The Justice Game

57

Ten years earlier

The irony was that Jason and his friends avoided the big party that night-the one with all the football players and cheerleaders and rich kids-because Jason and his buddies discussed it, and they thought there might be trouble.

For the most part, Jason avoided parties altogether, feeling lonelier in big groups than he did staying home. But on this night, he had made plans with four of his soccer teammates and a small group of girls to hang out in a parking lot next to the tennis courts of a northern Atlanta subdivision. A senior with a fake ID brought the beer. Another kid grew his own weed.

Jason rode to the party with a buddy named LeRon, a fast left wing on the soccer team, a player so full of bravado and bluster his teammates affectionately nicknamed him the Mouth.

In some ways, they made a strange pair-the quiet son of a cop and the outspoken son of an AME preacher-but sports brought them together. The Mouth could hold his own intellectually, quoting King and Plato and T. D. Jakes, and he brought a nice balance to Jason’s biting sarcasm. The Mouth was an eternal and irrepressible optimist, even on a soccer team that hadn’t logged a winning season in five years.

The Mouth also harbored big dreams. One day, he was going to be the next Johnnie Cochran. The next day, the world’s greatest sports agent. Once Jason tried to goad him toward politics, but the Mouth scoffed at the idea. “There’s no money in that. ”

On this night, like many others, the Mouth had a few too many beers and smoked a little too much weed. After a few hours hanging out, including the last thirty minutes inside the cars while a light rain fell, they all decided to go to a nearby Steak n Shake for something to eat. LeRon, to the surprise of everyone, begged off and handed his car keys to Jason. “Your daddy’s the cop,” he said. “They won’t bust you for DUI. You can take me home and crash at my house.”

Jason agreed to drive, but not because he thought his dad would cut him any slack. He wasn’t as wasted as LeRon. He’d only had a few beers during the past two hours, four or five at the most. If he wanted to get home in one piece without calling his father and triggering the old man’s wrath, his own hand on the wheel provided the best hope of getting there safely.

Trouble hit on the Highway 400 exit ramp. Jason lived off a different exit and nearly passed LeRon’s out of habit. At the last second, he swerved to make the ramp. It might have been this abrupt maneuver, or the sharp curve of the ramp, or the slick road, or the nearly bald tires, or the wipers that smudged rather than cleared the windshield. It might have been the speed. It might have been the booze.

The car started fishtailing, and Jason overcorrected, fighting back a surge of panic. LeRon reached out an arm to brace against the dashboard, shouting expletives. The car skidded, hit the shoulder, and flipped-once, twice, who knew how many times?

The world spun and tumbled, turning violent and chaotic as if some giant had picked up the car, shaken it around, and thrown it against a tree.

The tree. Jason saw it coming for a split second-nothing but a flash in his peripheral vision during one of the flips-and then felt it. The car slammed against it, metal crashing, shearing, practically exploding, Jason’s head bouncing violently against a doorframe, followed immediately by a jolt and the smell of smoke.

Air bags?

Within a split second, almost instantly, everything was quiet. Jason moaned-his head spinning, his subconscious screaming danger. Was he even alive? There was pain that said he was. A shoulder. His right leg. He could taste blood in his mouth.

His chest. It felt like somebody had crushed his rib cage.

He struggled for breath. He fought back darkness.

He was hanging nearly upside down, his weight on one shoulder and his neck, the whole front seat of the car crushed. The driver’s-side window was pinned against the ground. There was no way out.

“LeRon?” he said. It came out as a whimper. “LeRon?”

He tried to twist around, pain shooting through his body. He had to see his friend. A surge of adrenaline-fueled panic blew away some of the cobwebs. The smoke-was the car going to explode?

He twisted enough so he could see LeRon. His friend was not moving. His neck was wrenched around at a horrible angle, as if some superhuman force had twisted it like a bottle top. LeRon’s eyes were open, staring… lifeless.

“No!” Jason tried to reach out to him, but the darkness was winning, overwhelming Jason, clouding his thoughts.

He needed to get out, must get away from the car and get LeRon help… but he was trapped. He couldn’t focus. He started sinking deeper, faster, into a black hole of unconsciousness.

Somehow, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell. He flipped it open and speed-dialed his dad. Jason was fading fast, gasping for breath. He spoke in chopped sentences. His dad said something-get away from the car? don’t move your friend?-the instructions were lost in the whirlpool of thoughts Jason could no longer control. He mumbled something about the off-ramp, exit 6, a tree. The phone dropped from his hand.

The pain receded and the panic died, replaced by an oozing darkness and a sense of overwhelming loss.

Jason awoke in the hospital, his mind woozy from pain medication and trauma, his father sitting next to his bed. Jason stared at him for a moment, allowing the world to come into focus again. His father’s face was drawn, his eyes bloodshot.

“LeRon?” Jason asked.

His father shook his head.

The pain medication blunted the grief, keeping Jason from lashing out or shouting. Instead, he closed his eyes, sadness seeping through every fiber of his being. He felt his life had changed forever.

Immediately the questions started flowing.

Why did LeRon die?

Why did I survive?

Who wants to live like this?

When he opened his eyes again, his father had not moved. Jason felt tears rolling down his cheek, soaking into his pillow. His father leaned forward, glancing toward the door.

“You weren’t driving,” he whispered.

Huh? Jason furrowed his brow, trying to comprehend.

“I called the accident in to Officer Corey, who was patrolling that area. Then I called 911.” His dad edged a little closer to Jason’s bed. “Matt Corey is a friend. He managed to get you both out of the vehicle before the paramedics arrived.”

Jason shook his head. At least he tried to shake it. Small shakes. Adamant.

He wasn’t going along with this.

“Listen to me,” his father said sharply. “We’ve already lost one life. I’m not going to lose another.”

Jason stared back. Even in his drug-induced state, he knew he had to fight this. He had already done enough damage to LeRon’s family.

“Matt Corey put his career on the line for us, ” Jason’s dad said emphatically. “If you don’t handle this right, you’re not just tossing away your life. You’re ending the career of a great and selfless cop.”

The hardest day of Jason’s life was the day of LeRon’s funeral. Jason showed up with his broken right leg in a cast and his left arm in a sling-nursing a broken collarbone, a compound fracture of his tibia, two cracked ribs, and a serious concussion. He used a crutch under his good arm to walk.

He was showered with kindness and love by LeRon’s family.

The physical pain was nothing compared to Jason’s broken spirit. During the investigation, he had nodded along as Officer Corey described the scene, even when Corey talked about prying Jason out of the passenger seat. Jason gave vague details about the events of that night-claiming that the last thing he remembered was being at the tennis court parking lots. He had downplayed the amount of drinking he had done. There was no mention of drugs.

At the funeral, Jason watched in horror as LeRon’s mother sobbed uncontrollably in front of the casket. He cried quietly as LeRon’s dad eulogized his son, bringing the large crowd to laughter and tears and eventually to their feet as they applauded a life well lived.

For the next few months, suicide was never far from Jason’s mind. Nor was confession. On at least three separate occasions, he drove to the parking lot of LeRon’s church but couldn’t muster the courage to go inside and talk to LeRon’s dad about what had really happened.

The accident changed him. He vowed never to touch a drop of alcohol again. He became more cynical, less social, at times despondent.

It also served as the tipping point in an already strained relationship between father and son. Jason’s dad thought Jason should be grateful for a second chance at life. Instead, Jason felt resentment toward an officer of the law who would abuse the system and pressure his own son to lie about a matter of life and death. And he felt ashamed for his own part in the deceptive scheme.

As time wore on, it became harder for Jason to think about setting the record straight. It would destroy both Officer Corey and Jason’s own dad, and what would it help? Would LeRon’s parents really find any relief in knowing that their son wasn’t driving? It wouldn’t bring him back. Jason would probably go to jail, which in some ways might be an improvement-the guilt he already carried seemed more suffocating than any jail cell.

For months, remorse and shame stalked Jason, hanging over every waking moment, lurking in his nightmares, and reasserting their stranglehold the moment he woke up to face another tortured day. He rationalized his way through life, convincing himself each day that it was too late to turn back now.

He went to LeRon’s grave and asked for his friend’s forgiveness. He left with the same weight on his shoulders he had brought there.

Two years later, during his sophomore year in college, Jason decided to pursue a career as a lawyer. Maybe it was a sense of guilt that he had survived the accident and LeRon had not. LeRon had wanted to be a trial lawyer, the next Johnnie Cochran. Maybe he would have been.

Jason couldn’t bring his friend back. But he could at least honor his friend in some small way. Perhaps this accounted for Jason’s willingness to take on criminal defendants as clients. That’s certainly the type of law LeRon would have practiced.

LeRon’s style would have been very different from Jason’s. LeRon argued out of passion; for Jason it was mostly theater. But maybe someday Jason would find himself sitting at his counsel table, defending someone who faced the full wrath of the state, and realizing that this is exactly what LeRon would have done.

Jason would be switching seats again.

But this time, he would make his good friend proud.