The Criminal Lawyer: (A Good Lawyer Novel) by Thomas Benigno

Author:Thomas Benigno [Benigno, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Landview Books
Published: 2016-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

37

John didn’t come home, but that was the least of my concerns. I knew where he was.

He never left Sofia’s side.

It was close to dinnertime the following day when I arrived at Bellevue, the significance of the anagram still weighing on me. The text of my license plate, two sightings of an old green van, and the vengaren text, could no longer be the product of one cynical criminal lawyer’s paranoia.

Then my son gets approached by a goliath.

This deranged killer was getting closer.

When I entered one of the lobby elevators, and pushed the tenth floor button harder than I meant to, a wall of fear enveloped me, and a crystal-clear image of my mother’s abuse flashed like an illuminated billboard in my head, along with a vision of my own children’s dead bodies floating in the marsh beside four burlap bags stuffed with bones. My stomach was empty, and I reflexively started to feel nauseous and faint like that fifteen-year-old boy I once was who first heard the horrific truth about his family, his mother, and the only world he knew.

I held onto the handrail that curled around the elevator walls, while unbeknownst to me, John was waiting outside on the 10th floor. As the doors opened, he found me on one knee struggling to catch my breath.

He thought I was having a heart attack, and screamed for a doctor.

I wasn’t.

I was simply overcome with a sudden debilitating sickness of the mind that left me struggling to catch my breath.

The Perezes ran over. Then a nurse, hearing the commotion, issued a Level II Emergency.

Within minutes, a staff of interns and residents swarmed around me pushing a laptop on wheels and a cart of medication. I must have shrieked, “I’m fine,” over a dozen times. “It’s just that I haven’t eaten,” I repeated, until finally Mr. Perez believed me, and warded off all comers successfully. He then escorted me down the hall and into the secluded waiting room, but not before sending his daughter to the cafeteria with instructions to get me something to eat and fast.

As I became more convincing in my protestations that I was fine, I finally got John to leave. I told him that Sofia needed him a whole lot more than I did, which was an easy call, because I didn’t need him at all. Mr. Perez, however, refused to budge.

With his daughter in a coma, he was helpless to the doctors and the nurses and hospital staff attempting, on a minute-by-minute basis, to save his sweet Sofia’s life. I do believe it comforted him to be of some use to me, and the more I got to know the Perez family, the more I cared for and admired them. I also understood Mr. Perez’s feelings of inadequacy. I had felt them before, and depending on the time and circumstance, on many different levels.

I threw my arm around Sofia’s dad, and gave him a quick brotherly hug. “Mr. Perez—”

“Call me Federico, or I cannot talk to you.

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