Misjudged Read online

  Misjudged

  A Legal Thriller

  James Chandler

  MISJUDGED

  Copyright © 2020 by James Chandler.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Severn River Publishing

  www.SevernRiverPublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-64875-034-2 (Paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-64875-035-9 (Hardback)

  Contents

  Also by James Chandler

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

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  About the Author

  Also by James Chandler

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  Misjudged

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  For Ann,

  my dream girl, then and now.

  Prologue

  USS Mercy, March 2007

  Bright lights and surgical masks were all he’d remember.

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  A woman’s voice. He was lying on a bed of some sort, surrounded by people looking down. He couldn’t tell which one was talking because all their mouths were covered. The same woman asked him how he was feeling. Sam said he was okay, and she asked if he could feel his legs. He was telling her he could when he felt tingling on his arms and the hair rising on the back of his neck. He attempted to sit.

  “We’re under attack! My men!”

  Several sets of hands pushed him gently back on the gurney. “Lie back, lie back, Captain.” The same voice, but quieter and more soothing this time. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Sam. Sam Johnstone. Captain Sam Johnstone.”

  “Captain, it’s over. You’re safe,” she said. He still didn’t know who was talking. Sam looked from face to face, and finally determined the voice was coming from a short woman with blue eyes. “I’m Dr. Margaret Stevens, a trauma surgeon here on the USS Mercy,” she said. Between the protective goggles, the mask, and the scrub cap, she looked like an insect. He might have laughed, but the pain was too much.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” she asked.

  “Blown up.”

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Some.”

  “Tell me as much as you can remember. It will help us determine what might be going on with you.”

  The light behind the doctor was blinding. Everything was white. His head and left leg hurt. “I got blown up,” Sam offered.

  “Can you tell me a little more?” Her eyes were kind, at least.

  “Some insurgents—maybe forty or fifty of them—attacked a convoy heading for an FOB—that’s a forward operating base—in the Helmand Province. That’s Afghanistan, ma’am. Convoy got surrounded. They dropped me and a couple of platoons from my company to see if we could help. We called in an airstrike, then the gunships showed, which seemed to do the trick. Then we started to escort the convoy back to the forward operating base.”

  “And then what happened?” the doctor asked. “Nurse, hurry up with that IV.”

  While the nurse administered the IV, Sam closed his eyes. “Stay with me for a minute,” the doctor instructed.

  “What’s your name again?” Sam asked.

  “Stevens. Dr. Margaret Stevens. I’m an Army major and doctor. This is a hospital ship.”

  “Okay, ma’am. So, I was in the lead vehicle. We heard some AK-47 fire from the north, and an RPG round went right over the top of us. I was trying to get an idea of the enemy’s direction, but—” Sam tried to sit up again. “My men!”

  “Captain Johnstone, please lie back down.” Multiple pairs of hands carefully pushed him back down. “Finish your story, Captain,” she instructed.

  “We must have hit an improvised explosive device. Killed Jones—my driver. The poor bastard just got in theater last week.”

  The doctor nodded sympathetically, and Sam saw concern in the eyes of the others. “The concussion took off all the doors and blew me out of the vehicle, I think. I don’t know. I just know I was out on the road and slid about thirty yards on my side and ass.”

  “Were you conscious?”

  “Yeah, the whole time. I remember skidding along until I came to a stop. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I couldn’t feel anything.”

  “Adrenaline.”

  “Huh?”

  “That was the adrenaline going through your body.”

  “Okay. Anyway, I patted myself down and was trying to get my shit together and get up when I got shot in my leg, I think. Hurt like hell, but I knew I had to move, or I was gonna die.”

  “You walked with that leg?” the doctor asked.

  “No. I couldn’t use my leg, so I was trying to crawl for cover when Jenkins came and dragged me behind another vehicle. I reported contact to task force headquarters and had Jenkins help me to a covered position where I could see. I made it to the driver’s door. Jones was halfway out of the truck, hanging on by his seat belt. An arm and half his chest were missing.”

  The doctor looked to the nurse, who said, “IV is ready, ma’am. Say the word.”

  She nodded acknowledgement. “What else do you remember?”

  “The gunner—Fish—was dead, too. He was bleeding from his eyes and ears. No pulse. Jenkins told me Lieutenant Patterson was coordinating actions on contact. Then I was in some aid station somewhere. They told me I lost five men total. They cleaned me up and gave me a shot. Then Frankfurt. Next thing I know, here I am.”

  “Okay, Captain. I’m going to administer a little something that�
�s going to make you fall asleep while we look at your leg.”

  “What’s wrong with me, Doc? Where are my men?”

  The doctor ignored Sam and nodded to the nurse. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Once more, Sam struggled to sit up. “I should have seen it coming! The men!”

  “Try to relax, Captain. Please count backward from ten for me.”

  1

  2019

  Sam sat quietly, fly rod across his lap, staring at nothing, hearing only the roar of water against rock and feeling the morning sun on his shoulders and the high-mountain, early-summer breeze on his face. He twisted the lid off a pewter flask and took a long pull from it, then wiped his mouth and returned the flask to his vest pocket. Upstream, the small lake formed by snow runoff was beginning to reflect the rays of the sun just peeking over the jagged crests of the highest peaks in this part of Oregon. Somewhere, an eagle shrieked.

  He gave a desultory look at the selection of flies in his box. At last, he selected a tiny attractor—a Royal Wulff. Having made up his mind, he leaned forward and began the process of tying the tiny fly to the tippet. The fly would work; at this elevation, the small trout had only a few months to gorge themselves before their world was once again covered with several feet of snow and ice. If he could muster the energy and interest to get going, he would catch fish.

  When at last he was rigged and ready to go, he stood and stretched. Sitting for ten minutes on the cold granite had stiffened him; he’d need to be careful, lest he fall. He looked up the face of the mountain and saw a goat looking down at him. They stared at each other until, apparently deciding that its need to get over the ridge was more important than figuring out what that two-legged animal with the stick in its hand was, the goat turned on its heel, leaving Sam alone. He edged closer to the bank of the tiny creek, false-casted a few times, and flipped the fly upstream near a large boulder, behind which were several inches of still water and—if Sam was right—a fish.

  He played the brook trout as quickly as possible, removed it from the hook, then carefully released it in the shallows at his feet. “I’m in the books,” he whispered. Sitting back down, he took another long pull from the flask.

  With his left hand, he reached across his body and drew the pistol from the shoulder holster. He’d purchased the lightweight, compact, double action .38 caliber revolver a couple of weeks earlier. The guy at the gun counter had tried to talk him out of it, explaining that the little revolver held only five rounds. When Sam remarked, “I only need one,” the poor man had put his head down and finished the required paperwork without another word.

  Sam looked at the revolver in the morning sun and took a deep breath. One round and it would all be over. No more pain; no more regret. Over the sound of the rushing creek he heard once more the thump of rocket-propelled grenades and the staccato of automatic weapons from more than a decade ago. The soft touch of the high-mountain breeze yielded to the force from the concussion of mortar rounds, and the light from the morning sun gave way to intermittent flashes caused by the bursts. He closed his eyes and heard the screams of his men, wounded and dying and fighting to the end.

  A thousand miles east, Paul Norquist sat in an uncomfortable chair across the desk from Judge Preston C. Daniels, the Wyoming Twelfth Judicial District’s senior district court judge. Paul didn't like being in any judge’s chambers—no attorney in his right mind did. A sole practitioner, he had been one of Custer, Wyoming’s, preeminent attorneys for almost twenty years.

  “You want a drink?” Daniels asked, searching in a cabinet drawer. “I left that goddamned glass somewhere.”

  “No, thank you,” Paul said. “It’s not even four o’clock.”

  “Sure?” Daniels proffered a dingy-looking tumbler. “This is a very nice single malt. I got it from a client.”

  “I didn't think judges had clients,” Paul noted dryly.

  “Well, ‘ex-client,’ if you're forcing me to be accurate,” Daniels clarified, pouring himself a healthy dose. Paul was glad he didn’t have a client’s future riding on the old judge’s ability to see and think clearly this afternoon. “Same guy who needs the road.”

  Daniels had been on the bench for more than two decades now. He was short-tempered, acerbic, and took what some viewed as a sadistic joy in troubling attorneys from the bench. In Paul’s opinion, Daniels had long ago given up ruling based entirely on the law, choosing instead to impose “justice” as he saw it. On occasion, Daniels’s view of justice and the law coincided. When it did not, Paul appealed. The old judge wasn’t supposed to take it personally, of course—but he did. As a result, the two men had experienced more than their share of run-ins over the years.

  “This new man—Sam, I think you called him. Tell me about him, Paul.”

  “An old friend of mine from college. We played baseball together. After graduation, I went to law school and he went into the Army. We stayed in touch over the years—you know, alumni games, reunions, and the like—and at some point, an acquaintance of ours told me Sam had gotten himself into some trouble. Apparently, he got wounded in Afghanistan in 2007. Medically retired, then went to law school, of all things. I offered him a job a while back, but he wanted to do government contracts. Was working in some firm in D.C. but got fired.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not sure. Booze, maybe.”

  “He okay now?” Daniels asked. “The last thing we need is another drunk in this town—enough of those homegrown.” He took a sip from his tumbler.

  “Yeah, a lot of that going around,” Paul observed. “He got ahold of me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I still had a job for him.”

  “I’ve got a lot riding on this deal, so your guy better be up to it.”

  “He’ll do what we need him to do. He’s out of options.”

  “Good.” Daniels took a large envelope from his center desk drawer and handed it to Paul. “Here is a retainer.”

  Paul looked at the envelope and met Daniels’s gaze. Finally, he looked away. “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t either. But it is what it is. Take the money. I want that road put in.”

  While Daniels was talking with Paul, Circuit Court Judge Jonathon R. Howard was a floor below, presiding over the initial appearance of a suspected drunk driver. Circuit court was the lower trial court—the “people’s court,” some called it. Howard had called the case and was reviewing the charges when the young man said, “I want all charges dropped. I'll accept fifty-three dollars in compensation; I’d like it in cash, and I’d like to be paid today.”

  Howard looked up from the file in his hands. “Mr. Yoder, if you’ll hang on for a second, I’ll look through this and maybe figure out just what’s going on here.” Then he turned his attention back to the file. The police report indicated that after driving his truck across a city park’s grass, the defendant had purposely rammed a vehicle multiple times before exiting his truck and commencing a drunken rant of some sort. When finally accosted, he began spouting what the arresting officer referred to in his report as “religious gibberish.” Ultimately, Yoder had been charged with driving under the influence, felony property destruction, and a host of minor traffic violations.

  “Mr. Yoder, did you understand the rights I advised you of?”

  “Yes, Judge. My Lord my father explained them to me as well.”

  “Well, good,” Howard replied before asking Yoder several questions to try and discern whether he was oriented to time and place, and understood why he was there and the nature of his charges. Having obtained satisfactory responses, Howard moved on. “Mr. Yoder, are you employed?”

  Yoder stared at Howard for several seconds. “My Lord my father and higher power has instructed me not to answer any more questions.”

  Howard sat back, removed his reading glasses, and took a close look at the defendant. “Well, Mr. Yoder, we might be at loggerheads. My higher power is the Constitution of the State of Wyoming, as well as Wyoming’s rules of criminal proce
dure—particularly Rule 46, which governs pretrial release. Under those rules, if your higher power won’t let you answer questions, then my higher power will likely have me keeping you in jail until your trial just to be on the safe side, because I'll be unable to determine the level of danger you pose to the community.”

  Yoder stared at Howard for another long moment and then replied, “I’m a carpenter.”

  Howard and Yoder went back and forth for an extended period while Howard tried to discern whether the defendant was troubled or whether his religious beliefs were sincere. Yoder was somewhat difficult throughout the exchange, but Howard let it go due to his concerns for the defendant’s mental state. Ultimately, he deemed Yoder able to proceed, appointed him an attorney, and set bond. Finally, he asked, “Mr. Yoder, do you have any questions?”

  “Yes, Judge,” Yoder replied. “Are you going to pay me that fifty-three dollars?”