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www.ronaldrossmannjr.com
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From The Lost Road to Hope
Chapter 11: Confession without a chance
of redemption
I had been walking around aimlessly and I suddenly realize I am back in the store. Jackson is standing at the counter starring out the window. I wake up from my stupor and try to reverse course, hoping he won’t see me.
“I can smell a cop from a mile away,” Jackson mutters with his back still towards me. I try to act like I haven’t heard him but it is too late. “I knew you were a cop from the first moment you entered the clinic,” he continues.
“Is that so!”
“Yes, that’s so, you don’t remember me do you,” he adds still gazing
out the window.
“Yes, counselor, I do,” I reveal, “although it has been a long time.”
“I thought you did,” he responds. “You know you have quite an achievement you may be completely unaware of,” he continues, “do you know what that is?”
“No, enlighten me,” I quip.
“In fact you have done more than you ever could have imagined,” he continues.
“Are you speaking of the Gazelle Case,” I respond?
“Good memory, detective Trevor, very good memory,” he replies.
“It was my first trial,” I announce.
“It was just one of many for me, all wins, until that fateful case,” he boasts. “I had the best record as a defense lawyer in the city, hell the entire state,” he remarks. “I was being courted by every major law firm in the nation; I was a legend, on the fast track,” he continues, “there was no stopping me, or so I believed, and then that damn Gazelle Trial. You know when I first saw you, you looked familiar, but I didn’t truly place you until your conversation with
Doc just a few minutes ago.”
He finally turns to me.
“Ellis Gazelle, accused of the murder of two of his best friends over drug money,” he begins with all the grandiose of a true attorney, “No weapon found, friends had shady pasts, no witnesses, it was, as far as I was concerned, a home run.”
“No jury in the world could find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” he sits on the counter. “I already had the traditional celebratory bottle of bubbly chilling in my mini fridge at the office and a case of Cubans in the humidor ready to go,” he continues.
“Sorry to have spoiled your little party there,” I interject, “it must really suck for you when the truth trumps your snake oil.”
“Pisses me off to no end,” he retorts, “truth is subjective, detective, and it is all in the way you tell the tale to the jury.”
“You keep believing that,” I respond, “for you that warped reasoning may make sense, but for most, the truth is just that, the truth.”
“Yes, for the naive, or so I thought,” he debates, “ for years I swore by my way, that is of course, until you came into my little playpen.” “You turned my entire world upside down in a little under ninety minutes,” he explains, “That was the exact length of your testimony, including cross examination.” “You came out of left field, Trevor, and I bobbled the ball,” he shakes his head, “you were so very convincing to every one of those imbeciles, they bought every word you were peddling hook, line, and sinker.”
“That’s what you miss, counselor,” I correct, “I wasn’t peddling anything, that’s your M.O., I just told the truth.”
Jackson pauses and then sighs, “Yes you did, but that has never hurt me before.”
Jackson grabs a pack of cigarettes from behind the counter and
a lighter near the register.
“Hurt me, hell, it damn near destroyed me,” he lights his cigarette, “that case garnered the national spotlight; Gazelle was the son of a senator, if I were to get him off, I’d be able to write my own ticket.” “In fact Senator Gazelle himself made me a promise, if his boy walked, I would never have to worry for anything again,” he blows out a huge billow of smoke. “I would have been set for life,” he laughs, “Now that is my kind of truth.”
He hops down off the counter, “but it wasn’t meant to be, your testimony, added in with witness you found, turned my future inside out. How the hell did you pull that off, I mean my team scoured the city, looked under every rock, and found zilch.”
“It’s called good police work,” I retort.
“That my friend is an oxymoron,” he replies.
“When Gazelle’s very rich and powerful dad got through with me, I had zero chance in hell of ever being more than what I was,” he laments, “I promised him the world, he took mine away.” “All because of you cop,” his eyes widen, “and you are still playing the hero.” “Of all the people to survive with, it had to be the bane of my existence,” he snarls, smoke drifting from his flaring nostrils. “I hate you in ways that would make the devil blush,” he insists and points his cigarette at me.
“I recognized you after your little spat with Kayla in the clinic,” I explain, “I never forget a face, I usually have instant and total recall, I guess in your case I wanted to forget.”
“I wish I could have forgotten you,” he begins, “After Gazelle turned my reputation to shit, he assured me that every law firm in the United States thought of me as a legal leper. He somehow even managed to get me fired from my regular job.”
He takes another drag and leans on the counter. “Nobody wanted me, the media eviscerated me, and I was heading to rock bottom fast, with anchors tied to my shoes.” He looks down at the floor. “I had nowhere to go, no one to count on,” he continues, “so I had to do the one thing I promised myself I would never do, no matter what, I crawled back to evil incarnate, my father.”
He pauses again and pulls off a few more drags. The wisps of smoke encompass his head. As he ponders in silence, he puffs to the sequence of the thoughts registering in his mind.
“He was so happy to see me, so pleased that everything he had prophesied about me had come to fruition.” “He always thought I was a loser, he use to say, success and me were like oil and water, never mixing,” he remarks, “he was almost giddy when I came to him with my tail between my legs, an utter failure.”
He continues to stare at the ground, his cigarette all but ash singing the sides of his fingers. He is unfazed.
“My dad finally got me a public defenders job in another city, defending the most atrocious of people,” he laughs, “Right up my alley, huh.” His tone and attitude suddenly changes as he flicks his butt to the ground.
“I just grinned and bore it; it was a second chance,” he continues, “Sure it gave my old man all his power back over me, all the control. “I was his little Pinocchio, a puppet with too many strings to count.”
I actually find myself beginning to feel sympathy for this rat in a suit.
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