Corbin rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch. Are you seriously telling me he’s not short?” Molly asked.
“If you don’t like his height, take it up with him. I’m not the Evan Beckett complaint department. Now, can we please go back to the office?”
“Fine,” Molly said, and without warning, she shot past Corbin before he could even turn around. As she walked toward the elevator, she called back to Corbin. “Stop shopping for shoes and let’s get back to work!”
Corbin groaned.
Corbin returned to his desk just as Beckett and Theresa Miller rounded the corner of the dingy beige hallway leading to Corbin and Beckett’s office. Theresa pronounced her name “Tur-rae-sa” and had no tolerance for anyone who mispronounced it or shortened it. As always, Theresa was immaculately dressed, though her clothes were slightly dated. Today, despite the sleet, she wore a navy-blue suit with her trademark pencil skirt and heels. A silver pendant hung around her neck between the collar of her white blouse. A matching silver clip held her shoulder-length black hair out of her face.
Theresa, also an attorney, was a few years older than Beckett, and it was no secret she was extremely interested in Corbin. Corbin never returned the interest, but this didn’t deter Theresa. Beckett, on the other hand, rubbed her wrong. Indeed, Theresa and Beckett couldn’t start a conversation without turning it into an argument. That’s how the present argument started, as a conversation which began as they waited to see Kak. The conversation continued after they finished with Kak, turned into a disagreement as they walked down the hallway, and matured into an argument as they reached Corbin’s office.
“Oh bull!” Theresa’s voice rang out. She jabbed her finger at Beckett as the two of them entered the office.
“I can’t believe you’d say that!” Beckett responded.
“You just don’t want to admit some people are rotten and need to be locked up. This is typical liberal garbage.”
“No, not at all. I know lots of people who should be locked up. I’m saying it’s morally and philosophically wrong to frame somebody for a crime they didn’t commit, no matter how rotten they may be. ‘Guilty until proven innocent,’ ring any bells?” Beckett loosened his mauve paisley tie and unbuttoned the collar on his frayed, off-white Sears dress shirt before taking a seat. “Also, I’m not a liberal, I’m libertarian.”
“Same difference,” Theresa said, waving her hand dismissively. “If a guy deserves to be locked up, then what does it matter how he gets there?”
“‘Deserves’?”
“Yes, deserves! Killers, violent criminals, repeat offenders, people who like to hurt people.” Theresa counted off on her fingers as she delineated her list of evildoers. “People like that need to be locked up, and I don’t care how it happens.”
“Who are you to decide someone deserves to be imprisoned?”
“I’m the public, that’s who. I’m the person who has to live with these creatures. Besides, you make it sound like I want to start locking up innocent people! I’m talking about people everyone knows are guilty.”
“History is full of people ‘everybody knows are guilty.’ Lots of them turned out to be innocent, often after they were executed.”
Theresa rolled her eyes. “Oh cry me a river. You know guilty people escape justice all the time.”
Beckett became annoyed. “You’re missing the point. No matter what you think they’ve done, you’re talking about substituting your judgment for the legal system. You’re assuming they’re guilty, even though they’ve never been found guilty. You’re talking about throwing away the legal system and replacing it with millions of people seeking their own private vengeance.”
Theresa grunted. “I’m not talking about getting rid of the system, I’m-”
“But you are,” Beckett interrupted. “If we go with your plan, no one can trust the system because it won’t be the system making the decisions. What you’re suggesting takes us back to the age of Romeo and Juliet where ‘justice’ meant private vendettas.”
Theresa folded her arms. “You are so thick. I’m not talking about getting rid of the system. I’m talking about people who are clearly guilty, but who escape justice through some ridiculous technicality!”
“What you call technicalities are safeguards that protect you from the government. Two thousand years of jurisprudence have proven that certain types of evidence are so unreliable or so inflammatory that you can’t get a fair trial if the government is allowed to use it. Confessions obtained through torture, unsubstantiated rumors or innuendo, those are your technicalities. Eliminate those safeguards and nobody’s safe. They protect you from the government. You’re a lawyer, you should know that.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. I took criminal law too, but I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. Genuinely innocent people have nothing to fear.”
“You’re still missing the point!”
“No, you’re missing mine!” Theresa shot back. Her lips snarled and a wide crease developed across the center of her forehead. She was known for her temper, a temper which often seemed to verge on violence. “I’m not afraid of getting rid of these loopholes because I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t committed any crimes, and I don’t intend to.”
“But guilt or innocence become irrelevant if you eliminate these safeguards. The Nazis, the communists, they got rid of these so-called technicalities because they wanted to use the courts to get people. They just made up some charge, held a show trial, and locked you away. Guilt or innocence didn’t matter. There was no evidence. It was just character assassination thrown up like a shroud over the truth. Do you really think you’d be safe living under those regimes, especially with your penchant for speaking your mind?”
“There’s a huge difference between Nazis and Democrats and Republicans!”
“There is now, but how long do you think it would take before our politicians start taking advantage of the new powers you’re giving them?”
“‘I’m giving them’?! So now I’m Hitler?!” she growled.
“If the moustache fits,” Beckett said coldly.
Theresa’s face turned crimson and her eyes narrowed. She clenched her fists and stepped toward Beckett aggressively. He rose.
“Children, behave,” Corbin interjected calmly from behind a magazine.
Both Beckett and Theresa looked at Corbin and backed off slightly.
Beckett continued. “What’s more disturbing is you won’t admit what you’re advocating. When you claim the right to frame an innocent person, you’re putting yourself above the legal system as judge, jury and executioner. You’re giving yourself the power to eliminate people you don’t like, but you don’t even have the moral courage to tell the truth about why you’re eliminating them.”
“Shove your moral courage!” Theresa stepped closer to Beckett.
“Don’t make me separate you two,” Corbin said more forcefully.
“You can jump in any time,” Theresa sneered at Corbin without unballing her fists. It wasn’t clear if she meant for Corbin to join the argument or the pending assault.
Corbin rose and moved to the other side of his desk, between Beckett and Theresa. “Beckett and I don’t argue about criminal justice, we’ve agreed to disagree,” he said, as he leaned against the edge of his desk. “There is one important point however, which both of you are missing.”
They looked at Corbin. He smiled.
“Evan’s tie. Where in the world did you get that tie, Evan? Was it grave robbing night at the Beckett household?”
Beckett laughed. “What’s wrong with my tie? This is a cool tie.” He flapped the paisley tie about with his hand.
“It’s an awful tie!”
“No way.” Beckett held his tie out toward Theresa. “What do you think? Cool, right?”
“It’s horrible.” Unlike Beckett, she continued to steam about their argument.
“I don’t care what either of you says. This is one cool tie.” Beckett smoothed his tie and sat down.
Theresa focused on Corbin, which calmed her. “Speaking of ties, that’s a lovely tie, Alex, and a beautiful suit,” she said of Corbin’s red and gold designer tie and his dark-gray, tailored suit. “You always have such great suits.”