the State Attorney’s office isn’t Emily’s first choice. There are worse fates, I guess. But I hate the idea of leaving this job. All attorneys have duties and responsibilities to their clients, but my clients are the people of this district. How can I just walk away from them?

And even if none of that happens, maybe I should start taking more time for myself. Time to build a life, instead of just coming home to a place so bland and sterile it might as well be a hotel room.

This is all premature, though, and terribly presumptuous. I still have no idea what Emily’s really feeling here. As badly as I want to know, nothing good can come out of any sort of intimacy with an employee, whether it’s recreational maintenance or something deeper. And if something happens between us, I’d be disappointed if it were just a fling. My little self-Inquisition is honest enough to admit that much, at least.

It would be such a waste, burning the connection I felt tonight, on something short and dumb that left everyone somehow feelinglessafterward.

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