CHAPTER 53

“You know who the fuck I am?” Maddox shouts the moment we step back into the hallway outside Judge Maxa’s chambers.

“A prosecutor,” I say calmly. “At least for the time being.”

We’re close enough to each other that I can smell the coffee on Maddox’s breath, the breasts of our suit jackets magnetized by ire, the two of us squaring off and brushing against one another like manager and umpire following a blown call on a play at the plate. Then he grasps my lapels, and I his, and through sheer rage I overpower him, slamming him into the blah yellow wall with all the force I can muster.

I don’t know who throws the first punch. All I know is that our bodies collide with violent force and before I can consider the consequences we are both on the floor outside Judge Maxa’s chambers tearing at each other like sharks.

Maxa’s clerk, a number of court officers, a few lawyers all rush to intervene, to attempt to separate us, but punches are already landing, many to Maddox’s pretty face and a few to my own and there’s blood, lots of blood, more blood than you would ever expect as a result of a brawl between two lawyers at a courthouse.

It’s then, as Jake and Court Officer Perry pin me up against the far wall, blood spilling down my chin onto my starched white shirt and blue silk tie, that I realize the fire has returned to my gut.

Minutes ago in Judge Maxa’s chambers, Luke Maddox looked as though he might soil his pants. The way things were left in the courtroom, much of the media and all of the jury undoubtedly had dozens of questions they would have liked to ask. Maxa cut things off before things went too far—before, as Jake said, she couldn’t put the shit back in the horse.

“These are very serious accusations, Mr. Corvelli,” Maxa said to me.

All of us, Jake included, were standing in her chambers, the tension so thick it seemed to suck up the air. Maxa remained standing in her long flowing black robe, her jaw set so tight it couldn’t have been broken with a hammer.

“I’m well aware, Your Honor,” I told her.

Maddox began to speak but Maxa immediately cut him off. “I don’t think you should say a word right now, Mr. Maddox. You can only get yourself in deeper. Regardless of the truth of Mr. Corvelli’s allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, I suggest you speak to counsel before addressing these issues in any manner in any forum whatsoever.”

Maddox remained quiet after that.

“As for the trial…” Maxa said. “Mr. Corvelli, I’m inclined to grant you a mistrial. Until these allegations can be proved or disproved, I don’t see a reason why you or your client should have to proceed.”

Of course, I cannot prove the allegations without the cooperation of Corwin Pierce, and there is little to no chance of obtaining that. There are records—Flan searched for them at my request—of Maddox visiting Pierce on multiple occasions at Halawa, but there is no way to prove what was said, no way to establish with reasonable certainty that Maddox fed the details of the crime to Corwin Pierce and directed Pierce to confess to the crime to Turi Ahina, knowing damn well it would get back to me and lead the defense down a dark one-way road toward a conviction.

Of course Judge Sonya Maxa is suspicious enough, as she well should be, to grant the defense a mistrial.

“I don’t want a mistrial, Judge,” I hear myself saying. “I intend to win an acquittal.”

A mistrial was precisely what I had wanted when I rose to question Tatupu about Corwin Pierce, it was what I meant when I told Erin that I wouldn’t allow her to be convicted, that I was in complete control. But at some point during my cross-examination of John Tatupu, something in me snapped. I grew angry, angrier perhaps than I’ve ever been in my eights years as a lawyer. I was finally able to hate Luke Maddox, truly hate him, headful of Fukitol or not.

Now Jake Harper and Court Officer Perry stand in front of me, continuing to hold me back. Maxa is staring down at the spill of blood on the floor as it spreads like fire toward her chamber door.

“Go, get yourselves to a hospital,” Maxa says, arms folded across her chest. “Get stitched or stapled or whatever you need to do, because I will see both of you in my courtroom tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp, prepared to question the State’s next witness. And, so help me, you both better look presentable.”