The Family Lawyer Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Family Lawyer Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Night Sniper Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  The Good Sister Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Authors

  BookShots.com

  Newsletters

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2017 by James Patterson

  Cover photograph: Lee Avison/Trevillion Images

  Author photograph: Steve Duchesne/Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First ebook edition: September 2017

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  ISBN 978-1-5387-1134-7

  E3-20170718-DA-PC

  The Family Lawyer

  James Patterson

  with Robert Rotstein

  Children are of the blood of their parents, but parents are not the blood of their children.

  —Bouvier’s Maxims of Law (1856)

  Chapter 1

  Just as Debra is about to get to the punch line, my cell phone rings.

  “Shut that damn thing off, Matt,” she says. “If I were the judge, I’d fine you five hundred dollars for disrupting court.”

  “And I’d appeal your fascist ruling to the highest court in the land.”

  She smiles in spite of herself. She’s rehearsing for a hearing tomorrow, and I’m playing judge. Our client, an amateur photographer, claims that the cops rousted him for filming on-street arrests, so we sued the police department for violating his civil rights. That’s what we do.

  I should ignore the call, but the ID screen reads Westside Jail, so I answer. It’s probably someone looking for representation, and the law firm of Grant & Hovanes needs all the clients it can get. There’s little money in public interest law, and Debra and I are soft touches. Her case for the photographer happens to be pro bono.

  On the other end of the line, a female is weeping. She sounds so distraught that I suspect she’s a psych case. No matter—I represent a lot of psych cases.

  Then I hear, “Dad?”

  I stand up in shock and sit down again when my knees buckle. “Hailey? What…? My God, are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I…”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They arrested me!” I can hear deep breathing, a heaving sound. She’s trying to compose herself. This isn’t like her, not even under these circumstances. She’s the eight-year-old who wouldn’t cry after she cut her chin on the playground slide; the kid who wouldn’t cry even when she got six stitches. A fourth-grade teacher once called her “The Ice Princess.” She has titanium nerves. Which is why she’s a highly recruited soccer player who should earn a college scholarship and ease our family’s financial burden. I can’t pay for college, and I don’t want her to start adult life a hundred thousand dollars in debt.

  “Settle down and tell me what happened.” Easy for me to say. How am I going to settle down?

  Fraught silence. The uncertainty is agonizing.

  Finally: “I was going to soccer practice after school, and these police walk up and ask if I’m Hailey Hovanes. When I say yes, they arrest me in front of all my friends and the team and the coach and some teachers and parents and…They handcuffed me and hurt my wrists, Dad!”

  On hearing this, I want to punch the cops who did that. But I have bett
er ways to get back at them—through the legal system. “Have you said anything to the police?”

  “Just that I didn’t do it.”

  “Don’t say another word to them.”

  “Okay. Just come and—”

  There’s an adult male’s voice in the background, his words inaudible.

  “They’re making me hang up, Dad.”

  “Don’t hang up yet. Tell me why they arrested you.”

  The line goes dead.

  “Hailey’s been arrested,” I tell Debra as I spring out of my chair. “She was so upset she couldn’t even tell me what they busted her for. She was crying.”

  “Hailey? No way,” Debra says as she follows me out of the room.

  I’m not sure if she’s incredulous about Hailey being arrested or about the crying.

  “I’ll come with you,” she says. “She’ll need a lawyer.”

  “I’m a lawyer, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Right now, you’re only a parent.”

  She’s right. And, even if I wasn’t, I can always use her help. We make a good team. Six years ago, a judge separately appointed us to handle a habeas corpus appeal for a death-row inmate. We won, and ever since, we’ve shared an office suite, assisted on each other’s cases, and divided our meager profits fifty-fifty.

  “Thanks, I’ll handle it,” I say. “You need to prepare for tomorrow’s hearing.” That’s not the real reason I decline her offer. My wife, Janet, doesn’t want outsiders involved in our personal business. She considers Debra an outsider, though heaven knows I don’t.

  I grab my briefcase and laptop from my office and hurry to my car. In the concrete plaza that separates the parking garage from our building, the homeless are gathering to crash, as they do every night. When Debra and I opened up our law practice, we made sure to lease office space in a poor section of town. When you represent the downtrodden, you have to come to them—they’re too intimidated and resentful to come to a lavish chrome-and-glass high-rise in the Golden Triangle.

  As I race to my car, the homeless man known as Downtown Dennis shouts, “Attorney Hovanes!” Imposing at six foot eight, he played college ball, might even have made the NBA if he hadn’t flunked out sophomore year of college for various infractions caused by his incipient schizophrenia.

  “It’s Mike and Byron time!” he says.

  It’s a ritual that we’ve shared ever since I represented him pro bono on a trumped-up assault charge—we replay in pantomime Michael Jordan’s game-winning shot over Utah’s Byron Russell in the sixth game of the 1998 NBA finals. It started when he found out that I played in high school. Dennis always gets to play Jordan.

  “Dennis, I can’t—”

  I’ve never refused him before, and despite the silliness of our trivial game, his eyes fill with a combination of confusion and disappointment. I respond to the disappointment part, because I rely on the trust of people like him. I assume my defensive stance, he pushes off though the offensive foul isn’t called, and he sinks the imaginary shot. And all the while, I’m thinking Why am I letting my daughter languish in that jail even an extra thirty seconds? Yet, I simply can’t let these people down, can’t let Dennis down. I’ll just have to drive faster.

  We slap hands, and I sprint to my car, then drive to the jail through a fog of disbelief, fear, and anger. I’ve had practice doing this, unfortunately. Three times over the past nineteen months, I’ve posted bail for my seventeen-year-old, Daniel. Trespassing on school property, shoplifting, vandalism—petty crimes, but escalating. Somehow, the rides to the station to pick up my son seemed easier than this drive. Maybe it’s because he’s had behavioral problems since preschool, so the outcome seemed inevitable. Hailey has never been in trouble. Not like this.

  I don’t call Janet. She’ll learn about this soon enough.

  By the time I reach the station, I’m primed for battle. The cops won’t get away with this. My next lawsuit against the department will be filed on behalf of Hailey Nicole Hovanes.

  Walking through the entrance, I’m assaulted by bleak fluorescent lighting, a fusty odor of unbathed derelicts and underfunded budgets, and voices of the cynical and the desperate. This is no place for my daughter. I approach the watch commander, a brawny, clean-cut man in his thirties, and identify myself as Hailey’s father and lawyer.

  “I’m here to arrange for her immediate release,” I say.

  “You’re Hovanes,” he says, his tone accusatory. The police don’t like lawyers who sue them. Worse, I was once a prosecutor, so they consider me a turncoat.

  “I’m glad my reputation precedes me, officer. I’m sure it’ll make things go a lot faster.”

  The cop makes a grand show of checking his computer and says, “She’s still being processed. Take a seat in the lobby.”

  I lean over the counter. “Hailey is sixteen years old, and you’re not going to keep her here any longer than it takes to unlock her cell.”

  “How are you, Matt?” someone behind me says.

  I turn to find Detective Ernesto Velasquez. We worked together when I was at the district attorney’s office. He’s an honest cop. We were friends until I left the DA’s office and began suing the department. I haven’t seen him in a while, and he’s aged. Wrinkles from excessive stress and too much sun score his face. His formerly jet-black hair has gone mostly gray.

  “What’s this about, Ernie?” I ask.

  He leads me to an interior conference room and asks me to sit down.

  “I don’t want to sit down. I want to take my daughter home.”

  “It’s not that simple. She’s been charged with violating the cyber-stalking law. Using the internet to harass a classmate with the intent to cause severe emotional distress.”

  I shake my head, as much to clear it as to disclaim his statement. “You know how teenage kids are, especially girls. Hailey isn’t a bully. She’d never intentionally harm anyone.”

  “The victim was Farah Medhipour.”

  I shudder. Farah was the fourteen-year-old at Hailey’s school who committed suicide six weeks ago. Hailey mentored the younger girl at the start of the semester, and they were soccer teammates, but that doesn’t mean they were close. The school held the obligatory grieving assembly and offered the obligatory student counseling, the local media reported the tragedy, and then everything went back to normal in the space of a week.

  “We have compelling evidence that your daughter orchestrated a vicious harassment campaign against Farah with knowledge that the girl was suicidal,” Velasquez continues. “Farah left a video as her suicide note. She said she couldn’t stand the torture any longer, and she identified Hailey as her tormentor.” He takes another deep breath. “The victim hanged herself on video. The DA is all over this one. He wants to try your daughter as an adult.”

  “That’s absurd. She just turned sixteen.”

  “Her mature demeanor works against her.”

  I raise my hands in defiance. My daughter is being charged with a crime that could bring her a life sentence. The cops are calling her a cold-blooded killer.

  Chapter 2

  Hailey is no murderer,” I say. “The other girl took her own life.”

  “The charge isn’t murder. Under the penal code—”

  “I know the law as well as anyone, but I’m not talking about that right now, damn it. You’re saying my daughter intentionally tried to hurt another human being. Hailey would never do that. And, if you want to talk about the law, there’s never been a successful prosecution against a cyber stalker where the alleged victim committed suicide.” I raise an index finger and point it at him as if I, not he, am the accuser. “Hailey’s a juvenile with a spotless record. More importantly, she’s innocent. Now, release her. I’m not leaving this place without her.”

  “We need to bring her in front of a judicial officer who’ll set bail, and it’s late. There’s no time to do that today.”

  “If she’s not released now, I’ll ring up every superior court judge and
crime reporter I know and tell them that the department and the DA want to put a child in an adult jail with a bunch of dangerous adult criminals. For a crime she didn’t commit.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Matt. I’m the lead investigator on this, and we have more than enough evidence against your daughter.”

  “Who’s the assistant DA on the case?”

  “Lundy.”

  “Now I get it. That son of a bitch is putting my daughter through hell because he has a vendetta against me.” Back in my days with the DA’s office, Joshua Lundy and I were work buddies. We played basketball in the city leagues together, he the point guard and I the power forward, though that was thirty pounds ago. Then I discovered that he was withholding exculpatory evidence from defense counsel in a kidnapping case. He lied and claimed it was an oversight. When I blew the whistle, our superior backed him, so I quit and went into private practice. Lundy has held a grudge ever since. So have I.

  “That’s not what’s going on here,” Velasquez says. “You’ve spent your entire career involved in the criminal justice system. You know that the parents are always the last to accept the truth.”

  In that moment, I transform from combative lawyer to desperate, frightened parent. “I know my child. She’s innocent. She’s certainly not a flight risk or a danger to herself or others. She should be released on her own recognizance. Please, Ernie.” I pause. “How’s Maggie doing?”

  Eight years ago, his youngest sister, Margaret, was charged with possession of crack cocaine with intent to sell. He hired me to defend her, and not only did I get the charges reduced to simple possession, but his sister avoided jail time and got into a diversion program.

  “She’s doing real good.” He thinks for a long moment, then sighs. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I nod in gratitude, return to the main room, and sit down on an uncomfortable wooden bench. I pass the time speaking with a mother who’s there to post bond for her son, another kid who’s never been in trouble with the law. He had too many vodka and tonics at a frat party and then got stopped at a random highway-patrol checkpoint. I know she’s hurting, but I envy her. This arrest will turn out to be a cheap but important lesson for her son. I don’t know that I can say the same for my daughter. Just before her son is released, I give the woman the name of a friend of mine, the best driving-under-the-influence attorney in town.