TITLE: Behind the Lies 
AUTHOR: Albert and Emily (for now)
 
RATING: PG (so far)
 
SUMMARY: Bobby and Ellenor attempt to decide whether or not to 
represent a potentially homicidal teenager.
 
SPOILER: This story takes place in the middle of last season, sometime 
after the episode where Helen and Lindsay deal with the nun-killer, but 
before the season finale.

DISCLAIMER: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and the 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.

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Chapter One 

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Ellenor Frutt was in the middle of her second cup of coffee of the 
morning when she saw her latest client enter the office. There were two of 
them, a middle aged man, thin with a pair of the kind of coke-bottle 
lenses that made his eyes appear far too big At his side was a teenaged 
male garbed in black jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt.
 
Lucy, the office receptionist, greeted them with some uneasiness. 
Ellenor watched them mutter quietly to each other, then rose to take action.
 
"Mister Arnold?" she asked loudly, rising from her desk. The thin older 
man regarded her questioningly. "I'm Ellenor Frutt. We spoke on the 
phone."
 
He became slightly more at ease as he spoke. "Ah, yes. I'm Kenneth 
Arnold, nice to meet you. This is my son David," he declared, indicating 
the darkly garbed teenager to his side.
 
Ellenor extended a hand towards the elder Arnold, which he took without 
hesitation, and shook heartily. Ellenor then extended that same hand 
towards the younger Arnold, which the teenager did not accept. Ellenor 
looked him over for a split second. He had his bottom lip pierced, and a 
gold ring inserted through it. He also apparently had a tattoo on his 
chest that ran up and out of his shirt collar. She wasn't sure what it 
was supposed to be a picture of, but the large panther-like claw drawn 
up his neck certainly gave her a clue.
 
Ellenor calmly retracted her hand. "Well," she pronounced. "Let's go to 
the conference room, so we can discuss the particulars of this case."
 
It wasn't long before the son and the father were seated next to each 
other on one side of the great big polished oak table in the middle of 
the conference room. Before Ellenor could shut the door, Bobby Donnell 
appeared in the doorway.
 
"Hi," he said quietly to Ellenor. "Can I join you?"
 
"Sure, come on in."
 
"Hello, Mister Arnold," Bobby addressed the father. "And David," Bobby 
said to his son. "My name is Bobby Donnell, I'm the senior partner at 
this law firm. There's a chance I might be second chair on this case, so 
I'd like to sit in on these preliminary discussions."
 
Ellenor opened the bulky manila folder full of the research the firm 
had done so far on the case. "Okay," she spoke to the two men. "First of 
all, I should let you know that I'm always honest with my clients. And 
right now, I'm going to be honest with the two of you. Our 
best bet
 is 
to plea-bargain the charge down to a lesser offense. Conspiracy to 
destroy public property is probably our 
best bet
. With a conviction on that 
charge, David would be seeing about a two-year sentence. Probably less 
than that with---"
 
"But that would still be a felony, right?" asked the elder Arnold as he 
furrowed his brow.
 
"Yes, but the sentence would be mild compared to---"
 
"So my son would be a felon," Kenneth Arnold declared sharply. "That 
would put him in an entirely different class of people, you see. Every 
time he applies for a job, he'll be legally required to list this on any 
application he might get. What kind of person is going to hire my son 
after that? Well, his life would be ruined!"
 
"Well, Mr. Arnold," Bobby spoke up. "I hope you don't mind if I 
interject here. A conviction on conspiracy to destroy property is far, far 
better than the charges the DA would otherwise level against him: 
conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, reckless endangerment, all of 
those things would brand him as much more of a felon."
 
Ellenor clasped her hands together and leaned forward. "Listen, no 
matter how you look at it, David is facing the possibility of spending most 
of his twenties in jail."
 
"Well, that's all well and good," Kenneth said. "But my son is not a 
felon. And I object to him being labeled a felon so early in life. My son 
is barely eighteen, Miss Frutt. I don't want to send him down that path 
just yet. Surely there must be a way for you to get him off without 
pleading guilty to any felony."
 
Bobby was looking over the folder of documents from the police and the 
DA's office. "Mister Arnold, with all due respect, we try our hardest 
to clear the names of our clients. But this is a little different. The 
police found weapons in your son's room. Not just a couple of pistols, 
but automatic and semi-automatic rifles. Not only that, but they found 
printed copies of instructions for building bombs, instructions that he 
downloaded off the Internet... and he had all these newspaper 
clippings, of the events in Jonesboro, Littleton..."
 
"Yes, Mister Donnell," the elder Arnold cut in. "I know the facts as 
well as you do. What does this mean for my son?"
 
Bobby looked at Kenneth Arnold for a moment. "All I'm saying, Mister 
Arnold, is that with today's climate of school shooting after school 
shooting, you'd be hard-pressed to find a jury anywhere in this country 
that's going to let your son walk. We have to face the facts here. Jail 
time for David is almost a certainty."
 
"Oh, no," Kenneth said with a slight smile. "With your firm, I'd say 
almost the opposite."
 
"Pardon?" Ellenor asked.
 
Kenneth Arnold leaned back in his chair, with a half-grin still on his 
face. "I was referred to your firm because it has a reputation of doing 
whatever it takes to get that 'not guilty' verdict for your clients. I 
read the newspaper and I watch the news. You can accuse a man of 
killing his own sister, just so he can hog all the life insurance money to 
himself. What does it matter if you really think he did it or not? It 
makes the jury think, and whenever a jury thinks, that means a not guilty 
verdict!" he cried, gesturing wildly. "Always! And I want the same 
treatment for my son here."
 
Ellenor glanced at Bobby, who had a pained expression on his face. She 
was reminded once again that this was hardly the reputation Bobby 
Donnell must have envisioned for his firm when he started it three years 
ago.
 
"Might I ask who referred you to this firm?" Ellenor asked.
 
"I'd rather not say," was Kenneth Arnold's only response, delivered 
with the same smirk as before. "These are the types of people that I'd 
never admit to associating with."
 
Ellenor glanced over at Kenneth Arnold's son, who was listening to 
every word his father was saying. The younger man just sat stone-faced the 
entire time, looking at the wall.
 
"Okay," she abruptly told them, pulling out a legal pad and beginning 
to take notes. "If we're going to put forth a good defense, I need to 
know everything about this case."
 
"Yes, yes," Kenneth declared. "We'll tell you everything." His son 
remained silent.
 
"One thing that I wanted to know," Ellenor began. "You say the police 
came to your door, wanting to search David's room. They had to bust down 
the door because there was a lock on it. Why was there a lock on the 
door?"
 
"Well, we installed that lock," the elder Arnold informed.
 
"Pardon?"
 
"A long time ago, David had a fight with his mother and I. He said that 
he didn't want to live with our rules anymore. So, we said, fine, if 
you don't want to live with our rules, then you'll pay rent to us, just 
like anyone else who lives under our roof and doesn't abide by our 
rules."
 
"So, David was paying you on a regular basis in order to live in your 
house?"
 
"Well, why yes, of course," Kenneth told them. "He was paying us $200 a 
month to live in that room. He didn't want to act like our son, so we 
chose to treat him just like any stranger who was renting a room in our 
house."
 
"And when the police came to search David's room," Ellenor continued, 
"Who let them in?"
 
"My wife, of course."
 
"And she allowed them to enter David's room even though he wasn't 
there?"
 
"Yes, of course," Kenneth informed them.
 
Ellenor shot a look at Bobby. Bobby glanced up, acknowledged the look, 
but said nothing.
 
The questioning continued for another 45 minutes. The two lawyers 
covered the different aspects of the case, from the ammunition found in 
David's room to the threats he had delivered to his classmates, threats 
which were now being prosecuted by the DA's office. David Arnold gave 
forth almost no information; he was mostly silent as he sat in the 
conference room. The few times he spoke, his voice came forth as only a low 
mumble.
 
"Well," Ellenor declared. "I think I see some hope for your son yet." 
She chose not to look in Bobby's direction as she spoke. "We have to 
research the law a bit more. And see how it applies to your case. We'll 
let you know tomorrow morning what we come up with."
 
"Really?" Kenneth said, brightening. "Well, that's wonderful!" He 
smiled at his son then back at the two attorneys. "I knew my acquaintances 
hadn't steered me wrong."
 
Out of the corner of her eye, Ellenor could see Bobby grimacing ever so 
slightly.
 
The two lawyers saw the two Arnolds off. The instant the door closed, 
Ellenor prepared herself for what she knew was coming next.
 
"Ellenor," Bobby said. "In my office."
 
Inside Bobby's office, Ellenor paced back and forth, pounding the case. 
"He was paying them, Bobby. This boy was paying them rent. In this 
case, the law between landlords and tenants apply. His mom had no right to 
allow the police to search his room."
 
"So what are you saying, Ellenor?" Bobby asked, leaning forward in his 
chair. "That everything the cops found in that room, all the guns and 
bullets and the newspaper clippings, all that's inadmissible?"
 
"Yes!" Ellenor shouted. "The Supreme Court has been absolutely clear on 
this. No landlord can enter a tenant's room without express written 
permission. If they do, they violate the Fourth Amendment. That's what he 
has here. He paid them rent. He's a tenant, and they're the landlords. 
When she allowed the police to search his room, that was 
unconstitutional!"
 
"Are you saying we tout the Fourth Amendment again, Ellenor?" Bobby 
shouted. "Even if you could pull it off, which at this point I doubt, I 
don't feel very good about doing that, not again. Not after Lindsay let 
that nun-killer off, scoot-free. Judge Hiller had to rule that a corpse 
in a man's closet was inadmissible, for God's sake! This firm isn't 
mentally prepared to go through that sort of thing again."
 
"The constitution is the constitution, Bobby," Ellenor protested. 
"Legally, they had no right to enter his room. He should not held 
accountable for what they found!"
 
"Come on, Ellenor! The Fourth Amendment was designed to keep crooked 
cops from busting into our homes any time they want. That's not what 
happened here. They went to a boy's house and his mother let them in. How 
were they supposed to know she was supposedly his 'landlord'?"
 
"How would you feel in that boy's shoes? Wouldn't you feel violated in 
some way?"
 
"What do you want, Ellenor?"
 
She was taken aback by Bobby's question and stood stunned for a second.
 
Bobby continued. "What is it that you want? Do you want to see this boy 
go free? He had plans to blow up his own high school. He had guns, 
ammunitions, bombs, and a list of the people he planned to assassinate. 
Would you like to see him go free, to allow him to shoot up yet another 
high school, just because of some legal technicalities?"
 
"That won't happen. He was already expelled from that school..."
 
"Oh, that makes me feel *much* better, Ellenor," Bobby declared 
sarcastically. "So now this psychopath has his entire days free in order to 
plot even bigger ways of wreaking havoc upon society? Don't you see, 
Ellenor? If this guy goes out and blows up a building, I don't want blood 
on my hands, or on the hands of the people in this firm. Do you 
understand?"
 
"Oh, yes, I understand quite well," Ellenor said evenly, feeling the 
anger seething within her. "I see that the Fourth Amendment only applies 
to cases that Lindsay tries."
 
Without another word, she stormed out of the office. She could hear 
Bobby calling to her, but she made sure she was out of the office door, 
into the elevator, and down to the street level before he could catch up 
with her. 

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End part one
 
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Title: Behind the Lies
Author: Albert and Emily (Hey! that's me!!! Hi Mom!!!)  

Rating: PG-13 (so far) 

Summary: Ellenor goes over the edge and freaks out about her life.  

Spoiler: See Albert's  

Disclaimer: We all know they aren't mine. Yes, I wish they were, but 
they aren't. To David E. Kelley: I'm sorry for screwing with your 
characters. I'm sorry for spoiling your viewer's minds. I'm sorry for giving 
your viewers a bad name. I'm sorry in general. Take solace in the fact 
that I'm not trying to steal your characters. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
  
Ellenor Stalked down the street in a silent rage. Her mind was 
spinning, and she hardly noticed when she crashed in between a young couple. 
The couple just looked back at her in surprise, not knowing what to 
think.  

She clenched and unclenched her jaw. *How can he be this way?* Her 
hands were clenched into fists, and her sharp nails dug into her palms, 
breaking the skin, so thin streams of dark red blood curled over her 
fingers. *He wasn't always this way. It was *her* that made him this way. 
She made him such an inconsistent, idiotic, jackass! It was her! Before 
Lindsey, Bobby would make the rules and stick to them. He didn't pull 
this double-standard *shit*! He didn't act like a raving, moronic...* Her 
thoughts paused as she tried to think of every demeaning adjective 
she'd ever heard. In the end she gave up and started repeating a furious 
stream of curses and vulgarities in her mind.  The more she thought, the 
madder she got. 

Everything Bobby had ever done that annoyed her ran through her 
thoughts, along with her never-ending curses. Her memories of disgust tore 
through her mind like a demon with razor sharp claws, tearing at her 
skull, trying to get out, and wailing like ten banshees combined. Her mind 
throbbed with suppressed rage. She raised a shaking hand and laid it 
flat against the side of her head, then burrowing it deep into her hair 
and tearing at the roots. She winced at the pain, but it wasn't enough. 
She wanted to do something destructive. She wanted to hurt Bobby. She 
wanted to hurt herself.  

The blood from her torn palms was smeared into her hair, and was slowly 
dripping down onto her forehead. The people she passed on the street 
stared at her, thinking she was insane, and stopped to watch her pass, 
making sure to move out of her way. This fueled her fury, she started 
breathing more heavily, and began to walk faster to the point of almost 
running down the sidewalk. 

Her mind screamed at her to do something. To shout at the passersby, 
and tell them not to stare at her. To go slam her body into a nearby 
brick wall, just to feel physical, rather than mental pain. To randomly 
strike somebody on the street. To go back and kick Bobby's ass. But to do 
something. SOMETHING! Anything to tell Bobby that there was nothing 
wrong with *her*. That she wasn't being cold or heartless. That it wasn't 
her that was wrong. It wasn't her. IT WASN'T HER!!! 

But she did nothing. She squeezed her eyes shut, so she didn't have to 
see the laughing, judging, staring eyes. She raised her other hand to 
dig at her scalp, trying to make her head stop hurting, to get rid of 
the fury, but most of all to make those mean, glaring ideas and words go 
away.  

She opened her eyes and gasped for breath. She was already at her 
apartment building. Her legs were burning from walking so fast and so far, 
but she didn't care. She stumbled up the stairs to her building. She dug 
into her pocket for her keys, which she luckily had, since she hadn't 
taken her briefcase or her coat. She raised her bloody and shaking hand 
to the doorknob, and after a few tries, finally unlocked the door.  

She stumbled through the door, still breathing heavily, still 
suppressing the need to break something, suppressing the need to cause hurt. She 
slowly walked down the hall to her apartment, swaying the entire way, 
and sometimes leaning against the wall for support. Once she got to her 
apartment she rested her forehead against the door as she tried to 
force the key into the lock. She felt insane. She felt like she was losing 
control to a hated, animalistic part of her, that refused her attempts 
to calm down. The demon in her mind sneered at her. *It's just like my 
father. I'm just like him. All I need is a family to beat the shit out 
of* 

She squeezed her eyes shut tight again. Almost welcoming back the 
cruel, hateful thoughts directed towards Bobby and towards herself, so long 
as they replaced her memories of that awful, hateful man that had 
stolen her happy childhood thoughts, and given her memories of her mother, 
herself, and her brothers and sister slamming into the walls as he 
struck them again and again. 

Every part of her was consumed by burning, searing rage. She looked to 
her left and right inside her apartment, as if it were a stranger's. 
She stumbled towards the liquor cabinet, hoping a drink might take away 
some of the bite in her anger. She managed to pull a bottle and glass 
from the cabinet, but her hands were battered and shaking so badly, she 
couldn't manage to open it. With a cry of frustration and anger she 
slammed the bottle against the wall, rejoicing at the sight of shattered 
glass. She squeezed her hand tighter around the glass in her left hand, 
and it broke from the pressure. She tightened her grip on the shards of 
glass, letting them rip into her flesh, and then threw them at the wall 
after the bottle. 

The flood gate for her anger broke and she threw herself at everything 
in the room, slamming her fists into the walls, sweeping items off of 
every available surface, and hoping to break everything in sight. 
Growling and accenting every swipe of her hand with a cry. 

*It's not right! We're obligated to do everything. I don't write the 
laws. I don't tell the clients to kill and rape, and then ask us to clean 
everything up! It's not me who's wrong. It's not me who's screwed up! I 
didn't hurt anybody! I didn't kill, or rob, or rape! It's not my fault! 
IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!!!* 

And suddenly she couldn't do any more. All at once she was shaking and 
crying like a baby. She sunk to the floor, emptied of her madness, and 
everything else. She held her head in her hands, and shook with sobs. 
"It wasn't my fault." She whispered through her tears. "It was never me 
who did it." 

Her sobs became so great that she couldn't speak, but her thoughts 
continued weakly. *It was never supposed to be this way. How did it get 
this far? I was supposed to be the hero. The one who protected the 
innocent, and helped those who couldn't help themselves. At worst I was 
supposed to be filing divorce papers and counseling companies on tax 
arrangements. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I wasn't supposed to become 
this monster. I wasn't supposed to be the one helping the guilty. This 
can't be me. I can't deserve this.* Then her mind reached to that dark 
crevice that she never dared to enter. *I wasn't supposed to be empty 
and hateful and useless like Dad always said I would be. I was supposed 
to be different. I didn't end up stupid like he always said I was... But 
I'm still a degenerate. I'm still no good. He always said I was evil. I 
was bad and wrong. I let him be right. *Why* did I let him be right? 
Oh, God. And here I am. Here I am, screaming and pummeling everything in 
sight. Oh, God. How can I be so much like him? Why me?* 

When she had cried all she could, Ellenor shakily got to her feet. She 
walked to her bedroom, tired, depressed, and feeling empty. Then she 
saw her reflection in the full-length mirror. Her hair was wild, greasy, 
and clumped with blood from her hands and her torn scalp. There was 
blood on her face, her clothes, and it almost completely covered her 
hands. Her hands had been through so much. They were bruised and cut from 
her own nails, as well as from her maniacal spree of fury. Her nails had 
broken off, and the tips of her fingers were pink, raw, swollen, and, 
of course, bleeding. Her clothes were disheveled and the sleeve of her 
shirt was torn from wrist to sleeve (she had left her jacket at the 
office). Her eyes, nose, and lips were rimmed with a bright reddish-orange 
from crying. Her skin was a pasty-white shade of paleness, and her face 
was streaked with a mixture of tears and blood. Like a young child, she 
had a thin stream of snot running from her nose onto her upper lip, 
from crying. Her dark blue eyes looked sunken and were filled with 
emptiness. Almost more disturbing than anything else, she had unknowingly 
scratched and beaten at her face, causing bruises and even more blood. She 
didn't like what she saw in the mirror. It reminded her of her 
childhood. It reminded her of what terror she had just put herself through. It 
reminded of everything she was and wasn't. It reminded her of her 
father.  

In one last burst of anger she struck out at the mirror, shattering the 
glass, and knocking the frame back against the wall. Now she didn't 
have to see herself. 

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End part two

So, everybody tell me what you think! You can reach me at 
ereic-@alloymail.com. Hope you enjoyed it. Your turn, Albert! 

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TITLE: Behind the Lies 
AUTHOR: Albert, Emily, Ivan
 
RATING: PG (so far)
 
SUMMARY: Bobby and Ellenor attempt to decide whether or not to 
represent a potentially homicidal teenager, Jimmy has to face Judge Kittleson 
in court for the first time since accusing her of stabbing Lindsay
 
SPOILER: Sorry! I had to change the focus of this story...I made it 
AFTER the season finale.
 
DISCLAIMER: I do not and will never claim to be the almighty creator of 
these characters. I just borrowed them for entertainment. Note to 
readers: This is the first time I do this. Hope its good. And now without 
further adue...PART 3!
 
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Ellenor woke up dazed and confused. She looked down at herself and at 
the floor and wondered what happened. She still had the same clothes on 
from last night only now it was all torn and battered. "What time is 
it?" she asked to no one in particular before glancing at the clock that 
read 8:30, she was due in court at 8. She rushed to the phone to call 
the office...her real home. Lucy answered:
 
"Donnell Young & Frutt"
 
"Lucy, its Ellenor, the Stack case, did someone cover?"
 
"My, my, aren't we a little late?"
 
"Fuck off Lucy, this is not a good time to..."
 
Lucy interrupted "Okay, okay, don't get so worked up, good thing you 
can't throw a book! Bobby wants to talk to you"
 
Ellenor braced herself for what she knew was coming.
 
"Ellenor, its Bobby. Can you come in, we need to talk"
 
"Look Bobby, about yesterday, I don't know"
 
"Don't worry Ellenor, just come in as soon as possible, we have some 
things we need to discuss"
 
"What about Stack, has someone covered it?"
 
"Yes, Jimmy has it...its just a simple hearing...are you okay Ellenor?"
 
"I'll be fine...just let me jump in the shower...Jimmy? Are you sure 
that's a good idea"
 
"Ellenor, we had no choice, everyone else was busy"
 
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(cut to courtroom. Jimmy Berlutti is sitting at defense table. To his 
left is a 40 year old, overweight, bald man.) 

Two hours ago, Jimmy thought his day would be routine. He would get up, 
come into the office, look through some files, make some phone calls, 
then be home in time to catch the hockey game. Now he finds himself in 
court, dealing with a case he knows nothing about, in front of a judge 
that despises him. Would Kittleson actually hold a grudge against him? 
No, she's a judge, she's not supposed to let personal things interfere. 
Then Jimmy remembered that this was the same woman who made a man take 
his pants off in court, surely she would do worse to Jimmy, after all 
he did turn her into the police. The door swings open, Jimmy looks back 
hoping to see Ellenor, he has never wanted to see Ellenor more than he 
does now, but its just the bailiff. Jimmy braced himself for what he 
knew was about to happen.
 
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(cut to a jail cell)
 
Eugene found himself in an all too familiar place. In jail. Luckily, he 
is always on the visitors side of the glass. He stares down at the 
paper in front of him, the name Jerome Langley has been scribbled over 
about four times in dark black ink. The man sitting across from him is a 
young black man. He looked no older than 17 years old, his hair in 
dreadlocks, his clothes baggy and ragged. Eugene dreaded walking into the 
courtroom and arguing in front of a jury with Jerome sitting next to him.
 
"Look Mr. Langley, I am not going to lie to you...a jury takes one look 
at you, and they will think guilty"
 
"Mr. Young, It wasn't my fault"
 
"But you did it"
 
"I had no choice"
 
"You had no choice?" Eugene raised his voice just a bit, the security 
guards came rushing over, he waved them off.
 
"Mr. Young, have you ever been stopped by a police officer?"
 
"Yes many times"
 
"For what?"
 
"Speeding, no turn signals, not stopping long enough at a red 
light...should I go on?"
 
"So you know about DWB?"
 
"Look, I know that some police officers target black men, hell I have 
experienced it, but I can not get in front of a jury and say, 'hey 
forget about the police officer fighting for his life, he stopped him cause 
he's black, let him go' the jury will laugh me out of court and will 
laugh you into jail until you are 90 years old"
 
"You are the best defense attorney in the Boston, you have to help me."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
END OF PART THREE
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
 



TITLE: Behind the Lies part four
AUTHOR: Albert, Emily, Ivan
 
RATING: PG-13 (some profanity)
 
SUMMARY: Jimmy learns some stunning news about Judge Kittleson. 
Meanwhile, in true fan-fiction tradition, two characters who never seemed 
interested in each other before suddenly hook up!
 
SPOILER: Occurs after the most recent season finale.4
 
DISCLAIMER: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and the 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 

"Ellenor's here," announced Lucy's voice from the loudspeaker in 
Bobby's office.
 
"Thanks," Bobby acknowledged.
 
He steeled himself for what he was about to tell Ellenor. He knew her 
reaction wouldn't be a positive one. But with all the events of the 
recent weeks, with Lindsay being stabbed and Bobby proposing to her, he had 
no choice but to tell her what he was about to say. As he opened the 
door, any thought he had was erased as he saw Ellenor's bruised and 
battered face.
 
"What the Hell happened to you?" he asked, walking up to her. Her face 
was scratched up all over, and there was a big dark circle surrounding 
her eye.
 
"It's nothing, Bobby, I---"
 
"Don't tell me it's nothing, Ellenor, you look like someone just beat 
the crap out of you!"
 
"Look, I just..." she paused for a very long time before continuing. 
"It was an accident. I just took a tumble down the stairs at my apartment 
complex. I'll be fine, all I've got is a couple scrapes and bruises."
 
He knew almost instantly that she wasn't revealing the whole truth. He 
paused for a moment, but continued, deciding not to pursue the issue.
 
"You'll be fine? Ellenor, you are an attorney, your physical appearance 
in that courtroom is essential. You have to be more careful! What jury 
is going to trust an attorney that looks like she's been beaten up?"
 
"She's got about twenty rings in her ear," Lucy spoke up. "And juries 
still seem to trust her."
 
Bobby and Ellenor just glared at her. She immediately placed her hands 
above her head in a defensive posture.
 
"Sorry, don't throw anything at me," she pleaded.
 
Before either attorney could say another word, the door to the office 
creaked open. Jimmy Berlutti leaned against the frame with a loose tie 
and a shirt that looked soaked with sweat. From the look on his face, 
Bobby knew he had just been through Hell.
 
"Jimmy, hey," Ellenor called. "How's the Stack case going?"
 
"How's it going?" Jimmy spat, staggering into the office. "Oh, I'll 
tell you how it's going. Guess who's presiding over the case? Our old 
friend, Roberta Kittleson."
 
"Oh, dear God," Bobby exclaimed.
 
"What? What are you worried about, Bobby?" Ellenor quickly interjected.
 
"Kittleson has to recuse herself from the case; She has to! The defense 
attorney in the case had her locked up in jail for a night, for 
Christ's sake!"
 
"Well, thanks so much for bringing that up again, Ellenor," Jimmy 
grimaced, "but, unfortunately, I tried several times, in vain, to get her to 
recuse herself. She wouldn't budge. She wouldn't so much as grant me a 
sidebar the entire time."
 
Ellenor turned to Bobby, panic-stricken. "That means we can't have 
Jimmy trying this case! Put me back out there, Bobby, I'm Edward Stack's 
only chance..."
 
"No can do, Ellenor," Bobby replied. "Look at yourself. The jury is 
going to be far too busy counting the cuts to your hands and face than 
listening to any argument you might present."
 
"Now that you mention it," Jimmy cut in, "What the heck happened to 
you, anyway?"
 
Ellenor ignored Jimmy and continued speaking to Bobby. "Then get 
someone else in on it. Eugene, or Rebecca, anyone!"
 
"Eugene's way too busy with the Langley attempted murder trial, and 
this case is way out of Rebecca's league. With Lindsay still in the 
hospital recuperating, Jimmy is all we've got."
 
"But he once had an *affair* with the judge..."
 
"Ellenor," Bobby admonished. "Affair or no affair, Jimmy's our best 
shot. Worst-case scenario, we've got excellent grounds for an appeal later 
on."
 
"Yeah, excellent," Jimmy muttered, slumping down into his chair.
 
Just then, there was a rapping upon the door of the office. A tall 
silhouette appeared at the door and turned the knob. It was a dark haired 
gentleman, somewhere in his late twenties, who could have been a model. 
Even Bobby couldn't help but notice his bright blue eyes and chiseled 
jaw.
 
"Sorry to interrupt," the stranger spoke timidly to Lucy. "I wanted to 
speak to Mister... Berlutti, I think his name is."
 
Jimmy glanced up inquisitively. "I'm Jimmy Berlutti," he declared to 
the younger man.
 
The stranger glanced up. "Ah, Mister Berlutti," he pronounced, walking 
towards him. "My name is Steve Moffet," he said, extending his hand. "I 
tried to catch you coming out of the courtroom just now, but I'm afraid 
I missed you. The district attorney was kind enough to direct me to 
your office."
 
"Uhhh... is there something I can help you with?" Jimmy inquired.
 
"Maybe, maybe not," Steve replied. "But I think there's something you 
should know." He looked down at his shoes for a long time before 
continuing. "It's about Judge Kittleson."
 
Steve paused and glanced around the room, only to notice Bobby, 
Ellenor, and even Lucy were staring at him, obviously hanging on his every 
word. He glanced back at Jimmy nervously. "Is there somewhere else we 
could go to discuss this, somewhere private, perhaps?"
 
Jimmy suddenly came out of deep thought. "Oh! Yes, of course," he 
exclaimed.
 
"Right this way," he spoke, directing Steve Moffet to the conference 
room.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Aggravated assault," Eugene declared in Helen Gamble's office.
 
"Are you bullshitting me, Eugene?" was the district attorney's swift 
response.
 
"A police officer is in the hospital, clinging to life, and you want me 
to reduce the charges?"
 
"He's not clinging to life," Eugene said calmly. "He's in serious but 
stable condition."
 
"Whatever!" Helen cried. "You're lucky I don't push for attempted 
first-degree murder, along with a whole laundry list of other charges... 
carrying a concealed weapon, possession of an unlicensed handgun, 
resisting arrest..."
 
"This young man was in fear for his life, Helen," Eugene responded.
 
"They pulled him over for speeding!"
 
"And then they proceeded to slam him down on the pavement and threaten 
him with their billy clubs. Are you trying to tell me my client had no 
right to be afraid? How would you feel in that situation?"
 
Helen opened her mouth to shout a response, but stopped herself. After 
glancing down at her desk for a moment, she answered. "I would be 
pretty damn scared. And pretty damn angry. But I wouldn't start beating the 
life out of a police officer because---"
 
"Because you're not a black man," Eugene finished.
 
She glared up at him. "Is this what we're doing in this case, Eugene? 
Playing the race card? Because if you are, then---"
 
"No!" he shouted, with enough vehemence to silence her. "To you, it's a 
race card. To Jerome Langley, it's real life. Hell, to me, it's real 
life... This isn't Brentwood, Helen! It has nothing to do with that case. 
But it has everything to do with an institution that is still fervently 
racist..."
 
"Eugene, it's not 1979 anymore! And this we're not talking about the 
L.A.P.D. here. This is Boston. We moved past all that, don't you 
remember? All the forced busing back in the 70s? There were tense days between 
blacks and whites in this city, but for the most part, it's not an 
issue anymore."
 
"Not an issue anymore?" he asked, smirking. "If it's not an issue 
anymore, Helen, then surely you can sit there and tell me with a straight 
face that you wouldn't have a problem with a black man coming up and 
talking to you at a bar. Trying to get your number. If there's no racism in 
this city, they certainly you'd have no problem with that at all, am I 
right?"
 
Helen looked off into the distance for a long time. Eugene paced for a 
while, waiting for an answer. Looking at her, he could have sworn for a 
moment, from the look on her face, that some enticing idea had briefly 
passed through her mind.

"Helen?"
 
"Huh?" she said. "Oh. Well, to be completely candid, I'd have to say... 
no, I wouldn't have a problem with that. In fact," she told him, 
looking directly into his eyes, "I would be very interested. Very curious."
 
Eugene, taken aback somewhat, simply nodded and looked away.
 
"What about you, Eugene? Would you have a problem if a white woman came 
up to you in a bar and tried to get your number?"
 
Eugene's expression remained stoic. "Do you really think this is an 
appropriate conversation for us to have?" he asked flatly.
 
"As opposing counsel?" Helen asked. "Probably not."
 
"If this isn't a conversation between opposing counsel," Eugene asked, 
"Then what is it?"
 
They just looked at each other for a long time.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jimmy rocked back in his chair in the conference room, reeling from 
what Steve Moffet had just told him.
 
"Just one more time," Jimmy said, "Just to clarify."
 
Steve Moffet looked puzzled. "Well, Mister Berlutti, I don't mind 
answering your questions, but this is the third time you've asked me to 
clarify things."
 
"I know, I know," he said, motioning with his hand. "But one last 
time... Please."
 
"My wife was on trial a year ago, for running a drug trafficking ring. 
I went to Judge Kittleson, and I pleaded for her to throw out the 
charges against her."
 
"And she said she would, only if...?"
 
"Only if I... only if I had sexual intercourse with her."
 
"And you had intercourse with her?"

"Yes, I did." Steve admitted.

"And your wife?"
 
"Judge Kittleson was true to her word. She threw out the charges, 
citing lack of evidence."
 
Jimmy rested his head in his hands. He couldn't believe it; Roberta, of 
all people, the woman with whom he had shared so many passionate 
nights. But then the more he thought about it all, how she had come on to 
Bobby, how she had been sued for sexual harassment, how she had some 
picture of Bobby and Lindsay in her office, with Lindsay's face all 
scratched out, he slowly began to come to the conclusion that this woman was 
capable of anything. Including setting free a guilty woman. Since the DA 
couldn't make any charges stick against Steve's wife, Janice, they had 
to go after someone else. And that someone was Edward Stack.
 
"Why are you coming forward now, Mister Moffet?" Jimmy probed.
 
"I'm not proud of what I did, Mister Berlutti, but I justified it in my 
mind at the time because I couldn't believe my wife had done something 
like that. I didn't know who was responsible, but if Eddie was going to 
take the fall, so be it. At least it wasn't my innocent wife. But now, 
I know.. she's not innocent."
 
Jimmy perked up. "You have new evidence against her?"
 
"No.. nothing solid. Just things she told me. It would be my word 
against hers. But now I know: Eddie's innocent, and I can't bear to see him 
go to jail for 20 years.
 
"But more than that," Steve continued, with tears welling up in his 
eyes. "I can't bear to see that monster up there in her robes, acting like 
she's bringing about justice, when in reality I know she's just as sick 
and depraved as the criminals she sentences every day."
 
Jimmy felt real sorry for Steve Moffet. If what he said was all true, 
he had been forced into sex with a strange woman, only to find out his 
own wife had been running drugs for years. He couldn't imagine what this 
man had endured, but he still put a hand on his shoulder to comfort 
him.
 
"Mister Moffet," Jimmy began. "I mean, Steve, look. For right now, 
there's nothing I can do. You're only one guy coming here and telling me 
this. But I have a feeling, and if I know Roberta, I mean, Judge 
Kittleson, then there's probably several other guys out there just like you. If 
I can show a pattern of abuse of power, then I could get her thrown off 
the bench for life. She'd even be looking at criminal charges."
 
Steve looked up at him. "Do you think that's possible?"
 
"If there are others out there who can tell me the same story you're 
telling me right now, then I'll find them. I won't rest until I do. You 
have my word on it."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
End part four
 
So there you go. Emily, you now have two days to compose chapter five. 
Keep up the good work, Emily and Ivan!
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 



Title: Behind the Lies part 5 
Author: Albert, Emily (that would be mich), Ivan, and Sarah(?)  

Rating: PG-13 for language.  

Summary: Yeah, I'm continuing with my Ellenor thing. Sorry if it's 
annoying. 

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of David E. Kelley. In fact, 
it's damn near illegal to be writing this at all. But you all know, I'm 
not trying to take these characters (although it is tempting), and I 
mean no harm. However, the characters I create are for the use of this 
writing group (Albert, Ivan, Sarah(?), anyone else who joins, and myself), 
and no one else 
may use them. So, here goes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
  
Ellenor sat at her desk and looked around the office. Lucy was still 
sifting through papers at her desk, and Jimmy was furiously typing at his 
keyboard, and looking amazingly flustered. He'd looked a little dazed 
all afternoon, and the look on his face had followed him into the 
evening. She'd reluctantly handed over all information on the Stack case, but 
she doubted that that was what he was working on. Maybe losing the case 
was what was best for her. 

All day she'd tried her best to ignore the strange looks she was 
getting from her coworkers, but it was hard to know that she was constantly 
being stared at. When anybody asked what had happened, she gave the same 
answer of falling down the stairs. She knew her lines for that one 
extremely well. Still, she wished she'd used a different story. She was too 
banged up for just falling down the stairs, and no one believed her. It 
didn't help that her hands were bandaged so thickly that she could 
barely pick up a pen. She hated their questioning looks. 

But now it was getting late, and the office was getting fairly empty. 
She took a deep breath and stood up. Jimmy and Lucy's heads swiveled to 
look at her, and then they guiltily looked away. She squared her 
shoulders and walked up to the door of Bobby's office. She looked down at her 
hands, not sure if she could bear to knock. Instead she gently tapped 
the closed door with her foot, and called out, "Bobby, can we talk for a 
minute?" 

His answer sounded all too anxious. "Sure. Please come in." 

She forced herself to squeeze the door knob and walked in. Bobby stood 
up from his desk, and gestured to his sofa. Ellenor couldn't stand the 
look he gave her. He knew something was wrong, so he looked 
sympathetic, but at the same time, he was obviously disturbed by her appearance. 
Over it was the thick gauze of his curiosity. But worse than all that, 
he was trying to hide it, and wasn't doing a very good job. She looked 
away from him, hoping he wouldn't notice the dark flush that was wiped 
across her face, and sat down on his couch. Bobby circled to the front 
of his desk and sat down on the edge of it. 

"What's wrong?"  

Ellenor would have been annoyed if she weren't so nervous and ashamed. 
"Bobby, nothing is wrong." 

"We both know that's not true." 

"Well, it is, whether you believe it or not." She looked up at him and 
tried to be brave. 

"You know you can tell me if something's wrong. If something's 
bothering you...If some*one* is-" 

"Bobby, nothing is wrong." Ellenor was losing it. She knew that the 
tone of her voice made it obvious that something *was* wrong, and now 
Bobby was even more curious. She tried to continue, "You really don't need 
to worry about me, I'm-" Ellenor had just raised her hand to emphasize 
her words, when she saw once again what it looked like. You couldn't 
even see any of the flesh on her hands because of the bandages. She 
looked down again, trying not to look so damned ashamed. But she was 
ashamed. God, it was like she was back in sixth grade, trying to explain to 
her teacher how she had gotten *another* sprained wrist and black eye at 
the same time. 

Bobby gently took hold of her right hand and turned it over, a sad, 
worried look on his face. "Everybody in this office...We're you're 
friends. If you need to talk to someone...You know we're always here for you." 

Ellenor carefully pulled her hand away and looked away. She was really 
losing it now. She'd never talked to anyone about what had happened so 
long ago. She wanted to so much, but she knew she couldn't. *Oh, God. 
I'm crying.* She felt a warm tear slowly run down her cheek. She tried 
to keep her voice from shaking. "I know you're here. But, really, I 
don't need any help." She stopped as her voice cracked. She couldn't 
believe she was falling apart here and now. "I would just really like some 
time off, Bobby. I really need to take a break." 

Bobby reached behind him and pulled a tissue from the box on his desk. 
As he handed it to her, he asked again, "What's wrong?" 

Ellenor sighed and wiped her eyes. "Please, can we just drop it. I 
asked for time off, what's your answer?" 

Bobby leaned back and crossed his arms. He looked her up and down, 
watching her try not to wince as her hand brushed against her dark, 
swollen, bruised eye. He finally sighed and nodded his head. He wanted to keep 
prodding, but he knew she wouldn't talk, and it was best just to give 
her the time she needed. "OK. It will take at least to weeks for that 
eye to clear up. Something tells me you need it, so I'll give you three." 

"Thanks. I'll be back in three weeks." Ellenor tried to smile, 
unsuccessfully, and bolted for the door, where Bobby's words stopped her. 

"What about the Arnold case?" 

Ellenor turned halfway around, and looked at Bobby out of the corner of 
her eye. "I was under the assumption that we weren't pursuing that 
case." 

"Alright, then. It's your choice." 

Ellenor turned around and tried to leave once more, when, again, Bobby 
stopped her. "Ellenor?" 

She paused, her back facing him. "Yeah?" She asked weakly. 

"Be careful around those steps." 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellenor sat at the coffee shop, waiting to see if her sister would show 
up. *You know she won't come. It's not like you would've come a week 
ago if she had called you.*  

It was all settled. Her bags were packed, she had three weeks of 
vacation, and she was finally going to silence the demon inside her. But 
first, she had to speak with her sister. She couldn't leave without talking 
to her. 

She smiled politely at the waitress who refilled her half-empty coffee 
cup, and tried to ignore the curious look she was given. *God, it's 
been six years and we haven't seen each other. Shit, we live in the same 
city. We're not even fighting, why haven't we spoken with each other?* 
But she knew why she hadn't spoken with her sister. It was a whole lot 
easier to ignore the past, when the past wasn't walking around and 
calling you. She loved her sister, and her sister loved her, but they came 
from a time in each other's lives that both of them wanted to forget. It 
was almost startling to see her sister sit down across from her. 

"Ellie. Hi." 

"Hi. Julie, you look...great." They had the same tone of voice, same 
downcast eyes...it was obvious both of them were feeling a little broken. 
They sat and looked at each other, both looking at each other's wounds, 
both seeing the physical and, through each other's eyes, the mental 
anguish that consumed them. 

Julie hadn't changed that much since she was a teenager. She still 
looked like a younger, slightly smaller version of her sister, only with 
thin, silver rimmed glasses, and a much more tired, broken, sorrowful 
expression. Julie had never been as much a fighter as her older sister. 
Her childhood, instead of making her stronger like Ellenor, had only 
destroyed her will, and bright personality. She still had the two great 
scars that had chased her throughout her life. The first being her broken 
spirit, and never-ending flash-backs, and the second being her eye. Her 
right eyelid, and the entire circle of skin around her eye was covered 
in a spider web of scars. When she was younger her glasses were 
shattered, and the thin veins of scar would forever remind her of the night 
when she was told how lucky she was to escape without losing her eye. She 
had spent many hours in front of the vanity mirror in the room she 
shared with Ellenor, trying to cover at least some of the scarring. She had 
never succeeded. Thanks to the taunting of several of her 
less-sympathetic peers, she would spend the majority of her adulthood feeling 
incredibly self-conscious.  

"You're hurt." It was a statement of the obvious. Julie wasn't looking 
for anything more than a connection, and it was the perfect one, since 
they had spent so much of their childhood bandaging each other, or 
their brothers. 

"Yeah." They sat across from each other in a comfortable silence for 
some time, and ordered their lunches. They both sat back in their chairs, 
picking at their food with their forks, before Ellenor suddenly spoke. 

"I'm going home for a while." 

"I figured." Julie barely raised her eyes. 

"You should come." 

Ellenor watched as her sister slowly raised her head. All at once 
Julie's sorrows poured out through her eyes. There were so many memories. So 
many terrible memories. It wasn't that Ellenor had any less, but 
somehow she had forced herself to handle them. Or, at least push them back. 

"I can't bare to see him...or her." 

"I was a long time ago." 

Julie stared at her plate as she twisted her fork and nudged her salad 
with it. "Time doesn't matter."  

Ellenor stared at her own food without any appetite. "You won't even go 
and see Danny?" 

Julie was startled by that comment and dropped her fork in alarm. "I'll 
never go see Danny." Ellenor knew their little brother had meant a lot 
to them both. But she knew that he represented the worst of their lives 
as well. She should've known. 

"He loved you Julie." 

"He loved us both a lot. But, Ellie, he was more yours than anyone 
else's. You should see him on you own." 

Ellenor dropped her eyes again. "You should come." 

Julie sighed and looked out the window. Her eyes were wet with ancient 
tears. "You go, Ellie. You need to make peace. You need to remember, so 
you can forget, and say goodbye to them all. You don't need to be 
afraid. You were always the strong one. But me? I can never go back." 

"Yeah. I should've known." 

"You did. You just needed me to tell you to go." 

Ellenor nodded her head as their waitress set the bill on the edge of 
their table and glanced back at them over her shoulder. 

Julie started poking at her food again. 

"I talked to Mark the other day." 

Ellenor's head snapped up. She hadn't talked to their brother in even 
longer than she had talked to Julie. 

"How is he?" 

"He's doing good. His last book really did well." 

"Good." They sat across from each other in silence for another long 
burst of time. Ellenor glanced at her watch. 

"Should be leaving, I want to be there on Saturday."  

"You're driving?" 

"Yeah." Ellenor reached for the check, but Julie set her hand on top of 
hers.  

"I've got it." 

Ellenor raised her eyes to those of her younger sister before dropping 
them again. "You sure." 

"Yeah." Ellenor nodded and grabbed her bag and coat from the chair next 
to her. 

"I do have to go. Bye, Julie. Love you." 

Julie gave no response until Ellenor's back was turned to her. "Ellie?" 

Ellenor turned around to look at her younger sister. She had been so 
beautiful. One more thing he had ruined. "Yeah?" 

"Give them my love. Danny, Mike...Give them my love." 

"OK. What about Mom?" 

"Her too." 

"Dad?" 

Julie glanced out the window before her eyes returned to Ellenor. "Try 
not to hurt yourself, Ellie. It's not worth it." 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 5

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 




Title: Behind the Lies part 6 
Author: Albert, Emily, Ivan (me)
 
Rating: PG-13 for language.

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jimmy sat at his desk just staring. He was staring at nothing in 
particular. His computer was off, the screen was blank, but yet his eyes were 
glued there. He had been sitting there for fifteen minutes. Rebecca and 
Lucy sat across staring at him. Lucy couldn't stand it anymore and she 
broke the silence.
 
"Jimmy, you have to tell us what happened in there, you haven't said a 
word since you came out, come on, what happened?" Lucy couldn't bear 
but break into a half smile, the fact that Jimmy was sitting there with a 
blank stare could only mean something juicy.
 
Jimmy heard the words that came out of Lucy's mouth but he didn't quite 
pay attention to them. How could he have been so wrong about Roberta? 
How could she have done this? But what if Steve Moffet was lying? Jimmy 
did not know what to think.
 
Lucy now had a big smile on her face, and she kept prying..."Jimmy! 
Wake up!"
 
Jimmy glanced up, his thoughts were interrupted.
 
"What happened?, you look like you just saw a ghost."
 
Jimmy did not feel like dealing with Lucy right now, he had to do 
something about this, he had to tell Bobby. He got up, walked past Lucy and 
stood in front of Bobby's door. Just then the door swung open.
 
"Lucy get me...." Bobby's orders were interrupted as he slammed into 
Jimmy.
 
"Can I help you or are you just making sure my door is okay?"
 
"I need to talk with you Bobby, alone."
 
Bobby was like a father to everyone at this firm. Just fifteen minutes 
ago he had given Ellenor time off, and now Jimmy wanted a heart to 
heart also...He felt more like a shrink than the managing partner.
 
"Jimmy, you can't have any time off, and you can't be excused from the 
Stack case either."
 
"That's not why I'm here Bobby...that man, the guy that was here to see 
me...that was Steve Moffet,"
 
Bobby interrupted, "you mean the husband of the lady first charged with 
the drug bust?"
 
"yes, that's him. Well, he told me something...and I don't know if its 
true, I mean it could be, but maybe, you know its..."
 
"Jimmy, WHAT IS IT?"
 
"He slept with Kittleson" Bobby sat down "He says Kittleson made him 
sleep with her in order to drop the charges against his wife...Bobby, I 
want to go to the bar."
 
"NO JIMMY!" Jimmy tried to interrupt, but Bobby wouldn't let him 
"Jimmy, I speak now. Are you crazy? Do you really want to piss this woman off 
any more? You put her in prison for something she did not do, you are 
trying a case in front of her, a case you are seriously losing because 
of her grudge with you. If you bring a complaint against her, she will 
destroy you Jimmy. Just imagine, what if it's not true? She is a judge 
damn it! We appear before her on a regular basis. I don't want to piss 
her off anymore. How could you even be so sure its true?"
 
"Bobby, I know these things"
 
"No you don't. You don't even know this man, he just waltzes into the 
office, tells you a story, and you are gonna put your ass on the line? I 
don't like the smell of this, and I don't want this firm to be involved 
with it"
 
"But Bobby"
 
"NO Jimmy. NO. I have a meeting with Judge Kittleson in an hour, I am 
going to ask her to excuse herself from this case. You keep your mouth 
shut! You got it?"
 
Jimmy lowered his head and opened the door, Lucy and Rebecca fall in to 
Bobby's office. Bobby's cold stare was enough to send them scampering 
back to their desks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
(cut to street)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Eugene was on his way to the jail to see his client, a police officer 
walks up to him.
 
"Mr. Young?" the officer asked, even though he knew full well that the 
man he was talking was Eugene Young, everyone at the precinct knew 
Eugene Young.
 
Eugene turned around, his mind racing, what did he do now? "Can I help 
you?" he finally muttered.
 
"Mr. Young, my name is Officer Bailey, I have some information about 
Jerome Langley, can we talk?"
 
(cut to coffee shop. Eugene and the officer are sitting across from 
each other)
 
"I have been working with James for a year now, he's a great guy and a 
great police officer, he has been a cop for over fifteen years, but he 
has a flaw"
 
Eugene was puzzled "what's that?"
 
"He hates blacks."
 
Those three words rang loudly in Eugene's ears. They echoed again and 
again. The officer who arrested Langley was a racist.
 
"I have never been a racist, but ever since I was assigned to work with 
James it was obvious to me that he was. I became a police officer 
because I believed in justice, and everything I saw from him was just the 
opposite. He would always tell me 'if you ever make a traffic stop in a 
black neighborhood, have your hand on your gun and be ready to shoot, 
you have to treat them like animals'. I would always kind of just sit 
there and be quiet. He always targeted blacks. We would be driving around 
and if he found a black man driving a nice car, he would follow him 
until he did something wrong, and then he would pull him over."
 
Eugene was disgusted. He knew it wasn't over. "So what happened three 
days ago?"
 
"Well we were driving along, and we stopped at a red light. James 
looked to his side and saw your client. He started laughing and said, 'look 
at that monkey, we are going to get him tonight'. I tried to calm him 
down. I told him we should try and drive by downtown and see what was 
going on there, but he said, 'no, this will be more fun'. The light 
turned green, and James hands were on his radar gun. A white guy sped past 
us going like 60, but James had his target. Finally, your client sped up 
to beat a yellow light and that's when James stopped him."
 
Eugene was hanging on every word.
 
"We got out of the car, and James of course had his hand on his gun. He 
went up to your client and told him to get of the car, he resisted. 
James forced him out of the car and slammed on the floor, he put his knee 
up against his head and started yelling at him 'you think you can get 
away with this monkey?' I tried to calm him down, he turned to say 
something to me and your client snapped. I have never seen anyone with so 
much rage. He threw James off his back, wrestled the billy club away and 
whacked him over the head twice. I was frozen. Half of me wanted to see 
your client beat him, but I stopped him...I had to stop him."

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
END PART 6
 
well there it is...my small contribution....WHO'S NEXT???

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 




Title: Behind the Lies part 7 
Author: Albert, Emily, and Ivan. 

Rating: PG-13 for language. 

Summary: More on the Kittleson scandal. More on Helen and Eugene.

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby prepared himself for a brutal confrontation as he knocked on the 
door of Judge Kittleson's office.
 
"Enter," came her voice from the other side.
 
"Judge Kittleson?" Bobby asked, poking his head in.
 
"Ahhhh, Mister Donnell!" Roberta Kittleson cried in a sarcastic tone. 
"So good to see you! When my secretary told me you were coming, I didn't 
believe anyone at your firm would have the gall to step into these 
chambers ever again. But now I see how wrong I was!"
 
"Judge, I have to speak with you about the Edward Stack case," he 
continued, ignoring her comment. "It's urgent."
 
Kittleson swiveled back and forth in her chair, tapping a pen against 
her lips. "Stack... Edward Stack... Now which case would that be again? 
Oh yes, Jimmy Berlutti is representing Mister Stack, isn't he?"
 
"Yes, and you know just as well as I do that, because of that fact, 
your presiding over this case represents a huge conflict of interest."
 
Roberta stopped and leaned forward slightly. "Well, what ever do you 
mean? There's no conflict of interest here."
 
"With all due respect, Judge, you had an affair with the defense 
attorney, an affair that ended with him having the police investigate you 
for..."
 
"Attempted murder?" she completed. "Now, why would that prevent me from 
being fair and impartial in this case? Why, I get accused of some kind 
of felony all the time! "
 
Bobby thought back momentarily to what Jimmy had just told him, but 
knew it was best not to say anything at this point. "If Edward Stack is 
convicted, he's looking at 25 years, minimum. Do you really want to take 
this man's life from him just because you don't like his lawyer?"
 
"If Mister Stack ends up in prison, it will only be because the facts 
have shown he is guilty, regardless of how I feel about the lawyer 
representing him."
 
Bobby put a hand to his forehead. He was getting nowhere. Jimmy was 
right; she wasn't going to budge an inch. "Roberta," he said in 
desperation. "What is it that you want?"
 
She simply laughed. "Is this a philosophical question, Bobby?"
 
"You know what I mean, Roberta. Months ago, we sat in this very same 
room and you made a pass at me. Then, oddly enough, not long afterwards, 
you started dating another lawyer in my firm."
 
"Bobby, my love life is none of your business. Shall I check with you 
every time I meet someone new to make sure he's not a friend of yours?"
 
"Dammit, Roberta, you knew what you were doing! You were just using 
Jimmy, to somehow get back at me."
 
"Preposterous!" Roberta cried.
 
"And that picture of me and Lindsay that you had in this office? The 
police showed it to me. Lindsay's face was all scratched out. What was 
going through your mind when you did that? How did you get that picture 
in the first place? "
 
"I am not the witness for the prosecution, so do not cross examine me!" 
Roberta shouted back. "And if you don't leave my chambers immediately I 
shall have a bailiff escort you out!"
 
"What do you want from me?" Bobby pleaded. "Tell me that much and I'll 
go."
 
"What I want, Bobby, from you and from every other member of that gang 
of lunatics you call a law firm, is to be left alone, so that I might 
be able to do my job! Now I'm asking you one more time to leave, Mister 
Donnell, I won't ask again!"
 
Bobby sat silent for a moment, thinking. Perhaps Judge Kittleson 
wouldn't recuse herself, but, eventually, her bias was going to show. *And 
when it does,* Bobby thought, *I'll be there.* Without another word, he 
picked up his briefcase and walked out of Roberta's chambers.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Downstairs, Eugene paced nervously in the hallways of the courthouse. 
He glanced over at the doors of the courtroom, feeling his stomach tie 
up in knots as he went over in his mind what he was going to say.
 
He chided himself for being so nervous. After all, he had done this 
countless times before. But this time, things were very different, and the 
more he told himself not to think about it the more it consumed him.
 
Finally, the courtroom doors burst open. A small number of observers 
and attorneys filed out. Bringing up the rear was Helen Gamble.
 
"Eugene," she said with some surprise upon seeing him. "What are you 
doing here?"
 
"There's a new development in the Langley case, Helen. I just met with 
James Crawford's partner. He told me in no uncertain terms that the 
guy's a racist."
 
"What? Well, that can't be! Officer Bailey gave me a sworn statement 
that mentioned nothing of the kind!"
 
"Well, apparently he's amending that statement now."
 
"Is he planning to testify to this in court?" Helen asked.
 
"No. He wants to remain anonymous. He says part of the reason he gave 
that false statement is because his buddies down at the precinct would 
make his life a living Hell if he had said otherwise."
 
"Eugene, if he doesn't come forward to testify, he's of no use to you," 
Helen declared, walking down the corridor. Remember that line in the 
Constitution about facing your accuser?"
 
Eugene followed close alongside her. "Yes, I know that, but I think 
there might be a way around that." He swallowed hard as he attempted to 
deliver the next question in a calm tone of voice. "Can we discuss this 
more over dinner?"
 
Helen stopped dead in her tracks. "Dinner?"
 
"Yeah, you and me."
 
"Dinner."
 
Eugene let out a nervous laugh. "You've heard of that before, right?"
 
"What? Oh," she said, visibly relaxing. "Of course, I'm sorry, I 
just..." She looked up at him, smiling. "Yes. Dinner sounds nice, let's do 
that."
 
"Okay, then, let's do that," Eugene repeated.
 
They both stood frozen for several moments, not knowing what to say or 
do at that point.
 
"Oh!" Helen shouted. "I was on my way to meet with a witness right now. 
But, let me give you my home number..."
 
"Don't worry about it," Eugene told her. "I can get it pretty easily." 
He saw Helen's puzzled look. "It's the same as Lindsay's number, 
right?"
 
"Oh, right! Of course!" she said smiling. "Um, which reminds me, I 
really should go check in on her tonight over at the hospital. So I might 
not be home until later."
 
"That's fine," he told her. "Give her my love."
 
"Okay, will do. Well, um, I guess I should get going now. See you 
tonight?"
 
"See you tonight," Eugene responded. As Helen walked off, he took a 
deep breath and exhaled loudly. *And that,* he thought to himself, *was 
the easy part.*
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jimmy glanced down at the notepad he was carrying. All day, he had been 
researching Judge Kittleson's cases online, writing down the names of 
all the defendants that seemed to have had their cases thrown out a 
little too easily. There were six names and the first five had all refused 
to speak to Jimmy.
 
He looked at the sixth and final name: Jeff Morris. Glancing up, he saw 
the high-priced apartment complex that Morris lived in and made his way 
upstairs.
 
Soon, he was standing before the door to Morris' apartment, timidly 
knocking on his door.
 
"Yeah, who is it?" came a voice from inside. Before Jimmy could 
respond, the door swung open, revealing a well-built man with dark hair, a 
strong jaw, and blue eyes.
 
Jimmy couldn't believe it. Six different guys and all six were 
dead-ringers for Bobby. Judge Kittleson sure did know what she liked. *What the 
heck did Roberta see in me, anyway?* he thought.
 
"Mister Morris?" Jimmy asked. "Jeff Morris?"
 
"Yeah," Jeff responded. Jimmy looked at him and noticed his hair was 
wet and he was clothed only in a bathrobe. "And you are?"
 
"Sorry to make you jump out of the shower, Mister Morris. My name's 
Jimmy Berlutti and I'm an attorney at Donnell, Frutt, Dole and Young."
 
"Oh no," the man said. "When a lawyer comes to your door it's always 
bad news."
 
"Well, yes and no, Mister Morris, you see, I need to talk to you about 
Judge Kittleson."
 
Jeff Morris froze. "Judge who?" he asked in a tone that was just a bit 
too casual.
 
"Roberta Kittleson? She presided over a case of yours that went to 
court three years ago. That case was thrown out, and I'm trying to find out 
why."
 
"Ohh, that case. Well, I'll tell you why it was thrown out. The cops 
had the wrong guy and there wasn't any evidence against me. So the judge 
threw it out. What did you say her name was again?"
 
"Kittleson," Jimmy told him. "Look, with all due respect, I beg to 
differ with you. I think there was another reason that case was thrown out. 
And I think you know what I'm talking about here."
 
"No," he said, stone-faced. "I really have no idea."
 
"Look, Mister Morris, sir, if you'll just let me in, we can talk about 
what really happened between you and the judge. Off the record, 
alright? It'll just be between you and me, man to man."
 
"What? Get off my doorstep," Jeff shouted loudly.
 
"You don't understand, a man's life is in jeopardy..."
 
"Yeah, and that man is gonna be you if you don't get the Hell out of my 
face!"
 
"Mister Morris, please..."
 
"I have nothing to say to you! And if you're smart, you'll be out of 
the building by the time I get to my phone and call security!" With that, 
he slammed the door in Jimmy's face.
 
Jimmy turned to leave, but stopped himself. He removed a business card 
from his coat pocket, laid it under the door, and flicked it inside. 
Crossing the sixth and final name off his notepad, he walked off 
defeated.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen sat in a chair near the foot of Lindsay Dole's hospital bed. 
Helen's roommate had spent almost an entire week in this bed, recovering 
from stab wounds she had received in her own law office.
 
"Have the police told you anything recently?" Lindsay was asking her.
 
"Well," Helen began, "I haven't checked with them in a couple days, 
but..."
 
"So, nothing," Lindsay said sadly.
 
"I'm sorry, Lindsay. They don't really have many leads at this point. 
After Kingston, and Kittleson, and the nuns, they're not really sure who 
else to investigate."
 
"Terrific," Lindsay said, turning away.
 
"Lindsay, whoever it is, we'll find them," Helen told her, placing a 
hand on hers. "I promise you that."
 
"Thanks, Helen," Lindsay replied. She forced a smile and then attempted 
to change the subject. "So, anything new with you? Meet any new men in 
the last 24 hours?"
 
Helen was quiet for a long moment.
 
"Come on, Helen," Lindsay said with a smile. "Out with it."
 
"Well, I have a hypothetical question for you," Helen responded.
 
"Okay, shoot."
 
Helen gestured slightly, as if trying to find the right words to 
express what she wanted to say. Finally she decided to simply come out and 
say it. "What would you think about me dating a black man?"
 
"What?" Lindsay screamed. "Are you serious?"
 
"Yeah, I am," Helen countered. "Hypothetically, what would you think?"
 
"Well, I think, uh, I don't know," she said, smiling. "I mean, I would 
think it was great!"
 
"You wouldn't have a problem with that?"
 
"No! Of course not," Lindsay told her. After a pause, she asked, "So 
who is he?"
 
"I said it was a hypothetical question, Lindsay..."
 
"Oh come on, Helen, who is he? Is he a lawyer?"
 
"Lindsay..."
 
"Do I know him?"
 
"Stop it!"
 
"Have I ever worked with... oh my God!" she gasped, covering her mouth 
with her hands. "It's Eugene, isn't it?"
 
Helen's mouth moved, but no words came out.
 
"It *is* Eugene!" Lindsay cried, laughing. "Oh my God!"
 
"Would you stop doing that? Would you stop reading my mind?"
 
"Well, I, uh, Helen, um, I don't know what to say, I didn't think he 
was your, uhhh.. type?"
 
"What? What are you trying to say?"
 
"Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Eugene is a great guy, he really is. I 
love him to death. The only problem is he's got the whole ex-wife and kid 
baggage..."
 
"Lindsay! I am not dating Eugene! It's just something that... well, it 
just crossed my mind."
 
"Well, what brought this about? You never thought about it before, did 
you?"
 
"No, not really. It's just.. I don't know. Somehow it just crossed my 
mind, that's all. Also, it might be due to the fact that he asked me out 
to dinner tonight."
 
"What? Eugene asked you out?"
 
"Lindsay, it's not a date! He just wants to discuss a case... I 
think..."
 
"Helen, it's already 8pm, what are you doing here? The poor guy is 
going to think you're standing him up! Come on, give me a hug and get the 
Hell out of here."
 
"Alright, hon," Helen said, hugging her. "I hope you can go home soon, 
that apartment is pretty lonely without you."
 
"I bet you'll be happy to have that whole apartment to yourself 
tonight, though," Lindsay said.
 
"Lindsay!" Helen cried. She laughingly tossed a pillow at her roommate 
as she made her way out of the hospital room.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 7
 
...that's about it. Emily, chapter eight is all yours...
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 8. 
Author: Albert, Emily (that's me!), and Ivan
 
Summary: A look at Eugene and Helen's date. Ellenor's trek continues.
 
Rating: PG-13
 
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of David E. Kelley, and as far 
as I know, neither do Albert or Ivan. I'm not trying to steal them, and 
if Albert or Ivan are, I am certainly not aware of it (that's the part 
that will get me off in court). Just remember, the characters we create 
are for use in this work of fan-fiction (or any others we do together) 
only. That means that no one outside of the "Round Robin" group may use 
any of our created characters without express written permission. So, 
as long as we all understand each other, here it is...
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Eugene was a nervous wreck. Helen was ten minutes late. He didn't know 
what to do if he was stood up. It wouldn't be so bad under normal 
circumstances, but he saw this woman on a weekly basis at the very least. He 
didn't know how he could face her at work if the date went to Hell. He 
didn't even know how he would face her if it went well. On second 
thought, maybe it was better if she stood him up.
 
"Eugene?" Eugene looked up, startled. Well, she came. *Damn. Or maybe 
not. I don't know which.*
 
"Helen. I'm glad you made it." He stood up and pulled out her chair. 
Helen graciously accepted.
 
"Sorry I'm late. I was visiting Lindsay, and I guess I lost track of 
time."
 
"No problem. I know how time can go by when you're with a friend." Then 
he thought about what she'd said. *Great. I can't wait for this to 
become hot topic at the office.* "You...didn't...tell her you were meeting 
me. Did you?"
 
Helen tried to think of the best way to lie. "Do you really think I 
would?"
 
Eugene sighed, thinking that he was avoiding being the object of gossip 
for the moment. "No. Not really. But, we could just keep this quiet for 
a little while. Couldn't we? I mean, gossip really flies, and this 
could get blown out of proportion."
 
"Oh, no problem. Actually, the DA's office has a pretty nasty social 
circle, too." She smiled sweetly. *Note to self: tell Lindsay to keep her 
mouth shut, or she'll have even more stitches.*
 
"Well, since that's cleared up, why don't we order?"
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Helen rolled over in bed and sighed. She tried to forget the unusual 
feeling she was having, as if something was different, and find the 
bright red lights on her alarm clock. *Mmm. One more hour to sleep. I could 
use it, too. My head is killing me.* Suddenly she felt a hand on her 
back. *Oh, God.* all at once, her memories of the passionate night behind 
her came rushing back. *Note to self: if Lindsay tells ANYONE, make 
sure she never gets out of the coma you put her in.*
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Ellenor checked the address on the paper in her hand one more time. 
This was the one Mark's publisher had given her. She couldn't believe she 
was here. It had been so long. She didn't know if her brother would 
even want to talk to her. He certainly had reason not too, after all they 
had been through.
 
She looked down at her hands. They were already beginning to heal. She 
had learned long ago the right combination of about five antibiotic 
creams that would help speed the healing process and prevent scarring. She 
wished she could look a little better, when she was seeing her brother 
for the first time in so long, but she had no choice. This time off had 
to last a while. *How did we get so far apart. Christ, he's ten months 
older than me. We did everything together when we were younger.* But 
once again, as with Julie, she knew why they never saw each other 
anymore. They both wanted to forget.
 
Ellenor took a deep breath and gently knocked on the door. From deep 
inside she heard her brother call out, "One minute." She heard him 
laughing and a dog bark.
 
"Hold *on*, Daisy! No! I need to dry you off!" She listened to her 
brother crash around his apartment, supposedly chasing his dog, which kept 
barking. "Oh, fine! You already have the floor wet. Yeah, I can see, 
you're just *so* proud of yourself, aren't you! Just wait until tonight! 
Then we'll see who does and doesn't get a bone! Yeah, that shut you up! 
Don't worry, what goes around comes around!"
 
Ellenor started laughing. Her brother always did have a knack for 
talking to animals. She heard Mark laughing as he came to the door, just 
waiting to see who was getting such a kick out of him and his dog this 
time. He stopped laughing as soon as he opened the door.
 
"Ellie. My, God, Ellie! You look like shit! Come in here."
 
"Thanks, you look great, too." Then she looked him up and down. "What, 
were you taking a bath with your dog?" Mark was soaking wet. He looked 
down at his jeans and sweatshirt, which were plastered to his body. His 
sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and there was still soap 
clinging to his hands, clothes, and even in his hair.
 
"The only way to get that moose in the tub is to ambush her, and then 
wrestle her into the bathroom. Eventually I always end up in the tub 
with her, practically laying on top of her, and trying as hard as possible 
to get some shampoo on her, before she tackles me, and runs all over 
the house." He swept his hand through his shaggy, wet hair and stood 
back. "Didn't I say 'come in'? Get in here, already. Oh, by the way, that's 
Daisy. Daisy, Ellie. Ellie, Daisy." He pointed to a massive Saint 
Bernard, who was drenched with soapy water, and sitting on the couch, 
panting.
 
Ellenor stepped inside the apartment and took off her coat. "I thought 
you said you'd never be able to feed a Saint Bernard."
 
"Yeah, and under normal circumstances, I wouldn't be able to. I have a 
friend who owns a butcher shop. He brings me all the scrap meat he can. 
Oh, can you hand me that." Mark pointed to a towel laying on the floor 
at the opening to the hallway. Ellenor picked it up and handed to him.
 
"You know, you haven't changed at all."
 
Mark grinned as he began drying off his hair. "Do I really look that 
good? You know, I have been working out." He pulled off his wet 
sweatshirt and dropped it on the floor before flexing.
 
"Well, you're still as juvenile as ever. But that wasn't what I was 
talking about."
 
"Oh, really? Than what were you talking about?" Mark absentmindedly 
asked, while searching through a stack of clothes on the floor by his 
coffee table.
 
"You still have that carefree attitude. You didn't think a thing of me 
showing up at your door, when we haven't seen each other in almost a 
decade. You're talking to me now, like it was no big surprise that I 
showed up. You're still as absentminded as ever." Ellenor stooped to pick 
up a T-shirt from the floor and handed it to her brother.
 
"Thanks." "For finding the T-shirt?"
 
"For what you said. Wasn't all that a compliment?"
 
Ellenor shook her head. "You never really will grow up, will you?"
 
Mark flashed another dazzling smile. "Why? I look like a 
twenty-year-old, doesn't that mean I can act like one?"
 
Ellenor tried to ignore the fact that Mark did look exactly like he did 
when he was twenty. What was it with her family? Julie looked like a 
teenager, too. Was she the only one who was aging? "For you, no rules of 
the real world apply." She sat down on the couch by Daisy, ignoring the 
huge puddle on the cushion, and the wet spot on the back of the couch, 
and began stroking the dog as she talked.
 
"That's the way I like it." Mark sat down on the other side of his dog, 
even though there wasn't much room, and looked over her to talk to 
Ellenor.
 
"Don't worry. I remember that part."
 
"What about you?"
 
Ellenor looked puzzled. "What about me?"
 
"I know you. Are you telling me that you aren't exactly the same as 
when you were a kid? I'd bet my life that you're the same person I knew 
way back then. Always the strong one. First to help out, first to bitch 
about helping out. Always ready for a fight, verbal or physical. Temper 
like a baboon with a spoon up its ass. Always the cynic. Doesn't take 
shit from anybody, whether you deserve it or not. Ready to fight to the 
finish with all you've got, then party for two hours afterwards. Are 
you telling me that that isn't you?"
 
"Baboon with a spoon up its ass. Yeah, Mark, that's me."
 
"You laugh, but I can bet that you were shocked as Hell to find out 
that you're exactly the same."
 
"OK, I'll grant you that, but I have changed some."
 
Mark laughed. "Really? How?"
 
Ellenor looked up at the ceiling, mock-pondering her answer. "Like, now 
I wear suits to work and carry a briefcase to court, rather than ripped 
jeans and a tye-dyed tee, carrying a backpack and a concealed bottle of 
booze to a party."
 
"Oh, like you don't keep a flask in your suit pocket."
 
Ellenor laughed. "No, I keep a toothbrush in my suit pocket just in 
case I end up in a jail cell because of my baboon with a spoon up its ass 
temper."
 
"Touché."
 
Ellenor paused for a moment before looking her brother deep in the 
eyes. "Mark, I'm going home."
 
"You just got here."
 
Ellenor sighed. "No, I mean I'm going to go visit Mom and Dad."
 
Mark's face suddenly went blank. "Oh. I thought you might already have 
seen Dad, the way you look."
 
"Don't be like that, Mark."
 
"Ellie, why do you want to go back? I thought you'd put it behind you a 
long time ago."
 
"I want to go back and see them. See Danny and Mike. See the house. I 
just want to say goodbye to all of them, so I can put everything behind 
me."
 
Mark slowly nodded his head and stared blankly at the wall. "Yeah. I 
can see you doing that."
 
"Come with me."
 
Mark turned to her, trying to keep back tears. "Do you know how long 
it's taken me to forget."
 
"But you haven't forgotten."
 
"And going back won't change that."
 
"Don't you want to see them?" Ellenor was pleading with her eyes, 
trying to connect with her brother.
 
"I'd love to see them again. I just don't want to have to remember what 
happened."
 
"I can understand that."
 
"I do love them."
 
"I know, Mark." Mark sat stiffly, nodding his head once again.
 
"When are you leaving?"
 
"Soon. I'll stop here on my way back, but I want to get there by 
tomorrow."
 
"Will you stay for lunch? I'd like you to see the new book I'm working 
on."
 
"Yeah. I'll stay for lunch."
 
"Ellie?"
 
"Yeah?"
 
"I do love them."
 
"I know, Mark. I love them too."
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 

End part 8

-------------------------------------------------------------------- 





TITLE: Behind the Lies part 9
AUTHOR: Albert, Emily, and Ivan(me) Here is Part 9...hope you guys like 
it....

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Eugene was as happy as he had been in a long time. In fact, after 
leaving Helen's he was trying to remember the last time that he felt this 
happy. She was the first white woman he had been with, and if Helen was 
any indication of what white women were like in bed, he had to start 
courting some more of them, or maybe he would just stick with Helen...only 
time would tell. He felt like a man, a feeling that he had not had 
since law school. In fact, he remembered the last time he felt like this. 
The night after taking the oath, he and his wife went dancing...the next 
day, he began his new life, and the "man" was lost, he was now an 
attorney. This job had cost him his marriage and almost cost him his son; 
his love life was non-existent. He walked up to the door of his office. 
Before opening, he took a deep breath 'Eugene, you cant let them see a 
difference.' With that, he opened the door. Lucy greeted him
 
"Good morning Eugene"
 
He tried to hold back, but he was just too happy. He let out a huge 
smile, Lucy instantly caught on, and Eugene never smiled.
 
"Oh my God!" Lucy yelled, "Eugene got laid last night!"
 
Instantly, everyone's eyes were on Eugene, even Bobby crept out of his 
office. Eugene was shocked, but couldn't stop smiling; not even Lucy 
could bring him down. "Do you mind? You know some people do like to keep 
their lives personal. Is that possible around here?"
 
Lucy lived for moments like these. These people were like her own 
little soap opera, and she loved it. "Who was it, is it someone we know?"
 
"I hardly think that's any of your..."
 
"HELEN! Oh my God, you and Helen" Lucy was now jumping up and down, her 
headset falling around her neck.
 
Eugene could not believe it, was he THAT bad at keeping a secret, but 
then again, when you haven't been with a female for that long, it 
probably could show. "What are you talking about?"
 
"LUCY!" Bobby interrupted, he stopped her, although he did not know 
why, Lucy was usually right about things like these, and Bobby was 
interested.
 
"No Bobby...this is too juicy to stop here....was it good?"
 
Eugene kept staring at Lucy with a grin on his face, half of it was 
amazement at how observant she was. "Lucy, I am not going to discuss that 
with you"
 
"So it was Helen!"
 
"No...what?...you need to get a life" with that Eugene turned towards 
his office, Lucy, Rebecca, and Jimmy followed behind stopping at his 
door as Eugene slammed it. He leaned against his door. 'What is happening 
to you Eugene? What is happening to you?'
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

(Cut to hospital room)
 
Lindsay was eating the breakfast the nurses had brought in when Helen 
walked in.
 
"Helen! I was just thinking about you, how did it go with Eugene"
 
Helen had practiced this, she knew it wouldn't work, but she had to 
try. "We had dinner"
 
"That's it? Just dinner? You can't lie to me Helen!"
 
"Just dinner, we had a nice conversation, but that was it...listen, I 
need you to keep this quiet. Eugene was concerned what your firm would 
say if they found out...."
 
"Found out about what? According to you it was only 'dinner'"
 
Helen knew Lindsay wasn't buying it. "Yes, well, he doesn't want anyone 
to know we even had dinner, so I just came by to tell you..."
 
"Can I at least tell Bobby?"
 
"ESPECIALLY not Bobby!...listen, I have to go, I am meeting with the 
Officer in the Langley case today, I have to run.... Remember, not a 
word!"
 
Lindsay ran her fingers across her lips "they are zipped"
 
As Helen walked out, Lindsay's doctor walked in. "So Ms. Dole, 
everything is set for your release tonight, do you need to call someone to let 
them know?"
 
Lindsay smiled "No, I want to surprise some people."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

(cut to courtroom)
 
Jimmy hated Bobby for doing this. He hated Ellenor for having a nervous 
breakdown. He hated Kittleson for not recusing herself. But most of 
all, he hated himself. Why did he go to the police? No. He did the right 
thing. She is a nut, its better that he did.
 
"ALL RISE...The Honorable Judge Kittleson now presiding"
 
Judge Kittleson looked over at defense counsel table; she smiled at the 
sight of Jimmy. "Good morning, everyone, I understand the defense has 
some motions to bring before me"
 
Jimmy coughed and buttoned his coat "yes your honor, I am bringing 
forth a motion to suppress my client's 1973 DUI conviction, it has no 
relevance..." Jimmy tried to get it all in, but couldn't.
 
"Your motion is denied, do you have another motion"
 
The District Attorney just smiled, he knew this was going to be the 
easiest case he ever tried in his life. Jimmy shot back "Your honor, with 
all due respect, you haven't even heard my..."
 
"DENIED!"
 
"Judge, you are making a big mistake"
 
"Mr. Berlutti, either move on, or I will hold you in contempt."
 
Jimmy's face turned red, just as Bobby walked into the courtroom. "YOUR 
HONOR, I DEMAND THAT YOU RECUSE YOURSELF FROM THIS CASE!"
 
"Bailiff, take him away!"
 
"YOUR DISHONOR, NOT ONLY DO YOU HAVE A PERSONAL VENDETTA AGAINST ME, 
BUT YOU SLEPT WITH THE HUSBAND OF THE WOMAN ACCUSED OF THIS CRIME BEFORE 
MR. STACK..."
 
Bobby raced up to try and stop Jimmy; Kittleson tried stopping him too 
before he said any more "BAILIFF...TAKE HIM AWAY...MR. BERLUTTI, THAT'S 
ENOUGH!"
 
"YOU MADE HIM SLEEP WITH YOU IN ORDER TO TOSS OUT THE CASE AGAINST HIS 
WIFE! YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THIS ROOM, AND I DEMAND THAT YOU EXCUSE 
YOURSELF FROM THIS CASE AND THIS COURTROOM!"
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

(Cut to outside Lindsay's apartment)
 
Lindsay was finally out of that hospital. The doctors were amazed at 
how quickly she had recovered, but she wasn't. She had been successful in 
keeping it a secret from everyone. Now she was going to surprise them 
all. It was about 8:30. She knew Helen wouldn't be home, but she had to 
stop in anyway, just in case. Then, she would go to Bobby's apartment, 
slip into her new item she picked up from Victoria's Secret and wait 
for him to come home. She turned the key to her door, and hit the lights.
 
She heard some moaning, and when she turned around, she saw Helen on 
the floor with a man. "Uh, Helen, hi."
 
Helen jumped revealing a big black man under her...it was Eugene.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

END OF PART 9
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------




TITLE: Behind the Lies part 10
AUTHOR: Albert, Emily, and Ivan
 
RATING: PG-13 (some slight profanity)
 
SUMMARY: Lindsay and Helen and Eugene (oh my!). Bobby and Lindsay get 
reacquainted. Jimmy gets an unexpected visitor while in jail.
 
SPOILER: Takes place after the most recent season finale.
 
DISCLAIMER: All of these characters belong to David E. Kelley. Hell, 
even the characters I come up with myself belong to him, he can have them 
as long as he doesn't sue me!
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Oh my God," was all Lindsay could say. "Oh my God, oh my God."
 
"Lindsay! Lindsay!" Helen shouted back, covering herself with the 
clothes that obviously had been tossed to the floor earlier in the heat of 
passion.
 
"It's not what it looks like!"
 
"What? Then what is it?" Lindsay cried out in return. Eugene was busy 
pulling his pants back on and picking up his shirt and tie.
 
"Okay... um, alright, it *is* what it looks like. But we didn't know 
that you would... when did you... how did..."
 
"Listen, I'm sorry, I just wanted it to be a surprise, but I can come 
back, I swear, it's not a problem!"
 
"No, no, no!" Helen shouted, buttoning up her blouse. "It's fine," she 
said, forcing a smile. "Please, come in, how are you doing? I guess the 
doctors said it was okay for you to come home?" she spouted out 
quickly.
 
"You know, I really do think I should go..."
 
"Don't worry about it," Eugene spoke up, slipping his loafers back on. 
"As a matter of fact, I was just about to leave." Grasping his tie in 
his hand, he walked past Lindsay towards the door. Holding the knob, he 
turned to look at the two of them. "Uh, Helen, I'll, um..."
 
"You'll call me," she said, completing his thought.
 
Eugene simply grunted in affirmation and began to walk out.
 
"Eugene?" Lindsay called, stopping him short. He slowly turned. It was 
probably the first time since she had burst in on them that he had 
looked Lindsay in the eye. "You don't have to worry," she told him gently. 
"I'm not going to tell anyone at the firm. I promise."
 
"You won't have to," he replied. "Apparently, they'll know, anyway, as 
soon as I walk through the door." With that he quietly shut the door 
behind him.
 
"Okay," Helen exhaled. "Time for bed."
 
"What?"
 
"I'm going to bed."
 
"Helen, it's 8:30."
 
"What can I say? I had a long day. G'night."
 
Lindsay jumped in front of Helen as she headed towards her bedroom. 
"Helen, what is wrong with you?"
 
"Lindsay, I'm exhausted, and I know exactly what you're going to say 
about me and Eugene, and how we're moving too fast, and et cetera, et 
cetera, and I am in no mood to hear it! So, goodnight!" With that, Helen 
sidestepped Lindsay, darted into her bedroom, and slammed the door.
 
Lindsay just stared at Helen's door. "Quite a homecoming," she muttered 
to herself, walking to her bedroom.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
The street lamps outside Bobby's apartment made Lindsay's face glow 
with a bluish tint as he held her. He shivered; it was a chilly night for 
May --- he hadn't noticed it before, in the heat of their passion --- 
and he pulled the blanket up over Lindsay's shoulders as she lay upon 
his chest.
 
"So it was alright?" she murmured, kissing his chest.
 
"Excuse me?"
 
"My dropping in on you like this, without any notice. Was that alright 
with you? I didn't spoil your plans, did I?"
 
"Trust me, it was quite alright," he told her. He thought back to how 
much he had missed her, and being close to her, all those nights she had 
spent in the hospital. Then another thought popped into his mind.
 
"Didn't your doctor tell you to take it easy for a while?" he asked 
her.
 
"Hmm?" she said lazily. "Don't worry. I *am* taking it easy."
 
He smiled at her. "I doubt anyone would call what we just did as 
'taking it easy'."
 
"Come on, I'm fine. Doctors are just overcautious, that's all. Don't 
worry about it."
 
"That's good," he said, grinning. "Because there's just something about 
a woman's stitches popping during sex that really ruins the mood."
 
"Hey!" she cried, looking up at him. "That's not very nice. Anyway, I 
doubt something like that would have stopped you, anyway."
 
"Tonight?" he asked. "Probably not."
 
"Hey, look," she told him, straddling him as she sat up, exposing her 
bare chest and abdomen. She placed her hand down on her stomach, where 
her wounds had been. "It's almost completely healed. Cool, huh?"
 
Bobby glanced down to see the surgical thread that had scratched him 
earlier during their lovemaking. The wound was completely closed, and the 
stitches were probably due to be removed in only a few days. Of course, 
she would be left with a few pretty ugly scars. Both physical *and* 
mental.
 
She drew the sheet up over her back and laid back down on his chest. 
"So what's new with you?" she asked. "You haven't mentioned anything 
about the firm since I got here."
 
"Well, that's understandable considering that I only had about a minute 
and a half to talk to you in between you showing up on my doorstep and 
us ending up here." He could feel her chuckling slightly, deep in her 
throat.
 
"Yeah, that's true, isn't it? So why don't you tell me what's going on 
with the firm?"
 
"As usual, everything's a mess," he informed her. "Ellenor is taking 
time off."
 
"What? How come?"
 
"I don't know... I think she had a breakdown of some kind. She came in 
one day, all scratched and bruised up. Bandages on her hands."
 
"Oh my God, the poor woman. What do you think is wrong with her?"
 
"I don't know," Bobby replied. "But whatever it is, I know she wants to 
straighten it all out before she comes back to work."
 
"Who's going to handle all her cases in the meantime?"
 
"Jimmy is, which is another story in and of itself. Turns out one of 
Ellenor's cases was before Judge Kittleson. And before you say anything, 
no, she refused to recuse herself."
 
"Are you kidding me? Bobby, she has to take herself off that case, any 
idiot can see the conflict of interest there..."
 
"Yes, yes, I know all that. And Kittleson knows all that. But she won't 
budge. She insisted she could be impartial."
 
"How is Jimmy handling it all?"
 
Bobby just exhaled loudly. "Jimmy's in jail for contempt, isn't he?"
 
"He's got some crazy ideas," Bobby told her. "He thinks Kittleson 
abused her power in exchange for... sexual favors."
 
"Hmm. Not too far-fetched, is it? Considering?" Lindsay voice had 
icicles dripping from it. She had obviously developed a loathing for Roberta 
Kittleson from a long time ago, when she had initially made a pass at 
Bobby.
 
"I guess not," he said, shrugging. "But he's got no proof. Just one 
guy's word. If we went to the bar with that, and only that, they'd laugh 
us right out of the building. And forget about ever being able to get a 
fair trial from Judge Kittleson ever again."
 
"So then what do we do?"
 
"We live with it. Jimmy will apologize to the Court, I'll see to that. 
We do our best to win the Stack case, and if we don't, we use all that 
crap between him and Kittleson as grounds for appeal. What more *can* 
we do?"
 
"What about that kid?" Lindsay asked. "You know, that kid who wanted to 
shoot up his own high school?"
 
"Oh, *that* case. Well, after looking over the case file, I decided it 
wasn't a case we were prepared to take on."
 
"What? Why not?"
 
"The kid is obviously guilty, but his dad refuses to accept any kind of 
plea bargain of any kind."
 
Lindsay just laughed. "So then find a way to get him off."
 
Bobby sighed. "Ellenor already did. She found out that the kid was 
living with his parents, but paying them rent. The relationship between 
landlord and tenant applies. The search of his room could get thrown out, 
because it violated the Fourth Amendment."
 
"What? Then, Bobby, you're in a terrific position. What are you waiting 
for?"
 
"Well, I just don't think this firm is ready to go through that again. 
You got Michael Kingston off and that was an ordeal for everyone. Do we 
really want to put someone so obviously guilty and dangerous back out 
on the street like that again?"
 
"But Kenneth Arnold is stinking rich," Lindsay said. "Do you realize 
how much he would pay us if we could get his son off?"
 
"Yes, I realize it. Jesus, I run this firm, you think my eyes don't 
light up when I see how many zeroes there are in our potential fee? But, 
somehow, I'm not sure if I can justify using all of our usual tactics 
just to earn a lot of money."
 
Lindsay just stared at him for a long time. "Who are you, and what the 
Hell did you do with Bobby Donnell?"
 
"Lindsay! Come on, I'm serious..."
 
"And *I'm* serious too, Bobby. The Bobby Donnell of a couple of years 
ago wouldn't have thought twice about taking this case, about doing 
anything and everything possible to assure this client wouldn't go to jail. 
What happened to that man? That was the man that built this firm up 
from nothing to be one of the best firms in all of Boston. If he suddenly 
disappears, I don't know what's going to happen to the rest of us."
 
"Lindsay, you know how everyone felt after the nun-killer case..."
 
"I know that, but I know something else. No matter what anyone feels, I 
did the right thing. No one has ever told me that I didn't do the right 
thing. I would do it again, a hundred times over. You're a criminal 
defense attorney, for God's sake! Go *be* a criminal defense attorney. Do 
the right thing, Bobby."
 
Bobby simply sunk his head into his pillow and stared off into the 
distance, lost in thought.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Mister Berlutti?" Jimmy heard in his dreams. "Mister Berlutti!"
 
Suddenly he stirred. He remembered where he was, the jail cell that 
Roberta had sent him to yesterday afternoon after he had made that scene 
in court. He looked up to see a prison guard at the cell door peering at 
him.
 
"Yeah, I'm awake," he said quickly. "I'm Mister Berlutti. What's going 
on?"
 
"You have a visitor."
 
As Jimmy walked into the room where visitors met with prisoners, he 
smoothed out the wrinkles in his suit and jacket. He had slept in them 
last night, too lost in thought over Roberta Kittleson to change into the 
clothes provided to him by the county. The guard led him up a booth 
with a thick glass window on one side, and a phone hanging on the wall to 
allow him to speak to whoever happened to be on the other.
 
As he sat down, he became instantly dumbstruck at who was sitting 
across from him. It was Jeff Morris. The two of them stared at each other 
for a while, until Morris pointed at the receiver next to him. Shrugging 
off his shock, Jimmy picked up his end.
 
"What are you doing here? How did you find me? I thought you didn't 
want to have anything to do with me."
 
"To be honest, Mister Berlutti, that's how I felt when you showed up at 
my door. But after you left, I started thinking. I thought about what 
Roberta did, and I realized it made me sick to my stomach to see her 
still on the bench."
 
"But how did you know where to find me?"
 
"You left your card under my door. Remember? I called up your firm, and 
they told me where you were. I felt sorry for you, having to put up 
with such a controlling, maniacal bitch like Judge Kittleson."
 
"So, uh, what you're saying now is that you did have some, um, 
experiences with Kittleson?" Jimmy asked.
 
"I slept with her, Mister Berlutti. It was exactly like you said. She 
told me if I had sex with her, she'd throw out the charges. But, I must 
confess," Jeff said, closing his eyes. "Even though it was forced upon 
me, it was pretty damn near to the best sex of my life. Regardless of 
that, what she did was wrong, plain and simple."
 
Jimmy looked at him, speechless for a long time. This woman had 
obviously had more partners than Geraldo and Wilt Chamberlain combined. 
"Yeah," Jimmy coughed up after a few moments. "It was wrong." He leaned in 
close against the glass. "Mister Morris, if you can say everything you 
said to me to the police, we could make the case for getting Kittleson 
thrown off the bench." Jeff covered the receiver with his hand and began 
whispering.
 
"I'm... I'm not sure. I'm a married man, Mister Berlutti. And I don't 
think I could admit to something like this, I mean, I don't know how my 
wife would react. Is there some way, I mean, any way that maybe I could 
testify to all this anonymously?"
 
"No, not possible. Everyone has the right to face his or her accuser; 
it's the law of the land. Mister Morris... Jeff. You have to help me out 
here. It's not just my ass on the line, it's Ed Stack's ass, too. And 
any other poor schmoe who happens to end up before Kittleson. You have 
to do the right thing."
 
"And the right thing to do is to tell my wife I had an affair, and have 
her divorce me?"
 
Jimmy struggled to come up with a response.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 10
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------




TITLE: Behind the Lies part 12
AUTHORS: Albert, Emily, Ivan
 
RATING: PG-13 (some profanity)
 
SPOILER: Occurs after the most recent season finale.12

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jimmy had apologized to the court. It had been the most heartfelt 
apology he had delivered to a judge in his nine years of practicing law. In 
retrospect, perhaps it had been a little *too* heartfelt. As he 
addressed the court, he could see Roberta's eyebrow arching, as it often did, 
as she struggled to understand Jimmy's sudden about-face.
 
There had been a pause, in between Jimmy's apology and Kittleson's 
response, where his stomach churned and he had decided to himself that she 
hadn't bought a word of it. After a moment, however, she accepted his 
apology, granting him a one-day continuance to make up for the time he 
had spent in jail. Without another word, Jimmy had quickly hurried out 
of the courtroom and back to the office. The conversation with Steve 
Morris was fresh in his mind and the firm had to take action, and fast. 
They now had two witnesses speaking of judicial misconduct by Roberta, 
off the record at least. The first thing he would do when he stepped 
through that office door would be to call an immediate meeting, all 
partners, all associates. They would have to decide their next move, which 
might be going to the police, or maybe even---
 
As he walked into the office, he saw all the attorneys in a crowd in 
the center of the room." Jimmy!" a familiar voice called to him.
 
He craned his neck to see who was standing behind Bobby and Eugene. 
"Lindsay?" he said incredulously.
 
"Jimmy!" Lindsay called out gleefully. "It's so good to see you!"
 
"What are you doing here? I thought that---" Without another word, she 
embraced him. It was probably the first time she had ever hugged him, 
and Jimmy fell silent, enjoying the moment. He had never had any designs 
on her, mind you, but she sure was great to look at, and he certainly 
wasn't about to complain about having his arms around her.
 
She released him, and after a moment he regained his train of thought. 
"I didn't know they were releasing you from the hospital..."
 
"Well, that's just it," she said. "No one knew, I wanted it to be a 
surprise."
 
"Yeah, and some of us were surprised a little bit more than others," 
Bobby said, slipping a hand around her waist with a sly grin.
 
"You can say that again," Eugene muttered.
 
Everyone feel silent and looked at Eugene in puzzlement.
 
Jimmy spoke up. "Look, I don't mean to break up your happy homecoming, 
but I think there's something really urgent we all need to discuss. All 
of us."
 
Bobby glared at him. "Kittleson?"
 
Jimmy only nodded in response. "Someone else has come forward."
 
"Okay, everyone to the conference room," Bobby commanded.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
The attorneys sat in the conference room, their minds reeling from what 
they had just been told.
 
"And both of them told you, in no uncertain terms, that had slept with 
Judge Kittleson in order to have their cases dismissed?" Eugene asked.
 
"They didn't mince words, if that's what you're asking," Jimmy 
responded, pacing about the table.
 
"But neither of them would say those things in front of a judge, would 
they?" Rebecca asked.
 
"It doesn't seem likely at this point, no."
 
"Then we've got nothing," Rebecca cried. "We can't act on this!"
 
"But we can't just sit back and do nothing," Eugene chimed in. "How 
many of our cases has this judge presided over? How many of our cases 
could have been tampered with by this judge? Hell, how many of our cases 
*will* be tampered with by this judge? We can't just sit by and do 
nothing."
 
"But what *can* we do?" Lindsay asked. "Even if we *could* get these 
two men to testify in open court, it still comes down to their word 
against hers."
 
"Maybe not," Jimmy told her, coming to a standstill. "There's a chance, 
maybe we can set up one of these guys with a wire, have them go to 
Kittleson's chambers, get her to admit to the whole thing."
 
"You want to do an undercover operation to sting Judge Kittleson?" 
Lindsay cried.
 
"Basically, yes. But not us. We'd have to go to a higher authority. The 
police are out, they might be too close to the whole situation. Plus I 
don't think we can trust them too much, considering they tried planting 
evidence in our office once."
 
"No, we can't trust the police," Rebecca agreed. "But if not the 
police, then who?"
 
Jimmy wiped the sweat from his upper lip, thinking. "We should go to 
the FBI."
 
"Are you insane?" Lindsay shouted. "She's not a federal judge."
 
"Maybe not," Jimmy responded. "But tampering with witnesses and 
obstructing justice could be a federal crime regardless of who does it!"
 
"Listen, people," Bobby finally spoke up. "We're not going to come to a 
decision today. This thing is big, and we can't go making any rash 
judgements. I know an FBI agent, a friend from college. I'm going to talk 
to him about this. *Off* the record. But Eugene's right. She presides 
over so many of our cases. To sit back and do nothing would be 
malpractice---"
 
"But, Bobby," Lindsay said. "Do you really want to risk this firm's 
credibility by---"
 
"Lindsay, all I'm doing at this point is discussing the situation. 
That's all. When I know more, then we can come to a decision, which will 
have to come down to a partnership vote."
 
He glanced around the table. All the other lawyers were silent, lost in 
thought. "Let's adjourn this meeting. I have something urgent to attend 
to. Jimmy, in the meantime do your best with the Stack case. And, 
Jimmy?"
 
"Yeah?"
 
"No more little 'outbursts' in court, alright?"
 
Jimmy hunched his head down low as they all filed out of the conference 
room. "Sure thing."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Helen shut the door of her office on her way to lunch. As she turned to 
walk down the corridor, she heard someone striding quickly up beside 
her. "Helen!"
 
She turned. "Bobby! What are you doing here?"
 
"I need to ask a favor of you," he said, slightly out of breath. She 
simply smiled and began walking towards the elevator.
 
"What else is new?" she muttered. "Um, this is sort of a bad time, 
Bobby," she said, nervously.
 
"It's about Ellenor."
 
She stopped and faced him. "Ellenor? What's wrong with Ellenor?"
 
"I'm not sure. But I think she might have been assaulted a few nights 
ago in her apartment."
 
"What?"
 
"She came in one day all bruised and battered. I gave her some time 
off. Rebecca went to her apartment building and there's no sign of her. 
What's more, one of her neighbors heard sounds of a fight coming from her 
apartment a few nights ago."
 
"Oh my God, that's awful!" Helen said. "But, what can I do, Bobby?"
 
"Listen, maybe her neighbor can give a statement to police, and I can 
give a statement about how she looked the next day. Between the two 
maybe you can convince an officer to obtain a search warrant and..."
 
"Bobby, why didn't you bring any of this up days ago when you first saw 
she was hurt?"
 
Bobby only shrugged. "She told me she had just had an accident, Helen, 
I don't know. I guess, I guess I wanted to believe her."
 
"I don't know, I don't know if we're willing to go around searching 
people's apartments just because someone hears strange noises. Anyway, can 
we maybe discuss some other time---"
 
"This is different, Helen, you didn't see---" Bobby stopped suddenly, 
noticing that Helen was looking over his shoulder. From the look on her 
face, she was frantically trying to wave someone away without Bobby 
noticing.
 
She looked back at him. "Yes, go on," was all she said.
 
Bobby looked behind him. He immediately recognized the big hulking 
frame that was swiftly heading in the opposite direction. "Eugene?" he 
called out.
 
Eugene stopped dead in his tracks. He swiveled around, smiling. "Bobby! 
Hey, what are you doing here?"
 
"I was seeing Helen about Ellenor," Bobby told him, a little puzzled. 
"What are *you* doing here?"
 
"Well, uh, um," he stumbled, looking back and forth between Bobby and 
Helen. "I was just here for the... Langley probable cause hearing."
 
"What? I thought that was tomorrow!"
 
"Well, um, yes, it is, but I um..." Eugene trailed off, then suddenly 
glanced down at his watch. "Look, it's 1:00, I really would like to stay 
and chat, but I really need to get going." With that he headed quickly 
down the corridor to the elevator.
 
"Yeah, me too," Helen announced. "I'll see what I can do about Ellenor. 
No promises."
 
Bobby meekly waved at her as she jumped into the same elevator as 
Eugene, just as the doors closed. Bobby stood there for a moment, completely 
confused. He was definitely going to have a little talk with Lindsay 
later on tonight.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 12

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 11
Author: Albert, Emily (yours truly), and Ivan
 
Summary: Figure it out yourself. The story's right there, for God's 
sake!
 
Disclaimer: Unless you're all really, really stupid, you know the 
characters of David E. Kelley are not mine. If you are stupid, well, they 
aren't, and never will be. I intend no copyright infringement with this 
story, and have no intent to steal these characters. If Albert or Ivan 
are attempting copyright infringement, I have no part in it. However, 
the characters I create are for use in this round-robin group only. WE 
own them, so leave them alone, or be prosecuted in court. If you wish to 
use them, join the group, dammit!!!
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
There it was. Home sweet home. Ellenor had almost forgotten how 
beautiful the lake looked in the summer. The trees were lush and green, the 
wild flowers were in full bloom, and amazingly, some of the flower beds 
hadn't been taken over, despite all the years of neglect. It did her 
heart good to hear the birds chirping, and the waves from the lake lapping 
against the beach behind the house. It was so unfair that the beauty 
had to be tainted by her memories.
 
Not ready to go inside the house yet, she began to slowly walk around 
it. The paint was beginning to peal, but other than that, the home she 
had grown up in looked just as grand as it always had. She looked up at 
the third floor, and the window seat there. Her old room. She had 
fallen asleep reading in her window seat more times than she could count. 
She could still remember her Queen albums playing in the background, 
incense burning, a bottle of Coke by her side, and "The Grapes of Wrath" 
open on her knee. She loved those nights. But there were some where her 
records skipped with each pound against the wall, when the incense was 
never lighted, her coke never opened, and her books forgotten. There 
were too many of those nights.
 
She pulled the duffel bag she was carrying farther up on her shoulder 
and walked towards the back of the house. And there she saw it: the boat 
house. She fought the urge to run towards it, wondering if her goody 
stash was still there. As the door to the boat house creaked open, and 
that same old musty smell rushed out at her, she knew it had to be there. 
It *had* to be. She dropped her duffel bag onto the floor and stepped 
around the dilapidated rowboat she and her siblings had taken out so 
many times. She pushed the old tackle boxes on the back shelf to the side, 
shooing away spiders at the same time, and like she knew it had to be, 
her old *tackle box* was there.
 
Ellenor looked around her like she always had, not wanting to get 
caught, even knowing that no one was there, and sat down in the old boat. 
She pulled the lid up and another familiar smell rushed at her. *I can't 
believe I left this.* Laying in the first tray were three marijuana 
cigarettes. Beside them were her lighter, and a half-full pack of regular 
cigarettes. She pulled out the tray, and found everything there, all of 
it in the exact order it always had been. There was her flask of rum, 
her fake I.D., the bright red lipstick her mother hated, the tiny mirror 
and razor for cutting speed, the spare key to her mom's car that she 
would occasionally roll out of the driveway, and everything else she had 
hidden. She had forgotten it all when she left. She hadn't even cared.
 
Ellenor sighed and repacked all the forbidden goodies from her teen 
years. It was no use avoiding the house, there were memories everywhere 
else as well. She climbed out of the boat and picked up her duffel bag, 
telling herself she would come back later for a boat ride. As she came 
out of the boat house, she only glanced at the old swing set in the 
backyard. At least that had never been tainted. She trudged across the 
backyard and pulled out her key for the back door. The lock stuck for a 
moment, but with a little pressure the door gave way. It was just the 
same. The furniture was covered, just as it had been the day she left. The 
day she left... 

"Ellie, are you ready to go?" Her aunt came up from behind her, and 
draped her arm across a young Ellenor's shoulders. Ellenor just nodded her 
head. This was the last time she was going to be here. She couldn't 
believe she was standing there, duffel bag in hand, ready to leave her 
home forever. But it was time. There were so many terrible memories, so 
many things she needed to forget, and after the past few weeks, she knew 
she would never come back. If she did, she was insane. She had left 
almost all of her things, she could buy knew things for her new room, and 
soon for her dorm room. The next few years would be busy, all the 
better to help her forget. She hoped she could forget, that this terrible 
feeling that she was just as horrible as he had said would go away. But 
she did feel terrible, she should feel terrible after what had happened. 
Her thoughts flashed to her goody box in the boathouse for only a 
moment, before she dismissed the idea. She had to leave all that stuff alone 
now, she had to grow up. She let her smiling aunt turn her towards the 
back door. She could finally say goodbye...
 
Ellenor shook away the memory. She was still saying good bye, still 
trying to forget. Her heels clicked as she walked across the wooden 
floorboards. She stopped to pull off the sheet covering the couch. *It hasn't 
faded. Who'd of thought that damned couch would be the thing to stay 
bright.* She'd hated that couch. It was a bright-orangish flower print, 
that reminded her of her grandmother's furniture. *Oh, God.* The bag 
slid from her shoulder as she stooped to look at a small stain on the 
bottom corner of the couch. *I thought they got rid of it all.* Her mind 
flashed back to the pool of blood by this very couch. She squeezed her 
eyes shut. *Will it never go away?*
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rebecca walked into the office and slid out of her coat. "Hey, Bobby?"
 
Bobby turned around to answer. "Morning." Then he saw the look on 
Rebecca's face. *Great, another heart to heart. That's what I need this 
morning.* "What's wrong, Bec?"
 
"Can we go into your office?" "Sure." Bobby walked to his office door 
and held it open for Rebecca. As soon as they were inside, she turned to 
him.
 
"Bobby, I think something's wrong with Ellenor."
 
Bobby sighed. "I know. She was really upset about this case, and I 
think she just lost it, but she's taking time off. She'll be-"
 
"No, I mean something's really wrong."
 
Bobby's eyebrows dipped slightly. "Whaddo you mean?"
 
"She's not in town."
 
"What?! How do you know?" Now he was worried, after she had come in so 
beaten up... He didn't know what could be wrong.
 
"Well, I dropped by her place this morning- you know, to see how she 
was doing, since she looked so.."
 
"Yeah."
 
"Well, she didn't answer her door. And while I was knocking, one of her 
neighbors was walking down the hall, and he stopped and told me she had 
left. She said something about going home, but that was all he knew."
 
"Oh my God."
 
"Yeah, and there's more. He was home the day Ellenor went home after 
you two were fighting. He said he heard noise coming from her apartment, 
like someone was trashing the place, and he hear some screams, too. He 
didn't think she had fallen down the stairs. I'm worried, Bobby. What 
if she's having real trouble with someone?"
 
"I don't know, but-" Just then they heard a shout from the main office.
 
"Surprise!" It was unmistakable.
 
"Lindsay?!" Rebecca ran out of Bobby's office to see Lindsay standing 
in the doorway with a huge grin on her face.
 
"I'm back!"
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 11

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 13
Author: Albert, Emily(me), Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for language
 
Disclaimer: The characters I haven't created are not mine. I intend no 
copyright infringement by writing this story or any other, and if 
Albert or Ivan do, I have no part of it. I do make claims of ownership of 
the characters I create, and they are only for use by this round 
robingroup.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ellenor closed her eyes as she opened the door to her old bedroom. She 
tried not to think, not to remember, not to react, just to see it, and 
know where she was. As she opened her eyes, a warm tingly feeling of 
recognition wrapped around her. *It hasn't changed. Thank God, it's the 
same.*
 
Ellenor stood still as her eyes flickered from one detail to the other. 
She had left everything where it was when they moved in with her aunt. 
The room was left half-living, as if some girl was just at school, and 
it was waiting for her to return. Her psychedelic posters still hung on 
the walls, her two favorite dolls from her early childhood sat placidly 
on her bed, a half-written letter still sat on her desk, a book was 
placed open on her night table with a tissue stuck in it, so as not to 
lose her place, the afghan her grandmother had made her lay in a heap on 
her window seat, the ashes from the last incense she had burned lay 
fallen around the burner on her 
bookshelf
, a discarded outfit hung over her 
desk chair, there was even a half-full bottle of coke sitting on the 
floor by her bed. Everything was a little dusty and faded, but Ellenor 
didn't notice. She smiled at the feeling she *had* just come home from 
school, and her room *was* waiting for her to come back.
 
Ellenor cautiously stepped through the door, almost worried that she 
would break the spell over the room, and suddenly everything would be 
packed away in boxes. She let her duffel bag slide to the floor and 
gingerly sat down on the bed. Finally she felt like she was home.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Bobby?" Rebecca poked her head in the doorway of Bobby's office.
 
Bobby sighed *What now?* "Yeah, Bec?"
 
"Um, I was just wondering if you wanted to stop by Ellenor's with me 
during your lunch break."
 
"Rebecca, I already talked to Helen about what she could do. What can 
we do at Ellenor's place when she's not even there?"
 
Rebecca avoided meeting Bobby's eyes and was obviously trying very hard 
to be casual. "Well, I thought we could just stop in and take a look 
around since I stumbled across this." She held up a key chain with about 
three keys dangling from it.
 
Bobby gaped at her, shocked. "Is that Ellenor's spare set?"
 
"Um, well...yeah."
 
"Where did you find it?"
 
"Um, in her desk." Rebecca began shifting uneasily.
 
Bobby's mouth fell open. "Rebecca!"
 
"Bobby, it's for her own good."
 
"Wait a minute. I thought Ellenor locked her desk."
 
Rebecca looked towards the door and then back to Bobby, clasping her 
hands behind her back. "She does."
 
"Well, then how did you get into it?"
 
"You know, these desks have really cheap locks. Fit a paper clip in the 
lock and give the drawer a little tug, and-"
 
"Rebecca!"
 
"What? Bobby, I'm just trying to help her out! Are you coming, or not?"
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"I *really* don't feel good about this." Bobby whispered over Rebecca's 
shoulder as she began trying keys in the lock of Ellenor's apartment 
door.
 
"Bobby, we'll be in and out, she'll never know."
 
"If I remember correctly from law school, this is called breaking and 
entering. If she does find out, she's going to be pissed." Bobby 
anxiously looked behind them, hoping no one would show up.
 
"She'll understand. And we're not breaking anything, we have a key."
 
"She will *not* understand, you know that. And you got the key by 
breaking into her desk. God, she's going to kill us."
 
Rebecca finally found the right key and pushed the door open. They 
cautiously stepped inside and quickly shut the door.
 
"What are we looking for, anyway?" Bobby craned his head to see farther 
inside the apartment, almost afraid to tread more ground than he needed 
to.
 
"Evidence." Rebecca walked straight over to the 
kitchen table
 and 
started sifting through papers.
 
Bobby furrowed his brow, almost disbelievingly "Of what?"
 
"I don't know. A crime."
 
"Oh, I can take care of that. You have her keys, we're in her 
apartment, there's a crime."
 
Rebecca sighed. "Are you going to help me or not? The faster we finish 
looking, the sooner we'll be done, and the sooner we can leave."
 
"Fine, but let's just hurry up and get *out* of here." Bobby joined 
Rebecca and started looking through the things on Ellenor's kitchen 
counters. He gently tipped the lid on the garbage can open. "Bec, look at 
this. There's a ton of glass in here."
 
"Yeah. The paint's scratched in a few places, too. Everything looks 
kind of... I don't know... shoved back together."
 
"I was just thinking the same thing. It's like somebody trashed the 
place and then cleaned up as quickly as possible."
 
"Well, from the evidence we have so far, that's probably what 
happened."
 
"But who would want to hurt her."
 
"I don't know. That's what we need to find out." They both searched 
silently for a few minutes before Rebecca held up a paper and rushed over 
to Bobby. "Look, this might be something."
 
Bobby looked over the paper that was written across in Ellenor's 
scrawling, disorganized handwriting. "It's an address."
 
"Yeah, for someone named Mark. And look at the bottom."
 
Bobby shifted his eyes to the small note at the bottom of the paper. 
"If this doesn't work, try information. Bec, this could be anything."
 
"I know, but there's a phone number and address on the other side for 
someone named Julie."
 
"So what? She looked up the addresses of two people. That doesn't mean 
anything."
 
Rebecca looked somewhat defeated. "Yeah, I guess I'm grasping at 
straws."
 
Just then Bobby spied a piece of paper on the counter that he had 
missed before. "What about this?"
 
Rebecca walked to his side so she could read over his shoulder. "It 
looks like a note she left for a friend."
 
"Well, it certainly clears up a few things." The note was hastily 
written in short, choppy sentences. It read: Jackie- Sorry I had to skip out 
on you. Emergency. I'm going home for a while. Stopping to see Mark and 
Julie first. Back in a few weeks. Sorry again. -Ellie.
 
"So those two people *do* have something to do with this." Rebecca took 
the paper from Bobby so she could scan over it again.
 
"Looks like it. But we still have no idea who they are."
 
Rebecca raised her eyes from the paper. "Maybe we can find out. I mean, 
we have their names and addresses, that's got to be worth something."
 
Bobby nodded his head. "I think you're right. We might have found 
something."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ellenor gazed at the ceiling as she lay on her bed. She had no idea 
what to do. She certainly wasn't ready to face her family yet, or look 
through any of the rooms. It was about lunch time, but she didn't want to 
go into the main part of the town. She didn't feel like meeting up with 
any old acquaintances just yet. Then the thought dawned on her. There 
*was* one old friend she could see. *I wonder if he's still there?*
 
She quickly pulled her cell phone from the bag on the floor. She 
automatically started dialing from memory, not bothering to check with 
information to see if the pizza place was still there. She waited for it to 
ring and her heart jumped as she heard the voice on the other end of the 
line.
 
"Sam and Sons Pizza, the only way to go when you want the real thing. 
Sam, Jr. speaking." The voice recited its monologue dully like a 
machine.
 
Ellenor had to force herself not to laugh from joy. "Sammy?"
 
The voice on the other line perked up a little bit. "Yes?"
 
Ellenor allowed herself a few giggles. "Oh, my *God*! Over twenty years 
and you're *still* working at your father's pizza place!"
 
"Um, actually I run it now. May I ask whom is calling?"
 
Ellenor laughed again. "Sammy, I'm disappointed in you! You don't 
recognize my voice?"
 
"Um, no. Please, can you tell me who this is?"
 
"Here's a hint: Sammy, just give me the pizza. Don't make me kick your 
ass."
 
"Holy shit! Ellie, is that you?" Ellenor could hear a chair being 
knocked over on the other side of the line.
 
"Who else would it be? As far as I can recall, I was the only person 
you would torment with hunger by holding out on their primary food 
source."
 
Sammy laughed in a daze that she had called him. "Yeah, and I remember 
you kicking my ass a few times for it, too. Ellie, what are you doing 
in town?"
 
"I came for the pizza. Do I still get it free because your father loves 
me so much?"
 
Sammy suddenly sounded serious. "Actually, dad died from a heart attack 
a few years ago."
 
Ellenor was shocked. She couldn't remember all the times she had 
stopped by the pizza place to joke with Sammy's father. Every time she left 
he had said the same thing: 'Ellie, you remember: Sammy can have time 
off for you any time. If that damned boy would come to his senses, he'd 
sweep you off your feet so I could have a decent daughter-in-law. He's a 
fool, Ellie. A damned fool.' "God, Sammy...I'm so sorry."
 
Sammy chuckled softly. "Don't worry, El. You'll get your free pizza."
 
"You'll come by and eat with me?"
 
"Of course. Still a double-cheese, pineapple, and black olive?"
 
"I knew you'd never forget."
 
"You ordered from here at least three times a week. Who could forget 
something as grotesque as that?"
 
"Hey, it's underrated. You'll be here in a half hour?"
 
"Yeah, I'll see you then."
 
"OK. Bye, Sammy."
 
"Bye, Ellie." Ellenor sat for a moment and stared at the phone in her 
hands. Time got some sick pleasure out of making her think everything 
was the same, and then drastically changing one crucial detail. When 
would she get a break?
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 13

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 




Title: Behind the Lies part 14 
Author: Albert (me), Emily, and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for language

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rebecca was still twirling around the pieces of paper found in 
Ellenor's apartment, pieces of paper with names and phone numbers on them. As 
the doors of the elevator opened, Bobby looked at her.
 
"See if you can get in touch with those two people," he told her. "Find 
out if they know anything about what happened to Ellenor. I'm going to 
be out of the office for a few hours."
 
"You're not going to help me out with this?" Rebecca asked as they 
walked down the hall to the office.
 
"I can't," Bobby explained. "I have to go meet with Agent Rollins, get 
his opinion on the Kittleson case."
 
"Okay, fine," Rebecca relented. "I'll see what I can do."
 
Before she could approach her desk to begin making phone calls, Eugene 
appeared at the door of his office.
 
"Rebecca? Can I see you for a few minutes?"
 
Rebecca followed him to his office, closing the door behind her. 
"What's up?" she asked of Eugene.
 
"I have to ask a small favor from you," he told her standing beside his 
desk. "I need you to be with me in court tomorrow for the Langley PC 
hearing."
 
"What, do you need a second chair?" was her first question. When he 
didn't immediately respond, she grew suspicious. "Eugene, what's going 
on?" she said, folding her arms across her chest.
 
"I'll tell you," Eugene said in a calming tone. "It's a long story, 
though."
 
"Well," she said with a slight chuckle, "You'd better start talking 
now, then."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby stood in the lobby of the FBI field office in Boston. The young 
female security guard was placing a call upstairs to Agent Jonathan 
Rollins' office.
 
After a lengthy wait, the guard simply shook her head. "He's not 
there," she told Bobby. "If you'd like to leave your name, I can leave a 
message that you were here, so that when he gets back..."
 
Bobby held up a gently silencing hand. "No, it's quite alright," he 
told her, "I have a pretty good idea of where I might find him."
 
Following the signs on the walls to the cafeteria, Bobby noticed an 
agent snuffing out a cigarette in a hallway ashtray and lightly grabbed 
the man's arm.
 
"Hey, where can a guy smoke in this place?" Bobby inquired of the 
agent.
 
The other man quickly directed Bobby to the outside patio that was just 
outside of the cafeteria. True to form, Jonathan Rollins was there, 
stomping on the butt of one Marlboro as he began to light another.
 
"Well, well, well!" Rollins cried upon seeing Bobby step out through 
the glass doors. "Is that who I think it might be?"
 
Bobby grinned. John was just as Bobby remembered him, with messy salt 
and pepper hair and a face full of wrinkles ("character lines", he had 
called them) and an ugly tweed jacket with brown patches sewn in around 
the elbows. "Who else?" Bobby asked, walking towards him. "Who else 
would know to find you out here?"
 
John took the cigarette from his mouth with his left hand and shook 
Bobby's hand vigorously with his right. "Still playing detective, I see."
 
This was clearly a reference to the first time the two of them had met, 
when John had just six months under his belt as an FBI agent and Bobby 
was still a public defender. John had been a witness for the 
prosecution, but Bobby had found a way to dissect and analyze his testimony in 
such a way that it ended up benefiting Bobby's client. John had been so 
impressed by his work that the two of them ended up being relatively 
close acquaintances ever since.
 
"So what's up?" John asked him. "I know this can't be a social call. 
Whenever I hear from you I know it's got something to do with a case."
 
Bobby maintained his smile while internally acknowledging that they had 
never really been friends; their relationship, for the most part, was 
strictly professional. "You're right. I need some advice from you," he 
told the agent. "Federal law is not my specialty, and particularly not 
the enforcement of it."
 
"Alright," Agent Rollins said swiftly. He blew out one last cloud of 
smoke from his lungs and stamped out his cigarette. "Let's go up and 
discuss this in my office."
 
As the elevator doors slid shut, Bobby began counting the floor numbers 
as they slowly made their way up to fifteen.
 
"So what's got you all hot under the collar, Bobby?" Rollins asked.
 
"It's about a judge," Bobby told him, still looking up at the numbers. 
"We have reason to believe this judge might be tampering with the cases 
she presides over... requesting sexual favors in return for good 
verdicts."
 
"Oh yeah? What's this judge's name."
 
"Kittleson," Bobby said offhandedly. "Roberta Kittleson."
 
Before Bobby had a chance to say any more, Rollins' hand had snaked out 
to pull on the emergency stop button. The elevator screeched to a halt 
between floors. He looked at Rollins in surprise.
 
"What do you know about Kittleson?" the FBI agent said with grave 
seriousness.
 
Bobby was taken aback and let a small smirk play upon his face. 
"Obviously, not as much as you," he replied.
 
"I'm not joking here, Bobby. What have you got on her?"
 
Bobby glanced away, deciding whether or not to reveal what he knew. "We 
have two witnesses," he finally told the agent. "Two men who say they 
slept with Kittleson in order to get their charges thrown out, or the 
charges of someone they knew."
 
"Jesus Christ," John said, scratching nervously at his cheek. "Do you 
know how long we've been trying to get Kittleson for this? Who did these 
guys confess to?"
 
"Another attorney at my firm."
 
"That's just terrific. We've been trying to nail her for years and 
these guys just walk into your office one day and spill their guts."
 
"John, what do you know about Kittleson?"
 
"We've been hearing these stories for years, but so far no one has come 
forward to make any real claim. We started investigating her last year, 
but no luck so far."
 
"Well, this is why I came to you," Bobby told him. "I need to know what 
we can do about her."
 
John slapped the emergency stop button back into place as the elevator 
lurched upwards. "My office. We'll discuss this in my office."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Helen took a deep breath as Eugene arrived. She had prepared herself, 
mentally and emotionally, for this moment. She was set to argue the 
Langley probable cause hearing against an attorney she had slept with not 
very many nights ago.
 
"Eugene Young for the defense," she heard him announce. Oddly enough, 
Rebecca was in tow behind him. Had he suddenly decided this case was 
important enough to get some assistance?
 
She glanced up at the bench. It was Joseph Camp presiding over this 
case, and his head was still buried in the docket the bailiff had just 
handed him.
 
"Miss Gamble," the judge announced. "Have you any witnesses to call?"
 
"No, Your Honor," Helen responded. "I believe the reports files by 
police speak for themselves."
 
"Yes, yes," Judge Camp said, nodding. "I think I concur," he told the 
attorneys, lifting his gavel as to pronounce probably cause.
 
"Your Honor, wait," Eugene suddenly declared, standing. "I have a 
witness to call." He hesitated momentarily after that, as if not knowing how 
to proceed.
 
"Well?" Judge Camp asked impatiently. "Call your witness!"
 
"I call myself as a witness, Your Honor," Eugene declared. Suddenly the 
courtroom fell silent, and Helen just stared at him.
 
"Pardon me, counsel?" the judge asked. "I'm afraid my hearing isn't as 
good as it used to be."
 
"Your Honor, I met with a witness several days ago who told me a story 
in direct opposition to the report filed by police. However, he fears 
retribution and would prefer to remain anonymous. I would like to take 
the stand to explain his story."
 
Helen tried hard to prevent herself from spitting out her words. "Your 
Honor, this is hearsay in no uncertain terms! We can't..."
 
"This witness," Eugene quickly charged in, cutting her off, "is now a 
client of mine. Attorney-client privilege prevents me from identifying 
him or allowing him to testify in court. I have to take the stand. My 
associate will perform the cross-examination," he told them, indicating 
Rebecca, who was squirming a bit in her chair.
 
"Defense counsel has been withholding this information from me!" Helen 
spouted. "I had no idea counsel would call himself as a witness, much 
less have time to prepare..."
 
"Well, if counsel would return her phone calls every now and then," 
Eugene shot back. "Perhaps she wouldn't be taken by surprise as much!"
 
"Your Honor, opposing counsel should realize that I am a district 
attorney, and I simply do not have the time to answer every message I get 
regarding..."
 
"So what do I have to do to get a return call from you?" Eugene 
shouted. "Scream bloody murder on your voice mail?"
 
"Well perhaps some indication of the importance of..."
 
Judge Camp began banging his gavel to break up the dispute. "People, 
people!" he shouted. "What in the Hell is going on here?"
 
The two attorneys fell silent. Helen spoke up finally. "Your honor, I 
request a short recess to confer with opposing counsel."
 
"Please do," the judge said. "Court is in recess for one half-hour, so 
that counsel can kiss and make up." With that, he banged his gavel one 
last time.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"What kind of stunt is this, Eugene?" Helen cried as the two walked 
into her office.
 
"Helen, you know as well as I do that attorney-client privilege allows 
me to testify..."
 
"And since when did Officer Bailey become your 'client', Eugene?"
 
"He's my client now, Helen..."
 
"And when did he *become* your client?"
 
Eugene pursed his lips together. "He agreed last night."
 
"Well, nice," Helen said in frustration. "That's a very nice surprise 
to spring on me in open court, Eugene. I have half a mind to subpoena 
Bailey and make him take the stand..."
 
"Helen, you can't do that. I told you in strictest confidence about 
this officer..."
 
"And what is that supposed to mean to me?" Helen cried. "Or are you 
forgetting about how Ellenor ambushed me in open court in the Vogelman 
trial? Asking me about all those things I told her in 'strictest 
confidence'?"
 
"That was Ellenor's decision, not mine..."
 
"Well, I didn't exactly see you jumping up and down with outrage, did 
I?"
 
"What are we to each other?" Eugene bellowed.
 
Helen was taken aback by the sudden question. "I don't understand what 
you mean."
 
"Helen. It's been days since we last saw each other. I haven't heard 
anything from you. You haven't returned my phone calls, you didn't even 
consider discussing this hearing with me, which I can't believe, taking 
into account all that has happened between us..."
 
"Oh God, oh God..." was all she could mutter, bringing her hands up to 
her head and pacing back and forth. "I should have learned my lesson 
about dating defense attorneys... I should have learned with Bobby..."
 
"Helen," he cried, "I am not Bobby Donnell!"
 
"Well, with these stunts you're pulling in court, you're doing a damn 
fine impersonation of him!" She turned away, taking a deep breath to 
calm herself before she said anything she'd regret. "Eugene, look, this is 
not easy to explain to you... but..."
 
"But what?" he asked, looking down at her.
 
"Well, I know that you haven't dated in a long time. You and your 
ex-wife were married young, and you stayed together for years and years, and 
you haven't dated anyone since the two of you divorced..." Eugene just 
looked away, with some mixture of anger and shock in his eyes. "Please, 
don't be upset. It's just... Well, things are different now. It's not 
like when we were in law school. We're all professional attorneys now. 
You can't expect an instant return phone call. You can't expect to have 
my undivided attention or even the majority of my attention. I'm a DA, 
and this is what I do. This is who I am... everything else, and 
everyone else, takes a lower priority."
 
"Then what are you saying? Are you saying we shouldn't..."
 
"I'm not saying anything about 'us' at this point. I just don't want to 
see you grandstanding in court as some way to get my attention..."
 
"I'm not grandstanding!" he cried. "That officer's testimony needs to 
be heard..."
 
"Then tell *me* about it first. We can work something out! We can 
introduce that officer's testimony without you making a scene in front of a 
judge!"
 
"Okay, fine," Eugene responded, with some trace of embarrassment in his 
voice. "So let's go in there and tell Judge Camp we both need a 
continuance."
 
Helen grimaced inwardly as she watched him walk out of her office door. 
There was no kissing *or* making up here. Maybe this was going to be 
Bobby Donnell all over again. Was she ever going to learn?
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby pushed all thoughts of his meeting with Agent Rollins from his 
mind. He needed full concentration to defend David Arnold, the kid who 
got arrested for stockpiling weapons in his bedroom. Susan Knight, the 
tall blonde assistant DA, had called up one of the officers that had 
searched David's room and had found the evidence against him.
 
The officer did not paint a pretty picture for Judge Zoey Hiller. Bobby 
couldn't imagine a more incriminating scene: hateful literature, 
chemicals, and assorted ammunition. Bobby wondered if he really did have the 
energy to go on with this trial. He glanced about the courtroom, at the 
outraged faces of the media and the spectators and came within an 
instant of accepting the DA's plea bargain at the last minute.
 
But then his eyes settled on one spectator with a different expression 
on her face. This spectator wore a mask of pure determination. It was 
Lindsay. As the prosecution handed over the witness, she gave him a very 
slow and deliberate nod. That was all the motivation Bobby needed.
 
"No questions," he said, turning back to face Judge Hiller.
 
"You may step down," the judge instructed the policeman.
 
As the officer was making his way down from the witness stand, the 
assistant DA rose. "The Commonwealth rests, Your Honor."
 
Bobby straightened his jacket and tie as he stood. "The defense calls 
Kenneth Arnold, Your Honor."
 
The boy's father walked from the back of the courtroom with that sneer 
that seemed permanently etched on his face. This was probably the last 
person Bobby wanted to be working for, but forced himself to remember 
Lindsay's words: *You're a defense attorney, dammit, go BE a defense 
attorney!*
 
He made quick work of the first part of the father's testimony, asking 
brief introductory questions about the David, his demeanor, and the 
worsening relationship between the boy and his parents.
 
"And after you had this final dispute with your son about the drugs you 
found in his room," Bobby asked, coming in closer, "what happened?"
 
"Well, we came to an agreement with him. As his parents, we loved him 
very much, but there are rules that simply must be followed. So we told 
him to find a place of his own."
 
"And did he?"
 
"Well, Mr. Donnell, we had every intention of making him, but, as time 
went on, and tempers cooled... Well, my wife convinced me not to make 
him move out. So we compromised."
 
"Compromised how?"
 
"We allowed him to stay under our roof, granted he pay us monthly rent, 
just like any landlord. We figured it would be best this way, at least 
we could keep something of an eye on him."
 
"Let me get this straight," Bobby announced, turning back towards the 
courtroom. "He paid you rent. You were almost like his landlord."
 
"Yes, that's correct."
 
"He even went so far as to install locks on his door, isn't that right, 
Mr. Arnold? *Including* a deadbolt?"
 
"Yes, Mr. Donnell."
 
"When the police showed up that day acting on an anonymous tip, was 
your son there?"
 
"No, he was not."
 
"So who let them into David's room? Surely it wasn't unlocked..."
 
"My wife keeps a duplicate of his key," Kenneth Arnold said. "For 
emergencies such as these."
 
"So your wife let the police in to search your son's room."
 
"That is correct."
 
Bobby turned to the judge with a dramatic movement. "Your honor, I ask 
that you declare all evidence discovered in my client's bedroom to be 
inadmissible under the Fourth Amendment!"
 
An excited murmur suddenly spread around the courtroom. "What?" was 
Judge Hiller's only response.
 
"He was paying them rent, the attorney landlord relationship applies, 
and Mrs. Arnold had no right to allow the police in without the consent 
of my client!"
 
"Your Honor," the assistant district attorney cried, standing. "This is 
outrageous! He is a teenager living under his parent's roof..."
 
"He is 18," Bobby cried, "and legally an adult who has the right to be 
free in his own dwelling from illegal search and seizure..."
 
"Your Honor, counsel is clutching at straws! For God's sake, his 
client's own mother gave them permission to enter..."
 
Zoey Hiller began banging her gavel wildly. "Order! Order in this 
court!" She pointed her gavel directly at Bobby. "Another little stunt from 
you, Mr. Donnell? I wouldn't expect anything less of your law firm!"
 
"Your Honor, with all due respect, this is hardly the forum to air your 
grievances against my..."
 
"Why should I even consider the possibility of letting your client off 
*yet again*?"
 
"Because you know the law! The US Supreme Court has clearly established 
the rights of tenants, and you yourself have upheld those 
interpretations in your own rulings!"
 
Judge Hiller simply glared at him for a moment.
 
"Your Honor," Bobby continued. "In Commonwealth vs. Michael Kingston, 
you yourself declared that the body of a nun was inadmissible when found 
in the closet of the accused!"
 
"That might be so, but Michael Kingston was not planning on blowing up 
a school full of children!"
 
"Is that what's going on here, Your Honor? Is my client on trial for 
Littleton? Is he on trial for Jonesboro? The law is the law and it 
applies to everyone equally..."
 
"Spare me the lecture on constitutional law, Mr. Donnell," the small 
woman shot back. She looked down at her bench for a moment before 
returning her gaze to the courtroom. "I'll hear arguments on this matter first 
thing in the morning."
 
"Your Honor!" the DA cried. "You can't possibly entertain this wild 
notion, it's insane!"
 
"It may well be," the judge responded. "But you'll have plenty of time 
to argue that tomorrow morning. Court is adjourned," she declared with 
a bang of her gavel.
 
Bobby's expression remained controlled but inwardly he grinned. It felt 
good to be a defense attorney again.
 
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 14

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 15 
Author: Albert, Emily (me!), and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for some language
 
Disclaimer: I am not David E. Kelley, therefore his characters are not 
mine (duh). I make no claim to any of these characters, except for the 
ones I create, and OWN. The ones I create are for use within this round 
robin group only. To wrap it up, I'm not trying to steal them, if 
Albert and Ivan are, I have no part of it, keep your hands off my people, 
and enjoy the show!
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Ellenor?" Sammy cautiously poked his head through the front door of 
Ellenor's old home and looked around.
 
"Sammy!" Ellenor came forward from the stairway and opened her arms.
 
Sammy tossed the pizza box he was carrying onto the closest table and 
wrapped his arms around his old friend. "God, Ellie, you look great. 
It's so good to see you again." He pressed his nose into her hair and 
inhaled deeply. *Wow. She still smells good.*
 
Ellenor stepped back and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She 
blushed slightly and looked down. "Thanks. You look great, too." *You 
liar. Father Time has beaten me with his cane.*
 
They stood still and stared at each other for a long moment. "I can't 
believe you're here." Sammy finally broke the silence. He wore a dazed 
expression, still amazed that he was looking into the eyes of his best 
friend from high school.
 
"Neither can I." Ellenor laughed lightly.
 
"It's been so long." Sammy shook his head.
 
"It has."
 
"You're here!" It was as if he had just realized it. He laughed and 
pulled her into a hug again.
 
Ellenor laughed happily and hugged him back. "It's nice to be so 
welcome!"
 
"God, Ellie, you know you're always welcome. But let's give up the 
pleasantries, I'm starving."
 
"Still trying to bulk up?" Ellenor thumped Sammy's stomach playfully. 
"Wow, I can almost tell that you have a waist."
 
"Hey, let's not start that again!" Sammy grabbed her wrist and held it 
away from his stomach. "I was just beginning to forget my incredibly 
puny and worthless body!"
 
Ellenor laughed and pulled away her hand. "We can eat in my room, it's 
one of the few where the furniture isn't covered."
 
"Great! I love dust!"
 
As the two walked up the stairs together, Ellenor was suddenly very 
happy that her hands and face were healing quickly. There was just 
something about looking into those deep blue eyes... For the first time in a 
long time she was admiring the way his wavy, light-brown hair fell 
across his forehead, and the way his nose flattened out at the tip. She used 
to love teasing him about his nose...
 
"So what do you do for a living now?" Sammy turned to her and tipped 
his head a little to one side.
 
Ellenor opened her eyes wide and took a deep breath. "Wow, has it 
really been so long?"
 
"Yeah, it has."
 
"I'm a lawyer."
 
"Oh, my God! Little miss 'Hey, let's go smoke some pot and vandalize a 
teacher's house' is a lawyer! Holy shit, Ellie, what were you high on 
when you made that decision?!" A huge grin overwhelmed Sammy's face as 
he stared at Ellenor unbelievingly.
 
"Hey, it's a decent living. A little tough on your emotional health, 
but a decent living."
 
"Man, and I thought I was going to be upset when you said you drug 
dealer. No, you just defend them."
 
Ellenor laughed and punched Sammy in the shoulder. "Beats the hell out 
of being a pizza boy." "Hey, that was a low blow!"
 
"Lower than your drug dealer line?"
 
Sammy shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head agreeably. "You've got 
a point there."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"So, break the bad news. What in town has changed?" Ellenor sat on her 
bed across from Sammy with the empty pizza box in between them. They'd 
been talking for hours, and both were happy that it felt so much like 
it used to.
 
"Actually, not much has changed. It's just the little things, you know? 
Like, the ice cream parlor added all kinds of weird things to its menu. 
And the people who leave..." He looked deeply into Ellenor's eyes 
before adding, "Or die."
 
Thunder growled outside and Ellenor looked out the window to see dark 
clouds and rain pouring down. She ignored it and turned back to Sammy. 
"I'm sorry about your father. He was a good man."
 
Sammy turned his eyes to the rain. "He would have loved to hear you say 
that." He chuckled dryly. "He thought you were an angel. Said you were 
a firecracker, like my mother had been. He used to rant about how I was 
so stupid not to sweep you off your feet."
 
Ellenor smiled sadly. "Don't worry, I remember that. He used to give 
you time off to go do things with me whenever I asked."
 
Sammy turned back from the window. "He kept telling me to take my 
chance, or I'd lose you. There wasn't a day he didn't tell me I was a fool 
to let you go by."
 
Ellenor blushed and looked down at her hands. Sammy held his hand in 
the air hesitantly, and then reached out and stroked her cheek. He tilted 
her head up so he could look into her eyes so intently as he did. He 
quietly whispered, "He was right."
 
Ellenor's lips parted slightly and she took a deep breath, never 
breaking eye contact with the man in front of her. "Sammy-" He made a low 
shushing noise and brushed a finger over her lips. Moving his hand to the 
back of her head, he leaned forward to press his lips against hers.
 
Ellenor sunk against him and pushed the pizza box that was separating 
them onto the floor. Sammy pressed farther forward against her, and she 
lay back on the bed. Sammy gently pulled his face away from hers so he 
could look into her eyes once more. He gently brushed her hair away 
from her face as he whispered, "I was a fool, Ellie. A damned fool."
 
Ellenor didn't say a word, but smiled, and pulled him close to her 
again.
 
They had been away for years, but it didn't matter when they were 
together. Their relationship was one thing that would never disappear.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rebecca sat at her desk, staring at the phone. Suddenly she was 
terrified to call the people on the paper she had found at Ellenor's 
apartment. At first she had been frightened that they wouldn't know anything, 
and she'd be left wondering if her friend was locked in a car trunk 
somewhere. That would be completely understandable. After all, the paper 
didn't really say who they were. Ellenor hadn't even written down the last 
names of the two people. For all Rebecca knew, they could be witnesses 
for one of Ellenor's cases.
 
But however worried Rebecca was that they *wouldn't* know anything, she 
was twice as worried that they *would*. Those people might actually be 
friends of Ellenor's. They might say that she had been being stalked 
and only they knew, or she had been dating an abusive psychopath and was 
trying to get away from him, or maybe these *were* the ones to be 
worried about. Maybe they had taken Ellenor, and she was sitting beside one 
of them right now, tied and gagged.
 
Rebecca shook her head and picked up the phone. She forced herself to 
not think about what she was doing and dialed the first person on the 
paper. She waited for it to ring once...twice...three times before 
someone picked up.
 
"Hello?" A light, melodic voice picked up.
 
"Hello. Is, um...Julie there?" *Damn it! I don't know her last name!*
 
"Just a minute." Rebecca heard the woman pass the phone to someone.
 
"Hello?" The new voice sounded more throaty than the previous one, with 
a slightly raspy tint to it. *It almost sounds like Ellenor.*
 
"Yes, um, is this Julie?" *What was I thinking? Am I just going to say 
'Hey, you know Ellenor Frutt? Has she been abducted? Oh, you have her 
in your basement! Great, I'll be there in an hour with the police. Bye!*
 
"Yes." There was a long silence.
 
"That's Julie...Um..."
 
"Frutt?" The voice suggested.
 
Rebecca gasped. *It's a relative! Oh, my God, it's a relative.* "Your 
name is Julie Frutt?"
 
The voice on the other end of the line sounded a little confused. 
"Yes... I assumed you knew that, since you were calling me."
 
"Julie, my name is Rebecca Washington. I'm a coworker of Ellenor Frutt. 
She's related to you, isn't she?"
 
There was silence once again. Julie's voice was blank when she spoke 
again. "Ellie's my sister."
 
*She has a sister?* "Julie, do you know where Ellenor is? I'm a little 
worried about her."
 
"Who is this?" Rebecca was a little shocked at how cold Julie's voice 
became.
 
"Rebecca Washington... I already said, I'm a coworker of Ellenor's."
 
"How did you get my number?" The question was jabbed at Rebecca, almost 
accusingly.
 
Now Rebecca was concerned. "Julie, Ellenor is a friend. I just want to 
contact her to make sure she's alright," She said it slowly, 
cautiously, "Do you know where she is?"
 
"I'm only going to say this once, so *please* don't call me again. For 
the record, I neither confirm, nor deny that I know where my sister is. 
Wherever she *might* be, I'm sure she doesn't want you calling her. If 
she did, she would have given you a way to contact her. Now, I don't 
know how got this number, but I'm a little worried about the fact that 
you start dialing up people you don't know, just to pry into your 
*friend's* life. I *don't* think Ellie wanted you to have this number, I 
*don't* think she wanted you to be talking to me, and I *don't* think she 
wanted you to go off in search of her because you happen to be paranoid! 
So I think you might just want to hang up, toss my number away, go 
about your *own* business, and let Ellie go about hers. Now, I'm going to 
say it one more time: please *don't* call me again!"
 
Rebecca was shocked at the words hurled at her in such a violent, 
threatening manner. "Julie, I-"
 
"*Don't* call me again!" Julie screamed. There was a click, and the 
line was silent.
 
"Who was *that*?" Lucy wrinkled her forehead and stared at the phone. 
She had heard the woman shouting all the way from her desk. Rebecca 
ignored her and started dialing again.
 
"Hello?" a throaty, masculine voice asked.
 
"Hello," *Let's take a wild shot here.* "Is this Mark Frutt?"
 
"Yes, who is this?"
 
Rebecca was a little worried that the scene with Julie would repeat 
itself. "My name is Rebecca Washington. I'm a coworker of your sister, 
Ellenor Frutt. I believe she left town, but she didn't leave any word of 
where she is, or how to contact her. I was wondering if you could give 
me any information on her whereabouts." Rebecca held her breath and 
waited for a response.
 
The man's voice was cold, as Julie's had been. "I wouldn't feel 
comfortable giving any information on my sister over the phone."
 
"Would you be willing to meet with me in person, so I could give you 
proof that I do know Ellenor?"
 
"No." There was a click, and the line was silent.
 
"Cozy family." Rebecca commented as she stared at the phone in her 
hand. She stood up and began walking towards the door.
 
"Where are you going?" Lucy stood up and turned towards Rebecca.
 
"It's night. I'm going home." Rebecca reached for her coat.
 
"Are you going to go dig through Ellenor's stuff again?"
 
"What?!" Rebecca's head snapped towards Lucy.
 
"I was listening at the door to Bobby's office the other day. Are you?" 
The young secretary waited expectantly.
 
Rebecca thought about putting up a fight, but decided it would be 
easiest just to confess. She sighed. "Yeah, I am."
 
Lucy pulled off her headset and rushed out from behind her desk. "Can I 
come?"
 
"What?"
 
Lucy clasped her hands in front of her chest and began to beg, "Please, 
please, please! How often does a person get a chance like this?"
 
Rebecca placed her hands on her hips and turned towards the girl. 
"Lucy, first of all, I'm a little disappointed in you. The only reason I'm 
going to Ellenor's apartment is because I'm worried about her, and you 
know that, since you were listening to my conversation with Bobby." Her 
eyes shot daggers as she continued coldly, "Second, I don't think 
Ellenor would appreciate me letting you into her home so that you can snoop 
through her things."
 
Lucy looked a little ashamed and bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I am 
worried about Ellenor. I'm just not showing it like you are." She looked up 
into Rebecca's eyes. "Honestly, even though Ellenor and I have had our 
differences- a *lot* of differences- I still really like her. I am 
worried."
 
Rebecca sighed and shook her head. "Fine, get your coat."
 
Lucy grinned and clapped her hands. "Great! Can I go through her 
medicine cabinet?"
 
"Lucy-"
 
"Kidding..." Lucy held up her hands innocently. "I'll go get my coat."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 15

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 16
Author: Albert(me), Emily, and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for some language16

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby strolled into his darkened office. The sun was barely up, but he 
wanted to get there early in order to prepare to argue the motion to 
dismiss the Arnold case. He walked over to the coffee machine near Lucy's 
desk and began filling up the filter with grounds. As he did so, he 
looked up and noticed a faint glow coming from Eugene's office. *He must 
have left his lamp on last night,* Bobby thought. Switching on the 
coffee maker, he walked over to the office to turn the light off.
 
When he got to the door, he stopped short: Eugene was sitting at his 
desk, peering at a newspaper through his reading glasses. "Eugene?"
 
"Bobby," Eugene replied, rising from his desk.
 
"What are you doing here at this ungodly hour?"
 
"I was hoping to catch you before you argued to dismiss the Arnold 
case."
 
"You wanted to catch me before...? What's this about?"
 
Eugene sat down and motioned for Bobby to do the same. He slid his 
glasses off and flipped them around in his hands as he spoke to Bobby. "I 
want you to drop the case," he said at last.
 
"Drop the case?" Bobby cried. "Are you insane? I'm about to argue that 
this case should be thrown out, and I have a very good shot at making 
the case for a dismissal!"
 
"Yeah, Bobby, and that's what I'm afraid of."
 
"Look, I've been over this with Ellenor. The fact that this client is 
in high school does not make him any different from any of our other 
clients!"
 
"I beg to differ," Eugene said matter-of-factly. "Do you know which 
school David Arnold goes to, or went to?"
 
"Yeah, he goes to Douglas, why?"
 
Eugene's face took on a grave expression. "Kendall will be attending 
Douglas in the fall."
 
"What? But he's only 11 and it's a high school!"
 
"He turned 12 last week, he'll be starting the seventh grade in the 
fall. Douglas Secondary School is attended by students from grades 7 
through 12. Now, most of his friends from grade school will also be 
attending Douglas so I have no desire to enroll him at another school. But I 
want his time there to be safe, Bobby. This is why I cannot allow you to 
let David Arnold walk away a free man."
 
Bobby leaned forward, resting his face in his hands and he pondered the 
possibilities. There was no doubt that he could easily get out of the 
case; Judge Hiller would almost certainly see there was conflict of 
interest and release Bobby from the case. But what about Kenneth Arnold? He 
was one of the firm's best-paying clients and certainly this wouldn't 
be the last time he would need a lawyer in his life. Bobby mulled over 
the income that would certainly be lost by dropping this client.
 
"This sort of thing shouldn't be decided by just the two of us," Bobby 
finally told him. "We should have a partnership vote."
 
"A partnership vote? Get real, Bobby! I know Lindsay is behind you on 
this 100 percent. And even if she weren't, with Ellenor gone AWOL and 
with your having two votes the decision is a foregone conclusion!"
 
"In other words," Bobby said, rising to his feet, "You are trying to 
circumvent the partnership and make decisions about the firm's business 
all by yourself! That's outrageous!"
 
"Then I will divest," Eugene told him calmly, still seated, "So that 
you don't have to worry about me making decisions for this firm. And I 
will find another firm in which to practice law."
 
"Eugene..." Bobby sighed. "Is that really what you want to do? Over 
something like this?"
 
"My son means everything to me. We already found out that Kendall was 
selling dope that originally came from one of my clients. One of *our* 
clients. And who knows what would have happened to him if the school 
hadn't caught him? I'm not going to take that risk again. I don't want to 
lose him because of something else my firm does." Bobby began to 
protest, but Eugene simply lifted a hand to quiet him. "Bobby, I have already 
made up my mind. Either this client goes, or I go."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby mulled things over in his office. No one ever said practicing law 
was easy, but every day it was getting more and more difficult to do 
his job. He had started from the ideological standpoint, that even if he 
freed a hundred guilty men and one innocent man, it was more than worth 
it. But what do you do when one of those hundred guilty men is a guy 
like Michael Kingston? He escaped an almost certain death sentence, all 
because of a technicality. And he was all set to do it again. If the 
police hadn't burst into his apartment that day, under suspicion he had 
stabbed Lindsay, another woman would have surely lost her life. Would 
Bobby's firm had been responsible, even partially? Hell, maybe after all 
Kingston was the guy who *did* stab Lindsay, and if that were the case 
the guilt we be almost unbearable. And he just couldn't afford to lose 
Eugene. He couldn't afford to lose any of the partners, or any of the 
business they brought in. Lucy wasn't there that early, so Bobby sat up 
front waiting for Kenneth Arnold and his son to come in. Soon, the front 
door creaked open and there the two of them were.
 
"Good morning, Mister Donnell," Kenneth Arnold said. As usual, his son 
remained stonily silent. "So why exactly did you call us to come down 
here?" "We should discuss this in my office," he told them.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"You are no longer representing my son?" Kenneth Arnold sputtered. "But 
how can that be? You told me you had an excellent chance of getting the 
charges thrown out!"
 
"Mister Arnold, it's gotten much more complex," he told him.
 
"I'm afraid the general sentiment among our partners is that this is a 
case we'd rather not be associated with."
 
"Because he's a high school student, is that why?" Kenneth asked. Bobby 
remained silent. "Well, is that the reason?"
 
"Yes, in a way, that's the reason."
 
"Dammit!" Kenneth cried. "People are just idiots! My son might have had 
crazy notions about blowing up his school, but he is a teenager! 
Teenagers have crazy thoughts all the time! When he said and wrote those 
things, he was just letting off steam, that's all!"
 
"I know, I know..."
 
"And just because a few malcontents in Colorado blow away their 
classmates, my son has to go to jail for this? This is reprehensible, Mister 
Donnell! And it is malpractice of you to drop this case at the last 
minute..."
 
"I am completely justified in dropping this case," Bobby snapped back. 
"The judge wouldn't think twice about excusing me from this case once I 
explain the situation to her. So I suggest you focus your energy on 
locating another firm instead of attacking mine. I can refer you to some 
acquaintances of mine, they're all good attorneys..."
 
"Oh, no thank you," Kenneth told him, standing up and heading for the 
door. "I will have nothing to do with any of your acquaintances. David, 
we're leaving now." The stoic child rose from his chair and followed 
immediately behind his father. "Good day, Mister Donnell!" the elder 
Arnold shouted as he slammed the door to Bobby's office behind him.
 
Bobby struggled valiantly to push away all thoughts about the amount of 
money that just walked out the door. He picked up the phone and dialed 
a number at the Boston FBI field office.
 
"John," he said. "Bobby here. I'm not going to be in court this morning 
after all, so we can meet whenever you're available..."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jimmy popped another couple of Advil. The piercing headache wasn't 
going away soon. Despite the fact that Bobby was meeting with FBI agents in 
his office, determining what to do about Kittleson, Jimmy still had to 
go into that courtroom and face her. He had to face every overruled 
objection and every denied motion that Kittleson was going to shoot his 
way until this case was finally over and done with. Or until *she* was 
over and done with, whichever came first. He was looking over some of the 
transcripts when Bobby poked his head out of his office.
 
"Hey, Jimmy," Bobby called. "Can you come join us in here for a minute 
or two?"
 
There were two FBI agents in Bobby's office. One was an older-looking 
man with dark hair speckled with gray, that Bobby introduced as Jonathan 
Rollins. The other agent was a tall blonde woman by the name of Lauren 
Andrews.
 
"Well, Mister Berlutti, let me explain why we called you in here," 
Rollins began. "After discussing this case with Bobby, we have decided the 
best way to approach this would be to send someone, undercover, into 
Kittleson's chambers to have a series of discussions with her, where, we 
hope, the truth about her judicial misconduct will come out."
 
"Well, uh, not to question you gentleman, and, uh, lady," Jimmy said. 
"But how's something like that going to stand up at a trial? Wouldn't it 
be better to get some evidence of her doing something illegal?"
 
"They know all about that Jimmy," Bobby told him. "But they think that 
a recorded confession is about the best we'll do under the 
circumstances. Statement against interest. It'll hold up."
 
Jimmy thought it over for a moment. "Alright then," he said finally. 
"I'm behind you one hundred percent. Sounds like a great idea."
 
"Mister Berlutti," Agent Andrews spoke up, "The reason we called you in 
here is because we need your participation in this sting."
 
"You want my----" Jimmy fell silent as what they wanted him to do 
dawned on him.
 
"You want me to wear a wire? You want me to be the one who goes 
undercover?"
 
"We decided that would be best," Agent Rollins told him.
 
"With the past that the two of you have, it would make sense. You could 
let her know that if you came forward with the details of the 
relationship the two of you once had, it would be pretty damning, and it would 
be a rather difficult allegation to fight. We believe this will put you 
in a position to elicit a confession from her."
 
"But, but," Jimmy stuttered. "Our relationship wasn't misconduct on 
anyone's part! She never presided over any of my cases, the entire time we 
were seeing each other! I mean, if there's any clear cut case of 
misconduct, it's her and Bobby..."
 
"Jimmy!" Bobby suddenly cried.
 
The two FBI agents suddenly perked up. "What's this, Bobby? Something 
between you and Kittleson?"
 
"No! Nothing ever happened between us..." Bobby began.
 
"Except she made a pass at you, isn't that right, Bobby?" Jimmy 
continued. "And even after you turned her down, she continued to preside over 
that one case, right?"
 
"Is that true?" John Rollins asked.
 
Bobby looked up at him, obviously fuming inwardly. "Yes, that's true," 
he said grudgingly.
 
"Well, geez, Bobby!" the agent cried. "What are you hiding things from 
us for? Well, this changes things quite a bit. She hit on you while you 
were defending a client in a trial she was presiding over?"
 
"Yeah, that's right," Jimmy began. Bobby shot him a sharp look and 
Jimmy instantly got quiet.
 
"Look, John," Bobby began. "That was something that was between me and 
her. I've have never told anyone anything about it. The way Jimmy found 
out was quite by accident..."
 
"It doesn't matter!" John cried. "Look, you've got quite a powerful 
weapon to use against her. You can use it to get under her skin, and maybe 
she'll tell you things if she thinks there's an understanding between 
the two of you."
 
"I just don't know if it's such a good idea to betray her trust in that 
way."
 
"Bobby," John spoke, leaning in close to him. "She betrayed the whole 
legal process by what she did. Now do you want to see her continue to do 
that, or will you do whatever it takes to stop her?"
 
Jimmy realized with a question like that, Bobby's answer was a done 
deal. But would he ever forgive Jimmy for putting him in this situation? 
That was the *real* question.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
End part 16

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 17
Author: Albert, Emily (c'est moi), Ivan (?)
 
Rating: Um, let's just say PG-13
 
Disclaimer: The disclaimer from my previous parts still stands. 

Summary: I do not own the characters of David E. Kelley. Stay away from 
my characters.

Note: the events in this part occur before part 16.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Sshhh!" Rebecca hissed at Lucy.
 
"I am being quiet! You're the one sshhing!" Lucy whispered back.
 
"Quiet! We're not supposed to be here! We could get in big trouble if 
anyone found out!"
 
"Not to mention Ellenor would be majorly riled."
 
"Exactly! Frankly, I'd rather have the police find out than her! So be 
careful!" Rebecca quickly slid a key from Ellenor's stolen spare set 
into the lock of Ellenor's apartment door. She shoved the door open and 
pulled Lucy inside with her.
 
"I can't say much for her taste in decorating." Lucy said after 
flipping the light switch.
 
"I know. Like it's all just shoved together."
 
Lucy looked around in disgust. "Man, I knew Ellenor had a sloppy side, 
but..."
 
Rebecca turned to her with a stoic expression. "I don't think it always 
looked like this."
 
Lucy's eyes grew wide. "You mean, like, someone could have just..." She 
let the sentence hang in the air, afraid to finish it.
 
"That's why we're here."
 
Lucy drew in a deep breath and pulled her coat tighter around her, as 
if suddenly chilled. It seemed to have just hit her how important 
Ellenor's disappearance might be, and she was rightfully frightened. "Who do 
you think could have taken her?"
 
"Her brother and sister seemed pretty suspicious. Ellenor's never 
mentioned them before, which leads me to believe she doesn't have the best 
relationship with them. I want to see if I can find any trace of a 
grudge one of them might be holding against her." Rebecca moved towards the 
dark hallway at the back of the main room. "It looks like she has a 
bedroom, a bathroom, and a spare room back here. I never looked at any of 
them after I found those phone numbers."
 
Lucy pushed open the first door on their left. They both gasped when 
the light was turned on. "Let's start somewhere else," Lucy said after 
surveying the room in horror.
 
The frame of a full-length mirror lay on the floor surrounded by shards 
of glass. The bed in the middle of the room ha obviously been slept in, 
and the bedding was a rumpled mess.
 
Rebecca stepped forward and picked up the corner of a blanket. "There's 
blood all over the bed." She turned to see Lucy hunched over a pile of 
clothes on the floor.
 
"That's not the only place." Lucy held up a white dress shirt that was 
covered in red stains. She poked three fingers through a large hole in 
the chest before looking up at Rebecca in horror.
 
"And look at the floor." Lucy obeyed and was shocked to see trails of 
blood scattered over the bedroom floor. "I think you had the right idea, 
Lucy. Let's start somewhere else."
 
Lucy nodded and dropped the shirt. Together they backed out of the 
bedroom and practically ran into the spare room. They were swiftly tripped 
up by piles of boxes.
 
"Wow. Where do we start with these?" Lucy stood amidst the boxes with a 
flustered look on her face. "They all look the same, none of them are 
marked. We can't possibly look through them all tonight."
 
Rebecca spotted a door in the corner and pointed to it. "The closet."
 
"Why the closet?"
 
"If there was something you were trying to hide, would you keep it in 
the boxes by the door, or the boxes in the closet."
 
"You have a point." They started wading towards the door, pushing boxes 
out of the way as they went. "What is all this crap? God, for all we 
know, these could be body parts!"
 
"Lucy!" Rebecca gaped at the teenager in shock.
 
"What? I didn't say they were hers!"
 
Rebecca just shook her head and focused on trying to clear a way to the 
closet. On her way she accidentally knocked over one of the piles of 
boxes that reached the ceiling. "Shit!" She shouted without thinking
 
"Great! And you told me to be careful! Look, one of them popped open." 
Lucy walked over to a small area of the floor where a box lay open on 
its side. "They're photos, too! God, Rebecca, she's going to kill you!"
 
Rebecca slid a hand through her hair and sighed. "You're here, too. 
She'll be just as mad at you, ya' know." She stepped forward in curiosity 
when she saw that Lucy wasn't listening. "What is it?"
 
"Look." Lucy handed a single photo to Rebecca. Her voice was unusually 
soft and quiet.
 
Rebecca gasped. "Oh, my God. She was beautiful."
 
"I know," Lucy said while nodding. "She looked so young and..."
 
"Happy?" Rebecca suggested.
 
"Yeah. I've never seen her smile like that before."
 
The photo was of Ellenor in her teens, standing in a dark basement that 
had been converted to a dance floor. Her eyes were bright and a huge 
smile overwhelmed her face. She wore a tight, low-cut, tye-died tank top 
and bell-bottoms. Her curves were already fully developed, and although 
she was still large as a teenager, her hourglass shape was 
unmistakable. Her thick, dark hair reached her hips, and surrounded her as a 
glistening veil. Ellenor was tan all over, and her long, succulent arms swung 
by her sides. She already had her ears pierced over a dozen times, but 
because she was so stunning, it was really the last thing you noticed 
about her.
 
"What other pictures are there in that box?" Rebecca asked as she 
traced the outline of Ellenor's smiling face.
 
"I don't know. There's a ton of albums in here." Lucy sat down beside 
the box and reached inside. She pulled out an album and opened to its 
first page.
 
"That's weird. She never said anything about *any* brothers or 
sisters." Rebecca sat down on the floor next to Lucy and leaned close to her, 
so she could see the album as well. The photo was a family portrait 
taken in front of a stunning house near a beach.
 
"Who did you talk to?" Lucy searched the stranger's faces for evidence 
of any type of maliciousness or bitterness, but couldn't find any.
 
"Him," Rebecca said pointing to the boy who looked about the same age 
as Ellenor and stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. "And 
her." She pointed to the shy and demure looking girl, not much younger 
than Ellenor, who sat cross-legged on the grass, with her face turned 
downward. "At least, the caption matches their names."
 
"You don't know about any of the other ones?" Lucy asked.
 
Rebecca's eyes skipped from the young boy sitting on Ellenor's lap, his 
hand reaching up behind him to cup her cheek, to a boy older than any 
of the other children standing beside Ellenor's father, to Ellenor's 
smiling parents.
 
"No. She never said anything about any of them."
 
"Danny, Mike, Mom, and Dad." Lucy whispered as she traced a finger over 
Ellenor's scrawling, messy handwriting.
 
"Turn the page." Lucy did as she was told. "Well, I guess that's how 
she knows sign language." Rebecca commented as she saw a page full of 
Ellenor's little brother, Danny. Danny stood in the center of what 
appeared to be his bedroom. His hands paused in the middle of words to form 
sentences that were written under the pictures.
 
"Look at his arm." Lucy whispered.
 
"I see it." Up and down the arm of the smiling little boy was a string 
of dark purple bruises. The bruises weren't those of an accident. They 
looked vicious, somehow.
 
"Look at all these pictures," Rebecca said as she flipped through 
another photo album. "In every one, at least on of them is hurt, even her 
mother and father."
 
"Creepy."
 
Rebecca and Lucy sat for hours going through Ellenor's old albums. They 
watched her play with rattles, and take her first steps. They followed 
her through Hanukkahs, Halloweens, and birthdays. They looked in on her 
bar mitzvah, and her brothers' bat mitzvahs. They saw her rowing on a 
lake with a series of friends, as well as her siblings, from the time 
she was a toddler, till she was in high school. They saw her accept 
awards, and play in sports. And there were, many, many pictures of her and 
her friends at parties. They saw her dance and sometimes sing into a 
beer bottle. They even watched she and her friends laugh as pictures were 
taken of them rolling and smoking marijuana cigarettes. She seemed to 
be a wild, free spirit and a complete party girl.
 
"Are you sure this is Ellenor?" Lucy asked as they looked through 
photos from a particularly wild party.
 
"Not the one we know." Rebecca frowned at the pictures, wondering how 
some one could change so much.
 
Although they seemed to differ greatly, one thing in the photos was 
rather constant. Danny seemed to be with Ellenor in an amazingly high 
percentage of the photos. You could often see him sitting on her shoulders 
or in her lap, or them signing to each other. It looked as if Danny was 
always with Ellenor. Mark was with her a lot, too, especially at the 
parties. There were tons of pictures of them sitting on people's couches, 
each with an arm around the other, and a beer in the other hand. Julie 
appeared at a few of the parties also, but always turned away from the 
camera shyly.
 
The other person who was seen often was a boy named Sammy. He and 
Ellenor appeared to be best friends. He seemed to be with Ellenor almost as 
much as Danny, and in fact, Danny sat in his lap and signed to him as 
well as Ellenor.
 
Rebecca and Lucy were sifting through a particularly funny album of 
Ellenor, Mark, Danny, and Sammy at the beach, when the photos ended. There 
were still several pages left in the album, but they went unused, 
something that hadn't happened in any of the other albums.
 
"Why does it end there?" Lucy asked, flipping through the pages to make 
sure they were empty.
 
"I don't know." Rebecca pulled two more albums out of the box. "These 
are all that's left after those."
 
"You're kidding, right? Before, not a week went by without it being 
logged here."
 
"Well, these are what's left." Rebecca opened one of the albums and 
they looked through it together. To their surprise, the familiar earthy, 
beach setting was gone. So were Danny, Mike, Sammy, and Ellenor's mother 
and father. Instead, Ellenor, Mark, and Julie were placed in a city 
setting with their aunt and uncle. Suddenly, there wasn't such an amazing 
abundance of photos for every occasion. Instead, there were only a very 
few. And, sadly, they weren't as fun to look at anymore. Ellenor's 
smile had disappeared. She quickly grew weathered and tired-looking. Mark 
and Julie didn't even bother to look at the camera anymore.
 
There was a difference of about four months between the last photo of 
the other albums, and the first of these new, depressing ones. It was 
obvious that something had happened, but there was no way to tell what. 
Suddenly, Rebecca's interest in Ellenor's disappearance dropped, and a 
new interest arose in the mystery of what had happened in those four 
months. *Who knows,* Rebecca thought *They might even be connected.*
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 17

--------------------------------------------------------------------

 




Title: Behind the Lies part 18
Author: Albert(me), Emily, and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for some language

Disclaimer: The concept of 'The Practice' and its characters belong to 
David E. Kelley, 20TH Century Fox and ABC. This story and its 
non-Practice characters belong to their authors.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"You been here before?" the towering black guard asked Jeff Morris 
after patting him down.
 
"Yeah," Jeff told him.
 
The guard unlocked the heavy steel door and walked forward, motioning 
for Jeff to follow. Jeff grimaced. Had he been there before? he scoffed. 
He had been to county lockup far too many times than he had cared to 
count. He had first spent time there several years ago, as a prisoner. 
Thankfully, Judge Kittleson had thrown out his charges and he was a free 
man ever since. But, lately, he found himself returning all too 
frequently.
 
The guard led him down a row of cubicles, each with a phone receiver on 
the wall, and a thick piece of glass that separated visitors from 
convicts. The usual assortment of characters and low-lives were there, from 
the weeping wives and mothers, to the smarmy 800-number lawyers, to the 
shady associates who always spoke in hushed tones and looked about 
nervously to make sure they were not being watched. The latter were easy to 
spot, being the ones who instantly fell silent as Jeff and the prison 
guard strolled past.
 
He thought back to the many visits he had paid to county lockup. Yes, 
there was the time when he visited that attorney, Jimmy Berlutti, who 
got locked up for contempt. Jeff had offered up all sorts of details 
about an affair with Kittleson, but now he was worried. Was that really the 
right thing to do? Would it eventually just backfire on him? Would he 
end up right back here again, but on the other side of the glass next 
time?
 
The guard indicated a cube to Jeff. "They'll be bringing him out in a 
second."
 
Jeff simply nodded and slid down into the chair. As he waited, he 
noticed that he could see the faint reflection of himself in the thick glass 
in front of him. He gazed at himself, at his angular jaw and his wavy 
dark hair, barely making out his bright blue eyes in his reflection. 
Dammit, Jeff, what are you doing? he thought. You were never the kind of 
person to do something like this. What happened?
 
Jeff got no further time to reflect, as the guards on the opposite side 
of the glass were bringing out the man Jeff came to see. They pulled 
the man's orange-clad arms forward and unlocked his handcuffs. Jeff 
couldn't help but notice how much grayer his hair had turned, and how much 
deeper his wrinkles had become since he had ended up in here. Massaging 
his wrists, the older man took a seat directly in front of Jeff, 
picking up the receiver on the wall.
 
Jeff followed suit. "Hey, Eddie," he said, attempting to sound casual.
 
"How goes it, Jeff?" Edward Stack asked in return.
 
Jeff knew that Eddie Stack wasn't just trying to make pleasant small 
talk. "I got a phone call today..."
 
"From?" Eddie asked before Jeff could finish.
 
"The FBI. They want me to come down and make a statement about 
Kittleson."
 
"The FBI? You serious, Jeff?"
 
"As a heart attack," Jeff replied flatly.
 
"Hot damn!" Eddie tightened his hand into a celebratory fist.
 
"That means it worked, they're playing right into our hands. Donnell 
went to the Feds."
 
"Is that what you hoped would happen?" Jeff asked meekly.
 
"Well, of course! You can't trust the cops with something like this. 
They're just looking to nail somebody --- anybody --- for heading up this 
drug ring. That's why they came after me after they couldn't make 
anything stick to Laura Moffet. The FBI, now they're much more impartial, 
or, dare I say, more inclined to get judges and any other federal 
appointees they can."
 
"I see where you're coming from," Jeff replied. "It's just, I'm pretty 
used to dealing with the Boston PD, but I don't feel good about going 
in there and lying to the FBI. It makes me nervous."
 
"Jeff, Jeff," Eddie consoled. "Just relax. Tell the exact same story 
that we came up with, the same story you've been telling all along, and 
everything will be fine. Boston PD, FBI, it'll always be your word 
against hers. There's no way they can possibly prove you *didn't* have an 
affair with Kittleson, now is there?"
 
"Yeah, but what if they trust her word more than mine?"
 
Eddie Stack just smiled and shook his head. "Doesn't matter, man. If 
this goes public, if people start to hear about a judge who may have 
slept with a couple defendants in order to get their charges thrown out, 
she'll be hung in the court of public opinion. People love those crazy 
headlines..." At that point Eddie spread his hands out, as if visualizing 
the front page of a newspaper. "'Charges dismissed for sexual favors'," 
he pronounced grandly, "But if it turns out, months later, that she 
didn't do it, the story'll be buried on page 26 of the Globe and no one's 
gonna read it. At the very least, any case she ever presided over's 
gonna be called into doubt. Doubt as in reasonable doubt, you know what 
that means, right, Jeff?"
 
"Yeah, of course," Jeff muttered. "But... a judge? Forcing men to sleep 
with her? I mean who's gonna buy that?"
 
"Shit, Jeff, just about any lawyer in this town! They give us a little 
bit of Internet access back here, and I found a Website, for the Boston 
Court Buffs. Heard of 'em?" Jeff shook his head.
 
"Well, They're some old geezers who like to gossip about judges and 
lawyers. Anyway, turns out this old broad has slept with just about every 
criminal defense attorney in town! She's gettin' more tail than I ever 
got in my life, and that's even including the time I was a jar head 
down in southeast Asia!"
 
"Crap, Eddie," Jeff whispered loudly, "Do you have to be so loud about 
it? I mean, what if they're recording this?"
 
"Listen, ever since I've been holed up in here, I've been taking 
advantage of the library they have here and all they books they've got about 
the law. They can't record any of this without a warrant, and they 
can't get a warrant unless they have some reason to believe something 
suspicious is going on. Which they don't, because nobody suspects a thing! 
You got it?"
 
"But what if we get caught?"
 
"We won't get caught! What's wrong, Jeff, your feet getting cold all of 
a sudden? You're not about to back out on me, are you?"
 
"No! I just... This is a big thing, I just want to make sure we've 
thought of everything."
 
Eddie Stack just stared at him for a long time, a grin forming about 
his face. "If you need something to think about," he began, leaning up 
close to the glass,
 
"Then think about this: I get out of here, 250 grand is all yours, and 
you never have to see me again in your life. Is that enough incentive 
to keep telling your Kittleson story or not?"
 
"Yeah. Yeah, that's plenty." Jeff knew he could have no other answer. 
If he even considered backing out of this scheme now, Eddie's drug 
dealer cronies would make sure it was the last mistake Jeff ever made.
 
"Glad you're still aboard," Eddie Stack told him, hanging up his phone 
receiver.
 
There was no way out now, Jeff Morris realized, walking back towards 
the heavy steel door. From here on in, all he could do was play his part 
in this sick drama and hope for the best.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
David Arnold stood in his room stewing. He couldn't figure out who he 
hated most: phonies, cowards, or hypocrites. His former lawyer Bobby 
Donnell could easily fit into any of those three categories. As expected, 
no other lawyer in town wanted to deal with David's case. He was most 
likely going to end up in the hands of some pathetic public defender who 
wasn't going to do much more than cross his fingers and pray for a 
chance of parole. Donnell was the only one in town who had even shown some 
interest in taking on the case. But in the end he couldn't do it, he 
was a coward, too, after all.
 
The teenager stuffed a short, blunt-nosed semi-automatic machine gun 
into his gym bag. Next he slid a metal box from the bottom of his closet, 
far behind his laundry basket. Unlocking the padlock, he pulled out two 
pistols. He slid one into the waistband of his faded black jeans and 
dropped another into the gym bag, *just in case*, he thought.
 
Next he needed a sufficient amount of ammunition. He had no idea how 
long he would be holding police officers at bay, so he stocked up a great 
deal. Now, where was the ammo for the machine gun? he asked himself. 
All of his guns and all of his ammo had to be securely hidden away from a 
couple of parents that were even nosier and probed even deeper in the 
wake of his bogus arrest. The bullets were under the sink in the 
adjoining bathroom, he realized. Flinging open the cabinet, he tossed out 
bottles of shaving cream and packages of toilet paper all out onto the 
bathroom floor. There they were, two large boxes of bullets, and --- hello 
--- he spotted another of his sizable firearms collection, this time an 
assault rifle he had forgotten he had.
 
He lifted it, feeling its weight in his hand. He had barely used it and 
the metal still glistened. He carried it back into his bedroom. It was 
quite a prized possession, being the only fully automatic weapon he had 
had the good fortune to come across. Yes, he would take this weapon 
too. This would be perfect for teaching those lawyers a lesson about being 
hypocrites and phonies. Just then the door swung open, and David's 
father appeared.
 
"David, we've got to be down at the courthouse for---" He froze in his 
tracks and all the blood seemed to instantly flow from his face.
 
"What is that? What the Hell do you think you're doing, son? Huh? 
Didn't getting arrested teach you a goddamn thing?" His father's face grew 
more and more flushed. "I swear to God, I don't know how I ever raised a 
moron like you! You're fucked in the head, David, and you're gonna end 
up in prison just like everyone else in this society who's fucked in 
the head!"
 
David seethed but remained quiet. All of the bruises and fractures had 
taught him well what would happen if he dared talk back to his father. 
As the older man screamed, all David did was caress the trigger of the 
automatic rifle with his finger.
 
"Do you hear me, you jackass? Do you understand the words I'm saying 
for a change?"
 
David began playing a delicious thought in his head, about how nice it 
would be to just start squeezing that trigger and blow his father way 
right then and there.
 
Some seconds passed, and David suddenly became aware of himself again. 
What was he just thinking of? He had gotten so lost in his daydream 
that... He noticed wisps of smoke coming from the muzzle of the rifle in 
his hands. He followed the trail of the weapon down to the ground, where 
the bullet-riddled body of his father lay slumped against the wall. He 
didn't remember squeezing the trigger, but, certainly, he must have 
been the one to have done it. It was all for the better, he figured. He 
turned his father's limp body over on one side, reaching into his pants 
pocket for the car keys. It was easier this way; At least he wasn't 
going to have to beg to borrow the car this time. Keys in hand, he picked 
up his gym bag and calmly walked downstairs. It was time to pay a visit 
to a certain former lawyer of his.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 18

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 19
Author: Albert, Emily (c'est moi), and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13, for violence and language
 
Disclaimer: Disclaimer from my previous parts still stands. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ellenor sat on the beach, letting the light waves of water gently 
ripple over her bare toes. The lake was calm and quiet. It seemed that not a 
single creature dared to make noise, so as to not disturb her. The 
world around her sensed that she needed quiet and the peaceful harmony of 
nature, so she could reflect on her day.
 
Ellenor gently closed her eyes and let the thick fog of memory 
overwhelm her... *Ellenor walked slowly through the wide iron gates. The stone 
path was worn and ancient, and her shoes made small rubbing noises 
against them, like quick, soft moans. She was alone, but it felt like large 
groups of people had suddenly turned to smile at her. As if to 
accentuate the feeling, she turned to see a tall stone angel, with her arms 
outspread. The angel smiled down on Ellenor, encouraging her, reaching out 
to protect her.
 
Ellenor took a deep breath and moved on down the path. She passed more 
angels and a number of headstones, some almost completely hidden by 
overgrown grass. Soon she came to a large iron archway. Perched on top was 
the star of David. She gazed up at it wistfully and felt for the cool 
lump of metal laying against her chest under her shirt, her own star. 
'Just keep walking,' she whispered to herself. So she did keep walking. 
She strode past the headstones of countless people, some she had even 
known. Eventually she came to a small area near a large weeping willow. 
It was far enough away from the tree to avoid it's roots, but near 
enough to let a little shade from the tree to fall across it.
 
She stared down at four headstones, each with scripture from the Torah 
written on it in Hebrew. Each of the headstones held a carefully etched 
name, names that she knew very well. Daniel J. Frutt, i969-1977. 
Michael R. Frutt, 1957-1977. Lillian Anne Frutt, 1934-1977. Johnathan M. 
Frutt, 1932-1977. She cringed as she read the last name, but stepped 
forward.
 
She stooped before the first headstone and placed a small white stone 
on its edge. 'Oh, Danny,' she whispered. 'I loved you so much. I still 
love you, and you wouldn't believe how much I think of you. As hard as 
you had it, as many disadvantages as you had, you never once stopped 
smiling. You were so brilliant, and brave, and strong. You were always so 
ready to give a hug, or a kind word, and you never thought a thing 
about giving your love so freely. I'm so sorry, Danny. You deserved so much 
better. You would have been the most amazing man, and I'm sorry I 
didn't do all I could to help you get there.'
 
She paused to squeeze her eyes shut and wipe away her tears before 
moving on to the next headstone. Once again, she produced a small stone 
from her pocket, and placed it just to the side of the writing. 'Mike,' 
she chuckled softly under her breath. 'What can I say? You introduced me 
to beer. You covered for me more times than I can count, when I came 
home late. You told me dirty jokes to make me laugh when I was sick, and 
forged signatures so I could get out of school when I wanted to. You 
helped me with homework, and told me how to work the system. You were the 
greatest big brother I could ask for. Even when you turned eighteen and 
had the chance to leave, you stuck around to make sure we were safe. 
You paid the ultimate price for loving us so much, and you have no idea 
how grateful I am. I'm so sorry it's me standing here talking to 
headstones. It should be you.'
 
Ellenor rose solemnly and moved to the next headstone, placing a small 
rock on it as she had the others. 'Mom, you did your best,' Ellenor 
looked up at the bright blue sky and pondered her words. 'You did you 
best, and I'm indebted to you for that forever. You gave me life, and you 
protected it as best you could. You were always there to give advice and 
support, and you always forgave my faults. You focused on the best 
things about me, and let me know they were there. You never gave up on me, 
even when I was arrested or expelled. You made me try my hardest, and 
congratulated me when I did my best, no matter how bad my best was. I 
wish you could have gotten more help, God knows you needed it. I love 
you, Mom.'
 
Ellenor moved on to the final headstone and placed one last stone from 
her pocket on top of it. 'Daddy,' she spoke through tears. 'If only 
you'd gotten the help you needed. It was never you who got mad. You were 
never the hateful one. I know how much you loved me, and I love you till 
the end, no matter how bad it got. I remember how you used to keep 
candy in your pockets,' she smiled. 'It would melt all the time, and Mom 
would get mad at you for staining your clothes, but you didn't care. You 
wanted to keep it on hand for whenever any one of us might want a 
piece. You loved us so much, Dad. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry that we didn't 
get you help. I'm so sorry, Dad...' Ellenor broke into silent sobs that 
shook her body.*
 
"Ellie?" Ellenor turned her head, startled.
 
"Sammy, hey..." She looked up at her old friend, with a loving smile.
 
"So, what did you do today?" Sammy asked as he sat down beside her, and 
wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
 
"I went to see them, Sammy."
 
"Oh," He gently kissed her bowed forehead. "Are you alright?"
 
Ellenor smiled sadly. "Yeah. I think I'm doing OK."
 
"In that case, you wanna' go in and have some pizza? It's fresh from 
work."
 
"Actually, I kinda' like the way it is right now. Could we just sit 
here a while longer?"
 
Sammy smiled warmly and rubbed her back. "Sure. I kinda' like the way 
it is right now, too." Ellenor leaned her head on Sammy's shoulder, and 
they watched the gentle rise and fall of the waves on the lake.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Hey, Lindsay?" Rebecca called as she walked over to Lindsay's desk.
 
"Yeah?" Lindsay turned her head from her computer screen.
 
"Could you do me a favor?"
 
Lindsay swung her legs out from under her desk so that she could face 
Rebecca. She leaned her elbows on her knees and looked up intently. 
"Sure."
 
Rebecca pulled a chair from nearby up to Lindsay's desk and sat down.
 
"Has Bobby filled you in on the details of Ellenor's absence?" A slight 
frown settled over Rebecca's face.
 
"Up until your little escapade with Lucy the other night. Why?" Lindsay 
raised her eyebrows expectantly.
 
"I need you to find out some information on Ellenor's family. I find it 
a little disturbing that she had to look up the phone numbers and 
addresses of her own brother and sister. I think something might not be good 
between them, and that worries me."
 
"You think maybe her brother and sister abducted her?" Lindsay looked 
disbelieving.
 
"I don't know. But something happened when Ellenor was sixteen, and it 
put a serious rift in between her and her family. I want you to pull up 
as much as you can get on her family, and maybe on her history."
 
"Well, wait a minute! How am I even supposed to get access to that?"
 
"You're good with computers," Rebecca gestured to the lit up screen on 
Lindsay's desk. "You're telling me you can't find something?"
 
Lindsay's tone was disapproving. "You mean hack into something?"
 
"Do you want to help Ellenor or not? I think she's in some serious 
trouble here, but I don't know what to look for unless I know what's wrong 
in her family. She *did* say she was going to see her family, but from 
what I've found out, it doesn't seem very likely that Ellenor would 
want to spend time with them. Please, Lindsay. For Ellenor?"
 
Lindsay just sighed and turned towards the computer.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 19

--------------------------------------------------------------------





Title: Behind the Lies part 20
Author: Albert (me), Emily, and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13, for violence and language
 
Disclaimer: Emily's wacky disclaimers from previous parts still stand.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby faced the door to Kittleson's chambers. The microphone FBI Agent 
Rollins had strapped to his stomach had already begun irritating his 
skin. He had to remember not to itch it at any time during his 
conversation with Judge Kittleson, lest she grow too suspicious. He straightened 
his jacket, and put on his best poker face. That's all this really was, 
wasn't it? Just a glorified, high-stakes version of a friendly poker 
game. Bobby had played many of those during his years in law school. He 
remembered all the nights, winning the admiration (as well as the 

paychecks
) of his fellow classmates because not one among them could tell 
when Bobby was bluffing. Among a circle of would-be lawyers, this was 
indeed an achievement.
 
So that was what he was going to do now; Remain stone-faced, bluff his 
way through this, and see if Judge Kittleson called his hand. He rapped 
sharply on the door of her chambers. The gray-haired judge opened the 
door. She was hanging up her robe, as if she had just returned from 
court. Her lips pursed together tightly upon the sight of Bobby. "What is 
it this time?" she said harshly.
 
"I think you know what I want," he said quietly but purposefully. 
Kittleson opened the door the rest of the way and sat down.
 
"What is it this time, Bobby? Another one of your partners get stabbed 
by a nun?"
 
Bobby entered, making sure the door was tightly shut behind him. "Not 
quite," he said, taking a seat across from her.
 
"Well, then," she said with a falsely bright tone, tapping a pen 
against her lips. "This wouldn't be a social call, would it? Certainly I 
can't be that fortunate, or unfortunate, as the case might be."
 
Bobby leaned forward. *Your best poker face*, he told himself. "Jimmy 
and I are prepared to go to the police."
 
Kittleson only shook her head calmly. "It certainly wouldn't be a 
first. So tell me, Bobby, what's the charge going to be this time?"
 
"I don't know what's on the DA's mind, but I imagine witness tampering, 
obstruction of justice, and judicial misconduct will be pretty high up 
there."
 
"Ah, does this have anything to do with Mister Berlutti's little 
sex-in-chambers fantasy about me? The one he was screaming on and on about in 
open court the other day? We all know how that ended up. What possible 
reason could he have to keep flogging a dead horse?"
 
"We met another former defendant in one of your cases. He tells a story 
quite similar to Steve Moffet."
 
Kittleson fell silent for a moment, her smile fading. "Might I know the 
name of this new witness?" she asked with a nervous grin.
 
"No, I'm afraid you can't. He wants to remain anonymous for the time 
being."
 
Kittleson chuckled and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk. 
"Well, then. How do I know you're not just bluffing?" Bobby's 
expression remained a blank. "This is no bluff."
 
"Fine. Fine, then. Let them testify against me. Obviously you will find 
no proof, because it never happened. And then, you know what, Bobby?" 
she asked.
 
"It will be my word against theirs. The word of a highly respected 
judge, versus two men who most likely have criminal records and are very 
closely associated with criminals. Do you really think you have a case 
against me?"
 
"There's a third witness."

"Who?"
 
"This one isn't a criminal. In fact, he's a highly respected lawyer 
here in Boston. Almost as highly respected as the judge in this particular 
scenario."
 
He could see the wheels turning in Kittleson's head as she realized who 
that third witness was. Her face turned pale and she began to clench 
her hands into fists. "Bobby... You wouldn't dare..."
 
"It's the only choice I have," Bobby said firmly. "If I tell the police 
that you came on to me during a case then..."
 
"At the very worst, that is sexual harassment!" she cried.
 
"That is NOT the same thing as witness tampering."
 
"But it makes witness tampering a whole Hell of a lot easier to 
believe, doesn't it?"
 
"Bobby!" she shouted, "I am going to tell you this only once: You do 
not want to betray the confidence of a judge! I have many, many friends. 
I could ruin you...!"
 
"I'll take that chance!" he returned.
 
"If I can't stop you from letting criminals go, or putting innocent men 
behind bars just to satisfy your own sick impulses, then I'm a disgrace 
to the legal profession anyway!"
 
She immediately rocked back in her chair. "Is that really what you 
think of me?" Bobby remained silent. "Is it, Bobby? You think I'm some 
sex-crazed monster who will make defendants and witnesses sleep with me? 
Well, I suppose that's a far cry better than considering me a homicidal 
maniac like you did a few weeks ago."
 
"I have to do whatever it takes to protect the interests of my clients, 
Roberta. You of all people should know that. Isn't that why you came to 
me to defend you in your sexual harassment suit in the first place?"
 
"I know," she told him, with a faraway look on her face.
 
"But, in a way, I think I know what is going through your mind. There 
are times when you tell yourself your enemy is a monster, because then 
it's easier to attack them. But I'm not a monster, Bobby. I'm not evil 
incarnate."
 
Bobby absently rubbed his chin, staring out the window of Roberta's 
chambers. He had never thought of her as evil, just obsessed with sex. 
Yes, he did have her arrested for stabbing Lindsay, but under the 
circumstances --- the scratched out photo, the nun outfit in Kittleson's closet 
--- any guy with a girlfriend in the hospital would have done the same 
thing.
 
Kittleson seemed to sense what Bobby was thinking. She began speaking 
again very gently. "Now, I know you don't want to go to the police. You 
don't want to endure that kind of publicity any more than I do. And 
like it or not, you are jeopardizing your relationship with every judge in 
Boston. Now, come on, Bobby. Isn't there some way we can work this out, 
and make it all go away?"
 
"Maybe so," he said, turning to her. "We could forget about going to 
the police, but only if you admit you have a problem. And maybe agree to 
undergo some counseling."
 
"Counseling?" she said, her brow furrowing. "Counseling for what?"
 
"For your obvious sexual addiction," he told her.
 
Kittleson just began laughing loudly in response. "Bobby Donnell, 
junior psychologist!"
 
"Roberta, I'm serious, I think you have a problem." He became deathly 
serious, as if he were just about to lay down his trump card. "Just 
between you and me, did you sleep with those two men?"
 
She then took a deep breath, as if she were near some sort of breaking 
point. "Bobby, listen to me, because this is the only time I will say 
this: I have never slept with anyone while they were involved in a case 
I was presiding over. And I did not sleep with Steve Moffet, and I 
surely did not sleep with Jeff Morris! Do you understand?"
 
Bobby was dumbstruck for a moment. He struggled for something to say in 
response. "Yeah," he said in a falsely nonchalant tone. "I understand." 
Right about then, all he wanted to do was get out of those chambers as 
quickly as possible, before Kittleson realized what she had just said.
 
"And I will not submit to counseling for a problem that I do not have! 
So go to the police for all I care, it will be the biggest mistake of 
your career, Bobby!"
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Jonathan Rollins and Lauren Andrews were beside themselves after what 
they had just heard transpiring between Bobby and Judge Kittleson.
 
"And you're absolutely positive?" Rollins asked him for the fiftieth 
time.
 
"There was no way she could have known that Morris was the other 
witness you mentioned?"
 
"I told you, no!" Bobby said with a tinge of annoyance. He stepped out 
of the elevator and began heading down the corridor to his office.
 
"You were listening, you heard the conversation we had!"
 
"Yes, that's true," Andrews said, close on his heels. "But could you 
have given her any other types of clues? Non-verbal clues between the two 
of you that might have indicated his identity?"
 
"What are you asking me?" Bobby scoffed. "Did I spell out 'Jeff Morris' 
in sign language?"
 
"No!" Rollins cried just as they were at the door. "It's just, we have 
to make sure, Bobby. This is the most incriminating thing she's done in 
the entire time we've been investigating her."
 
"John, I know..." Lauren glanced about and saw various people walking 
through the halls. "Let's go inside, where we can discuss this 
privately," she told them both.
 
Bobby opened the door and the three of them stepped inside. He glanced 
about the office. Jimmy and Eugene were both there, searching through 
file cabinets for something. Both Lucy and Lindsay were at their desks. 
Lucy seemed to be staring off into space again, while Lindsay was 
completely absorbed with whatever was displayed on her computer screen.
 
"Bobby!" Lucy said brightly, rising from her chair.
 
"Any calls?"
 
"Just Helen Gamble. She wanted to know about..."
 
"Call her office, let her know I'll be tied up for a little while," he 
told her, hanging his coat on the rack by the door.
 
"Rebecca's out getting lunch for all of us," the redheaded teenager 
began. "I can call her on her cell phone if the three of you want 
anything..."
 
"No, that's alright, Lucy, thanks anyway." Bobby motioned for the two 
FBI agents to follow him inside his office.
 
Once there, Bobby slammed the door and began undoing buttons on his 
shirt. "You'll both have to forgive me," he told them, slowly removing the 
white bandage tape that held the recording device to his stomach. He 
winced as the tape snagged a hair or two as it came off. He felt a little 
bit awkward doing this with a woman present, but that thing absolutely 
positively had to come off. "Sorry, Lauren," he said to the female 
agent.
 
"Oh, it's quite alright," she said in a breathy tone, her eyes 
apparently fixated on Bobby's bare chest. She made a slight motion as if she 
were shaking herself out of deep thought. "I mean, don't worry about it, 
Mister Donnell. We know how uncomfortable those things can be."
 
"So just to make sure everyone's on the same page," Rollins began 
sharply,
 
"Here's where we're at. You mentioned there were two witnesses against 
her. Obviously she knew about Moffet already. But you never once 
mentioned Jeff Morris, yet she knew he was the other witness. How can that 
be?"
 
"Because she really did have an affair with him," Andrews offered up.
 
Bobby handed the recording device to John. "I believe this is yours," 
he told the man, buttoning his shirt back up.
 
"Yes, yes," Rollins said, accepting the device, but still lost in 
thought. "That would seem the obvious conclusion. But is there any way she 
could have possibly known you and your firm have had contact with 
Morris?"
 
"No, not at all," Bobby told him. "Jimmy met with him, and he only told 
me about it. The other partners of this firm know there's a second 
witness, but they don't know who that person is. I told him to keep quiet 
on it, and I have no reason to suspect he did otherwise."
 
Rollins glanced over at Agent Andrews. "Is it good enough?" he asked 
her.
 
Lauren Andrews just looked down at her folded hands. "It's good," she 
replied.
 
"But is it good enough to bring charges against Kittleson? I really 
don't know."
 
"Bobby?" someone asked. Bobby looked over to see that Lucy had barged 
into his office yet again.
 
"Lucy..." Bobby grumbled in response, about to admonish her for the 
twentieth time for not knocking first.
 
"I'm really sorry," she said, heading off his scolding, "But there are 
two men here, and I really think they need to see you now."
 
Bobby smiled to the two agents in his office. "I'll be right back," he 
told them, walking out.
 
There were two men in dull gray suits standing in the middle of the 
office, both taking on rigid postures. One was a pale, extremely tall man 
with thinning blond hair, while the other was dark skinned and stout.
 
"Mister Donnell?" asked the tall one, in a deep, booming voice. "Robert 
Donnell?"
 
"Yes, that's me, can I help you gentlemen?"
 
"Mister Donnell, I'm Agent Hasenback with the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation," the man began, flashing his ID card.
 
"What's this about?" Bobby asked.
 
"We're placing you under arrest," Agent Hasenback declared.
 
"What?" all of the lawyers cried nearly in unison.
 
Lindsay charged forward first. "What's the charge?"
 
"Conspiracy, obstruction of justice, extortion," Hasenback listed off 
evenly.
 
"You have the right to remain silent..."
 
"I know my rights! What did I do?" Bobby said, incredulous.
 
"We have it on tape, Mister Donnell," said the shorter agent.
 
"We know all about what you tried just now with Judge Kittleson."
 
"Judge Kittleson?" Jimmy cried, stepping forward. "But, Bobby, I 
thought that..."
 
"This is all just a misunderstanding," Bobby said to him firmly.
 
"Well, you can straighten all this out down at the field office, come 
on."
 
"You don't understand! I can explain everything!" Bobby cried 
frantically.
 
"Explain it to a judge," the shorter agent sneered, beginning to push 
Bobby out the door.
 
"Paul?" came a voice from the door of Bobby's office.
 
Agent Hasenback turned to see Agent Rollins standing there. "Jonathon? 
What in the hell are you doing here?"
 
"What are *you* doing here, Paul?"
 
"We're arresting Donnell, that's what we're doing."
 
"You are?" A wacky grin formed about Agent Rollins' face.
 
"Donnell is working undercover for us! We had him wired when he went in 
and talked to Kittleson!"
 
Hasenback's eyes grew wide. "We had *Kittleson* wired when Donnell went 
in to talk to her!"
 
"Well, I'll be damned," was all Rollins could say.
 
"Oh, just great," Lindsay shouted. "I love the way you guys coordinate 
things down at the FBI!"
 
"Lindsay..." Bobby groaned.
 
"You mean to tell me you and Andrews were investigating Kittleson all 
along?" Hassenback asked. "Well, goddamn. I think the four of us had 
better talk."
 
"In here," Rollins said, motioning the agents into Bobby's office. 
"Bobby, you too."
 
Bobby brought up the rear as the three of them filed into his office. 
When he got to the door, he turned to his fellow lawyers and simply 
shrugged.
 
"Our tax dollars at work," he heard Lindsay snipe as he quickly closed 
the door.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
In his office, Bobby and the four agents were listening to the tail end 
of a jailhouse conversation recorded on tape.
 
"But what if we get caught?" It was a voice Bobby had never heard 
before, but the agents had told him it was Jeff Morris.
 
"We won't get caught!" This was Edward Stack's voice.
 
"What's wrong, Jeff, your feet getting cold all of a sudden? You're not 
about to back out on me, are you?"
 
"No! I just... This is a big thing," Jeff Morris was saying. "I just 
want to make sure we've thought of everything."
 
"If you need something to think about, then think about this: I get out 
of here, 250 grand is all yours, and you never have to see me again in 
your life. Is that enough incentive to keep telling your Kittleson 
story or not?"
 
At the moment, Agent Hasenback stopped the tape. Bobby, Jonathan, and 
Lauren just sat there silently for a moment, rendered speechless by the 
implications of what they just heard.
 
"I can't believe it," Rollins finally spoke up. "This was all just a 
plot to get Kittleson from the start. And Stack cooked it up 
single-handedly."
 
"When Mister Donnell called up Judge Kittleson to arrange a meeting, we 
decided to take advantage of the opportunity," Agent Hasenback 
explained. "We wired her chambers, and when Donnell began issuing ultimatums, 
we assumed that he was a part of this whole scheme. But I guess we were 
wrong. We're sorry for making a scene in your office, Mister Donnell."
 
"It's fine," Bobby said, dismissing it. "I just can't believe that 
after all this, Kittleson didn't even do it!"
 
"When she first came to us, we investigated this fully," Hasenback 
said. "We wanted to make sure the charges weren't genuine, and that she 
wasn't using accusations of extortion to cover up real crimes. But there 
wasn't a shred of proof behind Stack's claims. Both the dismissals in 
these two cases were legal and fair."
 
"So that's how she knew about Morris!" Andrews said. "She knew about 
him from YOU guys..."
 
"So now what?" Bobby asked Jonathan.
 
"Well, we arrest Moffet, Morris, and Stack as soon as we can get a 
judge to write up a warrant. But as far as Kittleson goes, there's no 
reason to believe she's done anything illegal."
 
"So, what does that mean? Case closed?"
 
"It appears that way," Lauren Andrews answered. Before Bobby could say 
another word, there was suddenly an awful commotion coming from outside 
his office. Someone screamed! Was that Lindsay or Lucy?
 
"What's going on out there?" Rollins asked as everyone rose to their 
feet.
 
"I have no idea," Bobby said, going to the door. Before he could open 
it, the door burst open, and he couldn't believe who he saw standing 
there.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Lindsay was clicking her mouse furiously. The past couple of hours of 
Web searching had told her almost nothing. She prided herself on being 
the one person she knew who could find almost anything on the Internet, 
but in the case of the family Frutt, she was turning up nil. At that 
particular moment, it was Ellenor's older brother Michael who was 
beginning to look as if he vanished from the Earth without a trace. According 
to the yearbooks Lucy and Rebecca had found in Ellenor's apartment, 
Michael had been the model student over in Weston, a small suburb of 
Boston. He was bound to graduate with honors, a member of the speech and 
debate club, and apparently had stolen the show at numerous school plays. 
But here she was, perusing every alumni page ever created for Weston 
High and there was no mention of him at all.
 
Taking a deep breath, she began researching every student that was in 
the same class as Michael Frutt. She visited a dizzying array of 
personal homepages, corporate pages, pages for small Internet 
startups
, you 
name it. One of Michael's old classmates apparently owned a restaurant 
here in Boston. She was glancing over the Web page of this restaurant, 
reading its incredibly detailed menu and feeling her mouth beginning to 
water. She was beginning to wonder where the hell Rebecca was with 
lunch, when a small, barely noticeable sentence at the very bottom of the 
page brought all thoughts of food to a halt. IN MEMORY OF MICHAEL FRUTT, 
it said. Lindsay felt her stomach sink. Immediately, she returned to 
the Web site of the Weston Times newspaper, and tried something she 
didn't do before: search the obituaries. She sat there, incredulous at what 
she was finding, trying to understand it all.
 
She didn't get a chance to think about it for very long. Lucy was 
suddenly screaming. She looked at the young girl, seeing that her face was 
twisted into an expression of horror that Lindsay had never seen form 
her before. She searched for the source of Lucy's horror. A young male, 
probably about 18 or 19, was at the door of the office, aiming a large 
assault rifle directly at Lucy. Lindsay immediately dove down behind her 
desk, out of sight. Oh dear God, she thought, not here, not now, not 
again. Can't I work in my own goddamn office without being attacked 
anymore?! she thought angrily.
 
"Shut up! Shut up!" came the intruder's voice. "Stop screaming or I'll 
shoot you!" Lucy's cries instantly diminished. "And you two! Put your 
hands where I can see them!" It must have been Eugene and Jimmy that he 
was barking commands at.
 
"Look," came Eugene's voice, barely disguising the fear that he must 
have been feeling. "Just relax, and tell us what you want. No one has to 
get hurt here."
 
"Yeah, yeah, that's right," Jimmy chimed in. "If you're after money, 
then we'll give it to you. It's no problem. We've got no problem here."
 
"Shut up, you goddamn phonies!" the teenager cried. "That's what you 
are, all of you! A bunch of phonies and cowards!"
 
"Why do you say that, David?" Eugene asked. "David, that's your name, 
right?"
 
"How the hell would you know?" he shouted defensively.
 
That's right, Lindsay thought. Just keep him talking, Eugene. She 
quietly took her keys from her purse and began searching for the one that 
unlocked her desk drawer.
 
"I read about you in the papers, David," Eugene said calmly. "I know 
that you feel a lot of people have done you wrong, but that's no reason 
to---"
 
"Stop wasting my time, godammit!" the teenager shouted. "I don't give a 
shit about you! I'm only here for one person.. that coward, hypocrite 
Donnell!"
 
Oh no, please, Lindsay thought. She had to get in her desk drawer. She 
felt herself near to tears as the lock stuck slightly, but at last, the 
key turned and the drawer slid open. Now she was going to teach this 
teenager a lesson. She was not going to be attacked in her own office 
again. Never again.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Bobby backed away slowly from David Arnold as an assault rifle was 
aimed directly at him. "I'll teach you to be a hypocrite!" the teenager 
spat.
 
"David, you don't want to do this," Bobby told him. "What you've done 
so far isn't terrible. If they sent you away you could be out in just a 
few years." He glanced over at the four FBI agents that were in his 
office at that moment. They all seemed to be watching, and waiting for the 
moment when they could take David Arnold down without Bobby getting 
caught in the middle.
 
Bobby continued talking, struggling to get as much space as possible 
between him and David. In a pinch, Bobby could just as easily become a 
hostage. "You don't want to be a murderer," Bobby told him, inching away. 
"You could end up being in prison for the rest of your life."
 
"Oh yeah? Well, guess what, I'm already a murderer! I just gunned down 
my own dad at close range. So what the hell is gonna stop me from 
killing you, huh? They can't put me in jail for longer than a life sentence, 
now can they? Huh?" David shouted. "Can they?"
 
Bobby felt cold sweat trickle down his face. If what he was saying was 
true, if Kenneth Arnold was indeed dead, then this might be it. Good 
God, Bobby began to think, I can't die here. Not because of this.. it 
doesn't make sense!
 
"Drop the gun!" someone shouted. Both Bobby and David turned to see 
four guns drawn, all pointed directly at the teenager. "Drop it now!" It 
was Lauren Andrews screaming these commands. David Arnold was 
momentarily stunned, and Bobby took advantage of that and ran behind the agents. 
The teenager was frozen in his tracks, undoubtedly surprised by the 
unlikely presence of four law enforcement officers in Bobby's office.
 
"You want to set your gun down right now, son," Jonathan Rollins 
instructed him. "You've got four FBI agents holding you at gunpoint right 
now. You really don't want to do anything stupid right now, son, trust me 
on this."
 
Without another word, David Arnold quietly set down his gun. Paul 
Hasenback took a step forward, unhooking the handcuffs from his belt. "Well, 
young man, I guess this just isn't your day, is it?"
 
Before he could handcuff David's wrists together, the door to Bobby's 
office flew open. Before Bobby could see who was there, shots were 
suddenly fired. Without another thought, he ducked down behind his desk. He 
heard glass shatter as bullets apparently took out one of the windows 
in his office.
 
"Drop the gun!" the agents cried again. The room fell silent, and Bobby 
peeked up from behind his desk. It was Lindsay, clutching a large 
handgun as tears began streaming down her face.
 
"Oh my god," she said. "I'm so sorry, I just thought that... I was 
trying to..."
 
"It's okay," Rollins said calmly. "No one's been hurt, all right? 
Just.. put down the gun, okay?"
 
Lindsay's hand fell limp and the gun fell to the ground with a loud 
thud.
 
"Lindsay!" Bobby cried, running to her.
 
"Oh God, Bobby," Lindsay sobbed, wrapping her arms around him. "I 
thought, I thought he was going to kill you... and I thought I would be too 
late to help you..."
 
"It's alright, it's alright," he said soothingly. "I'm fine, everyone's 
fine."
 
He held her tightly as she sobbed. He barely noticed the sharp sound of 
handcuffs being affixed on the wrists of David Arnold.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rebecca took a deep breath in the elevator, relaxing herself after the 
bumper-to-bumper traffic she had just endured. Why, oh why, do they 
always schedule *the* most extensive road maintenance during lunch hours? 
she thought. She finally reached her floor and walked down the corridor 
to the office.
 
"Sorry I'm late with lunch, guys," she announced once inside the 
office, not turning to face their sure-to-be-disapproving scowls. "So let's 
see, who had the ham and swiss?" When there was no reply she looked 
around.
 
The members of the firm were seated all around, holding their heads and 
staring into space as though they had just been through hell. Several 
police officers in uniform and what looked to be plain clothes officers 
mulled about the office. "Oh dear God," Rebecca said. "What just 
happened here?"
 
"It's okay," Bobby said wearily, sitting behind Rebecca's desk and 
rubbing his beck. "One of my clients, David Arnold, he came in with a gun, 
threatening to shoot up the place..."
 
"Oh no!" Rebecca cried, aghast.
 
"It's okay, it's alright. No one was hurt. There were FBI agents in my 
office and they disarmed him. So everything's alright."
 
"No thanks to Lindsay," Lucy chimed in. "She decided to charge into 
Bobby's office like Rambo."
 
"Be quiet," Lindsay told her.
 
"That does make me wonder, though," Bobby began. "What were you doing 
with a gun here in office?"
 
"You keep a gun in the office?" Rebecca asked.
 
"I've had it for a long time," Lindsay said, dismissing their 
questions.
 
"What in the world do you need a gun for?" Bobby asked.
 
"Because I'm perfectly within my legal rights to have one," she 
snapped. "And maybe I want to protect myself from former clients like our 
young friend who stormed in here just now!"
 
"Well, why in the world didn't you tell me..."
 
A police officer stepped forward and cut off Bobby's question. "I'm 
sorry to interrupt, but you're all going to have to come down to the 
station for questioning. We need to establish what happened here as soon as 
possible."
 
"Okay, fine," he groaned, rising to his feet. All the other members of 
the firm also rose to their feet slowly, and began to walk towards the 
front door.
 
"You, too," an officer told Rebecca.
 
"She wasn't even here," Eugene told the officer. "She was out getting 
us lunch the whole time this happened."
 
"Okay, fine," the officer responded. "But we're going to need to get 
statements from anyone else who might have been here."
 
"Everyone's accounted for," Bobby grumbled.
 
"Great, a statement," Lindsay grimaced, reaching for her purse. "I'll 
be lucky to remember anything of what just transpired here. The last 
thing I remember was..." Her voice suddenly trailed off. She stopped 
sharply, turning to face Rebecca.
 
"What is it?" Rebecca cried. "What's wrong?"
 
"Rebecca!" the other lawyer shouted in return. "Oh my God.. you won't 
believe what I found! I don't want to say out loud. Just go to my desk. 
Look at the Web page that's displayed right now, okay?" The police 
began to usher them out. "We'll talk when I get back," Lindsay told her, 
walking out the door to the office.
 
After she watched all the members of her firm file out, Rebecca grabbed 
her sandwich and took a seat at Lindsay's desk. Noticing that the 
screensaver was on, she jarred the mouse with a slight movement. Well, 
Lindsay, she thought, let's see what you found out.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

End part 20

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 




Title: "Behind the Lies" Part 21 
Author: Albert, Emily (Hi, Mom!!), and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for language an violent scenes.
 
Disclaimer: Hey, do any of you know David E. Kelley? What a 
coincidence, neither do I. Since I don't know him, I have no affiliations with 
him, and I have absolutely no rights to his characters. I'm not trying to 
take them, and if Albert or Ivan are, I have no part of it. And let's 
all remember that the characters created by me are only to be used by 
Albert, Ivan and me unless you have express permission from us.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"They're all dead," Rebecca commented dully. "That's why they weren't 
in any pictures after that certain point. They're dead."
 
"Not just dead, Rebecca," Lindsay remarked. "They all died on the same 
day."
 
Lindsay and Rebecca finally had a chance to catch up on the situation 
with Ellenor. The questioning of everyone in the office had taken hours, 
and night had fallen long ago. Now the women were alone in the office, 
sitting by Lindsay's desk.
 
"My, God. She lost her parents and two brothers in one day. Can you 
imagine? It's no wonder she changed so fast, it must have destroyed her 
when she found out." Rebecca shook her head sadly.
 
"There's something more. The obituaries had absolutely no information 
on the deaths, so I tried to find the hospital records. Just try and 
guess how they died." Lindsay had a disturbed look on her face, as if she 
was about to be sick.
 
"Well, they died on the same day, I assumed it was a car accident, or a 
fire, or something." Rebecca was almost afraid to be curious. Judging 
by the look on Lindsay's face, she didn't think she'd like what she was 
about to hear.
 
"They were murdered."
 
Rebecca gasped and widened her eyes. "Are you kidding?"
 
"No." Lindsay bowed her head. "They were taken from their home, all 
dead upon the arrival of the paramedics. I found part of the police 
report." She reached for some papers laying on her desk.
 
Rebecca was obviously shaken, but still managed to ask, "Only part?"
 
"Yeah," Lindsay nodded. "I had a hard time accessing what I did. They 
tossed me out of the confidential record area before I could get any 
more."
 
"What does it say?" Rebecca craned her neck to look at the papers.
 
"I just found partial police statements on the scene. Those kids did 
take it hard. Really hard. Apparently the cops who covered it knew the 
family. They mentioned everyone by their first name and made some pretty 
informal comments. Ellenor's sister was just barely fifteen at the 
time, she was the first one they mentioned. Here's a quote: 'Julie was 
incredibly distraught. Frankly, she was a mess. She went from sobbing and 
screaming in her brother's arms, to curling up in an armchair, mute, 
with a catatonic expression. She claimed that she belonged with her 
family, and even threatened with suicide. Questioning for Julie was very 
limited and mild, due to her state and past mental health. Most of her 
answers were offered via her brother and sister.'"
 
"Oh my God..." Rebecca's mouth fell open slightly.
 
Lindsay took a deep breath before continuing. "They talked about Mark, 
Ellenor's surviving brother, next." She began to read from the papers 
she had printed out, "'Mark was doing better than Julie, but only 
slightly. Shortly after the arrival of officers, he just sat down and started 
crying with his head in his hands. He repeatedly whispered that the 
event should never have happened, and even declared that it was entirely 
his fault. The boy broke down after answering certain questions about 
the event, and turned violent, putting his fist through the wall in two 
places before collapsing and sobbing uncontrollably. Questioning had to 
be finished at a later time due to his state.'"
 
Rebecca sounded shocked and dazed. "What about Ellenor?" she whispered.
 
Lindsay just lowered her eyes and began reading from the papers again, 
rather than making a comment. "'I think we were all a little worried 
about Ellie. She faced the event with extreme denial, which is, of 
course, understandable. She was covered in the victims' blood, but refused to 
change her clothes. Upon being asked why she wasn't very upset, Ellie 
stated that she had no reason to be upset and that her family was 
perfectly safe. She told officers that her parents would be home soon and 
that everything would be alright then. Despite officers' peaceful efforts, 
she walked back into the room where the crime had taken place. When she 
saw the blood in the room, she quickly told officers that she would 
clean it up, or else her mother would be upset. When I pointed out the 
blood on her own clothes, she became startled and confused. She stated 
that she must have cut herself, but didn't know when or how.
 
"'When I was forced to insist that the event had, in fact, happened, 
Ellie became furious and screamed at me to stop lying to her. When I 
answered that I was telling the truth, she attacked me. Two officers 
restrained her, but she broke loose and ran from the house. We followed and 
soon found her by the lake, weeping as she tried to wash off the blood 
on her hands and clothing. Ellie refused to come back to the house and 
soon became extremely distressed. She eventually had to be sedated.'"
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ellenor and Sammy were curled up on the couch in Sammy's apartment 
watching TV. They had been spending their nights there as of a couple of 
days after their initial reunion the day Ellenor returned to Weston. They 
had quickly become tired of having pizza for every meal and the 
electricity had been cut off from Ellenor's house decades ago, leaving them at 
a loss for dinner options. Added to this was the lack of lights and 
running water. They had compromised to spend evenings lounging in Sammy's 
apartment, but Ellenor still returned to her home every day, forced 
there by some invisible pull of loyalty.
 
Ellenor's head rested on Sammy's shoulder while Sammy stroked her hair. 
He shifted his head so that he could lay a gentle kiss on Ellenor's 
forehead.
 
"This may seem insensitive, but I really wish you'd felt the need to 
come see your family a long time ago."
 
Ellenor pulled back slightly so she could look at him. "Really?" She 
smiled wryly. "You're right, that does sound insensitive."
 
Sammy shook his head and smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, but it's 
just that... Doesn't this feel right to you?" He turned his body 
joltingly so that he could face her. "This feels like... Well, like it should 
have been this way years ago when we were kids. It feels like we should 
have been this way the entire time you were gone. This feels right."
 
Ellenor glanced away and gave a small smile, trying to cover how 
uncomfortable and guilty she was feeling about the conversation. " I... I 
know, Sammy. It... does feel like a lot of time's been wasted, but..." She 
looked down, whispering, "But I had to leave."
 
Sammy spoke quickly in a comforting voice, "Hey, I know that." He 
gently lifted Ellenor's chin. "I know. I understand that you had to leave. 
God, your life crashed. that's not your fault. I'm just saying... I 
missed you, Ellie."
 
"Do you really understand, Sammy? Do you know just how horribly my life 
crashed? Do you get how much I needed to leave?" Ellenor searched 
Sammy's eyes for some measure of understanding her words had brought, but 
didn't allow her voice to take on an accusing tone.
 
"Yes. Yes! God, Ellie, your parents died, two of your brothers *died*. 
I can understand that you needed to put that behind you."
 
Ellenor gave a short laugh that held no humor. "It wasn't just that."
 
Sammy's body tensed. "Ellie?"
 
Ellenor laughed emptily again. "What, Sammy? You're telling me word 
didn't get around? Four members of a wealthy, high-class, yacht-club 
family are buried under the weeping willow in the Jewish cemetery, the other 
three disappear, and the entire community just keeps quiet? That's a 
joke. This is a small town, and the police and hospital aren't that 
strict about confidentiality."
 
"You'd be surprised at the loyalty the community had to your family, 
Ellie. Yeah, there was some gossip, but no real word of *anything* ever 
got out." He reached forward to gently rub her back. "Actually, the most 
surprising *truth* was that you guys never went to the funerals. That 
and that *you* didn't say goodbye. That's mostly what we knew was true. 
The rest was just speculation."
 
Ellenor looked away again. "We covered the mirrors. We sat shiva for 
them. We *did* mourn."
 
Sammy sighed and looked away, frustrated, before turning back to her. 
"Ellie, I wasn't accusing you of doing anything else! Why do you think I 
*am* accusing you of something?"
 
There was the scent of challenge in Ellenor's voice. "Maybe you should 
be."
 
"What?" Sammy's forehead wrinkled and his eyebrows dipped in shock.
 
"You just said that you don't really know anything. How do you know you 
shouldn't be accusing me?" Ellenor's eyes were dark. "How do you know?"
 
There was a brief, tense silence before Sammy spoke again. "What are 
you-"
 
"Shh!" Ellenor's head suddenly snapped back to the television.
 
Sammy looked a little exasperated. "Ellie, you-"
 
Ellenor's voice softened and she held up a finger to keep Sammy quiet. 
"Wait a second, they're talking about my firm."
 
Sammy turned to look at the TV set, catching the news reporter in the 
middle of his sentence. "barged into the law offices of Donnell, Young, 
Dole, and Frutt carrying several firearms and threatening to take 
lives. Shots *were* fired, although it is reported that no one was hurt. 
David Arnold was taken into custody. There is no information at this time 
as to how he will be charged. We remind the viewers that this *is* 
unconfirmed information that is subject to change. We will bring you more 
on this story at a later date."
 
"Oh, my God." Ellenor's mouth had fallen open and her expression was 
one of complete horror. "Oh, my God."
 
Sammy reached for her hand. "Ellie, it's okay, they said no one was 
hurt. If you just-"
 
Ellenor quickly jumped to her feet. "They also said the information was 
unconfirmed. Sammy...Oh, my God!" Ellenor rushed to the kitchen phone, 
her dark hair flying behind her.
 
"Ellie, just calm down. I'm sure it's alright." Sammy spoke in a 
soothing voice, afraid that Ellenor might just break down form stress.
 
Ellenor ignored Sammy and started dialing. She waited impatiently, 
counting the rings. "Damn it! I got the machine," she said as she hung up.
 
"Ellenor! Please-"
 
"God, Sammy, I've gotta' get back there. If someone's hurt..." Ellenor 
shook her head and took a deep breath as she ran a hand through her 
hair.
 
Sammy walked forward and grasped her shoulders tightly. "Ellie, listen 
to me. It's not going to do any good going back there in the middle of 
the night. You're stressed out and tired. Most likely you'd just cause 
an accident. And it's not going to do any good calling people at these 
ungodly hours, you'll just upset yourself more. Why don't you just stay 
here tonight, I'll stay up with you if you want, and you can go back 
tomorrow when you've calmed down a bit. Then you can talk to everyone in 
person and see that *everything* is *okay*. We might even see something 
more about the whole thing on the news. Right now, let's just sit down 
and I'll massage your back. You've had an *extremely* stressful and 
emotionally trying week. Frankly, it might not be good for your *friends* 
to see you the way you are right now."
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Ellenor stood in front of the office door, immersed in hesitation. As 
much as she wanted to make sure that everyone was alright, she was 
terrified that someone might have been hurt. She did her best to choke back 
her fear and walked through the door.
 
Ellenor stood in the doorway and saw that the entire firm and Lucy were 
there. *Damn it! They're okay!*
 
She began to wonder if it was such a good idea to come back from her 
vacation early as every head in the office swiveled to gape at her.
 
"Ellenor! You're alright!" The excited outburst came from Rebecca.
 
"Wow, you look...good," Lucy said as she looked Ellenor up and down 
with a confused expression on her face.
 
"Are you guys okay?" Ellenor asked. "I heard on the news-"
 
Bobby cut her off. "David Arnold. Yeah, we're all alright. Where have 
you been?"
 
"What?" Ellenor's forehead was furrowed from his accusing tone.
 
Bobby came forward to stand in front of her. "We had no idea where you 
were. We were worried sick."
 
"I went to visit my parents. What's the deal, why are you so upset?"
 
Rebecca, Lucy and Lindsay exchanged worried looks. Everyone in the 
office seemed to step back a bit, seeing a confrontation arising between 
Ellenor and Bobby.
 
"Ellenor, in my office." Bobby lowered his voice as he pointed to his 
office door. Ellenor submitted, but gave Bobby a confused look as she 
passed him.
 
As soon as Bobby's office door closed Ellenor started speaking. "You 
could have at least let me say 'hi'."
 
Bobby turned to her and almost shouted, "Where the Hell were you?!"
 
Ellenor frowned at Bobby. "I told you, I went to visit my parents. And 
*don't* yell at me."
 
"I will yell, Ellenor! You came in here looking like someone beat the 
shit out of you, and very obviously lied about how you were hurt, after 
which you fell apart in my office. We were all so worried about you 
that Rebecca went to your apartment to see how you were doing, only to 
find that you had skipped town without so much as a note to us. We were 
*further* surprised to hear your neighbor say he had heard a fight in 
your apartment. Your place was trashed and occasionally splattered with 
*blood* that we assumed was yours. We were thinking abduction, we were 
thinking nervous breakdown, psycho friends, abusive boyfriend, stalker, 
disgruntled client, psychotic serial killer with an *axe*! You have no 
idea how many times this week we've seen you lying beside the highway, 
hacked into pieces! And now you've come in here with this lie about 
visiting your parents! Don't tell me not to yell!"
 
Ellenor stomped closer to Bobby so that they were mere inches apart. 
Her eyes were glowing with viscous anger as she began shouting, "As a 
matter of fact, I was visiting my parents! And how do you know what my 
apartment loo-"
 
"Your parents are dead!" Bobby screamed it without thinking, and only 
when he saw the look on Ellenor's face did he think about all that he 
had given away with what he said.
 
The color drained from Ellenor's face. Her eyes widened and her jaw 
dropped. She stumbled backwards, as if terrified of Bobby, and began to 
whisper in a shaking voice, "You... You went into my apartment. You 
looked...through my things." *Oh, God, they must know... everything.* 
"You..."
 
Bobby was suddenly frightened and no longer angry. "Ellenor, we were so 
worried about you. We just wanted to make sure you were okay... Let me 
explain..." He tried to step towards her as he spoke, but Ellenor 
pulled away from him. "Ellenor, we-"
 
"How could you?!" The scream ripped from the deepest crevices of 
Ellenor's soul and pulled itself from her throat with a full and grainy, yet 
shrill quality. It seemed to shake the entire building as it tore at 
Bobby like shards of glass, causing him to wince.
 
"Ellenor..." Bobby couldn't think of anything to say to combat the 
feelings of anguish, hurt and betrayal in Ellenor's eyes.
 
They stood facing each other for a moment in deadly silence and 
stillness before Ellenor ran from the room and from the building with tears 
streaming down her face. Bobby had to wonder if she would be coming back.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Rebecca stood before Ellenor's apartment door and knocked. She 
whispered to herself over and over, "Please be home. Please be home. Please be 
home..." She had no idea where Ellenor might be if she decided to run 
away from them again. Rebecca sighed when there was no answer and pulled 
Ellenor's spare set of keys from her pocket. *I might as well go in. 
She already knows what we've been doing.*
 
"Ellenor?" Rebecca called into the apartment. She didn't hear any 
answer, but just caught the sound of heavy breathing. She walked down the 
hall to Ellenor's bedroom and looked in the door.
 
When she saw Ellenor a part of the police report rolled back into 
Rebecca's mind. '...found her weeping by the lake...' There she was, shaking 
with the force of her tears and scrubbing at the dried blood on the 
carpet with a wet rag. A bucket of pinkish water sat near her.
 
"Ellenor?" Rebecca whispered, kneeling beside her friend and placing a 
hand on her shoulder. Ellenor just kept scrubbing and crying as she 
swallowed a lump in her throat.
 
"Talk to me, honey." Rebecca brushed the hair back from Ellenor's face.
 
"They died because of me." Ellenor whispered without moving her eyes or 
breaking the rhythm of her scrubbing.
 
"Oh, Ellenor, that's not true." Rebecca spoke in a soft voice and kept 
stroking Ellenor's hair.
 
"But it is." Ellenor laughed. "One time, when I was just six, I tried 
to take the boat out on my own. I was determined enough to get it far 
enough out to have trouble getting back. One of the oars fell into the 
water and I stood up to try and reach it. I fell over the edge into the 
water and hit my head on the oar. All I could think of was this 
incredible pain by my temple. I just kept sinking and sinking and swallowing 
water. I was so dazed I couldn't even fight my way back up. All the 
sudden I felt something wrap around my waist and start pulling me to the 
surface. My dad threw me into the boat and started hitting my back until I 
coughed up all the water I'd breathed in. He rowed me back to the 
house, and took me up to bed. He never got mad, never even scolded me. He 
saved me, but I..." She stopped talking as more tears slid down her 
cheeks and started scrubbing harder.
 
"Ellenor, it wasn't your fault." Rebecca wrapped her arm around 
Ellenor's shoulders. "You didn't do anything wrong."
 
Ellenor suddenly sat back against the bed pulled her legs up in front 
of her, revealing two dark, wet patches on the knees of her jeans. She 
covered her face with her dripping hands and started crying harder. "He 
was so sick, Rebecca, he was just so sick..."
 
"Who?" Rebecca furrowed her brow and sat beside Ellenor, once again 
wrapping an arm around her.
 
"Dad." Ellenor choked on a sob and sniffled.
 
"Your dad?"
 
"God, we all knew he was sick, but none of us did anything. He would 
come home a nervous wreck, screaming at us to stop laughing and taunting 
him. It was just occasional things at first, but it got worse and 
worse..."
 
Rebecca looked sick. "He was...?"
 
"He was a schizophrenic. God, how could we? We never told anyone, we 
just wanted it to go away, so we kept quiet. He would get so mad... We 
just tried to block it out. I, I remember...trying to explain to Danny 
why he got so mad. Danny was so young, he didn't remember before..."
 
"Oh, Ellenor, you were just a kid. You were scared."
 
Ellenor continued without hearing. "The sick thing is, he could have 
gotten help. Schizophrenics... they only get really violent when you let 
it go for so long. We could have helped him, but we never did. He 
deserved help." Ellenor paused to sniff and wipe away the tears on her 
cheeks, which were only replaced by more tears. "I just wanted to get out of 
the house. All the time I tried to be away. That night... Mark and I 
were going to a party together. I kept...begging Julie to come, telling 
her how much fun she'd have. I finally convinced her to get ready. I...I 
had tucked Danny into bed before we left, but...I forgot to get him a 
glass of water. I thought about going back to get him one so he wouldn't 
have to get up in the middle of the night. I was worried that if Dad 
came home... But I just wanted to leave, so I went.
 
"We had so much fun at the party. Mark and I danced all night and drank 
and smoked... Julie sat in the corner and watched everybody else, but 
you could tell she was having fun... She was smiling so much... We 
finally decided to go home when it was after midnight. We went inside and 
were about to sneak upstairs when I saw a light on in the living room. I 
just had this horrible, horrible feeling. Mike and Julie followed me 
inside. "Dad was sitting in the recliner, with his hands squeezing the 
arms so tightly...his knuckles were just...white. He had this tired, 
tormented, deadly look in his eyes. We just stared at each other and then 
he said, 'Stop laughing.' I said I wasn't laughing at him and he got up 
and fell down in front of me, crying and begging me, 'Stop laughing. 
Please, just stop. I won't be mad I won't get upset, just please, please 
stop laughing. I can't sleep at night, I haven't slept in days. I can't 
work, I can't think, please, please, stop laughing at me.'
 
"I was so scared. I...I had almost never seen him cry. And Julie and 
Mark were scared too, Mark was just frozen there, and Julie was crying. I 
told him again I wasn't laughing. He just screamed at me, 'You're my 
children, I love you, why do you hate me? Why do you want to kill me? Why 
are you laughing?' And I just tried to stay calm and said again that I 
wasn't laughing. He was just shaking, and holding his head. He said to 
me, 'I thought it was them. They were trying to kill me, but it wasn't 
them laughing. It's one of you, it must be one of you.'
 
"And that was the first time I saw them. Julie must have seen them too, 
because she let out this awful, awful scream. The three of them were 
lying there on the floor... They were covered in smeared blood, and their 
clothes...were ripped and practically hanging off their bodies. You 
could see white pieces of bone in places where he'd cut them so deeply. On 
the floor there were just small...chunks of flesh that had come off 
when he just kept stabbing them over and over... I saw the knife on the 
floor, and... Next to Danny, there was this glass in a small puddle of 
water.
 
"Dad was terrified when Julie screamed. He lunged at her, screaming, 
'You're in on it too, you want to kill me too.' He slammed her up against 
the wall and was choking her. I looked at Mark, but he was just 
standing there, so frightened he couldn't move. I wasn't thinking, I 
just...jumped onto Dad's back to pull him off Julie. That scared him more and he 
started clawing at me. We were wrestling on the floor... I didn't know 
what I was doing, I just wanted him off me. I saw his throat, it was 
right in front of my eyes. I reached out..." Here Ellenor held out her 
hand again, like a claw, waiting to strike at something. "I just dug my 
nails in behind his Adam's apple and pulled. And then I scratched at it 
again, just tearing at his throat, until he was limp on top of me, 
gushing blood all over me.
 
"When I got up Mark was still standing there like a statue, his eyes 
were glassy. Julie was screaming 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' 
over and over. And then there were police, and I was out by the lake, and 
then I felt this stinging in my arm... I woke up in the hospital. All I 
could think was that it had to be a nightmare...just a nightmare. But 
then my aunt came to pick me up. All I could think of doing was 
forgetting, and getting away from there."
 
Ellenor laughed hoarsely. "You know, it must be a miracle. None of us 
have ever shown signs of schizophrenia. Just...traumatic childhoods." 
Ellenor started sobbing so hard that she couldn't talk. Rebecca pulled 
her into an embrace and rocked her back and forth.
 
Rebecca couldn't think of anything to say, so she just repeated, "It's 
okay. It's okay. It's okay." Without thinking, she whispered, "It's not 
your fault. You never laughed."
 
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End part 21

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Title: "Behind the Lies" Part 22/22 
Author: Albert, Emily, and Ivan
 
Rating: PG-13 for language an violent scenes.
 
Disclaimer: The characters of The Practice are the property of David E. 
Kelley Productions and Twentieth Century Fox Television. No copyright 
infringement is intended.

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EPILOGUE

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Eugene appeared at the front door of Helen's apartment. Both of their 
expressions were somber; they had agreed to go out this night long in 
advance of the tragedies that had just occurred. Eugene had suggested 
they cancel, but Helen insisted. Despite her tough exterior, this was one 
night where she needed to be able to lean on someone.
 
"Did you talk to Ellenor?" he asked.
 
"Yeah," she replied, closing her door and locking the deadbolt behind 
her. "Just on the phone, though. She's not coming out of her apartment 
and she doesn't want to see anyone. I felt lucky to have gotten as much 
out of her as I did."
 
"So, how is she doing?"
 
Helen sighed. "I guess, as well as anyone, considering what she went 
through."
 
After a silent, awkward moment, Eugene decided to change the subject. 
"So any ideas on where we should go?"
 
She stared off into space. "I was thinking, maybe we could just go down 
to the riverfront, sit on the pier. Stare out over the water. I feel 
like I'm being suffocated lately and some fresh air would do me good."
 
He smiled. "I think that's about all I'm up for myself. I've had more 
than enough excitement in the last few days." He took her by the hand as 
they walked towards the elevator.
 
Later, they both sat on a concrete bench, holding arms, forearms 
pressed together, looking out over wooden railings at the Charles River. The 
reflection of a thin crest of a moon shimmered in the ripples of the 
dark water. For an August night, it was very cold, but Eugene wasn't 
shivering. In some ways, he was thankful for the chilly air; it made him 
feel alive. And thankful for it.
 
"I just can't stop wondering, Eugene. Why didn't she tell any of us?" 
Helen asked.
 
"I would imagine that it's hard to do," he responded. "When someone is 
dead, by your hand, even if it's completely justified by self-defense, 
people's attitudes change. You're not the same person in their eyes. 
I've seen that happen a lot with clients of mine."
 
"I've seen it, too, but that's not the case here, my attitude hasn't 
changed. I don't think of her any differently now than I did last week. 
Do you?"
 
"No, I don't," he said. "But Ellenor didn't have any way of knowing 
that. I understand why she was afraid."
 
"When we were on the phone, she told me that Arnold kid was what set 
her off. He was just too damn similar to her own experiences, when she 
was growing up." She turned to look at him. "Tell me, did you think that 
was it for you? I mean, that it was all over? When that kid stormed 
into the office with guns blazing...?"
 
"No, actually, I didn't," Eugene told her, calmly dismissing the 
trauma. "For some reason, I didn't think he was actually going to hurt 
anyone. I guess it was just intuition. Or maybe I just felt like I was 
watching a movie the whole time. Like there really wasn't a chance of anyone 
getting hurt."
 
"I'm sure that was a good way of looking at it," she said. "It was just 
a movie. Otherwise the thought of so many people that you love and care 
about getting hurt would just make you sick to your stomach..."
 
Eugene wondered if he was included in that group of people that she 
loved and cared about. Let's see, Ellenor wasn't around at the time David 
Arnold burst in, leaving only Bobby and Lindsay as people she cared 
about who were there. That's two, and two people can hardly be considered 
"many", even if...
 
"What about Kittleson?" Helen asked, jarring him from his daydream.
 
"Kittleson," he grimaced in response. "Stack and Morris, they're both 
up on charges of obstructing justice. That's in addition to the original 
drug-trafficking charge. Kittleson recused herself from that case, with 
the conflict of interest and everything. And I guess that's that. I 
guess she didn't do anything wrong."
 
Helen just shook her head. "I still can't believe it. Something tells 
me that woman is a psycho."
 
"You know, maybe she isn't." Helen just looked at him. "It's Jimmy. 
There's something I see in his eyes. Maybe it's just my imagination but I 
think she means a lot to him."
 
"And you don't think she's deranged?"
 
Eugene calmly deflected the subject with a gentle smile. "Anything's 
possible. But I can see myself, later on, reconsidering the opinion I 
have of her. But who knows. We just have to wait and see."
 
"I hate it when you're diplomatic," she said flatly. "But I'm too 
emotionally drained to argue with you."
 
"No, not diplomatic," he told her. "Let's just say, these past few 
days, have seen me a lot less likely to jump into conflicts than I used to 
be."
 
"What, are you mellowing out in your old age?" she said, smiling.
 
He grinned. "Yeah, maybe so. Maybe I should just get out of criminal 
law all together. Copyright infringement. Now *those* are some exciting 
cases."
 
She chuckled slightly, then looked away, at a tugboat that was carrying 
its load down the river at a mercilessly slow pace.
 
"Hey, Eugene, about us..." she began, turning back to him.
 
"Yeah?"
 
She just looked at him, her face frozen in befuddlement. "Um, I'm not 
sure..."
 
"You're not sure?"
 
"Well, I just realized, for the first time in a long time, I'm in a 
relationship where I don't feel the need to talk 'about us'. I mean, it's 
weird, I keep thinking that there's something about our relationship 
that I should be worried about, but for the life of me I don't know what 
that could be."
 
"Well, that's good, right?" he laughed.
 
"Yeah, no, it's good, I mean, I guess," she said, looking into his 
eyes, "It's just a force of habit. I mean, let's just keep doing this, 
okay? Let's just keep on enjoying being with each other, no worries. Okay?"
 
"Can't argue with that," Eugene said, putting an arm around her. 
"Listen, um, tomorrow night. I've got Kendall. I was wondering if maybe you'd 
like to meet him, spend some time with him, maybe, and..."
 
"Don't push it, Eugene."
 
He maintained his grinning expression. "Just an offer, that's all."
 
The sat wordlessly and listened to the quiet world around them. They 
both had seen their fair share of crime, and they both knew the heinous 
things people were probably doing to each other in the city at that very 
moment. But for just a second, all was right and good. The dark waves 
lapped at the river banks. The trudging tugboat was far up the river 
know, and its barely audible foghorn carried across the water. Each of 
them was in the arms of someone they truly cared about. And they both 
wished that that second could last for an eternity.
 
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The end

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