“He’s proud of you, Jason,” Corey said, keeping his eyes on the road. “He probably never says anything to you, but he’s always bragging about you-his son, the big-shot lawyer.”
If Corey had just said he’d married the queen of England, Jason wouldn’t have been more surprised. Jason’s dad never said such things around Jason. He only criticized, always nitpicked. Words of praise were not in his vocabulary.
“That surprises me,” Jason said.
“He would rather have you wearing the white hat, of course. But he’s still proud of you.”
He hides it well, thought Jason. Nevertheless, he appreciated Detective Corey’s telling him this. It might make the next twenty-four hours a little more bearable. All Jason had ever gotten from his dad was a deep sense of disappointment. He wanted Jason to play football, but Jason chose soccer. He wanted Jason to become a Navy SEAL, and Jason wanted to act. When Jason entered law school, his father talked about the prosecutors he respected. Now Jason was a defense attorney.
They reached the house, and Corey pulled into the driveway. “It’s great to see you doing so well,” he said. He turned and looked straight at Jason. “I’m glad you took advantage of your second chance. I knew at the time you were a good kid.”
Jason had been half expecting Corey to bring up that night from ten years ago, the night that had changed Jason’s life forever. It was the night he learned that cops sometimes write their own laws. But still, the words made his stomach clench.
Once every few years, Corey mentioned it. Jason sensed the detective was trying to make sure his secret was still safe, that Jason still acknowledged a debt he could never fully repay.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jason said. He stared out the front window, the guilt pressing in on him. This was the reason he didn’t like being around Corey; it was a constant reminder of the worst night of Jason’s life. “Good kids don’t betray their friends.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Corey said emphatically. “And one stupid mistake shouldn’t haunt you for life.”
Jason nodded. He knew there was no sense arguing the point. He ought to be grateful to Detective Corey, not resentful.
“I know,” he said.
He swallowed the words he really wanted to say. It’s haunting me for life anyway.
25
Jason only made it home once or twice a year. The last few times, he had been struck by how much the place had changed. It was a small, one-story brick house in one of the few older Alpharetta neighborhoods. Jason’s father had bought the place to escape the home that held so many memories of Jason’s mom.
It made Jason sad to see the gradual deterioration of this house-the weeds overtaking the yard, the stained carpeting that needed to be replaced, the faded tile on the bathroom and kitchen floors.
The house smelled like stale beer.
In a halfhearted nod to the season, his dad had moved a chair in the living room and erected a fake Christmas tree. He had not bothered to decorate at all on the outside, making the house an oddity in a neighborhood that sparkled with all manner of gaudy outdoor lighting.
Jason threw his stuff in his old bedroom, a room that now doubled for storage, and stepped around the extra furniture, the old StairMaster, and the boxes that cluttered the floor. He thought about calling a few high school friends but remembered that they usually had family activities planned. Instead, he alternated between TV and surfing the Internet on his dad’s desktop computer.
Next year, he would think of a good excuse to skip Christmas in Alpharetta altogether.
At 11:30, Jason’s dad came home and apologized for being late. He had traded shifts with a young detective who had a sick wife, and Jason resisted the urge to make a snide comment. He could smell the alcohol when they shook hands, his father placing his left hand on the outside of Jason’s shoulder-a Noble family “hug.”
After his father changed clothes, he immediately poured himself a beer… almost certainly another beer. “Want one?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Loosen up, Son. It’s Christmas.”
Jason had sworn off drinking ten years earlier. He wasn’t about to start up now, especially seeing what it had done to his dad. “I’ll just take some soda.”
His father shook his head and mumbled something that Jason didn’t catch. He handed Jason a two-liter bottle of Coke from the refrigerator, and Jason poured himself a glass. The Coke was flat.
They took seats at opposite ends of the kitchen table like two gunslingers squaring off for a fight.
Jason studied his father-the old man’s deterioration seemed to match the house. Jason had his mother’s build, her average height, high metabolism, thin bone structure. His father was broad and stocky, about three inches shorter than his son, powerful as a bull. He had put on a little more weight in the last year, and his skin had the red, splotchy complexion of an alcoholic, matched by a large nose and perpetually bloodshot eyes. He looked older than fifty-two.
“Tell me about your practice,” his father said.
His tone said he might actually be interested, despite the disappointment he had expressed when Jason opted for a career as a private lawyer. Jason remembered Detective Corey’s comments and decided to start by describing the gun case he had just landed. His dad worshiped at the altar of the Second Amendment. There had been guns in the Noble house for as long as Jason could remember, though Jason himself had never fired one. This case might help break his dad’s perception that Jason was just defending a bunch of crooks and cop killers.
“You remember the shooting that occurred in that television station in Virginia Beach-the one everybody played live on the air?”
“Yeah.” His dad was wasting no time downing the beer.
“That reporter’s husband filed suit against the gun manufacturer for allegedly knowing about the illegal sale of their firearms and doing nothing to stop them.”
“MD Firearms,” his dad murmured as he took another drink.
“Right. They asked me to represent them. Some say this could be the biggest Second Amendment case in years.” Jason took a sip of his Coke as his dad made a face and digested the news.
“What do you know about them?”
“What I’ve read online and in the papers.” Jason decided to omit the fact that he had toured their plant, just a short drive from his father’s house.
“Maybe you ought to investigate a little more before you take that case.”
The tone deflated Jason. He hadn’t taken the case in order to gain his father’s approval, but he hadn’t thought it would hurt. “Meaning?”
His father played with his beer glass for a few seconds, apparently deciding whether to proceed. “Have you heard about what they did with silencers?”
Jason shrugged. He didn’t even know they made silencers.
“Buncha years ago, your potential client decides to make a few extra bucks by diversifying into silencers. The only problem is that, according to ATF guidelines at the time, anybody who orders a complete silencer has to register it. So MD Firearms-which was back then called Buford Arms Corp., or something like that-went into partnership with some other Georgia companies to sell parts for a silencer. I think your client sold the tubes and the others sold the internal parts.”
Jason’s father paused to take another drink. “Finally the ATF got a warrant and raided the facilities of all these companies. They seized records showing something like six thousand sales of silencer parts, but only four buyers had registered their silencers, and about fifty of ’em were sold to folks with prior felony convictions.”
Jason listened intently, knowing that this information would be paraded around by the plaintiff’s lawyers. This kind of rule bending seemed out of character for the Melissa Davids he had met at MD Firearms.
“So the ATF gets all this evidence and takes these companies to court to revoke their licenses, but the judge throws it out-says nobody can prove they intended to violate the registration laws. Might have just been legitimately trying to sell silencer parts.” Jason’s dad snorted. “What a crock.”