36

When Paige arrived at Kristen’s house, several reporters were already camped out in the street and driveway. Paige parked in front of a satellite truck and walked through a small gauntlet of cameramen, thinking about how horrible she was going to look on TV. The half-dozen reporters apparently recognized Paige and started asking questions. She kept her eyes straight ahead, not even tossing them a “no comment.” Surely they wouldn’t put her silent walk on the news, would they?

The front door was locked, and Paige rang the bell. Kristen cracked the door, peered out, and let Paige in.

The women hugged, and Paige was struck by Kristen’s puffy eyes and the dark circles underneath.

“When will they go away?” Kristen asked.

“I have no idea.”

The boys came running out, and Paige gave them a hug. She noticed that the television wasn’t on.

“I can’t believe she’s saying these things about Troy,” Kristen said. “It’s all lies. The prosecutor would have never agreed to a suspended sentence if he believed that woman for one minute.”

“I know,” Paige said. They retreated to the kitchen table, out of earshot of the boys, and talked while Kristen checked text messages and ignored incoming calls. They decided to put together a written statement that would deny the allegations. Paige was jotting something down when Wyatt called Kristen’s cell.

Paige listened to one side of the conversation. Kristen was mostly nodding and fighting back tears and saying that she understood. She asked Wyatt if she could put him on speaker because Paige was there with her.

“Are the reporters out front?” Wyatt asked. His voice was raspy, and Paige imagined that he was recovering from a hard night of drinking.

“The local stations,” Paige said.

“Good. That’ll be a perfect opportunity to tell them our side of the story,” Wyatt said.

Paige tensed up. She could see where this was heading; as usual, Wyatt was about to make a bad situation worse.

“We’ve got the goods on this woman,” Wyatt said. “Two friends of Troy’s were prepared to testify that she was hitting on them that night. She’s been married and divorced twice. Plus, she brought another charge once against some Navy guys at a bar up near Little Creek, and those charges were also dismissed. She cleaned up her Facebook page, but we have copies from my file that we can provide to the press. Paige, I can e-mail all this stuff to Kristen, and you can have an impromptu press conference right there on her front porch. Just go out and tell the press that you’ll be releasing a statement in an hour or so in order to make sure they don’t leave.”

Kristen looked at Paige, who shook her head. She leaned toward the phone to speak. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Attacking this woman will just add fuel to the fire. And I don’t know the case well enough to start making statements I can’t back up.”

“I’ll give you everything you need. We’ve got to get this stuff out there now. If we don’t, the press will move on to something else and it’ll be too late.”

“That’s my whole point. Let the press move on. People will see this as a desperate woman trying to attack a dead war hero.”

But Wyatt was insistent. “Kristen, do you see what I’m saying?” he asked, ignoring Paige. “They’re trying to play the woman’s card. They’re saying that I’m a misogynist who hates women and wants to bring down our first female president. Troy deserves better than this.”

Paige could tell the words were having an impact on Kristen, and she despised Wyatt for it. Of course Kristen wanted to strike back. Who wouldn’t? But Paige was only two weeks into private practice, and she wasn’t about to start trashing the reputation of women who claimed they were victims of sexual assault. Not even women like JJ, though Paige was tempted to make an exception for her. “I’m not comfortable with it, Wyatt. We’ll play right into their hands if we do that.”

“I’m asking Kristen,” Wyatt said. “I want to know what Kristen thinks.”

Kristen stared at the phone. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I mean, it sounds like something we should do, but if Paige isn’t comfortable with it, then maybe we shouldn’t.”

Paige felt sick. She had come to the house to comfort Kristen, and now it looked like she wasn’t willing to help her friend. But this was why people needed lawyers. Clients got too emotional to make good, objective decisions.

“Maybe we could just issue a statement or something,” Kristen suggested. “I don’t know. I just feel like we ought to do something.”

“Look, this needs to be answered,” Wyatt said. Paige could hear the exasperation in his voice. “Paige, if you’re not willing to say something, I will. I just think it would be better coming from a woman.”

“It’s not that I’m not willing. I think it’s a bad idea.”

“We can talk about this all day but we’ve got to do something. Kristen, are you okay if I go out there and defend Troy?”

Kristen looked up and caught Paige’s eye. Paige shrugged. She had said enough. Maybe too much.

“Go ahead, Mr. Jackson. Do whatever you think you ought to do.”

When they got off the phone, Paige tried to get Kristen to talk it through. Kristen kept saying that she wasn’t mad at Paige and that she understood where Paige was coming from, but she seemed disappointed, like the phone call with Wyatt had taken the fight out of her.

After a while, Paige shifted course and decided she was going to say something after all. She tried to call Wyatt, but he didn’t answer. She and Kristen jotted down a few statements that sounded good, and Paige rehearsed them a few times. At eleven thirty, Paige gave Kristen a hug and stepped out onto the front porch.

There were only three camera crews left. Paige announced she had a brief statement to make, and they gathered around. Paige swallowed hard and tried to look as confident as possible.

“As you know, a woman named Jordan Johnson is making the rounds today, accusing Troy Anderson of sexually assaulting her in a bar several years ago. These allegations are entirely false, and that’s why the commonwealth’s attorney ultimately dropped the charges. Mr. Wyatt Jackson, who was serving as Troy’s attorney at the time, had lined up several eyewitnesses, and the commonwealth could find no one to support Ms. Johnson’s version of events.”

Paige watched the reporters jot down notes. She licked her lips and continued. “Troy Anderson is a decorated war hero who gave his life defending our country. He died so that people like Ms. Johnson could have freedom of speech, even if they use it to unfairly tarnish someone else’s reputation. I am proud to represent Mr. Anderson and his family, and I would ask the members of the press to please give them their privacy as they try to move forward without a husband and a father.”

When she finished, a couple reporters asked questions. Paige politely refused to answer and requested again that they give the Anderson family some privacy.

She walked back in the house and let out a deep breath.

“Thanks,” Kristen said. “That was perfect.”

None of the news shows that day aired Paige’s statement on behalf of the Anderson family. They didn’t need to. They had a much more colorful denial from Wyatt Jackson, standing on the steps of the federal courthouse after filing what he described as “an important legal document.”

“This isn’t the first time this woman has lied about being sexually assaulted, and it probably won’t be the last,” Wyatt said nonchalantly. “I’m not saying that the president’s political team put her up to this, but the timing sure is suspicious. The only regret I have about that case is that we didn’t go to trial. I had plenty of witnesses, and she had nobody to back her up. But even if we had won that trial, the allegations alone would have been harmful to Troy’s career as a SEAL, and all he ever wanted to do was serve his country.”

Wyatt Jackson shook his head as if he couldn’t understand the depths to which people would stoop in these troubling times.

“What evidence do you have that the president’s supporters put her up to this?” a reporter asked. “She said she came forward of her own volition.”

Wyatt smiled as if that were the dumbest question he’d ever heard. “Let me just say this. Sometimes you see a little creature running in the shadows of your basement, and you can’t really tell what it is. But one thing you saw was a furry little tail. That’s probably a squirrel. But sometimes you see a nasty little creature scurrying around your basement and all you notice is a long thin slimy tail on its backside. You don’t need DNA to tell you that creature is a rat. Bringing up discredited charges against a man a month after he gives his life for his country—that’s just slimy, folks. That’s a rat if I ever saw one.”