Her eyes fluttered shut, but her head didn’t drop. “Do I need a lawyer?”
He glanced down at the defeated woman in the mug shot again. The woman before him? Anything but defeated.
“No, although I can recommend one of the best attorneys in the state, if you’d like.” He dug around in the top drawer until he found one of Rosebud Armstrong’s cards and scooted it across the desk. “Agent Yellow Bird can personally vouch for her.”
Of course, James knew Rosebud personally, too. But few people knew that the son former secretary of defense Alex Carlson and his wife, Julia, had been prepping for public office since he was born had had an affair with a Lakota Indian woman throughout law school. That was the sort of information that, if the media bloodhounds got a hold of it, could be twisted around until it destroyed a nascent political career before it got off the ground. James had worked too hard for too long to let something as base as physical desire ruin everything. He just needed to keep reminding himself of that fact every time he looked at Ms. Eagle Heart.
Without raising her eyes, Ms. Eagle Heart closed one hand around the card. James thought she’d put it in her bag, but she held on to it, running the pad of her thumb over the edge. Interesting, James thought. She couldn’t keep her hands still. Her fingertips were long, with clean, short nails that showed no sign of polish. Her hands had a few calluses. Those were not the hands of a pampered, coddled woman—a woman like Pauline Walker, the woman his mother had hand-picked to be James’s own blank slate of a wife. No, Ms. Eagle Heart had the hands of a woman who knew how to use them.
James shifted in his chair. Back on track. Now.
“Ms. Eagle Heart, the reason I’ve called you in for this interview today is because I think you have personal knowledge of a crime that was committed, and I would like to confirm your version of events.”
The color drained from her face. “I don’t know anything about any criminal activity. I’m innocent. I was never convicted.”
“Despite being arrested seventeen times, yes. I noted that. I also noted that you had the same judge for all of your court appearances. One Royce T. Maynard.”
James’s pulse began to race as his train not only got back on track, but picked up a head of steam. Maynard was, hands down, the most crooked judge ever to sit on the bench outside of New York City. Putting criminals like Maynard away would be the biggest feather in James’s cap. And after this case was resolved, James would resign his position with the Department of Justice and launch upon his political career with ironclad credentials as the man who would clean up government. He’d start by running for attorney general, then governor, and then—if things went according to plan—higher positions. Ones that came with nice roomy oval offices.
Early on, James hadn’t understood why his parents insisted he had to be president. He could do a lot of good in the world as a lawyer, as contradictory as that sounded. Lawyers fought for truth, justice and the American way—at least, that’s how it had seemed back when he’d been a kid, eavesdropping on his parents’ cocktail parties. Lawyers bragged about the big victories they won, whereas elected officials were always complaining about the red tape they had to battle and the reelection campaigns they had to run. Lawyers were the winners. Elected officials were tomorrow’s punching bags.
As an adult, James had realized that lawyers could lose just as easily as they won, and that politicians did have the power to change the world—if they didn’t let themselves get corrupted by special interests and lobbyists. James could guide this country the way he prosecuted his cases—efficiently, cleanly and with justice for the American people first and foremost in his mind. But to do that, he needed to have an unimpeachable background. No scandals, no skeletons, no questionable relationships with questionable women.
Women like Maggie Eagle Heart.
First things first. James had to prove Maynard’s guilt in a court of law. To do that, he needed the testimony of unreliable witnesses like Maggie Eagle Heart. Except that the woman sitting on the other side of his desk wasn’t exactly unreliable. In fact, with her alert eyes, set shoulders and unflinching confidence, she looked exactly like the kind of woman James would like to get to know better.
Ms. Eagle Heart swallowed. “Who?” She said it in a way that was supposed to make it sound as if she’d never heard Maynard’s name before, but, for the first time, her voice wobbled.
“I’m curious as to why a woman who was mixed up with the wrong crowd would walk away scot-free seventeen times. Once or twice, sure. But seventeen?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The wobble was stronger this time.
He had her dead to rights. “I think you do, Ms. Eagle Heart. I think you know why you’re here today, and I think you know what I want.” He shouldn’t have said that last bit, because her gaze zeroed in on him through thick lashes, the challenge writ large on her face. James knew in that instant she understood what he wanted—both in and out of the courtroom.
She didn’t offer up another weak protest, though. She kept right on looking at him with that combination of knowledge and distance. She was challenging him again. She wasn’t going to make this easy.
Yellow Bird shifted against the far wall, breaking the tension of the moment.
“The Department of Justice believes that Royce T. Maynard regularly abused the power of his office. He solicited and received bribes, took payments to sway judgments in courtrooms other than his own and …” James didn’t want to say this out loud, but as Ms. Eagle Heart wasn’t exactly jumping in, he forged ahead. “And pressured defendants to exchange services in return for judgments in their favor.”
She got a little paler. “Are you accusing me of a crime?”
“Not directly. We believe that Maynard demanded certain services in return for letting you off the hook.” He tossed the deposition of one of Maynard’s former bailiffs across the desk—the one that outlined how Maynard regularly recessed court so he could meet with female defendants in his chambers without their counsel.
She didn’t move, not even her hands. James wasn’t sure if she was breathing. He felt like the world’s biggest jerk. He couldn’t say what this woman had been doing for most of the last decade, but it seemed clear that she’d made a different sort of life for herself than the one the woman in the mug shot had chosen. However, his moment of regret was short-lived. He hadn’t gotten to be the youngest special prosecutor in the history of the DOJ by worrying about witnesses’ feelings.
“This is from a former public defender,” he added, handing over another deposition that detailed how the man who gave lawyers a bad name encouraged his clients accused of prostitution—including one Margaret Touchette—to go into chambers alone, where he believed they performed sex acts for Maynard in return for a not-guilty judgment. “I believe you’ll recognize the name.”
Her hand shaking, Ms. Eagle Heart picked up the deposition and read the name. Slowly, she set the file back down on the desk and took a deep breath. Her hair hung over the side of her face with the scar. With that identifying mark hidden, James couldn’t see anything about her that said drug addict or prostitute. Maggie Eagle Heart was a composed, beautiful woman who didn’t spook easily. He admired her resolve, but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit there was something else that drew him to her. Too bad he couldn’t spend a little time exploring what that something else was, but there was no way in hell he would jeopardize his entire career just because he was taken with her.
“Why
