CHAPTER THREE
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Inside his chambers, JJ Brant leaned over the sink in the bathroom and threw cold water onto his face. With his suit coat off and his stylish blue suspenders flapped over his light-blue dress shirt and highlighting the broadness of his shoulders, he still looked fit even though he hadn’t been in a gym in nearly a year. As the chief judge of the fourth circuit, all he did was sit behind a desk doing paperwork or assigning and appointing fellow judges or giving interviews and public statements on behalf of the court. Very little that required much more than signing off or checking boxes. But today was a different day.
He was up for reelection, for one thing, and his opponents were painting him as an out-of-touch rich Patrician who had no clue what the little guy in the criminal justice system was going through. “When was the last time he was even in a courtroom?” cried one of his opponents. That was when his campaign manager felt it was high time he got back to doing both: he needed to attend to the full administration of the fourth circuit court, and to preside over cases too. Today would be the first time in eight months that he would be back on the bench.
He looked at his face in the mirror as the water dripped down. A shell of a man: that was what he was. Going through the motions. Doing what he needed to do to make the hours speed away. Eight months ago, he had a kid sister he loved with all his heart and a sweet nephew he adored. They were his world. They were why he got up every morning. Now all he had was work, work, and more work. And if he didn’t win his next election, he wouldn’t even have that.
He grabbed a hand towel from the rack and dried his face. He was already tired that early in the morning and hadn’t done a thing. How could he have allowed his life to become so one-dimensional? Sylvia had begged him to get married again and give love a second chance. She begged him to not allow a gold-digger like Iris to stagnate him. But that was exactly what he managed to do. Nearly eight years after his divorce, he was still stagnant.
He tossed the towel aside and went into his chambers. When he saw his campaign manager standing at his window looking out over the Jacksonville skyline, he walked over to his desk. “I didn’t hear you knock.”
Artemus “Artie” Kramer turned around and smiled. Although an inch taller than the judge, he was thin as a rail and with bright brown eyes that looked strange on his pale white face. He and JJ had known each other since college. “And good morning to you too.”
“What do you want, Artie? I’m due in court in a few minutes.”
“That’s why I’m here. How are you feeling?”
JJ didn’t bother to answer that. He knew how he felt. The judge, instead, turned on his desk computer and reviewed the holding room monitor where the prisoners with business before his court sat. There had to be twenty or so prisoners: mostly young. Used to be mostly black and Hispanic, many of whom JJ knew were being arrested by hidden-agenda white cops for crimes they weren’t even questioning white criminals for. But with the explosion of the opioid crisis, whites were increasingly represented too.
All of the prisoners seemed jovial, considering where they were, as if they’d all been there many times before.
All except for one person, he noticed, who sat in the back. He took his desktop mouse and zoomed in on her. A black woman on the smallish side, she had a narrow face and huge eyes. She didn’t look jovial at all, but as if she was stricken. But with what, he wondered. Fear? Pain? Guilt? He had no idea. But for some strange reason he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“What are you staring at?” Artie asked him as he moved from the window and began walking toward the desk.
“The prisoners.”
Artie walked behind the desk and looked at the monitor too. “Happy bunch.” Then he looked at JJ. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Your first day back in what? Nine months?”
“Not entirely true. I never left, remember?”
“Don’t I ever! You were back at work the day after the funeral, even though we begged you to take some time off and get away. But nooo. Not JJ Brant. You’re the chief judge, you told us. You have to be here, which made no sense. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your first day back on the bench.”
It wasn’t guilt, JJ decided as he continued to look at the only black female prisoner in that holding room. She looked more devastated than guilty. And the way she’d flinch whenever the prisoners made too much noise seem to only devastate her more. Or the way she stared off into space when they didn’t unnerve her. What was her story, he wondered. Because everybody had one. How did she end up there?
“You heard me, JJ?”
JJ finally leaned back from his computer screen and looked at the man that used to be married to his sister. “What’s that?”
“I said I got a blind date lined up for you.”
“Not you too. Sylvie tried to set me up with my clerk.”
“And I see why. She’s a beautiful woman. You should give her a chance.”
“I don’t date women I work with.”
“You don’t date anybody. And it’s beginning to become a problem.”
JJ looked at Artie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Artie exhaled. “People are talking.”
JJ frowned. “People? What people?”
“Your opponents out on the campaign trail. They wonder why you’re never seen with a woman. There’s all kinds of innuendo and insinuations. ‘What’s JJ hiding from the voters,’ Manny Davis had the nerve to say the other day. It’s becoming a problem.”
“Their problem,” JJ said, rising to his feet. “Not mine.” He grabbed his suit coat from behind his chair and began putting it on.
“Just give the girl a try.”
“I told you I don’t date women I work with.”
“Not her! The blind date I set up for you. Give her a try.” Then he exhaled. “Look JJ, I was married to Sylvie, remember? I’m still hurting too. You lost your sister and your nephew, but I lost my wife and my child. But you have got to go on with your life. She would want that. Logan would want that.”
JJ and Artie shared a brief moment of grief as they both were still overcoming their horrible loss. And he knew Artie was in pain: he was the husband and father, although not very good at either. He was already dating again.
“Just give her a chance,” Artie said as the door of the chambers opened. Both men looked in that direction.
His clerk Reeva Lindsey, a beautiful redhead, peered inside. “The parties are assembled in the courtroom, Your Honor.”
“Thank you, Reeva.”
Reeva glanced at Artie, and then closed the door back.
“Sylvie wasn’t wrong,” said Artie with a smile. “She’s gorgeous.”
JJ wanted to roll his eyes. “Goodbye, Artemus,” he said as he began heading toward the door.
“Just think about what I said. A good-looking woman in your bed may be just what the doctor ordered.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” JJ said, and left the chambers.