Final Judgment by Joel Goldman Read Free Book Online

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    She dismissed Carol’s accusations and Bongiovanni’s theatrics as the romance-novel fantasy of a disturbed woman looking for a way to distract her jealous husband from her own indiscretions. Carol was the aggressor and the sex was consensual. Rockley backed her up.
    Worse yet, Carol was banging one of the bartenders, though Lari put it more delicately, forcing Carol to tearfully admit on the stand that she had been unfaithful to her husband. A fact that Carol had failed to share with him until Lari extracted it from her under oath before Judge Carter, her stunned husband watching as Lari dismantled his wife and marriage.
    Bongiovanni protested Lari’s tactics, claiming that Carol’s indiscretions were irrelevant. He was right, but that was one of the wonderful things about arbitration. There were no rules of evidence, allowing both sides to throw mud. Even if she had strayed, he argued, that didn’t make her fair game for someone who had the power to force her to submit or be fired.
    Bongiovanni countered with corroborating testimony from a girlfriend of Carol’s, who recounted how Carol had complained of Rockley’s crude advances. He closed his case with the reluctant testimony of another supervisor, who admitted that Rockley had bragged that he was “getting some” from Carol Hill.
    Lari Prillman had counterpunched with evidence of the girlfriend’s prior conviction for forging a coworker’s signature on a paycheck she’d stolen from the coworker. Then she cajoled the other supervisor to sheepishly admit on cross-examination that he had often bragged about his own mythical sexual exploits and had assumed as much about Rockley’s story.
    After reading the file on his computer screen, Mason charted the case on the dry erase board that hung on one wall of his office. The board was low tech, but it helped him put everything in perspective and allowed him to think in visual terms, picturing parties, witnesses, and lawyers. And it helped him find the pieces that didn’t fit or that were missing.
    This case was a deadfall, a push. There was no way to pick a winner from the one-dimensional lifeless transcript. That was not unusual. Judge Carter had heard the testimony live. She had observed the demeanor of the witnesses. She was in the best position to decide whom to believe.
    One thing was clear to Mason. There was nothing in the case that would cause Galaxy Gaming to risk blackmailing Judge Carter. If Carol Hill won, Galaxy would pay her off, probably fire Charles Rockley, and move on. Galaxy’s HR manager would conduct sensitivity training for the casino’s employees. It was a cost of doing business. If Galaxy was blackmailing the judge, there had to be a reason unrelated to the lawsuit.
    If Charles Rockley was willing to rape Carol Hill, he was probably willing to blackmail Judge Carter to keep his job. He was the obvious—and, for the moment, only—suspect.
    Mason went back to the computer, pulling up Rockley’s personnel file, printing the page with his home address and phone number. While he couldn’t sue Rockley to make him back off Judge Carter, he was confident that Rockley would respond to Blues’s powers of persuasion. Maybe, Mason thought, this would all work out after all.
    There was only one thing that nagged at him. Rockley was such an obvious suspect. Just like Avery Fish, and Mason was certain that Fish was innocent.

ELEVEN
    It was after dark by the time Mason finished reviewing Carol Hill’s file. He stood in the bay window looking down at the traffic on Broadway. Headlights bounced off cars and curbs. A few people scurried along the sidewalk, ducking into doorways beneath neon lights, finding a bar to warm up in before heading home. The late winter chill gave them and the rest of the city a hunkered-down feel, everyone holding on against the cold, hoping that spring was just around the corner.
    Mason hunched his shoulders, feeling the cold passing through the glass and into his