The Justice Game

37

Blake Crawford showed up right on time for his deposition preparation. Kelly started with the general advice. Listen carefully to the questions. Don’t guess. Look at the camera. Think before you answer. Those types of things.

Next she spent a few hours playing the role of Case McAllister or Jason Noble, grilling Blake with questions, trying to throw him off or make him lose his cool. Occasionally, she would stop the questioning and give him some pointers.

Overall, the man did amazingly well. He was soft-spoken and sincere. Even during the practice questions, he choked up when he talked about Rachel and the baby. At one point, Kelly stopped and asked him if he needed a break.

“Let’s just get through it,” he said.

He was at his best when talking about Rachel’s hopes and dreams. Blake was a high school math teacher and tennis coach. He and Rachel had moved to Virginia Beach from Florida less than a year earlier when Rachel had been offered a job as an investigative reporter. It was a bigger market and a better assignment than the small station Rachel had been working for in the Florida panhandle. For Blake, it meant moving in the middle of the school year and looking for work as a substitute teacher in Virginia.

“That’s quite a sacrifice,” Kelly said.

Blake shrugged. “Not really. Teaching jobs are a dime a dozen. But Rachel loved broadcast journalism. And she had a gift. Everywhere I went, I was pretty much known as Rachel Crawford’s husband.”

After Kelly had asked her last question, she pronounced him ready. “You’re going to do great. Just be yourself. We’ve got nothing to hide.”

Blake swallowed hard and stared past Kelly for a moment. “Can I ask you a question now?”

“Sure.”

“Your dad’s a pastor, right?”

The question caught Kelly a little off guard. “Um, yeah.”

“Do you think it’s right for me to pursue this?” He squirmed a little and toyed with a pen as he spoke. “I don’t mean from a legal perspective. I mean as a Christian. Do you think it’s the Christian thing to do?”

Kelly didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Definitely. Why do you ask?”

Blake put the pen down. Concern furrowed his forehead. “A lot of my friends at church think I’m on the wrong side of this. You know… they don’t say it that bluntly. But I pick it up from little things. Some of them have a hard time with this suit because they really believe in the Second Amendment. I don’t know, maybe they feel like this is a big step toward the government taking away our right to defend ourselves. They’re not big fans of the government to begin with.”

Kelly wanted to interrupt and maybe suggest a change of churches, but she knew enough to hear him out.

“Others probably feel like I’m just doing this for the money. Especially since we didn’t even sue the people who are really responsible. And then there’s the whole thing about whether Christians should sue at all.”

Kelly’s mind raced as her client shared these rambling thoughts. Her own understanding of God as a God of justice was so deeply ingrained that she considered cases like this almost a special calling. How could somebody who apparently worshiped the same God see things so differently?

“God cares about justice,” she said. “It’s all throughout the Old Testament.” She tried to think of some specific examples but she really wasn’t much of a Bible scholar. “Even in the New Testament, the apostle Paul appealed his own case all the way to Caesar. And the only reason Christ refused to defend Himself was because there were bigger issues at stake. In His case, justice demanded sacrifice.”

Blake looked skeptical. Even to Kelly’s ears, her argument sounded muddled. Then she had a thought. “You want me to see if I can get my dad on the phone?”

Blake thought it was a good idea, and Kelly slipped into the hallway so she could talk to her dad on the cell phone and privately explain the situation. A few minutes later, she put him on the speakerphone in the conference room and introduced Blake. “The question, Dad, is whether it’s right for Blake to be pursuing this case as a Christian.”

She looked at Blake. “Is that it?”

“Basically. Yeah. I mean, I hate to sound so conflicted. But some days, it just feels like I’m on the wrong side of this issue and alienating a lot of people I care about, and most of them are just too kind to say anything right now. I don’t know.”

“It’s a great question,” Kelly’s dad said. One thing Kelly had always appreciated about her dad was that he wasn’t afraid of tough questions. “And it’s pretty natural to feel conflicted about something like this.” His voice was calm and reassuring-Kelly called it his “pastor’s voice,” as in, “Don’t use that pastor’s voice on me.” Today, however, it sounded great.

“Like a lot of matters in life, the first thing you probably need to do is search your heart. Only you know why you’re really pursuing this lawsuit. Is it for the money? Is it revenge? An attempt to fill a hole in your heart left by Rachel’s death?”

Her dad waited, and Blake seemed to be considering these things.

“Or is it a desire to keep others from going through the same pain you suffered? Justice is a noble concept, Blake. But the line between justice and revenge is thinner than most people realize. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, not us.”

Blake nodded. “I ask myself those questions all the time. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what’s really driving me.”

“Fair enough,” said Kelly’s dad. “And that’s a question only you can answer. As for the theological questions-it is true that in the New Testament Christians are told not to file lawsuits against fellow believers, but that wouldn’t prevent a lawsuit against MD Firearms. And it may help you to know that our entire tort system is actually derived from the Mosaic law of the Old Testament. When Kelly decided to make a living suing and defending people, I did a little research on this.”

Interesting, Kelly thought. He’s never shared this with me.

“Let me read you a passage from Exodus that might apply here. You’ve heard the expression ‘It all depends on whose ox is being gored’?”

“Yeah,” Blake said.

“It comes from Exodus 21. Keep in mind that in those days, they talked about dangerous bulls, not dangerous guns, but you’ll see the parallels. ‘If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible. If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or a woman, the bull must be stoned and the owner also must be put to death. However, if payment is demanded of him, he may redeem his life by paying whatever is demanded.’”

“Wow,” Kelly said, excited to discover that her lawsuit might actually have a biblical foundation. “It’s the exact same principle. We’re saying that MD Firearms knew about the dangerous habits of this dealer and did nothing. Didn’t keep him penned up, so to speak. Consequently, it’s not just the dealer who should pay but MD Firearms as well.”

She looked at Blake. He didn’t seem to have quite the same spark as Kelly, but the sag in his shoulders had lifted a little. “Does that make sense?” she asked.

“Actually, that helps a lot.”

The three of them kicked it around for a few more minutes, and Kelly’s dad warned Blake that life seldom served up black-and-white choices. “The apostle Paul understood this when he said he was ‘perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.’ Sometimes we have to move forward one step at a time, just waiting for the fog to lift.”

When they hung up, Kelly could tell the conversation had helped Blake. But she also knew her dad well enough to realize that Blake may not have been his only, or even his primary, audience.

After her client left, Kelly called her dad again.

“Thanks, Dad. That was exactly what he needed.”

“He’s asking the right questions, Kelly. He’s going to be fine.”

They talked for a few minutes, and her dad put her through the usual interrogation. Was she getting enough sleep? Did she need anything? Was she getting any downtime? Her dad told Kelly a few stories about the excitement of his parishioners when they saw Kelly on TV.

“We’re praying for you, Kelly. And we’re proud of you.”

She knew it was true. She had always made the folks back home proud.

Which only made her feel more like a hypocrite. If they knew what she had done, her family would probably still love her. But pride would turn to sympathy and grave concern, swinging on the hinge of a sin that revealed much about her confused and broken heart.