55

The food was every bit as delicious as Randolph had said it would be, but the conversation left much to be desired. Randolph spent almost the entire time talking about himself—cases he had tried, verdicts he had won, cars he owned, vacation places that Nikki would have to visit sometime. But Nikki’s favorite topic of conversation was sitting on the opposite side of the table from Randolph. And whenever she brought hers up, Randolph seemed to interrupt with another of his long and elaborate Randolph-centric stories.

It wasn’t until after they had ordered from the dessert tray that Randolph finally turned to an interesting topic. “If you couldn’t choose your man Finney, who would you say is winning Faith on Trial?” he asked.

Nikki pretended to think about this for a few seconds, though she already knew the answer. “The Swami.”

Randolph gave her a knowing smile. “Because of his religion or because of his bedroom eyes?”

The question seemed out of character for a sophisticated man in such a fancy restaurant, but then a thought hit Nikki. Is this Randolph’s awkward way of flirting? Does he finally realize that he is having lunch with one of Tidewater, Virginia’s, most sought-after bachelorettes?

“Both.”

“I see,” Randolph said, his lips still curled in the slightest hint of a smile. “And what particular aspects of his religious beliefs are appealing to you?”

Nikki didn’t know a thing about the Hindu religion. But she did have a lifetime of experience at changing the subject and avoiding tough questions. “Pretty much all of it. What about you? If you couldn’t choose Kline, who would you say is winning?”

“That’s hard to say,” Randolph said, looking past Nikki to the windows that lined the far wall. “I guess I’d say Dr. Ando because Buddhism best explains suffering.” He refocused on Nikki, and she noticed a tinge of sadness, something that couldn’t be washed away by living the high life. “In my work, Nikki, I see a lot of clients who have suffered. I need a religion that explains that.”

In my work. Nikki could tell immediately that this wasn’t really about his work. She remembered Finney’s cross-examination of Ando. “But how does Ando explain it? By saying suffering will always be there? By telling us to ignore it? By detaching from everything important to us, including our lovers and our families?”

Though Randolph looked surprised at Nikki’s sudden animation, he couldn’t have been nearly as shocked as she was. Listen to me. I suddenly sound like some kind of comparative religion guru.

“And your religion does?” Randolph chased the sarcasm with a sip of martini.

“Actually, my religion tries to balance suffering by even greater amounts of partying,” Nikki said, bringing the sly smile back to Randolph’s face.

“I think I’m a bishop in that religion,” he said.

“But seriously, Preston, Christianity at least describes an afterlife where all our suffering is over, where perfect justice is done. Buddhism just keeps recycling us so we can face more suffering and injustice.”

This brought an unnerving stare from Randolph, as if he were trying to look into Nikki’s soul and see if she really believed that herself. Part of her discomfort was in not knowing the answer. She took a quick swig from a nearly empty wineglass.

Randolph poured her another. “Did you know that I lost a cousin in the 9/11 attacks?” he asked.

The question shocked Nikki. And she suddenly felt silly debating religion with a man who had lost a relative at the hands of religious extremists. “No. I’m sorry.”

The sadness returned to Randolph’s eyes, aging the man by a good ten years. “She left behind two kids and a husband who doesn’t have a clue about how to raise them alone.”

“That’s terrible,” Nikki said. What else could she say? This was so uncomfortable. But it was also helping her see a different side of Randolph. An insecure side. A searching side.

“It makes you feel helpless,” Randolph said. “All the money in the world can’t bring her back. It’s the first thing I tell my clients when they want to sue somebody for wrongful death.”

And then dessert arrived. It was hard to talk of suffering while eating such delicious raspberry cheesecake, so Randolph directed the conversation back to his favorite topic—war stories from his various trials. Nikki was actually relieved.

Dessert was nearly gone when Nikki suddenly remembered to call Wellington and tell him that he no longer had to be on standby for her meeting with the FBI agents.

“How’d it go?” Wellington asked.

“The FBI is all over it,” Nikki said, faking as much enthusiasm as possible.

It was the little things that made Finney want to quit in the first hour. A water droplet formed on the side of his nose, tickling him, but he couldn’t wipe it off. Water running into his eyes and lodging in his ears. One lousy drop at a time, yet he felt like he was drowning, the water dripping down the sides of his face and soaking his hair.

Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat. He answered all of Dr. Hargraves’s questions and told the shrink he was doing fine. A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews appeared and checked Finney’s vital signs. The doctor expressed concern about the blood pressure but let the judge continue. That was the only human contact Finney had the entire first hour.

Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat. Finney began counting. Sets of four and repeat. He estimated forty or so drips a minute. Twenty-four hundred drops an hour. He opened his eyes and checked the digital clock on the wall. He worked on the breathing techniques the Swami had shown him. He consciously thought about his heart rate, the swoosh of blood through his veins, and he tried to slow it down. Splat . . . splat . . . splat. When Hargraves and Andrews returned at the top of the second hour, Finney’s blood pressure had improved.

The chills started in hour three. The water was colder than room temperature and seemed to grow more chilling by the minute. The rivulets flowing through his hair turned into icy spiders. His body itched everywhere. He put on a brave face for Andrews but could tell the doc was concerned. Andrews made Finney take a drink of Powerade through a straw.

Splat . . . splat . . . splat . . . splat.

At three hours and twenty minutes, the headache became noticeable. Twenty minutes later, it was all Finney could think about. His mind started playing tricks on him—he pictured the drops like a waterfall that would carve canyons out of rocks over time. He imagined the indentation starting on his forehead. At three hours and fifty-five minutes, he had to consciously relax or he knew the shrink would make him quit.

Hargraves showed up and asked the same questions as before. Finney answered calmly, hypnotically. His speech had fallen into rhythm with the splat . . . splat . . . splat. A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews arrived and made Finney drink some more Powerade. “Not too much,” Andrews said, “or you’ll have to use the bathroom.”

“Thanks for making me think about that,” Finney said. “Just what I needed.”

“We can make those arrangements,” Andrews said.

“I’ll be fine,” Finney said.

“See you in another hour,” Andrews said.

Surprisingly, the next few hours got better. The headache stayed about the same, but Finney fought back the chills. He even stopped counting for a while, though that didn’t last long. His own compulsiveness was adding to the torture, he realized. But there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

The shackles seemed to shrink as the torture progressed, growing more and more uncomfortable. They rubbed against his neck, wrists, and ankles. The experience wouldn’t be half as bad if he could just move around more.

At the end of hour seven, just as Finney was trying to calm himself in preparation for his visit from Dr. Hargraves, he started coughing. He had been hacking away periodically throughout the time in the chair, but never at the precise moment when the doctors entered the room. This time, he couldn’t bring himself to stop before Hargraves walked in the door.

“We need to call it quits,” Hargraves suggested, but Finney wouldn’t hear of it. When the judge finally stopped coughing, he insisted that Hargraves bring in Andrews so that the medical doctor could make the call. By the time Andrews arrived, Finney had returned to a nearly vegetative state. “The vitals look fine,” Andrews said. “If you want, you can stay on another hour.”

The next hour was the longest Finney could remember. The water seemed to explode on his forehead—splat, splat, splat . . . boom! The chills returned with a vengeance, and the headache became nearly unbearable. The doctors consulted and agreed that Finney should quit. He begged for another twenty minutes.

He never dreamed it would be this hard to endure the water torture for eight hours. The next twenty minutes clicked by ever so slowly—five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen. How did victims of torture ever survive? At eight hours and sixteen minutes, Finney started watching every click of the digital clock, his open eyes stinging from the water. Splat, splat, splat . . . He flinched each time a new drop hit. And then, at precisely eight hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-five seconds, he pushed the panic button.

The drops stopped immediately.

A few minutes later, Dr. Andrews entered the room. “That was a good choice, Judge Finney,” he said. Andrews started unfastening the shackles and checking vital signs. “Dr. Hargraves and I were starting to worry about you.”

“Who’s left?” Finney asked.

“Just Ando and Hadji.”

“Good,” Finney said. “How’s Hadji holding up?”

Andrews didn’t answer for a minute as he counted Finney’s pulse. Then he said, “He’s totally relaxed. Seems like he could go forever.”

Finney wiped some more water out of his eyes and smoothed back his hair. “Let’s hope so,” he said.